the spirit that collectively animates a group of men cannot
be calculated by taking an arithmetical sum, it does depend on that
possessed by each individual in the group, and more particularly on what
is common to them all and on the nature of the bonds that connect them.
Even a chance group of persons previously unconnected and unrelated is
bound together by feelings common to all humanity and may be appealed to
collectively on such grounds. The haphazard street crowd thrills with
horror at the sight of a baby toddling in front of a trolley-car and
shouts with joy when the motorman stops just in time. But the same crowd,
if composed of newly-arrived Poles, Hungarians and Slovaks, would fail
utterly to respond to some patriotic appeal that might move an American
crowd profoundly. You may sway a Methodist congregation with a tale of
John Wesley that would leave Presbyterians or Episcopalians cold. Try a
Yale mob with "Boola" and then play the same tune at Princeton, and watch
the effect.

Thus, the more carefully our group is selected the more particular and
definite are the motives that we can bring to bear in it, and the more
powerful will its activities be along its own special lines. The mob in
the street may be roused by working on elemental passions--so roused it
will kill or burn, but you cannot excite in it enthusiasm for Dante's
Inferno, or induce it to contribute money or labor toward the preparation
of a new annotated edition. To get such enthusiasm and stimulate such
action you must work upon a body of men selected and brought together for
this very purpose.

Besides this, we must draw a distinction between natural and artificial
groups. The group brought together by natural causes and not by man's
contriving is generally lower in the scale of civilization when it acts
collectively than any one of its components. This is the case with a mob,
a tribe, even a municipal group. But an artificial or selected group,
where the grouping is for a purpose and has been specially effected with
that end in view may act more intelligently, and be, so far as its special
activities are concerned, more advanced in the scale of progress than its
components as individuals. There is the same difference as between a man's
hand and a delicate tool. The former is the result of physical evolution
only; the latter of evolution into which the brain of man has entered as a
factor. The tool is not as good for "all round" use as the hand