THE CROWD
A STUDY OF THE POPULAR MIND
BY
GUSTAVE LE BON
LONDON
ERNEST BENN LIMITED
4
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All
rights reserved
5
PREFACE
—♦—
THE following work is
devoted to an account of
the characteristics of crowds.
The whole of the common characteristics with
which heredity endows the individuals of a race constitute the genius
of the race. When, however, a certain number of these individuals are
gathered together in a crowd for purposes of action, observation proves
that, from the mere fact of their being assembled, there result certain
new psychological characteristics, which are added to the racial
characteristics and differ from them at times to a very considerable
degree.
Organised crowds have always played an
important part in the life of peoples, but this part has never been of
such moment as at present. The substitution of the unconscious action
of crowds for the conscious activity of individuals is one of the
principal characteristics of the present age.
I have endeavoured to examine the difficult
problem presented by crowds in a purely scientific manner — that is,
by making an effort to proceed with method, and without being
influenced by
6 PREFACE
opinions,
theories, and doctrines. This, I believe, is the only mode of
arriving at the discovery of some few particles of truth, especially
when dealing, as is the case here, with a question that is the subject
of impassioned controversy. A man of science bent on verifying a
phenomenon is not called upon to concern himself with the interests his
verifications may hurt. In a recent publication an eminent thinker, M.
Goblet d'Alviela, made the remark that, belonging to none of the
contemporary schools, I am occasionally found in opposition to sundry
of the conclusions of all of them. I hope this new work will merit a
similar observation. To belong to a school is necessarily to espouse
its prejudices and preconceived opinions.
Still I should explain to the reader why he
will find me draw conclusions from my investigations which it might be
thought at first sight they do not bear; why, for instance, after
noting the extreme mental inferiority of crowds, picked assemblies
included, I yet affirm it would be dangerous to meddle with their
organisation, notwithstanding this inferiority.
The reason is, that the most attentive
observation of the facts of history has invariably demonstrated to me
that social organisms being every whit as complicated as those of all
beings, it is in no wise in our power to force them to undergo on a
sudden far-reaching transformations. Nature has recourse at times to
radical measures, but never after our fashion,
which explains how it is that nothing is more
7 PREFACE
fatal to a
people than
the mania for great reforms, however excellent these reforms may appear
theoretically. They would only be useful were it possible to change
instantaneously the genius of nations. This power, however, is only
possessed by time. Men are ruled by ideas, sentiments, and customs —
matters which are of the essence of ourselves. Institutions and laws
are the outward manifestation of our character, the expression of its
needs. Being its outcome, institutions and laws cannot change this
character.
The study of social phenomena cannot be
separated from that of the peoples among whom they have come into
existence. From the philosophic point of view these phenomena may have
an absolute value; in practice they have only a relative value.
It is necessary, in consequence, when studying
a social phenomenon, to consider it successively under two very
different aspects. It will then be seen that the teachings of pure
reason are very often contrary to those of practical reason. There are
scarcely any data, even physical, to which this distinction is not
applicable. From the point of view of absolute truth a cube or a circle
are invariable geometrical figures, rigorously defined by certain
formulas. From the point of view of the impression they make on our eye
these geometrical figures may assume very varied
shapes. By perspective the cube may be transformed into a pyramid or a
square, the circle into an ellipse or a straight line. Moreover, the
con-
8 PREFACE
sideration of
these fictitious shapes is far more important than
that of the real shapes, for it is they and they alone that we see and
that can be reproduced by photography or in pictures. In certain cases
there is more truth in the unreal than in the real. To present objects
with their exact geometrical forms would be to distort nature and
render it unrecognisable. If we imagine a world whose inhabitants could
only copy or photograph objects, but were unable to touch them, it
would be very difficult for such persons to attain to an exact idea of
their form. Moreover, the knowledge of this form, accessible only to a
small number of learned men, would present but a very minor interest.
The philosopher who studies social phenomena
should bear in mind that side by side with their theoretical value they
possess a practical value, and that this latter, so far as the
evolution of civilisation is concerned, is alone of importance. The
recognition of this fact should render him very circumspect with regard
to the conclusions that logic would seem at first to enforce upon him.
There are other motives that dictate to him a
like reserve. The complexity of social facts is such, that it is
impossible to grasp them as a whole and to foresee the
effects of their reciprocal influence. It seems, too, that behind the
visible facts are hidden at times thousands of invisible causes.
Visible social phenomena appear to be the result of an immense,
unconscious working, that as a rule is beyond the reach of our
analysis. Perceptible
9 PREFACE
phenomena may
be compared to the waves, which are
the expression on the surface of the ocean of deep-lying disturbances
of which we know nothing. So far as the majority of their acts are
considered, crowds display a singularly inferior mentality; yet there
are other acts in which they appear to be guided by those mysterious
forces which the ancients denominated destiny, nature, or providence,
which we call the voices of the dead, and whose power it is impossible
to overlook, although we ignore their essence. It would seem, at times,
as if there were latent forces in the inner being of nations which
serve to guide them. What, for instance, can be more complicated, more
logical, more marvellous than a language? Yet whence can this admirably
organised production have arisen, except it be the outcome of the
unconscious genius of crowds? The most learned academics, the most
esteemed grammarians can do no more than note down the laws that govern
languages; they would be utterly incapable of creating them. Even with
respect to the ideas of great men are we certain that they are
exclusively the offspring of their brains?
No doubt such ideas are always created by solitary minds, but is it not
the genius of crowds that has furnished the thousands of grains of dust
forming the soil in which they have sprung up?
Crowds, doubtless, are always unconscious, but
this very unconsciousness is perhaps one of the secrets of their
strength. In the natural world beings exclusively governed by instinct
accomplish
10 PREFACE
acts whose
marvellous complexity astounds us. Reason is an
attribute of humanity of too recent date and still too imperfect to
reveal to us the laws of the unconscious, and still more to take its
place. The part played by the unconscious in all our acts is immense,
and that played by reason very small. The unconscious acts like a force
still unknown.
If we wish, then, to remain within the narrow
but safe limits within which science can attain to knowledge, and not
to wander in the domain of vague conjecture and vain hypothesis, all we
must do is simply to take note of such phenomena as are accessible to
us, and confine ourselves to their consideration. Every conclusion
drawn from our observation is, as a rule, premature, for behind the
phenomena which we see clearly are other phenomena that we see
indistinctly, and perhaps behind these latter, yet others which we do
not see at all.
11
CONTENTS
—♦—
|
|
INTRODUCTION
THE ERA OF CROWDS |
|
BOOK I
THE MIND OF CROWDS |
PAGE
|
CHAPTER
I
GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
— PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF THEIR
MENTAL UNITY
|
25
|
CHAPTER II
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS |
39
|
CHAPTER III
THE IDEAS, REASONING POWER, AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS |
67
|
CHAPTER
IV
A RELIGIOUS
SHAPE ASSUMED BY ALL THE CONVICTIONS OF
CROWDS |
81
|
12 CONTENTS
|
|
BOOK
II
THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS |
PAGE
|
CHAPTER
I
REMOTE
FACTORS OF THE OPINIONS AND
BELIEFS OF CROWDS
|
89
|
CHAPTER
II
THE IMMEDIATE FACTORS OF THE OPINIONS OF CROWDS |
115
|
CHAPTER
III
THE LEADERS OF CROWDS AND THEIR MEANS OF PERSUASION |
133
|
CHAPTER
IV
LIMITATIONS
OF THE VARIABILITY OF THE BELIEFS
AND OPINIONS OF CROWDS |
160
|
—————
|
|
BOOK
III
THE CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF
CROWDS |
|
CHAPTER
I
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CROWDS |
177
|
CHAPTER
II
CROWDS
TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS
|
183
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CHAPTER
III
CRIMINAL JURIES |
190
|
CHAPTER
IV
ELECTORAL CROWDS |
201
|
CHAPTER
V
PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLIES |
214
|
13
INTRODUCTION
—♦—
THE ERA OF CROWDS
The evolution of the present age —
The great
changes in civilisation are the consequence of changes in National
thought — Modern belief in the power of crowds — It transforms the
traditional policy of the European states — How the rise of the
popular classes comes about, and the manner in which they exercise
their power — The necessary consequences of the power of the crowd —
Crowds unable to play a part other than destructive — The dissolution
of worn-out civilisations is the work of the crowd — General ignorance
of the psychology of crowds — Importance of the study of crowds for
legislators and statesmen.
THE great upheavals which
precede changes of
civilisations such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation
of the Arabian Empire, seem at first sight determined more especially
by political transformations, foreign invasion, or the overthrow of
dynasties. But a more attentive study of these events shows that behind
their apparent causes the real cause is generally seen to be a profound
modification in the ideas of the peoples. The true historical
upheavals are not those which astonish us by their grandeur and
violence. The only important changes whence the renewal of
civilisa-
14 INTRODUCTION
tions results,
affect ideas, conceptions, and beliefs. The
memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible
changes of human thought. The reason these great events are so rare is
that there is nothing so stable in a race as the inherited groundwork
of its thoughts.
The present epoch is one of these critical
moments in which the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of
transformation.
Two fundamental factors are at the base of
this transformation. The first is the destruction of those religious,
political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our
civilisation are rooted. The second is the creation of entirely new
conditions of existence and thought as the result of modern scientific
and industrial discoveries.
The ideas of the past, although half
destroyed, being still very powerful, and the ideas which are to
replace them being still in process of formation, the modern age
represents a period of transition and anarchy.
It is not easy to say as yet what will one day
be evolved from this necessarily somewhat chaotic period. What will be
the fundamental ideas on which the societies that are to succeed our
own will be built up? We do
not at present know. Still it is already clear that on whatever lines
the societies of the future are organised, they will have to count with
a new power, with the last surviving sovereign force of modern times,
the power of crowds. On the ruins of so many ideas formerly considered
15 INTRODUCTION
beyond
discussion, and to-day decayed or decaying, of so many sources
of authority that successive revolutions have destroyed, this power,
which alone has arisen in their stead, seems soon destined to absorb
the others. While all our ancient beliefs are tottering and
disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way one by
one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces, and
of which the prestige is continually on the increase. The age we are
about to enter will in truth be the ERA OF CROWDS.
Scarcely a century ago the traditional policy
of European states and the rivalries of sovereigns were the principal
factors that shaped events. The opinion of the masses scarcely counted,
and most frequently indeed did not count at all. To-day it is the
traditions which used to obtain in politics, and the individual
tendencies and rivalries of rulers which do not count; while, on the
contrary, the voice of the masses has become preponderant. It is this
voice that dictates their conduct to kings, whose endeavour is to take
note of its utterances. The destinies of
nations are elaborated at present in the heart of the masses, and no
longer in the councils of princes.
The entry of the popular classes into
political life — that is to say, in reality, their progressive
transformation into governing classes — is one of the most striking
characteristics of our epoch of transition. The introduction of
universal suffrage, which exercised for a long time but little
influence,
16 INTRODUCTION
is not, as
might be thought, the distinguishing feature of
this transference of political power. The progressive growth of the
power of the masses took place at first by the propagation of certain
ideas, which have slowly implanted themselves in men's minds, and
afterwards by the gradual association of individuals bent on bringing
about the realisation of theoretical conceptions. It is by association
that crowds have come to procure ideas with respect to their interests
which are very clearly defined if not particularly just, and have
arrived at a consciousness of their strength. The masses are founding
syndicates before which the authorities capitulate one after the other;
they are also founding labour unions, which in spite of all economic
laws tend to regulate the conditions of labour and wages. They return
to assemblies in which the Government is vested, representatives
utterly lacking initiative and independence, and reduced most often to
nothing else than the spokesmen of the committees that have chosen them.
To-day the claims of the masses are becoming
more and more sharply defined, and amount to nothing less than a
determination to utterly destroy society as it now exists, with a view
to making it hark back to that primitive communism which was the normal
condition of all human groups before the dawn of civilisation.
Limitations of the hours of labour, the nationalisation of mines,
railways, factories, and the soil, the equal distribution of all
products, the elimination of all the upper classes
17 INTRODUCTION
for the
benefit of
the popular classes, etc., such are these claims.
Little adapted to reasoning, crowds, on the
contrary, are quick to act. As the result of their present organisation
their strength has become immense. The dogmas whose birth we are
witnessing will soon have the force of the old dogmas; that is to say,
the tyrannical and sovereign force of being above discussion. The
divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of
kings.
The writers who enjoy the favour of our middle
classes, those who best represent their rather narrow ideas, their
somewhat prescribed views, their rather superficial scepticism, and
their at times somewhat excessive egoism, display profound alarm at
this new power which they see growing; and to combat the disorder in
men's minds they are addressing despairing appeals to
those moral forces of the Church for which they formerly professed so
much disdain. They talk to us of the bankruptcy of science, go back in
penitence to Rome, and remind us of the teachings of revealed truth.
These new converts forget that it is too late. Had they been really
touched by grace, a like operation could not have the same influence on
minds less concerned with the preoccupations which beset these recent
adherents to religion. The masses repudiate to-day the gods which their
admonishers repudiated yesterday and helped to destroy. There is no
power, Divine or human, that can oblige a stream to flow back to its
source.
18 INTRODUCTION
There has been no bankruptcy of science, and
science has had no share in the present intellectual anarchy, nor in
the making of the new power which is springing up in the midst of this
anarchy. Science promised us truth, or at least a knowledge of such
relations as our intelligence can seize: it never promised us peace or
happiness. Sovereignly indifferent to our feelings, it is deaf to our
lamentations. It is for us to endeavour to live with science, since
nothing can bring back the illusions it has destroyed.
Universal symptoms, visible in all nations,
show us the rapid growth of the power of crowds, and do not admit of
our supposing that it is destined to cease growing at an early date.
Whatever fate it may
reserve for us, we shall have to submit to it. All reasoning against it
is a mere vain war of words. Certainly it is possible that the advent
to power of the masses marks one of the last stages of Western
civilisation, a complete return to those periods of confused anarchy
which seem always destined to precede the birth of every new society.
But may this result be prevented?
Up to now these thoroughgoing destructions of
a worn-out civilisation have constituted the most obvious task of the
masses. It is not indeed to-day merely that this can be traced. History
tells us, that from the moment when the moral forces on which a
civilisation rested have lost their strength, its final dissolution is
brought about by those unconscious and brutal crowds known, justifiably
19 INTRODUCTION
enough, as
barbarians. Civilisations as yet have only been created and
directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds
are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a
barbarian phase. A civilisation involves fixed rules, discipline, a
passing from the instinctive to the rational state, forethought for the
future, an elevated degree of culture — all of them conditions that
crowds, left to themselves, have invariably shown themselves incapable
of realising. In consequence of the purely destructive nature of their
power crowds act like those microbes which hasten the dissolution of
enfeebled or dead bodies. When the structure
of a civilisation is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about
its downfall. It is at such a juncture that their chief mission is
plainly visible, and that for a while the philosophy of number seems
the only philosophy of history.
Is the same fate in store for our
civilisation? There is ground to fear that this is the case, but we are
not as yet in a position to be certain of it.
However this may be, we are bound to resign
ourselves to the reign of the masses, since want of foresight has in
succession overthrown all the barriers that might have kept the crowd
in check.
We have a very slight knowledge of these
crowds which are beginning to be the object of so much discussion.
Professional students of psychology, having lived far from them, have
always ignored them, and when, as of late, they have turned their
20 INTRODUCTION
attention in
this direction it has only been to consider the crimes
crowds are capable of committing. Without a doubt criminal crowds
exist, but virtuous and heroic crowds, and crowds of many other kinds,
are also to be met with. The crimes of crowds only constitute a
particular phase of their psychology. The mental constitution of crowds
is not to be learnt merely by a study of their crimes, any more than
that of an individual by a mere description of his vices.
However, in point of fact, all the world's
masters, all the founders of religions or empires, the apostles of all
beliefs, eminent statesmen, and, in a more modest sphere, the mere
chiefs of small groups of men have always been unconscious
psychologists, possessed of an instinctive and often very sure
knowledge of the character of crowds, and it is their accurate
knowledge of this character that has enabled them to so easily
establish their mastery. Napoleon had a marvellous insight into the
psychology of the masses of the country over which he reigned, but he,
at times, completely misunderstood the psychology of crowds belonging
to other races; ¹ and it is because he thus misunderstood it that
he engaged in
Spain, and notably in Russia, in conflicts in which his power received
blows which were destined within a brief space of time to ruin
¹ His most subtle advisers, moreover, did not
understand this psychology any better. Talleyrand
wrote him that „Spain
would receive his soldiers as liberators.“ It received them as beasts
of prey. A psychologist acquainted with the hereditary instincts of the
Spanish race would have easily foreseen this reception.
21 INTRODUCTION
it. A
knowledge of the psychology of crowds is to-day the last resource of
the statesman who wishes not to govern them — that is becoming a very
difficult matter — but at any rate not to be too much governed by them.
It is only by obtaining some sort of insight
into the psychology of crowds that it can be understood how slight is
the action upon them of laws and institutions, how
powerless they are to hold any opinions other than those which are
imposed upon them, and that it is not with rules based on theories of
pure equity that they are to be led, but by seeking what produces an
impression on them and what seduces them. For instance, should a
legislator, wishing to impose a new tax, choose that which would be
theoretically the most just? By no means. In practice the most unjust
may be the best for the masses. Should it at the same time be the least
obvious, and apparently the least burdensome, it will be the most
easily tolerated. It is for this reason that an indirect tax, however
exorbitant it be, will always be accepted by the crowd, because, being
paid daily in fractions of a farthing on objects of consumption, it
will not interfere with the habits of the crowd, and will pass
unperceived. Replace it by a proportional tax on wages or income of any
other kind, to be paid in a lump sum, and were this new imposition
theoretically ten times less burdensome than the other, it would give
rise to unanimous protest. This arises from the fact that a sum
relatively high, which will appear im-
22 INTRODUCTION
mense, and
will in consequence
strike the imagination, has been substituted for the unperceived
fractions of a farthing. The new tax would only appear light had it
been saved farthing by farthing, but this economic proceeding involves
an amount of foresight of which the masses are incapable.
The example which precedes is of the simplest.
Its appositeness will be easily perceived. It did not escape the
attention of such a psychologist as Napoleon, but our modern
legislators, ignorant as they are of the characteristics of a crowd,
are unable to appreciate it. Experience has not taught them as yet to a
sufficient degree that men never shape their conduct upon the teaching
of pure reason.
Many other practical applications might be
made of the psychology of crowds. A knowledge of this science throws
the most vivid light on a great number of historical and economic
phenomena totally incomprehensible without it. I shall have occasion to
show that the reason why the most remarkable of modern historians,
Taine, has
at times so imperfectly understood the events of the great
French Revolution is, that it never occurred to him to study the genius
of crowds. He took as his guide in the study of this complicated period
the descriptive method resorted to by naturalists; but the moral forces
are almost absent in the case of the phenomena which naturalists have
to study. Yet it is precisely these forces that constitute the true
mainsprings of history.
In consequence, merely looked at from its
practical
23 INTRODUCTION
side, the
study of the psychology of crowds deserved to be attempted. Were its
interest that resulting from pure
curiosity only, it would still merit attention. It is as interesting to
decipher the motives of the actions of men as to determine the
characteristics of a mineral or a plant. Our study of the genius of
crowds can merely be a brief synthesis, a simple summary of our
investigations. Nothing more must be demanded of it than a few
suggestive views. Others will work the ground more thoroughly. To-day
we only touch the surface of a still almost virgin soil.
24
(Blank
page)
25
THE CROWD
—♦—
BOOK I
THE MIND OF CROWDS
CHAPTER I
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
CROWDS — PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF THEIR MENTAL UNITY
What constitutes a crowd from
the
psychological point of view — A numerically strong agglomeration of
individuals does not suffice to form a crowd — Special characteristics
of psychological crowds — The turning in a fixed direction of the
ideas and sentiments of individuals composing such a crowd, and the
disappearance of their personality — The crowd is always dominated by
considerations of which it is unconscious — The disappearance of brain
activity and the predominance of medullar activity — The lowering of
the intelligence and the complete transformation of the sentiments —
The transformed sentiments may be better or worse than those of the
individuals of which the crowd is composed — A crowd is as easily
heroic as criminal.
IN its ordinary sense
the word „crowd“ means a
gathering of individuals of whatever nationality, profession, or sex,
and whatever be the chances that have brought them together. From the
26 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
psychological
point of view the expression „crowd“ assumes quite a different
signification. Under certain
given
circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of
men presents new characteristics very different from those of the
individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons
in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious
personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless
transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The
gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression,
I will call an organised crowd, or, if the term is considered
preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being, and is
subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds.
It is evident that it is not by the mere fact
of a number of individuals finding themselves accidentally side by side
that they acquire the character of an organised crowd. A thousand
individuals accidentally gathered in a public place without any
determined object in no way constitute a crowd from the psychological
point of view. To acquire the special characteristics of such a crowd,
the influence is necessary of certain predisposing causes of which we
shall have to determine the nature.
The disappearance of conscious personality and
the turning of feelings and thoughts in a different direction, which
are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to
become organised, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a
number of
27 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
individuals on
one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals
may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain
violent emotions — such, for example, as a great national event — the
characteristics of a psychological crowd. It will be sufficient in that
case that a mere chance should bring them together for their acts to at
once assume the characteristics peculiar to the acts of a crowd. At
certain moments half a dozen men might constitute a psychological
crowd, which may not happen in the case of hundreds of men gathered
together by accident. On the other hand, an entire nation, though there
may be no visible agglomeration, may become a crowd under the action of
certain influences.
A psychological crowd once constituted, it
acquires certain provisional but determinable general characteristics.
To these general characteristics there are adjoined particular
characteristics which vary according to the elements of which the crowd
is composed, and may modify its mental constitution. Psychological
crowds, then, are susceptible of classification; and when we come to
occupy ourselves with this matter, we shall see that a heterogeneous
crowd — that is, a crowd composed of dissimilar elements — presents
certain characteristics in common with homogeneous crowds — that is,
with crowds composed of
elements more or less akin (sects, castes, and classes) — and side by
side with these common characteristics particularities which permit of
the two kinds of crowds being differentiated.
28 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
But before occupying ourselves with the
different categories of crowds, we must first of all examine the
characteristics common to them all. We shall set to work like the
naturalist, who begins by describing the general characteristics common
to all the members of a family before concerning himself with the
particular characteristics which allow the differentiation of the
genera and species that the family includes.
It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds
with exactness, because its organisation varies not only according to
race and composition, but also according to the nature and intensity of
the exciting causes to which crowds are subjected. The same difficulty,
however, presents itself in the psychological study of an individual.
It is only in novels that individuals are found to traverse their whole
life with an unvarying character. It is only the uniformity of the
environment that creates the apparent uniformity of characters. I have
shown elsewhere that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of
character which may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of
environment. This explains how it was that among the most savage
members of the French Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens
who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries
or virtuous magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal
character of quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them
his most docile servants.
29 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
It being impossible to study here all the
successive degrees of organisation of crowds, we shall concern
ourselves more especially with such crowds as have attained to the
phase of complete organisation. In this way we shall see what crowds
may become, but not what they invariably are. It is only in this
advanced phase of organisation that certain new and special
characteristics are superposed on the unvarying and dominant character
of the race; then takes place that turning already alluded to of all
the feelings and thoughts of the collectivity in an identical
direction. It is only under such circumstances, too, that what I have
called above the psychological law of the mental unity of crowds
comes
into play.
Among the psychological characteristics of
crowds there are some that they may present in common with isolated
individuals, and others, on the contrary, which are absolutely peculiar
to them and are only to be met with in collectivities. It is these
special characteristics that we shall study, first of all, in
order to show their importance.
The most striking peculiarity presented by a
psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that
compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their
occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they
have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of
collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite
different from that in which each individual of them
30 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
would feel,
think,
and act were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and
feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves
into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The
psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous
elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which
constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which
displays characteristics very different from those possessed by each of
the cells singly.
Contrary to an opinion which one is astonished
to find coming from the pen of so acute a philosopher as Herbert
Spencer, in the aggregate which constitutes a crowd there is in no
sort
a summing-up of or an average struck between its elements. What really
takes place is a combination followed by the creation of new
characteristics, just as in chemistry certain elements, when brought
into contact — bases and
acids, for example — combine to form a new body possessing properties
quite different from those of the bodies that have served to form it.
It is easy to prove how much the individual
forming part of a crowd differs from the isolated individual, but it is
less easy to discover the causes of this difference.
To obtain at any rate a glimpse of them it is
necessary in the first place to call to mind the truth established by
modern psychology, that unconscious phenomena play an altogether
preponderating part not only in organic life, but also in the
operations of
31 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
the
intelligence. The conscious life of the mind is of
small importance in comparison with its unconscious life. The most
subtle analyst, the most acute observer, is scarcely successful in
discovering more than a very small number of the unconscious motives
that determine his conduct. Our conscious acts are the outcome of an
unconscious substratum created in the mind in the main by hereditary
influences. This substratum consists of the innumerable common
characteristics handed down from generation to generation, which
constitute the genius of a race. Behind the avowed causes of our acts
there undoubtedly lie secret causes that we do not avow, but behind
these secret causes there are many others more secret still which we
ourselves ignore. The greater part of
our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our
observation.
It is more especially with respect to those
unconscious elements which constitute the genius of a race that all the
individuals belonging to it resemble each other, while it is
principally in respect to the conscious elements of their character —
the fruit of education, and yet more of exceptional hereditary
conditions — that they differ from each other. Men the most unlike in
the matter of their intelligence possess instincts, passions, and
feelings that are very similar. In the case of everything that belongs
to the realm of sentiment — religion, politics, morality, the
affections and antipathies, etc. — the most eminent men seldom
surpass the standard of the
32 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
most ordinary
individuals. From the
intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great
mathematician and his bootmaker, but from the point of view of
character the difference is most often slight or non-existent.
It is precisely these general qualities of
character, governed by forces of which we are unconscious, and
possessed by the majority of the normal individuals of a race in much
the same degree — it is precisely these qualities, I say, that in
crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual
aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality,
are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the
unconscious
qualities obtain the upper hand.
This very fact that crowds possess in common
ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts
demanding a high degree of intelligence. The decisions affecting
matters of general interest come to by an assembly of men of
distinction, but specialists in different walks of life, are not
sensibly superior to the decisions that would be adopted by a gathering
of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring to bear in common on
the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are the birthright of
every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit
that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is so often repeated,
that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly Voltaire that has more
wit than all
33 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
the world, if
by „all the world“ crowds are to be
understood.
If the individuals of a crowd confined
themselves to putting in common the ordinary qualities of which each of
them has his share, there would merely result the striking of an
average, and not, as we have said is actually the case, the creation of
new characteristics. How is it that these new characteristics are
created? This is what we are now to investigate.
Different causes determine the appearance of these
characteristics peculiar to crowds, and not possessed by isolated
individuals. The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd
acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of
invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he
been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the
less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd
being anonymous, and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of
responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.
The second cause, which is contagion, also
intervenes to determine the manifestation in crowds of their special
characteristics, and at the same time the trend they are to take.
Contagion is a phenomenon of which it is easy to establish the
presence, but that it is not easy to explain. It must be classed among
those phenomena of a hypnotic order, which we shall shortly study. In a
crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and con-
34 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
tagious to
such a
degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to
the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his
nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable, except when he makes
part of a crowd.
A third cause, and by far the most important,
determines in the individuals of a crowd special characteristics which
are quite contrary at times to those presented by the isolated
individual. I allude to that
suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is
neither more nor less than an effect.
To understand this phenomenon it is necessary
to bear in mind certain recent physiological discoveries. We know
to-day that by various processes an individual may be brought into such
a condition that, having entirely lost his conscious personality, he
obeys all the suggestions of the operator who has deprived him of it,
and commits acts in utter contradiction with his character and habits.
The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immerged
for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself —
either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd,
or from some other cause of which we are ignorant — in a special
state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the
hypnotised individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser. The
activity of the brain being paralysed in the case of the hypnotised
subject, the latter becomes the slave of all the unconscious
35 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
activities
of his spinal cord, which the hypnotiser directs at will. The conscious
personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All
feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the
hypnotiser.
Such also is approximately the state of the
individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer
conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotised
subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others
may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a
suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with
irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in
the case of crowds than in that of the hypnotised subject, from the
fact that, the suggestion being the same for all the individuals of the
crowd, it gains in strength by reciprocity. The individualities in the
crowd who might possess a personality sufficiently strong to resist the
suggestion are too few in number to struggle against the current. At
the utmost, they may be able to attempt a diversion by means of
different suggestions. It is in this way, for instance, that a happy
expression, an image opportunely evoked, have occasionally deterred
crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts.
We see, then, that the disappearance of the
conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality,
the turning by means of suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas
in an identical direction, the tendency to immediately
36 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
transform the
suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal
characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no
longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided
by his will.
Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part
of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of
civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd,
he is a barbarian — that is, a creature acting by instinct. He
possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the
enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to
resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed
by words and images — which would be entirely without action on each
of the isolated individuals composing the crowd — and to be induced to
commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known
habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains
of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.
It is for these reasons that juries are seen
to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove,
that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of which each of
their members would disapprove in his own person. Taken separately, the
men of the Convention were enlightened citizens of peaceful habits.
United in a crowd, they did not hesitate to give their adhesion to the
most savage proposals, to guillotine individuals most clearly innocent,
and, contrary to their interests,
37 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
to renounce
their inviolability and
to decimate themselves.
It is not only by his acts that the individual
in a crowd differs essentially from himself. Even before he has
entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a
transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the
miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man
into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The renunciation of all
its privileges which the nobility voted in a moment of enthusiasm
during the celebrated night of August
4, 1789, would certainly never
have been consented to by any of its members taken singly.
The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes
is, that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated
individual, but that, from the point of view of feelings and of the
acts these feelings provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances,
be better or worse than the individual. All depends on the nature of
the suggestion to which the crowd is exposed. This is the point that
has been completely misunderstood by writers who have only studied
crowds from the criminal point of view. Doubtless a crowd is often
criminal, but also it is often heroic. It is crowds rather than
isolated individuals that may be induced to run the risk of death to
secure the triumph of a creed or an idea, that may be fired with
enthusiasm for glory and honour, that are led on — almost without
bread and without arms, as in the age of the Crusades
38 THE MIND OF CROWDS
— GENERAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS
— to
deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel,
or, as in '93, to defend the fatherland. Such heroism is without doubt
somewhat unconscious, but it is of such heroism that history is made.
Were peoples only to be credited with the great actions performed in
cold blood, the annals of the world would register but few of them.
39
THE MIND OF CROWDS
CHAPTER II
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
§1. Impulsiveness, mobility, and
irritability of crowds. The crowd is at the mercy of all exterior
exciting causes, and reflects their incessant variations — The
impulses which the crowd obeys are so imperious as to annihilate the
feeling of personal interest — Premeditation is absent from crowds —
Racial influence. §2. Crowds are credulous and readily
influenced by
suggestion. The obedience of crowds to suggestions — The images
evoked
in the mind of crowds are accepted by them as realities — Why these
images are identical for all the individuals composing a crowd — The
equality of the educated and the ignorant man in a crowd — Various
examples of the illusions to which the individuals in a crowd are
subject — The impossibility of according belief to the testimony of
crowds — The unanimity of numerous witnesses is one of the worst
proofs that can be invoked to establish a fact — The slight value of
works of history. §3. The exaggeration and
ingenuousness of the
sentiments of crowds. Crowds do not admit doubt or uncertainty, and
always go to extremes — Their sentiments always excessive. §4. The
intolerance, dictatorialness, and conservatism of crowds. The
reasons
of these sentiments — The servility of crowds in the face of a strong
authority — The momentary revolutionary instincts of crowds do not
prevent them from
being extremely conservative — Crowds instinctively hostile to changes
and progress. §5. The morality of crowds.
The morality of crowds,
according to the suggestions under which they act, may be much lower or
much higher than that of the individuals composing them — Explanation
and examples — Crowds rarely guided by those considerations of
interest which are most often the exclusive motives of the isolated
individual — The moralising rôle of crowds.
40 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
HAVING indicated in a general way the
principal characteristics of crowds, it remains to study these
characteristics in detail.
It will be remarked that among the special
characteristics of crowds there are several — such as impulsiveness,
irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgment and of the
critical spirit, the exaggeration of the sentiments, and others besides
— which are almost always observed in beings belonging to inferior
forms of evolution — in women, savages, and children, for instance.
However, I merely indicate this analogy in passing; its demonstration
is outside the scope of this work. It would, moreover, be useless for
persons acquainted with the psychology of primitive beings, and would
scarcely carry conviction to those in ignorance of this matter.
I now proceed to the successive consideration
of the different characteristics that may be observed in the majority
of crowds.
§1. IMPULSIVENESS, MOBILITY, AND IRRITABILITY OF CROWDS
When studying the fundamental characteristics
of a crowd we stated that it is guided almost exclusively by
unconscious motives. Its acts are far more under the influence of the
spinal cord than of the brain. In this respect a crowd is closely akin
to quite primitive beings. The acts performed may be perfect so far as
their execution is concerned, but as they are not directed by the
brain, the indi-
41 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
vidual
conducts himself according as the exciting causes
to which he is submitted may happen to decide. A crowd is at the mercy
of all external exciting causes, and reflects their incessant
variations. It is the slave of the impulses which it receives. The
isolated individual may be submitted to the same exciting causes as the
man in a crowd, but as his brain shows him the inadvisability of
yielding to them, he refrains from yielding. This truth may be
physiologically expressed by saying that the isolated individual
possesses the capacity of dominating his reflex actions, while a crowd
is devoid of this capacity.
The varying impulses to which crowds obey may
be, according to their exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or
cowardly, but they will always be so imperious that the interest of the
individual, even the interest of self-preservation, will not dominate
them. The exciting causes that may act on crowds
being so varied, and crowds always obeying them, crowds are in
consequence extremely mobile. This explains how it is that we see them
pass in a moment from the most bloodthirsty ferocity to the most
extreme generosity and heroism. A crowd may easily enact the part of an
executioner, but not less easily that of a martyr. It is crowds that
have furnished the torrents of blood requisite for the triumph of every
belief. It is not necessary to go back to the heroic ages to see what
crowds are capable of in this latter direction. They are never sparing
of their life in an insurrection, and not
42 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
long since a
general, ¹ becoming suddenly popular, might easily have found a
hundred
thousand men ready to sacrifice their lives for his cause had he
demanded it.
Any display of premeditation by crowds is in
consequence out of the question. They may be animated in succession by
the most contrary sentiments, but they will always be under the
influence of the exciting causes of the moment. They are like the
leaves which a tempest whirls up and scatters in every direction and
then allows to fall. When studying later on certain revolutionary
crowds we shall give some examples of the variability of their
sentiments.
This mobility of crowds renders them very
difficult to govern, especially when a measure of public authority has
fallen into their hands. Did not the necessities of everyday life
constitute a sort of invisible regulator of existence, it would
scarcely be possible for democracies to last. Still, though the wishes
of crowds are frenzied they are not durable. Crowds are as incapable of
willing as of thinking for any length of time.
A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile.
Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come
between its desire and the realisation of its desire. It is the less
capable of understanding such an intervention, in consequence of the
feeling of irresistible power given it by its numerical strength. The
notion of impossibility disappears
¹ General Boulanger.
43 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
for the
individual in a crowd. An
isolated individual knows well enough that alone he cannot set fire to
a palace or loot a shop, and should he be tempted to do so, he will
easily resist the temptation. Making part of a crowd, he is conscious
of the power given him by number, and it is sufficient to suggest to
him ideas of murder or pillage for him to yield immediately to
temptation. An unexpected obstacle will be destroyed with frenzied
rage. Did the human organism allow of the perpetuity of furious
passion, it might be said that the normal condition of a crowd baulked
in its wishes is just such a state of furious passion.
The fundamental characteristics of the race,
which constitute the unvarying source from which all our sentiments
spring, always exert an influence on the irritability of crowds, their
impulsiveness and their mobility, as on all the popular sentiments we
shall have to study. All crowds are doubtless always irritable and
impulsive, but with great variations of degree. For instance, the
difference between a Latin and an Anglo-Saxon crowd is striking. The
most recent facts in French history throw a vivid light on this point.
The mere publication, twenty-five years ago, of a telegram, relating
an
insult supposed to have been offered an ambassador, was sufficient
to
determine an explosion of fury, whence followed immediately a terrible
war. Some years later the telegraphic
announcement of an insignificant
reverse at Langson provoked a fresh explosion which brought about
the
44 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
instantaneous
overthrow of the government. At the same moment a much
more serious reverse
undergone by the English expedition to Khartoum
produced only a slight emotion in England, and no ministry was
overturned. Crowds are everywhere distinguished by feminine
characteristics, but Latin crowds are the most feminine of all. Whoever
trusts in them may rapidly attain a lofty destiny, but to do so is to
be perpetually skirting the brink of a Tarpeian rock, with the
certainty of one day being precipitated from it.
§2. THE SUGGESTIBILITY AND CREDULITY OF CROWDS
When defining crowds, we said that one of
their general characteristics was an excessive suggestibility, and we
have shown to what an extent suggestions are contagious in every human
agglomeration; a fact which explains the rapid turning of the
sentiments of a crowd in a definite direction. However indifferent it
may be supposed, a crowd, as a rule, is in a state of expectant
attention, which renders suggestion easy. The first suggestion
formulated which arises implants itself immediately by a process of
contagion in the brains of all assembled, and the identical bent of the
sentiments of the crowd is immediately an accomplished fact.
As is the case with all persons under the
influence of suggestion, the idea which has entered the brain tends to
transform itself into an act. Whether the act is that of setting fire
to a palace, or involves
45 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
self-sacrifice,
a crowd lends itself to it
with equal facility. All will depend on the nature of the exciting
cause, and no longer, as in the case of the isolated individual, on the
relations existing between the act suggested and the sum total of the
reasons which may be urged against its realisation.
In consequence, a crowd perpetually hovering
on the borderland of unconsciousness, readily yielding to all
suggestions, having all the violence of feeling peculiar to beings who
cannot appeal to the influence of
reason, deprived of all critical faculty, cannot be otherwise than
excessively credulous. The improbable does not exist for a crowd, and
it is necessary to bear this circumstance well in mind to understand
the facility with which are created and propagated the most improbable
legends and stories. ¹
The creation of the legends which so easily
obtain circulation in crowds is not solely the consequence of their
extreme credulity. It is also the result of the prodigious perversions
that events undergo in the imagination of a throng. The simplest event
that comes under the observation of a crowd is soon totally
transformed. A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately
calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection
¹ Persons who went through the siege of Paris
saw numerous examples of this credulity of crowds. A candle alight in
an upper story was immediately looked upon as a signal given the
besiegers, although it was evident, after a moment of reflection, that
it was utterly impossible to catch sight of the light of the candle at
a distance of several miles.
46 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
with
the first. We can easily conceive this state by thinking of the
fantastic succession of ideas to which we are sometimes led by calling
up in our minds any fact. Our reason shows us the incoherence there is
in these images, but a crowd is almost blind to this truth, and
confuses with the real event what the deforming
action of its imagination has superimposed thereon. A crowd scarcely
distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as
real the images evoked in its mind, though they most often have only a
very distant relation with the observed fact.
The ways in which a crowd perverts any event
of which it is a witness ought, it would seem, to be innumerable and
unlike each other, since the individuals composing the gathering are of
very different temperaments. But this is not the case. As the result of
contagion the perversions are of the same kind, and take the same shape
in the case of all the assembled individuals.
The first perversion of the truth effected by
one of the individuals of the gathering is the starting-point of the
contagious suggestion. Before St. George appeared on the walls of
Jerusalem to all the Crusaders he was certainly perceived in the first
instance by one of those present. By dint of suggestion and contagion
the miracle signalised by a single person was immediately accepted by
all.
Such is always the mechanism of the collective
hallucinations so frequent in history — hallucina-
47 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
tions which
seem to
have all the recognised characteristics of authenticity, since they are
phenomena observed by thousands of persons.
To combat what precedes, the mental quality of
the individuals composing a crowd must not be brought into
consideration. This quality is without importance. From the moment that
they form part of a crowd the learned man and the ignoramus are equally
incapable of observation.
This thesis may seem paradoxical. To
demonstrate it beyond doubt it would be necessary to investigate a
great number of historical facts, and several volumes would be
insufficient for the purpose.
Still, as I do not wish to leave the reader
under the impression of unproved assertions, I shall give him some
examples taken at hazard from the immense number of those that might be
quoted.
The following fact is one of the most typical,
because chosen from among collective hallucinations of which a crowd is
the victim, in which are to be found individuals of every kind, from
the most ignorant to the most highly educated. It is related
incidentally by Julian Felix, a naval lieutenant, in his book on „Sea
Currents,“ and has been previously cited by the Revue Scientique.
The frigate, the Belle Poule, was cruising
in
the open sea for the purpose of finding the cruiser Le Berceau,
from
which she had been separated by a violent storm. It was broad daylight
and in full sunshine. Suddenly the watch signalled a disabled
48 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
vessel; the
crew looked in the direction signalled, and every one,
officers and sailors, clearly perceived a raft covered with men towed
by boats which were displaying signals of distress. Yet this was
nothing more than a collective hallucination. Admiral Desfosses lowered
a boat to go to the rescue of the wrecked sailors. On nearing the
object sighted, the sailors and officers on board the boat saw „masses
of men in motion, stretching out their hands, and heard the dull and
confused noise of a great number of voices.“ When the object was
reached those in the boat found themselves simply and solely in the
presence of a few branches of trees covered with leaves that had been
swept out from the neighbouring coast. Before evidence so palpable the
hallucination vanished.
The mechanism of a collective hallucination of
the kind we have explained is clearly seen at work in this example. On
the one hand we have a crowd in a state of expectant attention, on the
other a suggestion made by the watch signalling a disabled vessel at
sea, a suggestion which, by a process of contagion, was accepted by all
those present, both officers and sailors.
It is not necessary that a crowd should be
numerous for the faculty of seeing what is taking place before its eyes
to be destroyed and for the real facts to be replaced by hallucinations
unrelated to them. As soon as a few individuals are gathered together
they
constitute a crowd, and, though they should be distinguished men of
learning, they assume all
49 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
the
characteristics of crowds with regard to
matters outside their speciality. The faculty of observation and the
critical spirit possessed by each of them individually at once
disappears. An ingenious psychologist, Mr. Davey, supplies us with a
very curious example in point, recently cited in the Annales des
Sciences Psychiques, and deserving of relation here. Mr. Davey,
having
convoked a gathering of distinguished observers, among them one of the
most prominent of English scientific men, Mr. Wallace,
executed in
their presence, and after having allowed them to examine the objects
and to place seals where they wished, all the regulation spiritualistic
phenomena, the materialisation of spirits, writing on slates, etc.
Having subsequently obtained from these distinguished observers written
reports admitting that the phenomena observed could only have been
obtained by supernatural means, he revealed to them that they were the
result of very simple tricks. „The most astonishing feature of Monsieur
Davey's investigation,“ writes the author of this account, „is not the
marvellousness of the tricks themselves, but the extreme weakness of
the reports made with respect to them by the non-initiated witnesses.
It is clear, then,“ he says, „that witnesses even
in number may give circumstantial relations which are completely
erroneous, but whose result is that, if their descriptions are
accepted
as exact, the phenomena they describe are inexplicable by trickery.
The
methods invented by Mr. Davey were so simple that one
50 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
is astonished
that he should have had the boldness to employ them; but he had such a
power over the mind of the crowd that he could persuade it that it saw
what it did not see.“ Here, as always, we have the power of the
hypnotiser over the hypnotised. Moreover, when this power is seen in
action on minds of a superior order and previously invited to be
suspicious, it is understandable how easy it is to deceive ordinary
crowds.
Analogous examples are innumerable. As I write
these lines the papers are full of the story of two little girls found
drowned in the Seine. These children, to begin with, were recognised in
the most unmistakable manner by half a dozen witnesses. All the
affirmations were in such entire concordance that no doubt remained in
the mind of the juge d'instruction. He had the certificate of
death
drawn up, but just as the burial of the children was to have been
proceeded with, a mere chance brought about the discovery that the
supposed victims were alive, and had, moreover, but a remote
resemblance to the drowned girls. As in several of the examples
previously cited, the affirmation
of the first witness, himself a victim of illusion, had sufficed to
influence the other witnesses.
In parallel cases the starting-point of the
suggestion is always the illusion produced in an individual by more or
less vague reminiscences, contagion following as the result of the
affirmation of this initial illusion. If the first observer be very
impressionable, it will often be sufficient that the
51 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
corpse he
believes
he recognises should present — apart from all real resemblance — some
peculiarity, a scar, or some detail of toilet which may evoke the idea
of another person. The idea evoked may then become the nucleus of a
sort of crystallisation which invades the understanding and paralyses
all critical faculty. What the observer then sees is no longer the
object itself, but the image evoked in his mind. In this way are to be
explained erroneous recognitions of the dead bodies of children by
their own mother, as occurred in the following case, already old, but
which has been recently recalled by the newspapers. In it are to be
traced precisely the two kinds of suggestion of which I have just
pointed out the mechanism.
„The child was recognised by another child,
who was mistaken. The series of unwarranted recognitions then began.
„An extraordinary thing occurred. The day
after a schoolboy had recognised the corpse a woman exclaimed, 'Good
Heavens, it is my child!'
„She was taken up to the corpse; she examined
the clothing, and noted a scar on the forehead. 'It is certainly,' she
said, 'my son who disappeared last July. He has been stolen from me and
murdered.'
„The woman was concierge in the Rue du Four;
her name was Chavandret. Her brother-in-law was summoned, and when
questioned he said, 'That is the little Filibert.' Several persons
living in the street recognised the child found at La Villette
52 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
as
Filibert Chavandret, among them being the boy's schoolmaster, who based
his opinion on a medal worn by the lad.
„Nevertheless, the neighbours, the
brother-in-law, the schoolmaster, and the mother were mistaken. Six
weeks later the identity of the child was established. The boy,
belonging to Bordeaux, had been murdered there, and brought by a
carrying company to Paris.“ ¹
It will be
remarked that these recognitions
are most often made by women and children — that is to say, by
precisely the most impressionable persons. They show us at the same
time what is the worth in law courts of such witnesses. As far as
children, more
especially, are concerned, their statements ought never to be invoked.
Magistrates are in the habit of repeating that children do not lie. Did
they possess a psychological culture a little less rudimentary than is
the case they would know that, on the contrary, children invariably
lie; the lie is doubtless innocent, but it is none the less a lie. It
would be better to decide the fate of an accused person by the toss of
a coin than, as has been so often done, by the evidence of a child.
To return to the faculty of observation
possessed by crowds, our conclusion is that their collective
observations are as erroneous as possible, and that most often they
merely represent the illusion of an individual who, by a process of
contagion, has sugges-
¹ L'Eclair, April 21,
1895.
53 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
tioned his
fellows. Facts proving that the most
utter mistrust of the evidence of crowds is advisable might be
multiplied to any extent. Thousands of men were present twenty-five
years ago at the celebrated cavalry charge during the battle of Sedan,
and yet it is impossible, in the face of the most contradictory ocular
testimony, to decide by whom it was commanded. The English general,
Lord Wolseley, has proved in a recent book
that up to now the gravest
errors of fact have been committed with regard to the most important
incidents of the battle of Waterloo — facts that hundreds of witnesses
had nevertheless attested. ¹
Such facts
show us what is the value of the
testimony of crowds. Treatises on logic include the unanimity of
numerous witnesses in the category of the strongest proofs that can be
invoked in support of the exactness of a fact. Yet what we know of the
psychology of crowds shows that treatises on
¹ Do we know in the case of one
single battle
exactly how it took place? I am very doubtful on the point. We know who
were the conquerors and the conquered, but this is probably all. What
M. D'Harcourt has said with respect to the battle of
Solferino, which
he witnessed and in which he was personally engaged, may be applied to
all battles — „The generals (informed, of course, by the evidence of
hundreds of witnesses) forward their official reports; the orderly
officers modify these documents and draw up a definite narrative; the
chief of the staff raises objections and re-writes the whole on a
fresh basis. It is carried to the Marshal, who exclaims, 'You are
entirely in error,' and he substitutes a fresh edition. Scarcely
anything remains of the original report.“ M. D'Harcourt relates this
fact as proof of the impossibility of establishing the truth in
connection with the most striking, the best observed events.
54 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
logic need on
this point
to be rewritten. The events with regard to which there exists the most
doubt are certainly those which have been observed by the greatest
number of persons. To say that a fact has been simultaneously verified
by thousands of witnesses is to say, as a rule, that the real fact is
very different from the accepted account of it.
It clearly results from what precedes that
works of history must be considered as works of pure imagination. They
are fanciful accounts of ill-observed facts, accompanied by
explanations the result of reflection. To write such books is the most
absolute waste of time. Had not the past left us its literary,
artistic, and monumental works, we should know absolutely nothing in
reality with regard to bygone times. Are we in possession of a single
word of truth concerning the lives of the great men who have played
preponderating parts in the history of humanity — men such as
Hercules, Buddha, or Mahomet? In all probability we are not. In point
of fact, moreover, their real lives are of slight importance to us. Our
interest is to know what our great men were as they are presented by
popular legend. It is legendary heroes, and not for a moment real
heroes, who have impressed the minds of crowds.
Unfortunately, legends — even although they
have been definitely put on record by books — have in themselves no
stability. The imagination of the crowd continually transforms them as
the result
55 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
of the lapse
of time and especially in consequence of racial
causes. There is a great gulf fixed between the sanguinary Jehovah of
the Old Testament and the God of Love of Sainte
Thérèse,
and the Buddha worshipped in China has no traits in common with that
venerated in India.
It is not even necessary that heroes should be
separated from us by centuries for their legend to be transformed by
the imagination of the crowd. The transformation occasionally takes
place within a few years. In our own day we have seen the legend of one
of the greatest heroes of history modified several times in less than
fifty years. Under the Bourbons Napoleon became a sort of idyllic and
liberal philanthropist, a friend of the humble who, according to the
poets, was destined to be long remembered in the cottage. Thirty years
afterwards this easy-going hero had become a sanguinary despot, who,
after having usurped power and destroyed liberty, caused the slaughter
of three million men solely to satisfy his ambition. At present we are
witnessing a fresh transformation of the legend. When it has undergone
the influence of some dozens of centuries the learned men of the
future, face to face with these contradictory accounts, will perhaps
doubt the very existence of the hero, as some of them now doubt that of
Buddha, and will see in him nothing more than a solar myth or a
development of the legend of Hercules. They will doubtless console
themselves easily for this uncertainty, for, better initiated than we
are to-day
56 THE MIND OF CROWDS
—
THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
in the
characteristics and psychology of crowds, they will
know that history is scarcely capable of preserving the memory of
anything except myths.
§3. THE EXAGGERATION AND INGENUOUSNESS OF THE SENTIMENTS OF
CROWDS
Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be
good or bad, they present the double character of being very simple and
very exaggerated. On this point, as on so many others, an individual in
a crowd resembles primitive beings. Inaccessible to fine distinctions,
he sees things as a whole, and is blind to their intermediate phases.
The exaggeration of the sentiments of a crowd is heightened by the fact
that any feeling when once it is exhibited communicating itself very
quickly by a process of suggestion and contagion, the evident
approbation of which it is the object considerably increases its force.
The simplicity and exaggeration of the
sentiments of crowds have for result that a throng knows neither doubt
nor uncertainty. Like women, it goes at once to extremes. A suspicion
transforms itself as soon as announced into incontrovertible evidence.
A commencement of antipathy or disapprobation, which in the case of an
isolated individual would not gain strength, becomes at once furious
hatred in the case of an individual in a crowd.
The violence of the feelings of crowds is also
increased, especially in heterogeneous crowds, by the absence of all
sense of responsibility. The certainty
57 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
of impunity, a
certainty the stronger as the crowd is more
numerous, and the notion of a considerable momentary force due to
number, make possible in the case of crowds sentiments and acts
impossible for the isolated individual. In crowds the foolish,
ignorant, and envious persons are freed from the sense of their
insignificance and powerlessness, and are possessed instead by the
notion of brutal and temporary but immense strength.
Unfortunately, this tendency of crowds towards
exaggeration is often brought to bear upon bad sentiments. These
sentiments are atavistic residuum of the instincts of the primitive
man, which the fear of punishment obliges the isolated and responsible
individual to curb. Thus it is that crowds are so easily led into the
worst excesses.
Still this does not mean that crowds,
skilfully influenced, are not capable of heroism and devotion and of
evincing the loftiest virtues; they are even more capable of showing
these qualities than the isolated individual. We shall soon have
occasion to revert to this point when we come to study the morality of
crowds.
Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd
is only impressed by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a
crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate,
to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove
anything by reasoning are methods of argument well known to speakers at
public meetings.
Moreover, a crowd exacts a like exaggeration
in
58 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
the sentiments
of its heroes. Their apparent qualities and virtues
must always be amplified. It has been justly remarked that on the stage
a crowd demands from the hero of the piece a degree of courage,
morality, and virtue that is never to be found in real life.
Quite rightly importance has been laid on the
special standpoint from which matters are viewed in the theatre. Such a
standpoint exists no doubt, but its rules for the most part have
nothing to do with common sense and logic. The art of appealing to
crowds is no doubt of an inferior order, but it demands quite special
aptitudes. It is often impossible on reading plays to explain their
success. Managers of theatres when accepting pieces are themselves, as
a rule, very uncertain of their success, because to judge the matter it
would be necessary that they should be able to transform themselves
into a crowd. ¹
¹ It is understandable for this
reason why it
sometimes happens that pieces refused by all theatrical managers obtain
a prodigious success when by a stroke of chance they are put on the
stage. The recent success of Francois
Coppée's play, Pour la
Couronne, is well known, and yet, in spite of the name of its
author,
it was refused during ten years by the managers of the principal
Parisian theatres.
Charley's Aunt,
refused at every theatre,
and finally staged at the expense of a stockbroker, has had two hundred
representations in France, and more than a thousand in London. Without
the explanation given above of the impossibility for theatrical
managers to mentally substitute themselves for a crowd, such mistakes
in judgment on the part of competent individuals, who are most
interested not to commit such grave blunders, would be inexplicable.
This is a subject that I cannot deal with here, but
59 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
Here, once more, were we able to embark on
more extensive explanations, we should show the preponderating
influence of racial considerations. A play which provokes the
enthusiasm of the crowd in one country has sometimes no success in
another, or has only a partial and conventional success, because it
does not put in operation influences capable of working on an altered
public.
I need not add that the tendency to
exaggeration in crowds is only present in the case of sentiments and
not at all in the matter of intelligence. I have already shown that, by
the mere fact that an individual forms part of a crowd, his
intellectual standard is immediately and considerably lowered. A
learned magistrate, M. Tarde, has also verified this fact in his
researches on the crimes of crowds. It is only, then, with respect to
sentiment that crowds can rise to a very high or, on the contrary,
descend to a very low level.
§4. THE INTOLERANCE, DICTATORIALNESS, AND CONSERVATISM OF CROWDS
Crowds are only cognisant of simple and
extreme sentiments; the opinions, ideas, and beliefs suggested to them
are accepted or rejected as a whole, and considered as absolute truths
or as not less absolute errors. This is always the case with beliefs
induced by a process of suggestion instead of en-
it might worthily
tempt the pen of a writer acquainted with theatrical matters, and at
the same time a subtle psychologist — of such a writer, for instance,
as M. Francisque
Sarcey.
60 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
gendered by
reasoning.
Every one is aware of the intolerance that accompanies religious
beliefs, and of the despotic empire they exercise on men's minds.
Being in doubt as to what constitutes truth or
error, and having, on the other hand, a clear notion of its strength, a
crowd is as disposed to give authoritative effect to its inspirations
as it is intolerant. An individual may accept contradiction and
discussion; a crowd will never do so. At public meetings the slightest
contradiction on the part of an orator is immediately received with
howls of fury and violent invective, soon followed by blows, and
expulsion should the orator stick to his point. Without the restraining
presence of the representatives of authority the contradictor, indeed,
would often be done to death.
Dictatorialness and intolerance are common to
all categories of crowds, but they are met with in a varying degree of
intensity. Here, once more, reappears that fundamental notion of race
which dominates all the feelings and all the thoughts of men. It is
more
especially in Latin crowds that authoritativeness and intolerance are
found developed in the highest measure. In fact, their development is
such in crowds of Latin origin that they have entirely destroyed that
sentiment of the independence of the individual so powerful in the
Anglo-Saxon. Latin crowds are only concerned with the collective
independence of the sect to which they belong, and the characteristic
feature of
61 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
their
conception of independence is the need they experience
of bringing those who are in disagreement with themselves into
immediate and violent subjection to their beliefs. Among the Latin
races the Jacobins of every epoch, from those of the Inquisition
downwards, have never been able to attain to a different conception of
liberty.
Authoritativeness and intolerance are
sentiments of which crowds have a very clear notion, which they easily
conceive and which they entertain as readily as they put them in
practice when once they are imposed upon them. Crowds exhibit a docile
respect for force, and are but slightly impressed by kindness, which
for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies
have never been bestowed on easy-going masters, but on tyrants who
vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect
the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the
despot whom they have
stripped of his power, but it is because, having lost his strength, he
has resumed his place among the people, who are to be despised because
they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to crowds will always
have the semblance of a Cæsar. His insignia attracts them, his
authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear.
A crowd is always ready to revolt against a
feeble, and to bow down servilely before a strong authority. Should the
strength of an authority be intermittent, the crowd, always obedient to
its extreme senti-
62 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
ments, passes
alternately from anarchy to servitude,
and from servitude to anarchy.
However, to believe in the predominance among
crowds of revolutionary instincts would be to entirely misconstrue
their psychology. It is merely their tendency to violence that deceives
us on this point. Their rebellious and destructive outbursts are always
very transitory. Crowds are too much governed by unconscious
considerations, and too much subject in consequence to secular
hereditary influences not to be extremely conservative. Abandoned to
themselves, they soon weary of disorder, and instinctively turn to
servitude. It was the proudest and most untractable of the Jacobins who
acclaimed Bonaparte with greatest energy when he suppressed all liberty
and made his hand of
iron severely felt.
It is difficult to understand history, and
popular revolutions in particular, if one does not take sufficiently
into account the profoundly conservative instincts of crowds. They may
be desirous, it is true, of changing the names of their institutions,
and to obtain these changes they accomplish at times even violent
revolutions, but the essence of these institutions is too much the
expression of the hereditary needs of the race for them not invariably
to abide by it. Their incessant mobility only exerts its influence on
quite superficial matters. In fact they possess conservative instincts
as indestructible as those of all primitive beings. Their fetish-like
respect for all traditions is absolute;
63 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
their
unconscious horror of all
novelty capable of changing the essential conditions of their existence
is very deeply rooted. Had democracies possessed the power they wield
to-day at the time of the invention of mechanical looms or of the
introduction of steam-power and of railways, the realisation of these
inventions would have been impossible, or would have been achieved at
the cost of revolutions and repeated massacres. It is fortunate for the
progress of civilisation that the power of crowds only began to exist
when the great discoveries of science and industry had already been
effected.
§5. THE MORALITY OF CROWDS
Taking the word „morality“ to mean constant
respect for certain social conventions, and the permanent repression of
selfish impulses, it is quite evident that crowds are too impulsive and
too mobile to be moral. If, however, we include in the term morality
the transitory display of certain qualities such as abnegation,
self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotion, and the need of equity, we
may say, on the contrary, that crowds may exhibit at times a very lofty
morality.
The few psychologists who have studied crowds
have only considered them from the point of view of their criminal
acts, and noticing how frequent these acts are, they have come to the
conclusion that the moral standard of crowds is very low.
Doubtless this is often the case; but why?
Simply
64 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
because our
savage, destructive instincts are the inheritance
left dormant in all of us from the primitive ages. In the life of the
isolated individual it would be dangerous for him to gratify these
instincts, while his absorption in an irresponsible crowd, in which in
consequence he is assured of impunity, gives him entire liberty to
follow them. Being unable, in the ordinary course of events, to
exercise these destructive instincts on our fellow-men, we confine
ourselves to exercising them on animals. The passion, so widespread,
for the chase and the acts of ferocity of crowds proceed from one and
the same source. A crowd which slowly
slaughters a defenceless victim displays a very cowardly ferocity; but
for the philosopher this ferocity is very closely related to that of
the huntsmen who gather in dozens for the pleasure of taking part in
the pursuit and killing of a luckless stag by their hounds.
A crowd may be guilty of murder, incendiarism,
and every kind of crime, but it is also capable of very lofty acts of
devotion, sacrifice, and disinterestedness, of acts much loftier indeed
than those of which the isolated individual is capable. Appeals to
sentiments of glory, honour, and patriotism are particularly likely to
influence the individual forming part of a crowd, and often to the
extent of obtaining from him the sacrifice of his life. History is rich
in examples analogous to those furnished by the Crusaders and the
volunteers of 1793. Collectivities alone are capable of great
disinterestedness and great devotion. How numerous are the crowds
65 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
that
have heroically faced death for beliefs, ideas, and phrases that they
scarcely understood! The crowds that go on strike do so far more in
obedience to an order than to obtain an increase of the slender salary
with which they make shift. Personal interest is very rarely a powerful
motive force with crowds, while it is almost the exclusive motive of
the conduct of the isolated individual. It is assuredly not
self-interest that has guided crowds in so many wars,
incomprehensible as a rule to their intelligence — wars in which they
have allowed themselves to be massacred as easily as the larks
hypnotised by the mirror of the hunter.
Even in the case of absolute scoundrels it
often happens that the mere fact of their being in a crowd endows them
for the moment with very strict principles of morality. Taine calls
attention to the fact that the perpetrators of the September massacres
deposited on the table of the committees the pocket-books and jewels
they had found on their victims, and with which they could easily have
been able to make away. The howling, swarming, ragged crowd which
invaded the Tuileries during the revolution of 1848 did not lay hands
on any of the objects that excited its astonishment, and one of which
would have meant bread for many days.
This moralisation of the individual by the
crowd is not certainly a constant rule, but it is a rule frequently
observed. It is even observed in circumstances much less grave than
those I have just cited.
66 THE MIND OF CROWDS
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THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
I have
remarked that in the theatre a crowd
exacts from the hero of the piece exaggerated virtues, and it is a
commonplace observation that an assembly, even though composed of
inferior elements, shows itself as a rule very prudish. The debauchee,
the souteneur, the rough often break out into murmurs at a
slightly risky scene or
expression, though they be very harmless in comparison with their
customary conversation.
If, then, crowds often abandon themselves to
low instincts, they also set the example at times of acts of lofty
morality. If disinterestedness, resignation, and absolute devotion to a
real or chimerical ideal are moral virtues, it may be said that crowds
often possess these virtues to a degree rarely attained by the wisest
philosophers. Doubtless they practice them unconsciously, but that is
of small import. We should not complain too much that crowds are more
especially guided by unconscious considerations and are not given to
reasoning. Had they, in certain cases, reasoned and consulted their
immediate interests, it is possible that no civilisation would have
grown up on our planet and humanity would have had no history.
67
THE MIND OF CROWDS
CHAPTER III
THE IDEAS, REASONING POWER, AND
IMAGINATION OF CROWDS
§1. The ideas of crowds. Fundamental
and
accessory ideas — How contradictory ideas may exist simultaneously —
The transformation that must be undergone by lofty ideas before they
are accessible to crowds — The social influence of ideas is
independent of the degree of truth they may contain. §2. The reasoning
power of crowds. Crowds are not to be influenced by reasoning — The
reasoning of crowds is always of a very inferior order — There is only
the appearance of analogy or succession in the ideas they associate. §3.
The imagination of crowds. Strength of the imagination of crowds —
Crowds think in images, and these images succeed each other without any
connecting link — Crowds are especially impressed by the marvellous —
Legends and the marvellous are the real pillars of civilisation — The
popular imagination has always been the basis of the power of statesmen
— The manner in which facts capable of striking the imagination of
crowds present themselves for observation.
§1. THE IDEAS
OF CROWDS
WHEN studying in a
preceding work the part
played by ideas in the evolution of nations, we showed that every
civilisation is the outcome of a small number of fundamental ideas that
are very rarely renewed. We showed how these ideas are implanted in the
minds of
crowds, with what difficulty the process is effected, and the power
possessed by the ideas
68 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
THE
IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
in question
when once it has been accomplished.
Finally we saw that great historical perturbations are the result, as a
rule, of changes in these fundamental ideas.
Having treated this subject at sufficient
length, I shall not return to it now, but shall confine myself to
saying a few words on the subject of such ideas as are accessible to
crowds, and of the forms under which they conceive them.
They may be divided into two classes. In one
we shall place accidental and passing ideas created by the influences
of the moment; infatuation for an individual or a doctrine, for
instance. In the other will be classed the fundamental ideas, to which
the environment, the laws of heredity and public opinion give a very
great stability; such ideas are the religious beliefs of the past and
the social and democratic ideas of to-day.
These fundamental ideas resemble the volume of
the water of a stream slowly pursuing its course; the transitory ideas
are like the small waves, for ever changing, which agitate its surface,
and are more visible than the progress of the stream itself, although
without real importance.
At the present day the great fundamental ideas
which were the mainstay of our fathers are tottering more and more.
They have lost all solidity, and at the same
time the institutions resting upon them are severely shaken. Every day
there are formed a great many of those transitory minor ideas of which
I have just been speaking; but very few
69 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
THE
IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
of them to all
appearance seem
endowed with vitality and destined to acquire a preponderating
influence.
Whatever be the ideas suggested to crowds they
can only exercise effective influence on condition that they assume a
very absolute, uncompromising, and simple shape. They present
themselves then in the guise of images, and are only accessible to the
masses under this form. These image-like ideas are not connected by any
logical bond of analogy or succession, and may take each other's place
like the slides of a magic-lantern which the operator withdraws from
the groove in which they were placed one above the other. This explains
how it is that the most contradictory ideas may be seen to be
simultaneously current in crowds. According to the chances of the
moment, a crowd will come under the influence of one of the various
ideas stored up in its understanding, and is capable, in consequence,
of committing the most dissimilar acts. Its complete lack of the
critical spirit does not allow of its perceiving these contradictions.
This phenomenon is not peculiar to crowds. It is to
be observed in many isolated individuals, not only among
primitive beings, but in the case of all those — the fervent sectaries
of a religious faith, for instance — who by one side or another of
their intelligence are akin to primitive beings. I have observed its
presence to a curious extent in the case of educated Hindoos brought up
at our European universities and having taken their degree. A
70 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
number of
Western ideas had been superposed on their unchangeable and fundamental
hereditary or social ideas. According to the chances of the moment, the
one or the other set of ideas showed themselves each with their special
accompaniment of acts or utterances, the same individual presenting in
this way the most flagrant contradictions. These contradictions are
more apparent than real, for it is only hereditary ideas that have
sufficient influence over the isolated individual to become motives of
conduct. It is only when, as the result of the intermingling of
different races, a man is placed between different hereditary
tendencies that his acts from one moment to another may be really
entirely contradictory. It would be useless to insist here on these
phenomena, although their psychological importance is capital. I am of
opinion that at least ten years of travel and observation would be
necessary to arrive at a comprehension of them.
Ideas being only accessible to crowds after
having assumed a very simple shape must often undergo the most
thoroughgoing transformations to become popular. It is especially when
we are dealing with somewhat lofty philosophic or scientific ideas that
we see how far-reaching are the modifications they require in order to
lower them to the level of the intelligence of crowds. These
modifications are dependent on the nature of the crowds, or of the race
to which the crowds belong, but their tendency is always belittling and
in the direction of simplifica-
71 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
tion. This
explains the fact that, from
the social point of view, there is in reality scarcely any such thing
as a hierarchy of ideas — that is to say, as ideas of greater or less
elevation. However great or true an idea may have been to begin with,
it is deprived of almost all that which constituted its elevation and
its greatness by the mere fact that it has come within the intellectual
range of crowds and exerts an influence upon them.
Moreover, from the social point of view the
hierarchical value of an idea, its intrinsic worth, is without
importance. The necessary point to consider is the effects it produces.
The Christian ideas of the Middle Ages, the democratic ideas of the
last century, or the social ideas of to-day are assuredly not very
elevated. Philosophically considered, they can only be regarded as
somewhat sorry errors, and yet their power has been and will be
immense, and
they will count for a long time to come among the most essential
factors that determine the conduct of States.
Even when an idea has undergone the
transformations which render it accessible to crowds, it only exerts
influence when, by various processes which we shall examine elsewhere,
it has entered the domain of the unconscious, when indeed it has become
a sentiment, for which much time is required.
For it must not be supposed that merely
because the justness of an idea has been proved it can be productive of
effective action even on cultivated minds. This fact may be quickly
appreciated by
72 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
noting how
slight is the influence of the clearest
demonstration on the majority of men. Evidence, if it be very plain,
may be accepted by an educated person, but the convert will be quickly
brought back by his unconscious self to his original conceptions. See
him again after the lapse of a few days and he will put forward afresh
his old arguments in exactly the same terms. He is in reality under the
influence of anterior ideas, that have become sentiments, and it is
such ideas alone that influence the more recondite motives of our acts
and utterances. It cannot be otherwise in the case of crowds.
When by various processes an idea has ended by
penetrating into the minds of crowds, it possesses an irresistible
power, and brings about a series of effects, opposition to which is
bootless. The philosophical ideas which resulted in the French
Revolution took nearly a century to implant themselves in the mind of
the crowd. Their irresistible force, when once they had taken root, is
known. The striving of an entire nation towards the conquest of social
equality, and the realisation of abstract rights and ideal liberties,
caused the tottering of all thrones and profoundly disturbed the
Western world. During twenty years the nations were engaged in
internecine conflict, and Europe witnessed hecatombs that would have
terrified Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane. The world had never seen on such
a scale what may result from the promulgation of an idea.
A long time is necessary for ideas to
establish
73 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
themselves in
the minds of crowds, but just as long a time is
needed for them to be eradicated. For this reason crowds, as far as
ideas are concerned, are always several generations behind learned men
and philosophers. All statesmen are well aware to-day of the admixture
of error contained in the fundamental ideas I referred to a short while
back, but as the influence of these ideas is still very powerful they
are obliged to govern in accordance with principles in the truth of
which they have ceased to believe.
§2. THE REASONING POWER
OF CROWDS
It cannot absolutely be said that crowds do
not reason and are not to be influenced by reasoning.
However, the arguments they employ and those
which are capable of influencing them are, from a logical point of
view, of such an inferior kind that it is only by way of analogy that
they can be described as reasoning.
The inferior reasoning of crowds is based,
just as is reasoning of a high order, on the association of ideas, but
between the ideas associated by crowds there are only apparent bonds of
analogy or succession. The mode of reasoning of crowds resembles that
of the Esquimaux who, knowing from experience that ice, a transparent
body, melts in the mouth, concludes that glass, also a transparent
body, should also melt in the mouth; or that of the savage who imagines
that by eating the heart of a courageous foe he acquires his bravery;
or of
74 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
the workman
who, having been exploited by one employer of labour,
immediately concludes that all employers exploit their men.
The characteristics of the reasoning of crowds
are the association of dissimilar things possessing a merely apparent
connection between each other, and the immediate generalisation of
particular cases. It is arguments of this kind that are always
presented to crowds by those who know how to manage them. They are the
only arguments by which crowds are to be influenced. A chain of logical
argumentation
is totally incomprehensible to crowds, and for this reason it is
permissible to say that they do not reason or that they reason falsely,
and are not to be influenced by reasoning. Astonishment is felt at
times on reading certain speeches at their weakness, and yet they had
an enormous influence on the crowds which listened to them; but it is
forgotten that they were intended to persuade collectivities and not to
be read by philosophers. An orator in intimate communication with a
crowd can evoke images by which it will be seduced. If he is successful
his object has been attained, and twenty volumes of harangues — always
the outcome of reflection — are not worth the few phrases which
appealed to the brains it was required to convince.
It would be superfluous to add that the
powerlessness of crowds to reason aright prevents them displaying any
trace of the critical spirit, prevents them, that is, from being
capable of discerning
75 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
truth from
error, or of forming a precise
judgment on any matter. Judgments accepted by crowds are merely
judgments forced upon them and never judgments adopted after
discussion. In regard to this matter the individuals who do not rise
above the level of a crowd are numerous. The ease with which certain
opinions obtain general acceptance results more especially from the
impossibility experienced by the majority of men of forming an opinion
peculiar to
themselves and based on reasoning of their own.
§3. THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS
Just as is the case with respect to persons in
whom the reasoning power is absent, the figurative imagination of
crowds is very powerful, very active, and very susceptible of being
keenly impressed. The images evoked in their mind by a personage, an
event, an accident, are almost as lifelike as the reality. Crowds are
to some extent in the position of the sleeper whose reason, suspended
for the time being, allows the arousing in his mind of images of
extreme intensity which would quickly be dissipated could they be
submitted to the action of reflection. Crowds, being incapable both of
reflection and of reasoning, are devoid of the notion of improbability;
and it is to be noted that in a general way it is the most improbable
things that are the most striking.
This is why it happens that it is always the
marvellous and legendary side of events that more
76 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
specially
strike
crowds. When a civilisation is analysed it is seen that, in reality, it
is the marvellous and the legendary that are its true supports.
Appearances have always played a much more important part than reality
in history, where the unreal is always of greater moment than the real.
Crowds being only capable of thinking in
images are only to be impressed by images. It is only images that
terrify or attract them and become motives of action.
For this reason theatrical representations, in
which the image is shown in its most clearly visible shape, always have
an enormous influence on crowds. Bread and spectacular shows
constituted for the plebeians of ancient Rome the ideal of happiness,
and they asked for nothing more. Throughout the successive ages this
ideal has scarcely varied. Nothing has a greater effect on the
imagination of crowds of every category than theatrical
representations. The entire audience experiences at the same time the
same emotions, and if these emotions are not at once transformed into
acts, it is because the most unconscious spectator cannot ignore that
he is the victim of illusions, and that he has laughed or wept over
imaginary adventures. Sometimes, however, the sentiments suggested by
the images are so strong that they tend, like habitual suggestions, to
transform themselves into acts. The story has often been told of the
manager of a popular theatre who, in consequence of his only
77 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
playing
sombre dramas, was obliged to have the actor who took the part of the
traitor protected on his leaving the theatre, to defend him against the
violence of the spectators, indignant at the crimes, imaginary though
they were, which the traitor had committed. We have here, in my
opinion, one of the most remarkable indications of the mental state of
crowds, and especially of the facility with which they are
suggestioned. The unreal has almost as much influence on them as the
real. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two.
The power of conquerors and the strength of
States is based on the popular imagination. It is more particularly by
working upon this imagination that crowds are led. All great historical
facts, the rise of Buddhism, of Christianity, of Islamism, the
Reformation, the French Revolution, and, in our own time, the
threatening invasion of Socialism, are the direct or indirect
consequences of strong impressions produced on the imagination of the
crowd.
Moreover, all the great statesmen of every age
and every country, including the most absolute despots, have regarded
the popular imagination as the basis of their power, and they have
never attempted to govern in opposition to it. „It was by becoming a
Catholic,“ said Napoleon to the Council of State, „that I terminated
the Vendéen
war, by becoming a Mussulman that I obtained a
footing in Egypt, by becoming an Ultramontane
78 THE MIND OF CROWDS —
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
that I won
over the
Italian priests, and had I to govern a nation of Jews I would rebuild
Solomon's temple.“ Never perhaps since Alexander and Cæsar has
any great
man better understood how the imagination of the crowd should be
impressed. His constant preoccupation was to strike it. He bore it in
mind in his victories, in his harangues, in his speeches, in all his
acts. On his deathbed it was still in his thoughts.
How is the imagination of crowds to be
impressed? We shall soon see. Let us confine ourselves for the moment
to saying that the feat is never to be achieved by attempting to work
upon the intelligence or reasoning faculty, that is to say, by way of
demonstration. It was not by means of cunning rhetoric that Antony
succeeded in making the populace rise against the murderers of
Cæsar; it was by reading his will to the multitude and pointing
to his corpse.
Whatever strikes the imagination of crowds
presents itself under the shape of a startling and very clear image,
freed from all accessory explanation, or merely having as accompaniment
a few marvellous or mysterious facts: examples in point are a great
victory, a great miracle, a great crime, or a great hope. Things must
be laid before the crowd as a whole, and their genesis must never be
indicated. A hundred petty crimes or petty accidents will not strike
the imagination of crowds in the least, whereas a single great crime or
a single great accident will profoundly impress them, even though
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
the results be
infinitely less disastrous than those of the hundred small
accidents put together. The epidemic of influenza, which caused the
death but a few years ago of five thousand persons in Paris alone, made
very little impression on the popular imagination. The reason was that
this veritable hecatomb was not embodied in any visible image, but was
only learnt from statistical information furnished weekly. An accident
which should have caused the death of only five hundred instead of five
thousand persons, but on the same day and in public, as the outcome of
an accident appealing strongly to the eye, by the fall, for instance,
of the Eiffel Tower, would have produced, on the contrary, an immense
impression on the imagination of the crowd. The probable loss of a
transatlantic steamer that was supposed, in the absence of news, to
have gone down in mid-ocean profoundly impressed the imagination of the
crowd for a whole week. Yet official statistics show that 850 sailing
vessels and 203 steamers were lost in the year 1894 alone. The crowd,
however, was never for a moment concerned by these successive losses,
much more important though they were as far as regards the destruction
of life and property, than the loss of the Atlantic liner in question
could possibly have been.
It is not, then, the facts in themselves that
strike the popular imagination, but the way in which they take place
and are brought under notice. It is necessary that by
their condensation, if I may
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IDEAS AND IMAGINATION
OF CROWDS
thus express
myself, they should produce a
startling image which fills and besets the mind. To know the art of
impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the
art of governing them.
81
THE MIND OF CROWDS
CHAPTER IV
A RELIGIOUS SHAPE ASSUMED BY ALL THE
CONVICTIONS OF CROWDS
What is meant by the religious
sentiment — It
is independent of the worship of a divinity — Its characteristics —
The strength of convictions assuming a religious shape — Various
examples — Popular gods have never disappeared — New forms under
which they are revived — Religious forms of atheism — Importance of
these notions from the historical point of view — The Reformation,
Saint Bartholomew, the Terror, and all analogous events are the result
of the religious sentiments of crowds and not of the will of isolated
individuals.
WE have shown that crowds do
not reason, that
they accept or reject ideas as a whole, that they tolerate neither
discussion nor contradiction, and that the suggestions brought to bear
on them invade the entire field of their understanding and tend at once
to transform themselves into acts. We have shown that crowds suitably
influenced are ready to sacrifice themselves for the ideal with which
they have been inspired. We have also seen that they only entertain
violent and extreme sentiments, that in their case sympathy quickly
becomes adoration, and antipathy
almost as soon as it is aroused is transformed into hatred. These
general
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CROWDS
indications
furnish us already with a presentiment of the
nature of the convictions of crowds.
When these convictions are closely examined,
whether at epochs marked by fervent religious faith, or by great
political upheavals such as those of the last century, it is apparent
that they always assume a peculiar form which I cannot better define
than by giving it the name of a religious sentiment.
This sentiment has very simple
characteristics, such as worship of a being supposed superior, fear of
the power with which the being is credited, blind submission to its
commands, inability to discuss its dogmas, the desire to spread them,
and a tendency to consider as enemies all by whom they are not
accepted. Whether such a sentiment apply to an invisible God, to a
wooden or stone idol, to a hero or to a political conception, provided
that it presents the preceding characteristics, its essence always
remains religious. The supernatural and the miraculous are found to be
present to the same extent. Crowds unconsciously accord a mysterious
power to the political formula or the victorious leader that for the
moment arouses their enthusiasm.
A person is not religious solely when he
worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind,
the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of
fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the
goal and guide of his thoughts and actions.
Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary
accompaniments of the religious sentiment. They
83 THE MIND OF CROWDS — THE CONVICTIONS OF
CROWDS
are inevitably
displayed by those who believe themselves in the possession of the
secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are
to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a
conviction of any kind. The Jacobins of the Reign of Terror were at
bottom as religious as the Catholics of the Inquisition, and their
cruel ardour proceeded from the same source.
The convictions of crowds assume those
characteristics of blind submission, fierce intolerance, and the need
of violent propaganda which are inherent in the religious sentiment,
and it is for this reason that it may be said that all their beliefs
have a religious form. The hero acclaimed by a crowd is a veritable god
for that crowd. Napoleon was such a god for fifteen years, and a
divinity never had more fervent worshippers or sent men to their death
with greater ease. The Christian and Pagan Gods never exercised a more
absolute empire over the minds that had fallen under their sway.
All founders of religious or political creeds
have established them solely because they were successful in inspiring
crowds with those fanatical sentiments which have as result that men
find their happiness in worship and obedience and are ready to lay down
their lives for their idol. This has been the case at all epochs.
Fustel
de Coulanges, in his excellent work on Roman Gaul,
justly
remarks that the Roman Empire was in no wise maintained by force, but
by the religious admiration it inspired. „It would be without a
parallel in the history of the
84 THE MIND OF CROWDS — THE CONVICTIONS OF
CROWDS
world,“ he
observes rightly, „that a
form of government held in popular detestation should have lasted for
five centuries .... It would be inexplicable that the thirty legions
of the Empire should have constrained a hundred million men to
obedience.“ The reason of their obedience was that the Emperor, who
personified the greatness of Rome, was worshipped like a divinity by
unanimous consent. There were altars in honour of the Emperor in the
smallest townships of his realm. „From one end of the Empire to the
other a new religion was seen to arise in those days which had for its
divinities the emperors themselves. Some years before the Christian era
the whole of Gaul, represented by sixty cities, built in common a
temple near the town of Lyons in honour of Augustus .... Its priests,
elected by the united Gallic cities, were the principal personages in
their country .... It is impossible to attribute all this to fear
and servility. Whole nations are not servile, and especially for three
centuries. It was not the courtiers who worshipped the prince, it was
Rome, and it was not Rome merely, but it was Gaul, it was Spain, it was
Greece and Asia.“
To-day the majority of the great men who have
swayed men's minds no longer have altars, but they have statues, or
their portraits are in the hands of their admirers, and the cult of
which they are the object is not notably different from that accorded
to their predecessors. An understanding of the philosophy of history is
only to be got by a thorough
85 THE MIND OF CROWDS — THE CONVICTIONS OF
CROWDS
appreciation
of this fundamental point of
the psychology of crowds. The crowd demands a god before everything
else.
It must not be supposed that these are the
superstitions of a bygone age which reason has definitely banished.
Sentiment has never been vanquished in its eternal conflict with
reason. Crowds will hear no more of the words divinity and religion, in
whose name they were so long enslaved; but they have never possessed so
many fetishes as in the last hundred years, and the old divinities have
never had so many statues and altars raised in their honour. Those who
in recent years have studied the popular movement known under the name
of Boulangism have been able to see with what ease the religious
instincts of crowds are ready to revive. There was not a
country inn that did not possess the hero's portrait. He was credited
with the power of remedying all injustices and all evils, and thousands
of men would have given their lives for him. Great might have been his
place in history had his character been at all on a level with his
legendary reputation.
It is thus a very useless commonplace to
assert that a religion is necessary for the masses, because all
political, divine, and social creeds only take root among them on the
condition of always assuming the religious shape — a shape which
obviates the danger of discussion. Were it possible to induce the
masses to adopt atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant
ardour of a religious sentiment,
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CROWDS
and in its
exterior forms would soon
become a cult. The evolution of the small Positivist sect furnishes us
a curious proof in point. What happened to the Nihilist whose story is
related by that profound thinker Dostoïewsky has quickly happened
to the Positivists. Illumined one day by the light of reason he broke
the images of divinities and saints that adorned the altar of a chapel,
extinguished the candles, and, without losing a moment, replaced the
destroyed objects by the works of atheistic philosophers such as
Büchner
and Moleschott,
after which he piously relighted the
candles. The object of his religious beliefs had been transformed, but
can it be truthfully said that his religious
sentiments had changed?
Certain historical events — and they are
precisely the most important, — I again repeat, are not to be
understood unless one has attained to an appreciation of the religious
form which the convictions of crowds always assume in the long run.
There are social phenomena that need to be studied far more from the
point of view of the psychologist than from that of the naturalist. The
great historian Taine has only studied the Revolution as a naturalist,
and on this account the real genesis of events has often escaped him.
He has perfectly observed the facts, but from want of having studied
the psychology of crowds he has not always been able to trace their
causes. The facts having appalled him by their bloodthirsty, anarchic,
and ferocious side, he has scarcely seen in the heroes of the great
87 THE MIND OF CROWDS — THE CONVICTIONS OF
CROWDS
drama anything
more than a horde of epileptic savages abandoning
themselves without restraint to their instincts. The violence of the
Revolution, its massacres, its need of propaganda, its declarations of
war upon all things, are only to be properly explained by reflecting
that the Revolution was merely the establishment of a new religious
belief in the mind of the masses. The Reformation, the massacre of
Saint Bartholomew, the French religious wars, the Inquisition, the
Reign of Terror are phenomena of an identical kind, brought about by
crowds animated by those religious sentiments which necessarily lead
those imbued with them to pitilessly extirpate by fire and sword
whoever is opposed to the establishment of the new faith. The methods
of the Inquisition are those of all whose convictions are genuine and
sturdy. Their convictions would not deserve these epithets did they
resort to other methods.
Upheavals analogous to those I have just cited
are only possible when it is the soul of the masses that brings them
about. The most absolute despots could not cause them. When historians
tell us that the massacre of Saint Bartholomew was the work of a king,
they show themselves as ignorant of the psychology of crowds as of that
of sovereigns. Manifestations of this order can only proceed from the
soul of crowds. The most absolute power of the most despotic monarch
can scarcely do more than hasten or retard the moment of their
apparition. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew or the
88 THE MIND OF CROWDS — THE CONVICTIONS OF
CROWDS
religious wars
were no more the work of kings than the Reign of Terror was the work of
Robespierre, Danton, or St. Just. At the bottom of such events is
always to be found the working of the soul of the masses, and never the
power of potentates.
89
BOOK II
THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS
CHAPTER I
REMOTE FACTORS OF THE OPINIONS AND
BELIEFS OF CROWDS
Preparatory factors of the beliefs
of crowds —
The origin of the beliefs of crowds is the consequence of a
preliminary process of elaboration — Study of the different factors of
these beliefs. §1. Race. The predominating influence it
exercises — It
represents the suggestions of ancestors. §2. Traditions.
They are the
synthesis of the soul of the race — Social importance of traditions —
How, after having been necessary, they become harmful — Crowds are the
most obstinate maintainers of traditional ideas. §3. Time.
It prepares
in succession the establishment of beliefs and then their destruction.
It is by the aid of this factor that order may proceed from chaos.
§4.
Political and Social Institutions. Erroneous idea of their part
—
Their influence extremely weak — They are effects, not causes —
Nations are incapable of choosing what appear to them the best
institutions — Institutions are labels which shelter the most
dissimilar things under the same title — How institutions may come to
be created — Certain institutions theoretically bad, such as
centralisation obligatory for certain nations. §5. Institutions
and education. Falsity of prevalent ideas as to the influence of
instruction on crowds — Statistical indications — Demoralising effect
of Latin system of education — Part instruction might play — Examples
furnished by various peoples.
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HAVING studied the mental constitution of
crowds and become acquainted with their modes of feeling, thinking, and
reasoning, we shall now proceed to examine how their opinions and
beliefs arise and become established.
The factors which determine these opinions and
beliefs are of two kinds: remote factors and immediate factors.
The remote factors are those which render
crowds capable of adopting certain convictions and absolutely
refractory to the acceptance of others. These factors prepare the
ground in which are suddenly seen to germinate certain new ideas whose
force and consequences are a cause of astonishment, though they are
only spontaneous in appearance. The outburst and putting in practice of
certain ideas among crowds present at times a startling suddenness.
This is only a superficial effect, behind which must be sought a
preliminary and preparatory action of long duration.
The immediate factors are those which, coming
on the top of this long, preparatory working, in whose absence they
would remain without effect, serve as the source of active persuasion
on crowds; that is, they are the factors which cause the idea to take
shape and set it loose with all its consequences. The resolutions by
which collectivities are suddenly carried away arise out of these
immediate factors; it is due to them that a riot breaks out or a strike
is decided upon, and to them that enormous
91 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — REMOTE
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BELIEFS OF CROWDS
majorities
invest one man
with power to overthrow a government.
The successive action of these two kinds of
factors is to be traced in all great historical events. The French
Revolution — to cite but one of the most striking of such events —
had among its remote factors the writings of the philosophers, the
exactions of the nobility, and the progress of scientific thought. The
mind of the masses, thus prepared, was then easily roused by such
immediate factors as the speeches of orators, and the resistance of the
court party to insignificant reforms.
Among the remote factors there are some of a
general nature, which are found to underlie all the beliefs and
opinions of crowds. They are race, traditions, time, institutions, and
education.
We now proceed to study the influence of these
different factors.
§1. RACE
This factor, race, must be placed in the first
rank, for in itself it far surpasses in importance all the others. We
have sufficiently studied it in another work; it is therefore needless
to deal with it again. We showed, in a previous volume, what an
historical race is, and how,
its character once formed, it possesses, as the result of the laws of
heredity such power that its beliefs, institutions, and arts — in a
word, all the elements of its civilisation — are merely the outward
expression of its genius. We showed that the power of the race is such
that no element
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BELIEFS OF CROWDS
can pass from
one people to another without undergoing
the most profound transformations. ¹
Environment, circumstances, and events
represent the social suggestions of the moment. They may have a
considerable influence, but this influence is always momentary if it be
contrary to the suggestions of the race; that is, to those which are
inherited by a nation from the entire series of its ancestors.
We shall have occasion in several of the
chapters of this work to touch again upon racial influence, and to show
that this influence is so great that it dominates the characteristics
peculiar to the genius of crowds. It follows from this fact that the
crowds of different countries offer very considerable differences of
beliefs and conduct and are not to be influenced in the same manner.
§2. TRADITIONS
Traditions represent the ideas, the needs, and
the sentiments of the past. They are the synthesis of the race, and
weigh upon us with immense force.
The biological sciences have been transformed
since embryology has shown the immense influence of the past on the
evolution of living beings; and
¹ The novelty of this proposition being still
considerable, and history being quite unintelligible without it, I
devoted four chapters to its demonstration in my last book (The
Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples). From it the reader
will see that, in spite of fallacious appearances, neither language,
religion, arts, or, in a word, any element of civilisation, can pass,
intact, from one people to another.
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the historical
sciences will not
undergo a less change when this conception has become more widespread.
As yet it is not sufficiently general, and many statesmen are still no
further advanced than the theorists of the last century, who believed
that a society could break off with its past and be entirely recast on
lines suggested solely by the light of reason.
A people is an organism created by the past,
and, like every other organism, it can only be modified by slow
hereditary accumulations.
It is tradition that guides men, and more
especially so when they are in a crowd. The changes they can effect in
their traditions with any ease, merely bear, as I have often repeated,
upon names and outward forms.
This circumstance is not to be regretted.
Neither a national genius nor civilisation would be possible without
traditions. In consequence man's two great concerns since he has
existed have been to create a network of traditions which he afterwards
endeavours to destroy when their beneficial effects have worn
themselves out. Civilisation is impossible without
traditions, and progress impossible without the destruction of those
traditions. The difficulty, and it is an immense difficulty, is to find
a proper equilibrium between stability and variability. Should a people
allow its customs to become too firmly rooted, it can no longer change,
and becomes, like China, incapable of improvement. Violent revolutions
are in this case of no avail;
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BELIEFS OF CROWDS
for what
happens is that either the
broken fragments of the chain are pieced together again and the past
resumes its empire without change, or the fragments remain apart and
decadence soon succeeds anarchy.
The ideal for a people is in consequence to
preserve the institutions of the past, merely changing them insensibly
and little by little. This ideal is difficult to realise. The Romans in
ancient and the English in modern times are almost alone in having
realised it.
It is precisely crowds that cling the most
tenaciously to traditional ideas and oppose their being changed with
the most obstinacy. This is notably the case with the category of
crowds constituting castes. I have already insisted upon the
conservative spirit of crowds, and shown that the most violent
rebellions merely end in a changing of words and terms. At the end of
the last century, in the presence of destroyed churches, of priests
expelled the country or guillotined, it might have been thought that
the old religious ideas had lost all their strength, and yet a few
years had barely lapsed before the abolished system of public worship
had to be re-established in deference to universal demands. ¹
¹ The report of the
ex-Conventionist, Fourcroy,
quoted by Taine, is very clear on this point.
„What is everywhere seen with respect to the
keeping of Sunday and attendance at the churches proves that the
majority of Frenchmen desire to return to their old usages, and that it
is no longer opportune to resist this natural tendency .... The great
majority of men stand in need of religion, public worship, and priests.
It is an error of some modern philosophers, by which I myself have
been
led away, to believe in the possibility of in-
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Blotted out for a moment, the old traditions
had resumed their sway.
No example could better display the power of
tradition on the mind of crowds. The most redoubtable idols do not
dwell in temples, nor the most despotic tyrants in palaces; both the
one and the other can be broken in an instant. But the invisible
masters that reign in our innermost selves are safe from every effort
at revolt, and only yield to the slow wearing away of centuries.
§3. TIME
In social as in biological problems time is
one of the most energetic factors. It is the sole real creator and the
sole great destroyer. It is time that has made mountains with grains of
sand and raised the obscure cell of geological eras to human dignity.
The action of centuries is sufficient to transform any given
phenomenon. It has been justly observed that an ant with enough time at
its disposal could level Mount Blanc. A being possessed of the magical
force of varying time at his will would have the power attributed by
believers to God.
In this place, however, we have only to
concern ourselves with the influence of time on the genesis of the
opinions of crowds. Its action from this
struction being so
general
as to destroy religious prejudices, which for a great number of
unfortunate persons are a source of consolation .... The mass of the
people, then, must be allowed its priests, its altars, and its public
worship.“
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point of view
is still
immense. Dependent upon it are the great forces such as race, which
cannot form themselves without it. It causes the birth, the growth, and
the death of all beliefs. It is by the aid of time that they acquire
their strength and also by its aid that they lose it.
It is time in particular that prepares the
opinions and beliefs of crowds, or at least the soil on which they will
germinate. This is why certain ideas are realisable at one epoch and
not at another. It is time that accumulates that immense detritus of
beliefs and thoughts on which the ideas of a given period spring up.
They do not grow at hazard and by chance; the roots of each of them
strike down into a long past.
When they blossom it is time that has prepared their blooming; and to
arrive at a notion of their genesis it is always back in the past that
it is necessary to search. They are the daughters of the past and the
mothers of the future, but throughout the slaves of time.
Time, in consequence, is our veritable master,
and it suffices to leave it free to act to see all things transformed.
At the present day we are very uneasy with regard to the threatening
aspirations of the masses and the destructions and upheavals foreboded
thereby. Time, without other aid, will see to the restoration of
equilibrium. „No form of government,“ M. Lavisse very
properly writes,
„was founded in a day. Political and social organisations are works
that demand centuries. The feudal system existed for centuries in a
shapeless,
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chaotic state
before it found its laws; absolute monarchy
also existed for centuries before arriving at regular methods of
government, and these periods of expectancy were extremely troubled.“
§4. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
The idea that institutions can remedy the
defects of societies, that national progress is the consequence of the
improvement of institutions and governments, and that social changes
can be effected by decrees — this idea, I say, is still generally
accepted. It was the starting-point of the French Revolution, and
the social theories of the present day are based upon it.
The most continuous experience has been
unsuccessful in shaking this grave delusion. Philosophers and
historians have endeavoured in vain to prove its absurdity, but yet
they have had no difficulty in demonstrating that institutions are the
outcome of ideas, sentiments, and customs, and that ideas, sentiments,
and customs are not to be recast by recasting legislative codes. A
nation does not choose its institutions at will any more than it
chooses the colour of its hair or its eyes. Institutions and
governments are the product of the race. They are not the creators of
an epoch, but are created by it. Peoples are not governed in accordance
with their caprices of the moment, but as their character determines
that they shall be governed. Centuries are required to form a political
system and centuries needed to change it.
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Institutions
have no
intrinsic virtue: in themselves they are neither good nor bad. Those
which are good at a given moment for a given people may be harmful in
the extreme for another nation.
Moreover, it is in no way in the power of a
people to really change its institutions. Undoubtedly, at the cost of
violent revolutions, it can change their name, but in their essence
they remain unmodified. The names are mere futile labels with which an
historian who goes to the bottom of things need scarcely
concern himself. It is in this way, for instance, that England, ¹
the most democratic country in the world, lives,
nevertheless, under a monarchical régime, whereas the
countries
in which the most oppressive despotism is rampant are the
Spanish-American Republics, in spite of their republican constitutions.
The destinies of peoples are determined by their character and not by
their government. I have endeavoured to establish this view in my
previous volume by setting forth categorical examples.
To lose time
in the manufacture of
cut-and-dried constitutions is, in consequence, a puerile task, the
useless labour of an ignorant rhetorician. Necessity
¹ The most advanced
republicans, even of the
United States, recognise this fact. The American magazine, The Forum,
recently gave categorical expression to the opinion in terms which I
reproduce here from the Review of Reviews for December, 1894: —
„It should never be forgotten, even by the
most ardent enemies of an aristocracy, that England is to-day the most
democratic country of the universe, the country in which the rights of
the individual are most respected, and in which the individual
possesses the most liberty.“
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and time
undertake
the charge of elaborating constitutions when we are wise enough to
allow these two factors to act. This is the plan the Anglo-Saxons have
adopted, as their great historian, Macaulay,
teaches us in a passage
that the politicians of all Latin countries ought to learn by heart.
After having shown all the good that can be accomplished by laws
which appear from the point of view of pure reason a chaos of
absurdities and contradictions, he compares the scores of constitutions
that have been engulphed in the convulsions of the Latin peoples with
that of England, and points out that the latter has only been very
slowly changed part by part, under the influence of immediate
necessities and never of speculative reasoning.
„To think nothing of symmetry and much of
convenience; never to remove an anomaly merely because it is an
anomaly; never to innovate except when some grievance is felt; never to
innovate except so far as to get rid of the grievance; never to lay
down any proposition of wider extent than the particular case for which
it is necessary to provide; these are the rules which have, from the
age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided the deliberations
of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments.“
It would be necessary to take one by one the
laws and institutions of each people to show to what extent they are
the expression of the needs of each race and are incapable, for that
reason, of being
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violently
transformed. It is possible, for, instance,
to indulge in philosophical dissertations on the advantages and
disadvantages of centralisation; but when we see a people composed of
very different races devote a
thousand years of efforts to attaining to this centralisation; when we
observe that a great revolution, having for object the destruction of
all the institutions of the past, has been forced to respect this
centralisation, and has even strengthened it; under these circumstances
we should admit that it is the outcome of imperious needs, that it is a
condition of the existence of the nation in question, and we should
pity the poor mental range of politicians who talk of destroying it.
Could they by chance succeed in this attempt, their success would at
once be the signal for a frightful civil war, ¹ which, moreover, would immediately bring back
a new system
of centralisation much more oppressive than the old.
¹ If a comparison be made
between the profound
religious and political dissensions which separate the various parties
in France, and are more especially the result of social questions, and
the separatist tendencies which were manifested at the time of the
Revolution, and began to again display themselves towards the close of
the Franco-German war, it will be seen that the different races
represented in France are still far from being completely blended. The
vigorous centralisation of the Revolution and the creation of
artificial departments destined to bring about the fusion of the
ancient provinces was certainly its most useful work. Were it possible
to bring about the decentralisation which is to-day preoccupying minds
lacking in foresight, the achievement would promptly have for
consequence the most sanguinary disorders. To overlook this fact is to
leave out of account the entire history of France.
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The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes
is, that it is not in institutions that the means is to be sought of
profoundly influencing the genius of the masses. When we see certain
countries, such as the United States, reach a high degree of prosperity
under democratic institutions, while others, such as the
Spanish-American Republics, are found existing in a pitiable state of
anarchy under absolutely similar institutions, we should admit that
these institutions are as foreign to the greatness of the one as to the
decadence of the others. Peoples are governed by their character, and
all institutions which are not intimately modelled on that character
merely represent a borrowed garment, a transitory disguise. No doubt
sanguinary wars and violent revolutions have been undertaken, and will
continue to be undertaken, to impose institutions to which is
attributed, as to the relics of saints, the supernatural power of
creating welfare. It may be said, then, in one sense, that institutions
react on the mind of the crowd inasmuch as they engender such
upheavals. But in reality it is not the institutions that react in this
manner, since we know that, whether triumphant or vanquished, they
possess in themselves no virtue. It is illusions and words that have
influenced the mind of the crowd, and especially words — words which
are as powerful as they are chimerical, and whose astonishing sway we
shall shortly demonstrate.
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§5. INSTRUCTION AND EDUCATION
Foremost among the dominant ideas of the
present epoch is to be found the notion that instruction is capable of
considerably changing men, and has for its unfailing consequence to
improve them and even to make them equal. By the mere fact of its being
constantly repeated, this assertion has ended by becoming one of the
most steadfast democratic dogmas. It would be as difficult now to
attack it as it would have been formerly to have attacked the dogmas of
the Church.
On this point, however, as on many others,
democratic ideas are in profound disagreement with the results of
psychology and experience. Many eminent philosophers, among them
Herbert Spencer, have had no difficulty in showing that instruction
neither renders a man more moral nor happier, that it changes neither
his instincts nor his hereditary passions, and that at times — for
this to happen it need only be badly directed — it is much more
pernicious than useful. Statisticians have brought confirmation of
these views by telling us that criminality increases with the
generalisation of instruction, or at any rate of a certain kind of
instruction, and that the worst enemies of society, the anarchists, are
recruited among the prize-winners of schools; while in a recent work a
distinguished magistrate, M. Adolphe Guillot, made the observation that
at present 3000 educated criminals are met with
for every 1000 illiterate
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delinquents,
and that in fifty years the
criminal percentage of the population has passed from 227 to 552 for
every 100,000 inhabitants, an increase of 133 per cent. He has also
noted in common with his colleagues that criminality is particularly on
the increase among young persons, for whom, as is known, gratuitous and
obligatory schooling has — in France — replaced apprenticeship.
It is not assuredly — and nobody has ever
maintained this proposition — that well-directed instruction may not
give very useful practical results, if not in the sense of raising the
standard of morality, at least in that of developing professional
capacity. Unfortunately the Latin peoples, especially in the last
tweny-five years, have based their systems of instruction on very
erroneous principles, and in spite of the observations of the most
eminent minds, such as Bréal, Fustel de Coulanges, Taine, and
many others, they persist in their lamentable mistakes. I have myself
shown, in a work published some time ago, that the French system of
education transforms the majority of those who have undergone it into
enemies of society, and recruits numerous disciples for the worst forms
of socialism.
The primary danger of this system of education
— very properly qualified as Latin — consists in the fact that it is
based on the fundamental psychological error that the
intelligence is developed by the learning by heart of text-books.
Adopting this view, the endeavour has been made to enforce a knowledge
of as many hand-books as possible.
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From the
primary school till he
leaves the university a young man does nothing but acquire books by
heart without his judgment or personal initiative being ever called
into play. Education consists for him in reciting by heart and obeying.
„Learning lessons, knowing by heart a grammar
or a compendium, repeating well and imitating well — that,“ writes a
former Minister of Public Instruction, M. Jules Simon, „is a ludicrous
form of education whose every effort is an act of faith tacitly
admitting the infallibility of the master, and whose only results are a
belittling of ourselves and a rendering of us impotent.“
Were this education merely useless, one might
confine one's self to expressing compassion for the unhappy children
who, instead of making needful studies at the primary school, are
instructed in the genealogy of the sons of Clotaire, the conflicts
between Neustria and Austrasia, or zoological classifications. But the
system presents a far more serious danger. It gives those who have been
submitted to it a violent dislike to the state of life in which they
were born, and an intense desire to escape from it. The working man no
longer wishes to remain a
working man, or the peasant to continue a peasant, while the most
humble members of the middle classes admit of no possible career for
their sons except that of State-paid functionaries. Instead of
preparing men for life French schools solely prepare them to occupy
public functions, in which
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success can be
attained without any
necessity for self-direction or the exhibition of the least glimmer of
personal initiative. At the bottom of the social ladder the system
creates an army of proletarians discontented with their lot and always
ready to revolt, while at the summit it brings into being a frivolous
bourgeoisie, at once sceptical and credulous, having a superstitious
confidence in the State, whom it regards as a sort of Providence, but
without forgetting to display towards it a ceaseless hostility, always
laying its own faults to the door of the Government, and incapable of
the least enterprise without the intervention of the authorities.
The State, which manufactures by dint of
textbooks all these persons possessing diplomas, can only utilise a
small number of them, and is forced to leave the others without
employment. It is obliged in consequence to resign itself to feeding
the first-mentioned and to having the others as its enemies. From the
top to the bottom of the social pyramid, from the humblest clerk to the
professor and the prefect, the immense mass of persons boasting
diplomas besiege the professions. While a business man has the greatest
difficulty in finding an agent to represent him in the colonies,
thousands of candidates solicit the most modest official posts. There
are 20,000 school masters and mistresses without employment in the
department of the Seine alone, all of them persons who, disdaining the
fields or the workshops, look to the State for
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their
livelihood. The
number of the chosen being restricted, that of the discontented is
perforce immense. The latter are ready for any revolution, whoever be
its chiefs and whatever the goal they aim at. The acquisition of
knowledge for which no use can be found is a sure method of driving a
man to revolt. ¹
It is
evidently too late to retrace our steps.
Experience alone, that supreme educator of peoples, will be at pains to
show us our mistake. It alone will be powerful enough to prove the
necessity of replacing our odious text-books and our pitiable
examinations by industrial instruction capable of inducing our young
men to return to the fields, to the workshop, and to the
¹ This phenomenon, moreover, is
not peculiar to
the Latin peoples. It is also to be observed in China, which is also a
country in the hands of a solid hierarchy of mandarins or
functionaries, and where a function is obtained, as in France, by
competitive examination, in which the only test is the imperturbable
recitation of bulky manuals. The army of educated persons without
employment is considered in China at the present day as a veritable
national calamity. It is the same in India where, since the English
have opened schools, not for educating purposes, as is the case in
England itself, but simply to furnish the indigenous inhabitants with
instruction, there has been formed a special class of educated persons,
the Baboos, who, when they do not obtain employment, become the
irreconcilable enemies of the English rule. In the case of all the
Baboos, whether provided with employment or not, the first effect of
their instruction has been to lower their standard of morality. This is
a fact on which I have insisted at length in my book, The
Civilisations of India — a fact, too, which has been observed by
all
authors who have visited the great peninsula.
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colonial
enterprise which they avoid to-day at all costs.
The professional instruction which all
enlightened minds are now demanding was the instruction received in the
past by our forefathers. It is still in vigour at the present day among
the nations who rule the world by their force of will, their
initiative, and their spirit of enterprise. In a series of remarkable
pages, whose principal passages I reproduce further on, a great
thinker, M. Taine, has clearly shown that our former system of
education was approximately that in vogue to-day in England and
America, and in a remarkable parallel between the Latin and Anglo-Saxon
systems he has plainly pointed out the consequences of the two methods.
One might consent, perhaps, at a pinch, to continue
to accept all the disadvantages of our classical education,
although it produced nothing but discontented men, and men unfitted for
their station in life, did the superficial acquisition of so much
knowledge, the faultless repeating by heart of so many text-books,
raise the level of intelligence. But does it really raise this level?
Alas, no! The conditions of success in life are the possession of
judgment, experience, initiative, and character — qualities which are
not bestowed by books. Books are dictionaries, which it is useful to
consult, but of which it is perfectly useless to have lengthy portions
in one's head.
How is it possible for professional
instruction to
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develop the
intelligence in a measure quite beyond the
reach of classical instruction? This has been well shown by M. Taine.
„Ideas,“ he says, „are only formed in their
natural and normal surroundings; the promotion of the growth is
effected by the innumerable impressions appealing to the senses which a
young man receives daily in the workshop, the mine, the law court, the
study, the builder's yard, the hospital; at the sight of tools,
materials, and operations; in the presence of customers, workers, and
labour, of work well or ill done, costly or lucrative. In such a way
are obtained those trifling perceptions of detail of the eyes, the ear,
the hands, and even the sense of smell, which, picked up involuntarily,
and silently elaborated, take shape within the learner, and suggest to
him sooner or, later this or that new combination, simplification,
economy, improvement, or invention. The young Frenchman is deprived,
and precisely at the age when they are most fruitful, of all these
precious contacts, of all these indispensable elements of assimilation.
For seven or eight years on end he is shut up in a school, and is cut
off from that direct personal experience which would give him a keen
and exact notion of men and things and of the various ways of handling
them.“
„ ... At least nine out of ten have wasted
their time and pains during several years of their life — telling,
important, even decisive years. Among
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such are to be
counted, first of
all, the half or two-thirds of those who present themselves for
examination — I refer to those who are rejected; and then among those
who are successful, who obtain a degree, a certificate, a diploma,
there is still a half or two-thirds — I refer to the overworked. Too
much has been demanded of them by exacting that on a given day, on a
chair or before a board, they should, for two hours in succession, and
with respect to a group of sciences, be living repertories of all human
knowledge. In point of fact they were that, or nearly so, for two hours
on
that particular day, but a month later they are so no longer. They
could not go through the examination again. Their too numerous and too
burdensome acquisitions slip incessantly from their mind, and are not
replaced. Their mental vigour has declined, their fertile capacity for
growth has dried up, the fully-developed man appears, and he is often a
used-up man. Settled down, married, resigned to turning in a circle,
and indefinitely in the same circle, he shuts himself up in his
confined function, which he fulfils adequately, but nothing more. Such
is the average yield; assuredly the receipts do not balance the
expenditure. In England or America, where, as in France previous to
1789, the contrary proceeding is adopted, the outcome obtained is equal
or superior.“
The illustrious psychologist subsequently
shows us the difference between our system and that of
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the
Anglo-Saxons. The latter do not possess our innumerable special
schools. With them instruction is not based on book-learning, but on
object lessons. The engineer, for example, is trained in a workshop,
and never at a school; a method which allows of each individual
reaching the level his intelligence permits of. He becomes a workman or
a foreman if he can get no further, an engineer if his aptitudes take
him as far. This manner of proceeding is
much more democratic and of much greater benefit to society than that
of making the whole career of an individual depend on an examination,
lasting a few hours, and undergone at the age of nineteen or twenty.
„In the hospital, the mine, the factory, in
the architect's or the lawyer's office, the student, who makes a start
while very young, goes through his apprenticeship, stage by stage, much
as does with us a law clerk in his office, or an artist in his studio.
Previously, and before making a practical beginning, he has had an
opportunity of following some general and summary course of
instruction, so as to have a framework ready prepared in which to store
the observations he is shortly to make. Furthermore he is able, as a
rule, to avail himself of sundry technical courses which he can follow
in his leisure hours, so as to co-ordinate step by step the daily
experience he is gathering. Under such a system the practical
capabilities increase and develop of themselves in exact proportion to
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the faculties
of the student, and in the direction requisite for his
future task and the special work for which from now onwards he desires
to fit himself. By this means in England or the United States a young
man is quickly in a position to develop his capacity to the utmost. At
twenty-five years of age, and much sooner if the
material and the parts are there, he is not merely a useful performer,
he is capable also of spontaneous enterprise; he is not only a part of
a machine, but also a motor. In France, where the contrary system
prevails — in France, which with each succeeding generation is falling
more and more into line with China — the sum total of the wasted
forces is enormous.“
The great philosopher arrives at the following
conclusion with respect to the growing incongruity between our Latin
system of education and the requirements of practical life: —
„In the three stages of instruction, those of
childhood, adolescence, and youth, the theoretical and pedagogic
preparation by books on the school benches has lengthened out and
become overcharged in view of the examination, the degree, the diploma,
and the certificate, and solely in this view, and by the worst methods,
by the application of an unnatural and anti-social régime,
by
the excessive postponement of the practical apprenticeship, by our
boarding-school system, by artificial training and mechanical cramming,
by overwork, without
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thought for
the time that is to follow, for the
adult age and the functions of the man, without regard for the real
world on which the young man will shortly be thrown, for the society in
which we
move and to which he must be adapted or be taught to resign himself in
advance, for the struggle in which humanity is engaged, and in which to
defend himself and to keep his footing he ought previously to have been
equipped, armed, trained, and hardened. This indispensable equipment,
this acquisition of more importance than any other, this sturdy common
sense and nerve and will-power our schools do not procure the young
Frenchman; on the contrary, far from qualifying him for his approaching
and definite state, they disqualify him. In consequence, his entry into
the world and his first steps in the field of action are most often
merely a succession of painful falls, whose effect is that he long
remains wounded and bruised, and sometimes disabled for life. The test
is severe and dangerous. In the course of it the mental and moral
equilibrium is affected, and runs the risk of not being re-established.
Too sudden and complete disillusion has supervened. The deceptions have
been too great, the disappointments too keen.“ ¹
¹ Taine, Le Régime
moderne, vol. ii., 1894.
These pages are almost the last that Taine wrote. They resume admirably
the results of the great philosopher's long experience. Unfortunately
they are in my opinion totally incomprehensible for such of our
university professors who have not lived abroad. Education is the only
means at our disposal of influencing to some extent the mind of a
nation, and it is profoundly saddening to have to think
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Have we digressed in what precedes from the
psychology of crowds? Assuredly not. If we desire to understand the
ideas and beliefs that are germinating to-day in the masses, and will
spring up to-morrow, it is necessary to know how the ground has been
prepared. The instruction given the youth of a country allows of a
knowledge of what that country will one day be. The education accorded
the present generation justifies the most gloomy previsions. It is in
part by instruction and education that the mind of the masses is
improved or deteriorated. It was necessary in consequence to show how
this mind has been fashioned by the system in vogue, and how the mass
of the indifferent
and the neutral has become progressively an army of the discontented
ready to obey all the suggestions
that there is
scarcely any one in France who can arrive at understanding that our
present system of teaching is a grave cause of rapid decadence, which
instead of elevating our youth, lowers and perverts it.
A useful comparison may be made between
Taine's pages and the observations on American education recently made
by M. Paul Bourget
in his excellent book, Outre-Mer. He, too, after
having noted that our education merely produces narrow-minded
bourgeois, lacking in initiative and will-power, or anarchists — „those
two equally harmful types of the civilised man, who degenerates
into impotent platitude or insane destructiveness“ — he too, I say,
draws a comparison that cannot be the object of too much reflection
between our French lycées (public schools), those
factories of
degeneration, and the American schools, which prepare a man admirably
for life. The gulf existing between truly democratic nations and those
who have democracy in their speeches, but in no wise in their thoughts,
is clearly brought out in this comparison.
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of utopians
and rhetoricians. It is
in the schoolroom that socialists and anarchists are found nowadays,
and that the way is being paved for the approaching period of decadence
for the Latin peoples.
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CHAPTER II
THE IMMEDIATE FACTORS OF THE OPINIONS OF
CROWDS
§1. Images, words and
formulæ. The
magical power of words and formulæ — The power of words bound up
with the images they evoke, and independent of their real sense —
These images vary from age to age, and from race to race — The wear
and tear of words — Examples of the considerable variations of sense
of much-used words — The political utility of baptizing old things
with new names when the words by which they were designated produced an
unfavourable impression on the masses — Variations of the sense of
words in consequence of race differences — The different meanings of
the word „democracy“ in Europe and America. §2. Illusions.
Their
importance — They are to be found at the root of all civilisations —
The social necessity of illusions — Crowds always prefer them to
truths. §3. Experience. Experience alone can fix in the
mind of crowds
truths become necessary and destroy illusions grown dangerous —
Experience is only effective on the condition that it be frequently
repeated — The cost of the experiences requisite to persuade crowds.
§4. Reason. The nullity of its influence on crowds —
Crowds only to be
influenced by their unconscious sentiments — The rôle of
logic
in history — The secret causes of improbable events.
WE have just investigated the
remote and
preparatory factors which give the mind of crowds a special
receptivity, and make possible therein the growth of certain
sentiments and certain ideas. It now remains for us to study the
factors capable
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CROWDS
of acting in a
direct manner. We shall see in a
forthcoming chapter how these factors should be put in force in order
that they may produce their full effect.
In the first part of this work we studied the
sentiments, ideas, and methods of reasoning of collective bodies, and
from the knowledge thus acquired it would evidently be possible to
deduce in a general way the means of making an impression on their
mind. We already know what strikes the imagination of crowds, and are
acquainted with the power and contagiousness of suggestions, of those
especially that are presented under the form of images. However, as
suggestions may proceed from very different sources, the factors
capable of acting on the minds of crowds may differ considerably. It is
necessary, then, to study them separately. This is not a useless study.
Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: it is necessary
to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or
to resign ourselves to being devoured by them.
§1. IMAGES, WORDS, AND
FORMULAS
When studying the imagination of crowds we saw
that it is particularly open to the impressions produced by images.
These images do not always lie ready to hand, but
it is possible to evoke them by the judicious employment of words and
formulas. Handled with art, they possess in sober truth the mysterious
power formerly attributed to them by
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CROWDS
the adepts of
magic. They cause
the birth in the minds of crowds of the most formidable tempests, which
in turn they are capable of stilling. A pyramid far loftier than that
of old Cheops could be raised merely with the bones of men who have
been victims of the power of words and formulas.
The power of words is bound up with the images
they evoke, and is quite independent of their real significance. Words
whose sense is the most ill-defined are sometimes those that possess
the most influence. Such, for example, are the terms democracy,
socialism, equality, liberty, etc., whose meaning is so vague that
bulky volumes do not suffice to precisely fix it. Yet it is certain
that a truly magical power is attached to those short syllables, as if
they contained the solution of all problems. They synthesise the most
diverse unconscious aspirations and the hope of their realisation.
Reason and arguments are incapable of
combatting certain words and formulas. They are uttered with solemnity
in the presence of crowds, and as soon as they have been pronounced an
expression of respect is visible on every countenance, and all heads
are bowed. By many they are considered as natural forces, as
supernatural powers. They evoke grandiose and vague images in men's
minds, but this very vagueness that wraps them in obscurity augments
their mysterious power. They are the mysterious divinities hidden
behind the
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OPINIONS OF
CROWDS
tabernacle,
which the devout only approach in fear and
trembling.
The images evoked by words being independent
of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people,
the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are
attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of
an electric bell that calls them up.
All words and all formulas do not possess the
power of evoking images, while there are some which have once had this
power, but lose it in the course of use, and cease to waken any
response in the mind. They then become vain sounds, whose principal
utility is to relieve the person who employs them of the obligation of
thinking. Armed with a small stock of formulas and commonplaces learnt
while we are young, we possess all that is needed to traverse life
without the tiring necessity of having to reflect on anything whatever.
If any particular language be studied, it is
seen that the words of which it is composed change rather slowly in the
course of ages, while the images these words evoke
or the meaning attached to them changes ceaselessly. This is the reason
why, in another work, I have arrived at the conclusion that the
absolute translation of a language, especially of a dead language, is
totally impossible. What do we do in reality when we substitute a
French for a Latin, Greek, or Sanscrit expression, or even when we
endeavour to understand a book written in our own tongue two or three
centuries back?
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We merely put
the images and ideas with which modern
life has endowed our intelligence in the place of absolutely distinct
notions and images which ancient life had brought into being in the
mind of races submitted to conditions of existence having no analogy
with our own. When the men of the Revolution imagined they were copying
the Greeks and Romans, what were they doing except giving to ancient
words a sense the latter had never had? What resemblance can possibly
exist between the institutions of the Greeks and those designated
to-day by corresponding words? A republic at that epoch was an
essentially aristocratic institution, formed of a reunion of petty
despots ruling over a crowd of slaves kept in the most absolute
subjection. These communal aristocracies, based on slavery, could not
have existed for a moment without it.
The word „liberty,“ again, what signification
could it have in any way resembling that we attribute to it to-day at a
period when the possibility of the liberty of thought was not even
suspected, and when there was no greater and more exceptional crime
than that of discussing the gods, the laws and the customs of the city?
What did such a word as „fatherland“ signify to an Athenian or Spartan
unless it were the cult of Athens or Sparta, and in no wise that of
Greece, composed of rival cities always at war with each other? What
meaning had the same word „fatherland“ among the ancient Gauls, divided
into rival tribes and races, and
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OPINIONS OF
CROWDS
possessing
different languages and
religions, and who were easily vanquished by Cæsar because he
always
found allies among them? It was Rome that made a country of Gaul by
endowing it with political and religious unity. Without going back so
far, scarcely two centuries ago, is it to be believed that this same
notion of a fatherland was conceived to have the same meaning as at
present by French princes like the great
Condé, who allied
themselves with the foreigner against their sovereign? And yet again,
the same word had it not a sense very different from the modern for the
French royalist emigrants, who thought they obeyed the laws of honour
in fighting against France, and who from their point of view did indeed
obey them, since the feudal law bound the vassal to the lord and not to
the soil, so that where the sovereign was there was the true fatherland?
Numerous are the words whose meaning has thus
profoundly changed from age to age — words which we can only arrive at
understanding in the sense in which they were formerly understood after
a long effort. It has been said with truth that much study is necessary
merely to arrive at conceiving what was signified to our
great-grandfathers by such words as the „king“ and the „royal family.“
What,
then, is likely to be the case with terms still more complex?
Words, then, have only mobile and transitory
significations which change from age to age and people to people; and
when we desire to exert
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CROWDS
an influence
by their means on the crowd what
it is requisite to know is the meaning given them by the crowd at a
given moment, and not the meaning which they formerly had or may yet
have for individuals of a different mental constitution.
Thus, when crowds have come, as the result of
political upheavals or changes of belief, to acquire a profound
antipathy for the images evoked by certain words, the first duty of the
true statesman is to change the words without, of course, laying hands
on the things themselves, the latter being too intimately bound up with
the inherited constitution to be transformed. The judicious Tocqueville
long ago made the remark that the work of the consulate and the empire
consisted more particularly in the clothing with new words of the
greater part of the institutions of the past — that is to say, in
replacing words evoking disagreeable images in the imagination of the
crowd by other words of which the novelty prevented such evocations.
The „taille“ or tallage has become the land tax; the „gabelle,“ the tax
on salt; the „aids,“ the indirect contributions and the consolidated
duties; the tax on trade companies and guilds, the license, etc.
One of the most essential functions of
statesmen consists, then, in baptizing with popular or, at any rate,
indifferent words things the crowd cannot endure under their old names.
The power of words is so great that it suffices to designate in
well-chosen terms the most odious things to make them
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CROWDS
acceptable to
crowds. Taine justly observes that it was by invoking liberty and
fraternity — words very popular at the time — that the Jacobins were
able „to install a despotism worthy of Dahomey, a tribunal similar to
that of the Inquisition, and to accomplish human hecatombs akin to
those of ancient Mexico.“ The art of those who govern, as is the case
with the art of advocates, consists above all in the science of
employing words. One of the greatest difficulties of this art is, that
in one and the same society the same words most often have very
different meanings for the different
social classes, who employ in appearance the same words, but never
speak the same language.
In the preceding examples it is especially
time that has been made to intervene as the principal factor in the
changing of the meaning of words. If, however, we also make race
intervene, we shall then see that, at the same period, among peoples
equally civilised but of different race, the same words very often
correspond to extremely dissimilar ideas. It is impossible to
understand these differences without having travelled much, and for
this reason I shall not insist upon them. I shall confine myself to
observing that it is precisely the words most often employed by the
masses which among different peoples possess the most different
meanings. Such is the case, for instance, with the words „democracy“
and „socialism“ in such frequent use nowadays.
In reality they correspond to quite contrary
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CROWDS
ideas and
images in the Latin and Anglo-Saxon mind. For the Latin
peoples the word „democracy“ signifies more especially the
subordination of the will and the initiative of the individual to the
will and the initiative of the community represented by the State. It
is the State that is charged, to a greater and greater degree, with the
direction of everything, the centralisation, the monopolisation, and
the manufacture of everything. To the State it is
that all parties without exception, radicals, socialists, or
monarchists, constantly appeal. Among the Anglo-Saxons, and notably in
America, this same word „democracy“ signifies, on the contrary, the
intense development of the will of the individual, and as complete a
subordination as possible of the State, which, with the exception of
the police, the army, and diplomatic relations, is not allowed the
direction of anything, not even of public instruction. It is seen,
then, that the same word which signifies for one people the
subordination of the will and the initiative of the individual and the
preponderance of the State, signifies for another the excessive
development of the will and the initiative of the individual and the
complete subordination of the State. ¹
¹ In my book, The
Psychological Laws of the
Evolution of Peoples, I have insisted at length on the differences
which distinguish the Latin democratic ideal from the Anglo-Saxon
democratic ideal. Independently, and as the result of his travels, M.
Paul Bourget has arrived, in his quite recent book, Outre-Mer,
at
conclusions almost identical with mine.
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§2. ILLUSIONS
From the dawn of civilisation onwards crowds
have always undergone the influence of illusions. It is to the creators
of illusions that they have raised more temples, statues, and altars
than to any other class of men. Whether it be the religious illusions
of the
past or the philosophic and social illusions of the present, these
formidable sovereign powers are always found at the head of all the
civilisations that have successively flourished on our planet. It is in
their name that were built the temples of Chaldea and Egypt and the
religious edifices of the Middle Ages, and that a vast upheaval shook
the whole of Europe a century ago, and there is not one of our
political, artistic, or social conceptions that is free from their
powerful impress. Occasionally, at the cost of terrible disturbances,
man overthrows them, but he seems condemned to always set them up
again. Without them he would never have emerged from his primitive
barbarian state, and without them again he would soon return to it.
Doubtless they are futile shadows; but these children of our dreams
have forced the nations to create whatever the arts may boast of
splendour or civilisation of greatness.
„If one destroyed in museums and libraries, if
one hurled down on the flagstones before the churches all the works and
all the monuments of art that religions have inspired, what would
remain of the great dreams of humanity? To give to men that portion of
hope and illusion without which
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CROWDS
they cannot
live, such is the reason
for the existence of gods, heroes, and poets. During fifty years
science appeared to undertake this task. But science has been
compromised in hearts hungering after the ideal, because it does not
dare to be lavish enough of promises, because it cannot lie.“ ¹
The philosophers of the last century devoted
themselves with fervour to the destruction of the religious, political,
and social illusions on which our forefathers had lived for a long tale
of centuries. By destroying them they have dried up the springs of hope
and resignation. Behind the immolated chimeras they came face to face
with the blind and silent forces of nature, which are inexorable to
weakness and ignore pity.
Notwithstanding all its progress, philosophy
has been unable as yet to offer the masses any ideal that can charm
them; but, as they must have their illusions at all cost, they turn
instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians who
accord them what they want. Not truth, but error has always been the
chief factor in the evolution of nations, and the reason why socialism
is so powerful to-day is that it constitutes the last illusion that is
still vital. In spite of all scientific demonstrations it continues on
the increase. Its principal strength lies in the fact that it is
championed by minds sufficiently ignorant of things as they are in
reality to venture boldly to promise mankind happiness. The social
illusion reigns
¹ Daniel
Lesueur.
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OPINIONS OF
CROWDS
to-day upon
all the
heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses
have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is
not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them.
Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever
attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
§3. EXPERIENCE
Experience constitutes almost the only
effective process by which a truth may be solidly established in the
mind of the masses, and illusions grown too dangerous be destroyed. To
this end, however, it is necessary that the experience should take
place on a very large scale, and be very frequently repeated. The
experiences undergone by one generation are useless, as a rule, for the
generation that follows, which is the reason why historical facts,
cited with a view to demonstration, serve no purpose. Their only
utility is to prove to what an extent experiences need to be repeated
from age to age to exert any influence, or to be successful in merely
shaking an erroneous opinion when it is solidly implanted in the mind
of the masses.
Our century and that which preceded it will
doubtless be alluded to by historians as an era of curious experiments,
which in no other age have been tried in such
number.
The most gigantic of these experiments was the
French Revolution. To find out that a society is not to be refashioned
from top to bottom in accord-
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OPINIONS OF
CROWDS
ance with the
dictates of pure reason, it
was necessary that several millions of men should be massacred and that
Europe should be profoundly disturbed for a period of twenty years. To
prove to us experimentally that dictators cost the nations who acclaim
them dear, two ruinous experiences have been required in fifty years,
and in spite of their clearness they do not seem to have been
sufficiently convincing. The first, nevertheless, cost three millions
of men and an invasion, the second involved a loss of territory, and
carried in its wake the necessity for permanent armies. A third was
almost attempted not long since, and will assuredly be attempted one
day. To bring an entire nation to admit that the huge German army was
not, as was currently alleged thirty years ago, a sort of harmless
national guard, ¹ the terrible war which cost us so dear had to
¹ The opinion of the crowd was
formed in this
case by those rough-and-ready associations of dissimilar things, the
mechanism of which I have previously explained. The French National
Guard of that period, being composed of peaceable shopkeepers, utterly
lacking in discipline and quite incapable of being taken seriously,
whatever bore a similar name, evoked the same conception and was
considered in consequence as harmless. The error of the crowd was
shared at the time by its leaders, as happens so often in connection
with opinions dealing with generalisations. In a speech made in the
Chamber on the 31st of December, 1867, and quoted in a
book by M. E.
Ollivier that has appeared recently, a statesman who often followed
the
opinion of the crowd but was never in advance of it — I allude to M.
Thiers —
declared that Prussia only possessed a national guard
analogous to that of France, and in consequence without importance, in
addition to a regular army about equal to the French regular army;
assertions about as accurate as the predictions of the same statesman
as to the insignificant future reserved for railways.
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OPINIONS OF
CROWDS
take place. To
bring about the recognition
that Protection ruins the nations who adopt it, at least twenty years
of disastrous experience will be needful. These examples might be
indefinitely multiplied.
§4. REASON
In enumerating the factors capable of making
an impression on the minds of crowds all mention of reason might be
dispensed with, were it not necessary to point out the negative value
of its influence.
We have already shown that crowds are not to
be influenced by reasoning, and can only comprehend rough-and-ready
associations of ideas. The orators who know how to make an impression
upon them always appeal in consequence to their sentiments and never to
their reason. The laws of logic have no action on crowds. ¹ To
bring home conviction
¹ My first observations with regard to the art
of impressing crowds and touching the slight assistance to be derived
in this connection from the rules of logic date back to the seige of
Paris, to the day when I saw conducted to the Louvre, where the
Government was then sitting, Marshal V—— , whom a furious crowd
asserted they had surprised in the act of taking the plans of the
fortifications to sell them to the Prussians. A member of the
Government (G. P—— ), a very celebrated orator, came out to
harangue the crowd, which was demanding the immediate execution of the
prisoner. I had expected that the speaker would point out the absurdity
of the accusation by remarking that the accused Marshal was positively
one of those who had constructed the fortifications, the plan of which,
moreover, was on sale at every bookseller's. To my immense stupefaction
— I was very young then — the speech was on quite different lines.
„Justice shall be done,“ exclaimed the orator, advancing towards the
prisoner, „and pitiless justice. Let the Government of the National
Defence conclude your inquiry. In the meantime we will keep
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CROWDS
to crowds it
is necessary first of
all to thoroughly comprehend the sentiments by which they are animated,
to pretend to share these sentiments, then to endeavour to modify them
by calling up, by means of rudimentary associations, certain eminently
suggestive notions, to be capable, if need be, of going back to the
point of view from which a start was made, and, above all, to divine
from instant to instant the sentiments to which one's discourse
is giving birth. This necessity of ceaselessly varying one's language
in accordance with the effect produced at the moment of speaking
deprives from the outset a prepared and studied harangue of all
efficaciousness. In such a speech the orator follows his own line of
thought, not that of his hearers, and from this fact alone his
influence is annihilated.
Logical minds,
accustomed to be convinced by a
chain of somewhat close reasoning, cannot avoid having recourse to this
mode of persuasion when addressing crowds, and the inability of their
arguments always surprises them. „The usual mathematical consequences
based on the syllogism — that is, on associations of identities — are
imperative ...“ writes a logician. „This imperativeness would enforce
the assent even of an inorganic mass were
the
prisoner in custody.“ At once calmed by this apparent concession, the
crowd broke up, and a quarter of an hour later the Marshal was able to
return home. He would infallibly have been torn in pieces had the
speaker treated the infuriated crowd to the logical arguments that my
extreme youth induced me to consider as very convincing.
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OPINIONS OF
CROWDS
it capable of
following
associations of identities.“ This is doubtless true, but a crowd is no
more capable than an inorganic mass of following such associations, nor
even of understanding them. If the attempt be made to convince by
reasoning primitive minds — savages or children, for instance — the
slight value possessed by this method of arguing will be understood.
It is not even necessary to descend so low as
primitive beings to obtain an insight into the utter powerlessness of
reasoning when it has to fight against sentiment. Let us merely call to
mind how tenacious, for
centuries long, have been religious superstitions in contradiction with
the simplest logic. For nearly two thousand years the most luminous
geniuses have bowed before their laws, and modern times have to be
reached for their veracity to be merely contested. The Middle Ages and
the Renaissance possessed many enlightened men, but not a single man
who attained by reasoning to an appreciation of the childish side of
his superstitions, or who promulgated even a slight doubt as to the
misdeeds of the devil or the necessity of burning sorcerers.
Should it be regretted that crowds are never
guided by reason? We would not venture to affirm it. Without a doubt
human reason would not have availed to spur humanity along the path of
civilisation with the ardour and hardihood its illusions have done.
These illusions, the offspring of those unconscious forces by which we
are led,
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CROWDS
were doubtless
necessary. Every race carries in its mental
constitution the laws of its destiny, and it is, perhaps, these laws
that it obeys with a resistless impulse, even in the case of those of
its impulses which apparently are the most unreasoned. It seems at
times as if nations were submitted to secret forces analogous to those
which compel the acorn to transform itself into an oak or a comet to
follow its orbit.
What little insight we can get into these
forces must be sought for in the general course of the evolution of a
people, and not in the isolated facts from which this evolution appears
at times to proceed. Were these facts alone to be taken into
consideration, history would seem to be the result of a series of
improbable chances. It was improbable that a Galilean carpenter should
become for two thousand years an all-powerful God in whose name the
most important civilisations were founded; improbable, too, that a few
bands of Arabs, emerging from their deserts, should conquer the greater
part of the old Græco-Roman world, and establish an empire
greater than
that of Alexander; improbable, again, that in Europe, at an advanced
period of its development, and when authority throughout it had been
systematically hierarchised, an obscure lieutenant of artillery should
have succeeded in reigning over a multitude of peoples and kings.
Let us leave reason, then, to philosophers,
and not insist too strongly on its intervention in the
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CROWDS
governing of
men. It is not by reason, but most often in spite of it, that are
created those sentiments that are the mainsprings of all civilisation —
sentiments such as honour, self-sacrifice, religious faith,
patriotism, and the love of glory.
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THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS
CHAPTER III
THE LEADERS OF CROWDS AND THEIR MEANS OF
PERSUASION
§1. The leaders of crowds. The
instinctive need of all beings forming a crowd to obey a leader — The
psychology of the leaders of crowds — They alone can endow crowds with
faith and organise them — The leaders forcibly despotic —
Classification of the leaders — The part played by the will. §2. The
means of action of the leaders. Affirmation, repetition, contagion
—
The respective part of these different factors — The way in which
contagion may spread from the lower to the upper classes in a society —
A popular opinion soon becomes a general opinion. §3. Prestige.
Definition of prestige and classification of its different kinds —
Acquired prestige and personal prestige — Various examples — The way
in which prestige is destroyed.
WE are now acquainted
with the mental
constitution of crowds, and we also know what are the motives capable
of making an impression on their mind. It remains to investigate how
these motives may be set in action, and by whom they may usefully be
turned to practical account.
§1. THE LEADERS OF CROWDS
As soon as a certain number of living beings
are gathered together, whether they be animals or
134 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
men, they
place
themselves instinctively under the authority of a chief.
In the case of human crowds the chief is often
nothing more than a ringleader or agitator, but as such he plays a
considerable part. His will is the nucleus around which the opinions of
the crowd are grouped and attain to identity. He constitutes the first
element towards the organisation of heterogeneous crowds, and paves the
way for their organisation in sects; in the meantime he directs them. A
crowd is a servile flock that is incapable of ever doing without a
master.
The leader has most often started as one of
the led. He has himself been hypnotised by the idea, whose apostle he
has since become. It has taken possession of him to such a degree that
everything outside it vanishes, and that every contrary opinion appears
to him an error or a superstition. An example in point is Robespierre,
hypnotised by the philosophical ideas of Rousseau, and employing the
methods of the Inquisition to propagate them.
The leaders we speak of are more frequently
men of action than thinkers. They are not gifted with keen foresight,
nor could they be, as this quality generally conduces to doubt and
inactivity. They are especially recruited from the ranks of those
morbidly nervous,
excitable, half-deranged persons who are bordering on madness. However
absurd may be the idea they uphold or the goal they pursue, their
convictions are so strong that all reasoning is lost upon them.
Contempt and
135 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
persecution do
not affect them, or only serve to excite
them the more. They sacrifice their personal interest, their family —
everything. The very instinct of self-preservation is entirely
obliterated in them, and so much so that often the only recompense they
solicit is that of martyrdom. The intensity of their faith gives great
power of suggestion to their words. The multitude is always ready to
listen to the strong-willed man, who knows how to impose himself upon
it. Men gathered in a crowd lose all force of will, and turn
instinctively to the person who possesses the quality they lack.
Nations have never lacked leaders, but all of
the latter have by no means been animated by those strong convictions
proper to apostles. These leaders are often subtle rhetoricians,
seeking only their own personal interest, and endeavouring to persuade
by flattering base instincts. The influence they can assert in this
manner may be very great, but it is always ephemeral. The men of ardent
convictions who have stirred the soul of crowds, the Peter the Hermits,
the Luthers, the Savonarolas, the men of the French Revolution, have
only exercised their fascination
after having been themselves fascinated first of all by a creed. They
are then able to call up in the souls of their fellows that formidable
force known as faith, which renders a man the absolute slave of his
dream.
The arousing of faith — whether religious,
political, or social, whether faith in a work, in a person, or an idea
— has always been the function of the
136 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
great leaders
of crowds, and it
is on this account that their influence is always very great. Of all
the forces at the disposal of humanity, faith has always been one of
the most tremendous, and the gospel rightly attributes to it the power
of moving mountains. To endow a man with faith is to multiply his
strength tenfold. The great events of history have been brought about
by obscure believers, who have had little beyond their faith in their
favour. It is not by the aid of the learned or of philosophers, and
still less of sceptics, that have been built up the great religions
which have swayed the world, or the vast empires which have spread from
one hemisphere to the other.
In the cases just cited, however, we are
dealing with great leaders, and they are so few in number that history
can easily reckon them up. They form the summit of a continuous series,
which extends from these powerful masters of men down to the workman
who, in the smoky atmosphere of an inn, slowly fascinates his comrades
by ceaselessly drumming into
their ears a few set phrases, whose purport he scarcely comprehends,
but the application of which, according to him, must surely bring about
the realisation of all dreams and of every hope.
In every social sphere, from the highest to
the lowest, as soon as a man ceases to be isolated he speedily falls
under the influence of a leader. The majority of men, especially among
the masses, do not possess clear and reasoned ideas on any subject
137 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
whatever
outside their own speciality. The leader serves them as guide.
It is just possible that he may be replaced, though very inefficiently,
by the periodical publications which manufacture opinions for their
readers and supply them with ready-made phrases which dispense them of
the trouble of reasoning.
The leaders of crowds wield a very despotic
authority, and this despotism indeed is a condition of their obtaining
a following. It has often been remarked how easily they extort
obedience, although without any means of backing up their authority,
from the most turbulent section of the working classes. They fix the
hours of labour and the rate of wages, and they decree strikes, which
are begun and ended at the hour they ordain.
At the present day these leaders and agitators tend
more and more to usurp the place of the public authorities in
proportion as the latter allow themselves to be called in question and
shorn of their strength. The tyranny of these new masters has for
result that the crowds obey them much more docilely than they have
obeyed any Government. If in consequence of some accident or other the
leaders should be removed from the scene, the crowd returns to its
original state of a collectivity without cohesion or force of
resistance. During the last strike of the Parisian omnibus
employés the arrest of the two leaders who were directing it was
at once sufficient to bring it to an end. It is the need not of liberty
but of servitude that is always pre-
138 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
dominant in
the soul of crowds. They
are so bent on obedience that they instinctively submit to whoever
declares himself their master.
These ringleaders and agitators may be divided
into two clearly defined classes. The one includes the men who are
energetic and possess, but only intermittently, much strength of will,
the other the men, far rarer than the preceding, whose strength of will
is enduring. The first-mentioned are violent, brave, and audacious.
They are more especially useful to direct a violent enterprise suddenly
decided on, to carry the masses with them in spite of danger, and to
transform into heroes the men who but yesterday were recruits. Men of
this kind were Ney and Murat under the First Empire, and such a
man in our own time was Garibaldi, a talentless but energetic
adventurer who succeeded with a handful of men in laying hands on the
ancient kingdom of Naples, defended though it was by a disciplined army.
Still, though the energy of leaders of this
class is a force to be reckoned with, it is transitory, and scarcely
outlasts the exciting cause that has brought it into play. When they
have returned to their ordinary course of life the heroes animated by
energy of this description often evince, as was the case with those I
have just cited, the most astonishing weakness of character. They seem
incapable of reflection and of conducting themselves under the simplest
circumstances, although they had been able to lead others. These men
are leaders who cannot
139 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
exercise their
function except on the condition
that they be led themselves and continually stimulated, that they have
always as their beacon a man or an idea, that they follow a line of
conduct clearly traced. The second category of leaders, that of men of
enduring strength of will, have, in spite of a less brilliant aspect, a
much more considerable influence. In this category are to be found the
true founders of religions and great undertakings; St. Paul, Mahomet,
Christopher Columbus, and de Lesseps, for example. Whether they be
intelligent or narrow-minded is of no importance: the world belongs to
them. The
persistent will-force they possess is an immensely rare and immensely
powerful faculty to which everything yields. What a strong and
continuous will is capable of is not always properly appreciated.
Nothing resists it; neither nature, gods, nor man.
The most recent example of what can be
effected by a strong and continuous will is afforded us by the
illustrious man who separated the Eastern and Western worlds, and
accomplished a task that during three thousand years had been attempted
in vain by the greatest sovereigns. He failed later in an identical
enterprise, but then had intervened old age, to which everything, even
the will, succumbs.
When it is desired to show what may be done by
mere strength of will, all that is necessary is to relate in detail the
history of the difficulties that had to be surmounted in connection
with the cutting of the Suez Canal. An ocular witness, Dr. Cazalis,
140 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
has
summed up in a few striking lines the entire story of this great work,
recounted by its immortal author.
„From day to day, episode by episode, he told
the stupendous story of the canal. He told of all he had had to
vanquish, of the impossible he had made possible, of all the opposition
he encountered, of the coalition against him, and the disappointments,
the reverses, the defeats which had been unavailing to discourage or
depress him. He recalled how England had combatted
him, attacking him without cessation, how Egypt and France had
hesitated, how the French Consul had been foremost in his opposition to
the early stages of the work, and the nature of the opposition he had
met with, the attempt to force his workmen to desert from thirst by
refusing them fresh water; how the Minister of Marine and the
engineers, all responsible men of experienced and scientific training,
had naturally all been hostile, were all certain on scientific grounds
that disaster was at hand, had calculated its coming, foretelling it
for such a day and hour as an eclipse is foretold.“
The book which relates the lives of all these
great leaders would not contain many names, but these names have been
bound up with the most important events in the history of civilisation.
141 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
§2. THE MEANS OF ACTION
OF THE LEADERS: AFFIRMATION,
REPETITION, CONTAGION
When it is wanted to stir up a crowd for a
short space of time, to induce it to commit an act of any nature — to
pillage a palace, or to die in defence of a stronghold or a barricade,
for instance — the crowd must be acted upon by rapid suggestions, among
which example is the most powerful in its effect. To attain this end,
however, it is necessary that the crowd should have been previously
prepared by certain circumstances, and, above all, that he who wishes
to work upon
it should possess the quality to be studied farther on, to which I give
the name of prestige.
When, however, it is proposed to imbue the
mind of a crowd with ideas and beliefs — with modern social theories,
for instance — the leaders have recourse to different expedients. The
principal of them are three in number and clearly defined —
affirmation, repetition, and contagion. Their action is somewhat slow,
but its effects, once produced, are very lasting.
Affirmation pure and simple, kept free of all
reasoning and all proof, is one of the surest means of making an idea
enter the mind of crowds. The conciser an affirmation is, the more
destitute of every appearance of proof and demonstration, the more
weight it carries. The religious books and the legal codes of all ages
have always resorted to simple affirmation. Statesmen called upon to
defend
142 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
a political
cause, and commercial men pushing the sale of their
products by means of advertising, are acquainted with the value of
affirmation.
Affirmation, however, has no real influence
unless it be constantly repeated, and so far as possible in the same
terms. It was Napoleon, I believe, who said that there is only one
figure in rhetoric of serious importance, namely, repetition. The thing
affirmed comes by repetition to fix itself in the mind in such a way
that it is accepted in the end as a demonstrated truth.
The influence of repetition on crowds is
comprehensible when the power is seen which it exercises on the most
enlightened minds. This power is due to the fact that the repeated
statement is embedded in the long-run in those profound regions of our
unconscious selves in which the motives of our actions are forged. At
the end of a certain time we have forgotten who is the author of the
repeated assertion, and we finish by believing it. To this circumstance
is due the astonishing power of advertisements. When we have read a
hundred, a thousand, times that X's chocolate is the best, we imagine
we have heard it said in many quarters, and we end by acquiring the
certitude that such is the fact. When we have read a thousand times
that Y's flour has cured the most illustrious persons of the most
obstinate maladies, we are tempted at last to try it when suffering
from an illness of a similar kind. If we always read in the same papers
that A is an arrant scamp and B a most honest
143 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
man we finish
by being
convinced that this is the truth, unless, indeed, we are given to
reading another paper of the contrary opinion, in which the two
qualifications are reversed. Affirmation and repetition are alone
powerful enough to combat each other.
When an affirmation has been sufficiently
repeated and there is unanimity in this repetition — as has occurred
in the case of certain famous financial undertakings rich enough to
purchase every assistance — what is called a current of opinion is
formed and the powerful mechanism of contagion intervenes. Ideas,
sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power
as intense as that of microbes. This phenomenon is very natural, since
it is observed even in animals when they are together in number. Should
a horse in a stable take to biting his manger the other horses in the
stable will imitate him. A panic that has seized on a few sheep will
soon extend to the whole flock. In the case of men collected in a crowd
all emotions are very rapidly contagious, which explains the suddenness
of panics. Brain disorders, like madness, are themselves contagious.
The frequency of madness among doctors who are specialists for the mad
is notorious. Indeed, forms of madness have recently been cited —
agoraphobia, for instance — which are communicable from men to animals.
For individuals to succumb to contagion their
simultaneous presence on the same spot is not
144 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
indispensable.
The action
of contagion may be felt from a distance under the influence of events
which give all minds an individual trend and the characteristics
peculiar to crowds. This is especially the case when men's minds have
been prepared to undergo the influence
in question by those remote factors of which I have made a study above.
An example in point is the revolutionary movement of 1848, which, after
breaking out in Paris, spread rapidly over a great part of Europe and
shook a number of thrones.
Imitation, to which so much influence is
attributed in social phenomena, is in reality a mere effect of
contagion. Having shown its influence elsewhere, I shall confine myself
to reproducing what I said on the subject fifteen years ago. My remarks
have since been developed by other writers in recent publications.
„Man, like animals, has a natural tendency to
imitation. Imitation is a necessity for him, provided always that the
imitation is quite easy. It is this necessity that makes the influence
of what is called fashion so powerful. Whether in the matter of
opinions, ideas, literary manifestations, or merely of dress, how many
persons are bold enough to run counter to the fashion? It is by
examples not by arguments that crowds are guided. At every period there
exists a small number of individualities which react upon the remainder
and are imitated by the unconscious mass. It is needful however, that
these individualities should
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OF CROWDS
not be in too
pronounced disagreement with
received ideas. Were they so, to imitate them would be too difficult
and their influence would be nil. For this very reason men who are too
superior to their epoch are generally without influence upon it. The
line of separation is too strongly marked. For the same reason too
Europeans, in spite of all the advantages of their civilisation, have
so insignificant an influence on Eastern people; they differ from them
to too great an extent.
„The dual action of the past and of reciprocal
imitation renders, in the long run, all the men of the same country and
the same period so alike that even in the case of individuals who would
seem destined to escape this double influence, such as philosophers,
learned men, and men of letters, thought and style have a family air
which enables the age to which they belong to be immediately
recognised. It is not necessary to talk for long with an individual to
attain to a thorough knowledge of what he reads, of his habitual
occupations, and of the surroundings amid which he lives.“ ¹
Contagion is so powerful that it forces upon
individuals not only certain opinions, but certain modes of feeling as
well. Contagion is the cause of the contempt in which, at a given
period, certain works are held — the example of Tannhaüser
may
be cited — which, a few years later, for the
¹ Gustave le Bon, L'Homme et les
Sociétés, vol. ii. p. 116. 1881.
146 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
same reason
are admired by those who were foremost in criticising them.
The opinions and beliefs of crowds are
specially propagated by contagion, but never by reasoning. The
conceptions at present rife among the working classes have been
acquired at the public-house as the result of affirmation, repetition,
and contagion, and indeed the mode of creation of the beliefs of crowds
of every age has scarcely been different. Renan justly institutes a
comparison between the first founders of Christianity and „the
socialist working men spreading their ideas from public-house to
public-house“; while Voltaire had already observed in connection with
the Christian religion that „for more than a hundred years it was only
embraced by the vilest riff-raff.“
It will be noted that in cases analogous to
those I have just cited, contagion, after having been at work among the
popular classes, has spread to the higher classes of society. This is
what we see happening at the present day with regard to the socialist
doctrines which are beginning to be held by those who will yet be their
first victims. Contagion is so powerful a force that even the sentiment
of personal interest disappears under its action.
This is the explanation of the fact that every
opinion adopted by the populace always ends in implanting itself with
great vigour in the highest social strata, however obvious be the
absurdity of the triumphant
opinion. This reaction of the lower upon the higher social classes is
the more
147 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
curious, owing
to the circumstance that the beliefs of the
crowd always have their origin to a greater or less extent in some
higher idea, which has often remained without influence in the sphere
in which it was evolved. Leaders and agitators, subjugated by this
higher idea, take hold of it, distort it and create a sect which
distorts it afresh, and then propagates it amongst the masses, who
carry the process of deformation still further. Become a popular truth
the idea returns, as it were, to its source and exerts an influence on
the upper classes of a nation. In the long-run it is intelligence that
shapes the destiny of the world, but very indirectly. The philosophers
who evolve ideas have long since returned to dust, when, as the result
of the process I have just described, the fruit of their reflection
ends by triumphing.
§3. PRESTIGE
Great power is given to ideas propagated by
affirmation, repetition, and contagion by the circumstance that they
acquire in time that mysterious force known as prestige.
Whatever has been a ruling power in the world,
whether it be ideas or men, has in the main enforced its authority by
means of that irresistible force expressed by the word „prestige.“ The
term is one whose meaning
is grasped by everybody, but the word is employed in ways too different
for it to be easy to define it. Prestige may involve such sentiments as
admiration or fear. Occasionally even
148 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
these
sentiments are its basis,
but it can perfectly well exist without them. The greatest measure of
prestige is possessed by the dead, by beings, that is, of whom we do
not stand in fear — by Alexander, Cæsar, Mahomet, and Buddha,
for example. On the other hand, there are fictive beings whom we do not
admire — the monstrous divinities of the subterranean temples of
India, for instance — but who strike us nevertheless as endowed with a
great prestige.
Prestige in reality is a sort of domination
exercised on our mind by an individual, a work, or an idea. This
domination entirely paralyses our critical faculty, and fills our soul
with astonishment and respect. The sentiment provoked is inexplicable,
like all sentiments, but it would appear to be of the same kind as the
fascination to which a magnetised person is subjected. Prestige is the
mainspring of all authority. Neither gods, kings, nor women have ever
reigned without it.
The various kinds of prestige may be grouped
under two principal heads: acquired prestige and personal prestige.
Acquired prestige is that resulting from name, fortune, and reputation.
It may be independent of personal
prestige. Personal prestige, on the contrary, is something essentially
peculiar to the individual; it may coexist with reputation, glory, and
fortune, or be strengthened by them, but it is perfectly capable of
existing in their absence.
Acquired or artificial prestige is much the
most
149 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
common. The
mere fact that an individual occupies a certain
position, possesses a certain fortune, or bears certain titles, endows
him with prestige, however slight his own personal worth. A soldier in
uniform, a judge in his robes, always enjoys prestige. Pascal has very
properly noted the necessity for judges of robes and wigs. Without them
they would be stripped of half their authority. The most unbending
socialist is always somewhat impressed by the sight of a prince or a
marquis; and the assumption of such titles makes the robbing of
tradesmen an easy matter. ¹
The prestige
of which I have just spoken is
exercised by persons; side by side with it may be placed
¹ The influence of titles,
decorations, and
uniforms on crowds is to be traced in all countries, even in those in
which the sentiment of personal independence is the most strongly
developed. I quote in this connection a curious passage from a recent
book of travel, on the prestige enjoyed in England by great persons.
„I had observed, under various circumstances,
the peculiar sort of intoxication produced in the most reasonable
Englishmen by the contact or sight of an English peer.
„Provided his fortune enables him to keep up
his rank, he is sure of their affection in advance, and brought into
contact with him they are so enchanted as to put up with anything at
his hands. They may be seen to redden with pleasure at his approach,
and if he speaks to them their suppressed joy increases their redness,
and causes their eyes to gleam with unusual brilliance. Respect for
nobility is in their blood, so to speak, as with Spaniards the love of
dancing, with Germans that of music, and with Frenchmen the liking for
revolutions. Their passion for horses and Shakespeare is less violent,
the satisfaction and pride they derive from these sources a less
integral part of their being. There is a considerable sale for books
dealing with the peerage, and go where one will they are to be found,
like the Bible, in all hands.“
150 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
that exercised
by opinions, literary and artistic works, etc. Prestige of the
latter kind is most often merely the result of accumulated repetitions.
History, literary and artistic history especially, being nothing more
than the repetition of identical judgments, which nobody endeavours to
verify, everyone ends by repeating what he learnt at school, till
there come to be names and things which nobody would venture to meddle
with. For a modern reader the perusal of Homer results incontestably in
immense boredom; but who would venture to say so? The Parthenon, in its
present state, is a wretched ruin, utterly destitute of interest, but
it is endowed with such prestige that it does not appear to us as it
really is, but with all its accompaniment of historic memories. The
special characteristic of prestige is to prevent us seeing things as
they are and to entirely paralyse our judgment. Crowds
always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions
on all subjects. The popularity of these opinions is independent of the
measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely regulated by
their prestige.
I now come to personal prestige. Its nature is
very different from that of artificial or acquired prestige, with which
I have just been concerned. It is a faculty independent of all titles,
of all authority, and possessed by a small number of persons whom it
enables to exercise a veritably magnetic fascination on those around
them, although they are socially their equals, and lack all ordinary
means of domina-
151 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
tion. They
force the acceptance of their ideas and
sentiments on those about them, and they are obeyed as is the tamer of
wild beasts by the animal that could easily devour him.
The great leaders of crowds, such as Buddha,
Jesus, Mahomet, Joan of Arc, and Napoleon, have possessed this form of
prestige in a high degree, and to this endowment is more particularly
due the position they attained. Gods, heroes, and dogmas win their way
in the world of their own inward strength. They are not to be
discussed: they disappear, indeed, as soon as discussed.
The great personages I have just cited were in
possession of their power of fascination long before they became
illustrious, and would never have become so without it. It is evident,
for instance, that Napoleon at the zenith of his glory enjoyed an
immense prestige by the mere fact of his power, but he was already
endowed in part with this prestige when he was without power and
completely unknown. When, an obscure general, he was sent, thanks to
influential protection, to command the army of Italy, he found himself
among rough generals who were of a mind to give a hostile reception to
the young intruder dispatched them by the Directory. From the very
beginning, from the first interview, without the aid of speeches,
gestures, or threats, at the first sight of the man who was to become
great they were vanquished. Taine furnishes a curious account of this
interview taken from contemporary memoirs.
152 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
„The generals of division, amongst others
Augereau, a sort of swashbuckler, uncouth and heroic, proud of his
height and his bravery, arrive at the staff quarters very badly
disposed towards the little upstart dispatched them from Paris. On the
strength of the description of him that has been given them, Augereau
is inclined to be insolent and insubordinate; a favourite of Barras, a
general who owes his rank to the events of Vendémiaire, who has
won his grade by street-fighting, who is looked upon as bearish,
because he is always thinking in solitude, of
poor aspect, and with the reputation of a mathematician and dreamer.
They are introduced, and Bonaparte keeps them waiting. At last he
appears, girt with his sword; he puts on his hat, explains the measures
he has taken, gives his orders, and dismisses them. Augereau has
remained silent; it is only when he is outside that he regains his
self-possession and is able to deliver himself of his customary oaths.
He admits with Masséna that this little devil of a general has
inspired him with awe; he cannot understand the ascendency by which
from the very first he has felt himself overwhelmed.“
Become a great man, his prestige increased in
proportion as his glory grew, and came to be at least equal to that of
a divinity in the eyes of those devoted to him. General Vandamme, a
rough, typical soldier of the Revolution, even more brutal and
energetic than Augereau, said of him to Marshal
153 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
d'Arnano in
1815, as on
one occasion they mounted together the stairs of the Tuileries: „That
devil of a man exercises a fascination on me that I cannot explain even
to myself, and in such a degree that, though I fear neither God nor
devil, when I am in his presence I am ready to tremble like a child,
and he could make me go through the eye of a needle to throw myself
into the fire.“
Napoleon exercised a like fascination on all
who came into contact with him. ¹
Davoust used
to say, talking of Maret's
devotion and of his own: „Had the Emperor said to us, 'It is important
in the interest of my policy that Paris should be destroyed without a
single person leaving it or escaping,' Maret I am sure would have kept
the secret, but he could not have abstained
¹ Thoroughly conscious of
his prestige, Napoleon
was aware that he added to it by treating rather worse than stable lads
the great personages around him, and among whom figured some of those
celebrated men of the Convention of whom Europe had stood in dread. The
gossip of the period abounds in illustrations of this fact. One day, in
the midst of a Council of State, Napoleon grossly insults Beugnot,
treating him as one might an unmannerly valet. The effect produced, he
goes up to him and says, „Well, stupid, have you found your head
again?“ Whereupon Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, and the
little man raising his hand, takes the tall one by the ear, „an
intoxicating sign of favour,“ writes Beugnot, „the familiar gesture of
the master who waxes gracious.“ Such examples give a clear idea of the
degree of base platitude that prestige can provoke. They enable us to
understand the immense contempt of the great despot for the men
surrounding him — men whom he merely looked upon as „food for powder.“
154 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
from
compromising himself
by seeing that his family got clear of the city. On the other hand, I,
for fear of letting the truth leak out, would have let my wife and
children stay.“
It is necessary to bear in mind the astounding
power exerted by fascination of this order to understand that
marvellous return from the Isle of Elba, that
lightning-like conquest of France by an isolated man confronted by all
the organised forces of a great country that might have been supposed
weary of his tyranny. He had merely to cast a look at the generals sent
to lay hands on him, and who had sworn to accomplish their mission. All
of them submitted without discussion.
„Napoleon,“ writes the English General
Wolseley, „lands in France almost alone, a fugitive from the small
island of Elba which was his kingdom, and succeeded in a few weeks,
without bloodshed, in upsetting all organised authority in France under
its legitimate king; is it possible for the personal ascendency of a
man to affirm itself in a more astonishing manner? But from the
beginning to the end of this campaign, which was his last, how
remarkable too is the ascendency he exercised over the Allies, obliging
them to follow his initiative, and how near he came to crushing them!“
His prestige outlived him and continued to
grow. It is his prestige that made an emperor of his obscure nephew.
How powerful is his memory still is seen
155 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
in the
resurrection of his
legend in progress at the present day. Ill-treat men as you will,
massacre them by millions, be the cause of invasion upon invasion, all
is permitted you if you possess prestige in a sufficient degree and the
talent necessary to uphold it.
I have invoked, no doubt, in this case a quite
exceptional example of prestige, but one it was useful to cite to make
clear the genesis of great religions, great doctrines, and great
empires. Were it not for the power exerted on the crowd by prestige,
such growths would be incomprehensible.
Prestige, however, is not based solely on
personal ascendency, military glory, and religious terror; it may have
a more modest origin and still be considerable. Our century furnishes
several examples. One of the most striking ones that posterity will
recall from age to age will be supplied by the history of the
illustrious man who modified the face of the globe and the commercial
relations of the nations by separating two continents. He succeeded in
his enterprise owing to his immense strength of will, but also owing to
the fascination he exercised on those surrounding him. To overcome the
unanimous opposition he met with, he had only to show himself. He would
speak briefly, and in face of the charm he exerted his opponents became
his friends. The English in particular strenuously opposed his scheme;
he had only to put in an appearance in England to rally all suffrages.
In later years, when he passed Southampton, the bells
156 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
were rung on
his
passage; and at the present day a movement is on foot in England to
raise a statue in his honour.
„Having vanquished whatever there is to
vanquish, men and things, marshes, rocks, and sandy wastes,“ he had
ceased to believe in obstacles, and wished to begin Suez over again at
Panama. He began again with the same methods as of old; but he had
aged, and, besides, the faith that moves mountains does not move them
if they are too lofty. The mountains resisted, and the catastrophe that
ensued destroyed the glittering aureole of glory that enveloped the
hero. His life teaches how prestige can grow and how it can vanish.
After rivalling in greatness the most famous heroes of history, he was
lowered by the magistrates of his country to the ranks of the vilest
criminals. When he died, his coffin, unattended, traversed an
indifferent crowd. Foreign sovereigns are alone in rendering homage to
his memory as to that of one of the greatest men that history has
known. ¹
¹ An Austrian paper, the Neue Freie Presse,
of
Vienna, has indulged on the subject of the destiny of de Lesseps
in
reflections marked by a most judicious psychological insight. I
therefore reproduce them here: —
„After the condemnation of Ferdinand de
Lesseps one has no longer the right to be astonished at the sad end of
Christopher Columbus. If Ferdinand de Lesseps were a rogue every noble
illusion is a crime. Antiquity would have crowned the memory of de
Lesseps with an aureole of glory, and would have made him drink from
the bowl of nectar in the midst of Olympus, for he has altered the face
of the earth and accomplished works which make the creation more
perfect. The President of the Court of Appeal
157 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
Still, the various examples that have just
been cited represent extreme cases. To fix in detail the psychology of
prestige, it would be necessary to place them at the extremity of a
series, which would range from the founders of religions and empires to
the private individual who endeavours to dazzle his neighbours by a new
coat or a decoration.
Between the extreme limits of this series
would find a place all the forms of prestige resulting from the
different elements composing a civilisation — sciences, arts,
literature, etc. — and it would be seen that prestige constitutes
the fundamental element
has immortalised himself
by condemning Ferdinand de Lesseps, for the nations will always demand
the name of the man who was not afraid to debase his century by
investing with the convict's cap an aged man, whose life redounded to
the glory of his contemporaries.
„Let there be no more talk in the future of
inflexible justice, there where reigns a bureaucratic hatred of
audacious feats. The nations have need of audacious men who believe in
themselves and overcome every obstacle without concern for their
personal safety. Genius cannot be prudent; by dint of prudence it could
never enlarge the sphere of human activity.
„... Ferdinand de Lesseps has known the
intoxication of triumph and the bitterness of disappointment — Suez
and Panama. At this point the heart revolts at the morality of success.
When de Lesseps had succeeded in joining two seas princes and nations
rendered him their homage; to-day, when he meets with failure among the
rocks of the Cordilleras, he is nothing but a vulgar rogue. ... In
this result we see a war between the classes of society, the discontent
of bureaucrats and employés, who take their revenge with the aid
of the criminal code on those who would raise themselves above their
fellows. ... Modern legislators are filled with embarrassment when
confronted by the lofty ideas due to human genius; the public
comprehends such ideas still less, and it is easy for an
advocate-general to prove that Stanley is a murderer and de Lesseps a
deceiver.“
158 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
of persuasion.
Consciously or not, the being,
the idea, or the thing possessing prestige is immediately imitated in
consequence of contagion, and forces an entire generation to adopt
certain modes of feeling and of giving expression to its thought. This
imitation, moreover, is, as a rule, unconscious, which accounts for the
fact that it is perfect. The modern painters who copy the pale
colouring and the stiff attitudes of some of the Primitives are
scarcely alive to the source of their inspiration. They believe in
their own sincerity, whereas, if an eminent master had not revived this
form of art, people would have continued blind to all but its
naïve and inferior sides. Those artists who, after the manner of
another illustrious master, inundate their canvasses with violet shades
do not see in nature more violet than was detected there fifty years
ago; but they are influenced, „suggestioned,“ by the personal and
special impressions of a painter who, in spite of this eccentricity,
was successful in acquiring great prestige. Similar examples might be
brought forward in connection with all the elements of civilisation.
It is seen from what precedes that a number of
factors may be concerned in the genesis of prestige; among them success
was always one of the most important. Every successful man, every idea
that forces itself into recognition, ceases, ipso facto, to be
called
in question. The proof that success is one of the principal
stepping-stones to prestige is that the disappearance of the one is
almost always followed
159 THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — THE LEADERS
OF CROWDS
by the
disappearance of the other. The hero whom
the crowd acclaimed yesterday is insulted to-day should he have been
overtaken by failure. The reaction, indeed, will be the stronger in
proportion as the prestige has been great. The crowd in this case
considers the fallen hero as an equal, and takes its revenge for having
bowed to a superiority whose existence it no longer admits. While
Robespierre was causing the execution of his colleagues and of a great
number of his contemporaries, he possessed an immense prestige. When
the transposition of a few votes deprived him of power, he immediately
lost his prestige, and the crowd followed him to the guillotine with
the self-same imprecations with which shortly before it had pursued his
victims. Believers always break the statues of their former gods with
every symptom of fury.
Prestige lost by want of success disappears in
a brief space of time. It can also be worn away, but more slowly by
being subjected to discussion. This latter power, however, is
exceedingly sure. From the moment
prestige is called in question it ceases to be prestige. The gods and
men who have kept their prestige for long have never tolerated
discussion. For the crowd to admire, it must be kept at a distance.
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THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS
CHAPTER IV
LIMITATIONS OF THE VARIABILITY OF THE
BELIEFS AND OPINIONS OF CROWDS
§1. Fixed Beliefs.
The invariability of certain
general beliefs — They shape the course of a civilisation — The
difficulty of uprooting them — In what respect intolerance is a virtue
in a people — The philosophic absurdity of a belief cannot interfere
with its spreading. §2. The Changeable Opinions of Crowds.
The extreme
mobility of opinions which do not arise from general beliefs —
Apparent variations of ideas and beliefs in less than a century — The
real limits of these variations — The matters effected by the
variation — The disappearance at present in progress of general
beliefs, and the extreme diffusion of the newspaper press, have for
result that opinions are nowadays more and more changeable — Why the
opinions of crowds tend on the majority of subjects towards
indifference — Governments now powerless to direct opinion as they
formerly did — Opinions prevented to-day from being tyrannical on
account of their exceeding divergency.
§1. FIXED BELIEFS
A CLOSE parallel exists
between the anatomical
and psychological characteristics of living beings. In these anatomical
characteristics certain invariable, or slightly
variable, elements are met with, to change which the lapse is necessary
of geological ages. Side by side with these fixed, indestructible
features are to be found others extremely changeable, which the art of
the breeder or horticulturist may easily
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THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — LIMITATIONS
OF THE VARIABILITY
modify, and at
times to such
an extent as to conceal the fundamental characteristics from an
observer at all inattentive.
The same phenomenon is observed in the case of
moral characteristics. Alongside the unalterable psychological elements
of a race, mobile and changeable elements are to be encountered. For
this reason, in studying the beliefs and opinions of a people, the
presence is always detected of a fixed groundwork on which are
engrafted opinions as changing as the surface sand on a rock.
The opinions and beliefs of crowds may be
divided, then, into two very distinct classes. On the one hand we have
great permanent beliefs, which endure for several centuries, and on
which an entire civilisation may rest. Such, for instance, in the past
were feudalism, Christianity, and Protestantism; and such, in our own
time, are the nationalist principle and contemporary democratic and
social ideas. In the second place, there are the transitory, changing
opinions, the outcome, as a rule, of general conceptions, of which
every age sees the birth and disappearance; examples in point are the
theories which mould literature and the arts — those,
for instance, which produced romanticism, naturalism, mysticism, etc.
Opinions of this order are as superficial, as a rule, as
fashion, and as changeable. They may be likened to the ripples which
ceaselessly arise and vanish on the surface of a deep lake.
The great generalised beliefs are very
restricted in number. Their rise and fall form the culminat-
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OF THE VARIABILITY
ing points
of the history of every historic race. They constitute the real
framework of civilisation.
It is easy to imbue the mind of crowds with a
passing opinion, but very difficult to implant therein a lasting
belief. However, a belief of this latter description once established,
it is equally difficult to uproot it. It is usually only to be changed
at the cost of violent revolutions. Even revolutions can only avail
when the belief has almost entirely lost its sway over men's minds. In
that case revolutions serve to finally sweep away what had already been
almost cast aside, though the force of habit prevented its complete
abandonment. The beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a
belief.
The precise moment at which a great belief is
doomed is easily recognisable; it is the moment when its value begins
to be called in question. Every general belief being little else than a
fiction, it can only survive on the condition that it be not subjected
to
examination.
But even when a belief is severely shaken, the
institutions to which it has given rise retain their strength and
disappear but slowly. Finally, when the belief has completely lost its
force, all that rested upon it is soon involved in ruin. As yet a
nation has never been able to change its beliefs without being
condemned at the same time to transform all the elements of its
civilisation. The nation continues this process of transformation until
it has alighted on and accepted a new general belief; until this
juncture it is perforce in a state of anarchy. General
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THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — LIMITATIONS
OF THE VARIABILITY
beliefs are
the
indispensable pillars of civilisations; they determine the trend of
ideas. They alone are capable of inspiring faith and creating a sense
of duty.
Nations have always been conscious of the
utility of acquiring general beliefs, and have instinctively understood
that their disappearance would be the signal for their own decline. In
the case of the Romans, the fanatical cult of Rome was the belief that
made them masters of the world, and when the belief had died out Rome
was doomed to die. As for the barbarians who destroyed the Roman
civilisation, it was only when they had acquired certain commonly
accepted beliefs that they attained a measure of cohesion and emerged
from anarchy.
Plainly it is not for nothing that nations
have always displayed intolerance in the defence of their opinions.
This intolerance, open as it is to criticism from the philosophic
standpoint, represents in the life of a people the most necessary of
virtues. It was to found or uphold general beliefs that so many victims
were sent to the stake in the Middle Ages and that so many inventors
and innovators have died in despair even if they have escaped
martyrdom. It is in defence, too, of such beliefs that the world has
been so often the scene of the direst disorder, and that so many
millions of men have died on the battlefield, and will yet die there.
There are great difficulties in the way of
establishing a general belief, but when it is definitely implanted its
power is for a long time to come invincible, and however false it be
philosophically it imposes
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OF THE VARIABILITY
itself upon
the most luminous intelligence.
Have not the European peoples regarded as incontrovertible for more
than fifteen centuries religious legends which, closely examined, are
as barbarous ¹ as those of Moloch? The frightful absurdity of the
legend of
a God who revenges himself for the disobedience of one of his creatures
by inflicting horrible tortures on his son remained
unperceived during many centuries. Such potent geniuses as a Galileo, a
Newton, and a Leibnitz never supposed for an instant that the truth of
such dogmas could be called in question. Nothing can be more typical
than this fact of the hypnotising effect of general beliefs, but at the
same time nothing can mark more decisively the humiliating limitations
of our intelligence.
As soon as a
new dogma is implanted in the
mind of crowds it becomes the source of inspiration whence are evolved
its institutions, arts, and mode of existence. The sway it exerts over
men's minds under these circumstances is absolute. Men of action have
no thought beyond realising the accepted belief, legislators beyond
applying it, while philosophers, artists, and men of letters are solely
preoccupied with its expression under various shapes.
From the fundamental belief transient
accessory ideas may arise, but they always bear the impress
¹ Barbarous, philosophically
speaking, I mean.
In practice they have created an entirely new civilisation, and for
fifteen centuries have given mankind a glimpse of those enchanted
realms of generous dreams and of hope which he will know no more.
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OF THE VARIABILITY
of the
belief from which they have sprung. The Egyptian civilisation, the
European civilisation of the Middle Ages, the Mussulman civilisation of
the Arabs are all the outcome of a small number of religious beliefs
which have left their mark on the least important elements of these
civilisations and allow of their immediate recognition.
Thus it is that, thanks to general beliefs,
the men of every age are enveloped in a network of traditions,
opinions, and
customs which render them all alike, and from whose yoke they cannot
extricate themselves. Men are guided in their conduct above all by
their beliefs and by the customs that are the consequence of those
beliefs. These beliefs and customs regulate the smallest acts of our
existence, and the most independent spirit cannot escape their
influence. The tyranny exercised unconsciously on men's minds is the
only real tyranny, because it cannot be fought against. Tiberius,
Ghengis Khan, and Napoleon were assuredly redoubtable tyrants, but from
the depth of their graves Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Mahomet have
exerted on the human soul a far profounder despotism. A conspiracy may
overthrow a tyrant, but what can it avail against a firmly established
belief? In its violent struggle with Roman Catholicism it is the French
Revolution that has been vanquished, and this in spite of the fact that
the sympathy of the crowd was apparently on its side, and in spite of
recourse to destructive measures as pitiless as those of the
Inquisition. The only real tyrants that
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OF THE VARIABILITY
humanity has
known have always
been the memories of its dead or the illusions it has forged itself.
The philosophic absurdity that often marks
general beliefs has never been an obstacle to their triumph. Indeed the
triumph of such beliefs would seem impossible unless on the condition
that they offer some
mysterious absurdity. In consequence, the evident weakness of the
socialist beliefs of to-day will not prevent them triumphing among the
masses. Their real inferiority to all religious beliefs is solely the
result of this consideration, that the ideal of happiness offered by
the latter being realisable only in a future life, it was beyond the
power of anybody to contest it. The socialist ideal of happiness being
intended to be realised on earth, the vanity of its promises will at
once appear as soon as the first efforts towards their realisation are
made, and simultaneously the new belief will entirely lose its
prestige. Its strength, in consequence, will only increase until the
day when, having triumphed, its practical realisation shall commence.
For this reason, while the new religion exerts to begin with, like all
those that have preceded it, a destructive influence, it will be
unable, in the future, to play a creative part.
§2. THE CHANGEABLE OPINIONS
OF CROWDS
Above the substratum of fixed beliefs, whose
power we have just demonstrated, is found an overlying growth of
opinions, ideas, and thoughts which are incessantly springing up and
dying out. Some
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OF THE VARIABILITY
of them exist
but for a day, and the more important
scarcely outlive a generation. We have already noted that the changes
which supervene in opinions of this
order are at times far more superficial than real, and that they are
always affected by racial considerations. When examining, for instance,
the political institutions of France we showed that parties to all
appearance utterly distinct — royalists, radicals, imperialists,
socialists, etc. — have an ideal absolutely identical, and that
this ideal is solely dependent on the mental structure of the French
race, since a quite contrary ideal is found under analogous names among
other races. Neither the name given to opinions nor deceptive
adaptations alter the essence of things. The men of the Great
Revolution, saturated with Latin literature, who (their eyes fixed on
the Roman Republic) adopted its laws, its fasces, and its togas, did
not become Romans because they were under the empire of a powerful
historical suggestion. The task of the philosopher is to investigate
what it is which subsists of ancient beliefs beneath their apparent
changes, and to identify amid the moving flux of opinions the part
determined by general beliefs and the genius of the race.
In the absence of this philosophic test it
might be supposed that crowds change their political or religious
beliefs frequently and at will. All history, whether political,
religious, artistic, or literary, seems to prove that such is the case.
As an example, let us take a very short period
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OF THE VARIABILITY
of French
history, merely that from 1790 to 1820, a period of thirty
years' duration, that of a generation. In the course of it we see the
crowd at first monarchical become very revolutionary, then very
imperialist, and again very monarchical. In the matter of religion it
gravitates in the same lapse of time from Catholicism to atheism, then
towards deism, and then returns to the most pronounced forms of
Catholicism. These changes take place not only amongst the masses, but
also amongst those who direct them. We observe with astonishment the
prominent men of the Convention, the sworn enemies of kings, men who
would have neither gods nor masters, become the humble servants of
Napoleon, and afterwards, under Louis XVIII., piously carry candles in
religious processions.
Numerous, too, are the changes in the opinions
of the crowd in the course of the following seventy years. The
„Perfidious Albion“ of the opening of the century is the ally of France
under Napoleon's heir; Russia, twice invaded by France, which looked on
with satisfaction at French reverses, becomes its friend.
In literature, art, and philosophy the
successive evolutions of opinion are more rapid still. Romanticism,
naturalism, mysticism, etc., spring up and die out in turn. The
artist and the writer applauded yesterday are treated on the morrow
with profound contempt.
When, however, we analyse all these changes in
appearance so far reaching, what do we find? All
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OF THE VARIABILITY
those that are
in
opposition with the general beliefs and sentiments of the race are of
transient duration, and the diverted stream soon resumes its course.
The opinions which are not linked to any general belief or sentiment of
the race, and which in consequence cannot possess stability, are at the
mercy of every chance, or, if the expression be preferred, of every
change in the surrounding circumstances. Formed by suggestion and
contagion, they are always momentary; they crop up and disappear as
rapidly on occasion as the sandhills formed by the wind on the
sea-coast.
At the present day the changeable opinions of
crowds are greater in number than they ever were, and for three
different reasons.
The first is that as the old beliefs are
losing their influence to a greater and greater extent, they are
ceasing to shape the ephemeral opinions of the moment as they did in
the past. The weakening of general beliefs clears the ground for a crop
of haphazard opinions without a past or a future.
The second reason is that the power of crowds
being on the increase, and this power being less and less
counterbalanced, the extreme mobility of ideas, which we have seen to
be a peculiarity of crowds, can manifest
itself without let or hindrance.
Finally, the third reason is the recent
development of the newspaper press, by whose agency the most contrary
opinions are being continually brought before the attention of crowds.
The suggestions that might result from each individual opinion are
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THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS — LIMITATIONS
OF THE VARIABILITY
soon
destroyed by suggestions of an opposite character. The consequence is
that no opinion succeeds in becoming widespread, and that the existence
of all of them is ephemeral. An opinion nowadays dies out before it has
found a sufficiently wide acceptance to become general.
A phenomenon quite new in the world's history,
and most characteristic of the present age, has resulted from these
different causes; I allude to the powerlessness of governments to
direct opinion.
In the past, and in no very distant past, the
action of governments and the influence of a few writers and a very
small number of newspapers constituted the real reflectors of public
opinion. To-day the writers have lost all influence, and the newspapers
only reflect opinion. As for statesmen, far from directing opinion,
their only endeavour is to follow it. They have a dread of opinion,
which amounts at times to terror, and causes them to adopt an utterly
unstable line of conduct.
The opinion of crowds tends, then, more and more to
become the supreme guiding principle in politics. It goes so
far to-day as to force on alliances, as has been seen recently in the
case of the Franco-Russian alliance, which is solely the outcome of a
popular movement. A curious symptom of the present time is to observe
popes, kings, and emperors consent to be interviewed as a means of
submitting their views on a given subject to the judgment of crowds.
Formerly it might have been correct to say that politics were not a
matter of sentiment.
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OF THE VARIABILITY
Can the same
be said to-day, when politics
are more and more swayed by the impulse of changeable crowds, who are
uninfluenced by reason and can only be guided by sentiment?
As to the press, which formerly directed
opinion, it has had, like governments, to humble itself before the
power of crowds. It wields, no doubt, a considerable influence, but
only because it is exclusively the reflection of the opinions of crowds
and of their incessant variations. Become a mere agency for the supply
of information, the press has renounced all endeavour to enforce an
idea or a doctrine. It follows all the changes of public thought,
obliged to do so by the necessities of competition under pain of losing
its readers. The old staid and influential organs of the past, such as
the Constitutionnel, the Débats, or the Siècle,
which
were accepted as oracles by the preceding generation, have disappeared
or have become typical
modern papers, in which a maximum of news is sandwiched in between
light articles, society gossip, and financial puffs. There can be no
question to-day of a paper rich enough to allow its contributors to air
their personal opinions, and such opinions would be of slight weight
with readers who only ask to be kept informed or to be amused, and who
suspect every affirmation of being prompted by motives of speculation.
Even the critics have ceased to be able to assure the success of a book
or a play. They are capable of doing harm, but not of doing a service.
The papers are so conscious of the uselessness of every-
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OF THE VARIABILITY
thing in the
shape of criticism or personal opinion, that they have reached the
point of suppressing literary criticism, confining themselves to citing
the title of a book, and appending a „puff“ of two or three lines.
¹ In twenty years' time the same fate will probably have
overtaken theatrical criticism.
The close
watching of the course of opinion
has become to-day the principal preoccupation of the press and of
governments. The effect produced by an event, a legislative proposal, a
speech, is without intermission what they require to know, and the task
is not easy, for nothing is more mobile and changeable than the thought
of crowds, and nothing more frequent
than to see them execrate to-day what they applauded yesterday.
This total absence of any sort of direction of
opinion, and at the same time the destruction of general beliefs, have
had for final result an extreme divergency of convictions of every
order, and a growing indifference on the part of crowds to everything
that does not plainly touch their immediate interests. Questions of
doctrine, such as socialism, only recruit champions boasting genuine
convictions among the quite illiterate classes, among the workers in
mines and factories, for instance. Members of the lower middle class,
and working men possessing some degree of instruction, have either
become utterly sceptical or extremely unstable in their opinions.
¹ These remarks refer to the
French newspaper
press. — Note of the Translator.
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OF THE VARIABILITY
The evolution which has been effected in this
direction in the last twenty-five years is striking. During the
preceding period, comparatively near us though it is, opinions still
had a certain general trend; they had their origin in the acceptance of
some fundamental belief. By the mere fact that an individual was a
monarchist he possessed inevitably certain clearly defined ideas in
history as well as in science, while by the mere fact that he was a
republican, his ideas were quite contrary. A monarchist was well aware
that men are not descended from monkeys, and a republican was not less
well aware that such is in truth their descent. It was the
duty of the monarchist to speak with horror, and of the republican to
speak with veneration, of the great Revolution. There were certain
names, such as those of Robespierre and Marat, that had to be uttered
with an air of religious devotion, and other names, such as those of
Cæsar, Augustus, or Napoleon, that ought never to be mentioned
unaccompanied by a torrent of invective. Even in the French Sorbonne
this ingenuous fashion of conceiving history was general. ¹
¹ There are pages in the books
of the French
official professors of history that are very curious from this point of
view. They prove too how little the critical spirit is developed by the
system of university education in vogue in France. I cite as an example
the following extracts from the French Revolution of M. Rambaud,
professor of history at the Sorbonne: —
„The taking of the Bastille was a culminating
event in the
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OF THE VARIABILITY
At the present day, as the result of
discussion and analysis, all opinions are losing their prestige; their
distinctive features are rapidly worn away, and few survive capable of
arousing our enthusiasm. The man of modern times is more and more a
prey to indifference.
The general wearing away of opinions should
not be too greatly deplored. That it is a symptom of decadence in the
life of a people cannot be contested. It is certain that men of
immense, of almost supernatural insight, that apostles, leaders of
crowds — men, in a word, of genuine and strong convictions — exert a
far greater force than men who deny, who criticise, or who are
indifferent, but it must not be forgotten that, given the power
possessed at present by crowds, were a single opinion to acquire
sufficient prestige to enforce its general acceptance, it would soon be
endowed with so tyrannical a strength that everything would have to
bend before it, and the era of free discussion would be closed for a
long time. Crowds are occasionally easy-going masters, as were
Heliogabalus and Tiberius, but they are also violently capricious. A
civilisation, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high
hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long.
history not only
of France, but of all Europe; and
inaugurated a new epoch in the history of the world!“
With respect to Robespierre, we learn with
stupefaction that „his dictatorship was based more especially on
opinion, persuasion, and moral authority; it was a sort of pontificate
in the hands of a virtuous man“! (pp. 91 and 220.)
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Could anything
postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be
precisely the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their
growing indifference with respect to all general beliefs.
176
(Blank
page)
177
BOOK III
THE CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION OF
THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS
CHAPTER I
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CROWDS
The general divisions of crowds —
Their
classification. §1. Heterogeneous crowds. Different
varieties of them —
The influence of race — The spirit of the crowd is weak in proportion
as the spirit of the race is strong — The spirit of the race
represents the civilised state and the spirit of the crowd the
barbarian state. §2. Homogeneous crowds. Their different
varieties —
Sects, castes, and classes.
WE have sketched in this work
the general
characteristics common to psychological crowds. It remains to point out
the particular characteristics which accompany those of a general order
in the different categories of collectivities, when they are
transformed into a crowd under the influences of the proper exciting
causes. We will, first of all, set forth in a few
words a classification of crowds.
Our starting-point will be the simple
multitude. Its most inferior form is met with when the multitude is
composed of individuals belonging to different races. In this case its
only common bond of union
178 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CROWDS
is the will,
more or less respected, of a
chief. The barbarians of very diverse origin who during several
centuries invaded the Roman Empire, may be cited as a specimen of
multitudes of this kind.
On a higher level than these multitudes
composed of different races are those which under certain influences
have acquired common characteristics, and have ended by forming a
single race. They present at times characteristics peculiar to crowds,
but these characteristics are overruled to a greater or less extent by
racial considerations.
These two kinds of multitudes may, under
certain influences investigated in this work, be transformed into
organised or psychological crowds. We shall break up these organised
crowds into the following divisions: —
A. Heterogeneous
crowds. |
1.
Anonymous crowds (street crowds, for example).
2. Crowds not anonymous (juries, parliamentary assemblies, etc.).
|
B. Homogeneous crowds.
|
1.
Sects (political sects, religious sects, etc.).
2. Castes (the military caste, the priestly caste, the working caste,
etc.).
3. Classes (the middle classes, the peasant classes, etc.). |
179 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CROWDS
We will point out briefly the distinguishing
characteristics of these different categories of crowds.
§1. HETEROGENEOUS CROWDS
It is these collectivities whose
characteristics have been studied in this volume. They are composed of
individuals of any description, of any profession, and any degree of
intelligence.
We are now aware that by the mere fact that
men form part of a crowd engaged in action, their collective psychology
differs essentially from their individual psychology, and their
intelligence is affected by this differentiation. We have seen that
intelligence is without influence in collectivities, they being solely
under the sway of unconscious sentiments.
A fundamental factor, that of race, allows of
a tolerably thorough differentiation of the various heterogeneous
crowds.
We have often referred already to the part
played by race, and have shown it to be the most powerful of the
factors capable of determining men's actions. Its
action is also to be traced in the character of crowds. A crowd
composed of individuals assembled at haphazard, but all of them
Englishmen or Chinamen, will differ widely from another crowd also
composed of individuals of any and every description, but of other
races — Russians, Frenchmen, or Spaniards, for example.
The wide divergencies which their inherited
mental constitution creates in men's modes of feeling
180 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CROWDS
and thinking
at
once come into prominence when, which rarely happens, circumstances
gather together in the same crowd and in fairly equal proportions
individuals of different nationality, and this occurs, however
identical in appearance be the interests which provoked the gathering.
The efforts made by the socialists to assemble in great congresses the
representatives of the working-class populations of different
countries, have always ended in the most pronounced discord. A Latin
crowd, however revolutionary or however conservative it be supposed,
will invariably appeal to the intervention of the State to realise its
demands. It is always distinguished by a marked tendency towards
centralisation and by a leaning, more or less pronounced, in favour of
a dictatorship. An English or an American crowd, on the contrary, sets
no store on the State, and only appeals to private initiative. A French
crowd
lays particular weight on equality and an English crowd on liberty.
These differences of race explain how it is that there are almost as
many different forms of socialism and democracy as there are nations.
The genius of the race, then, exerts a
paramount influence upon the dispositions of a crowd. It is the
powerful underlying force that limits its changes of humour. It should
be considered as an essential law that the inferior characteristics
of
crowds are the less accentuated in proportion as the spirit of the race
is strong. The crowd state and the domination of crowds is
equivalent
to the barbarian state,
181 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CROWDS
or to a return
to it. It is by the acquisition
of a solidly constituted collective spirit that the race frees itself
to a greater and greater extent from the unreflecting power of crowds,
and emerges from the barbarian state. The only important classification
to be made of heterogeneous crowds, apart from that based on racial
considerations, is to separate them into anonymous crowds, such as
street crowds, and crowds not anonymous — deliberative assemblies and
juries, for example. The sentiment of responsibility absent from crowds
of the first description and developed in those of the second often
gives a very different tendency to their respective acts.
§2. HOMOGENEOUS CROWDS
Homogeneous crowds include: 1. Sects; 2.
Castes; 3. Classes.
The sect represents the first step in the
process of organisation of homogeneous crowds. A sect includes
individuals differing greatly as to their education, their professions,
and the class of society to which they belong, and with their common
beliefs as the connecting link. Examples in point are religious and
political sects.
The caste represents the highest degree of
organisation of which the crowd is susceptible. While the sect includes
individuals of very different professions, degrees of education and
social surrounding, who are only linked together by the beliefs they
hold in common, the caste is composed of individuals of the same
profession, and in consequence similarly
182 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
THE CLASSIFICATION OF CROWDS
educated and
of much the same
social status. Examples in point are the military and priestly castes.
The class is formed of individuals of
diverse
origin, linked together not by a community of beliefs, as are the
members of a sect, or by common professional occupations, as are the
members of a caste, but by certain interests and certain habits of life
and education almost identical. The middle class and the agricultural
class are examples.
Being only concerned in this work with heterogeneous
crowds, and reserving the study of homogeneous crowds
(sects, castes, and classes) for another volume, I shall not insist
here on the characteristics of crowds of this latter kind. I shall
conclude this study of heterogeneous crowds by the examination of a few
typical and distinct categories of crowds.
183 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS
CHAPTER II
CROWDS TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS
Crowds termed criminal crowds — A
crowd may
be legally yet not psychologically criminal — The absolute
unconsciousness of the acts of crowds — Various examples — Psychology
of the authors of the September massacres — Their reasoning, their
sensibility, their ferocity, and their morality.
OWING to the fact that
crowds, after a period
of excitement, enter upon a purely automatic and unconscious state, in
which they are guided by suggestion, it seems difficult to qualify them
in any case as criminal. I only retain this erroneous qualification
because it has been definitely brought into vogue by recent
psychological investigations. Certain acts of crowds are assuredly
criminal, if considered merely in themselves, but criminal in that case
in the same way as the act of a tiger devouring a Hindoo, after
allowing its young to maul him for their amusement.
The usual motive of the crimes of crowds is a
powerful suggestion, and the individuals who take part in such crimes
are afterwards convinced that they have acted in obedience to duty,
which is far from being the case with the ordinary criminal.
184 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS — CROWDS
TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS
The history of the crimes committed by crowds
illustrates what precedes.
The murder of M. de
Launay, the governor of
the Bastille, may be cited as a typical example. After the taking of
the fortress the governor, surrounded by a very excited crowd, was
dealt blows from every direction. It was proposed to hang him, to cut
off his head, to tie him to a horse's tail. While struggling, he
accidently kicked one of those present. Some one proposed, and his
suggestion was at once received with acclamation by the crowd, that the
individual who had been kicked should cut the governor's throat.
„The individual in question, a cook out of
work, whose chief reason for being at the Bastille was idle curiosity
as to what was going on, esteems, that since such is the general
opinion, the action is patriotic and even believes he deserves a medal
for having destroyed a monster. With a sword that is lent him he
strikes the bared neck, but the weapon being somewhat blunt and not
cutting, he takes from his pocket a small black-handled knife and (in
his capacity of cook he would be experienced in cutting up meat)
successfully effects the operation.“
The working of the process indicated above is
clearly seen in this example. We have obedience to a suggestion, which
is all the stronger because of its collective origin, and the
murderer's conviction that he has committed a very meritorious act, a
conviction the more natural seeing that
185 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS — CROWDS
TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS
he enjoys the
unanimous
approval of his fellow-citizens. An act of this kind may be considered
crime legally but not psychologically.
The general characteristics of criminal crowds
are precisely the same as those we have met with in all crowds:
openness to suggestion, credulity, mobility, the exaggeration of the
sentiments good or bad, the manifestation of certain forms of morality,
etc.
We shall find all these characteristics
present in a crowd which has left behind it in French history the most
sinister memories — the crowd which perpetrated the September
massacres. In point of fact it offers much similarity with the
crowd
that committed the Saint
Bartholomew massacres. I borrow the details
from the narration of M. Taine, who took them from contemporary sources.
It is not known exactly who gave the order or
made the suggestion to empty the prisons by massacring the prisoners.
Whether it was Danton, as is probable, or another does not matter; the
one interesting fact for us is the powerful suggestion received by the
crowd charged with the massacre.
The crowd of murderers numbered some three
hundred persons, and was a perfectly typical heterogeneous crowd. With
the exception of a very small number of professional scoundrels, it was
composed in the main of shopkeepers and artisans of every trade:
bootmakers, locksmiths, hairdressers, masons,
186 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS — CROWDS
TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS
clerks,
messengers, etc. Under the influence of the suggestion received they
are
perfectly convinced, as was the cook referred to above, that they are
accomplishing a patriotic duty. They fill a double office, being at
once judge and executioner, but they do not for a moment regard
themselves as criminals.
Deeply conscious of the importance of their
duty, they begin by forming a sort of tribunal, and in connection with
this act the ingenuousness of crowds and their rudimentary conception
of justice are seen immediately. In consideration of the large number
of the accused, it is decided that, to begin with, the nobles, priests,
officers, and members of the king's household — in a word, all the
individuals whose mere profession is proof of their guilt in the eyes
of a good patriot — shall be slaughtered in a body, there being no
need for a special decision in their case. The remainder shall be
judged on their personal appearance and their reputation. In this way
the rudimentary conscience of the crowd is satisfied. It will now be
able to proceed legally with the
massacre, and to give free scope to those instincts of ferocity whose
genesis I have set forth elsewhere, they being instincts which
collectivities always have it in them to develop to a high degree.
These instincts, however — as is regularly the case in crowds — will
not prevent the manifestation of other and contrary sentiments, such as
a tender-heartedness often as extreme as the ferocity.
187 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS — CROWDS
TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS
„They have the expansive sympathy and prompt
sensibility of the Parisian working man. At the Abbaye, one of the
federates, learning that the prisoners had been left without water for
twenty-six hours, was bent on putting the gaoler to death, and would
have done so but for the prayers of the prisoners themselves. When a
prisoner is acquitted (by the improvised tribunal) every one, guards
and slaughterers included, embraces him with transports of joy and
applauds frantically,“ after which the wholesale massacre is
recommenced. During its progress a pleasant gaiety never ceases to
reign. There is dancing and singing around the corpses, and benches are
arranged „for the ladies,“ delighted to witness the killing of
aristocrats. The exhibition continues, moreover, of a special
description of justice.
A slaughterer at the Abbaye having complained
that the ladies placed at a little distance saw badly, and that only a
few of those present had the pleasure of
striking the aristocrats, the justice of the observation is admitted,
and it is decided that the victims shall be made to pass slowly between
two rows of slaughterers, who shall be under the obligation to strike
with the back of the sword only so as to prolong the agony. At the
prison de la Force the victims are stripped stark naked and literally
„carved“ for half an hour, after which, when every one has had a good
view, they are finished off by a blow that lays bare their entrails.
The slaughterers, too, have their scruples and
exhibit that moral sense whose existence in crowds
188 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS — CROWDS
TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS
we have
already
pointed out. They refuse to appropriate the money and jewels of the
victims, taking them to the table of the committees.
Those rudimentary forms of reasoning,
characteristic of the mind of crowds, are always to be traced in all
their acts. Thus, after the slaughter of the 1200 or 1500 enemies of
the nation, some one makes the remark, and his suggestion is at once
adopted, that the other prisons, those containing aged beggars,
vagabonds, and young prisoners, hold in reality useless mouths, of
which it would be well on that account to get rid. Besides, among them
there should certainly be enemies of the people, a woman of the name of
Delarue, for instance, the widow of a poisoner: „She must be furious at
being in prison, if she could she would
set
fire to Paris: she must have said so, she has said so. Another good
riddance.“ The demonstration appears convincing, and the prisoners are
massacred without exception, included in the number being some fifty
children of from twelve to seventeen years of age, who, of course,
might themselves have become enemies of the nation, and of whom in
consequence it was clearly well to be rid.
At the end of a week's work, all these
operations being brought to an end, the slaughterers can think of
reposing themselves. Profoundly convinced that they have deserved well
of their country, they went to the authorities and demanded a
recompense. The most zealous went so far as to claim a medal.
189 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS — CROWDS
TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS
The history of the Commune of 1871 affords
several facts analogous to those which precede. Given the growing
influence of crowds and the successive capitulations before them of
those in authority, we are destined to witness many others of a like
nature.
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DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS
CHAPTER III
CRIMINAL JURIES
Criminal juries — General
characteristics of
juries — Statistics show that their decisions are independent of their
composition — The manner in which an impression may be made on juries —
The style and influence of argument — The methods of persuasion of
celebrated counsel — The nature of those crimes for which juries are
respectively indulgent or severe — The utility of the jury as an
institution, and the danger that would result from its place being
taken by magistrates.
BEING unable to study here
every category of
jury, I shall only examine the most important — that of the juries of
the Court of
Assize. These juries afford an excellent example of the
heterogeneous crowd that is not anonymous. We shall find them display
suggestibility and but slight capacity for reasoning, while they are
open to the influence of the leaders of crowds, and they are guided in
the main by unconscious sentiments. In the course of this investigation
we shall have occasion to observe some interesting examples of the
errors that may be made by persons not versed in the psychology of
crowds.
191 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
Juries, in the first place, furnish us a good
example of the slight importance of the mental level of the different
elements composing a crowd, so far as the decisions it comes to are
concerned. We have seen that when a deliberative assembly is called
upon to give its opinion on a question of a character not entirely
technical, intelligence stands for nothing. For instance, a gathering
of scientific men or of artists, owing to the mere fact that they form
an assemblage, will not deliver judgments on general subjects sensibly
different from those rendered by a gathering of masons or grocers. At
various periods, and in particular previous to 1848, the French
administration instituted a careful choice among the persons summoned
to form a jury, picking the jurors from among the enlightened classes;
choosing professors, functionaries, men of letters, etc. At the
present day jurors are recruited for the most part from among small
tradesmen, petty capitalists, and employés. Yet, to the great
astonishment of specialist writers, whatever the composition of the
jury has been, its decisions have been identical. Even the magistrates,
hostile as they are to the institution of the jury, have had to
recognise the exactness of the assertion. M. Bérard des Glajeux,
a former President of the Court of Assizes, expresses himself on the
subject in his „Memoirs“ in the following terms:
—
„The selection of jurymen is to-day in reality
in
192 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
the hands of
the municipal councillors, who put people down on the
list or eliminate them from it in accordance with the political and
electoral preoccupations inherent in their situation. ... The
majority of the jurors chosen are persons engaged in trade, but persons
of less importance than formerly, and employés belonging to
certain branches of the administration. ... Both opinions and
professions counting for nothing once the rôle of judge
assumed,
many of the jurymen having the ardour of neophytes, and men of the best
intentions being similarly disposed in humble situations, the spirit of
the jury has not changed: its verdicts have remained the same.“
Of the passage just cited the conclusions,
which are just, are to be borne in mind and not the explanations, which
are weak. Too much astonishment should not be felt at this weakness,
for, as a rule, counsel equally with magistrates seem to be ignorant of
the psychology of crowds and, in consequence, of juries. I find a proof
of this statement in a fact related by the author just quoted. He
remarks that Lachaud, one of the most illustrious barristers practising
in the Court of Assize, made systematic use of his right to object to a
juror in the case of
all individuals of intelligence on the list. Yet experience — and
experience alone — has ended by acquainting us with the utter
uselessness of these objections.
193 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
This is proved
by the fact that at the
present day public prosecutors and barristers, at any rate those
belonging to the Parisian bar, have entirely renounced their right to
object to a juror; still, as M. des Glajeux remarks, the verdicts have
not changed, „they are neither better nor worse.“
Like all crowds, juries are very strongly
impressed by sentimental considerations, and very slightly by argument.
„They cannot resist the sight,“ writes a barrister, „of a mother giving
her child the breast, or of orphans.“ „It is sufficient that a woman
should be of agreeable appearance,“ says M. des Glajeux, „to win the
benevolence of the jury.“
Without pity for crimes of which it appears
possible they might themselves be the victims — such crimes, moreover,
are the most dangerous for society — juries, on the contrary, are very
indulgent in the case of breaches of the law whose motive is passion.
They are rarely severe on infanticide by girl-mothers, or hard on the
young woman who throws vitriol at the man who has seduced and deserted
her, for the reason that they feel instinctively that society runs but
slight danger from such crimes, ¹ and that in a country in which
¹ It is to be remarked, in passing, that this
division of crimes into those dangerous and those not dangerous for
society, which is well and instinctively made by juries, is far from
being unjust. The object of criminal laws is evidently to protect
society against
194 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
the law does
not protect
deserted girls the crime of the girl who avenges herself is rather
useful than harmful, inasmuch as it frightens future seducers in
advance.
Juries, like
all crowds, are profoundly
impressed by prestige, and President des Glajeux very properly remarks
that, very democratic as juries are in their composition, they are very
aristocratic in their likes and dislikes: „Name, birth, great wealth,
celebrity, the assistance of an illustrious counsel, everything in the
nature of distinction or that lends brilliancy to the accused, stands
him in extremely good stead.“
The chief concern of a good counsel should be
to work upon the feelings of the jury, and, as with all crowds, to
argue but little, or only to employ rudimentary modes of reasoning. An
English barrister, famous for his successes in the assize
dangerous criminals and not to avenge it. On the other
hand, the French code, and above all the minds of the French
magistrates, are still deeply imbued with the spirit of vengeance
characteristic of the old primitive law, and the term „vindicte“
(prosecution, from the Latin vindicta, vengeance) is still in
daily
use. A proof of this tendency on the part of the magistrates is found
in the refusal by many of them to apply Bérenger's law, which
allows of a condemned person not undergoing his sentence unless he
repeats his crime. Yet no magistrate can be ignorant, for the fact is
proved by statistics, that the application of a punishment inflicted
for the first time infallibly leads to further crime on the part of the
person punished. When judges set free a sentenced person it always
seems to them that society has not been avenged. Rather than not avenge
it they prefer to create a dangerous, confirmed criminal.
195 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
courts, has
well set forth the line of action to be followed: —
„While pleading he would attentively observe
the jury. The most favourable opportunity has been reached. By dint of
insight and experience the counsel reads the effect of each phrase on
the faces of the jurymen, and draws his conclusions in consequence. His
first step is to be sure which members of the jury are already
favourable to his cause. It is short work to definitely gain their
adhesion, and having done so he turns his attention to the members who
seem, on the contrary, ill-disposed, and endeavours to discover why
they are hostile to the accused. This is the delicate part of his task,
for there may be an infinity of reasons for condemning a man, apart
from the sentiment of justice.“
These few lines resume the
entire mechanism of the art of oratory, and we see why the speech
prepared in advance has so slight an effect, it being necessary to be
able to modify the terms employed from moment to
moment in accordance with the impression produced.
The orator does not require to convert to his
views all the members of a jury, but only the leading spirits among it
who will determine the general opinion. As in all crowds, so in juries
there are a small number of individuals who serve as guides
196 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
to the
rest. „I have found by experience,“ says the counsel cited above, „that
one or two energetic men suffice to carry the rest of the jury with
them.“ It is those two or three whom it is necessary to convince by
skilful suggestions. First of all, and above all, it is necessary to
please them. The man forming part of a crowd whom one has succeeded in
pleasing is on the point of being convinced, and is quite disposed to
accept as excellent any arguments that may be offered him. I detach the
following anecdote from an interesting account of M. Lachaud, alluded
to above: —
„It is well known that during all the speeches
he would deliver in the course of an assize sessions, Lachaud never
lost sight of the two or three jurymen whom he knew or felt to be
influential but obstinate. As a rule he was successful in winning over
these refractory jurors. On one occasion, however, in the provinces, he
had to deal with a juryman whom he plied in vain for three-quarters of
an hour with his
most cunning arguments; the man was the seventh juryman, the first on
the second bench. The case was desperate. Suddenly, in the middle of a
passionate demonstration, Lachaud stopped short, and addressing the
President of the court said: 'Would you give instructions for the
curtain there in front to be drawn? The seventh juryman is blinded by
the sun.' The juryman in question reddened, smiled, and ex-
197 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
pressed his
thanks. He was won over for the defence.“
Many writers, some of them most distinguished,
have started of late a strong campaign against the institution of the
jury, although it is the only protection we have against the errors,
really very frequent, of a caste that is under no control. ¹ A
portion of these writers advocate a jury recruited solely from the
ranks of the enlightened classes; but we have already proved that even
in this case the verdicts would be identical with those returned under
the present system. Other writers, taking
¹ The magistracy is, in point of fact, the only
administration whose acts are under no control. In spite of all its
revolutions, democratic France does not possess that right of habeas
corpus of which England is so proud. We have banished all the
tyrants,
but have set up a magistrate in each city who disposes at will of the
honour and liberty of the citizens. An insignificant juge
d'instruction
(an examining magistrate who has no exact counterpart in England. —
Trans.), fresh from the university, possesses the revolting
power of
sending to prison at will persons of the most considerable standing, on
a simple supposition on his part of their guilt, and without being
obliged to justify his act to anyone. Under the pretext of pursuing
his investigation he can keep these persons in prison for six months or
even a year, and free them at last without owing them either an
indemnity or excuses. The warrant in France is the exact equivalent of
the lettre
de cachet, with this difference, that the latter, with the
use of which the monarchy was so justly reproached, could only be
resorted to by persons occupying a very high position, while the
warrant is an instrument in the hands of a whole class of citizens
which is far from passing for being very enlightened or very
independent.
198 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
their stand on
the errors
committed by juries, would abolish the jury and replace it by judges.
It is difficult to see how these would-be reformers can forget that the
errors for which the jury is blamed were committed in the first
instance by judges, and that when the accused person comes before a
jury he has already been held to be guilty by several magistrates, by
the juge d'instruction, the public prosecutor, and the Court of
Arraignment. It should thus be clear that were the accused to be
definitely judged by magistrates instead of by jurymen, he would lose
his only chance of being admitted innocent. The errors of juries have
always been first of all the errors of magistrates. It is solely the
magistrates, then, who should be blamed when particularly monstrous
judicial errors crop up, such, for instance, as the quite recent
condemnation of Dr. L—— who, prosecuted by a juge
d'instruction, of excessive stupidity, on the strength of the
denunciation of a half-idiot girl, who accused the doctor of having
performed an illegal operation upon her for thirty francs, would have
been sent to penal servitude but for an explosion of public
indignation, which had for result that he was immediately set at
liberty by the Chief of the State. The honourable character given the
condemned man by all his fellow-citizens made the grossness of the
blunder self-evident. The magistrates themselves admitted it, and yet
out of caste considerations they did all they could to prevent the
pardon being signed.
199 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
In all similar
affairs the jury, confronted with
technical details it is unable to understand, naturally hearkens to the
public prosecutor, arguing that, after all, the affair has been
investigated by magistrates trained to unravel the most intricate
situations. Who, then, are the real authors of the error — the jurymen
or the magistrates? We should cling vigorously to the jury. It
constitutes, perhaps, the only category of crowd that cannot be
replaced by any individuality. It alone can temper the severity of the
law, which, equal for all, ought in principle to be blind and to take
no cognisance of particular cases. Inaccessible to pity, and heeding
nothing but the text of the law, the judge in his professional severity
would visit with the same penalty the burglar guilty of murder and the
wretched girl whom poverty and her abandonment by her seducer have
driven to infanticide. The jury, on the other hand, instinctively feels
that the seduced girl is much less guilty than the seducer, who,
however, is not touched by the law, and that she deserves every
indulgence.
Being well acquainted with the psychology of
castes, and also with the psychology of other categories of crowds, I
do not perceive a single case in which, wrongly accused of a crime, I
should not prefer to have to deal with a jury rather than with
magistrates. I should have some chance that my innocence would be
recognised by the former and
200 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
CRIMINAL
JURIES
not the
slightest chance that it would be
admitted by the latter. The power of crowds is to be dreaded, but the
power of certain castes is to be dreaded yet more. Crowds are open to
conviction; castes never are.
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DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS
CHAPTER IV
ELECTORAL CROWDS
General characteristics of electoral crowds —
The manner of persuading them — The qualities that should be possessed
by a candidate — Necessity of prestige — Why working men and peasants
so rarely choose candidates from their own class — The influence of
words and formulas on the elector — The general aspect of election
oratory — How the opinions of the elector are formed — The power of
political committees — They represent the most redoubtable form of
tyranny — The committees of the Revolution — Universal suffrage
cannot be replaced in spite of its slight psychological value — Why it
is that the votes recorded would remain the same even if the right of
voting were restricted to a limited class of citizens — Of what
universal suffrage is the expression in all countries.
ELECTORAL crowds — that
is to say,
collectivities invested with the power of electing the holders of
certain functions — constitute heterogeneous crowds, but as their
action is confined to a single clearly determined matter, namely, to
choosing between different candidates, they present only a few of the
characteristics previously described. Of the characteristics peculiar
to crowds, they display in particular but slight aptitude for
reasoning, the absence of the critical spirit, irritability, credulity,
and simplicity. In their decision, moreover, is to be traced the
influence of the leaders of crowds
202 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
ELECTORAL
CROWDS
and the part
played by the factors
we have enumerated: affirmation, repetition, prestige, and contagion.
Let us examine by what methods electoral
crowds are to be persuaded. It will be easy to deduce their psychology
from the methods that are most successful.
It is of primary importance that the candidate
should possess prestige. Personal prestige can only be replaced by that
resulting from wealth. Talent and even genius are not elements of
success of serious importance.
Of capital importance, on the other hand, is
the necessity for the candidate of possessing prestige, of being able,
that is, to force himself upon the electorate without discussion. The
reason why the electors, of whom a majority are working men or
peasants, so rarely choose a man from their own ranks to represent them
is that such a person enjoys no prestige among them. When, by chance,
they do elect a man who is their equal, it is as a rule for subsidiary
reasons — for instance, to spite an eminent man, or an influential
employer of labour on whom the elector is in daily dependence, and
whose master he has the illusion he becomes in this way for a moment.
The possession of prestige does not suffice,
however, to assure the success of a candidate. The elector stickles in
particular for the flattery of his greed and vanity. He must be
overwhelmed with the most extravagant blandishments, and there
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CROWDS
must be
no hesitation in making him the most fantastic promises.
If he is a
working man it is impossible to go too far in insulting and
stigmatising employers of labour. As for the rival candidate, an effort
must be made to destroy his chance by establishing by dint of
affirmation, repetition, and contagion that he is an arrant scoundrel,
and that it is a matter of common knowledge that he has been guilty of
several crimes. It is, of course, useless to trouble about any
semblance of proof. Should the adversary be ill-acquainted with the
psychology of crowds he will try to justify himself by arguments
instead of confining himself to replying to one set of affirmations by
another; and he will have no chance whatever of being successful.
The candidate's written programme should not
be too categorical, since later on his adversaries might bring it up
against him; in his verbal programme, however, there cannot be too much
exaggeration. The most important reforms may be fearlessly promised. At
the moment they are made these exaggerations produce a great effect,
and they are not
binding for the future, it being a matter of constant observation that
the elector never troubles himself to know how far the candidate he has
returned has followed out the electoral programme he applauded, and in
virtue of which the election was supposed to have been secured.
In what precedes, all the factors of
persuasion which we have described are to be recognised. We
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CROWDS
shall come
across them again in the action exerted by words and formulas, whose
magical sway we have already insisted upon. An orator who knows how to
make use of these means of persuasion can do what he will with a crowd.
Expressions such as infamous capital, vile exploiters, the admirable
working man, the socialisation of wealth, etc., always produce the
same effect, although already somewhat worn by use. But the candidate
who hits on a new formula as devoid as possible of precise meaning, and
apt in consequence to flatter the most varied aspirations, infallibly
obtains a success. The sanguinary Spanish revolution of 1873 was
brought about by one of these magical phrases of complex meaning on
which everybody can put his own interpretation. A contemporary writer
has described the launching of this phrase in terms that deserve to be
quoted: —
„The radicals have made the discovery that a
centralised republic is a monarchy in disguise, and to humour them the
Cortes had unanimously proclaimed a federal republic, though
none of
the voters could have explained what it was he had just voted for. This
formula, however, delighted everybody; the joy was intoxicating,
delirious. The reign of virtue and happiness had just been inaugurated
on earth. A republican whose opponent refused him the title of
federalist considered himself to be mortally insulted. People addressed
each other in the streets with the words: 'Long live
205 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
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CROWDS
the federal
republic!' After which the praises were sung of the mystic virtue of
the absence of discipline in the army, and of the autonomy of the
soldiers. What was understood by the 'federal republic?' There were
those who took it to mean the emancipation of the provinces,
institutions akin to those of the United States and administrative
decentralisation; others had in view the abolition of all authority and
the speedy commencement of the great social liquidation. The socialists
of Barcelona and Andalusia stood out for the absolute sovereignty of
the communes; they proposed to endow Spain with ten thousand
independent municipalities, to legislate on their own account, and
their creation to be accompanied by the suppression of the police and
the army. In the southern provinces the insurrection was soon seen to
spread from town to town and village to village. Directly a village had
made its pronunciamento its first care was to
destroy the telegraph wires and the railway lines so as to cut off all
communication with its neighbours and Madrid. The sorriest hamlet was
determined to stand on its own bottom. Federation had given place to
cantonalism, marked by massacres, incendiarism, and every description
of brutality, and bloody saturnalia were celebrated throughout the
length and breadth of the land.“
With respect to the influence that may be
exerted by reasoning on the minds of electors, to harbour the least
doubt on this subject can only be the result
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CROWDS
of never
having read the
reports of an electioneering meeting. In such a gathering affirmations,
invectives, and sometimes blows are exchanged, but never arguments.
Should silence be established for a moment it is because some one
present, having the reputation of a „tough customer,“ has announced
that he is about to heckle the candidate by putting him one of those
embarrassing questions which are always the joy of the audience. The
satisfaction, however, of the opposition party is shortlived, for the
voice of the questioner is soon drowned in the uproar made by his
adversaries. The following reports of public meetings, chosen from
hundreds of similar examples, and taken from the daily papers, may be
considered as typical: —
„One of the organisers of the meeting having
asked the assembly to elect a president, the storm bursts. The
anarchists leap on to the platform to take the committee table by
storm. The socialists make an energetic defence; blows are exchanged,
and each party accuses the other of being spies in the pay of the
Government, etc. ... A citizen leaves the hall with a black eye.
„The committee is at length installed as best
it may be in the midst of the tumult, and the right to speak devolves
upon 'Comrade' X.
„The orator starts a vigorous attack on the
socialists, who interrupt him with shouts of 'Idiot, scoundrel,
blackguard!' etc., epithets to which
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CROWDS
Comrade X.
replies by setting
forth a theory according to which the socialists are 'idiots' or
'jokers.'“
„The Allemanist party had organised yesterday
evening, in the Hall of Commerce, in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, a
great meeting, preliminary to the workers' fête of the
1st of
May. The watchword of the meeting was 'Calm and Tranquillity!'
„Comrade G—— alludes to the socialists as 'idiots'
and 'humbugs.'
„At these words there is an exchange of
invectives and orators and audience come to blows. Chairs, tables, and
benches are converted into weapons,“ etc., etc.
It is not to be imagined for a moment that this
description of discussion is peculiar to a determined class of electors
and dependent on their social position. In every anonymous assembly
whatever, though it be composed exclusively of highly educated persons,
discussion always assumes the same shape. I have shown that when men
are collected in a crowd there is a tendency towards their mental
levelling at work, and proof of this is to be found at every turn.
Take, for example, the following extract from a report of a meeting
composed exclusively of students, which I borrow from the Temps
of 13th
of February, 1895: —
„The tumult only increased as the evening went
208 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
ELECTORAL
CROWDS
on; I do not
believe that a single orator succeeded in uttering two
sentences without being interrupted. At every instant there came shouts
from this or that direction or from every direction at once. Applause
was intermingled with hissing, violent discussions were in progress
between individual members of the audience, sticks were brandished
threateningly, others beat a tattoo on the floor, and the interrupters
were greeted with yells of 'Put him out!' or 'Let him speak!'
„M. C—— lavished such epithets as odious
and cowardly, monstrous, vile, venal and vindictive, on the
Association, which he declared he wanted to destroy,“ etc., etc.
How, it may be asked, can an elector form an opinion
under such conditions? To put such a question is to harbour a
strange delusion as to the measure of liberty that may be enjoyed by a
collectivity. Crowds have opinions that have been imposed upon them,
but they never boast reasoned opinions. In the case under consideration
the opinions and votes of the electors are in the hands of the election
committees, whose leading spirits are, as a rule, publicans, their
influence over the working men, to whom they allow credit, being great.
„Do you know what an election committee is?“ writes M. Schérer,
one of the most valiant champions of present-day democracy. „It is
neither more nor less than the corner-stone of our institutions, the
masterpiece of the political
209 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
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CROWDS
machine.
France is governed to-day by the
election committees.“ ¹
To exert an
influence over them is not
difficult, provided the candidate be in himself acceptable and possess
adequate financial resources. According to the admissions of the
donors, three millions of francs sufficed to secure the repeated
elections of General
Boulanger.
Such is the psychology of electoral crowds. It
is identical with that of other crowds: neither better nor worse.
In consequence I draw no conclusion against
universal suffrage from what precedes. Had I to settle its fate, I
should preserve it as it is for practical reasons, which are to be
deduced in point of fact from our investigation of the psychology of
crowds. On this account I shall proceed to set them forth.
No doubt the weak side of universal suffrage
is
¹ Committees under whatever name, clubs,
syndicates, etc., constitute perhaps the most redoubtable danger
resulting from the power of crowds. They represent in reality the most
impersonal and, in consequence, the most oppressive form of tyranny.
The leaders who direct the committees being supposed to speak and act
in the name of a collectivity, are freed from all responsibility, and
are in a position to do just as they choose. The most savage tyrant has
never ventured even to dream of such proscriptions as those ordained by
the committees of the Revolution. Barras has declared that they
decimated the convention, picking off its members at their pleasure. So
long as he was able to speak in their name, Robespierre wielded
absolute power. The moment this frightful dictator separated himself
from them, for reasons of personal pride, he was lost. The reign of
crowds is the reign of committees, that is, of the leaders of crowds. A
severer despotism cannot be imagined.
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CROWDS
too obvious to
be overlooked. It cannot be gainsaid that
civilisation has been the work of a small minority of superior
intelligences, constituting the culminating point of a pyramid, whose
stages, widening in proportion to the decrease of mental power,
represent the masses of a nation. The greatness of a civilisation
cannot assuredly depend upon the votes given by inferior elements
boasting solely numerical strength. Doubtless, too, the votes recorded
by crowds are often very dangerous. They have
already cost us several invasions, and in view of the triumph of
socialism, for which they are preparing the way, it is probable that
the vagaries of popular sovereignty will cost us still more dearly.
Excellent, however, as these objections are in
theory, in practice they lose all force, as will be admitted if the
invincible strength be remembered of ideas transformed into dogmas. The
dogma of the sovereignty of crowds is as little defensible, from the
philosophical point of view, as the religious dogmas of the Middle
Ages, but it enjoys at present the same absolute power they formerly
enjoyed. It is as unattackable in consequence as in the past were our
religious ideas. Imagine a modern freethinker miraculously transported
into the midst of the Middle Ages. Do you suppose that, after having
ascertained the sovereign power of the religious ideas that were then
in force, he would have been tempted to attack them? Having fallen into
the hands of a judge disposed to send him to the stake, under the
imputation of having concluded
211 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
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CROWDS
a pact with
the devil, or of having been
present at the witches sabbath, would it have occurred to him to call
in question the existence of the devil or of the sabbath? It were as
wise to oppose cyclones with discussion as the beliefs of crowds. The
dogma of universal suffrage possesses to-day the power the Christian
dogmas formerly possessed. Orators and writers allude to it with a
respect and adulation that never fell to the share of Louis XIV. In
consequence the same position must be taken up with regard to it as
with regard to all religious dogmas. Time alone can act upon them.
Besides, it would be the more useless to
attempt to undermine this dogma, inasmuch as it has an appearance of
reasonableness in its favour. „In an era of equality,“ Tocqueville
justly remarks, „men have no faith in each other on account of their
being all alike; yet this same similitude gives them an almost
limitless confidence in the judgment of the public, the reason being
that it does not appear probable that, all men being equally
enlightened, truth and numerical superiority should not go hand in
hand.“
Must it be believed that with a restricted
suffrage — a suffrage restricted to those intellectually capable if it
be desired — an improvement would be effected in the votes of crowds?
I cannot admit for a moment that this would be the case, and that for
the reasons I have already given touching the mental inferiority of all
collectivities, whatever their composition. In a crowd men always tend
to the same
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CROWDS
level, and, on
general questions, a vote, recorded by forty
academicians is no better than that of forty water-carriers. I do not
in the least believe that any of the votes for which universal
suffrage is blamed — the re-establishment of the Empire, for instance —
would have fallen out differently had the voters been exclusively
recruited among learned and liberally educated men. It does not follow
because an individual knows Greek or mathematics, is an architect, a
veterinary surgeon, a doctor, or a barrister, that he is endowed with a
special intelligence of social questions. All our political economists
are highly educated, being for the most part professors or
academicians, yet is there a single general question — protection,
bimetallism, etc. — on which they have succeeded in agreeing? The
explanation is that their science is only a very attenuated form of our
universal ignorance. With regard to social problems, owing to the
number of unknown quantities they offer, men are substantially, equally
ignorant.
In consequence, were the electorate solely
composed of persons stuffed with sciences their votes would be no
better than those emitted at present. They would be guided in the main
by their sentiments and by party spirit. We should be spared none of
the difficulties we now have to contend with, and we should certainly
be subjected to the oppressive tyranny of castes.
Whether the suffrage of crowds be restricted
or general, whether it be exercised under a republic or
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ELECTORAL
CROWDS
a monarchy, in
France, in Belgium, in Greece, in Portugal, or in
Spain, it is everywhere identical; and, when all is said and done, it
is the expression of the unconscious aspirations and needs of the race.
In each country the average opinions of those elected represent the
genius of the race, and they will be found not to alter sensibly from
one generation to another.
It is seen, then, that we are confronted once
more by the fundamental notion of race, which we have come across so
often, and on this other notion, which is the outcome of the first,
that institutions and governments play but a small part in the life of
a people. Peoples are guided in the main by the genius of their race,
that is, by that inherited residue of qualities of which the genius is
the sum total. Race and the slavery of our daily necessities are the
mysterious master-causes that rule our destiny.
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DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS
CHAPTER V
PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLIES
Parliamentary crowds present most of
the
characteristics common to heterogeneous crowds that are not anonymous —
The simplicity of their opinions — Their suggestibility and its
limits — Their indestructible, fixed opinions and their changed
opinions — The reason of the predominance of indecision — The
rôle of the leaders — The reason of their prestige — They
are
the true masters of an assembly whose votes, on that account, are
merely those of a small minority — The absolute power they exercise —
The elements of their oratorical art — Phrases and images — The
psychological necessity the leaders are under of being in a general way
of stubborn convictions and narrow-minded — It is impossible for a
speaker without prestige to obtain recognition for his arguments — The
exaggeration of the sentiments, whether good or bad, of assemblies —
At certain moments they become automatic — The sittings of the
Convention — Cases in which an assembly loses the characteristics of
crowds — The influence of specialists when technical questions arise —
The advantages and dangers of a parliamentary system in all
countries — It is adapted to modern needs; but it involves financial
waste and the progressive curtailment of all liberty — Conclusion.
IN parliamentary assemblies
we have an example
of heterogeneous crowds that are not anonymous. Although the mode of
election of their members varies from epoch to
epoch, and from nation to nation, they present very similar
characteristics.
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ASSEMBLIES
In this case
the influence of the race makes itself
felt to weaken or exaggerate the characteristics common to crowds, but
not to prevent their manifestation. The parliamentary assemblies of the
most widely different countries, of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain,
France, and America present great analogies in their debates and votes,
and leave the respective governments face to face with identical
difficulties.
Moreover, the parliamentary system represents
the ideal of all modern civilised peoples. The system is the expression
of the idea, psychologically erroneous, but generally admitted, that a
large gathering of men is much more capable than a small number of
coming to a wise and independent decision on a given subject.
The general characteristics of crowds are to
be met with in parliamentary assemblies: intellectual simplicity,
irritability, suggestibility, the exaggeration of the sentiments and
the preponderating influence of a few leaders. In consequence, however,
of their special composition parliamentary crowds offer some
distinctive features, which we shall point out shortly.
Simplicity in their opinions is one of their
most important characteristics. In the case of all parties, and more
especially so far as the Latin peoples are concerned,
an invariable tendency is met with in crowds of this kind to solve the
most complicated social problems by the simplest abstract principles
216 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
PARLIAMENTARY
ASSEMBLIES
and general
laws applicable to all cases. Naturally the principles vary
with the party; but owing to the mere fact that the individual members
are a part of a crowd, they are always inclined to exaggerate the worth
of their principles, and to push them to their extreme consequences. In
consequence parliaments are more especially representative of extreme
opinions.
The most perfect example of the ingenuous
simplification of opinions peculiar to assemblies is offered by the
Jacobins of the French Revolution. Dogmatic and logical to a man, and
their brains full of vague generalities, they busied themselves with
the application of fixed principles without concerning themselves with
events. It has been said of them, with reason, that they went through
the Revolution without witnessing it. With the aid of the very simple
dogmas that served them as guide, they imagined they could recast
society from top to bottom, and cause a highly refined civilisation to
return to a very anterior phase of the social evolution. The methods
they resorted to to realise their dream wore the same stamp of absolute
ingenuousness. They confined themselves, in reality, to destroying what
stood in their way. All of them, moreover — Girondists, the Men of the
Mountain, the
Thermidorians, etc. — were alike animated by the same spirit.
Parliamentary crowds are very open to
suggestion; and, as in the case of all crowds, the suggestion
217 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
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ASSEMBLIES
comes
from leaders possessing prestige; but the suggestibility of
parliamentary assemblies has very clearly defined limits, which it is
important to point out.
On all questions of local or regional interest
every member of an assembly has fixed, unalterable opinions, which no
amount of argument can shake. The talent of a Demosthenes would be
powerless to change the vote of a Deputy on such questions as
protection or the privilege of distilling alcohol, questions in which
the interests of influential electors are involved. The suggestion
emanating from these electors and undergone before the time to vote
arrives, sufficiently outweighs suggestions from any other source to
annul them and to maintain an absolute fixity of opinion. ¹
On general
questions — the overthrow of a
Cabinet, the imposition of a tax, etc. — there is no longer any fixity
of opinion, and the suggestions of leaders can exert
an influence, though not in quite the same way as in an ordinary crowd.
Every party has its leaders, who possess occasionally an equal
influence. The result is that the Deputy finds himself placed between
two contrary suggestions, and is inevitably made to hesitate. This
explains
¹ The following reflection of
an English parliamentarian of long
experience doubtless applies to these opinions, fixed beforehand, and
rendered unalterable by electioneering necessities: „During the fifty
years that I have sat at Westminster, I have listened to thousands of
speeches; but few of them have changed my opinion, not one of them has
changed my vote.“
218 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
PARLIAMENTARY
ASSEMBLIES
how it is that
he is often seen to vote in contrary fashion in
an interval of a quarter of an hour or to add to a law an article which
nullifies it; for instance, to withdraw from employers of labour the
right of choosing and dismissing their workmen, and then to very nearly
annul this measure by an amendment.
It is for the same reason that every Chamber
that is returned has some very stable opinions, and other opinions that
are very shifting. On the whole, the general questions being the more
numerous, indecision is predominant in the Chamber — the indecision
which results from the ever-present fear of the elector, the suggestion
received from whom is always latent, and tends to counterbalance the
influence of the leaders.
Still, it is the leaders who are definitely
the masters in those numerous discussions, with regard to the
subject-matter of which the members of an assembly are without strong
preconceived opinions.
The necessity for these leaders is evident,
since, under the name of heads of groups, they are met with in the
assemblies of every country. They are the real rulers of an
assembly. Men forming a crowd cannot do without a master, whence it
results that the votes of an assembly only represent, as a rule, the
opinions of a small minority.
The influence of the leaders is due in very
small measure to the arguments they employ, but in a large degree to
their prestige. The best proof of
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ASSEMBLIES
this is that,
should they by any
circumstance lose their prestige, their influence disappears.
The prestige of these political leaders is
individual, and independent of name or celebrity: a fact of which M.
Jules Simon
gives us some very curious examples in his remarks on the
prominent men of the Assembly of 1848, of which he was a member: —
„Two months before he was all-powerful, Louis
Napoleon was entirely without the least importance.
„Victor Hugo mounted the tribune. He failed to
achieve success. He was listened to as Félix Pyat
was listened
to, but he did not obtain as much applause. 'I don't like his ideas,'
Vaulabelle
said to me, speaking of Félix Pyat, 'but he is one of
the greatest writers and the greatest orator of France.' Edgar Quinet,
in spite of his exceptional and powerful intelligence, was held in no
esteem whatever. He had been popular for awhile before the opening of
the Assembly; in the Assembly he had no popularity.
„The splendour of genius makes itself less
felt in political assemblies than anywhere else. They only give heed to
eloquence appropriate to the time and place and to party services, not
to services rendered the country. For homage to be rendered Lamartine
in 1848 and Thiers in 1871, the stimulant was needed of urgent,
inexorable interest. As soon as the danger was passed the parliamentary
220 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
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ASSEMBLIES
world forgot
in the same instant its gratitude and its fright.“
I have quoted the preceding passage for the
sake of the facts it contains, not of the explanations it offers, their
psychology being somewhat poor. A crowd would at once lose its
character of a crowd were it to credit its leaders with their services,
whether of a party nature or rendered their country. The crowd that
obeys a leader is under the influence of his prestige, and its
submission is not dictated by any sentiment of interest or gratitude.
In consequence the leader endowed with
sufficient prestige wields almost absolute power. The immense influence
exerted during a long series of years, thanks to his prestige, by a
celebrated Deputy, ¹ beaten at the last general election in
consequence of certain financial events, is well known. He had only to
give the signal and Cabinets were overthrown. A writer has clearly
indicated the scope of his action in the following lines: —
„It is due, in
the main, to M. X—— that we
paid three times as dearly as we should have done for Tonkin, that we
remained so long on a precarious footing in Madagascar, that we were
defrauded of an empire in the region of the Lower Niger, and that we
have lost the preponderating situation we used to occupy in Egypt. The
theories of M. X——
¹ M. Clemenceau.
— Note of the Translator.
221 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
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ASSEMBLIES
have cost us
more territories than the disasters
of Napoleon I.“
We must not harbour too bitter a grudge
against the leader in question. It is plain that he has cost us very
dear; but a great part of his influence was due to the fact that he
followed public opinion, which, in colonial matters, was far from being
at the time what it has since become. A leader is seldom in advance of
public opinion; almost always all he does is to follow it and to
espouse all its errors.
The means of persuasion of the leaders we are
dealing with, apart from their prestige, consist in the factors we have
already enumerated several times. To make a skilful use of these
resources a leader must have arrived at a comprehension, at least in an
unconscious manner, of the psychology of crowds, and must
know how to address them. He should be aware, in particular, of the
fascinating influence of words, phrases, and images. He should possess
a special description of eloquence, composed of energetic affirmations
— unburdened with proofs — and impressive images, accompanied by very
summary arguments. This is a kind of eloquence that is met with in all
assemblies, the English Parliament included, the most serious though it
is of all.
„Debates in the House of Commons,“ says the
English philosopher Maine, „may be constantly read in which the entire
discussion is confined to an
222 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
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ASSEMBLIES
exchange of
rather weak generalities and
rather violent personalities. General formulas of this description
exercise a prodigious influence on the imagination of a pure democracy.
It will always be easy to make a crowd accept general assertions,
presented in striking terms, although they have never been verified,
and are perhaps not susceptible of verification.“
Too much importance cannot be attached to the
„striking terms“ alluded to in the above quotation. We have already
insisted, on several occasions, on the special power of words and
formulas. They must be chosen in such a way as to evoke very vivid
images. The following phrase, taken from a speech by one of the
leaders of our assemblies, affords an excellent example: —
„When the same vessel shall bear away to the
fever-haunted lands of our penitentiary settlements the politician of
shady reputation and the anarchist guilty of murder, the pair will be
able to converse together, and they will appear to each other as the
two complementary aspects of one and the same state of society.“
The image thus evoked is very vivid, and all
the adversaries of the speaker felt themselves threatened by it. They
conjured up a double vision of the fever-haunted country and the vessel
that might
223 DIFFERENT KINDS OF CROWDS —
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ASSEMBLIES
carry them
away; for is it not possible that they are included
in the somewhat ill-defined category of the politicians menaced? They
experienced the lurking fear that the men of the Convention must have
felt whom the vague speeches of Robespierre threatened with the
guillotine, and who, under the influence of this fear, invariably
yielded to him.
It is all to the interest of the leaders to
indulge in the most improbable exaggerations. The speaker of whom I
have just cited a sentence was able to affirm, without arousing violent
protestations, that bankers and priests had subsidised the throwers of
bombs, and that the directors of the great financial
companies deserve the same punishment as anarchists. Affirmations of
this kind are always effective with crowds. The affirmation is never
too violent, the declamation never too threatening. Nothing intimidates
the audience more than this sort of eloquence. Those present are afraid
that if they protest they will be put down as traitors or accomplices.
As I have said, this peculiar style of
eloquence has ever been of sovereign effect in all assemblies. In times
of crisis its power is still further accentuated. The speeches of the
great orators of the assemblies of the French Revolution are very
interesting reading from this point of view. At every instant they
thought themselves obliged to pause in order to denounce crime and
exalt virtue,
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ASSEMBLIES
after which
they would burst forth into imprecations
against tyrants, and swear to live free men or perish. Those present
rose to their feet, applauded furiously, and then, calmed, took their
seats again.
On occasion, the leader may be intelligent and
highly educated, but the possession of these qualities does him, as a
rule, more harm than good. By showing how complex things are, by
allowing of explanation and promoting comprehension, intelligence
always renders its owner indulgent, and blunts, in a large measure,
that intensity and violence of conviction needful for apostles. The
great leaders of crowds of all ages, and those of the
Revolution in particular, have been of lamentably narrow intellect;
while it is precisely those whose intelligence has been the most
restricted who have exercised the greatest influence.
The speeches of the most celebrated of them,
of Robespierre, frequently astound one by their incoherence: by merely
reading them no plausible explanation is to be found of the great part
played by the powerful dictator: —
„The commonplaces and redundancies of
pedagogic eloquence and Latin culture at the service of a mind childish
rather than undistinguished, and limited in its notions of attack and
defence to the defiant attitude of schoolboys. Not an idea, not a happy
turn of phrase, or a telling hit: a storm of declamation that leaves us
bored. After a dose of this un-
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exhilarating
reading one is attempted to
exclaim 'Oh!' with the amiable Camille
Desmoulins.“
It is terrible at times to think of the power
that strong conviction combined with extreme narrowness of mind gives a
man possessing prestige. It is none the less necessary that these
conditions should be satisfied for a man to ignore obstacles and
display strength of will in a high measure. Crowds instinctively
recognise in men of energy and conviction the
masters they are always in need of.
In a parliamentary assembly the success of a
speech depends almost solely on the prestige possessed by the speaker,
and not at all on the arguments he brings forward. The best proof of
this is that when for one cause or another a speaker loses his
prestige, he loses simultaneously all his influence, that is, his power
of influencing votes at will.
When an unknown speaker comes forward with a
speech containing good arguments, but only arguments, the chances are
that he will only obtain a hearing. A Deputy who is a psychologist of
insight, M. Desaubes, has recently traced in the following lines the
portrait of the Deputy who lacks prestige: —
„When he takes his place in the tribune he
draws a document from his portfolio, spreads it out methodically before
him, and makes a start with assurance.
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„He flatters himself that he will implant in
the minds of his audience the conviction by which he is himself
animated. He has weighed and reweighed his arguments; he is well primed
with figures and proofs; he is certain he will convince his hearers. In
the face of the evidence he is to adduce all resistance would be
futile. He begins, confident in the
justice of his cause, and relying upon the attention of his colleagues,
whose only anxiety, of course, is to subscribe to the truth.
„He speaks, and is at once surprised at the
restlessness of the House, and a little annoyed by the noise that is
being made.
„How is it silence is not kept? Why this
general inattention? What are those Deputies thinking about who are
engaged in conversation? What urgent motive has induced this or that
Deputy to quit his seat?
„An expression of uneasiness crosses his face;
he frowns and stops. Encouraged by the Presisident, he begins again,
raising his voice. He is only listened to all the less. He lends
emphasis to his words, and gesticulates: the noise around him
increases. He can no longer hear himself, and again stops; finally,
afraid that his silence may provoke the dreaded cry, 'The Closure!' he
starts off again. The clamour becomes unbearable.“
When parliamentary assemblies reach a certain
pitch of excitement they become identical with
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ordinary
heterogeneous
crowds, and their sentiments in consequence present the peculiarity of
being always extreme. They will be seen to commit acts of the greatest
heroism or the worst excesses. The individual is no longer himself, and
so entirely is this
the case that he will vote measures most adverse to his personal
interests.
The history of the French Revolution shows to
what an extent assemblies are capable of losing their
self-consciousness, and of obeying suggestions most contrary to their
interests. It was an enormous sacrifice for the nobility to renounce
its privileges, yet it did so without hesitation on a famous night
during the sittings of the Constituant Assembly. By renouncing their
inviolability the men of the Convention placed themselves under a
perpetual menace of death, and yet they took this step, and were not
afraid to decimate their own ranks, though perfectly aware that the
scaffold to which they were sending their colleagues to-day might be
their own fate to-morrow. The truth is they had attained to that
completely automatic state which I have described elsewhere, and no
consideration would hinder them from yielding to the suggestions by
which they were hypnotised. The following passage from the memoirs of
one of them, Billaud-Varennes,
is absolutely typical on this score:
„The decisions with which we have been so reproached,“ he says, „were
not desired by us two days, a single day before they were taken;
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it was
the crisis and nothing else that gave rise to them.“ Nothing can be
more accurate.
The same phenomena of unconsciousness were to
be witnessed during all the stormy sittings of the Convention.
„They approved and decreed measures,“ says
Taine, „which they held in horror — measures which were not only
stupid and foolish, but measures that were crimes — the murder of
innocent men, the murder of their friends. The Left, supported by the
Right, unanimously and amid loud applause, sent to the scaffold Danton,
its natural chief, and the great promoter and leader of the Revolution.
Unanimously and amid the greatest applause the Right, supported by the
Left, votes the worst decrees of the revolutionary government.
Unanimously and amid cries of admiration and enthusiasm, amid
demonstrations of passionate sympathy for Collot d'Herbois, Couthon,
and Robespierre, the Convention by spontaneous and repeated
re-elections keeps in office the homicidal government which the Plain
detests because it is homicidal, and the Mountain detests because it is
decimated by it. The Plain and the Mountain, the majority and the
minority, finish by consenting to help on their own suicide. The 22
Prairial the entire Convention offered itself to the executioner; the 8
Thermidor, during the first quarter of an hour that followed
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Robespierre's
speech, it did the same thing again.“
This picture may appear sombre. Yet it is
accurate. Parliamentary assemblies, sufficiently excited and
hypnotised, offer the same characteristics. They become an unstable
flock, obedient to every impulsion. The following description of the
Assembly of 1848 is due to M. Spuller, a parliamentarian whose faith in
democracy is above suspicion. I reproduce it from the Revue
littéraire, and it is thoroughly typical. It offers an
example
of all the exaggerated sentiments which I have described as
characteristic of crowds, and of that excessive changeableness which
permits of assemblies passing, from moment to moment, from one set of
sentiments to another entirely opposite.
„The Republican party was brought to its
perdition by its divisions, its jealousies, its suspicions, and, in
turn, its blind confidence and its limitless hopes. Its ingenuousness
and candour were only equalled by its universal mistrust. An absence of
all sense of legality, of all comprehension of discipline, together
with boundless terrors and illusions; the peasant and the child are on
a level in these respects. Their calm is as great as their impatience,
their ferocity is equal to their docility. This condition is the
natural consequence of a temperament that is not formed and of the lack
of education.
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Nothing
astonishes such persons, and everything
disconcerts them. Trembling with fear or brave to the point of heroism,
they would go through fire and
water or fly from a shadow.
„They are ignorant of cause and effect and of
the connecting links between events. They are as promptly discouraged
as they are exalted, they are subject to every description of panic,
they are always either too highly strung or too downcast, but never in
the mood or the measure the situation would require. More fluid than
water they reflect every line and assume every shape. What sort of a
foundation for a government can they be expected to supply?“
Fortunately all the characteristics just
described as to be met with in parliamentary assemblies are in no wise
constantly displayed. Such assemblies only constitute crowds at certain
moments. The individuals composing them retain their individuality in a
great number of cases, which explains how it is that an assembly is
able to turn out excellent technical laws. It is true that the author
of these laws is a specialist who has prepared them in the quiet of his
study, and that in reality the law voted is the work of an individual
and not of an assembly. These laws are naturally the best. They are
only liable to have disastrous results when a series of amendments has
converted them into the outcome of a collective effort. The work of a
crowd is
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always
inferior, whatever its nature, to that of an isolated individual. It is
specialists who safeguard assemblies from passing ill-advised or
unworkable measures. The specialist in this case is a temporary leader
of crowds. The Assembly is without influence on him, but he has
influence over the Assembly.
In spite of all the difficulties attending
their working, parliamentary assemblies are the best form of government
mankind has discovered as yet, and more especially the best means it
has found to escape the yoke of personal tyrannies. They constitute
assuredly the ideal government at any rate for philosophers, thinkers,
writers, artists, and learned men — in a word, for all those who form
the cream of a civilisation.
Moreover, in reality they only present two
serious dangers, one being inevitable financial waste, and the other
the progressive restriction of the liberty of the individual.
The first of these dangers is the necessary
consequence of the exigencies and want of foresight of electoral
crowds. Should a member of an assembly propose a measure giving
apparent satisfaction to democratic ideas, should he bring in a Bill,
for instance, to assure old-age pensions to all workers, and to
increase the wages of any class of State employés, the other
Deputies, victims of suggestion in their dread of their electors, will
not venture to seem to disregard the interests of the latter by
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rejecting the
proposed measure, although well aware they are imposing a
fresh strain on the Budget and necessitating the creation of new taxes.
It is impossible for them to hesitate to give their votes. The
consequences of the increase of expenditure are remote and will not
entail disagreeable consequences for them personally, while the
consequences of a negative vote might clearly come to light when they
next present themselves for re-election.
In addition to this first cause of an
exaggerated expenditure there is another not less imperative — the
necessity of voting all grants for local purposes. A Deputy is unable
to oppose grants of this kind because they represent once more the
exigencies of the electors, and because each individual Deputy can only
obtain what he requires for his own constituency on the condition of
acceding to similar demands on the part of his colleagues. ¹
¹ In its issue of April 6,
1895, the Economiste published a curious
review of the figures that may be reached by expenditure caused solely
by electoral considerations, and notably of the outlay on railways. To
put Langayes (a town of 3000 inhabitants, situated on a mountain) in
communication with Puy, a railway is voted that will cost 15 millions
of francs. Seven millions are to be spent to put Beaumont (3500
inhabitants) in communication with Castel-Sarrazin; 7 millions to put
Oust (a village of 523 inhabitants) in communication with Seix (1200
inhabitants); 6 millions to put Prade in communication with the hamlet
of Olette (747 inhabitants), etc. In 1895 alone 90 millions of
francs were voted for railways of only local utility. There is other no
less important expenditure necessitated also by electioneering
considerations. The law instituting working-men's pensions will soon
involve a
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The second of the dangers referred to above —
the inevitable restrictions on liberty consummated by parliamentary
assemblies — is apparently less obvious, but is, nevertheless, very
real. It is the result of the innumerable laws — having always a
restrictive action — which parliaments consider themselves obliged to
vote, and to whose consequences, owing to their shortsightedness, they
are in a great measure blind.
The danger must indeed be most inevitable,
since even England itself, which assuredly offers the most popular type
of the parliamentary régime, the type in
which the representative is most independent of his elector, has been
unable to escape it. Herbert Spencer has shown, in a work already old,
that the increase of apparent liberty must needs be followed by the
decrease of real liberty. Re-
minimum annual outlay of 165 millions, according to the
Minister of Finance, and of 800 millions according to the academician
M. Leroy-Beaulieu. It is evident that the continued growth of
expenditure of this kind must end in bankruptcy. Many European
countries — Portugal, Greece, Spain, Turkey — have reached this
stage, and others, such as Italy, will soon be reduced to the same
extremity. Still too much alarm need not be felt at this state of
things, since the public has successively consented to put up with the
reduction of four-fifths in the payment of their coupons by these
different countries. Bankruptcy under these ingenious conditions allows
the equilibrium of Budgets difficult to balance to be instantly
restored. Moreover, wars, socialism, and economic conflicts hold in
store for us a profusion of other catastrophes in the period of
universal disintegration we are traversing, and it is necessary to be
resigned to living from hand to mouth without too much concern for a
future we cannot control.
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turning to
this contention in his recent
book, The Individual versus the State, he thus expresses
himself with
regard to the English Parliament: —
„Legislation since this period has followed
the course I pointed out. Rapidly multiplying dictatorial measures
have continually tended to restrict individual liberties, and this in
two ways. Regulations have been established every year in greater
number, imposing a constraint on the citizen in matters in which his
acts were formerly completely free, and forcing him to accomplish acts
which he was formerly at liberty to accomplish or not to accomplish at
will. At the same time heavier and heavier public, and especially
local, burdens have still further restricted his liberty by diminishing
the portion of his profits he can spend as he chooses, and by
augmenting the portion which is taken from him to be spent according to
the good pleasure of the public authorities.“
This progressive restriction of liberties shows
itself in every country in a special shape which Herbert Spencer has
not pointed out; it is that the passing of these innumerable series of
legislative measures, all of them in a general way of a restrictive
order, conduces necessarily to augment the number, the power, and the
influence of the functionaries charged with their application. These
functionaries tend in this way to become the veritable masters of
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civilised
countries. Their power is all the greater owing to the fact
that, amidst the incessant transfer of authority, the administrative
caste is alone in being untouched by these changes, is alone in
possessing irresponsibility, impersonality, and perpetuity. There is no
more oppressive despotism than that which presents itself under this
triple form.
This incessant creation of restrictive laws
and regulations, surrounding the pettiest actions of existence with the
most complicated formalities, inevitably has for its result the
confining within narrower and narrower limits of the sphere in which
the citizen may move freely. Victims of the delusion that equality and
liberty are the better assured by the multiplication of laws, nations
daily consent to put up with trammels increasingly burdensome. They do
not accept this legislation with impunity. Accustomed to put up with
every yoke, they soon end by desiring servitude, and lose all
spontaneousness and energy. They are then no more than vain shadows,
passive, unresisting and powerless automata.
Arrived at this point, the individual is bound
to seek outside himself the forces he no longer finds within him. The
functions of governments necessarily increase in proportion as the
indifference and helplessness of the citizens grow. They it is who must
necessarily exhibit the initiative, enterprising, and guiding spirit in
which private persons are
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lacking. It
falls on them to undertake
everything, direct everything, and take everything under their
protection. The State becomes an all-powerful god. Still experience
shows that the power of such gods was never either very durable or very
strong.
This progressive restriction of all liberties
in the case of certain peoples, in spite of an outward license that
gives them the illusion that these liberties are still in their
possession, seems at least as much a consequence of their old age as of
any particular system. It constitutes one of the precursory symptoms of
that decadent phase which up to now no civilisation has escaped.
Judging by the lessons of the past, and by the
symptoms that strike the attention on every side, several of our modern
civilisations have reached that phase of extreme old age which precedes
decadence. It seems inevitable that all peoples should pass through
identical phases of existence, since history is so often seen to repeat
its course.
It is easy to note briefly these common phases
of the evolution of civilisations, and I shall terminate this work with
a summary of them. This rapid sketch will perhaps throw some gleams of
light on the causes of the power at present wielded by crowds.
If we examine
in their main lines the genesis
of the greatness and of the fall of the civilisations that preceded our
own, what do we see?
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At the dawn of civilisation a swarm of men of
various origin, brought together by the chances of migrations,
invasions, and conquests. Of different blood, and of equally different
languages and beliefs, the only common bond of union between these men
is the half-recognised law of a chief. The psychological
characteristics of crowds are present in an eminent degree in these
confused agglomerations. They have the transient cohesion of crowds,
their heroism, their weaknesses, their impulsiveness, and their
violence. Nothing is stable in connection with them. They are
barbarians.
At length time accomplishes its work. The
identity of surroundings, the repeated intermingling of races, the
necessities of life in common exert their influence. The assemblage of
dissimilar units begins to blend into a whole, to form a race; that is,
an aggregate possessing
common characteristics and sentiments to which heredity will give
greater and greater fixity. The crowd has become a people, and this
people is able to emerge from its barbarous state. However, it will
only entirely emerge therefrom when, after long efforts, struggles
necessarily repeated, and innumerable recommencements, it shall have
acquired an ideal. The nature of this ideal is of slight importance;
whether it be the cult of Rome, the might of Athens, or the triumph of
Allah, it will suffice to endow all the individuals of the race that is
forming with perfect unity of sentiment and thought.
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At this stage a new civilisation, with its
institutions, its beliefs, and its arts, may be born. In pursuit of its
ideal, the race will acquire in succession the qualities necessary to
give it splendour, vigour, and grandeur. At times no doubt it will
still be a crowd, but henceforth, beneath the mobile and changing
characteristics of crowds, is found a solid substratum, the genius of
the race which confines within narrow limits the transformations of a
nation and overrules the play of chance.
After having exerted its creative action, time
begins that work of destruction from which neither gods nor men escape.
Having reached a certain level of strength and complexity a
civilisation ceases to grow, and having ceased to grow it is condemned
to a speedy decline. The hour of its old age has struck.
This inevitable hour is always marked by the
weakening of the ideal that was the mainstay of the race. In proportion
as this ideal pales all the religious, political, and social structures
inspired by it begin to be shaken.
With the progressive perishing of its ideal
the race loses more and more the qualities that lent it its cohesion,
its unity, and its strength. The personality and intelligence of the
individual may increase, but at the same time this collective egoism of
the race is replaced by an excessive development of the egoism of the
individual, accompanied by a weakening of character and a lessening of
the capacity for action. What constituted a people, a
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unity, a
whole,
becomes in the end an agglomeration of individualities lacking
cohesion, and artificially held together for a time by its traditions
and institutions. It is at this stage that men, divided by their
interests and aspirations, and incapable any longer of self-government,
require directing in their pettiest acts, and that the State exerts an
absorbing influence.
With the definite loss of its old ideal the
genius of the race entirely disappears; it is a mere swarm of isolated
individuals and returns to its original state — that of a crowd.
Without consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory
characteristics of crowds. Its civilisation is now without stability,
and at the mercy
of every chance. The populace is sovereign, and the tide of barbarism
mounts. The civilisation may still seem brilliant because it possesses
an outward front, the work of a long past, but it is in reality an
edifice crumbling to ruin, which nothing supports, and destined to fall
in at the first storm.
To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the
barbarous to the civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost
its virtue, to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a
people.
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