The Crowd by Gustave le Bon (libby ebook reader .TXT) đź“–
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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 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 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 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
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 Vendeen war. By becoming a Mussulman that I
obtained a footing in Egypt. By becoming an Ultramontane 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 Caesar 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 Caesar; 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 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 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.
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 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
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