Judging by the lessons of the past, and by the symptoms that strike the attention on every side, several of our modern civilisations have reached that phase of extreme old age which precedes decadence.It seems inevitable that all peoples should pass through identical phases of existence, since history is so often seen to repeat its course.
It is easy to note briefly these common phases of the evolution of civilisations, and I shall terminate this work with a summary of them.This rapid sketch will perhaps throw some gleams of light on the causes of the power at present wielded by crowds.
If we examine in their main lines the genesis of the greatness and of the fall of the civilisations that preceded our own, what do we see?
At the dawn of civilisation a swarm of men of various origin, brought together by the chances of migrations, invasions, and conquests.Of different blood, and of equally different languages and beliefs, the only common bond of union between these men is the half-recognised law of a chief.The psychological characteristics of crowds are present in an eminent degree in these confused agglomerations.They have the transient cohesion of crowds, their heroism, their weaknesses, their impulsiveness, and their violence.Nothing is stable in connection with them.They are barbarians.
At length time accomplishes its work.The identity of surroundings, the repeated intermingling of races, the necessities of life in common exert their influence.The assemblage of dissimilar units begins to blend into a whole, to form a race; that is, an aggregate possessing common characteristics and sentiments to which heredity will give greater and greater fixity.The crowd has become a people, and this people is able to emerge from its barbarous state.However, it will only entirely emerge therefrom when, after long efforts, struggles necessarily repeated, and innumerable recommencements, it shall have acquired an ideal.The nature of this ideal is of slight importance; whether it be the cult of Rome, the might of Athens, or the triumph of Allah, it will suffice to endow all the individuals of the race that is forming with perfect unity of sentiment and thought.
At this stage a new civilisation, with its institutions, its beliefs, and its arts, may be born.In pursuit of its ideal, the race will acquire in succession the qualities necessary to give it splendour, vigour, and grandeur.At times no doubt it will still be a crowd, but henceforth, beneath the mobile and changing characteristics of crowds, is found a solid substratum, the genius of the race which confines within narrow limits the transformations of a nation and overrules the play of chance.
After having exerted its creative action, time begins that work of destruction from which neither gods nor men escape.Having reached a certain level of strength and complexity a civilisation ceases to grow, and having ceased to grow it is condemned to a speedy decline.The hour of its old age has struck.
This inevitable hour is always marked by the weakening of the ideal that was the mainstay of the race.In proportion as this ideal pales all the religious, political, and social structures inspired by it begin to be shaken.
With the progressive perishing of its ideal the race loses more and more the qualities that lent it its cohesion, its unity, and its strength.The personality and intelligence of the individual may increase, but at the same time this collective egoism of the race is replaced by an excessive development of the egoism of the individual, accompanied by a weakening of character and a lessening of the capacity for action.What constituted a people, a unity, a whole, becomes in the end an agglomeration of individualities lacking cohesion, and artificially held together for a time by its traditions and institutions.It is at this stage that men, divided by their interests and aspirations, and incapable any longer of self-government, require directing in their pettiest acts, and that the State exerts an absorbing influence.
With the definite loss of its old ideal the genius of the race entirely disappears; it is a mere swarm of isolated individuals and returns to its original state--that of a crowd.Without consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory characteristics of crowds.Its civilisation is now without stability, and at the mercy of every chance.The populace is sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts.The civilisation may still seem brilliant because it possesses an outward front, the work of a long past, but it is in reality an edifice crumbling to ruin, which nothing supports, and destined to fall in at the first storm.
To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue, to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people.
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