The Crowd | Page 6

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