The Crowd | Page 8

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.

BOOK I
THE MIND OF CROWDS


CHAPTER I
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS.--PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF
THEIR MENTAL UNITY.
What constitutes a crowd from the psychological point of view--A numerically strong
agglomeration of individuals does not suffice to form a crowd--Special characteristics of
psychological crowds--The turning in a fixed direction of the ideas and sentiments of
individuals composing such a crowd, and the disappearance of their personality--The
crowd is always dominated by considerations of which it is unconscious--The

disappearance of brain activity and the predominance of medullar activity--The lowering
of the intelligence and the complete transformation of the sentiments--The transformed
sentiments may be better or worse than those of the individuals of which the crowd is
composed--A crowd is as easily heroic as criminal.
In its ordinary sense the word "crowd" means a gathering of individuals of whatever
nationality, profession, or sex, and whatever be the chances that have brought them
together. From the psychological point of view the expression "crowd" assumes quite a
different signification. Under certain given circumstances, and only under those
circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from
those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the
gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A
collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined
characteristics. The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression,
I will call an organised crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological
crowd. It forms a single being, and is subjected to the LAW OF THE MENTAL UNITY
OF CROWDS.
It is evident that it is not by the mere fact of a number of individuals finding themselves
accidentally side by side that they acquire the character of an organised crowd. A
thousand individuals accidentally gathered in a public place without any determined
object in no way constitute a crowd from the psychological point of view. To acquire the
special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of certain predisposing
causes of which we shall have to determine the nature.
The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a
definite direction, which are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become
organised, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals
on one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and
under the influence of certain violent emotions--such, for example, as a great national
event--the characteristics of a psychological crowd. It will be sufficient in that case that a
mere chance should bring them together for their acts to at once assume the
characteristics peculiar to the acts of a crowd. At certain moments half a dozen men
might constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of hundreds