§ 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 of showing these qualities than the isolated
individual. We shall soon have occasion to revert to this point when we
come to study the morality of crowds.
Given to exaggeration in its feelings, a crowd is only impressed by
excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an
abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to
resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by
reasoning are methods of
argument well known to speakers at public
meetings.
Moreover, a crowd exacts a like exaggeration in the sentiments of
its heroes. Their apparent qualities and virtues must always be
amplified. It has been justly remarked that on the stage a crowd
demands from the hero of the piece a degree of courage, morality, and
virtue that is never to be found in real life.
Quite rightly importance has been laid on the special standpoint
from which matters are viewed in the theatre. Such a standpoint exists
no doubt, but its rules for the most part have nothing to do with common
sense and logic. The art of appealing to crowds is no doubt of an
inferior order, but it demands quite special aptitudes. It is often
impossible on reading plays to explain their success. Managers of
theatres when accepting pieces are themselves, as a rule, very uncertain
of their success, because to judge the matter it would be necessary that
they should be able to transform themselves into a crowd.
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It is understandable for this reason why it sometimes happens
that pieces refused by all theatrical managers obtain a prodigious
success when by a stroke of chance they are put on the stage. The
recent success of Francois Coppée's play "Pour la Couronne" is well
known, and yet, in spite of the name of its author, it was refused
during ten years by the managers of the principal Parisian theatres.
"Charley's
Aunt," refused at every theatre, and finally staged at
the expense of a stockbroker, has had two hundred representations in
France, and more than a thousand in London. Without the explanation
given above of the impossibility for theatrical managers to mentally
substitute themselves for a crowd, such mistakes in judgment on the part
of competent individuals, who are most interested not to commit such
grave blunders, would be inexplicable. This is a subject that I cannot
deal with here, but it might worthily tempt the pen of a writer
acquainted with theatrical matters, and at the same time a subtle
psychologist — of such a writer, for instance, as M. Francisque Sarcey.
Here, once more, were we able to embark on more extensive
explanations, we should show the preponderating influence of racial
considerations. A play which provokes the enthusiasm of the crowd in
one country has sometimes no success in another, or has only a partial
and conventional success, because it does not put in operation influences
capable of working on an altered public.
I need not add that the tendency to exaggeration in crowds is only
present in the case of sentiments and not at all in the matter of
intelligence. I have already shown that, by the mere fact that an individual
forms part of a crowd, his intellectual standard is immediately
and considerably lowered. A learned magistrate, M. Tarde, has also
verified this fact in his researches on the crimes of crowds. It is
only, then, with respect to sentiment that crowds can rise to a very
high or, on the contrary, descend to a very low level.
