The Crowd by Gustave le Bon (libby ebook reader .TXT) đź“–
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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 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,[10] which, moreover, would immediately bring
back a new system of centralisation much more oppressive than the
old.
[10] 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.
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.
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 3,000
educated criminals are met with for every 1,000 illiterate
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 twenty-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 Breal, 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 textbooks. Adopting this
view, the endeavour has been made to enforce a knowledge of as
many hand-books as possible. 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 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 schoolmasters 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 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.[11]
[11] 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.
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 textbooks and our pitiable examinations
by industrial instruction capable of inducing our young men to
return to the fields, to the workshop, and to the 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
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