REMOTE FACTORS OF THE OPINIONS AND BELIEFS OF CROWDSPreparatory factors of the beliefs of crowds--The origin of the beliefs of crowds is the consequence of a preliminary process of elaboration-- Study of the different factors of these beliefs.
1.RACE.The predominating influence it exercises--It represents the suggestions of ancestors.2.TRADITIONS.
They are the synthesis of the soul of the race--Social importance of traditions--How, after having been necessary they become harmful--Crowds are the most obstinate maintainers of traditional ideas.3.TIME.It prepares in succession the establishment of beliefs and then their destruction.It is by the aid of this factor that order may proceed from chaos.4.POLITICAL ANDSOCIAL INSTITUTIONS.Erroneous idea of their part--Their influence extremely weak--They are effects, not causes--Nations are incapable of choosing what appear to them the best institutions--Institutions are labels which shelter the most dissimilar things under the same title-- How institutions may come to be created--Certain institutions theoretically bad, such as centralisation obligatory for certain nations.5.
INSTITUTIONS AND EDUCATION.Falsity of prevalent ideas as to the influence of instruction on crowds-- Statistical indications--Demoralising effect of Latin system of education--Part instruction might play--Examples furnished by various peoples.
Having studied the mental constitution of crowds and become acquainted with their modes of feeling, thinking, and reasoning, we shall now proceed to examine how their opinions and beliefs arise and become established.
The factors which determine these opinions and beliefs are of two kinds: remote factors and immediate factors.
The remote factors are those which render crowds capable of adopting certain convictions and absolutely refractory to the acceptance of others.These factors prepare the ground in which are suddenly seen to germinate certain new ideas whose force and consequences are a cause of astonishment, though they are only spontaneous in appearance.The outburst and putting in practice of certain ideas among crowds present at times a startling suddenness.This is only a superficial effect, behind which must be sought a preliminary and preparatory action of long duration.
The immediate factors are those which, coming on the top of this long, preparatory working, in whose absence they would remain without effect, serve as the source of active persuasion on crowds; that is, they are the factors which cause the idea to take shape and set it loose with all its consequences.The resolutions by which collectivities are suddenly carried away arise out of these immediate factors; it is due to them that a riot breaks out or a strike is decided upon, and to them that enormous majorities invest one man with power to overthrow a government.
The successive action of these two kinds of factors is to be traced in all great historical events.The French Revolution--to cite but one of the most striking of such events--had among its remote factors the writings of the philosophers, the exactions of the nobility, and the progress of scientific thought.The mind of the masses, thus prepared, was then easily roused by such immediate factors as the speeches of orators, and the resistance of the court party to insignificant reforms.
Among the remote factors there are some of a general nature, which are found to underlie all the beliefs and opinions of crowds.They are race, traditions, time, institutions, and education.
We now proceed to study the influence of these different factors.
1.RACE
This factor, race, must be placed in the first rank, for in itself it far surpasses in importance all the others.We have sufficiently studied it in another work; it is therefore needless to deal with it again.We showed, in a previous volume, what an historical race is, and how, its character once formed, it possesses, as the result of the laws of heredity such power that its beliefs, institutions, and arts--in a word, all the elements of its civilisation--are merely the outward expression of its genius.We showed that the power of the race is such that no element can pass from one people to another without undergoing the most profound transformations.[7]
[7] The novelty of this proposition being still considerable and history being quite unintelligible without it, I devoted four chapters to its demonstration in my last book ("The Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples").From it the reader will see that, in spite of fallacious appearances, neither language, religion, arts, or, in a word, any element of civilisation, can pass, intact, from one people to another.
Environment, circumstances, and events represent the social suggestions of the moment.They may have a considerable influence, but this influence is always momentary if it be contrary to the suggestions of the race; that is, to those which are inherited by a nation from the entire series of its ancestors.
We shall have occasion in several of the chapters of this work to touch again upon racial influence, and to show that this influence is so great that it dominates the characteristics peculiar to the genius of crowds.It follows from this fact that the crowds of different countries offer very considerable differences of beliefs and conduct and are not to be influenced in the same manner.
2.TRADITIONS
Traditions represent the ideas, the needs, and the sentiments of the past.They are the synthesis of the race, and weigh upon us with immense force.
