Structured edition
The Crowd
by Gustave Le Bon
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Overview
The Crowd is Gustave Le Bon's study of what happens to people gathered in large numbers, and of why he holds that this gathering matters so much for the age he writes in.
Le Bon sets out to examine the mental character of crowds. He wants to know how they feel, how they reason, how they are led and what beliefs move them. His starting point is that a crowd is more than a heap of individuals.
For Le Bon it forms a single collective being with its own way of thinking.
The stakes are large in his telling. Le Bon presents the power of crowds as a force that shapes the course of events, and he writes to explain it in the age he lives in.
What Le Bon Examines
Le Bon treats the crowd as a collective mind with its own character.
The path ahead follows three questions he takes up. First, what is the character of the crowd mind? Second, how do crowds think, and what shapes their opinions? Third, how do leaders, beliefs and the different types of crowd fit into his account?
What is inside
The Crowd Mind and Its Character
- 01The Era of Crowds and the Mental Unity of the CrowdFor Le Bon, the coming age is the Era of Crowds: while ancient beliefs totter, the power of crowds is the only force nothing menaces.Free, in full
- 02Impulsive, Suggestible, Credulous: The Feelings of CrowdsFor Le Bon, a crowd is the slave of the impulses it receives, always at the mercy of external exciting causes.
- 03Exaggeration, Intolerance and the Morality of CrowdsFor Le Bon, crowd feelings are always very simple and exaggerated, so a crowd knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.
How Crowds Think and What Shapes Their Opinions
- 04Ideas, Reasoning and Imagination in CrowdsFor Le Bon, a crowd takes ideas only as absolute, simple images, never as reasoned argument.
- 05The Religious Shape of Crowd ConvictionsEvery conviction of a crowd takes the shape of a religious sentiment, whatever its object, he holds.
- 06Race, Tradition, Time, Institutions and EducationFor Le Bon, race surpasses every other factor shaping what crowds can believe.
- 07Images, Words, Illusions, Experience and ReasonThe power of words lies in the images they evoke, not in their real meaning, he holds.
Leaders, Beliefs and Types of Crowd
- 08Leaders, Affirmation, Repetition, Contagion and PrestigeFor Le Bon, a crowd is a servile flock, incapable of ever doing without a master.
- 09Fixed Beliefs, Changing Opinions and the Classification of CrowdsA people rests on a fixed groundwork of belief, he holds, on which changing opinions lie like surface sand.
- 10Juries, Voters and Parliaments as CrowdsFor Le Bon, crowds that commit murder act under suggestion and feel convinced of their duty.
Concept 01 of 10
The Era of Crowds and the Mental Unity of the Crowd
Le Bon holds that the coming age belongs to the crowd, and that a gathering becomes something new, a single collective mind, once its members' personalities dissolve.
The Last Sovereign Force
Le Bon sees the old order collapsing. Ancient beliefs totter, the pillars of society give way one by one, and successive revolutions have destroyed the sources of authority. One power alone has risen in their place: the power of crowds.
Scarcely a century earlier, he notes, the rivalries of sovereigns shaped events and the opinion of the masses hardly counted. Now the voice of the masses dictates their conduct to kings.
The destinies of nations, he says, are worked out in the heart of the masses, no longer in the councils of princes. The age ahead is the Era of Crowds.
While all ancient beliefs totter and the old pillars of society give way,
the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces.
He adds that today the voice of the masses has become preponderant, over the traditions and rivalries of rulers.
When a Gathering Becomes a Crowd
In the everyday sense, a crowd is any gathering of people. Le Bon uses the word differently. Only under certain given circumstances, he holds, does an agglomeration of men show new characteristics, very different from those of the individuals composing it.
- The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction.
- Their conscious personality vanishes.
- A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but with very clearly defined characteristics.
- He calls the result an organised crowd, or a psychological crowd: it forms a single being, subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds.
Mere numbers do not suffice. A thousand people who happen to stand in a public square with no common aim are not a crowd in this sense.
Proximity is not required either. Thousands of scattered individuals can take on a crowd's traits under a violent emotion such as a great national event, and a whole nation may become a crowd without any visible gathering. Half a dozen men can form one.
A New Compound, Not an Average
Le Bon rejects Herbert Spencer's view that a crowd is a summing-up or an average struck between its elements. Instead, he says, a combination takes place and creates new characteristics, as in chemistry when bases and acids combine to form a new body with properties quite different from either.
| View | What a crowd is |
|---|---|
| Spencer's opinion, as Le Bon reports it | A summing-up of its elements, or an average struck between them |
| Le Bon | A combination creating new characteristics, as in chemistry |
Contagion is one cause that brings out these special traits and sets their direction. Le Bon calls it easy to detect but hard to explain, and ranks it among phenomena of a hypnotic order. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious.
It is so contagious that a person readily sacrifices personal interest to the collective interest, which is very contrary to his nature and which he is scarcely capable of except as part of a crowd.
Lower in Mind, Not Always Worse in Deed
His conclusion has two sides. The crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual. In feelings and the acts they provoke, it may be better or worse, according to circumstances. All depends on the suggestion to which it is exposed.
| Respect | The crowd compared with the individual |
|---|---|
| Intelligence | Always inferior |
| Feelings and acts | Better or worse, according to the suggestion given |
Le Bon says writers who studied crowds only as criminals missed this. A crowd is often criminal but also often heroic.
Crowds, more than isolated individuals, may be induced to run the risk of death for a creed or an idea. They may be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honour.
They were led on, almost without bread or arms, to deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel or, in 1793, to defend the fatherland.
Such heroism is somewhat unconscious, he grants, yet history is made of it. If peoples were credited only with deeds done in cold blood, the annals of the world would hold few.
The Unconscious and the Limits of Knowledge
Le Bon holds that crowds are always unconscious, yet perhaps this very unconsciousness is one of the secrets of their strength. Beings governed exclusively by instinct accomplish acts of astounding complexity. Reason is too recent and too imperfect to reveal the laws of the unconscious, still less to take its place.
He adds that the part played by the unconscious in all our acts is immense, and that played by reason very small.
- Psychological crowd
- An agglomeration of men whose sentiments and ideas take one direction and whose conscious personality vanishes.
- Law of mental unity
- The law to which the crowd, forming a single being, is subjected.
- Contagion
- A hypnotic-order phenomenon, easy to establish but hard to explain: in a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious.
He therefore urges staying within the narrow but safe limits of science: note the phenomena accessible to us and consider only them. Conclusions drawn too early are premature, since behind clear phenomena lie others seen dimly or not at all.
Why the Crowd Cannot Be Described Once and for All
He admits the crowd's mind is hard to describe exactly. Its organisation varies with race, composition, and the nature and intensity of the exciting causes. Individuals are no different: only in novels does a character stay unvarying through a whole life.
Uniform surroundings create apparent uniformity. A sudden change of environment can bring out possibilities of character already present. Among the most savage members of the French Convention were inoffensive citizens, who in ordinary times would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates. Napoleon later found among them his most docile servants.
He therefore concerns himself with crowds that have reached complete organisation, to show what crowds may become, not what they invariably are. Only in this advanced phase are special characteristics superposed on the dominant character of the race, and all feelings and thoughts turn in an identical direction.
| Kind of crowd | Make-up |
|---|---|
| Heterogeneous | Composed of dissimilar elements |
| Homogeneous | Composed of elements more or less akin: sects, castes, classes |
Both kinds share certain common characteristics, with particular traits that let the two be told apart.
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