3. A Suggested Explanation of the Progressive
Exaggeration of Sentiments in Assemblies.
If collective sentiments were susceptible of exact
quantitative measurement, we might translate them by a curve
which, after a first gradual ascent, runs upward with extreme
rapidity and then falls almost vertically. The equation of this
curve might be called the equation of the variations of
collective sentiments subjected to a constant excitation.
It is not always easy to explain the acceleration of
certain sentiments under the influence of a constant exciting
cause. Perhaps, however, one may say that if the laws of
psychology are comparable to those of mechanics, a cause of
invariable dimensions acting in a continuous fashion will rapidly
increase the intensity of a sentiment. We know, for example,
that a force which is constant in dimension and direction, such
as gravity acting upon a mass, will cause an accelerated
movement. The speed of a free object falling in space under the
influence of gravity will be about 32 feet during the first
second, 64 feet during the next, 96 feet during the next, &c. It
would be easy, were the moving body allowed to fall from a
sufficient height, to give it a velocity sufficient to perforate
a plate of steel.
But although this explanation is applicable to the
acceleration of a sentiment subjected to a constant
exciting cause, it does not tell us why the effects of
acceleration finally and suddenly cease. Such a fall is only
comprehensible if we bring in physiological factors—that is, if
we remember that pleasure, like pain, cannot exceed certain
limits, and that all sensations, when too violent, result in the
paralysis of sensation. Our organism can only support a certain
maximum of joy, pain, or effort, and it cannot support that
maximum for long together. The hand which grasps a dynamometer
soon exhausts its effort, and is obliged suddenly to let go.
The study of the causes of the rapid disappearance of
certain groups of sentiments in assemblies will remind us of the
fact that beside the party which is predominant by means of its
strength or prestige there are others whose sentiments,
restrained by this force or prestige, have not reached their full
development. Some chance circumstance may somewhat weaken the
prevailing party, when immediately the suppressed sentiments of
the adverse parties may become preponderant. The Mountain
learned this lesson after Thermidor.
All analogies that we may seek to establish between the
laws of material phenomena and those which condition the
evolution of affective and mystic factors are evidently extremely
rough. They must be so until the mechanism of the cerebral
functions is better understood than it is to-day.
