Gustave Le Bon, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The first thing to establish is what a crowd is not. A thousand individuals gathered by accident in a public square, each pursuing his own errand, constitute nothing of psychological interest — they are a numerical fact, nothing more.1 The crowd, in the sense that matters, forms only under certain conditions: when a common event, a shared passion, an image that strikes all imaginations simultaneously, turns the ideas and sentiments of each person in one and the same direction.
At that moment something new comes into existence. The conscious personality of each individual vanishes.2 A collective mind is formed — transitory, yes, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics while it lasts — and the gathering becomes what I call a psychological crowd, subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds.1 The man who was yesterday a magistrate, a scholar, a tradesman, becomes in the crowd something other than himself.
He is now a grain of sand that the wind moves at will. What governs this collective mind? Not reason. The crowd is dominated entirely by unconscious elements and subject to a peculiar collective logic of its own.3 Its credulity is infinite, its sensibility exaggerated, its incapacity to respond to rational argument nearly absolute. Affirmation, contagion, repetition, and prestige — these are almost the only means of reaching it; reality and experience leave it unmoved.3
In times of revolution this exaggeration intensifies still further: the most improbable accusations are accepted as gospel, the most horrible legends circulated as fact.4 And yet the crowd is not simply criminal. It can be heroic, virtuous, self-sacrificing — its transformed sentiments may rise above or sink below those of the individuals who compose it.5
The mental constitution of crowds is not learned by studying their crimes alone, any more than a man's character is learned from a catalogue of his vices.5 There is one practical consequence that statesmen have rarely grasped, and paid dearly for ignoring. In 1848, the marshal commanding troops fully sufficient to defend Louis-Philippe allowed the crowd to mingle with his soldiers; paralysed by suggestion and contagion, those soldiers ceased to do their duty.6
Governments fall with astonishing ease precisely because they do not understand that the multitude responds to the display of force, to prestige, to the contagious certainty of the leader — not to argument, not to decree.6 A knowledge of crowd psychology is today the last resource of the statesman who wishes, if not to govern the masses, at least not to be entirely governed by them.7
Behind the oscillating crowd, however, stands something far more stable: the racial mind, the ancestral soul of a people established by a long past.8 A people is not a crowd, though it sometimes resembles one. Its enthusiasms and destructions are real, but behind them persist the tenacious, conservative instincts of the racial mind — which is why more than one system of government shattered by a revolution has eventually been restored by the very people who shattered it.8
Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes.The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind
A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organised crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being, and is subjected to the law of the mental unity of crowds.The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind
The collective mind, momentarily formed, represents a very special kind of aggregate. Its chief peculiarity is that it is entirely dominated by unconscious elements, and is subject to a peculiar collective logic.The Psychology of Revolution
Affirmation, contagion, repetition, and prestige constitute almost the only means of persuading them. Reality and experience have no effect upon them. The multitude will admit anything; nothing is impossible in the eyes of the crowd.The Psychology of Revolution
Without a doubt criminal crowds exist, but virtuous and heroic crowds, and crowds of many other kinds, are also to be met with. The crimes of crowds only constitute a particular phase of their psychology. The mental constitution of crowds is not to be learnt merely by a study of their crimes, any more than that of an individual by a mere description of his vices.The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind
The marshal in command of the troops in 1848, which were more than sufficient to defend the king, certainly did not understand that the moment he allowed the crowd to mingle with the troops the latter, paralysed by suggestion and contagion, would cease to do their duty.The Psychology of Revolution
A knowledge of the psychology of crowds is to-day the last resource of the statesman who wishes not to govern them — that is becoming a very difficult matter — but at any rate not to be too much governed by them.The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind
A people can in a sense be likened to a crowd. It possesses certain characteristics, but the oscillations of these characteristics are limited by the soul or mind of the race. The mind of the race has a fixity unknown to the transitory mind of the crowd. When a people possesses an ancestral soul established by a long past the soul of the crowd is always dominated thereby.The Psychology of Revolution