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

on the prestige possessed by the speaker, and not

at all on the arguments he brings forward. The best proof of

this is that when for one cause or another a speaker loses his

prestige, he loses simultaneously all his influence, that is, his

power of influencing votes at will.

 

When an unknown speaker comes forward with a speech containing

good arguments, but only arguments, the chances are that he will

only obtain a hearing. A Deputy who is a psychologist of

insight, M. Desaubes, has recently traced in the following lines

the portrait of the Deputy who lacks prestige:—

 

“When he takes his place in the tribune he draws a document from

his portfolio, spreads it out methodically before him, and makes

a start with assurance.

 

“He flatters himself that he will implant in the minds of his

audience the conviction by which he is himself animated. He has

weighed and reweighed his arguments; he is well primed with

figures and proofs; he is certain he will convince his hearers.

In the face of the evidence he is to adduce all resistance would

be futile. He begins, confident in the justice of his cause, and

relying upon the attention of his colleagues, whose only anxiety,

of course, is to subscribe to the truth.

 

“He speaks, and is at once surprised at the restlessness of the

House, and a little annoyed by the noise that is being made.

 

“How is it silence is not kept? Why this general inattention?

What are those Deputies thinking about who are engaged in

conversation? What urgent motive has induced this or that Deputy

to quit his seat?

 

“An expression of uneasiness crosses his face; he frowns and

stops. Encouraged by the President, he begins again, raising his

voice. He is only listened to all the less. He lends emphasis

to his words, and gesticulates: the noise around him increases.

He can no longer hear himself, and again stops; finally, afraid

that his silence may provoke the dreaded cry, `The Closure!’ he

starts off again. The clamour becomes unbearable.”

 

When parliamentary assemblies reach a certain pitch of excitement

they become identical with ordinary heterogeneous crowds, and

their sentiments in consequence present the peculiarity of being

always extreme. They will be seen to commit acts of the greatest

heroism or the worst excesses. The individual is no longer

himself, and so entirely is this the case that he will vote

measures most adverse to his personal interests.

 

The history of the French Revolution shows to what an extent

assemblies are capable of losing their self-consciousness, and of

obeying suggestions most contrary to their interests. It was an

enormous sacrifice for the nobility to renounce its privileges,

yet it did so without hesitation on a famous night during the

sittings of the Constituant Assembly. By renouncing their

inviolability the men of the Convention placed themselves under a

perpetual menace of death and yet they took this step, and were

not afraid to decimate their own ranks, though perfectly aware

that the scaffold to which they were sending their colleagues

to-day might be their own fate to-morrow. The truth is they had

attained to that completely automatic state which I have

described elsewhere, and no consideration would hinder them from

yielding to the suggestions by which they were hypnotised. The

following passage from the memoirs of one of them,

Billaud-Varennes, is absolutely typical on this score: “The

decisions with which we have been so reproached,” he says, “WERE

NOT DESIRED BY US TWO DAYS, A SINGLE DAY BEFORE THEY WERE TAKEN:

IT WAS THE CRISIS AND NOTHING ELSE THAT GAVE RISE TO THEM.”

Nothing can be more accurate.

 

The same phenomena of unconsciousness were to be witnessed during

all the stormy sittings of the Convention.

 

“They approved and decreed measures,” says Taine, “which they

held in horror—measures which were not only stupid and foolish,

but measures that were crimes—the murder of innocent men, the

murder of their friends. The Left, supported by the Right,

unanimously and amid loud applause, sent to the scaffold Danton,

its natural chief, and the great promoter and leader of the

Revolution. Unanimously and amid the greatest applause the

Right, supported by the Left, votes the worst decrees of the

revolutionary government. Unanimously and amid cries of

admiration and enthusiasm, amid demonstrations of passionate

sympathy for Collot d’Herbois, Couthon, and Robespierre, the

Convention by spontaneous and repeated re-elections keeps in

office the homicidal government which the Plain detests because

it is homicidal, and the Mountain detests because it is decimated

by it. The Plain and the Mountain, the majority and the

minority, finish by consenting to help on their own suicide. The

22 Prairial the entire Convention offered itself to the

executioner; the 8 Thermidor, during the first quarter of an hour

that followed Robespierre’s speech, it did the same thing again.”

 

This picture may appear sombre. Yet it is accurate.

Parliamentary assemblies, sufficiently excited and hypnotised,

offer the same characteristics. They become an unstable flock,

obedient to every impulsion. The following description of the

Assembly of 1848 is due to M. Spuller, a parliamentarian whose

faith in democracy is above suspicion. I reproduce it from the

Revue litteraire, and it is thoroughly typical. It offers an

example of all the exaggerated sentiments which I have described

as characteristic of crowds, and of that excessive changeableness

which permits of assemblies passing, from moment to moment, from

one set of sentiments to another entirely opposite.

 

“The Republican party was brought to its perdition by its

divisions, its jealousies, its suspicions, and, in turn, its

blind confidence and its limitless hopes. Its ingenuousness and

candour were only equalled by its universal mistrust. An absence

of all sense of legality, of all comprehension of discipline,

together with boundless terrors and illusions; the peasant and

the child are on a level in these respects. Their calm is as

great as their impatience; their ferocity is equal to their

docility. This condition is the natural consequence of a

temperament that is not formed and of the lack of education.

Nothing astonishes such persons, and everything disconcerts them.

Trembling with fear or brave to the point of heroism, they would

go through fire and water or fly from a shadow.

 

“They are ignorant of cause and effect and of the connecting

links between events. They are as promptly discouraged as they

are exalted, they are subject to every description of panic, they

are always either too highly strung or too downcast, but never in

the mood or the measure the situation would require. More fluid

than water they reflect every line and assume every shape. What

sort of a foundation for a government can they be expected to

supply?”

 

Fortunately all the characteristics just described as to be met

with in parliamentary assemblies are in no wise constantly

displayed. Such assemblies only constitute crowds at certain

moments. The individuals composing them retain their

individuality in a great number of cases, which explains how it

is that an assembly is able to turn out excellent technical laws.

It is true that the author of these laws is a specialist who has

prepared them in the quiet of his study, and that in reality the

law voted is the work of an individual and not of an assembly.

These laws are naturally the best. They are only liable to have

disastrous results when a series of amendments has converted them

into the outcome of a collective effort. The work of a crowd is

always inferior, whatever its nature, to that of an isolated

individual. It is specialists who safeguard assemblies from

passing ill-advised or unworkable measures. The specialist in

this case is a temporary leader of crowds. The Assembly is

without influence on him, but he has influence over the Assembly.

 

In spite of all the difficulties attending their working,

parliamentary assemblies are the best form of government mankind

has discovered as yet, and more especially the best means it has

found to escape the yoke of personal tyrannies. They constitute

assuredly the ideal government at any rate for philosophers,

thinkers, writers, artists, and learned men—in a word, for all

those who form the cream of a civilisation.

 

Moreover, in reality they only present two serious dangers, one

being inevitable financial waste, and the other the progressive

restriction of the liberty of the individual.

 

The first of these dangers is the necessary consequence of the

exigencies and want of foresight of electoral crowds. Should a

member of an assembly propose a measure giving apparent

satisfaction to democratic ideas, should he bring in a Bill, for

instance, to assure old-age pensions to all workers, and to

increase the wages of any class of State employes, the other

Deputies, victims of suggestion in their dread of their electors,

will not venture to seem to disregard the interests of the latter

by rejecting the proposed measure, although well aware they are

imposing a fresh strain on the Budget and necessitating the

creation of new taxes. It is impossible for them to hesitate to

give their votes. The consequences of the increase of

expenditure are remote and will not entail disagreeable

consequences for them personally, while the consequences of a

negative vote might clearly come to light when they next present

themselves for re-election.

 

In addition to this first cause of an exaggerated expenditure

there is another not less imperative—the necessity of voting all

grants for local purposes. A Deputy is unable to oppose grants

of this kind because they represent once more the exigencies of

the electors, and because each individual Deputy can only obtain

what he requires for his own constituency on the condition of

acceding to similar demands on the part of his colleagues.[29]

 

[29] In its issue of April 6, 1895, the Economiste published a

curious review of the figures that may be reached by expenditure

caused solely by electoral considerations, and notably of the

outlay on railways. To put Langayes (a town of 3,000

inhabitants, situated on a mountain) in communication with Puy, a

railway is voted that will cost 15 millions of francs. Seven

millions are to be spent to put Beaumont (3,500 inhabitants) in

communication with Castel-Sarrazin; 7 millions to put Oust (a

village of 523 inhabitants) in communication with Seix (1,200

inhabitants); 6 millions to put Prade in communication with the

hamlet of Olette (747 inhabitants), &c. In 1895 alone 90

millions of francs were voted for railways of only local utility.

There is other no less important expenditure necessitated also by

electioneering considerations. The law instituting workingmen’s

pensions will soon involve a minimum annual outlay of 165

millions, according to the Minister of Finance, and of 800

millions according to the academician M. Leroy-Beaulieu. It is

evident that the continued growth of expenditure of this kind

must end in bankruptcy. Many European countries—Portugal,

Greece, Spain, Turkey—have reached this stage, and others, such

as Italy, will soon be reduced to the same extremity. Still too

much alarm need not be felt at this state of things, since the

public has successively consented to put up with the reduction of

four-fifths in the payment of their coupons by these different

countries. Bankruptcy under these ingenious conditions allows

the equilibrium of Budgets difficult to balance to be instantly

restored. Moreover, wars, socialism, and economic conflicts hold

in store for us a profusion of other catastrophes in the period

of universal disintegration we are traversing, and it is

necessary to be resigned to living from hand to mouth without too

much concern for a future we cannot control.

 

The second of the dangers referred to above—the inevitable

restrictions on liberty consummated by parliamentary

assemblies—is apparently less obvious, but is, nevertheless,

very real. It is the result of the innumerable laws—having

always a restrictive action—which parliaments consider

themselves obliged to vote and to whose consequences, owing to

their shortsightedness, they are in