GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CROWDS.--PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF THEIRMENTAL UNITY.
What constitutes a crowd from the psychological point of view--Anumerically strong agglomeration of individuals does not suffice to form a crowd--Special characteristics of psychological crowds--The turning in a fixed direction of the ideas and sentiments of individuals composing such a crowd, and the disappearance of their personality--The crowd is always dominated by considerations of which it is unconscious--The disappearance of brain activity and the predominance of medullar activity--The lowering of the intelligence and the complete transformation of the sentiments--The transformed sentiments may be better or worse than those of the individuals of which the crowd is composed--Acrowd is as easily heroic as criminal.
In its ordinary sense the word "crowd" means a gathering of individuals of whatever nationality, profession, or sex, and whatever be the chances that have brought them together.From the psychological point of view the expression "crowd" assumes quite a different signification.Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents 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, and their conscious personality vanishes.Acollective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics.The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organised crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological crowd.It forms a single being, and is subjected to the LAW OF THE MENTAL UNITY OF CROWDS.
It is evident that it is not by the mere fact of a number of individuals finding themselves accidentally side by side that they acquire the character of an organised crowd.A thousand individuals accidentally gathered in a public place without any determined object in no way constitute a crowd from the psychological point of view.To acquire the special characteristics of such a crowd, the influence is necessary of certain predisposing causes of which we shall have to determine the nature.
The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organised, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one spot.Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain violent emotions--such, for example, as a great national event--the characteristics of a psychological crowd.It will be sufficient in that case that a mere chance should bring them together for their acts to at once assume the characteristics peculiar to the acts of a crowd.At certain moments half a dozen men might constitute a psychological crowd, which may not happen in the case of hundreds of men gathered together by accident.On the other hand, an entire nation, though there may be no visible agglomeration, may become a crowd under the action of certain influences.
A psychological crowd once constituted, it acquires certain provisional but determinable general characteristics.To these general characteristics there are adjoined particular characteristics which vary according to the elements of which the crowd is composed, and may modify its mental constitution.
Psychological crowds, then, are susceptible of classification;and when we come to occupy ourselves with this matter, we shall see that a heterogeneous crowd--that is, a crowd composed of dissimilar elements--presents certain characteristics in common with homogeneous crowds--that is, with crowds composed of elements more or less akin (sects, castes, and classes)--and side by side with these common characteristics particularities which permit of the two kinds of crowds being differentiated.
But before occupying ourselves with the different categories of crowds, we must first of all examine the characteristics common to them all.We shall set to work like the naturalist, who begins by describing the general characteristics common to all the members of a family before concerning himself with the particular characteristics which allow the differentiation of the genera and species that the family includes.
It is not easy to describe the mind of crowds with exactness, because its organisation varies not only according to race and composition, but also according to the nature and intensity of the exciting causes to which crowds are subjected.The same difficulty, however, presents itself in the psychological study of an individual.It is only in novels that individuals are found to traverse their whole life with an unvarying character.
It is only the uniformity of the environment that creates the apparent uniformity of characters.I have shown elsewhere that all mental constitutions contain possibilities of character which may be manifested in consequence of a sudden change of environment.This explains how it was that among the most savage members of the French Convention were to be found inoffensive citizens who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been peaceable notaries or virtuous magistrates.The storm past, they resumed their normal character of quiet, law-abiding citizens.
Napoleon found amongst them his most docile servants.
