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

juncture it is perforce in a state of

anarchy. General beliefs are the indispensable pillars of

civilisations; they determine the trend of ideas. They alone are

capable of inspiring faith and creating a sense of duty.

 

Nations have always been conscious of the utility of acquiring

general beliefs, and have instinctively understood that their

disappearance would be the signal for their own decline. In the

case of the Romans, the fanatical cult of Rome was the belief

that made them masters of the world, and when the belief had died

out Rome was doomed to die. As for the barbarians who destroyed

the Roman civilisation, it was only when they had acquired

certain commonly accepted beliefs that they attained a measure of

cohesion and emerged from anarchy.

 

Plainly it is not for nothing that nations have always displayed

intolerance in the defence of their opinions. This intolerance,

open as it is to criticism from the philosophic standpoint,

represents in the life of a people the most necessary of virtues.

It was to found or uphold general beliefs that so many victims

were sent to the stake in the Middle Ages and that so many

inventors and innovators have died in despair even if they have

escaped martyrdom. It is in defence, too, of such beliefs that

the world has been so often the scene of the direst disorder, and

that so many millions of men have died on the battlefield, and

will yet die there.

 

There are great difficulties in the way of establishing a general

belief, but when it is definitely implanted its power is for a

long time to come invincible, and however false it be

philosophically it imposes itself upon the most luminous

intelligence. Have not the European peoples regarded as

incontrovertible for more than fifteen centuries religious

legends which, closely examined, are as barbarous[21] as those of

Moloch? The frightful absurdity of the legend of a God who

revenges himself for the disobedience of one of his creatures by

inflicting horrible tortures on his son remained unperceived

during many centuries. Such potent geniuses as a Galileo, a

Newton, and a Leibnitz never supposed for an instant that the

truth of such dogmas could be called in question. Nothing can be

more typical than this fact of the hypnotising effect of general

beliefs, but at the same time nothing can mark more decisively

the humiliating limitations of our intelligence.

 

[21] Barbarous, philosophically speaking, I mean. In practice

they have created an entirely new civilisation, and for fifteen

centuries have given mankind a glimpse of those enchanted realms

of generous dreams and of hope which he will know no more.

 

As soon as a new dogma is implanted in the mind of crowds it

becomes the source of inspiration whence are evolved its

institutions, arts, and mode of existence. The sway it exerts

over men’s minds under these circumstances is absolute. Men of

action have no thought beyond realising the accepted belief,

legislators beyond applying it, while philosophers, artists, and

men of letters are solely preoccupied with its expression under

various shapes.

 

From the fundamental belief transient accessory ideas may arise,

but they always bear the impress of the belief from which they

have sprung. The Egyptian civilisation, the European

civilisation of the Middle Ages, the Mussulman civilisation of

the Arabs are all the outcome of a small number of religious

beliefs which have left their mark on the least important

elements of these civilisations and allow of their immediate

recognition.

 

Thus it is that, thanks to general beliefs, the men of every age

are enveloped in a network of traditions, opinions, and customs

which render them all alike, and from whose yoke they cannot

extricate themselves. Men are guided in their conduct above all

by their beliefs and by the customs that are the consequence of

those beliefs. These beliefs and customs regulate the smallest

acts of our existence, and the most independent spirit cannot

escape their influence. The tyranny exercised unconsciously on

men’s minds is the only real tyranny, because it cannot be fought

against. Tiberius, Ghengis Khan, and Napoleon were assuredly

redoubtable tyrants, but from the depth of their graves Moses,

Buddha, Jesus, and Mahomet have exerted on the human soul a far

profounder despotism. A conspiracy may overthrow a tyrant, but

what can it avail against a firmly established belief? In its

violent struggle with Roman Catholicism it is the French

Revolution that has been vanquished, and this in spite of the

fact that the sympathy of the crowd was apparently on its side,

and in spite of recourse to destructive measures as pitiless as

those of the Inquisition. The only real tyrants that humanity

has known have always been the memories of its dead or the

illusions it has forged itself.

 

The philosophic absurdity that often marks general beliefs has

never been an obstacle to their triumph. Indeed the triumph of

such beliefs would seem impossible unless on the condition that

they offer some mysterious absurdity. In consequence, the

evident weakness of the socialist beliefs of to-day will not

prevent them triumphing among the masses. Their real inferiority

to all religious beliefs is solely the result of this

consideration, that the ideal of happiness offered by the latter

being realisable only in a future life, it was beyond the power

of anybody to contest it. The socialist ideal of happiness being

intended to be realised on earth, the vanity of its promises will

at once appear as soon as the first efforts towards their

realisation are made, and simultaneously the new belief will

entirely lose its prestige. Its strength, in consequence, will

only increase until the day when, having triumphed, its practical

realisation shall commence. For this reason, while the new

religion exerts to begin with, like all those that have preceded

it, a destructive influence, it will be unable, in the future, to

play a creative part.

 

2. THE CHANGEABLE OPINIONS OF CROWDS

 

Above the substratum of fixed beliefs, whose power we have just

demonstrated, is found an overlying growth of opinions, ideas,

and thoughts which are incessantly springing up and dying out.

Some of them exist but for a day, and the more important scarcely

outlive a generation. We have already noted that the changes

which supervene in opinions of this order are at times far more

superficial than real, and that they are always affected by

racial considerations. When examining, for instance, the

political institutions of France we showed that parties to all

appearance utterly distinct—royalists, radicals, imperialists,

socialists, &c.—have an ideal absolutely identical, and that

this ideal is solely dependent on the mental structure of the

French race, since a quite contrary ideal is found under

analogous names among other races. Neither the name given to

opinions nor deceptive adaptations alter the essence of things.

The men of the Great Revolution, saturated with Latin literature,

who (their eyes fixed on the Roman Republic), adopted its laws,

its fasces, and its togas, did not become Romans because they

were under the empire of a powerful historical suggestion. The

task of the philosopher is to investigate what it is which

subsists of ancient beliefs beneath their apparent changes, and

to identify amid the moving flux of opinions the part determined

by general beliefs and the genius of the race.

 

In the absence of this philosophic test it might be supposed that

crowds change their political or religious beliefs frequently and

at will. All history, whether political, religious, artistic, or

literary, seems to prove that such is the case.

 

As an example, let us take a very short period of French history,

merely that from 1790 to 1820, a period of thirty years’

duration, that of a generation. In the course of it we see the

crowd at first monarchical become very revolutionary, then very

imperialist, and again very monarchical. In the matter of

religion it gravitates in the same lapse of time from Catholicism

to atheism, then towards deism, and then returns to the most

pronounced forms of Catholicism. These changes take place not

only amongst the masses, but also amongst those who direct them.

We observe with astonishment the prominent men of the Convention,

the sworn enemies of kings, men who would have neither gods nor

masters, become the humble servants of Napoleon, and afterwards,

under Louis XVIII., piously carry candles in religious

processions.

 

Numerous, too, are the changes in the opinions of the crowd in

the course of the following seventy years. The “Perfidious

Albion” of the opening of the century is the ally of France under

Napoleon’s heir; Russia, twice invaded by France, which looked on

with satisfaction at French reverses, becomes its friend.

 

In literature, art, and philosophy the successive evolutions of

opinion are more rapid still. Romanticism, naturalism,

mysticism, &c., spring up and die out in turn. The artist and

the writer applauded yesterday are treated on the morrow with

profound contempt.

 

When, however, we analyse all these changes in appearance so far

reaching, what do we find? All those that are in opposition with

the general beliefs and sentiments of the race are of transient

duration, and the diverted stream soon resumes its course. The

opinions which are not linked to any general belief or sentiment

of the race, and which in consequence cannot possess stability,

are at the mercy of every chance, or, if the expression be

preferred, of every change in the surrounding circumstances.

Formed by suggestion and contagion, they are always momentary;

they crop up and disappear as rapidly on occasion as the

sandhills formed by the wind on the sea-coast.

 

At the present day the changeable opinions of crowds are greater

in number than they ever were, and for three different reasons.

 

The first is that as the old beliefs are losing their influence

to a greater and greater extent, they are ceasing to shape the

ephemeral opinions of the moment as they did in the past. The

weakening of general beliefs clears the ground for a crop of

haphazard opinions without a past or a future.

 

The second reason is that the power of crowds being on the

increase, and this power being less and less counterbalanced, the

extreme mobility of ideas, which we have seen to be a peculiarity

of crowds, can manifest itself without let or hindrance.

 

Finally, the third reason is the recent development of the

newspaper press, by whose agency the most contrary opinions are

being continually brought before the attention of crowds. The

suggestions that might result from each individual opinion are

soon destroyed by suggestions of an opposite character. The

consequence is that no opinion succeeds in becoming widespread,

and that the existence of all of them is ephemeral. An opinion

nowadays dies out before it has found a sufficiently wide

acceptance to become general.

 

A phenomenon quite new in the world’s history, and most

characteristic of the present age, has resulted from these

different causes; I allude to the powerlessness of governments to

direct opinion.

 

In the past, and in no very distant past, the action of

governments and the influence of a few writers and a very small

number of newspapers constituted the real reflectors of public

opinion. To-day the writers have lost all influence, and the

newspapers only reflect opinion. As for statesmen, far from

directing opinion, their only endeavour is to follow it. They

have a dread of opinion, which amounts at times to terror, and

causes them to adopt an utterly unstable line of conduct.

 

The opinion of crowds tends, then, more and more to become the

supreme guiding principle in politics. It goes so far to-day as

to force on alliances, as has been seen recently in the case of

the Franco-Russian alliance, which is solely the outcome of a

popular movement. A curious symptom of the present time is to

observe popes, kings, and emperors