The Crowd by Gustave le Bon (list of ebook readers txt) 📕

[13] In my book, “The Psychological Laws of the Evolution of

Peoples,” I have insisted at length on the differences which

distinguish the Latin democratic ideal from the Anglo-Saxon

democratic ideal. Independently, and as the result of his

travels, M. Paul Bourget has arrived, in his quite recent book,

“Outre-Mer,” at conclusions almost identical with mine.

2. ILLUSIONS

From the dawn of civilisation onwards crowds have always

undergone the influence of illusions. It is to the creators of

illusions that they have raised more temples, statues, and altars

than to any other class of men. Whether it be the religious

illusions of the past or the philosophic and social illusions of

the present, these formidable sovereign powers are always found

at the head of all the civilisations that have successively

flourished on our planet. It is in their name that were built

the temples of Chaldea and Egypt and the religious edifices of

the Middle Ages, and that a vast upheaval shook the whole of

Europe a century ago, and there is not one of our political,

artistic, or social conceptions that is free from their powerful

impress. Occasionally, at the cost of terrible disturbances, man

overthrows them, but he seems condemned to always set them up

again. Without them he would never have emerged from his

primitive barbarian state, and without them again he would soon

return to it. Doubtless they are futile shadows; but these

children of our dreams have forced the nations to create whatever

the arts may boast of splendour or civilisation of greatness.

“If one destroyed in museums and libraries, if one hurled down on

the flagstones before the churches all the works and all the

monuments of art that religions have inspired, what would remain

of the great dreams of humanity? To give to men that portion of

hope and illusion without which they cannot live, such is the

reason for the existence of gods, heroes, and poets. During

fifty years science appeared to undertake this task. But science

has been compromised in hearts hungering after the ideal, because

it does not dare to be lavish enough of promises, because it

cannot lie.”[14]

[14] Daniel Lesueur.

The philosophers of the last century devoted themselves with

fervour to the destruction of the religious, political, and

social illusions on which our forefathers had lived for a long

tale of centuries. By destroying them they have dried up the

springs of hope and resignation. Behind the immolated chimeras

they came face to face with the blind and silent forces of

nature, which are inexorable to weakness and ignore pity.

Notwithstanding all its progress, philosophy has been unable as

yet to offer the masses any ideal that can charm them; but, as

they must have their illusions at all cost, they turn

instinctively, as the insect seeks the light, to the rhetoricians

who accord them what they want. Not truth, but error has always

been the chief factor in the evolution of nations, and the reason

why socialism is so powerful to-day is that it constitutes the

last illusion that is still vital. In spite of all scientific

demonstrations it continues on the increase. Its principal

strength lies in the fact that it is championed by minds

sufficiently ignorant of things as they are in reality to venture

boldly to promise mankind happiness. The social illusion reigns

to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it

belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth.

They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste,

preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can

supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever

attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

3. EXPERIENCE

Experience constitutes almost the only effective process by which

a truth may be solidly established in the mind of the masses, and

illusions grown too dangerous be destroyed. To this end,

however, it is necessary that the experience should take place on

a very large scale, and be very frequently repeated. The

experiences undergone by one generation are useless, as a rule,

for the generation that follows, which is the reason why

historical facts, cited with a view to demonstration, serve no

purpose. Their only utility is to prove to what an extent

experiences need to be repeated from age to age to exert any

influence, or to be successful in merely shaking an erroneous

opinion when it is solidly implanted in the mind of the masses.

Our century and that which preceded it will doubtless be alluded

to by historians as an era of curious experiments, which in no

other age have been tried in such number.

The most gigantic of these experiments was the French Revolution.

To find out that a society is not to be refashioned from top to

bottom in accordance with the dictates of pure reason, it was

necessary that several millions of men should be massacred and

that Europe should be profoundly disturbed for a period of twenty

years. To prove to us experimentally that dictators cost the

nations who acclaim them dear, two ruinous experiences have been

required in fifty years, and in spite of their clearness they do

not seem to have been sufficiently convincing. The first,

nevertheless, cost three millions of men and an invasion, the

second involved a loss of territory, and carried in its wake the

necessity for permanent armies. A third was almost attempted not

long since, and will assuredly be attempted one day. To bring an

entire nation to admit that the huge German army was not, as was

currently alleged thirty years ago, a sort of harmless national

guard,[15] the terrible war which cost us so dear had to take

place. To bring about the recognition that Protection ruins the

nations who adopt it, at least twenty years of disastrous

experience will be needful. These examples might be indefinitely

multiplied.

[15] The opinion of the crowd was formed in this case by those

rough-and-ready associations of dissimilar things, the mechanism

of which I have previously explained. The French national guard

of that period, being composed of peaceable shopkeepers, utterly

lacking in discipline and quite incapable of being taken

seriously, whatever bore a similar name, evoked the same

conception and was considered in consequence as harmless. The

error of the crowd was shared at the time by its leaders, as

happens so often in connection with opinions dealing with

generalisations. In a speech made in the Chamber on the 31st of

December, 1867, and quoted in a book by M. E. Ollivier that has

appeared recently, a statesman who often followed the opinion of

the crowd but was never in advance of it—I allude to M.

Thiers—declared that Prussia only possessed a national guard

analogous to that of France, and in consequence without

importance, in addition to a regular army about equal to the

French regular army; assertions about as accurate as the

predictions of the same statesman as to the insignificant future

reserved for railways.

4. REASON

In enumerating the factors capable of making an impression on the

minds of crowds all mention of reason might be dispensed with,

were it not necessary to point out the negative value of its

influence.

We have already shown that crowds are not to be influenced by

reasoning, and can only comprehend rough-and-ready associations

of ideas. The orators who know how to make an impression upon

them always appeal in consequence to their sentiments and never

to their reason. The laws of logic have no action on crowds.[16]

To bring home conviction to crowds it is necessary first of all

to thoroughly comprehend the sentiments by which they are

animated, to pretend to share these sentiments, then to endeavour

to modify them by calling up, by means of rudimentary

associations, certain eminently suggestive notions, to be

capable, if need be, of going back to the point of view from

which a start was made, and, above all, to divine from instant to

instant the sentiments to which one’s discourse is giving birth.

This necessity of ceaselessly varying one’s language in

accordance with the effect produced at the moment of speaking

deprives from the outset a prepared and studied harangue of all

efficaciousness. In such a speech the orator follows his own

line of thought, not that of his hearers, and from this fact

alone his influence is annihilated.

[16] My first observations with regard to the art of impressing

crowds and touching the slight assistance to be derived in this

connection from the rules of logic date back to the seige of

Paris, to the day when I saw conducted to the Louvre, where the

Government was then sitting, Marshal V–-, whom a furious crowd

asserted they had surprised in the act of taking the plans of the

fortifications to sell them to the Prussians. A member of the

Government (G. P–-), a very celebrated orator, came out to

harangue the crowd, which was demanding the immediate execution

of the prisoner. I had expected that the speaker would point out

the absurdity of the accusation by remarking that the accused

Marshal was positively one of those who had constructed the

fortifications, the plan of which, moreover, was on sale at every

booksellers. To my immense stupefaction—I was very young

then—the speech was on quite different lines. “Justice shall be

done,” exclaimed the orator, advancing towards the prisoner, “and

pitiless justice. Let the Government of the National Defence

conclude your inquiry. In the meantime we will keep the prisoner

in custody.” At once calmed by this apparent concession, the

crowd broke up, and a quarter of an hour later the Marshal was

able to return home. He would infallibly have been torn in

pieces had the speaker treated the infuriated crowd to the

logical arguments that my extreme youth induced me to consider as

very convincing.

Logical minds, accustomed to be convinced by a chain of somewhat

close reasoning, cannot avoid having recourse to this mode of

persuasion when addressing crowds, and the inability of their

arguments always surprises them. “The usual mathematical

consequences based on the syllogism—that is, on associations of

identities—are imperative …” writes a logician. “This

imperativeness would enforce the assent even of an inorganic mass

were it capable of following associations of identities.” This

is doubtless true, but a crowd is no more capable than an

inorganic mass of following such associations, nor even of

understanding them. If the attempt be made to convince by

reasoning primitive minds—savages or children, for instance—the

slight value possessed by this method of arguing will be

understood.

It is not even necessary to descend so low as primitive beings to

obtain an insight into the utter powerlessness of reasoning when

it has to fight against sentiment. Let us merely call to mind

how tenacious, for centuries long, have been religious

superstitions in contradiction with the simplest logic. For

nearly two thousand years the most luminous geniuses have bowed

before their laws, and modern times have to be reached for their

veracity to be merely contested. The Middle Ages and the

Renaissance possessed many enlightened men, but not a single man

who attained by reasoning to an appreciation of the childish side

of his superstitions, or who promulgated even a slight doubt as

to the misdeeds of the devil or the necessity of burning

sorcerers.

Should it be regretted that crowds are never guided by reason?

We would not venture to affirm it. Without a doubt human reason

would not have availed to spur humanity along the path of

civilisation with the ardour and hardihood its illusions have

done. These illusions, the offspring of those unconscious forces

by which we are led, were doubtless necessary. Every race

carries in its mental constitution the laws of its destiny, and

it is, perhaps, these laws that it obeys with