Science
Read books online » Science » The Crowd by Gustave le Bon (libby ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Book online «The Crowd by Gustave le Bon (libby ebook reader .TXT) 📖». Author Gustave le Bon



1 ... 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ... 29
Go to page:
consent to be interviewed as a

means of submitting their views on a given subject to the

judgment of crowds. Formerly it might have been correct to say

that politics were not a matter of sentiment. Can the same be

said to-day, when politics are more and more swayed by the

impulse of changeable crowds, who are uninfluenced by reason and

can only be guided by sentiment?

 

As to the press, which formerly directed opinion, it has had,

like governments, to humble itself before the power of crowds.

It wields, no doubt, a considerable influence, but only because

it is exclusively the reflection of the opinions of crowds and of

their incessant variations. Become a mere agency for the supply

of information, the press has renounced all endeavour to enforce

an idea or a doctrine. It follows all the changes of public

thought, obliged to do so by the necessities of competition under

pain of losing its readers. The old staid and influential organs

of the past, such as the Constitutionnel, the Debats, or the

Siecle, which were accepted as oracles by the preceding

generation, have disappeared or have become typical modern

papers, in which a maximum of news is sandwiched in between light

articles, society gossip, and financial puffs. There can be no

question to-day of a paper rich enough to allow its contributors

to air their personal opinions, and such opinions would be of

slight weight with readers who only ask to be kept informed or to

be amused, and who suspect every affirmation of being prompted by

motives of speculation. Even the critics have ceased to be able

to assure the success of a book or a play. They are capable of

doing harm, but not of doing a service. The papers are so

conscious of the uselessness of everything in the shape of

criticism or personal opinion, that they have reached the point

of suppressing literary criticism, confining themselves to citing

the title of a book, and appending a “puff” of two or three

lines.[22] In twenty years’ time the same fate will probably

have overtaken theatrical criticism.

 

[22] These remarks refer to the French newspaper press.—Note of

the Translator.

 

The close watching of the course of opinion has become to-day the

principal preoccupation of the press and of governments. The

effect produced by an event, a legislative proposal, a speech, is

without intermission what they require to know, and the task is

not easy, for nothing is more mobile and changeable than the

thought of crowds, and nothing more frequent than to see them

execrate to-day what they applauded yesterday.

 

This total absence of any sort of direction of opinion, and at

the same time the destruction of general beliefs, have had for

final result an extreme divergency of convictions of every order,

and a growing indifference on the part of crowds to everything

that does not plainly touch their immediate interests. Questions

of doctrine, such as socialism, only recruit champions boasting

genuine convictions among the quite illiterate classes, among the

workers in mines and factories, for instance. Members of the

lower middle class, and working men possessing some degree of

instruction, have either become utterly sceptical or extremely

unstable in their opinions.

 

The evolution which has been effected in this direction in the

last twenty-five years is striking. During the preceding period,

comparatively near us though it is, opinions still had a certain

general trend; they had their origin in the acceptance of some

fundamental belief. By the mere fact that an individual was a

monarchist he possessed inevitably certain clearly defined ideas

in history as well as in science, while by the mere fact that he

was a republican, his ideas were quite contrary. A monarchist

was well aware that men are not descended from monkeys, and a

republican was not less well aware that such is in truth their

descent. It was the duty of the monarchist to speak with horror,

and of the republican to speak with veneration, of the great

Revolution. There were certain names, such as those of

Robespierre and Marat, that had to be uttered with an air of

religious devotion, and other names, such as those of Caesar,

Augustus, or Napoleon, that ought never to be mentioned

unaccompanied by a torrent of invective. Even in the French

Sorbonne this ingenuous fashion of conceiving history was

general.[23]

 

[23] There are pages in the books of the French official

professors of history that are very curious from this point of

view. They prove too how little the critical spirit is developed

by the system of university education in vogue in France. I cite

as an example the following extracts from the “French Revolution”

of M. Rambaud, professor of history at the Sorbonne:

 

“The taking of the Bastille was a culminating event in the

history not only of France, but of all Europe; and inaugurated a

new epoch in the history of the world!”

 

With respect to Robespierre, we learn with stupefaction that “his

dictatorship was based more especially on opinion, persuasion,

and moral authority; it was a sort of pontificate in the hands of

a virtuous man!” (pp. 91 and 220.)

 

At the present day, as the result of discussion and analysis, all

opinions are losing their prestige; their distinctive features

are rapidly worn away, and few survive capable of arousing our

enthusiasm. The man of modern times is more and more a prey to

indifference.

 

The general wearing away of opinions should not be too greatly

deplored. That it is a symptom of decadence in the life of a

people cannot be contested. It is certain that men of immense,

of almost supernatural insight, that apostles, leaders of

crowds—men, in a word, of genuine and strong convictions—exert

a far greater force than men who deny, who criticise, or who are

indifferent, but it must not be forgotten that, given the power

possessed at present by crowds, were a single opinion to acquire

sufficient prestige to enforce its general acceptance, it would

soon be endowed with so tyrannical a strength that everything

would have to bend before it, and the era of free discussion

would be closed for a long time. Crowds are occasionally

easy-going masters, as were Heliogabalus and Tiberius, but they

are also violently capricious. A civilisation, when the moment

has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the

mercy of too many chances to endure for long. Could anything

postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be precisely

the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their

growing indifference with respect to all general beliefs.

BOOK III

THE CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF

CROWDS

CHAPTER I

THE CLASSIFICATION OF CROWDS

 

The general divisions of crowds—Their classification. 1.

HETEROGENEOUS CROWDS. Different varieties of them—The influence

of race—The spirit of the crowd is weak in proportion as the

spirit of the race is strong—The spirit of the race represents

the civilised state and the spirit of the crowd the barbarian

state. 2. HOMOGENEOUS CROWDS. Their different

varieties—Sects, castes, and classes.

 

We have sketched in this work the general characteristics common

to psychological crowds. It remains to point out the particular

characteristics which accompany those of a general order in the

different categories of collectivities, when they are transformed

into a crowd under the influences of the proper exciting causes.

We will, first of all, set forth in a few words a classification

of crowds.

 

Our starting-point will be the simple multitude. Its most

inferior form is met with when the multitude is composed of

individuals belonging to different races. In this case its only

common bond of union is the will, more or less respected of a

chief. The barbarians of very diverse origin who during several

centuries invaded the Roman Empire, may be cited as a specimen of

multitudes of this kind.

 

On a higher level than these multitudes composed of different

races are those which under certain influences have acquired

common characteristics, and have ended by forming a single race.

They present at times characteristics peculiar to crowds, but

these characteristics are overruled to a greater or less extent

by racial considerations.

 

These two kinds of multitudes may, under certain influences

investigated in this work, be transformed into organised or

psychological crowds. We shall break up these organised crowds

into the following divisions:—

 

1. Anonymous crowds (street

crowds, for example).

A. Heterogeneous 2. Crowds not anonymous

crowds. (juries, parliamentary assemblies,

&c.).

1. Sects (political sects,

religious sects, &c.).

2. Castes (the military caste,

B. Homogeneous the priestly caste, the

crowds. working caste, &c.).

3. Classes (the middle classes,

the peasant classes, &c.).

 

We will point out briefly the distinguishing characteristics of

these different categories of crowds.

 

1. HETEROGENEOUS CROWDS

 

It is these collectivities whose characteristics have been

studied in this volume. They are composed of individuals of any

description, of any profession, and any degree of intelligence.

 

We are now aware that by the mere fact that men form part of a

crowd engaged in action, their collective psychology differs

essentially from their individual psychology, and their

intelligence is affected by this differentiation. We have seen

that intelligence is without influence in collectivities, they

being solely under the sway of unconscious sentiments.

 

A fundamental factor, that of race, allows of a tolerably

thorough differentiation of the various heterogeneous crowds.

 

We have often referred already to the part played by race, and

have shown it to be the most powerful of the factors capable of

determining men’s actions. Its action is also to be traced in

the character of crowds. A crowd composed of individuals

assembled at haphazard, but all of them Englishmen or Chinamen,

will differ widely from another crowd also composed of

individuals of any and every description, but of other

races—Russians, Frenchmen, or Spaniards, for example.

 

The wide divergencies which their inherited mental constitution

creates in men’s modes of feeling and thinking at once come into

prominence when, which rarely happens, circumstances gather

together in the same crowd and in fairly equal proportions

individuals of different nationality, and this occurs, however

identical in appearance be the interests which provoked the

gathering. The efforts made by the socialists to assemble in

great congresses the representatives of the working-class

populations of different countries, have always ended in the most

pronounced discord. A Latin crowd, however revolutionary or

however conservative it be supposed, will invariably appeal to

the intervention of the State to realise its demands. It is

always distinguished by a marked tendency towards centralisation

and by a leaning, more or less pronounced, in favour of a

dictatorship. An English or an American crowd, on the contrary,

sets no store on the State, and only appeals to private

initiative. A French crowd lays particular weight on equality

and an English crowd on liberty. These differences of race

explain how it is that there are almost as many different forms

of socialism and democracy as there are nations.

 

The genius of the race, then, exerts a paramount influence upon

the dispositions of a crowd. It is the powerful underlying force

that limits its changes of humour. It should be considered as an

essential law that THE INFERIOR CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS ARE THE

LESS ACCENTUATED IN PROPORTION AS THE SPIRIT OF THE RACE IS

STRONG. The crowd state and the domination of crowds is

equivalent to the barbarian state, or to a return to it. It is

by the acquisition of a solidly constituted collective spirit

that the race frees itself to a greater and greater extent from

the unreflecting power of crowds, and emerges from the barbarian

state. The only important classification to be made of

heterogeneous crowds, apart from that based on racial

considerations, is to separate them into anonymous crowds, such

as

1 ... 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ... 29
Go to page:

Free ebook «The Crowd by Gustave le Bon (libby ebook reader .TXT) 📖» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment