The most dissimilar men in terms of intelligence possess very similar instincts, passions and feelings. In everything that belongs to the field of feelings - religion, politics, morality, affections and antipathies, etc. - the most eminent men rarely rise above the level of the most ordinary individuals. From an intellectual point of view there may be an abyss between a great mathematician and his shoemaker, but from a character point of view the difference is most often slight or non-existent. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd The irrationality of the masses, be it an army designed with the sole purpose of destruction or a political protest turned violent, has fascinated psychologists for centuries. Just flipping through the television on a Friday night reveals society's need to explain away the senseless crimes of ordinary citizens who, when united, become a force of destruction. A single common thread connects a news report about swarms of soccer moms running amok at a local mall on Black Friday, a made-for-TV movie dramatizing the Manson cult massacres, and a documentary blaming Holocaust atrocities on everything from Hitler's unhappy childhood. to syphilis: the desire to understand the transformation from a collection of ordinary people to a crowd of senseless murderers. In War of the Worlds, HG Wells examines man's aspiration to understand the incomprehensible, in this case a crowd of Martians who appear to possess few human emotions. Although the Martians are not a traditional mob, The War of the Worlds reflects contemporary advances in psychology explained in The Mob as the same rules that govern a frenzied mob also control the "collective mind" of the Martians due to a common goal (Le. .. ... at the center of intellectual and intellectual commonalities so that he can better understand the intentions of the Martians, thus decreasing his fear of the conquerors. He comes to juxtapose the relationship between man and Martian with the relationship between inferiors beasts of earth and man Because the survival of their race depends on it, the Martians trample man just as man has massacred and rearranged his world. Wells uses this projection of emotion to examine the role of technological development in the morality differences between man and Martian, as well as the high levels of intelligence of aliens accompanied by cruelty, Wells confirms Le Bon's assertion that single-minded research strips men of any individual morality, examines man's corrupt role as administrator of earth and explores the relationship between technological development and moral regression.