4. The Rôle of the Leader in Revolutionary
Movements.
All the varieties of crowds—homogeneous and
heterogeneous, assemblies, peoples, clubs, &c.—are, as we have
often repeated, aggregates incapable of unity and action so long
as they find no master to lead them.
I have shown elsewhere, making use of certain
physiological experiments, that the unconscious collective mind
of the crowd seems bound up with the mind of the leader. The
latter gives it a single will and imposes absolute obedience.
The leader acts especially through suggestion. His
success depends on his fashion of provoking this suggestion.
Many experiments have shown to what point a collectivity may be
subjected to suggestion.6
According to the suggestions of the leaders, the multitude
will be calm, furious, criminal, or heroic. These various
suggestions may sometimes appear to present a rational aspect,
but they will only appear to be reasonable. A crowd is in
reality inaccessible to reason; the only ideas capable of
influencing it will always be sentiments evoked in the form of
images.
The history of the Revolution shows on every page how
easily the multitude follows the most
contradictory impulses given by its different leaders. We see it
applaud just as vigorously at the triumph of the Girondists, the
Hébertists, the Dantonists, and the Terrorists as at their
successive downfalls. One may be quite sure, also, that the
crowd understood nothing of these events.
At a distance one can only confusedly perceive the part
played by the leaders, for they commonly work in the shade. To
grasp this clearly we must study them in contemporary events. We
shall then see how readily the leader can provoke the most
violent popular movements. We are not thinking here of the
strikes of the postmen or railway men, in which the discontent of
the employees might intervene, but of events in which the crowd
was not in the least interested. Such, for example, was the
popular rising provoked by a few Socialist leaders amidst the
Parisian populace on the morrow of the execution of Ferrer, in
Spain. The French crowd had never heard of Ferrer. In Spain his
execution was almost unnoticed. In Paris the incitements of a
few leaders sufficed to hurl a regular popular army upon the
Spanish Embassy, with the intention of burning it. Part of the
garrison had to be employed to protect it. Energetically
repulsed, the assailants contented themselves with sacking a few
shops and building some barricades.
At the same time, the leaders gave another proof of their
influence. Finally understanding that the burning of a foreign
embassy might be extremely dangerous, they ordered a pacific
demonstration for the following day, and were as faithfully
obeyed as if they had ordered the most violent riot. No
example could better show the importance of leaders and the
submission of the crowd
The historians who, from Michelet to M. Aulard, have
represented the revolutionary crowd as having acted on its own
initiative, without leaders, do not comprehend its psychology.
