- Contents–Index
- Preface
- Introduction: The Era of Crowds
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The evolution of the present age—The great changes in civilisation are the consequence of changes in National thought—Modern belief in the power of crowds—It transforms the traditional policy of the European states—How the rise of the popular classes comes about, and the manner in which they exercise their power—The necessary consequences of the power of the crowd—Crowds unable to play a part other than destructive—The dissolution of worn-out civilisations is the work of the crowd—General ignorance of the psychology of crowds—Importance of the study of crowds for legislators and statesmen.
- Book 1, The Mind Of Crowds
- 1. General Characteristics of Crowds – Psychological Law of Their Mental Unity
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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.
- 2. The Sentiments and Morality of Crowds
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1. IMPULSIVENESS, MOBILITY, AND IRRITABILITY OF CROWDS. The crowd is at the mercy of all exterior exciting causes, and reflects their incessant variations—The impulses which the crowd obeys are so imperious as to annihilate the feeling of personal interest—Premeditation is absent from crowds—Racial influence.
2. CROWDS ARE CREDULOUS AND READILY INFLUENCED BY SUGGESTION. The obedience of crowds to suggestions—The images evoked in the mind of crowds are accepted by them as realities—Why these images are identical for all the individuals composing a crowd—The equality of the educated and the ignorant man in a crowd—Various examples of the illusions to which the individuals in a crowd are subject—The impossibility of according belief to the testimony of crowds—The unanimity of numerous witnesses is one of the worst proofs that can be invoked to establish a fact—The slight value of works of history.
3. THE EXAGGERATION AND INGENUOUSNESS OF THE SENTIMENTS OF CROWDS. Crowds do not admit doubt or uncertainty, and always go to extremes—Their sentiments always excessive.
4. THE INTOLERANCE, DICTATORIALNESS, AND CONSERVATISM OF CROWDS. The reasons of these sentiments—The servility of crowds in the face of a strong authority—The momentary revolutionary instincts of crowds do not prevent them from being extremely conservative—Crowds instinctively hostile to changes and progress.
5. THE MORALITY OF CROWDS. The morality of crowds, according to the suggestions under which they act, may be much lower or much higher than that of the individuals composing them—Explanation and examples—Crowds rarely guided by those considerations of interest which are most often the exclusive motives of the isolated individual—The moralising role of crowds.
- 3. The Ideas, Reasoning Power, and Imagination of Crowds
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1. Fundamental and accessory ideas—How contradictory ideas may exist simultaneously—The transformation that must be undergone by lofty ideas before they are accessible to crowds—The social influence of ideas is independent of the degree of truth they may contain.
2. THE REASONING POWER OF CROWDS. Crowds are not to be influenced by reasoning—The reasoning of crowds is always of a very inferior order—There is only the appearance of analogy or succession in the ideas they associate.
3. THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS. Strength of the imagination of crowds—Crowds think in images, and these images succeed each other without any connecting link—Crowds are especially impressed by the marvellous—Legends and the marvellous are the real pillars of civilisation—The popular imagination has always been the basis of the power of statesmen—The manner in which facts capable of striking the imagination of crowds present themselves for observation.
- 4. A Religious Shape Assumed by All the Convictions of Crowds
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What is meant by the religious sentiment—It is independent of the worship of a divinity—Its characteristics—The strength of convictions assuming a religious shape—Various examples—Popular gods have never disappeared—New forms under which they are revived—Religious forms of atheism—Importance of these notions from the historical point of view—The Reformation, Saint Bartholomew, the Terror, and all analogous events are the result of the religious sentiments of crowds and not of the will of isolated individuals.
- Book 2, The Opinions and Beliefs of Crowds
- 1. Remote Factors of The Opinions and Beliefs of Crowds
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Preparatory factors of the beliefs of crowds—The origin of the beliefs of crowds is the consequence of a preliminary process of elaboration—Study of the different factors of these beliefs.
1. RACE. The predominating influence it exercises—It represents the suggestions of ancestors.
2. TRADITIONS. They are the synthesis of the soul of the race—Social importance of traditions—How, after having been necessary they become harmful—Crowds are the most obstinate maintainers of traditional ideas.
3. TIME. It prepares in succession the establishment of beliefs and then their destruction. It is by the aid of this factor that order may proceed from chaos.
4. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Erroneous idea of their part—Their influence extremely weak—They are effects, not causes—Nations are incapable of choosing what appear to them the best institutions—Institutions are labels which shelter the most dissimilar things under the same title—How institutions may come to be created—Certain institutions theoretically bad, such as centralisation obligatory for certain nations.
5. INSTITUTIONS AND EDUCATION. Falsity of prevalent ideas as to the influence of instruction on crowds—Statistical indications—Demoralising effect of Latin system of education—Part instruction might play—Examples furnished by various peoples.
- 2. The Immediate Factors of the Opinions of Crowds
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1. IMAGES, WORDS AND FORMULAE. The magical power of words and formulae—The power of words bound up with the images they evoke, and independent of their real sense—These images vary from age to age, and from race to race—The wear and tear of words—Examples of the considerable variations of sense of much-used words—The political utility of baptizing old things with new names when the words by which they were designated produced an unfavourable impression on the masses—variations of the sense of words in consequence of race differences—The different meanings of the word "democracy" in Europe and America.
2. ILLUSIONS. Their importance—They are to be found at the root of all civilisations—The social necessity of illusions—Crowds always prefer them to truths.
3. EXPERIENCE. Experience alone can fix in the mind of crowds truths become necessary and destroy illusions grown dangerous—Experience is only effective on the condition that it be frequently repeated—The cost of the experiences requisite to persuade crowds.
4. REASON. The nullity of its influence on crowds—Crowds only to be influenced by their unconscious sentiments—The role of logic in history—The secret causes of improbable events.
- 3. The Leaders of Crowds and Their Means of Persuasion
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1. THE LEADERS OF CROWDS. The instinctive need of all beings forming a crowd to obey a leader—The psychology of the leaders of crowds—They alone can endow crowds with faith and organise them—The leaders forcibly despotic—Classification of the leaders—The part played by the will.
2. THE MEANS OF ACTION OF THE LEADERS. Affirmation, repetition, contagion—The respective part of these different factors—The way in which contagion may spread from the lower to the upper classes in a society—A popular opinion soon becomes a general opinion.
3. PRESTIGE. Definition of prestige and classification of its different kinds—Acquired prestige and personal prestige—Various examples—The way in which prestige is destroyed.
- 4. Limitations of The Variability of the Beliefs and Opinions of Crowds
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1. FIXED BELIEFS. The invariability of certain general beliefs—They shape the course of a civilisation—The difficulty of uprooting them—In what respect intolerance is a virtue in a people—The philosophic absurdity of a belief cannot interfere with its spreading.
2. THE CHANGEABLE OPINIONS OF CROWDS. The extreme mobility of opinions which do not arise from general beliefs—Apparent variations of ideas and beliefs in less than a century—The real limits of these variations—The matters effected by the variation—The disappearance at present in progress of general beliefs, and the extreme diffusion of the newspaper press, have for result that opinions are nowadays more and more changeable—Why the opinions of crowds tend on the majority of subjects towards indifference—Governments now powerless to direct opinion as they formerly did—Opinions prevented to-day from being tyrannical on account of their exceeding divergency.
- Book 3, The Classification and Description of the Different Kinds of Crowds
- 1. The Classification of Crowds
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The general divisions of crowds—Their classification.
1. HETEROGENEOUS CROWDS. Different varieties of them—The influence of race—The spirit of the crowd is weak in proportion as the spirit of the race is strong—The spirit of the race represents the civilised state and the spirit of the crowd the barbarian state.
2. HOMOGENEOUS CROWDS. Their different varieties—Sects, castes, and classes.
- 2. Crowds Termed Criminal Crowds
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Crowds termed criminal crowds—A crowd may be legally yet not psychologically criminal—The absolute unconsciousness of the acts of crowds—Various examples—Psychology of the authors of the September massacres—Their reasoning, their sensibility, their ferocity, and their morality.
- 3. Criminal Juries
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Criminal juries—General characteristics of juries—statistics show that their decisions are independent of their composition—The manner in which an impression may be made on juries—The style and influence of argument—The methods of persuasion of celebrated counsel—The nature of those crimes for which juries are respectively indulgent or severe—The utility of the jury as an institution, and the danger that would result from its place being taken by magistrates.
- 4. Electoral Crowds
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General characteristics of electoral crowds—The manner of persuading them—The qualities that should be possessed by a candidate—Necessity of prestige—Why working men and peasants so rarely choose candidates from their own class—The influence of words and formulas on the elector—The general aspect of election oratory—How the opinions of the elector are formed—The power of political committees—They represent the most redoubtable form of tyranny—The committees of the Revolution—Universal suffrage cannot be replaced in spite of its slight psychological value—Why it is that the votes recorded would remain the same even if the right of voting were restricted to a limited class of citizens—What universal suffrage expresses in all countries.
- 5. Parliamentary Assemblies
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Parliamentary crowds present most of the characteristics common to heterogeneous crowds that are not anonymous—The simplicity of their opinions—Their suggestibility and its limits—Their indestructible, fixed opinions and their changed opinions—The reason of the predominance of indecision—The role of the leaders—The reason of their prestige—They are the true masters of an assembly whose votes, on that account, are merely those of a small minority—The absolute power they exercise—The elements of their oratorical art—Phrases and images—The psychological necessity the leaders are under of being in a general way of stubborn convictions and narrow-minded—It is impossible for a speaker without prestige to obtain recognition for his arguments—The exaggeration of the sentiments, whether good or bad, of assemblies—At certain moments they become automatic—The sittings of the Convention—Cases in which an assembly loses the characteristics of crowds—The influence of specialists when technical questions arise—The advantages and dangers of a parliamentary system in all countries—It is adapted to modern needs; but it involves financial waste and the progressive curtailment of all liberty—Conclusion.
