The Crowd - Gustave le Bon (classic fiction .txt) 📗
- Author: Gustave le Bon
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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.
PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLIES
Parliamentary crowds present most of the characteristics common
to heterogeneous crowds that are not anonymous—The simplicity of
their opinions—Their suggestibility and its limits—Their
indestructible, fixed opinions and their changed opinions—The
reason of the predominance of indecision—The role of the
leaders—The reason of their prestige—They are the true masters
of an assembly whose votes, on that account, are merely those of
a small minority—The absolute power they exercise—The elements
of their oratorical art—Phrases and images—The psychological
necessity the leaders are under of being in a general way of
stubborn convictions and narrow-minded—It is impossible for a
speaker without prestige to obtain recognition for his
arguments— The exaggeration of the sentiments, whether good or
bad, of assemblies— At certain moments they become
automatic—The sittings of the Convention—Cases in which an
assembly loses the characteristics of crowds—The influence of
specialists when technical questions arise—The advantages and
dangers of a parliamentary system in all countries—It is adapted
to modern needs; but it involves financial waste and the
progressive curtailment of all liberty—Conclusion.
In parliamentary assemblies we have an example of heterogeneous
crowds that are not anonymous. Although the mode of election of
their members varies from epoch to epoch, and from nation to
nation, they present very similar characteristics. In this case
the influence of the race makes itself felt to weaken or
exaggerate the characteristics common to crowds, but not to
prevent their manifestation. The parliamentary assemblies of the
most widely different countries, of Greece, Italy, Portugal,
Spain, France, and America present great analogies in their
debates and votes, and leave the respective governments face to
face with identical difficulties.
Moreover, the parliamentary system represents the ideal of all
modern civilised peoples. The system is the expression of the
idea, psychologically erroneous, but generally admitted, that a
large gathering of men is much more capable than a small number
of coming to a wise and independent decision on a given subject.
The general characteristics of crowds are to be met with in
parliamentary assemblies: intellectual simplicity, irritability,
suggestibility, the exaggeration of the sentiments and the
preponderating influence of a few leaders. In consequence,
however, of their special composition parliamentary crowds offer
some distinctive features, which we shall point out shortly.
Simplicity in their opinions is one of their most important
characteristics. In the case of all parties, and more especially
so far as the Latin peoples are concerned, an invariable tendency
is met with in crowds of this kind to solve the most complicated
social problems by the simplest abstract principles and general
laws applicable to all cases. Naturally the principles vary with
the party; but owing to the mere fact that the individual members
are a part of a crowd, they are always inclined to exaggerate the
worth of their principles, and to push them to their extreme
consequences. In consequence parliaments are more especially
representative of extreme opinions.
The most perfect example of the ingenuous simplification of
opinions peculiar to assemblies is offered by the Jacobins of the
French Revolution. Dogmatic and logical to a man, and their
brains full of vague generalities, they busied themselves with
the application of fixed-principles without concerning themselves
with events. It has been said of them, with reason, that they
went through the Revolution without witnessing it. With the aid
of the very simple dogmas that served them as guide, they
imagined they could recast society from top to bottom, and cause
a highly refined civilisation to return to a very anterior phase
of the social evolution. The methods they resorted to to realise
their dream wore the same stamp of absolute ingenuousness. They
confined themselves, in reality, to destroying what stood in
their way. All of them, moreover—Girondists, the Men of the
Mountain, the Thermidorians, &c.—were
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