The Crowd

There is a persistent trait of human nature that causes most of us to seek the company of others. We are essentially social beings. We need each other, for companionship, for comfort, for counsel. We have learned to know that few if any of us can enjoy security alone. Physical protection has long since been a matter of collective concern, and civilization itself has been achieved cooperatively and must be preserved that way. But the fact that we achieve many of our aims by cooperation with others, must not make us lose sight of the fact that every crowd, every community, every country is composed of individuals, each of whom is individually responsible for his own conduct, his own thinking, his own life. Crowds sometimes do strange things to people. For example, a gangster surrounded by his own gang may acquire a false sense of bravery, when, in reality, alone he is a cringing coward. The gang spirit can become a very dangerous spirit. Crowds sometimes make a boy rush unwisely into things he wouldn’t have done except for the crowd. As one of a crowd he may forget that something which he wouldn’t do alone doesn’t become right just because a crowd does it. A crime that is perpetrated by three people isn’t just one-third as bad as if one had done it. More properly it could be described as being three times as bad ⎯ because, while there may have been only one offense, there are three offenders, each of whom is guilty. A crowd can’t think; crowds don’t change the basic nature of things. Crowd action doesn’t convert wrong into right. A crowd may make an action seem impersonal, but we can’t impersonalize anything in which we ourselves participate or to which we ourselves give consent. We cannot avoid moral responsibility by hiding behind gangs, or false fronts, or organizations ⎯ for the crowd is always composed of individuals, and our individual responsibility for our own conduct is everlastingly upon us whether we are alone or with a dozen or a million. We do not lose our identity or our responsibility or our accountability by merging ourselves with any crowd of any size or description.