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

and vindictive, on the Association, which

he declared he wanted to destroy,” &c., &c.

 

How, it may be asked, can an elector form an opinion under such

conditions? To put such a question is to harbour a strange

delusion as to the measure of liberty that may be enjoyed by a

collectivity. Crowds have opinions that have been imposed upon

them, but they never boast reasoned opinions. In the case under

consideration the opinions and votes of the electors are in the

hands of the election committees, whose leading spirits are, as a

rule, publicans, their influence over the working men, to whom

they allow credit, being great. “Do you know what an election

committee is?” writes M. Scherer, one of the most valiant

champions of present-day democracy. “It is neither more nor less

than the corner-stone of our institutions, the masterpiece of the

political machine. France is governed to-day by the election

committees.”[26]

 

[26] Committees under whatever name, clubs, syndicates, &c.,

constitute perhaps the most redoubtable danger resulting from the

power of crowds. They represent in reality the most impersonal

and, in consequence, the most oppressive form of tyranny. The

leaders who direct the committees being supposed to speak and act

in the name of a collectivity, are freed from all responsibility,

and are in a position to do just as they choose. The most savage

tyrant has never ventured even to dream of such proscriptions as

those ordained by the committees of the Revolution. Barras has

declared that they decimated the convention, picking off its

members at their pleasure. So long as he was able to speak in

their name, Robespierre wielded absolute power. The moment this

frightful dictator separated himself from them, for reasons of

personal pride, he was lost. The reign of crowds is the reign of

committees, that is, of the leaders of crowds. A severer

despotism cannot be imagined.

 

To exert an influence over them is not difficult, provided the

candidate be in himself acceptable and possess adequate financial

resources. According to the admissions of the donors, three

millions of francs sufficed to secure the repeated elections of

General Boulanger.

 

Such is the psychology of electoral crowds. It is identical with

that of other crowds: neither better nor worse.

 

In consequence I draw no conclusion against universal suffrage

from what precedes. Had I to settle its fate, I should preserve

it as it is for practical reasons, which are to be deduced in

point of fact from our investigation of the psychology of crowds.

On this account I shall proceed to set them forth.

 

No doubt the weak side of universal suffrage is too obvious to be

overlooked. It cannot be gainsaid that civilisation has been the

work of a small minority of superior intelligences constituting

the culminating point of a pyramid, whose stages, widening in

proportion to the decrease of mental power, represent the masses

of a nation. The greatness of a civilisation cannot assuredly

depend upon the votes given by inferior elements boasting solely

numerical strength. Doubtless, too, the votes recorded by crowds

are often very dangerous. They have already cost us several

invasions, and in view of the triumph of socialism, for which

they are preparing the way, it is probable that the vagaries of

popular sovereignty will cost us still more dearly.

 

Excellent, however, as these objections are in theory, in

practice they lose all force, as will be admitted if the

invincible strength be remembered of ideas transformed into

dogmas. The dogma of the sovereignty of crowds is as little

defensible, from the philosophical point of view, as the

religious dogmas of the Middle Ages, but it enjoys at present the

same absolute power they formerly enjoyed. It is as unattackable

in consequence as in the past were our religious ideas. Imagine

a modern freethinker miraculously transported into the midst of

the Middle Ages. Do you suppose that, after having ascertained

the sovereign power of the religious ideas that were then in

force, he would have been tempted to attack them? Having fallen

into the hands of a judge disposed to send him to the stake,

under the imputation of having concluded a pact with the devil,

or of having been present at the witches sabbath, would it have

occurred to him to call in question the existence of the devil or

of the sabbath? It were as wise to oppose cyclones with

discussion as the beliefs of crowds. The dogma of universal

suffrage possesses to-day the power the Christian dogmas formerly

possessed. Orators and writers allude to it with a respect and

adulation that never fell to the share of Louis XIV. In

consequence the same position must be taken up with regard to it

as with regard to all religious dogmas. Time alone can act upon

them.

 

Besides, it would be the more useless to attempt to undermine

this dogma, inasmuch as it has an appearance of reasonableness in

its favour. “In an era of equality,” Tocqueville justly remarks,

“men have no faith in each other on account of their being all

alike; yet this same similitude gives them an almost limitless

confidence in the judgment of the public, the reason being that

it does not appear probable that, all men being equally

enlightened, truth and numerical superiority should not go hand

in hand.”

 

Must it be believed that with a restricted suffrage—a suffrage

restricted to those intellectually capable if it be desired—an

improvement would be effected in the votes of crowds? I cannot

admit for a moment that this would be the case, and that for the

reasons I have already given touching the mental inferiority of

all collectivities, whatever their composition. In a crowd men

always tend to the same level, and, on general questions, a vote,

recorded by forty academicians is no better than that of forty

water-carriers. I do not in the least believe that any of the

votes for which universal suffrage is blamed—the

re-establishment of the Empire, for instance— would have fallen

out differently had the voters been exclusively recruited among

learned and liberally educated men. It does not follow because

an individual knows Greek or mathematics, is an architect, a

veterinary surgeon, a doctor, or a barrister, that he is endowed

with a special intelligence of social questions. All our

political economists are highly educated, being for the most part

professors or academicians, yet is there a single general

question—protection, bimetallism, &c.—on which they have

succeeded in agreeing? The explanation is that their science is

only a very attenuated form of our universal ignorance. With

regard to social problems, owing to the number of unknown

quantities they offer, men are substantially, equally ignorant.

 

In consequence, were the electorate solely composed of persons

stuffed with sciences their votes would be no better than those

emitted at present. They would be guided in the main by their

sentiments and by party spirit. We should be spared none of the

difficulties we now have to contend with, and we should certainly

be subjected to the oppressive tyranny of castes.

 

Whether the suffrage of crowds be restricted or general, whether

it be exercised under a republic or a monarchy, in France, in

Belgium, in Greece, in Portugal, or in Spain, it is everywhere

identical; and, when all is said and done, it is the expression

of the unconscious aspirations and needs of the race. In each

country the average opinions of those elected represent the

genius of the race, and they will be found not to alter sensibly

from one generation to another.

 

It is seen, then, that we are confronted once more by the

fundamental notion of race, which we have come across so often,

and on this other notion, which is the outcome of the first, that

institutions and governments play but a small part in the life of

a people. Peoples are guided in the main by the genius of their

race, that is, by that inherited residue of qualities of which

the genius is the sum total. Race and the slavery of our daily

necessities are the mysterious master-causes that rule our

destiny.