With wonderful lucidity and richness of illustration - Sir Martin demonstrates the
following fundamental facts:
(1) The great majority of men are brought up in, and all their lives belong to, certain psychological “crowds”, i.e., groups of people who think, and above all, feel similarly. Such crowds are those of the home, friends and associates, schools and universities, professions, religious sects, political parties, schools of thought, nations, races, and so on. Even those who read the same newspapers or belong to the same club form a psychological “crowd”.
(2) Such crowds are in the main formed by, nourished on, and dominated by feeling or emotion — not by thought.
A crowd has all the emotions, but no intellect: it can feel, but it cannot think. The opinions of crowds are seldom or never reached by reason, but are merely infectious passions which sweep through the whole body like an electric current, these frequently originating from a single brain. Once caught up in the crowd, the individual rapidly loses his power of individual thought and feeling, and becomes one with the crowd, sharing its life, its opinions, its attitudes, prejudices, and the like.
(3) Very few ever have the courage or the strength to break away from the various crowds to which they belong; the vast majority remain all their lives under the sway of the crowds which have absorbed them.
Our author then proceeds to enumerate and describe the various crowd virtues and to show that they differ from the virtues of the individual, being on the whole at a much lower and more primitive level.
Every crowd, being unable to lead itself, needs and finds a leader. Of such leaders there are three main types.
(a) The Crowd-Compeller. He is one who dominates and leads the crowd by imposing upon it his own ideas by the sheer force of his own personality. Examples of this type are Napoleon, Disraeli, Caesar, Charlemagne.
(6) The Crowd-Exponent. This type, totally distinct from the Crowd-Compeller, is one which feels by natural sensitiveness what the crowd feels, or is going to feel, and which expresses in clear and usually graphic language the emotions of the crowd, which on its own account is inarticulate. Such men seldom think out problems for themselves and then proclaim their gospel. Rather they wait for the emotions of the crowd to take form: then they plunge into the thick of the fray and say with eloquence, power and enthusiasm that which people about them are dimly and vaguely feeling. Examples of this type are very common, especially in the field of politics,
(c) The Crowd-Representative. Crowd leaders of this type are picturesque figureheads rather than individual forces. Typical examples are a constitutional king, a consul, an ambassador, a judge (at any rate in England). These men are merely the people, “public opinion”, personified: they speak with the voice of the people, act for them, and stand for them in the sight of the world. They must suppress or conceal their own individual opinions, and appear to feel as the public feels, to act in conformity with the public wishes and sentiments.
The above is the merest sketch of the leading principles enunciated in the extremely able book mentioned, and the student of Sufism is urged to make a careful study of that work for himself. It will help him not only to appreciate more justly the forces by which 'the public' is swayed, but also to assess at their true value many of his own beliefs, opinions and attitudes towards many questions of the day.
It is clearly of the utmost importance that, in all his feelings and thoughts, the student of Sufism should act deliberately and consciously. The Greek saying Gnothi seauton, Know Thyself, is a fine piece of advice, for self-knowledge is absolutely necessary to any candidate for progress. The Sufi should not allow himself to be swept off his feet by becoming; submerged in a collective emotion — or thought-form, which forms a kind of atmosphere through which every thing is seen and by which everything is coloured, and which so manifestly dominates and sways the many crowds amongst which he moves. It is no easy matter to stand against a strong popular bias, owing to the ceaseless beating upon us of the thought-forms and currents of thought which fill the atmosphere: yet the student must learn to do so.
He should, moreover, be able to recognise the various types of crowd-leaders and to refuse to allow himself to be dominated, persuaded or cajoled into accepting ideas or following lines of action unless he does so quite deliberately, and with all his own faculties alert.
The influence of psychological crowds and crowd-leaders in the world today, as well probably as in every age, is very great indeed, and the forces they wield subtle and far-reaching, so that the student who aims at self-mastery and who wishes to lead his own emotional and intellectual life, must be continuously on his guard against these insidious influences.
A study of 'The Crowd in Peace and War' (and The Science of the Emotions by Bhagavan Das) is an invaluable preliminary to the task of training and developing the emotional body till it becomes a useful and obedient servant of the sovereign will of the Self.
