There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange. Even in sleep, when he is far more unguarded, he can all too easily be disturbed by a touch.
All the distances which men create round themselves are dictated by this fear. They shut themselves in houses which no one may enter, not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness. The fear of being touched remains with us when we go about among people; the way we move in a busy street, in restaurants, trains or buses, is governed by it. Even when we are standing next to them and are able to watch and examine them closely, we avoid actual contact if we can. If we do not avoid it, it is because we feel attracted to someone; and then it is we who make the approach.
It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite. The crowd he needs is the dense crowd, in which body is pressed to body; a crowd, too, whose physical constitution is also dense, or compact, so that he no longer notices who it is that presses against him. As soon as a man has surrendered himself to the crowd he ceases to fear its touch.
Ideally all are equal there; no distinctions count, not even that of sex. The man pressed against him is the same as himself. He feels him as he feels himself. Suddenly it is as though everything were happening in one and the same body. This is perhaps one of the reasons why a crowd seeks to close in on itself: it wants to rid each individual as completely as possible of the fear of being touched. The more fiercely people press together, the more certain they feel that they do not fear each other. This reversal of the fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest.
1. People fear burglars because（ ）.
2. In public, according to the author, we（ ）.
3. Which is the possible meaning of the phrase “make the approach” in Paragraph 3?
4. The way we feel when in a crowd is presented as a(n) （ ）.
5. Once formed, crowds always tend to（ ）.
