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are completely erroneous, but whose result is THAT, IF THEIR
DESCRIPTIONS ARE ACCEPTED AS EXACT, the phenomena they describe
are inexplicable by trickery. The methods invented by Mr. Davey
were so simple that one is astonished that he should have had the
boldness to employ them; but he had such a power over the mind of
the crowd that he could persuade it that it saw what it did not
see.” Here, as always, we have the power of the hypnotiser over
the hypnotised. Moreover, when this power is seen in action on
minds of a superior order and previously invited to be
suspicious, it is understandable how easy it is to deceive
ordinary crowds.
Analogous examples are innumerable. As I write these lines the
papers are full of the story of two little girls found drowned in
the Seine. These children, to begin with, were recognised in the
most unmistakable manner by half a dozen witnesses. All the
affirmations were in such entire concordance that no doubt
remained in the mind of the juge d’instruction. He had the
certificate of death drawn up, but just as the burial of the
children was to have been proceeded with, a mere chance brought
about the discovery that the supposed victims were alive, and
had, moreover, but a remote resemblance to the drowned girls. As
in several of the examples previously cited, the affirmation of
the first witness, himself a victim of illusion, had sufficed to
influence the other witnesses.
In parallel cases the starting-point of the suggestion is always
the illusion produced in an individual by more or less vague
reminiscences, contagion following as the result of the
affirmation of this initial illusion. If the first observer be
very impressionable, it will often be sufficient that the corpse
he believes he recognises should present— apart from all real
resemblance—some peculiarity, a scar, or some detail of toilet
which may evoke the idea of another person. The idea evoked may
then become the nucleus of a sort of crystallisation which
invades the understanding and paralyses all critical faculty.
What the observer then sees is no longer the object itself, but
the image evoked in his mind. In this way are to be explained
erroneous recognitions of the dead bodies of children by their
own mother, as occurred in the following case, already old, but
which has been recently recalled by the newspapers. In it are to
be traced precisely the two kinds of suggestion of which I have
just pointed out the mechanism.
“The child was recognised by another child, who was mistaken.
The series of unwarranted recognitions then began.
“An extraordinary thing occurred. The day after a schoolboy had
recognised the corpse a woman exclaimed, `Good Heavens, it is my
child!’
“She was taken up to the corpse; she examined the clothing, and
noted a scar on the forehead. `It is certainly,’ she said, `my
son who disappeared last July. He has been stolen from me and
murdered.’
“The woman was concierge in the Rue du Four; her name was
Chavandret. Her brother-in-law was summoned, and when questioned
he said, `That is the little Filibert.’ Several persons living in
the street recognised the child found at La Villette as Filibert
Chavandret, among them being the boy’s schoolmaster, who based
his opinion on a medal worn by the lad.
“Nevertheless, the neighbours, the brother-in-law, the
schoolmaster, and the mother were mistaken. Six weeks later the
identity of the child was established. The boy, belonging to
Bordeaux, had been murdered there and brought by a carrying
company to Paris.”[4]
[4] L’Eclair, April 21, 1895.
It will be remarked that these recognitions are most often made
by women and children—that is to say, by precisely the most
impressionable persons. They show us at the same time what is
the worth in law courts of such witnesses. As far as children,
more especially, are concerned, their statements ought never to
be invoked. Magistrates are in the habit of repeating that
children do not lie. Did they possess a psychological culture a
little less rudimentary than is the case they would know that, on
the contrary, children invariably lie; the lie is doubtless
innocent, but it is none the less a lie. It would be better to
decide the fate of an accused person by the toss of a coin than,
as has been so often done, by the evidence of a child.
To return to the faculty of observation possessed by crowds, our
conclusion is that their collective observations are as erroneous
as possible, and that most often they merely represent the
illusion of an individual who, by a process of contagion, has
suggestioned his fellows. Facts proving that the most utter
mistrust of the evidence of crowds is advisable might be
multiplied to any extent. Thousands of men were present
twenty-five years ago at the celebrated cavalry charge during the
battle of Sedan, and yet it is impossible, in the face of the
most contradictory ocular testimony, to decide by whom it was
commanded. The English general, Lord Wolseley, has proved in a
recent book that up to now the gravest errors of fact have been
committed with regard to the most important incidents of the
battle of Waterloo—facts that hundreds of witnesses had
nevertheless attested.[5]
[5] Do we know in the case of one single battle exactly how it
took place? I am very doubtful on the point. We know who were
the conquerors and the conquered, but this is probably all. What
M. D’Harcourt has said with respect to the battle of Solferino,
which he witnessed and in which he was personally engaged, may be
applied to all battles—“The generals (informed, of course, by
the evidence of hundreds of witnesses) forward their official
reports; the orderly officers modify these documents and draw up
a definite narrative; the chief of the staff raises objections
and rewrites the whole on a fresh basis. It is carried to the
Marshal, who exclaims, `You are entirely in error,’ and he
substitutes a fresh edition. Scarcely anything remains of the
original report.” M. D’Harcourt relates this fact as proof of
the impossibility of establishing the truth in connection with
the most striking, the best observed events.
Such facts show us what is the value of the testimony of crowds.
Treatises on logic include the unanimity of numerous witnesses in
the category of the strongest proofs that can be invoked in
support of the exactness of a fact. Yet what we know of the
psychology of crowds shows that treatises on logic need on this
point to be rewritten. The events with regard to which there
exists the most doubt are certainly those which have been
observed by the greatest number of persons. To say that a fact
has been simultaneously verified by thousands of witnesses is to
say, as a rule, that the real fact is very different from the
accepted account of it.
It clearly results from what precedes that works of history must
be considered as works of pure imagination. They are fanciful
accounts of ill-observed facts, accompanied by explanations the
result of reflection. To write such books is the most absolute
waste of time. Had not the past left us its literary, artistic,
and monumental works, we should know absolutely nothing in
reality with regard to bygone times. Are we in possession of a
single word of truth concerning the lives of the great men who
have played preponderating parts in the history of humanity—men
such as Hercules, Buddha, or Mahomet? In all probability we are
not. In point of fact, moreover, their real lives are of slight
importance to us. Our interest is to know what our great men
were as they are presented by popular legend. It is legendary
heroes, and not for a moment real heroes, who have impressed the
minds of crowds.
Unfortunately, legends—even although they have been definitely
put on record by books—have in themselves no stability. The
imagination of the crowd continually transforms them as the
result of the lapse of time and especially in consequence of
racial causes. There is a great gulf fixed between the
sanguinary Jehovah of the Old Testament and the God of Love of
Sainte Therese, and the Buddha worshipped in China has no traits
in common with that venerated in India.
It is not even necessary that heroes should be separated from us
by centuries for their legend to be transformed by the
imagination of the crowd. The transformation occasionally takes
place within a few years. In our own day we have seen the legend
of one of the greatest heroes of history modified several times
in less than fifty years. Under the Bourbons Napoleon became a
sort of idyllic and liberal philanthropist, a friend of the
humble who, according to the poets, was destined to be long
remembered in the cottage. Thirty years afterwards this
easy-going hero had become a sanguinary despot, who, after having
usurped power and destroyed liberty, caused the slaughter of
three million men solely to satisfy his ambition. At present we
are witnessing a fresh transformation of the legend. When it has
undergone the influence of some dozens of centuries the learned
men of the future, face to face with these contradictory
accounts, will perhaps doubt the very existence of the hero, as
some of them now doubt that of Buddha, and will see in him
nothing more than a solar myth or a development of the legend of
Hercules. They will doubtless console themselves easily for this
uncertainty, for, better initiated than we are to-day in the
characteristics and psychology of crowds, they will know that
history is scarcely capable of preserving the memory of anything
except myths.
3. THE EXAGGERATION AND INGENUOUSNESS OF THE SENTIMENTS OF CROWDS.
Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be good or bad, they
present the double character of being very simple and very
exaggerated. On this point, as on so many others, an individual
in a crowd resembles primitive beings. Inaccessible to fine
distinctions, he sees things as a whole, and is blind to their
intermediate phases. The exaggeration of the sentiments of a
crowd is heightened by the fact that any feeling when once it is
exhibited communicating itself very quickly by a process of
suggestion and contagion, the evident approbation of which it is
the object considerably increases its force.
The simplicity and exaggeration of the sentiments of crowds have
for result that a throng knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.
Like women, it goes at once to extremes. A suspicion transforms
itself as soon as announced into incontrovertible evidence. A
commencement of antipathy or disapprobation, which in the case of
an isolated individual would not gain strength, becomes at once
furious hatred in the case of an individual in a crowd.
The violence of the feelings of crowds is also increased,
especially in heterogeneous crowds, by the absence of all sense
of responsibility. The certainty of impunity, a certainty the
stronger as the crowd is more numerous, and the notion of a
considerable momentary force due to number, make possible in the
case of crowds sentiments and acts impossible for the isolated
individual. In crowds the foolish, ignorant, and envious persons
are freed from the sense of their insignificance and
powerlessness, and are possessed instead by the notion of brutal
and temporary but immense strength.
Unfortunately, this tendency of crowds towards exaggeration is
often brought to bear upon bad sentiments. These sentiments are
atavistic residuum of the instincts of the primitive man, which
the fear of punishment obliges the isolated and responsible
individual to curb. Thus it is that crowds are so easily led
into the worst excesses.
Still this does not mean that crowds, skilfully influenced, are
not capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest
virtues; they are even more capable
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