The egotism of the ignorant keeps them in ignorance. There is an amusing notion that the masses are kept in ignorance by clever conspirators against freedom and progress. The average man’s reasoning consists chiefly of the repetition of cant phrases in support of preconceived ideas. He wishes to hear only what he can applaud, and he applauds what saves his face and puts his enemies to shame. Theological disputation has always been carried on in this spirit, and so have most popular discussions of morals, politics and economic problems. Professor Overstreet says that this “One Right Way” attitude is essentially adolescent. This does not mean that it is essentially youthful. Adolescence is the period when there is normally an exaggerated emotional interest in the ego. A delayed adolescent type of mentality is common. Psychologists speak of it as narcissism,--a fixation of interest upon the idea of self. Among psychopathic individuals and also among crowds this _narcissism_ is very dominant and leads to exaggerated notions of self-importance and to other fixed ideas. Inability to entertain any doubt of self becomes inability to question any idea which one would like to believe true. Hence the delusion of infallibility. I think that vast numbers of otherwise normal people are made susceptible to crowd thinking because they simply do not know that there are ways of life and thought different from their own which good people may and do honestly hold. Crowd appeal at once entrenches prejudice and flatters the ego, compensating it perhaps for any half-conscious feeling of inferiority it may have because for instance a man over-rates school education and “did not get it.” It is interesting to note how this delusion of infallibility may often lead men to believe and assert the most incredible fabrications. I quote from a recent New York newspaper an exaggerated example which will illustrate what I mean. “The League of Nations has been asked to do a lot of strange things by people all over the world, but it remained for a New York business man to request action on the most unusual topic of all. Announcement is made by the league secretariat that it has received a letter from the New Yorker declaring his opinion that ‘brain enslavement,’ otherwise known as spirit writing or receiving messages from the dead, is the cause of many evils. He said he wanted the league to stop this system all over the world, making the specific charge that the American courts of ‘so-called justice’ are controlled by the spirit movement.”