Appearances have
always played a much more important part than reality in history, where the
unreal is always of greater import than the real.[1]
It is not, then, the
facts in themselves that strike the popular imagination, but the way in which
they take place and are brought to notice.
It is necessary that by their condensation, if I may thus express
myself, they should produce a startling image which fills and besets the
mind. To know the art of impressing the
imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.[2]
From the dawn of
civilisation onwards crowds have always undergone the influence of illusions. It is to the creators of illusions that they
have raised more temples, statues, and altars than any other class of men.[3]
The masses have never
thirsted after truth. They turn aside
from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error
seduce them. Whoever can supply them
with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their
illusions is always their victim.[4]
As soon as a certain
number of living beings are gathered together, whether they be animals or men,
they place themselves instinctively under the authority of a chief.
In the case of human
crowds the chief is nothing more than a ringleader or agitator, but as such he
plays a considerable part. His will is
the nucleus around which the opinions of the crowd are grouped and attain
identity. He constitutes the first element
towards the organisation of heterogeneous crowds, and paves the way for their
organisation in sects; in the meantime he directs them. A crowd is a servile flock that is incapable
of ever doing without a master.[5]
Juries, like all
crowds, are profoundly impressed by prestige, and President des Glajeux very
properly remarks that, very democratic as juries are in their composition, they
are very aristocratic in their likes and dislikes: “Name, birth, great wealth, celebrity,
the assistance of an illustrious counsel, everything in the nature of distinction
or that lends brilliancy to the accused, stands him in extremely good stead.”[6]
“Debates in the House
of Commons,” says the English philosopher Maine, “may be constantly read in
which the entire discussion is confined to an exchange of rather weak
generalities and rather violent personalities.
General formulas of this description exercise a prodigious influence on
the imagination of a pure democracy. It
will always be easy to make a crowd accept general assertions, presented in
striking terms, although they have never been verified, and are perhaps not susceptible
of verification.”[7]
Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896).
[1] Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: T. Fisher Unwin,
1896 [Filiquarian Reprint, 2005]), p. 60.
Originally published in French in 1895.
[7] Ibid., p. 192.
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