The following work is devoted to an account of the
characteristics of crowds.
The whole of the common characteristics with which heredity
endows the individuals of a race constitute the genius of the race.
When, however, a certain number of these individuals are gathered
together in a crowd for purposes of action, observation proves
that, from the mere fact of their being assembled, there result
certain new psychological characteristics, which are added to the
racial characteristics and differ from them at times to a very
considerable degree.
Organised crowds have always played an important part in the
life of peoples, but this part has never been of such moment as at
present. The substitution of the unconscious action of crowds for
the conscious activity of individuals is one of the principal
characteristics of the present age.
I have endeavoured to examine the difficult problem presented
by crowds in a purely scientific manner—that is, by making an
effort to proceed with method, and without being influenced by
opinions, theories, and doctrines. This, I believe, is the only
mode of arriving at the discovery of some few particles of truth,
especially when dealing, as is the case here, with a question that
is the subject of impassioned controversy. A man of science bent on
verifying a phenomenon is not called upon to concern himself with
the interests his verifications may hurt. In a recent publication
an eminent thinker, M. Goblet d'Alviela, made the remark that,
belonging to none of the contemporary schools, I am occasionally
found in opposition of sundry of the conclusions of all of them. I
hope this new work will merit a similar observation. To belong to a
school is necessarily to espouse its prejudices and preconceived
opinions.
Still I should explain to the reader why he will find me draw
conclusions from my investigations which it might be thought at
first sight they do not bear; why, for instance, after noting the
extreme mental inferiority of crowds, picked assemblies included, I
yet affirm it would be dangerous to meddle with their organisation,
notwithstanding this inferiority.
The reason is, that the most attentive observation of the
facts of history has invariably demonstrated to me that social
organisms being every whit as complicated as those of all beings,
it is in no wise in our power to force them to undergo on a sudden
far-reaching transformations. Nature has recourse at times to
radical measures, but never after our fashion, which explains how
it is that nothing is more fatal to a people than the mania for
great reforms, however excellent these reforms may appear
theoretically. They would only be useful were it possible to change
instantaneously the genius of nations. This power, however, is only
possessed by time. Men are ruled by ideas, sentiments, and
customs—matters which are of the essence of ourselves. Institutions
and laws are the outward manifestation of our character, the
expression of its needs. Being its outcome, institutions and laws
cannot change this character.
The study of social phenomena cannot be separated from that
of the peoples among whom they have come into existence. From the
philosophic point of view these phenomena may have an absolute
value; in practice they have only a relative value.
It is necessary, in consequence, when studying a social
phenomenon, to consider it successively under two very different
aspects. It will then be seen that the teachings of pure reason are
very often contrary to those of practical reason. There are
scarcely any data, even physical, to which this distinction is not
applicable. From the point of view of absolute truth a cube or a
circle are invariable geometrical figures, rigorously defined by
certain formulas. From the point of view of the impression they
make on our eye these geometrical figures may assume very varied
shapes. By perspective the cube may be transformed into a pyramid
or a square, the circle into an ellipse or a straight line.
Moreover, the consideration of these fictitious shapes is far more
important than that of the real shapes, for it is they and they
alone that we see and that can be reproduced by photography or in
pictures. In certain cases there is more truth in the unreal than
in the real. To present objects with their exact geometrical forms
would be to distort nature and render it unrecognisable. If we
imagine a world whose inhabitants could only copy or photograph
objects, but were unable to touch them, it would be very difficult
for such persons to attain to an exact idea of their form.
Moreover, the knowledge of this form, accessible only to a small
number of learned men, would present but a very minor
interest.
The philosopher who studies social phenomena should bear in
mind that side by side with their theoretical value they possess a
practical value, and that this latter, so far as the evolution of
civilisation is concerned, is alone of importance. The recognition
of this fact should render him very circumspect with regard to the
conclusions that logic would seem at first to enforce upon
him.
There are other motives that dictate to him a like reserve.
The complexity of social facts is such, that it is impossible to
grasp them as a whole and to foresee the effects of their
reciprocal influence. It seems, too, that behind the visible facts
are hidden at times thousands of invisible causes. Visible social
phenomena appear to be the result of an immense, unconscious
working, that as a rule is beyond the reach of our analysis.
Perceptible phenomena may be compared to the waves, which are the
expression on the surface of the ocean of deep-lying disturbances
of which we know nothing. So far as the majority of their acts are
considered, crowds display a singularly inferior mentality; yet
there are other acts in which they appear to be guided by those
mysterious forces which the ancients denominated destiny, nature,
or providence, which we call the voices of the dead, and whose
power it is impossible to overlook, although we ignore their
essence. It would seem, at times, as if there were latent forces in
the inner being of nations which serve to guide them. What, for
instance, can be more complicated, more logical, more marvellous
than a language? Yet whence can this admirably organised production
have arisen, except it be the outcome of the unconscious genius of
crowds? The most learned academics, the most esteemed grammarians
can do no more than note down the laws that govern languages; they
would be utterly incapable of creating them. Even with respect to
the ideas of great men are we certain that they are exclusively the
offspring of their brains? No doubt such ideas are always created
by solitary minds, but is it not the genius of crowds that has
furnished the thousands of grains of dust forming the soil in which
they have sprung up?
Crowds, doubtless, are always unconscious, but this very
unconsciousness is perhaps one of the secrets of their strength. In
the natural world beings exclusively governed by instinct
accomplish acts whose marvellous complexity astounds us. Reason is
an attribute of humanity of too recent date and still too imperfect
to reveal to us the laws of the unconscious, and still more to take
its place. The part played by the unconscious in all our acts is
immense, and that played by reason very small. The unconscious acts
like a force still unknown.
If we wish, then, to remain within the narrow but safe limits
within which science can attain to knowledge, and not to wander in
the domain of vague conjecture and vain hypothesis, all we must do
is simply to take note of such phenomena as are accessible to us,
and confine ourselves to their consideration. Every conclusion
drawn from our observation is, as a rule, premature, for behind the
phenomena which we see clearly are other phenomena that we see
indistinctly, and perhaps behind these latter, yet others which we
do not see at all.
The evolution of the present age—The great changes in
civilisation are the consequence of changes in National
thought—Modern belief in the power of crowds—It transforms the
traditional policy of the European states—How the rise of the
popular classes comes about, and the manner in which they exercise
their power—The necessary consequences of the power of the
crowd—Crowds unable to play a part other than destructive—The
dissolution of worn-out civilisations is the work of the
crowd—General ignorance of the psychology of crowds— Importance of
the study of crowds for legislators and statesmen.
The great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations
such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the
Arabian Empire, seem at first sight determined more especially by
political transformations, foreign invasion, or the overthrow of
dynasties. But a more attentive study of these events shows that
behind their apparent causes the real cause is generally seen to be
a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples. The true
historical upheavals are not those which astonish us by their
grandeur and violence. The only important changes whence the
renewal of civilisations results, affect ideas, conceptions, and
beliefs. The memorable events of history are the visible effects of
the invisible changes of human thought. The reason these great
events are so rare is that there is nothing so stable in a race as
the inherited groundwork of its thoughts.
The present epoch is one of these critical moments in which
the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of
transformation.
Two fundamental factors are at the base of this
transformation. The first is the destruction of those religious,
political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our
civilisation are rooted. The second is the creation of entirely new
conditions of existence and thought as the result of modern
scientific and industrial discoveries.
The ideas of the past, although half destroyed, being still
very powerful, and the ideas which are to replace them being still
in process of formation, the modern age represents a period of
transition and anarchy.
It is not easy to say as yet what will one day be evolved
from this necessarily somewhat chaotic period. What will be the
fundamental ideas on which the societies that are to succeed our
own will be built up? We do not at present know. Still it is
already clear that on whatever lines the societies of the future
are organised, they will have to count with a new power, with the
last surviving sovereign force of modern times, the power of
crowds. On the ruins of so many ideas formerly considered beyond
discussion, and to-day decayed or decaying, of so many sources of
authority that successive revolutions have destroyed, this power,
which alone has arisen in their stead, seems soon destined to
absorb the others. While all our ancient beliefs are tottering and
disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way one
by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing
menaces, and of which the prestige is continually on the increase.
The age we are about to enter will in truth be the ERA OF
CROWDS.
Scarcely a century ago the traditional policy of European
states and the rivalries of sovereigns were the principal factors
that shaped events. The opinion of the masses scarcely counted, and
most frequently indeed did not count at all. To-day it is the
traditions which used to obtain in politics, and the individual
tendencies and rivalries of rulers which do not count; while, on
the contrary, the voice of the masses has become preponderant. It
is this voice that dictates their conduct to kings, whose endeavour
is to take note of its utterances. The destinies of nations are
elaborated at present in the heart of the masses, and no longer in
the councils of princes.
The entry of the popular classes into political life—that is
to say, in reality, their progressive transformation into governing
classes—is one of the most striking characteristics of our epoch of
transition. The introduction of universal suffrage, which exercised
for a long time but little influence, is not, as might be thought,
the distinguishing feature of this transference of political power.
The progressive growth of the power of the masses took place at
first by the propagation of certain ideas, which have slowly
implanted themselves in men's minds, and afterwards by the gradual
association of individuals bent on bringing about the realisation
of theoretical conceptions. It is by association that crowds have
come to procure ideas with respect to their interests which are
very clearly defined if not particularly just, and have arrived at
a consciousness of their strength. The masses are founding
syndicates before which the authorities capitulate one after the
other; they are also founding labour unions, which in spite of all
economic laws tend to regulate the conditions of labour and wages.
They return to assemblies in which the Government is vested,
representatives utterly lacking initiative and independence, and
reduced most often to nothing else than the spokesmen of the
committees that have chosen them.
To-day the claims of the masses are becoming more and more
sharply defined, and amount to nothing less than a determination to
utterly destroy society as it now exists, with a view to making it
hark back to that primitive communism which was the normal
condition of all human groups before the dawn of civilisation.
Limitations of the hours of labour, the nationalisation of mines,
railways, factories, and the soil, the equal distribution of all
products, the elimination of all the upper classes for the benefit
of the popular classes, &c., such are these
claims.
Little adapted to reasoning, crowds, on the contrary, are
quick to act. As the result of their present organisation their
strength has become immense. The dogmas whose birth we are
witnessing will soon have the force of the old dogmas; that is to
say, the tyrannical and sovereign force of being above discussion.
The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right
of kings.
The writers who enjoy the favour of our middle classes, those
who best represent their rather narrow ideas, their somewhat
prescribed views, their rather superficial scepticism, and their at
times somewhat excessive egoism, display profound alarm at this new
power which they see growing; and to combat the disorder in men's
minds they are addressing despairing appeals to those moral forces
of the Church for which they formerly professed so much disdain.
They talk to us of the bankruptcy of science, go back in penitence
to Rome, and remind us of the teachings of revealed truth. These
new converts forget that it is too late. Had they been really
touched by grace, a like operation could not have the same
influence on minds less concerned with the preoccupations which
beset these recent adherents to religion. The masses repudiate
to-day the gods which their admonishers repudiated yesterday and
helped to destroy. There is no power, Divine or human, that can
oblige a stream to flow back to its source.
There has been no bankruptcy of science, and science has had
no share in the present intellectual anarchy, nor in the making of
the new power which is springing up in the midst of this anarchy.
Science promised us truth, or at least a knowledge of such
relations as our intelligence can seize: it never promised us peace
or happiness. Sovereignly indifferent to our feelings, it is deaf
to our lamentations. It is for us to endeavour to live with
science, since nothing can bring back the illusions it has
destroyed.
Universal symptoms, visible in all nations, show us the rapid
growth of the power of crowds, and do not admit of our supposing
that it is destined to cease growing at an early date. Whatever
fate it may reserve for us, we shall have to submit to it. All
reasoning against it is a mere vain war of words. Certainly it is
possible that the advent to power of the masses marks one of the
last stages of Western civilisation, a complete return to those
periods of confused anarchy which seem always destined to precede
the birth of every new society. But may this result be
prevented?
Up to now these thoroughgoing destructions of a worn-out
civilisation have constituted the most obvious task of the masses.
It is not indeed to-day merely that this can be traced. History
tells us, that from the moment when the moral forces on which a
civilisation rested have lost their strength, its final dissolution
is brought about by those unconscious and brutal crowds known,
justifiably enough, as barbarians. Civilisations as yet have only
been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy,
never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their
rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase. A civilisation
involves fixed rules, discipline, a passing from the instinctive to
the rational state, forethought for the future, an elevated degree
of culture—all of them conditions that crowds, left to themselves,
have invariably shown themselves incapable of realising. In
consequence of the purely destructive nature of their power crowds
act like those microbes which hasten the dissolution of enfeebled
or dead bodies. When the structure of a civilisation is rotten, it
is always the masses that bring about its downfall. It is at such a
juncture that their chief mission is plainly visible, and that for
a while the philosophy of number seems the only philosophy of
history.
Is the same fate in store for our civilisation? There is
ground to fear that this is the case, but we are not as yet in a
position to be certain of it.
However this may be, we are bound to resign ourselves to the
reign of the masses, since want of foresight has in succession
overthrown all the barriers that might have kept the crowd in
check.
We have a very slight knowledge of these crowds which are
beginning to be the object of so much discussion. Professional
students of psychology, having lived far from them, have always
ignored them, and when, as of late, they have turned their
attention in this direction it has only been to consider the crimes
crowds are capable of committing. Without a doubt criminal crowds
exist, but virtuous and heroic crowds, and crowds of many other
kinds, are also to be met with. The crimes of crowds only
constitute a particular phase of their psychology. The mental
constitution of crowds is not to be learnt merely by a study of
their crimes, any more than that of an individual by a mere
description of his vices.
However, in point of fact, all the world's masters, all the
founders of religions or empires, the apostles of all beliefs,
eminent statesmen, and, in a more modest sphere, the mere chiefs of
small groups of men have always been unconscious psychologists,
possessed of an instinctive and often very sure knowledge of the
character of crowds, and it is their accurate knowledge of this
character that has enabled them to so easily establish their
mastery. Napoleon had a marvellous insight into the psychology of
the masses of the country over which he reigned, but he, at times,
completely misunderstood the psychology of crowds belonging to
other races;[1] and it is because he thus misunderstood it that he
engaged in Spain, and notably in Russia, in conflicts in which his
power received blows which were destined within a brief space of
time to ruin it. A knowledge of the psychology of crowds is to-day
the last resource of the statesman who wishes not to govern
them—that is becoming a very difficult matter—but at any rate not
to be too much governed by them.
[1] His most subtle advisers, moreover, did not understand
this psychology any better. Talleyrand wrote him that "Spain would
receive his soldiers as liberators." It received them as beasts of
prey. A psychologist acquainted with the hereditary instincts of
the Spanish race would have easily foreseen this
reception.
It is only by obtaining some sort of insight into the
psychology of crowds that it can be understood how slight is the
action upon them of laws and institutions, how powerless they are
to hold any opinions other than those which are imposed upon them,
and that it is not with rules based on theories of pure equity that
they are to be led, but by seeking what produces an impression on
them and what seduces them. For instance, should a legislator,
wishing to impose a new tax, choose that which would be
theoretically the most just? By no means. In practice the most
unjust may be the best for the masses. Should it at the same time
be the least obvious, and apparently the least burdensome, it will
be the most easily tolerated. It is for this reason that an
indirect tax, however exorbitant it be, will always be accepted by
the crowd, because, being paid daily in fractions of a farthing on
objects of consumption, it will not interfere with the habits of
the crowd, and will pass unperceived. Replace it by a proportional
tax on wages or income of any other kind, to be paid in a lump sum,
and were this new imposition theoretically ten times less
burdensome than the other, it would give rise to unanimous protest.
This arises from the fact that a sum relatively high, which will
appear immense, and will in consequence strike the imagination, has
been substituted for the unperceived fractions of a farthing. The
new tax would only appear light had it been saved farthing by
farthing, but this economic proceeding involves an amount of
foresight of which the masses are incapable.
The example which precedes is of the simplest. Its
appositeness will be easily perceived. It did not escape the
attention of such a psychologist as Napoleon, but our modern
legislators, ignorant as they are of the characteristics of a
crowd, are unable to appreciate it. Experience has not taught them
as yet to a sufficient degree that men never shape their conduct
upon the teaching of pure reason.
Many other practical applications might be made of the
psychology of crowds. A knowledge of this science throws the most
vivid light on a great number of historical and economic phenomena
totally incomprehensible without it. I shall have occasion to show
that the reason why the most remarkable of modern historians,
Taine, has at times so imperfectly understood the events of the
great French Revolution is, that it never occurred to him to study
the genius of crowds. He took as his guide in the study of this
complicated period the descriptive method resorted to by
naturalists; but the moral forces are almost absent in the case of
the phenomena which naturalists have to study. Yet it is precisely
these forces that constitute the true mainsprings of
history.
In consequence, merely looked at from its practical side, the
study of the psychology of crowds deserved to be attempted. Were
its interest that resulting from pure curiosity only, it would
still merit attention. It is as interesting to decipher the motives
of the actions of men as to determine the characteristics of a
mineral or a plant. Our study of the genius of crowds can merely be
a brief synthesis, a simple summary of our investigations. Nothing
more must be demanded of it than a few suggestive views. Others
will work the ground more thoroughly. To-day we only touch the
surface of a still almost virgin soil.