1896 book by Gustave Le Bon
'The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind'
'The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind', published in 1896 by Gustave Le Bon, is dedicated to accounting for the characteristics of crowds. When individuals gather in a crowd for purposes of action, new psychological characteristics emerge, distinct from their individual or racial traits.
This transition from the conscious activity of individuals to the unconscious action of crowds is identified as a principal characteristic of the present age, which is perceived as the Era of Crowds. The study endeavours to examine the difficult problem presented by crowds in a purely scientific manner, proceeding methodically and without influence from opinions, theories, or doctrines, aiming to discover fundamental truths.
The Nature of Crowds
In its ordinary sense, 'crowd' means a gathering of individuals irrespective of nationality, profession, or sex. From a psychological perspective, under specific circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it.
The sentiments and ideas of all persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is thus formed, albeit transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. This gathering becomes an organised or psychological crowd, subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds.
The formation of an organised crowd is not merely due to accidental proximity; predisposing causes are necessary. The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction do not always require simultaneous physical presence; thousands of isolated individuals may, under violent emotions, acquire the characteristics of a psychological crowd. Conversely, a small group can be a psychological crowd, while hundreds gathered by accident may not. An entire nation may become a crowd under certain influences.
Once constituted, a psychological crowd acquires provisional but determinable general characteristics, alongside particular characteristics varying with its composition.
The mind of crowds is challenging to describe precisely, as its organisation varies according to race, composition, and exciting causes. In crowds, the heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand. In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.
The individual's transformation within a crowd is determined by several causes:
Sentiment of invincible power
Derived solely from numerical strength, allowing yielding to instincts normally restrained in isolation.
Anonymity and irresponsibility
The sentiment of responsibility disappears entirely.
Contagion
Every sentiment and act is contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices personal interest to the collective interest.
Suggestibility
The most important cause, of which contagion is an effect. Individuals in an acting crowd enter a state resembling hypnotic fascination, losing conscious personality, will, and discernment. Their feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by suggestion, which gains strength by reciprocity.
Collective Identity
Just by forming part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be cultivated; in a crowd, he is a barbarian, acting by instinct, possessing the spontaneity, violence, ferocity, enthusiasm, and heroism of primitive beings. He is easily impressed by words and images that would be without action on him in isolation. This explains why juries deliver verdicts and parliamentary assemblies adopt laws that individual members would disapprove of in isolation.
The transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the sceptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero. The crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but from the point of view of feelings and the acts they provoke, it may be better or worse, depending on the nature of the suggestion. Crowds are often heroic, readily running the risk of death for a creed or idea.
Psychology of Crowds
Impulsiveness, Mobility, and Irritability of Crowds
Crowds are guided almost exclusively by unconscious motives; their acts are far more under the influence of the spinal cord than of the brain. They are at the mercy of all external exciting causes and reflect their incessant variations, becoming slaves of the impulses received.
The impulses crowds obey can be generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even self-preservation, will not dominate them. This results in their extreme mobility, allowing them to pass in a moment from bloodthirsty ferocity to extreme generosity and heroism. Premeditation is out of the question. This mobility renders crowds very difficult to govern, as they are as incapable of sustained will or thought as they are frenzied in their desires.
The notion of impossibility disappears for the individual in a crowd. Racial characteristics always exert an influence on the irritability, impulsiveness, and mobility of crowds. For instance, Latin crowds are more prone to authoritativeness and intolerance than Anglo-Saxon crowds and display feminine characteristics more profoundly.
Suggestibility and Credulity of Crowds
One of the general characteristics of crowds is excessive suggestibility. A crowd, as a rule, is in a state of expectant attention, which renders suggestion easy, leading to a rapid turning of sentiments in a definite direction by contagion. The idea which has entered the brain tends to transform itself into an act with equal facility, whether it involves setting fire to a palace or self-sacrifice.
Consequently, a crowd, perpetually hovering on the borderland of unconsciousness, readily yielding to all suggestions, and lacking critical faculty, cannot be otherwise than excessively credulous. The improbable does not exist for a crowd, enabling the easy creation and propagation of the most improbable legends and stories.
A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images without logical connection. A crowd scarcely distinguishes between subjective and objective, accepting evoked images as real. Due to contagion, the perversions of truth are of the same kind and take the same shape in all assembled individuals, leading to collective hallucinations. The mental quality of individuals is without importance; the learned man and the ignoramus are equally incapable of observation once they form part of a crowd.
Numerous historical facts, such as the collective hallucination of the Belle Poule crew sighting a non-existent disabled vessel, demonstrate the unreliability of crowd testimony. The unanimity of numerous witnesses is one of the worst proofs that can be invoked to establish a fact. History works, therefore, must be seen as works of pure imagination, fanciful accounts of ill-observed facts. Legendary heroes, not real ones, have impressed the minds of crowds.
Exaggeration and Ingenuousness of the Sentiments of Crowds
Whether good or bad, the feelings exhibited by a crowd present the double character of being very simple and very exaggerated. An individual in a crowd resembles primitive beings, insensitive to fine distinctions, seeing things as a whole. The exaggeration is heightened as feelings, once exhibited, communicate very quickly by suggestion and contagion.
This simplicity and exaggeration result in crowds knowing neither doubt nor uncertainty, going at once to extremes. A mere suspicion transforms itself into incontrovertible evidence, and a commencement of antipathy becomes furious hatred.
The violence of crowd feelings is also increased by the absence of all sense of responsibility, especially in heterogeneous crowds, where the certainty of impunity unleashes sentiments and acts impossible for isolated individuals. This tendency towards exaggeration is often brought to bear upon bad sentiments, releasing atavistic residues of primitive man's instincts.
An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations, exaggeration, and repetition, never attempting to prove anything by reasoning.
Intolerance, Dictatorialness, and Conservatism of Crowds
Crowds are only cognisant of simple and extreme sentiments; opinions, ideas, and beliefs suggested to them are accepted or rejected as a whole, and considered as absolute truths or errors. This is characteristic of beliefs induced by suggestion rather than reasoning.
Being in doubt as to what constitutes truth or error, and having a clear notion of its strength, a crowd is as disposed to give authoritative effect to its inspirations as it is intolerant. An individual may accept contradiction, but a crowd will never do so.
Dictatorialness and intolerance are common to all categories of crowds, but are especially developed in Latin crowds, where they have entirely destroyed the sentiment of individual independence. Latin crowds are concerned only with the collective independence of their sect, compelling disagreement into immediate and violent subjection.
Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force and are slightly impressed by kindness, which they see as weakness, bestowing their sympathies on tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. A crowd is always ready to revolt against a feeble, and to bow down servilely before a strong authority.
Despite appearances, the predominance of revolutionary instincts in crowds is a misconception. Their rebellious and destructive outbursts are always very transitory.
Crowds are too much governed by unconscious considerations and secular hereditary influences not to be extremely conservative. Abandoned to themselves, they soon weary of disorder and instinctively turn to servitude. Crowds may desire to change institutional names, but the essence of institutions, being expressions of hereditary needs, invariably remains.
Their fetish-like respect for all traditions is absolute, and their unconscious horror of novelty is deeply rooted. It is fortunate for civilisation that the power of crowds only began to exist when the great discoveries of science and industry had already been effected.
The Morality of Crowds
If 'morality' means constant respect for social conventions and repression of selfish impulses, crowds are too impulsive and mobile to be moral. If, however, morality includes the transitory display of qualities such as abnegation, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotion, and a need for equity, then crowds may exhibit at times a very lofty morality.
Psychologists often conclude crowds have a low moral standard due to their frequent criminal acts, which unleash savage, destructive instincts dormant in all, facilitated by anonymity and impunity.
However, a crowd capable of murder and incendiarism is also capable of very lofty acts of devotion, sacrifice, and disinterestedness, often much loftier than those of which the isolated individual is capable. Appeals to glory, honour, and patriotism are particularly likely to influence the individual in a crowd, even to the extent of obtaining from him the sacrifice of his life.
Personal interest is very rarely a powerful motive force with crowds, while it is almost the exclusive motive of the conduct of the isolated individual. Even in the case of absolute scoundrels, the mere fact of their being in a crowd often endows them for the moment with very strict principles of morality, as seen with the perpetrators of the September massacres who refused to appropriate victims' valuables.
This moralisation of the individual by the crowd is frequently observed. Crowds are more especially guided by unconscious considerations and are not given to reasoning; had they, in certain cases, reasoned and consulted their immediate interests, it is possible that no civilisation would have grown up.
The Ideas of Crowds
Every civilisation is the outcome of a small number of fundamental ideas that are very rarely renewed. These ideas are implanted in the minds of crowds with difficulty, but wield immense power once accomplished. Great historical perturbations are the result, as a rule, of changes in these fundamental ideas. Ideas accessible to crowds are divided into accidental and passing ideas (e.g. infatuation for an individual) and fundamental ideas (e.g. religious beliefs, contemporary social ideas). Fundamental ideas resemble the volume of a stream's water, while transitory ideas are like the small waves on its surface.
Ideas suggested to crowds can only exercise effective influence on condition that they assume a very absolute, uncompromising, and simple shape, presenting themselves in the guise of images. These image-like ideas are not connected by any logical bond and may take each other's place, explaining how contradictory ideas can coexist simultaneously in crowds, which, due to their complete lack of critical spirit, fail to perceived these contradictions.
This phenomenon is also observed in many isolated individuals akin to primitive beings, such as fervent religious sectaries. Ideas must undergo thorough transformations, simplifying and diminishing the original concept, to become popular. From a social point of view, the hierarchical or intrinsic worth of an idea is without importance; only its effects matter. An idea only exerts real influence when it has entered the domain of the unconscious and become a sentiment, a process requiring much time.
The demonstrable truth of an idea does not guarantee its adoption, as unconscious, deeply held sentiments often prevail. Once deeply ingrained in crowds, an idea possesses irresistible power. A long time is necessary for ideas to establish themselves and to be eradicated, meaning crowds are always several generations behind learned men.
The Reasoning Power of Crowds
Crowds are not to be influenced by reasoning. The arguments they employ or are influenced by are, from a logical point of view, so inferior that they can only be described as reasoning by analogy. The reasoning of crowds resembles that of primitive beings, based on apparent connections or sequences between ideas (e.g., glass melts like ice because both are transparent).
Arguments presented to crowds must be of this kind, as a chain of logical argumentation is totally incomprehensible to them. The powerlessness of crowds to reason correctly prevents them displaying any trace of the critical spirit, making them incapable of discerning truth from error or forming precise judgments. Judgments accepted by crowds are imposed, never adopted after discussion.
It is not certain whether it should be regretted that crowds are never guided by reason. Human reason alone would likely not have propelled humanity along the path of civilisation with the ardour and hardihood that illusions have. These illusions, born of unconscious forces, were doubtless necessary.
History, when viewed solely through isolated facts, would seem a series of improbable chances. Reason should be left to philosophers, and its intervention in the governance of men should not be overstressed. It is not by reason, but most often in spite of it, that the mainsprings of civilisation - honour, self-sacrifice, religious faith, patriotism, and the love of glory - are created.
The Imagination of Crowds
Just as with persons in whom reasoning power is absent, the figurative imagination of crowds is very powerful, very active and very susceptible of being keenly impressed. The images evoked in their mind are almost as lifelike as the reality.
Crowds are akin to sleepers whose reason is suspended, allowing intense images to arise, unchecked by reflection. Incapable of reflection and reasoning, crowds lack the notion of improbability; it is typically the most improbable things that are most striking. This is why the marvellous and legendary side of events more specially strikes crowds, for appearances have always played a much more important part than reality in history, where the unreal is always of greater moment than the real.
Crowds are only capable of thinking in images and are exclusively impressed by them; images alone terrify or attract them and become motives of action. Theatrical representations, which present images vividly, have an enormous influence. The emotional impact of suggested images can be so potent that they tend to transform into actions. The unreal has almost as much influence on them as the real. The power of conquerors and the strength of States is based on the popular imagination.
All great historical facts are direct or indirect consequences of strong impressions produced on the imagination of the crowd. Statesmen, even despots, have always recognised popular imagination as the basis of their power, never attempting to govern in opposition to it. Napoleon, for instance, understood the necessity of impressing the crowd's imagination through his victories, speeches, and actions.
This feat is never achieved by appealing to intelligence or reasoning. Whatever strikes the imagination of crowds presents itself under the shape of a startling and very clear image, freed from all accessory explanation, or merely having as accompaniment marvellous or mysterious facts.
It is not the facts themselves that strike the popular imagination, but their manner of occurrence and presentation. To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.
Remote Factors of the Opinions and Beliefs of Crowds
The factors determining crowd opinions and beliefs are divided into remote and immediate. Remote factors prepare crowds to adopt certain convictions and reject others, laying the groundwork for the sudden germination of new ideas. The general remote factors influencing all crowd beliefs and opinions are race, traditions, time, institutions, and education.
Race
Race must be placed in the first rank, for in itself it far surpasses in importance all the others. An historical race, once its character is formed, possesses such power through heredity that its beliefs, institutions, and arts - all elements of its civilisation—are merely the outward expression of its genius.
No cultural element can pass from one people to another without profound transformations. While environment and events provide momentary social suggestions, their influence is transient if contrary to the inherited racial suggestions.
Racial influence is so great that it dominates the characteristics peculiar to the genius of crowds, causing crowds of different countries to offer very considerable differences of beliefs and conduct.
Traditions
Traditions represent the ideas, the needs, and the sentiments of the past; they are the synthesis of the race, and weigh upon us with immense force.
A people is an organism created by the past, modifiable only by slow hereditary accumulations. Traditions guide men, especially when they are in a crowd. Neither a national genius nor civilisation would be possible without traditions, yet progress is impossible without their destruction.
The difficulty is to find a proper equilibrium between stability and variability. Overly rigid customs, as in China, lead to stagnation. Crowds are the most tenacious preservers of traditional ideas and oppose their being changed with the most obstinacy. Even violent rebellions merely end in a changing of words and terms, leaving the essence untouched.
Time
In social as in biological problems, time is one of the most energetic factors; it is the sole real creator and the sole great destroyer.
The action of centuries is sufficient to transform any given phenomenon. Time prepares the opinions and beliefs of crowds, or at least the soil on which they will germinate, making certain ideas realisable at one epoch and not at another. It accumulates the immense detritus of beliefs and thoughts on which the ideas of a given period spring up; their roots strike down into a long past.
Time is our veritable master, and it suffices to leave it free to act to see all things transformed. Political and social organisations demand centuries to form.
Political and Social Institutions
The idea that institutions can rectify societal defects and that national progress is the consequence of institutional improvement is a grave delusion.
Institutions are the outcome of ideas, sentiments, and customs, which cannot be recast by legislative codes. A nation no more chooses its institutions at will than its physical traits; institutions and governments are the product of the race, not creators of an epoch, but created by it. Centuries are required to form and change a political system. Institutions have no intrinsic virtue; they are neither good nor bad in themselves, and what benefits one people may be harmful to another.
A people cannot genuinely change its institutions; revolutions may change their name, but their essence remains unaltered. Peoples' destinies are determined by their character and not by their government. The most continuous experience proves the uselessness of cut-and-dried constitutions.
Laws and institutions are expressions of a race's needs and cannot be violently transformed. It is not in institutions that the means is to be sought of profoundly influencing the genius of the masses. Institutions are merely borrowed garments. It is illusions and words that have influenced the mind of the crowd, especially words, which are as powerful as they are chimerical.
Instruction and Education
A dominant idea of the current epoch is that instruction can considerably change men, unfailingly improving and even equalising them, a steadfast democratic dogma. However, democratic ideas clash with psychological and experiential results.
Instruction neither renders a man more moral nor happier; it changes neither his instincts nor his hereditary passions, and if misdirected, can be more pernicious than useful. Statistics indicate that criminality increases with the generalisation of certain types of instruction, with anarchists often recruited from among highly educated individuals.
While well-directed instruction can yield useful practical results in developing professional capacity, the Latin peoples, especially in the last 25 years, have based their education systems on very erroneous principles.
The French system, for example, transforms many into enemies of society, fostering socialism. The primary danger of this Latin system lies in the psychological error that intelligence is developed by the learning by heart of textbooks. From primary school to university, young men memorise countless books without developing judgment or personal initiative, learning only to recite and obey.
This education leads to discontent with one's social standing and a desire to escape it, preparing individuals not for practical life, but for state-paid official positions lacking self-direction or initiative. This system creates an army of proletarians discontented with their lot and always ready to revolt, and a frivolous, sceptical, yet state-dependent bourgeoisie.
The State, producing a multitude of diploma-holders it cannot employ, is forced to leave many without employment, who become its enemies. The acquisition of knowledge for which no use can be found is a sure method of driving a man to revolt. This phenomenon is also observed in China and India. It is too late to retrace these steps; only experience will demonstrate the mistake and the necessity of replacing textbook learning with industrial instruction that encourages practical engagement, as seen in Anglo-Saxon countries.