Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.

The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immerged for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself -- either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd, or from some other cause of which we are ignorant -- in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser.

The individualities in the crowd who might possess a personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in number to struggle against the current.

We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by means of suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas in an identical direction, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.