gerness and enthusiasm
of an orator can, irrespective of the merits of the cause he is
defending, provoke eagerness and enthusiasm for the same
cause among an audience that does not in the least understand
what the orator is talking about.

[Footnote 2:
"In man infectious laughter or yawning, walking in step, imitating the
movements of a ropewalker, while watching him, feeling a shock in one's legs
when one sees a man falling, and a hundred other occurrences of this kind are
cases of physiological sympathy." Ribot: _Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 232.

Reproduction of the actions of others has by a certain school of philosophers
and psychologists, notably Tarde, Le Bon, and Baldwin, been ascribed to
imitation. But no experimental researches have revealed any such specific
instinct to imitate (see Thorndike, p. 73 ff.), and "imitations" of acts can
generally be traced to sympathy, or suggestion--which is sympathy on an
intellectual plane.]

[Footnote 3: Such expressions as "kill joy," "wet blanket," "life of the
party" are instances of the popular appreciation of the fact of social
contagion.]

One brand of cigarettes was recently advertised by the
face of a young soldier, roguishly irresponsible, palpably and
completely given over to joy. One found one's self transported
into something of this same mood before one had a
chance to speculate at all as to whether there was any causal
relation between the specific quality of tobacco the youngster
was smoking, and that contagious, undeniable delight. What
is called personal magnetism is perhaps more than anything
else the ability to provoke in others sympathetic experiences
of pleasant and exhilarating emotions.

Sensibility to the emotions of others, though possessed by
almost all individuals, varies in degree. The complete
absence of it marks a man out as "stolid," "cold," "callous,"
"brutal." Such a type of personality may be efficient and
successful in pursuits requiring nothing besides a direct
analysis of facts, uncolored by any irrelevant access of feeling, as in
the case of mathematics and mechanics. But the geniuses
even in strictly intellectual fields have frequently been men of
sensitiveness, delicacy, and responsiveness to the feelings of
others. That intellectual analysis, however, does frequently
blunt the poignancy of feeling is illustrated in the case of John
Stuart Mill, who writes in his _Autobiography_:

Analytic habits may thus even strengthen