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[13] 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.
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 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.”[14]
[14] Daniel Lesueur.
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
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 accordance 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,[15] the terrible war which cost us so dear had to 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.
[15] 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.
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.[16]
To bring home conviction 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.
[16] 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
booksellers. 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 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.
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 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, 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
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