1. General Characteristics of the Crowd.
WHATEVER their origin, revolutions do not produce their full
effects until they have penetrated the soul of the multitude.
They therefore represent a consequence of the psychology of
crowds.
Although I have studied collective psychology at length in
another volume, I must here recall its principal laws.
Man, as part of a multitude, is a very different being
from the same man as an isolated individual. His conscious
individuality vanishes in the unconscious personality of the
crowd.
Material contact is not absolutely necessary to produce in
the individual the mentality of the crowd. Common passions and
sentiments, provoked by certain events, are often sufficient to
create it.
The collective mind, momentarily formed, represents a very
special kind of aggregate. Its chief peculiarity is that it is
entirely dominated by unconscious elements, and is subject to a
peculiar collective logic.
Among the other characteristics of crowds, we must note
their infinite credulity and exaggerated sensibility, their
short-sightedness, and their incapacity
to respond to the influences of reason. Affirmation, contagion,
repetition, and prestige constitute almost the only means of
persuading them. Reality and experience have no effect upon
them. The multitude will admit anything; nothing is impossible
in the eyes of the crowd.
By reason of the extreme sensibility of crowds, their
sentiments, good or bad, are always exaggerated. This
exaggeration increases still further in times of revolution. The
least excitement will then lead the multitude to act with the
utmost fury. Their credulity, so great even in the normal state,
is still further increased; the most improbable statements are
accepted. Arthur Young relates that when he visited the springs
near Clermont, at the time of the French Revolution, his guide
was stopped by the people, who were persuaded that he had come by
order of the Queen to mine and blow up the town. The most
horrible tales concerning the Royal Family were circulated,
depicting it as a nest of ghouls and vampires.
These various characteristics show that man in the crowd
descends to a very low degree in the scale of civilisation. He
becomes a savage, with all a savage's faults and qualities, with
all his momentary violence, enthusiasm, and heroism. In the
intellectual domain a crowd is always inferior to the isolated
unit. In the moral and sentimental domain it may be his
superior. A crowd will commit a crime as readily as an act of
abnegation.
Personal characteristics vanish in the crowd, which exerts
an extraordinary influence upon the individuals which form it.
The miser becomes generous, the
sceptic a believer, the honest man a criminal, the coward a hero.
Examples of such transformations abounded during the great
Revolution.
As part of a jury or a parliament, the collective man
renders verdicts or passes laws of which he would never have
dreamed in his isolated condition.
One of the most notable consequences of the influence of a
collectivity upon the individuals who compose it is the
unification of their sentiments and wills. This psychological
unity confers a remarkable force upon crowds.
The formation of such a mental unity results chiefly from
the fact that in a crowd gestures and actions are extremely
contagious. Acclamations of hatred, fury, or love are
immediately approved and repeated.
What is the origin of these common sentiments, this common
will? They are propagated by contagion, but a point of departure
is necessary before this contagion can take effect. Without a
leader the crowd is an amorphous entity incapable of action.
A knowledge of the laws relating to the psychology of
crowds is indispensable to the interpretation of the elements of
our Revolution, and to a comprehension of the conduct of
revolutionary assemblies, and the singular transformations of the
individuals who form part of them. Pushed by the unconscious
forces of the collective soul, they more often than not say what
they did not intend, and vote what they would not have wished to
vote.
Although the laws of collective psychology have sometimes
been divined instinctively by superior statesmen, the majority of
Governments have not
understood and do not understand them. It is because they do not
understand them that so many of them have fallen so easily. When
we see the facility with which certain Governments were over-thrown by an insignificant riot—as happened in the case of the
monarchy of Louis-Philippe—the dangers of an ignorance of
collective psychology are evident. The marshal in command of the
troops in 1848, which were more than sufficient to defend the
king, certainly did not understand that the moment he allowed the
crowd to mingle with the troops the latter, paralysed by
suggestion and contagion, would cease to do their duty. Neither
did he know that as the multitude is extremely sensible to
prestige it needs a great display of force to impress it, and
that such a display will at once suppress hostile demonstrations.
He was equally ignorant of the fact that all gatherings should be
dispersed immediately. All these things have been taught by
experience, but in 1848 these lessons had not been grasped. At
the time of the great Revolution the psychology of crowds was
even less understood.
