The crowd : $b A study of the popular mindLe Bon, Gustave
Science
The crowd : $b A study of the popular mind
Le Bon, Gustave
Crowds
At the present day these leaders and agitators tend more and more
to usurp the place of the public authorities in proportion as the
latter allow themselves to be called in question and shorn of
their strength. The tyranny of these new masters has for result
that the crowds obey them much more docilely than they have
obeyed any government. If in consequence of some accident or
other the leaders should be removed from the scene the crowd
returns to its original state of a collectivity without cohesion
or force of resistance. During the last strike of the Parisian
omnibus employes the arrest of the two leaders who were directing
it was at once sufficient to bring it to an end. It is the need
not of liberty but of servitude that is always predominant in the
soul of crowds. They are so bent on obedience that they
instinctively submit to whoever declares himself their master.
These ringleaders and agitators may be divided into two clearly
defined classes. The one includes the men who are energetic and
possess, but only intermittently, much strength of will, the
other the men, far rarer than the preceding, whose strength of
will is enduring. The first mentioned are violent, brave, and
audacious. They are more especially useful to direct a violent
enterprise suddenly decided on, to carry the masses with them in
spite of danger, and to transform into heroes the men who but
yesterday were recruits. Men of this kind were Ney and Murat
under the First Empire, and such a man in our own time was
Garibaldi, a talentless but energetic adventurer who succeeded
with a handful of men in laying hands on the ancient kingdom of
Naples, defended though it was by a disciplined army.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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