The Crowd by Gustave le Bon (libby ebook reader .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Gustave le Bon
- Performer: -
Book online «The Crowd by Gustave le Bon (libby ebook reader .TXT) 📖». Author Gustave le Bon
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 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.[20]
[20] 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
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 employes, 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.”
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, &c.—and it
would be seen that prestige constitutes the fundamental element
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 naive 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 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.
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 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, &c. Opinions of this order are as
superficial, as a rule, as fashion, and as changeable. They may
be compared 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 culminating 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
Comments (0)