Today the crowd is as real a factor in our socialized life as are magnates and monopolies.  It is too complex a problem merely to damn or praise it—­it must be reckoned with, and mastered.  The present problem is how to get the most and the best out of the crowd-spirit, and the public speaker finds this to be peculiarly his own question.  His influence is multiplied if he can only transmute his audience into a crowd.  His affirmations must be their conclusions.

This can be accomplished by unifying the minds and needs of the audience and arousing their emotions.  Their feelings, not their reason, must be played upon—­it is “up to” him to do this nobly.  Argument has its place on the platform, but even its potencies must subserve the speaker’s plan of attack to win possession of his audience.

Reread the chapter on “Feeling and Enthusiasm.”  It is impossible to make an audience a crowd without appealing to their emotions.  Can you imagine the average group becoming a crowd while hearing a lecture on Dry Fly Fishing, or on Egyptian Art?  On the other hand, it would not have required world-famous eloquence to have turned any audience in Ulster, in 1914, into a crowd by discussing the Home Rule Act.  The crowd-spirit depends largely on the subject used to fuse their individualities into one glowing whole.

Note how Antony played upon the feelings of his hearers in the famous funeral oration given by Shakespeare in “Julius Caesar.”  From murmuring units the men became a unit—­a mob.

ANTONY’S ORATION OVER CAESAR’S BODY Friends, Romans, countrymen!  Lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.  The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones:  So let it be with Caesar!  The Noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.  If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answered it.  Here, under leave of Brutus, and the rest—­ For Brutus is an honorable man, So are they all, all honorable men—­ Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.  He was my friend, faithful and just to me:  But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man.  He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:  Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?  When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:  Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man.  You all did see, that, on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse.  Was this ambition?  Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And sure, he is an honorable man.  I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know.  You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?  Oh, judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!—­Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me. [Weeps.

    1 Plebeian. Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.