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

which

are completely erroneous, but whose result is THAT, IF THEIR

DESCRIPTIONS ARE ACCEPTED AS EXACT, the phenomena they describe

are inexplicable by trickery. The methods invented by Mr. Davey

were so simple that one is astonished that he should have had the

boldness to employ them; but he had such a power over the mind of

the crowd that he could persuade it that it saw what it did not

see.” Here, as always, we have the power of the hypnotiser over

the hypnotised. Moreover, when this power is seen in action on

minds of a superior order and previously invited to be

suspicious, it is understandable how easy it is to deceive

ordinary crowds.

 

Analogous examples are innumerable. As I write these lines the

papers are full of the story of two little girls found drowned in

the Seine. These children, to begin with, were recognised in the

most unmistakable manner by half a dozen witnesses. All the

affirmations were in such entire concordance that no doubt

remained in the mind of the juge d’instruction. He had the

certificate of death drawn up, but just as the burial of the

children was to have been proceeded with, a mere chance brought

about the discovery that the supposed victims were alive, and

had, moreover, but a remote resemblance to the drowned girls. As

in several of the examples previously cited, the affirmation of

the first witness, himself a victim of illusion, had sufficed to

influence the other witnesses.

 

In parallel cases the starting-point of the suggestion is always

the illusion produced in an individual by more or less vague

reminiscences, contagion following as the result of the

affirmation of this initial illusion. If the first observer be

very impressionable, it will often be sufficient that the corpse

he believes he recognises should present— apart from all real

resemblance—some peculiarity, a scar, or some detail of toilet

which may evoke the idea of another person. The idea evoked may

then become the nucleus of a sort of crystallisation which

invades the understanding and paralyses all critical faculty.

What the observer then sees is no longer the object itself, but

the image evoked in his mind. In this way are to be explained

erroneous recognitions of the dead bodies of children by their

own mother, as occurred in the following case, already old, but

which has been recently recalled by the newspapers. In it are to

be traced precisely the two kinds of suggestion of which I have

just pointed out the mechanism.

 

“The child was recognised by another child, who was mistaken.

The series of unwarranted recognitions then began.

 

“An extraordinary thing occurred. The day after a schoolboy had

recognised the corpse a woman exclaimed, `Good Heavens, it is my

child!’

 

“She was taken up to the corpse; she examined the clothing, and

noted a scar on the forehead. `It is certainly,’ she said, `my

son who disappeared last July. He has been stolen from me and

murdered.’

 

“The woman was concierge in the Rue du Four; her name was

Chavandret. Her brother-in-law was summoned, and when questioned

he said, `That is the little Filibert.’ Several persons living in

the street recognised the child found at La Villette as Filibert

Chavandret, among them being the boy’s schoolmaster, who based

his opinion on a medal worn by the lad.

 

“Nevertheless, the neighbours, the brother-in-law, the

schoolmaster, and the mother were mistaken. Six weeks later the

identity of the child was established. The boy, belonging to

Bordeaux, had been murdered there and brought by a carrying

company to Paris.”[4]

 

[4] L’Eclair, April 21, 1895.

 

It will be remarked that these recognitions are most often made

by women and children—that is to say, by precisely the most

impressionable persons. They show us at the same time what is

the worth in law courts of such witnesses. As far as children,

more especially, are concerned, their statements ought never to

be invoked. Magistrates are in the habit of repeating that

children do not lie. Did they possess a psychological culture a

little less rudimentary than is the case they would know that, on

the contrary, children invariably lie; the lie is doubtless

innocent, but it is none the less a lie. It would be better to

decide the fate of an accused person by the toss of a coin than,

as has been so often done, by the evidence of a child.

 

To return to the faculty of observation possessed by crowds, our

conclusion is that their collective observations are as erroneous

as possible, and that most often they merely represent the

illusion of an individual who, by a process of contagion, has

suggestioned his fellows. Facts proving that the most utter

mistrust of the evidence of crowds is advisable might be

multiplied to any extent. Thousands of men were present

twenty-five years ago at the celebrated cavalry charge during the

battle of Sedan, and yet it is impossible, in the face of the

most contradictory ocular testimony, to decide by whom it was

commanded. The English general, Lord Wolseley, has proved in a

recent book that up to now the gravest errors of fact have been

committed with regard to the most important incidents of the

battle of Waterloo—facts that hundreds of witnesses had

nevertheless attested.[5]

 

[5] Do we know in the case of one single battle exactly how it

took place? I am very doubtful on the point. We know who were

the conquerors and the conquered, but this is probably all. What

M. D’Harcourt has said with respect to the battle of Solferino,

which he witnessed and in which he was personally engaged, may be

applied to all battles—“The generals (informed, of course, by

the evidence of hundreds of witnesses) forward their official

reports; the orderly officers modify these documents and draw up

a definite narrative; the chief of the staff raises objections

and rewrites the whole on a fresh basis. It is carried to the

Marshal, who exclaims, `You are entirely in error,’ and he

substitutes a fresh edition. Scarcely anything remains of the

original report.” M. D’Harcourt relates this fact as proof of

the impossibility of establishing the truth in connection with

the most striking, the best observed events.

 

Such facts show us what is the value of the testimony of crowds.

Treatises on logic include the unanimity of numerous witnesses in

the category of the strongest proofs that can be invoked in

support of the exactness of a fact. Yet what we know of the

psychology of crowds shows that treatises on logic need on this

point to be rewritten. The events with regard to which there

exists the most doubt are certainly those which have been

observed by the greatest number of persons. To say that a fact

has been simultaneously verified by thousands of witnesses is to

say, as a rule, that the real fact is very different from the

accepted account of it.

 

It clearly results from what precedes that works of history must

be considered as works of pure imagination. They are fanciful

accounts of ill-observed facts, accompanied by explanations the

result of reflection. To write such books is the most absolute

waste of time. Had not the past left us its literary, artistic,

and monumental works, we should know absolutely nothing in

reality with regard to bygone times. Are we in possession of a

single word of truth concerning the lives of the great men who

have played preponderating parts in the history of humanity—men

such as Hercules, Buddha, or Mahomet? In all probability we are

not. In point of fact, moreover, their real lives are of slight

importance to us. Our interest is to know what our great men

were as they are presented by popular legend. It is legendary

heroes, and not for a moment real heroes, who have impressed the

minds of crowds.

 

Unfortunately, legends—even although they have been definitely

put on record by books—have in themselves no stability. The

imagination of the crowd continually transforms them as the

result of the lapse of time and especially in consequence of

racial causes. There is a great gulf fixed between the

sanguinary Jehovah of the Old Testament and the God of Love of

Sainte Therese, and the Buddha worshipped in China has no traits

in common with that venerated in India.

 

It is not even necessary that heroes should be separated from us

by centuries for their legend to be transformed by the

imagination of the crowd. The transformation occasionally takes

place within a few years. In our own day we have seen the legend

of one of the greatest heroes of history modified several times

in less than fifty years. Under the Bourbons Napoleon became a

sort of idyllic and liberal philanthropist, a friend of the

humble who, according to the poets, was destined to be long

remembered in the cottage. Thirty years afterwards this

easy-going hero had become a sanguinary despot, who, after having

usurped power and destroyed liberty, caused the slaughter of

three million men solely to satisfy his ambition. At present we

are witnessing a fresh transformation of the legend. When it has

undergone the influence of some dozens of centuries the learned

men of the future, face to face with these contradictory

accounts, will perhaps doubt the very existence of the hero, as

some of them now doubt that of Buddha, and will see in him

nothing more than a solar myth or a development of the legend of

Hercules. They will doubtless console themselves easily for this

uncertainty, for, better initiated than we are to-day in the

characteristics and psychology of crowds, they will know that

history is scarcely capable of preserving the memory of anything

except myths.

 

3. THE EXAGGERATION AND INGENUOUSNESS OF THE SENTIMENTS OF CROWDS.

 

Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be good or bad, they

present the double character of being very simple and very

exaggerated. On this point, as on so many others, an individual

in a crowd resembles primitive beings. Inaccessible to fine

distinctions, he sees things as a whole, and is blind to their

intermediate phases. The exaggeration of the sentiments of a

crowd is heightened by the fact that any feeling when once it is

exhibited communicating itself very quickly by a process of

suggestion and contagion, the evident approbation of which it is

the object considerably increases its force.

 

The simplicity and exaggeration of the sentiments of crowds have

for result that a throng knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.

Like women, it goes at once to extremes. A suspicion transforms

itself as soon as announced into incontrovertible evidence. A

commencement of antipathy or disapprobation, which in the case of

an isolated individual would not gain strength, becomes at once

furious hatred in the case of an individual in a crowd.

 

The violence of the feelings of crowds is also increased,

especially in heterogeneous crowds, by the absence of all sense

of responsibility. The certainty of impunity, a certainty the

stronger as the crowd is more numerous, and the notion of a

considerable momentary force due to number, make possible in the

case of crowds sentiments and acts impossible for the isolated

individual. In crowds the foolish, ignorant, and envious persons

are freed from the sense of their insignificance and

powerlessness, and are possessed instead by the notion of brutal

and temporary but immense strength.

 

Unfortunately, this tendency of crowds towards exaggeration is

often brought to bear upon bad sentiments. These sentiments are

atavistic residuum of the instincts of the primitive man, which

the fear of punishment obliges the isolated and responsible

individual to curb. Thus it is that crowds are so easily led

into the worst excesses.

 

Still this does not mean that crowds, skilfully influenced, are

not capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest

virtues; they are even more capable