سيكولوجية الجماهير

The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.

The work of a crowd is always inferior, whatever its nature, to that of an isolated individual.

Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear.

Science promised us truth, or at least a knowledge of such relations as our intelligence can seize: it never promised us peace or happiness.

Words whose sense is the most ill-defined are sometimes those that possess the most influence. Such, for example, are the terms democracy, socialism, equality, liberty, &c., whose meaning is so vague that bulky volumes do not suffice to precisely fix it. Yet it is certain that a truly magical power is attached to those short syllables, as if they contained the solution of all problems.

And, finally, groups have never thirsted aftertruth. They demand illusions, and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal precedenceover what is real; they are almost as strongly influencedby what is untrue as by what is true. Theyhave an evident tendency not to distinguish betweenthe two.

Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct.

Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects. The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely regulated by their prestige.

Here is yet another important consideration forhelping us to understand the individual in a group:Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part ofan organised group, a man descends several rungsin the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be acultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possessesthe spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and alsothe enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.He then dwells especially upon the lowering inintellectual ability which an individual experiences whenhe becomes merged in a group.

If one destroyed in museums and libraries, if one hurled down on the flagstones before the churches all the works and all the monuments of art that religions have inspired, what would remain of the great dreams of humanity? To give to men that portion of hope and illusion without which they cannot live, such is the reason for the existence of gods, heroes, and poets. During fifty years science appeared to undertake this task. But science has been compromised in hearts hungering after the ideal, because it does not dare to be lavish enough of promises, because it cannot lie

From the intellectual point of view an abyss may exist between a great mathematician and his boot maker, but from the point of view of character the difference is most often slight or non-existent

A person is not religious solely when he worships a divinity, but when he puts all the resources of his mind, the complete submission of his will, and the whole-souled ardour of fanaticism at the service of a cause or an individual who becomes the goal and guide of his thoughts and actions.

In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest.

The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.

Thebeginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief

Instead of preparing men for life French schools solely prepare them to occupy public functions, in which success can be attained without any necessity forself-direction or the exhibition of the least glimmer of personal initiative.

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

The only real tyrants that humanity has known have always been the memories of its dead or the illusions it has forged itself.

that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but that, from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these feelings provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, he better or worse than the individual. All depends on the nature of the suggestion to which the crowd is exposed.

I am going to the USA to catch sight of a wild porcupine and to give some lectures.

A civilization, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long. Could anything postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be precisely the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their growing indifference and lack of respect for all general beliefs.

Experience alone, that supreme educator of peoples, will be at pains to show us our mistake. It alone will be powerful enough to prove the necessity of replacing our odious text-books and our pitiable examinations by industrial instruction capable of inducing our young men to return to the fields, to the workshop, and to the colonial enterprise which they avoid to-day at all costs.

This sentiment has very simple characteristics, such as worship of a being supposed superior, fear of the power with which the being is credited, blind submission to its commands, inability to discuss its dogmas, the desire to spread them, and a tendency to consider as enemies all by whom they are not accepted. Whether such a sentiment apply to an invisible God, to a wooden or stone idol, to a hero or to a political conception, provided that it presents the preceding characteristics, its essence always remains religious.

To lose time in the manufacture of cut-and-dried constitutions is, in consequence, a puerile task, the useless labour of an ignorant rhetorician. Necessity and time undertake the charge of elaborating constitutions when we are wise enough to allow these two factors to act

This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of intelligence.

Since McDougall contrasts the behaviour of ahighly organised group with what has just been described,we shall be particularly interested to learnin what this organisation consists, and by whatfactors it is produced. The author enumerates fiveprincipal conditions 'for raising collective mentallife to a higher level.The first and fundamental condition is that thereshould be some degree of continuity of existence inthe group. This may be either material or formal:the former, if the same individuals persist in thegroup for some time; and the latter, if there isdeveloped within the group a system of fixed positionswhich are occupied by a succession of individuals.The second condition is that in the individualmember of the group some definite idea should beformed of the nature, composition, functions andcapacities of the group, so that from this he maydevelop an emotional relation to the group as awhole.The third is that the group should be broughtinto interaction (perhaps in the form of rivalry) withother groups similar to it but differing from it inmany respects.The fourth is that the group should possesstraditions, customs and habits, and especially such asdetermine the relations of its members to oneanother.The fifth is that the group should have a definitestructure, expressed in the specialisation and differentiationof the functions of its constituents.According to McDougall, if these conditionsare fulfilled, the psychological disadvantages of thegroup formation are removed. The collective loweringof intellectual ability is avoided by withdrawingthe performance of intellectual tasks from the groupand reserving them for individual members of it.

Sentiment has never been vanquished in its eternal conflict with reason

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.

McDougall does not dispute the thesis as tothe collective inhibition of intelligence in groups(p. 41). He says that the minds of lower intelligencebring down those of a higher order to their ownlevel. The latter are obstructed in their activity,because in general an intensification of emotioncreates unfavourable conditions for sound intellectualwork, and further because the individuals are intimidatedby the group and their mental activity isnot free, and because there is a lowering in eachindividual of his sense of responsibility for his ownperformances.

From the primary school till he leaves theuniversity a young man does nothing but acquire books by heart without hisjudgment or personal initiative being ever called into play.