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anarchy. General 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 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[21] 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.
[21] 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.
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 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 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 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, &c.—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 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, &c., 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 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
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
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