Treatises on logic include the unanimity of numerous witnesses in the category of the strongest proofs that can be invoked in support of the exactness of a fact.Yet what we know of the psychology of crowds shows that treatises on logic need on this point to be rewritten.The events with regard to which there exists the most doubt are certainly those which have been observed by the greatest number of persons.To say that a fact has been simultaneously verified by thousands of witnesses is to say, as a rule, that the real fact is very different from the accepted account of it.
It clearly results from what precedes that works of history must be considered as works of pure imagination.They are fanciful accounts of ill-observed facts, accompanied by explanations the result of reflection.To write such books is the most absolute waste of time.Had not the past left us its literary, artistic, and monumental works, we should know absolutely nothing in reality with regard to bygone times.Are we in possession of a single word of truth concerning the lives of the great men who have played preponderating parts in the history of humanity--men such as Hercules, Buddha, or Mahomet? In all probability we are not.In point of fact, moreover, their real lives are of slight importance to us.Our interest is to know what our great men were as they are presented by popular legend.It is legendary heroes, and not for a moment real heroes, who have impressed the minds of crowds.
Unfortunately, legends--even although they have been definitely put on record by books--have in themselves no stability.The imagination of the crowd continually transforms them as the result of the lapse of time and especially in consequence of racial causes.There is a great gulf fixed between the sanguinary Jehovah of the Old Testament and the God of Love of Sainte Therese, and the Buddha worshipped in China has no traits in common with that venerated in India.
It is not even necessary that heroes should be separated from us by centuries for their legend to be transformed by the imagination of the crowd.The transformation occasionally takes place within a few years.In our own day we have seen the legend of one of the greatest heroes of history modified several times in less than fifty years.Under the Bourbons Napoleon became a sort of idyllic and liberal philanthropist, a friend of the humble who, according to the poets, was destined to be long remembered in the cottage.Thirty years afterwards this easy-going hero had become a sanguinary despot, who, after having usurped power and destroyed liberty, caused the slaughter of three million men solely to satisfy his ambition.At present we are witnessing a fresh transformation of the legend.When it has undergone the influence of some dozens of centuries the learned men of the future, face to face with these contradictory accounts, will perhaps doubt the very existence of the hero, as some of them now doubt that of Buddha, and will see in him nothing more than a solar myth or a development of the legend of Hercules.They will doubtless console themselves easily for this uncertainty, for, better initiated than we are to-day in the characteristics and psychology of crowds, they will know that history is scarcely capable of preserving the memory of anything except myths.
3.THE EXAGGERATION AND INGENUOUSNESS OF THE SENTIMENTS OF CROWDS.
Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be good or bad, they present the double character of being very simple and very exaggerated.On this point, as on so many others, an individual in a crowd resembles primitive beings.Inaccessible to fine distinctions, he sees things as a whole, and is blind to their intermediate phases.The exaggeration of the sentiments of a crowd is heightened by the fact that any feeling when once it is exhibited communicating itself very quickly by a process of suggestion and contagion, the evident approbation of which it is the object considerably increases its force.
The simplicity and exaggeration of the sentiments of crowds have for result that a throng knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.
Like women, it goes at once to extremes.A suspicion transforms itself as soon as announced into incontrovertible evidence.Acommencement of antipathy or disapprobation, which in the case of an isolated individual would not gain strength, becomes at once furious hatred in the case of an individual in a crowd.
The violence of the feelings of crowds is also increased, especially in heterogeneous crowds, by the absence of all sense of responsibility.The certainty of impunity, a certainty the stronger as the crowd is more numerous, and the notion of a considerable momentary force due to number, make possible in the case of crowds sentiments and acts impossible for the isolated individual.In crowds the foolish, ignorant, and envious persons are freed from the sense of their insignificance and powerlessness, and are possessed instead by the notion of brutal and temporary but immense strength.
Unfortunately, this tendency of crowds towards exaggeration is often brought to bear upon bad sentiments.These sentiments are atavistic residuum of the instincts of the primitive man, which the fear of punishment obliges the isolated and responsible individual to curb.Thus it is that crowds are so easily led into the worst excesses.
Still this does not mean that crowds, skilfully influenced, are not capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest virtues; they are even more capable of showing these qualities than the isolated individual.We shall soon have occasion to revert to this point when we come to study the morality of crowds.
