The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological StudyMartin, Everett Dean
Science
The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study
Martin, Everett Dean
Crowds
All the facts which have been pointed out above are the inevitable
consequences of government by crowds. There can be no real liberty with
crowds because there can be no personal independence. The psychic
mechanisms of the crowd are hostile to conscious personality. The
independent thinker cannot be controlled by catchwords. In our day
intellectual freedom is not smothered in actual martyr fires, but it is
too often strangled in the cradle. The existence of new values, a thing
which will inevitably happen where the human spirit is left free in its
creative impulses, is disturbing to the crowd-mind. Education must
therefore be made "safe for democracy"; it must be guarded carefully
lest the youth become an original personal fact, a new spiritual
creation. I realize the element of truth in the statement often made,
that there is already too much spiritual originality in the youths of
this generation. I am not contending that certain phases of egoism
should not be checked by education. A solid intellectual basis must be
created which will make social living possible. The trouble is,
however, that this task is done too well. It is the merely useful man,
not the unusual man, whom the crowd loves. Skill is encouraged, for,
whether it be skill in serving or in demanding service, skill in itself
does not upset existing crowd-values. Reflection is "wicked" for it
leads to doubt, and doubt is non-gregarious behavior. Education ceases
to be the path of spiritual freedom; it becomes a device for harnessing
the spirit of youth in the treadmill of the survival-values of the
crowd. It is also the revenge of the old against the young, a way of
making them less troublesome. It teaches the rules for success in a
crowd-governed world while taking advantage of the natural credulity of
childhood to draw the curtain with such terrifying mummery about the
figure of wisdom that the average mind, never having the daring or
curiosity to lift it, will remain to its dying day a dullard and a
mental slave without suspecting the fact. Every "dangerous" thought is
denatured and expurgated. The student is skillfully insulated from any
mental shock that might galvanize him into original intellectual life.
The classic languages are taught for purposes of "discipline." After six
or seven years' study of Greek literature in the accepted manner one may
be able to repeat most of the rules of Goodwin's _Greek Grammar_, and
pride himself upon being a cultivated person, knowing in the end less
of the language than a bootblack from modern Athens knows of it, or than
a waiter from Bologna knows of English after one year's residence in
Greenwich Village. And the all-important thing is that never once has
the student been given a glimpse of the beautiful free pagan life which
all this literature is about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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