THE IDEAS, REASONING POWER, AND IMAGINATION OF CROWDS1.THE IDEAS OF CROWDS.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.THEREASONING 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.
1.THE IDEAS OF CROWDS
WHEN studying in a preceding work the part played by ideas in the evolution of nations, we showed that every civilisation is the outcome of a small number of fundamental ideas that are very rarely renewed.We showed how these ideas are implanted in the minds of crowds, with what difficulty the process is effected, and the power possessed by the ideas in question when once it has been accomplished.Finally we saw that great historical perturbations are the result, as a rule, of changes in these fundamental ideas.
Having treated this subject at sufficient length, I shall not return to it now, but shall confine myself to saying a few words on the subject of such ideas as are accessible to crowds, and of the forms under which they conceive them.
They may be divided into two classes.In one we shall place accidental and passing ideas created by the influences of the moment: infatuation for an individual or a doctrine, for instance.In the other will be classed the fundamental ideas, to which the environment, the laws of heredity and public opinion give a very great stability; such ideas are the religious beliefs of the past and the social and democratic ideas of to-day.
These fundamental ideas resemble the volume of the water of a stream slowly pursuing its course; the transitory ideas are like the small waves, for ever changing, which agitate its surface, and are more visible than the progress of the stream itself although without real importance.
At the present day the great fundamental ideas which were the mainstay of our fathers are tottering more and more.They have lost all solidity, and at the same time the institutions resting upon them are severely shaken.Every day there are formed a great many of those transitory minor ideas of which I have just been speaking; but very few of them to all appearance seem endowed with vitality and destined to acquire a preponderating influence.
Whatever be the ideas suggested to crowds they can only exercise effective influence on condition that they assume a very absolute, uncompromising, and simple shape.They present themselves then in the guise of images, and are only accessible to the masses under this form.These imagelike ideas are not connected by any logical bond of analogy or succession, and may take each other's place like the slides of a magic-lantern which the operator withdraws from the groove in which they were placed one above the other.This explains how it is that the most contradictory ideas may be seen to be simultaneously current in crowds.According to the chances of the moment, a crowd will come under the influence of one of the various ideas stored up in its understanding, and is capable, in consequence, of committing the most dissimilar acts.Its complete lack of the critical spirit does not allow of its perceiving these contradictions.
This phenomenon is not peculiar to crowds.It is to be observed in many isolated individuals, not only among primitive beings, but in the case of all those--the fervent sectaries of a religious faith, for instance--who by one side or another of their intelligence are akin to primitive beings.I have observed its presence to a curious extent in the case of educated Hindoos brought up at our European universities and having taken their degree.A number of Western ideas had been superposed on their unchangeable and fundamental hereditary or social ideas.
According to the chances of the moment, the one or the other set of ideas showed themselves each with their special accompaniment of acts or utterances, the same individual presenting in this way the most flagrant contradictions.These contradictions are more apparent than real, for it is only hereditary ideas that have sufficient influence over the isolated individual to become motives of conduct.It is only when, as the result of the intermingling of different races, a man is placed between different hereditary tendencies that his acts from one moment to another may be really entirely contradictory.It would be useless to insist here on these phenomena, although their psychological importance is capital.I am of opinion that at least ten years of travel and observation would be necessary to arrive at a comprehension of them.
Ideas being only accessible to crowds after having assumed a very simple shape must often undergo the most thoroughgoing transformations to become popular.It is especially when we are dealing with somewhat lofty philosophic or scientific ideas that we see how far-reaching are the modifications they require in order to lower them to the level of the intelligence of crowds.
