The Crowd

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, by Gustave Le Bon, is an account of the characteristics of crowds and of the psychology that takes hold of individuals when they gather together. The English text is a translation of Psychologie des foules. Le Bon begins from the idea that the common traits which heredity gives the members of a race make up what he calls the genius of the race. When a number of these individuals are assembled for action, he argues, observation shows that new psychological characteristics appear. These are added to the racial ones and can differ from them considerably.

In his preface Le Bon says he approaches the problem in a purely scientific manner, trying to proceed with method and without being swayed by opinions, theories or doctrines. He notes that a thinker had remarked that, belonging to no contemporary school, he sometimes opposes the conclusions of all of them, and he hopes this book will earn the same remark. He claims that a man of science verifying a phenomenon need not worry about the interests his findings may hurt.

One of the preface’s central puzzles is why he can note the extreme mental inferiority of crowds, even picked assemblies, and still insist that it would be dangerous to meddle with their organisation. His answer is that social organisms are as complicated as living beings, and cannot be forced through sudden, far-reaching change. Nothing is more fatal to a people, he says, than the mania for great reforms, because only time can alter the genius of a nation. Men are ruled by ideas, sentiments and customs, and institutions and laws are an outward expression of character, so they cannot change it.

He also distinguishes the absolute value of social phenomena from their practical value, using the example of a cube or circle that changes shape with perspective. For the evolution of civilisation, he holds, practical value is what counts. He adds that visible social facts seem to be the surface waves of deep, unconscious disturbances beyond our analysis. Crowds act with an inferior mentality in most respects, yet he credits the unconscious genius of crowds with creations such as language, which scholars can describe but never invent.

The contents show the plan. An introduction, The Era of Crowds, argues that great historical upheavals rest on profound changes in the ideas of peoples, and that the present age is such a moment, marked by the destruction of old religious, political and social beliefs and by new conditions created by science and industry. Book I treats the mind of crowds: their mental unity, sentiments and morality, ideas, reasoning and imagination, and the religious shape their convictions take. Book II covers opinions and beliefs, including remote and immediate factors, the leaders of crowds and their means of persuasion, and limits on the variability of belief. Book III classifies kinds of crowds, with chapters on criminal crowds, criminal juries, electoral crowds and parliamentary assemblies.