rate much weakened in force, until the dominant emotion has spent itself.[1]
2. Each wave of collective emotion is followed by a reaction in the opposite direction. Times of depression follow times of elation. Periods of sensuous enjoyment alternate with periods of moral contrition and severity. After the laxity of Charles I and his court came the rigours of puritanism, and after this had run its course came the restoration of the corrupt court of Charles II and the reopening of the flood-gates of carnality. The panic and the speculative fever chase each other. It is hard to say what is the cause of the reaction; but it is a general fact.
3. Two powerful popular emotions can not occur at the same time. This is obviously true if the emotions are opposite, or antagonistic to one another; if one prevails it inhibits the another. It is also true when the two are not opposite but only different, i.e., are concerned with different interests. For instance, before the world war broke out the people of the United States were mildly excited about
- ↑ A caution, perhaps, needs to be observed if we are not to entertain a false conception of these "waves." We are using a material image, and this may lead us to think of these waves as continuous states of feeling; but it will be well for us to remember that in such "waves" of popular emotion no individual is throughout its duration in a continuous state of the characteristic feeling. Each person has recurrent states of feeling with regard to the particular interest which is for the time dominant, as his attention is from time to time directed to it; but naturally this occurs often, and hence he has a frequent recurrence of the characteristic feeling. Obviously he can not be thinking and feeling about that particular interest all the time; and there are, doubtless, times of greater or less length when no single individual in the group is in that particular state of feeling for instance, they may all be asleep. The use of the phrase, "wave of popular feeling," means simply that for a period of some length a large proportion of the people are having frequently recurring states of feeling of a certain type. It is true, however, that there does persist during such a period of mental epidemic an unusual susceptibility to the stimuli which arouse that particular type of feeling.
Neither should we think of a wave of popular feeling as an emotional experience of a great mind over and above particular persons. There is no over-individual social mind; but there are in dividual social minds, i.e., individual minds are social.
