n their loose and precarious conditions
of life, are driven irregularly hither and thither by different
individual needs and desires, to act under one impulse with one
feeling for one object. It introduces order and connection, at
least occasionally, into the rambling, fluctuating life of the
hunting tribes. It is, besides wars, perhaps the only factor
that makes their solidarity vitally perceptible to the
adherents of a primitive tribe, and it is at the same time one
of the best preparations for war, for the gymnastic dances
correspond in more than one respect to our military exercises.
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of the
primitive dance in the culture development of mankind. All
higher civilization is conditioned upon the uniformly ordered
co-operation of individual social elements, and primitive men
are trained to this co-operation by the dance.[252]

The dance, which is so characteristic and so universal a feature of the
life of primitive man--at once a mode of collective expression and of
collective representation--is but a conventionalized form of the
circular reaction, which in its most primitive form is represented by
the milling of the herd.

b) _Public opinion._--We ordinarily think of public opinion as a sort
of social weather. At certain times, and under certain circumstances, we
observe strong, steady currents of opinion, moving apparently in a
definite direction and toward a definite goal. At other times, however,
we note flurries and eddies and counter-currents in this movement. Every
now and then there are storms, shifts, or dead calms. These sudden
shifts in public opinion, when expressed in terms of votes, are referred
to by the politicians as "landslides."

In all these movements, cross-currents and changes in direction which a
closer observation of public opinion reveals, it is always possible to
discern, but on a much grander scale, to be sure, that same type of
circular reaction which we have found elsewhere, whenever the group was
preparing to act. Always in the public, as in the crowd, there will be a
circle, sometimes wider, sometimes narrower, within which individuals
are mutually responsive to motives and interests of one another, so that
out of this interplay of social forces there may emerge at any time a
common motive and a common purpose that will dominate the whole.

Within the circle of the mutua