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Gustave
Le Bon and his school, in their discussions of the psychology
of crowds, have put forward the doctrine that the individual
man, cheek by jowl with the multitude, drops down an intellectual
peg or two, and so tends to show the mental and emotional reactions
of his inferiors. It is thus that they explain the well-known
violence and imbecility of crowds. The crowd, as a crowd, performs
acts that many of its members, as individuals, would never be
guilty of. Its average intelligence is very low; it is inflammatory,
vicious, idiotic, almost simian. Crowds, properly worked up
by skilful demagogues, are ready to believe anything, and to
do anything.
Le
Bon, I daresay, is partly right, but also partly wrong. His
theory is probably too flattering to the average numskull. He
accounts for the extravagance of crowds on the assumption that
the numskull, along with the superior man, is knocked out of
his wits by suggestion--that he, too, does things in association
that he would never think of doing singly. The fact may be accepted,
but the reasoning raises a doubt. The numskull runs amuck in
a crowd, not because he has been inoculated with new rascality
by the mysterious crowd influence, but because his habitual
rascality now has its only chance to function safely. In other
words, the numskull is vicious, but a poltroon. He refrains
from all attempts at lynching _a cappella_, not because it takes
suggestion to make him desire to lynch, but because it takes
the protection of a crowd to make him brave enough to try it.
What
happens when a crowd cuts loose is not quite what Le Bon and
his followers describe. The few superior men in it are not straightway
reduced to the level of the underlying stoneheads. On the contrary,
they usually keep their heads, and often make efforts to combat
the crowd action. But the stoneheads are too many for them;
the fence is torn down or the blackamoor is lynched. And why?
Not because the stoneheads, normally virtuous, are suddenly
criminally insane. Nay, but because they are suddenly conscious
of the power lying in their numbers--because they suddenly realize
that their natural viciousness and insanity may be safely permitted
to function.
In
other words, the particular swinishness of a crowd is permanently
resident in the majority of its members--in all those members,
that is, who are naturally ignorant and vicious--perhaps 95
per cent. All studies of mob psychology are defective in that
they underestimate this viciousness. They are poisoned by the
prevailing delusion that the lower orders of men are angels.
This is nonsense. The lower orders of men are incurable rascals,
either individually or collectively. Decency, self-restraint,
the sense of justice, courage--these virtues belong only to
a small minority of men. This minority never runs amuck. Its
most distinguishing character, in truth, is its resistance to
all running amuck. The third-rate man, though he may wear the
false whiskers of a first-rate man, may always be detected by
his inability to keep his head in the face of an appeal to his
emotions. A whoop strips off his disguise.
