The Crowd Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H THE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CEOWDS i 1. Impulsiveness, mobility, and irritability of crowds. The crowd is at the mercy of all exterior exciting causes, and reflects their incessant variations?The impulses which the crowd obeys are so imperious as to annihilate the feeling of personal interest?Premeditation is absent from crowds?Racial influence. § 2. Crowds are credulous and readily influenced by suggestion. The obedience of crowds to suggestions?The images evoked in the mind of crowds are accepted by them as realities?Why these images are identical for all the individuals composing a crowd?The equality of the educated and the ignorant man in a crowd?Various examples of the illusions to which the individuals in a crowd are subject? The impossibility of according belief to the testimony of crowds?The unanimity of numerous witnesses is one of the worst proofs that can be invoked to establish a fact?The slight value of works of history. § 3. The exaggeration and ingenuousness of the sentiments of crowds. Crowds do not admit doubt or uncertainty, and always go to extremes? Their sentiments always excessive. § 4. The intolerance, dictatorialness, and conservatism of crowds. The reasons of these sentiments?The servility of crowds in the face of a strong authority?The momentary revolutionary instincts of crowds do not prevent them from being extremely conservative?Crowds instinctively hostile to changes and progress. § 5. The morality of crowds. The morality of crowds, according to the suggestions under which they act, may be much lower or much higher than that of the individuals composing them?Explanation and examples?Crowds rarely guided by those considerations of interest which are most often the exclusive motives of the isolated individual?The moralising rtle of cr...Read More