In panic, the dominance of the one emotion and its impulse is so complete as to allow no scope for any of the subtler modes of collective mental operation. But in other cases other conditions co-operate to determine the character of the emotional response of the crowd. Of these the most important are the awareness of the crowd as a whole in the mind of each member of it and his consciousness of his membership in the whole. When a common emotion pervades the crowd, each member becomes more or less distinctly aware of the fact; and this gives him a sense of sharing in a mighty and irresistible power which renders him reckless of consequences and encourages him to give himself up to the prevailing emotion without restraint. Thus, in the case of an audience swept by an emotion of admiration for a brilliant singer, the thunder of applause, which shows each individual that his emotion is shared by all the rest, intensifies his own emotion, not only by way of sympathetic induction, but also because it frees him from that restraint of emotion which is habitual with most of us in the presence of any critical or adversely disposed spectators, and which the mere thought of such spectators tends to maintain and strengthen. Again, the oratory of a demagogue, if addressed to a large crowd, will raise angry emotion to a pitch of intensity far higher than any it will attain if he is heard by a few persons only; and this is due not only to accentuation of the emotion by sympathetic induction, but also to the fact that, as the symptoms of the emotion begin to be manifested on all sides, each man becomes aware that it pervades the crowd, that the crowd as a whole is swayed by the same emotion and the same impulse as he himself feels, that none remains to criticise the violence of his expressions. To which it must be added that the consciousness of the harmony of one’s feelings with those of a mass of one’s fellows, and the consequent sense of freedom from all restraint, are highly pleasurable to most men; they find a pleasure in letting themselves go, in being swept away in the torrent of collective emotion. This is one of the secrets of the fascination which draws many thousands of spectators to a football match, and brings together the multitudes of base-ball ‘fans’ bubbling over with eager anticipation of an emotional orgy.