A crowd may be looked upon as a sort of new composite personality born of the union of a number of men whose individual qualities will not by any means represent the character of the crowd they form. The crowd may be said to have a collective soul which will cause it to act in a way in which the individuals composing it would not, and indeed could not, act. This soul is generally inferior to the average character of the persons forming the crowd, but at times rises to heights impossible to them. Thus crowds have often committed atrocities from which their component individuals would have shrunk, but other crowds have shown incredible enthusiasm and devotion, and performed acts of heroism and self-sacrifice, to which no individual in them could ever have risen singly. Examples of the crimes of crowds are patent in history, but their heroisms also may be found, most of all in the innumerable instances when troops have faced death without flinching, and thereby gained victory for their Cause. The characteristics of crowds may be glanced at. They will be seen to be analogous to those which animate troops. Crowds act on instinct and are incapable of reasoning, so that they are essentially irresponsible, while very easily influenced by suggestion. Their impressions are extraordinarily infectious, for Man is an imitative animal, and still more so is Man in bulk. Hence, suggestions spread like fire, and impressions and tendencies to action are communicated with the greatest rapidity, for, in a crowd, reason has little influence on the action, and self-concern, so potent in the individual, is effaced in the confidence born from a sense of the power of numbers. So we may note among soldiers at one time the spread of panic, and at another the not less infectious courage due to combination. Both are capable of producing striking action for harm or for good, and action quite impossible for the individual when alone.