The Crowd | Page 9

of
men gathered together by accident. On the other hand, an entire nation, though there may
be no visible agglomeration, may become a crowd under the action of certain influences.
A psychological crowd once constituted, it acquires certain provisional but determinable
general characteristics. To these general characteristics there are adjoined particular
characteristics which vary according to the elements of which the crowd is composed,
and may modify its mental constitution. Psychological crowds, then, are susceptible of
classification; and when we come to occupy ourselves with this matter, we shall see that a
heterogeneous crowd--that is, a crowd composed of dissimilar elements--presents certain
characteristics in common with homogeneous crowds--that is, with crowds composed of
elements more or less akin (sects, castes, and classes)--and side by side with these
common characteristics particularities which permit of the two kinds of crowds being
differentiated.

But before occupying ourselves with the different categories of crowds, we must first of
all examine the characteristics common to them all. We shall set to work like the
naturalist, who begins by describing the general characteristics common to all the
members of a family before concerning himself with the particular characteristics which
allow the differentiation of the genera and species that the family includes.
It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds with exactness, because its organisation
varies not only according to race and composition, but also according to the nature and
intensity of the exciting causes to which crowds are subjected. The same difficulty,
however, presents itself in the psychological study of an individual. It is only in novels
that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an unvarying character. It is
only the uniformity of the environment that creates the apparent uniformity of characters.
I have shown elsewhere that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character
which may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment. This
explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French Convention were
to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been
peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates. The storm past, they resumed their normal
character of quiet, law-abiding citizens. Napoleon found amongst them his most docile
servants.
It being impossible to study here all the successive degrees of organisation of crowds, we
shall concern ourselves more especially with such crowds as have attained to the phase of
complete organisation. In this way we shall see what crowds may become, but not what
they invariably are. It is only in this advanced phase of organisation that certain new and
special characteristics are superposed on the unvarying and dominant character of the
race; then takes place that turning already alluded to of all the feelings and thoughts of
the collectivity in an identical direction. It is only under such circumstances, too, that
what I have called above the PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF THE MENTAL UNITY OF
CROWDS comes into play.
Among the psychological characteristics of crowds there are some that they may present
in common with isolated individuals, and others, on the contrary, which are absolutely
peculiar to them and are only to be met with in collectivities. It is these special
characteristics that we shall study, first of all, in order to show their importance.
The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following:
Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life,
their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been
transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which
makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each
individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation. There are
certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves
into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a
provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined,
exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being
which displays characteristics very different from those possessed by each of the cells
singly.

Contrary to an opinion which one is astonished to find coming from the pen of so acute a
philosopher as Herbert Spencer, in the aggregate which constitutes a crowd there is in no
sort a summing-up of or an average struck between its elements. What really takes place
is a combination followed by the creation of new characteristics, just as in chemistry
certain elements, when brought into contact--bases and acids, for example--combine to
form a new body possessing properties quite different from those of the bodies that have
served to form it.
It is easy to