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

The danger must indeed be most inevitable, since even England

itself, which assuredly offers the most popular type of the

parliamentary regime, the type in which the representative is

most independent of his elector, has been unable to escape it.

Herbert Spencer has shown, in a work already old, that the

increase of apparent liberty must needs be followed by the

decrease of real liberty. Returning to this contention in his

recent book, “The Individual versus the State,” he thus expresses

himself with regard to the English Parliament:—

“Legislation since this period has followed the course, I pointed

out. Rapidly multiplying dictatorial measures have continually

tended to restrict individual liberties, and this in two ways.

Regulations have been established every year in greater number,

imposing a constraint on the citizen in matters in which his acts

were formerly completely free, and forcing him to accomplish acts

which he was formerly at liberty to accomplish or not to

accomplish at will. At the same time heavier and heavier public,

and especially local, burdens have still further restricted his

liberty by diminishing the portion of his profits he can spend as

he chooses, and by augmenting the portion which is taken from him

to be spent according to the good pleasure of the public

authorities.”

This progressive restriction of liberties shows itself in every

country in a special shape which Herbert Spencer has not pointed

out; it is that the passing of these innumerable series of

legislative measures, all of them in a general way of a

restrictive order, conduces necessarily to augment the number,

the power, and the influence of the functionaries charged with

their application. These functionaries tend in this way to

become the veritable masters of civilised countries. Their power

is all the greater owing to the fact that, amidst the incessant

transfer of authority, the administrative caste is alone in being

untouched by these changes, is alone in possessing

irresponsibility, impersonality, and perpetuity. There is no

more oppressive despotism than that which presents itself under

this triple form.

This incessant creation of restrictive laws and regulations,

surrounding the pettiest actions of existence with the most

complicated formalities, inevitably has for its result the

confining within narrower and narrower limits of the sphere in

which the citizen may move freely. Victims of the delusion that

equality and liberty are the better assured by the multiplication

of laws, nations daily consent to put up with trammels

increasingly burdensome. They do not accept this legislation

with impunity. Accustomed to put up with every yoke, they soon

end by desiring servitude, and lose all spontaneousness and

energy. They are then no more than vain shadows, passive,

unresisting and powerless automata.

Arrived at this point, the individual is bound to seek outside

himself the forces he no longer finds within him. The functions

of governments necessarily increase in proportion as the

indifference and helplessness of the citizens grow. They it is

who must necessarily exhibit the initiative, enterprising, and

guiding spirit in which private persons are lacking. It falls on

them to undertake everything, direct everything, and take

everything under their protection. The State becomes an

all-powerful god. Still experience shows that the power of such

gods was never either very durable or very strong.

This progressive restriction of all liberties in the case of

certain peoples, in spite of an outward license that gives them

the illusion that these liberties are still in their possession,

seems at least as much a consequence of their old age as of any

particular system. It constitutes one of the precursory symptoms

of that decadent phase which up to now no civilisation has

escaped.

Judging by the lessons of the past, and by the symptoms that

strike the attention on every side, several of our modern

civilisations have reached that phase of extreme old age which

precedes decadence. It seems inevitable that all peoples should

pass through identical phases of existence, since history is so

often seen to repeat its course.

It is easy to note briefly these common phases of the evolution

of civilisations, and I shall terminate this work with a summary

of them. This rapid sketch will perhaps throw some gleams of

light on the causes of the power at present wielded by crowds.

If we examine in their main lines the genesis of the greatness

and of the fall of the civilisations that preceded our own, what

do we see?

At the dawn of civilisation a swarm of men of various origin,

brought together by the chances of migrations, invasions, and

conquests. Of different blood, and of equally different

languages and beliefs, the only common bond of union between

these men is the half-recognised law of a chief. The

psychological characteristics of crowds are present in an eminent

degree in these confused agglomerations. They have the transient

cohesion of crowds, their heroism, their weaknesses, their

impulsiveness, and their violence. Nothing is stable in

connection with them. They are barbarians.

At length time accomplishes its work. The identity of

surroundings, the repeated intermingling of races, the

necessities of life in common exert their influence. The

assemblage of dissimilar units begins to blend into a whole, to

form a race; that is, an aggregate possessing common

characteristics and sentiments to which heredity will give

greater and greater fixity. The crowd has become a people, and

this people is able to emerge from its barbarous state. However,

it will only entirely emerge therefrom when, after long efforts,

struggles necessarily repeated, and innumerable recommencements,

it shall have acquired an ideal. The nature of this ideal is of

slight importance; whether it be the cult of Rome, the might of

Athens, or the triumph of Allah, it will suffice to endow all the

individuals of the race that is forming with perfect unity of

sentiment and thought.

At this stage a new civilisation, with its institutions, its

beliefs, and its arts, may be born. In pursuit of its ideal, the

race will acquire in succession the qualities necessary to give

it splendour, vigour, and grandeur. At times no doubt it will

still be a crowd, but henceforth, beneath the mobile and changing

characteristics of crowds, is found a solid substratum, the

genius of the race which confines within narrow limits the

transformations of a nation and overrules the play of chance.

After having exerted its creative action, time begins that work

of destruction from which neither gods nor men escape. Having

reached a certain level of strength and complexity a civilisation

ceases to grow, and having ceased to grow it is condemned to a

speedy decline. The hour of its old age has struck.

This inevitable hour is always marked by the weakening of the

ideal that was the mainstay of the race. In proportion as this

ideal pales all the religious, political, and social structures

inspired by it begin to be shaken.

With the progressive perishing of its ideal the race loses more

and more the qualities that lent it its cohesion, its unity, and

its strength. The personality and intelligence of the individual

may increase, but at the same time this collective egoism of the

race is replaced by an excessive development of the egoism of the

individual, accompanied by a weakening of character and a

lessening of the capacity for action. What constituted a people,

a unity, a whole, becomes in the end an agglomeration of

individualities lacking cohesion, and artificially held together

for a time by its traditions and institutions. It is at this

stage that men, divided by their interests and aspirations, and

incapable any longer of self-government, require directing in

their pettiest acts, and that the State exerts an absorbing

influence.

With the definite loss of its old ideal the genius of the race

entirely disappears; it is a mere swarm of isolated individuals

and returns to its original state—that of a crowd. Without

consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory

characteristics of crowds. Its civilisation is now without

stability, and at the mercy of every chance. The populace is

sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts. The civilisation

may still seem brilliant because it possesses an outward front,

the work of a long past, but it is in reality an edifice

crumbling to ruin, which nothing supports, and destined to fall

in at the first storm.

To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the

civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue,

to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people.

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Crowd, by Gustave le Bon