We have dealt at sufficient length with the transmission of emotion by mimetic expression. A striking instance of this process has already been found outside the domain of art in the contagiousness of collective states of mind. When art adopts emotional transmission as an end in itself, this contagiousness is naturally increased. On the side of the executant we have to suppose a conscious endeavour to make the mimic expression as easily appropriated as possible; on the side of the spectator an increased readiness to partake of the expressed feeling. A theatrical audience, indeed, unlike a riotous mob, does not generally go so far as to imitate its leader, the actor, by actual movement. Conscious of the fictitious character of the performance, the spectators are able to resist the sub-conscious volitional impulses which they receive. But while thus controlling their outward activity, those who attentively follow the acting may nevertheless appropriate in an almost direct manner the feelings represented. Although they remain passive spectators and preserve an appearance of immobility, they are apt to follow, in a kind of abridgment, the attitudes and facial play of the performers. At the most critical stages of a popular melodrama the audience always falls into an unconscious pantomime, which, as Engel remarked, to the psychological observer is of far greater interest than that enacted on the stage.[135] In the higher forms of dramatic art this direct transmission of feeling no doubt loses a great deal of its importance. But we believe that every attentive playgoer has occasional opportunities of observing, in himself if not in his neighbours, faint traces of an unconscious and involuntary imitation which follows all the movements of the performers. Such imitation will, of course, become more and more pronounced the more the dialogue gives place to pantomimic action, and the more vividly and convincingly this action is represented. As an example of the power with which a good mimic may compel even the most critical spectator to participate in emotional moods, we cannot quote anything better than the description of Garrick in Lichtenberg’s _Briefe aus England_. “His facial expression is so powerful as to invite imitation. When he is grave his audience is grave. When he frowns the house frowns, and it smiles when he smiles. In his hidden pleasure, and in his intimate manner, when, in an aside, he gives the audience his confidence, there is something so winning that one’s whole soul goes out to this fascinating man.”[136]