734 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol,. V. No. 123. 



The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind. By 



GusTAVE Le Bon. The Macmillan Co. 



This is a translation of a little volume en- 

 titled ' Psychologic des foules,' which appeared 

 in Paris in 1895. The author is well known in 

 the European scientific world as a voluminous 

 writer upon many branches of physiology and 

 psychology, and in recent years more especially 

 as a student of the psychology of races and of 

 mankind as socially organized. 



In the present work M. Le Bon devotes his 

 attention to an analysis of the psychological 

 phenomena of masses of men. The substi- 

 tution of the unconscious action of crowds for 

 the conscious activity of individuals, he tells 

 us, is one of the principal characteristics of the 

 present age. The epoch is one of those critical 

 moments in which the thought of mankind is 

 undergoing a process of transformation. The 

 general destruction of those religious, political 

 and social beliefs which were the elements of 

 an earlier civilization has been succeeded by 

 new intellectual conditions of existence, the 

 product of scientific thought and industrial dis- 

 coveries In this critical transition period we 

 are witnessing also the transformation of social 

 organization from monarchical and aristocratic 

 forms to democracy. Our author declares that 

 we have entered, or we are about to enter, upon 

 an age that may truthfully be described as the 

 era of crowds. While only two generations 

 ago the opinion of the masses scarcely counted 

 in political affairs, to-day it is the old traditions 

 and the opinions of individuals that are without 

 influence. The voice of the masses has become 

 preponderant. 



What effect is this rule of the crowd to have 

 upon civilization? In the past, civilizations 

 have been created and directed by a small in- 

 tellectual aristocracy, never by the crowd. 

 Crowds, thus far in the world's history, have 

 been powerful chiefly for destruction. Ob- 

 viously, before we can answer any question in 

 regard to the probable future action of crowds, 

 we shall need to know much more of the psy- 

 chology of collective men than we know at pres- 

 ent. The thoughtful public should be grateful 

 to M. Le Bon for this first serious attempt to an- 

 alyze the mind of the crowd. One need not ac- 

 cept all of his conclusions to appreciate the value 



of his work. Its importance consists in the fact 

 that he has clearly stated a large number of 

 problems which merit diligent consideration — 

 problems which hitherto have not been seriously 

 studied as the foundation of political science. 



The starting point of M. Le Bon's philosophy 

 of crowds is a conviction that the crowd is 

 always something more than the sum or the 

 average of its individual elements. Our author 

 believes that when men become organized as a 

 crowd they lose many of their individual char- 

 acteristics and acquire others which, as individ- 

 uals, they never exhibit. The crowd is always, 

 according to M. Le Bon's observations, swayed 

 by feeling rather than by reason. This is be- 

 cause men difier more widely in intelligence 

 than in feeling. The mental unity of a crowd, 

 therefore, is sympathetic rather than rational. 

 Again, crowds are undoubtedly to a very great 

 extent subject to suggestion and to hypnotic in- 

 fluence. So far as the mental operations of 

 crowds are intellectual they think in images, 

 and are therefore in a large measure controlled 

 by imagination. Like children, crowds are im- 

 patient of any obstacle interposed between sug- 

 gestion and act ; they desire to carry a purpose 

 into immediate eflect. They are, thei-efore, in- 

 tolerant of discussion and of delay. 



These truths, M. Le Bon declares, have 

 always been instinctively apprehended by men 

 with a genius for leadership. The imagination 

 of crowds is awakened by whatever presents 

 itself in the shape of a startling and eflfective 

 image, freed from" all accessory explanations. 

 The leader, therefore, will take care to lay things 

 before the crowd as a whole, and will carefully 

 avoid any attempt to justify them on grounds 

 of reason or to explain their origin. No man 

 ever so thoroughly understood this truth as the 

 first Napoleon. "It was by becoming a Catho- 

 lic," he said to the Council of State, "that I 

 terminated the Vendeean war ; by becoming a 

 Musselman that I obtained a footing in Egypt ; 

 by becoming an Ultramontane that I won over 

 the Italian priests, and had I to govern a nation 

 of Jews, I would rebuild Solomon's temple." 



In general, crowds are powerless to hold other 

 opinions than those which are imposed upon 

 them by example or authority, and are not to 

 be controlled by rules based upon theories of 



