The Crowd, Gustave le Bon [read ebook pdf .TXT] 📗

only been very slowly changed part by

part, under the influence of immediate necessities and never of

speculative reasoning.

 

“To think nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to

remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly; never to

innovate except when some grievance is felt; never to innovate

except so far as to get rid of the grievance; never to lay down

any proposition of wider extent than the particular case for

which it is necessary to provide; these are the rules which have,

from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided the

deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments.”

 

It would be necessary to take one by one the laws and

institutions of each people to show to what extent they are the

expression of the needs of each race and are incapable, for that

reason, of being violently transformed. It is possible, for,

instance, to indulge in philosophical dissertations on the

advantages and disadvantages of centralisation; but when we see a

people composed of very different races devote a thousand years

of efforts to attaining to this centralisation; when we observe

that a great revolution, having for object the destruction of all

the institutions of the past, has been forced to respect this

centralisation, and has even strengthened it; under these

circumstances we should admit that it is the outcome of imperious

needs, that it is a condition of the existence of the nation in

question, and we should pity the poor mental range of politicians

who talk of destroying it. Could they by chance succeed in this

attempt, their success would at once be the signal for a

frightful civil war,[10] which, moreover, would immediately bring

back a new system of centralisation much more oppressive than the

old.

 

[10] If a comparison be made between the profound religious and

political dissensions which separate the various parties in

France, and are more especially the result of social questions,

and the separatist tendencies which were manifested at the time

of the Revolution, and began to again display themselves towards

the close of the Franco-German war, it will be seen that the

different races represented in France are still far from being

completely blended. The vigorous centralisation of the

Revolution and the creation of artificial departments destined to

bring about the fusion of the ancient provinces was certainly its

most useful work. Were it possible to bring about the

decentralisation which is to-day preoccupying minds lacking in

foresight, the achievement would promptly have for consequence

the most sanguinary disorders. To overlook this fact is to leave

out of account the entire history of France.

 

The conclusion to be drawn from what precedes is, that it is not

in institutions that the means is to be sought of profoundly

influencing the genius of the masses. When we see certain

countries, such as the United States, reach a high degree of

prosperity under democratic institutions, while others, such as

the Spanish-American Republics, are found existing in a pitiable

state of anarchy under absolutely similar institutions, we should

admit that these institutions are as foreign to the greatness of

the one as to the decadence of the others. Peoples are governed

by their character, and all institutions which are not intimately

modelled on that character merely represent a borrowed garment, a

transitory disguise. No doubt sanguinary wars and violent

revolutions have been undertaken, and will continue to be

undertaken, to impose institutions to which is attributed, as to

the relics of saints, the supernatural power of creating welfare.

It may be said, then, in one sense, that institutions react on

the mind of the crowd inasmuch as they engender such upheavals.

But in reality it is not the institutions that react in this

manner, since we know that, whether triumphant or vanquished,

they possess in themselves no virtue. It is illusions and words

that have influenced the mind of the crowd, and especially

words— words which are as powerful as they are chimerical, and

whose astonishing sway we shall shortly demonstrate.

 

5. INSTRUCTION AND EDUCATION

 

Foremost among the dominant ideas of the present epoch is to be

found the notion that instruction is capable of considerably

changing men, and has for its unfailing consequence to improve

them and even to make them equal. By the mere fact of its being

constantly repeated, this assertion has ended by becoming one of

the most steadfast democratic dogmas. It would be as difficult

now to attack it as it would have been formerly to have attacked

the dogmas of the Church.

 

On this point, however, as on many others, democratic ideas are

in profound disagreement with the results of psychology and

experience. Many eminent philosophers, among them Herbert

Spencer, have had no difficulty in showing that instruction

neither renders a man more moral nor happier, that it changes

neither his instincts nor his hereditary passions, and that at

times—for this to happen it need only be badly directed—it is

much more pernicious than useful. Statisticians have brought

confirmation of these views by telling us that criminality

increases with the generalisation of instruction, or at any rate

of a certain kind of instruction, and that the worst enemies of

society, the anarchists, are recruited among the prize-winners of

schools; while in a recent work a distinguished magistrate, M.

Adolphe Guillot, made the observation that at present 3,000

educated criminals are met with for every 1,000 illiterate

delinquents, and that in fifty years the criminal percentage of

the population has passed from 227 to 552 for every 100,000

inhabitants, an increase of 133 per cent. He has also noted in

common with his colleagues that criminality is particularly on

the increase among young persons, for whom, as is known,

gratuitous and obligatory schooling has—in France—replaced

apprenticeship.

 

It is not assuredly—and nobody has ever maintained this

proposition— that well-directed instruction may not give very

useful practical results, if not in the sense of raising the

standard of morality, at least in that of developing professional

capacity. Unfortunately the Latin peoples, especially in the

last twenty-five years, have based their systems of instruction

on very erroneous principles, and in spite of the observations of

the most eminent minds, such as Breal, Fustel de Coulanges,

Taine, and many others, they persist in their lamentable

mistakes. I have myself shown, in a work published some time

ago, that the French system of education transforms the majority

of those who have undergone it into enemies of society, and

recruits numerous disciples for the worst forms of socialism.

 

The primary danger of this system of education—very properly

qualified as Latin—consists in the fact that it is based on the

fundamental psychological error that the intelligence is

developed by the learning by heart of textbooks. Adopting this

view, the endeavour has been made to enforce a knowledge of as

many hand-books as possible. From the primary school till he

leaves the university a young man does nothing but acquire books

by heart without his judgment or personal initiative being ever

called into play. Education consists for him in reciting by

heart and obeying.

 

“Learning lessons, knowing by heart a grammar or a compendium,

repeating well and imitating well—that,” writes a former

Minister of Public Instruction, M. Jules Simon, “is a ludicrous

form of education whose every effort is an act of faith tacitly

admitting the infallibility of the master, and whose only results

are a belittling of ourselves and a rendering of us impotent.”

 

Were this education merely useless, one might confine one’s self

to expressing compassion for the unhappy children who, instead of

making needful studies at the primary school, are instructed in

the genealogy of the sons of Clotaire, the conflicts between

Neustria and Austrasia, or zoological classifications. But the

system presents a far more serious danger. It gives those who

have been submitted to it a violent dislike to the state of life

in which they were born, and an intense desire to escape from it.

The working man no longer wishes to remain a working man, or the

peasant to continue a peasant, while the most humble members of

the middle classes admit of no possible career for their sons

except that of State-paid functionaries. Instead of preparing

men for life French schools solely prepare them to occupy public

functions, in which success can be attained without any necessity

for self-direction or the exhibition of the least glimmer of

personal initiative. At the bottom of the social ladder the

system creates an army of proletarians discontented with their

lot and always ready to revolt, while at the summit it brings

into being a frivolous bourgeoisie, at once sceptical and

credulous, having a superstitious confidence in the State, whom

it regards as a sort of Providence, but without forgetting to

display towards it a ceaseless hostility, always laying its own

faults to the door of the Government, and incapable of the least

enterprise without the intervention of the authorities.

 

The State, which manufactures by dint of textbooks all these

persons possessing diplomas, can only utilise a small number of

them, and is forced to leave the others without employment. It

is obliged in consequence to resign itself to feeding the first

mentioned and to having the others as its enemies. From the top

to the bottom of the social pyramid, from the humblest clerk to

the professor and the prefect, the immense mass of persons

boasting diplomas besiege the professions. While a business man

has the greatest difficulty in finding an agent to represent him

in the colonies, thousands of candidates solicit the most modest

official posts. There are 20,000 schoolmasters and mistresses

without employment in the department of the Seine alone, all of

them persons who, disdaining the fields or the workshops, look to

the State for their livelihood. The number of the chosen being

restricted, that of the discontented is perforce immense. The

latter are ready for any revolution, whoever be its chiefs and

whatever the goal they aim at. The acquisition of knowledge for

which no use can be found is a sure method of driving a man to

revolt.[11]

 

[11] This phenomenon, moreover, is not peculiar to the Latin

peoples. It is also to be observed in China, which is also a

country in the hands of a solid hierarchy of mandarins or

functionaries, and where a function is obtained, as in France, by

competitive examination, in which the only test is the

imperturbable recitation of bulky manuals. The army of educated

persons without employment is considered in China at the present

day as a veritable national calamity. It is the same in India

where, since the English have opened schools, not for educating

purposes, as is the case in England itself, but simply to furnish

the indigenous inhabitants with instruction, there has been

formed a special class of educated persons, the Baboos, who, when

they do not obtain employment, become the irreconcilable enemies

of the English rule. In the case of all the Baboos, whether

provided with employment or not, the first effect of their

instruction has been to lower their standard of morality. This

is a fact on which I have insisted at length in my book, “The

Civilisations of India”—a fact, too, which has been observed by

all authors who have visited the great peninsula.

 

It is evidently too late to retrace our steps. Experience alone,

that supreme educator of peoples, will be at pains to show us our

mistake. It alone will be powerful enough to prove the necessity

of replacing our odious textbooks and our pitiable examinations

by industrial instruction capable of inducing our young men to

return to the fields, to the workshop, and to the colonial

enterprise which they avoid to-day at all costs.

 

The professional instruction which all enlightened minds are now

demanding was the instruction received in the past by our

forefathers. It is still in