The crowd : a study of the popular mind / by Gustave Le Bon.

  • Gustave Le Bon
Date:
[1920]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The crowd : a study of the popular mind / by Gustave Le Bon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    enough, as barbarians. Civilisations as yet have only been created and directed by a small in¬ tellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase. A civilisation involves fixed rules, discipline, a passing from the instinctive to the rational state, forethought for the future, an elevated degree of culture—all of them conditions that crowds, left to themselves, have invariably shown themselves incapable of realising. In consequence of the purely destructive nature of their power, crowds act like those microbes which hasten the dissolution of enfeebled or dead bodies. When the structure of a civilisation is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about its downfall. It is at such a juncture that their chief mission is plainly visible, and that for a while the philosophy of number seems the only philosophy of history. Is the same fate in store for our civilisation ? There is ground to fear that this is the case, but we are not as yet in a position to be certain of it. However this may be, we are bound to resign ourselves to the reign of the masses, since want of foresight has in succession overthrown all the barriers that might have kept the crowd in check. We have a very slight knowledge of these crowds which are beginning to be the object of so much discussion. Professional students of psychology, having lived far from them, have always ignored them, and when, as of late, they have turned their