2. How the Stability of the Racial Mind limits the
Oscillations of the Mind of the Crowd.
A people can in a sense be likened to a crowd. It possesses
certain characteristics, but the oscillations of these
characteristics are limited by the soul or mind of the race. The
mind of the race has a fixity unknown to the transitory mind of
the crowd.
When a people possesses an ancestral soul established by a
long past the soul of the crowd is always dominated thereby.
A people differs from a crowd also in that it is composed
of a collection of groups, each having different interests and
passions. In a crowd properly so-called—a popular assembly, for
example—there are unities which may belong to very different
social categories.
A people sometimes seems as mobile as a crowd, but we must
not forget that behind its mobility, its enthusiasms, its
violence and destructiveness, the extremely tenacious and
conservative instincts of the racial mind persist. The history
of the Revolution and the century which has followed shows how
the conservative spirit finally overcomes the spirit of
destruction. More than one system of government which the people
has shattered has been restored by the people.
It is not as easy to work upon the mind of the people—
that is, the mind of the race—as on the mind of a crowd. The
means of action are indirect and slower (journals, conferences,
speeches, books, &c.). The elements of persuasion always come
under the headings already given: affirmation, repetition,
prestige, and contagion.
Mental contagion may affect a whole people
instantaneously, but more often it operates slowly, creeping from
group to group. Thus was the Reformation propagated in France.
A people is far less excitable than a crowd; but certain
events—national insults, threats of invasion, &c.—may arouse it
instantly. Such a phenomenon was observed on several occasions
during the Revolution, notably at the time of the insolent
manifesto issued by the Duke of Brunswick. The Duke knew little
indeed of the psychology of the French race
when he proffered his threats. Not only did he considerably
prejudice the cause of Louis XVI.; but he also damaged his own,
since his intervention raised from the soil an army eager to
fight him.
This sudden explosion of feeling throughout a whole race
has been observed in all nations. Napoleon did not understand
the power of such explosions when he invaded Spain and Russia.
One may easily disaggregate the facile mind of a crowd, but one
can do nothing before the permanent soul of a race. Certainly
the Russian peasant is a very indifferent being, gross and narrow
by nature, yet at the first news of invasion he was transformed.
One may judge of this fact on reading a letter written by
Elizabeth, wife of the Emperor Alexander I.
“From the moment when Napoleon had crossed our
frontiers it was as though an electric spark had spread through
all Russia; and if the immensity of its area had made it possible
for the news to penetrate simultaneously to every corner of the
Empire a cry of indignation would have arisen so terrible that I
believe it would have resounded to the ends of the earth. As
Napoleon advances this feeling is growing yet stronger. Old men
who have lost all or nearly all their goods are saying: `We
shall find a way of living. Anything is preferable to a shameful
peace.' Women all of whose kin are in the army regard the
dangers they are running as secondary, and fear nothing but
peace. Happily this peace, which would be the death-warrant of
Russia, will not be negotiated; the Emperor does not conceive of
such an idea, and even if he would he could not. This is the
heroic side of our position.”
The Empress describes to her mother the two following
traits, which give some idea of the degree of resistance of
which the soul of the Russian is capable:—
“The Frenchmen had caught some unhappy peasants in
Moscow, whom they thought to force to serve in their ranks, and
in order that they should not be able to escape they branded
their hands as one brands horses in the stud. One of them asked
what this mark meant; he was told it signified that he was a
French soldier. `What! I am a soldier of the Emperor of the
French!' he said. And immediately he took his hatchet, cut off
his hand, and threw it at the feet of those present, saying,
`Take it—there's your mark!'
“At Moscow, too, the French had taken a score of
peasants of whom they wished to make an example in order to
frighten the villagers, who were picking off the French foraging
parties and were making war as well as the detachments of regular
troops. They ranged them against a wall and read their sentence
in Russian. They waited for them to beg for mercy: instead of
that they took farewell of one another and made their sign of the
cross. The French fired on the first of them; they waited for
the rest to beg for pardon in their terror, and to promise to
change their conduct. They fired on the second, and on the
third, and so on all the twenty, without a single one having
attempted to implore the clemency of the enemy. Napoleon
has not once had the pleasure of profaning this word in
Russia.”
Among the characteristics of the popular mind we must
mention that in all peoples and all ages it has
been saturated with mysticism. The people will always be
convinced that superior beings—divinities, Governments, or great
men—have the power to change things at will. This mystic side
produces an intense need of adoration. The people must have a
fetich, either a man or a doctrine. This is why, when threatened
with anarchy, it calls for a Messiah to save it.
Like the crowd, but more slowly, the people readily passes
from adoration to hatred. A man may be the hero of the people at
one period, and finally earn its curses. These variations of
popular opinion concerning political personalities may be
observed in all times. The history of Cromwell furnishes us with
a very curious example.5
