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
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.
THE CLASSIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF
CROWDS
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
Comments (0)