CHAPTER I.
REMOTE FACTORS OF THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS.
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind | ||
§ 1. RACE.
This factor, race, must be placed in the first rank, for in itself it far surpasses in importance all the others. We have sufficiently studied it in another work; it is therefore needless to deal with it again.
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The novelty of this proposition being still considerable and history being quite unintelligible without it, I devoted four chapters to its demonstration in my last book ("The Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples"). From it the reader will see that, in spite of fallacious appearances, neither language, religion, arts, or, in a word, any element of civilisation, can pass, intact, from one people to another.
Environment, circumstances, and events represent the social suggestions of the moment. They may have a considerable influence, but this influence is always momentary if it be contrary to the suggestions of the race; that is, to those which are inherited by a nation from the entire series of its ancestors.
We shall have occasion in several of the chapters of this work to touch again upon racial influence, and to show that this influence is so great that it dominates the characteristics peculiar to the genius of crowds. It follows from this fact that the crowds of different countries offer very considerable differences of beliefs and conduct and are not to be influenced in the same manner.
CHAPTER I.
REMOTE FACTORS OF THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDS.
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind | ||