PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLIES
Parliamentary crowds present most of the characteristics common
to heterogeneous crowds that are not anonymous--The simplicity of
their opinions--Their suggestibility and its limits--Their
indestructible, fixed opinions and their changed opinions--The
reason of the predominance of indecision--The role of the
leaders--The reason of their prestige--They are the true masters
of an assembly whose votes, on that account, are merely those of
a small minority--The absolute power they exercise--The elements
of their oratorical art--Phrases and images--The psychological
necessity the leaders are under of being in a general way of
stubborn convictions and narrow-minded--It is impossible for a
speaker without prestige to obtain recognition for his
arguments-- The exaggeration of the sentiments, whether good or
bad, of assemblies-- At certain moments they become
automatic--The sittings of the Convention--Cases in which an
assembly loses the characteristics of crowds--The influence of
specialists when technical questions arise--The advantages and
dangers of a parliamentary system in all countries--It is adapted
to modern needs; but it involves financial waste and the
progressive curtailment of all liberty--Conclusion.
In parliamentary assemblies we have an example of heterogeneous
crowds that are not anonymous. Although the mode of election of
their members varies from epoch to epoch, and from nation to
nation, they present very similar characteristics. In this case
the influence of the race makes itself felt to weaken or
exaggerate the characteristics common to crowds, but not to
prevent their manifestation. The parliamentary assemblies of the
most widely different countries, of Greece, Italy, Portugal,
Spain, France, and America present great analogies in their
debates and votes, and leave the respective governments face to
face with identical difficulties.
Moreover, the parliamentary system represents the ideal of all
modern civilised peoples. The system is the expression of the
idea, psychologically erroneous, but generally admitted, that a
large gathering of men is much more capable than a small number
of coming to a wise and independent decision on a given subject.
The general characteristics of crowds are to be met with in
parliamentary assemblies: intellectual simplicity, irritability,
suggestibility, the exaggeration of the sentiments and the
preponderating influence of a few leaders. In consequence,
however, of their special composition parliamentary crowds offer
some distinctive features, which we shall point out shortly.
Simplicity in their opinions is one of their most important
characteristics. In the case of all parties, and more especially
so far as the Latin peoples are concerned, an invariable tendency
is met with in crowds of this kind to solve the most complicated
social problems by the simplest abstract principles and general
laws applicable to all cases. Naturally the principles vary with
the party; but owing to the mere fact that the individual members
are a part of a crowd, they are always inclined to exaggerate the
worth of their principles, and to push them to their extreme
consequences. In consequence parliaments are more especially
representative of extreme opinions.
The most perfect example of the ingenuous simplification of
opinions peculiar to assemblies is offered by the Jacobins of the
French Revolution. Dogmatic and logical to a man, and their
brains full of vague generalities, they busied themselves with
the application of fixed-principles without concerning themselves
with events. It has been said of them, with reason, that they
went through the Revolution without witnessing it. With the aid
of the very simple dogmas that served them as guide, they
imagined they could recast society from top to bottom, and cause
a highly refined civilisation to return to a very anterior phase
of the social evolution. The methods they resorted to to realise
their dream wore the same stamp of absolute ingenuousness. They
confined themselves, in reality, to destroying what stood in
their way. All of them, moreover--Girondists, the Men of the
Mountain, the Thermidorians, &c.--were alike animated by the same
spirit.
Parliamentary crowds are very open to suggestion; and, as in the
case of all crowds, the suggestion comes from leaders possessing
prestige; but the suggestibility of parliamentary assemblies has
very clearly defined limits, which it is important to point out.
On all questions of local or regional interest every member of an
assembly has fixed, unalterable opinions, which no amount of
argument can shake. The talent of a Demosthenes would be
powerless to change the vote of a Deputy on such questions as
protection or the privilege of distilling alcohol, questions in
which the interests of influential electors are involved. The
suggestion emanating from these electors and undergone before the
time to vote arrives, sufficiently outweighs suggestions from any
other source to annul them and to maintain an absolute fixity of
opinion.[27]
[27] The following reflection of an English parliamentarian of
long experience doubtless applies to these opinions, fixed
beforehand, and rendered unalterable by electioneering
necessities: "During the fifty years that I have sat at
Westminster, I have listened to thousands of speeches; but few of
them have changed my opinion, not one of them has changed my
vote."
On general questions--the overthrow of a Cabinet, the imposition
of a tax, &c.--there is no longer any fixity of opinion, and the
suggestions of leaders can exert an influence, though not in
quite the same way as in an ordinary crowd. Every party has its
leaders, who possess occasionally an equal influence. The result
is that the Deputy finds himself placed between two contrary
suggestions, and is inevitably made to hesitate. This explains
how it is that he is often seen to vote in contrary fashion in an
interval of a quarter of an hour or to add to a law an article
which nullifies it; for instance, to withdraw from employers of
labour the right of choosing and dismissing their workmen, and
then to very nearly annul this measure by an amendment.
It is for the same reason that every Chamber that is returned has
some very stable opinions, and other opinions that are very
shifting. On the whole, the general questions being the more
numerous, indecision is predominant in the Chamber--the
indecision which results from the ever- present fear of the
elector, the suggestion received from whom is always latent, and
tends to counterbalance the influence of the leaders.
Still, it is the leaders who are definitely the masters in those
numerous discussions, with regard to the subject-matter of which
the members of an assembly are without strong preconceived
opinions.
The necessity for these leaders is evident, since, under the name
of heads of groups, they are met with in the assemblies of every
country. They are the real rulers of an assembly. Men forming a
crowd cannot do without a master, whence it results that the
votes of an assembly only represent, as a rule, the opinions of a
small minority.
The influence of the leaders is due in very small measure to the
arguments they employ, but in a large degree to their prestige.
The best proof of this is that, should they by any circumstance
lose their prestige, their influence disappears.
The prestige of these political leaders is individual, and
independent of name or celebrity: a fact of which M. Jules Simon
gives us some very curious examples in his remarks on the
prominent men of the Assembly of 1848, of which he was a
member:--
"Two months before he was all-powerful, Louis Napoleon was
entirely without the least importance.
"Victor Hugo mounted the tribune. He failed to achieve success.
He was listened to as Felix Pyat was listened to, but he did not
obtain as much applause. `I don't like his ideas,' Vaulabelle
said to me, speaking of Felix Pyat,' but he is one of the
greatest writers and the greatest orator of France.' Edgar
Quinet, in spite of his exceptional and powerful intelligence,
was held in no esteem whatever. He had been popular for awhile
before the opening of the Assembly; in the Assembly he had no
popularity.
"The splendour of genius makes itself less felt in political
assemblies than anywhere else. They only give heed to eloquence
appropriate to the time and place and to party services, not to
services rendered the country. For homage to be rendered
Lamartine in 1848 and Thiers in 1871, the stimulant was needed of
urgent, inexorable interest. As soon as the danger was passed
the parliamentary world forgot in the same instant its gratitude
and its fright."
I have quoted the preceding passage for the sake of the facts it
contains, not of the explanations it offers, their psychology
being somewhat poor. A crowd would at once lose its character of
a crowd were it to credit its leaders with their services,
whether of a party nature or rendered their country. The crowd
that obeys a leader is under the influence of his prestige, and
its submission is not dictated by any sentiment of interest or
gratitude.
In consequence the leader endowed with sufficient prestige wields
almost absolute power. The immense influence exerted during a
long series of years, thanks to his prestige, by a celebrated
Deputy,[28] beaten at the last general election in consequence of
certain financial events, is well known. He had only to give the
signal and Cabinets were overthrown. A writer has clearly
indicated the scope of his action in the following lines:--
[28] M. Clemenceau.--Note of the Translator.
"It is due, in the main, to M. X---- that we paid three times as
dearly as we should have done for Tonkin, that we remained so
long on a precarious footing in Madagascar, that we were
defrauded of an empire in the region of the Lower Niger, and that
we have lost the preponderating situation we used to occupy in
Egypt. The theories of M. X---- have cost us more territories
than the disasters of Napoleon I."
We must not harbour too bitter a grudge against the leader in
question. It is plain that he has cost us very dear; but a great
part of his influence was due to the fact that he followed public
opinion, which, in colonial matters, was far from being at the
time what it has since become. A leader is seldom in advance of
public opinion; almost always all he does is to follow it and to
espouse all its errors.
The means of persuasion of the leaders we are dealing with, apart
from their prestige, consist in the factors we have already
enumerated several times. To make a skilful use of these
resources a leader must have arrived at a comprehension, at least
in an unconscious manner, of the psychology of crowds, and must
know how to address them. He should be aware, in particular, of
the fascinating influence of words, phrases, and images. He
should possess a special description of eloquence, composed of
energetic affirmations--unburdened with proofs-- and impressive
images, accompanied by very summary arguments. This is a kind of
eloquence that is met with in all assemblies, the English
Parliament included, the most serious though it is of all.
"Debates in the House of Commons," says the English philosopher
Maine, "may be constantly read in which the entire discussion is
confined to an exchange of rather weak generalities and rather
violent personalities. General formulas of this description
exercise a prodigious influence on the imagination of a pure
democracy. It will always be easy to make a crowd accept general
assertions, presented in striking terms, although they have never
been verified, and are perhaps not susceptible of verification."
Too much importance cannot be attached to the "striking terms"
alluded to in the above quotation. We have already insisted, on
several occasions, on the special power of words and formulas.
They must be chosen in such a way as to evoke very vivid images.
The following phrase, taken from a speech by one of the leaders
of our assemblies, affords an excellent example:--
"When the same vessel shall bear away to the fever-haunted lands
of our penitentiary settlements the politician of shady
reputation and the anarchist guilty of murder, the pair will be
able to converse together, and they will appear to each other as
the two complementary aspects of one and the same state of
society."
The image thus evoked is very vivid, and all the adversaries of
the speaker felt themselves threatened by it. They conjured up a
double vision of the fever-haunted country and the vessel that
may carry them away; for is it not possible that they are
included in the somewhat ill-defined category of the politicians
menaced? They experienced the lurking fear that the men of the
Convention must have felt whom the vague speeches of Robespierre
threatened with the guillotine, and who, under the influence of
this fear, invariably yielded to him.
It is all to the interest of the leaders to indulge in the most
improbable exaggerations. The speaker of whom I have just cited
a sentence was able to affirm, without arousing violent
protestations, that bankers and priests had subsidised the
throwers of bombs, and that the directors of the great financial
companies deserve the same punishment as anarchists.
Affirmations of this kind are always effective with crowds. The
affirmation is never too violent, the declamation never too
threatening. Nothing intimidates the audience more than this
sort of eloquence. Those present are afraid that if they protest
they will be put down as traitors or accomplices.
As I have said, this peculiar style of eloquence has ever been of
sovereign effect in all assemblies. In times of crisis its power
is still further accentuated. The speeches of the great orators
of the assemblies of the French Revolution are very interesting
reading from this point of view. At every instant they thought
themselves obliged to pause in order to denounce crime and exalt
virtue, after which they would burst forth into imprecations
against tyrants, and swear to live free men or perish. Those
present rose to their feet, applauded furiously, and then,
calmed, took their seats again.
On occasion, the leader may be intelligent and highly educated,
but the possession of these qualities does him, as a rule, more
harm than good. By showing how complex things are, by allowing
of explanation and promoting comprehension, intelligence always
renders its owner indulgent, and blunts, in a large measure, that
intensity and violence of conviction needful for apostles. The
great leaders of crowds of all ages, and those of the Revolution
in particular, have been of lamentably narrow intellect; while it
is precisely those whose intelligence has been the most
restricted who have exercised the greatest influence.
The speeches of the most celebrated of them, of Robespierre,
frequently astound one by their incoherence: by merely reading
them no plausible explanation is to be found of the great part
played by the powerful dictator:--
"The commonplaces and redundancies of pedagogic eloquence and
Latin culture at the service of a mind childish rather than
undistinguished, and limited in its notions of attack and defence
to the defiant attitude of schoolboys. Not an idea, not a happy
turn of phrase, or a telling hit: a storm of declamation that
leaves us bored. After a dose of this unexhilarating reading one
is attempted to exclaim `Oh!' with the amiable Camille
Desmoulins."
It is terrible at times to think of the power that strong
conviction combined with extreme narrowness of mind gives a man
possessing prestige. It is none the less necessary that these
conditions should be satisfied for a man to ignore obstacles and
display strength of will in a high measure. Crowds instinctively
recognise in men of energy and conviction the masters they are
always in need of.
In a parliamentary assembly the success of a speech depends
almost solely on the prestige possessed by the speaker, and not
at all on the arguments he brings forward. The best proof of
this is that when for one cause or another a speaker loses his
prestige, he loses simultaneously all his influence, that is, his
power of influencing votes at will.
When an unknown speaker comes forward with a speech containing
good arguments, but only arguments, the chances are that he will
only obtain a hearing. A Deputy who is a psychologist of
insight, M. Desaubes, has recently traced in the following lines
the portrait of the Deputy who lacks prestige:--
"When he takes his place in the tribune he draws a document from
his portfolio, spreads it out methodically before him, and makes
a start with assurance.
"He flatters himself that he will implant in the minds of his
audience the conviction by which he is himself animated. He has
weighed and reweighed his arguments; he is well primed with
figures and proofs; he is certain he will convince his hearers.
In the face of the evidence he is to adduce all resistance would
be futile. He begins, confident in the justice of his cause, and
relying upon the attention of his colleagues, whose only anxiety,
of course, is to subscribe to the truth.
"He speaks, and is at once surprised at the restlessness of the
House, and a little annoyed by the noise that is being made.
"How is it silence is not kept? Why this general inattention?
What are those Deputies thinking about who are engaged in
conversation? What urgent motive has induced this or that Deputy
to quit his seat?
"An expression of uneasiness crosses his face; he frowns and
stops. Encouraged by the President, he begins again, raising his
voice. He is only listened to all the less. He lends emphasis
to his words, and gesticulates: the noise around him increases.
He can no longer hear himself, and again stops; finally, afraid
that his silence may provoke the dreaded cry, `The Closure!' he
starts off again. The clamour becomes unbearable."
When parliamentary assemblies reach a certain pitch of excitement
they become identical with ordinary heterogeneous crowds, and
their sentiments in consequence present the peculiarity of being
always extreme. They will be seen to commit acts of the greatest
heroism or the worst excesses. The individual is no longer
himself, and so entirely is this the case that he will vote
measures most adverse to his personal interests.
The history of the French Revolution shows to what an extent
assemblies are capable of losing their self-consciousness, and of
obeying suggestions most contrary to their interests. It was an
enormous sacrifice for the nobility to renounce its privileges,
yet it did so without hesitation on a famous night during the
sittings of the Constituant Assembly. By renouncing their
inviolability the men of the Convention placed themselves under a
perpetual menace of death and yet they took this step, and were
not afraid to decimate their own ranks, though perfectly aware
that the scaffold to which they were sending their colleagues
to-day might be their own fate to-morrow. The truth is they had
attained to that completely automatic state which I have
described elsewhere, and no consideration would hinder them from
yielding to the suggestions by which they were hypnotised. The
following passage from the memoirs of one of them,
Billaud-Varennes, is absolutely typical on this score: "The
decisions with which we have been so reproached," he says, "WERE
NOT DESIRED BY US TWO DAYS, A SINGLE DAY BEFORE THEY WERE TAKEN:
IT WAS THE CRISIS AND NOTHING ELSE THAT GAVE RISE TO THEM."
Nothing can be more accurate.
The same phenomena of unconsciousness were to be witnessed during
all the stormy sittings of the Convention.
"They approved and decreed measures," says Taine, "which they
held in horror--measures which were not only stupid and foolish,
but measures that were crimes--the murder of innocent men, the
murder of their friends. The Left, supported by the Right,
unanimously and amid loud applause, sent to the scaffold Danton,
its natural chief, and the great promoter and leader of the
Revolution. Unanimously and amid the greatest applause the
Right, supported by the Left, votes the worst decrees of the
revolutionary government. Unanimously and amid cries of
admiration and enthusiasm, amid demonstrations of passionate
sympathy for Collot d'Herbois, Couthon, and Robespierre, the
Convention by spontaneous and repeated re-elections keeps in
office the homicidal government which the Plain detests because
it is homicidal, and the Mountain detests because it is decimated
by it. The Plain and the Mountain, the majority and the
minority, finish by consenting to help on their own suicide. The
22 Prairial the entire Convention offered itself to the
executioner; the 8 Thermidor, during the first quarter of an hour
that followed Robespierre's speech, it did the same thing again."
This picture may appear sombre. Yet it is accurate.
Parliamentary assemblies, sufficiently excited and hypnotised,
offer the same characteristics. They become an unstable flock,
obedient to every impulsion. The following description of the
Assembly of 1848 is due to M. Spuller, a parliamentarian whose
faith in democracy is above suspicion. I reproduce it from the
Revue litteraire, and it is thoroughly typical. It offers an
example of all the exaggerated sentiments which I have described
as characteristic of crowds, and of that excessive changeableness
which permits of assemblies passing, from moment to moment, from
one set of sentiments to another entirely opposite.
"The Republican party was brought to its perdition by its
divisions, its jealousies, its suspicions, and, in turn, its
blind confidence and its limitless hopes. Its ingenuousness and
candour were only equalled by its universal mistrust. An absence
of all sense of legality, of all comprehension of discipline,
together with boundless terrors and illusions; the peasant and
the child are on a level in these respects. Their calm is as
great as their impatience; their ferocity is equal to their
docility. This condition is the natural consequence of a
temperament that is not formed and of the lack of education.
Nothing astonishes such persons, and everything disconcerts them.
Trembling with fear or brave to the point of heroism, they would
go through fire and water or fly from a shadow.
"They are ignorant of cause and effect and of the connecting
links between events. They are as promptly discouraged as they
are exalted, they are subject to every description of panic, they
are always either too highly strung or too downcast, but never in
the mood or the measure the situation would require. More fluid
than water they reflect every line and assume every shape. What
sort of a foundation for a government can they be expected to
supply?"
Fortunately all the characteristics just described as to be met
with in parliamentary assemblies are in no wise constantly
displayed. Such assemblies only constitute crowds at certain
moments. The individuals composing them retain their
individuality in a great number of cases, which explains how it
is that an assembly is able to turn out excellent technical laws.
It is true that the author of these laws is a specialist who has
prepared them in the quiet of his study, and that in reality the
law voted is the work of an individual and not of an assembly.
These laws are naturally the best. They are only liable to have
disastrous results when a series of amendments has converted them
into the outcome of a collective effort. The work of a crowd is
always inferior, whatever its nature, to that of an isolated
individual. It is specialists who safeguard assemblies from
passing ill-advised or unworkable measures. The specialist in
this case is a temporary leader of crowds. The Assembly is
without influence on him, but he has influence over the Assembly.
In spite of all the difficulties attending their working,
parliamentary assemblies are the best form of government mankind
has discovered as yet, and more especially the best means it has
found to escape the yoke of personal tyrannies. They constitute
assuredly the ideal government at any rate for philosophers,
thinkers, writers, artists, and learned men--in a word, for all
those who form the cream of a civilisation.
Moreover, in reality they only present two serious dangers, one
being inevitable financial waste, and the other the progressive
restriction of the liberty of the individual.
The first of these dangers is the necessary consequence of the
exigencies and want of foresight of electoral crowds. Should a
member of an assembly propose a measure giving apparent
satisfaction to democratic ideas, should he bring in a Bill, for
instance, to assure old-age pensions to all workers, and to
increase the wages of any class of State employes, the other
Deputies, victims of suggestion in their dread of their electors,
will not venture to seem to disregard the interests of the latter
by rejecting the proposed measure, although well aware they are
imposing a fresh strain on the Budget and necessitating the
creation of new taxes. It is impossible for them to hesitate to
give their votes. The consequences of the increase of
expenditure are remote and will not entail disagreeable
consequences for them personally, while the consequences of a
negative vote might clearly come to light when they next present
themselves for re-election.
In addition to this first cause of an exaggerated expenditure
there is another not less imperative--the necessity of voting all
grants for local purposes. A Deputy is unable to oppose grants
of this kind because they represent once more the exigencies of
the electors, and because each individual Deputy can only obtain
what he requires for his own constituency on the condition of
acceding to similar demands on the part of his colleagues.[29]
[29] In its issue of April 6, 1895, the Economiste published a
curious review of the figures that may be reached by expenditure
caused solely by electoral considerations, and notably of the
outlay on railways. To put Langayes (a town of 3,000
inhabitants, situated on a mountain) in communication with Puy, a
railway is voted that will cost 15 millions of francs. Seven
millions are to be spent to put Beaumont (3,500 inhabitants) in
communication with Castel-Sarrazin; 7 millions to put Oust (a
village of 523 inhabitants) in communication with Seix (1,200
inhabitants); 6 millions to put Prade in communication with the
hamlet of Olette (747 inhabitants), &c. In 1895 alone 90
millions of francs were voted for railways of only local utility.
There is other no less important expenditure necessitated also by
electioneering considerations. The law instituting workingmen's
pensions will soon involve a minimum annual outlay of 165
millions, according to the Minister of Finance, and of 800
millions according to the academician M. Leroy-Beaulieu. It is
evident that the continued growth of expenditure of this kind
must end in bankruptcy. Many European countries--Portugal,
Greece, Spain, Turkey--have reached this stage, and others, such
as Italy, will soon be reduced to the same extremity. Still too
much alarm need not be felt at this state of things, since the
public has successively consented to put up with the reduction of
four-fifths in the payment of their coupons by these different
countries. Bankruptcy under these ingenious conditions allows
the equilibrium of Budgets difficult to balance to be instantly
restored. Moreover, wars, socialism, and economic conflicts hold
in store for us a profusion of other catastrophes in the period
of universal disintegration we are traversing, and it is
necessary to be resigned to living from hand to mouth without too
much concern for a future we cannot control.
The second of the dangers referred to above--the inevitable
restrictions on liberty consummated by parliamentary
assemblies--is apparently less obvious, but is, nevertheless,
very real. It is the result of the innumerable laws--having
always a restrictive action--which parliaments consider
themselves obliged to vote and to whose consequences, owing to
their shortsightedness, they are in a great measure blind.
The danger must indeed be most inevitable, since even England
itself, which assuredly offers the most popular type of the
parliamentary regime, the type in which the representative is
most independent of his elector, has been unable to escape it.
Herbert Spencer has shown, in a work already old, that the
increase of apparent liberty must needs be followed by the
decrease of real liberty. Returning to this contention in his
recent book, "The Individual versus the State," he thus expresses
himself with regard to the English Parliament:--
"Legislation since this period has followed the course, I pointed
out. Rapidly multiplying dictatorial measures have continually
tended to restrict individual liberties, and this in two ways.
Regulations have been established every year in greater number,
imposing a constraint on the citizen in matters in which his acts
were formerly completely free, and forcing him to accomplish acts
which he was formerly at liberty to accomplish or not to
accomplish at will. At the same time heavier and heavier public,
and especially local, burdens have still further restricted his
liberty by diminishing the portion of his profits he can spend as
he chooses, and by augmenting the portion which is taken from him
to be spent according to the good pleasure of the public
authorities."
This progressive restriction of liberties shows itself in every
country in a special shape which Herbert Spencer has not pointed
out; it is that the passing of these innumerable series of
legislative measures, all of them in a general way of a
restrictive order, conduces necessarily to augment the number,
the power, and the influence of the functionaries charged with
their application. These functionaries tend in this way to
become the veritable masters of civilised countries. Their power
is all the greater owing to the fact that, amidst the incessant
transfer of authority, the administrative caste is alone in being
untouched by these changes, is alone in possessing
irresponsibility, impersonality, and perpetuity. There is no
more oppressive despotism than that which presents itself under
this triple form.
This incessant creation of restrictive laws and regulations,
surrounding the pettiest actions of existence with the most
complicated formalities, inevitably has for its result the
confining within narrower and narrower limits of the sphere in
which the citizen may move freely. Victims of the delusion that
equality and liberty are the better assured by the multiplication
of laws, nations daily consent to put up with trammels
increasingly burdensome. They do not accept this legislation
with impunity. Accustomed to put up with every yoke, they soon
end by desiring servitude, and lose all spontaneousness and
energy. They are then no more than vain shadows, passive,
unresisting and powerless automata.
Arrived at this point, the individual is bound to seek outside
himself the forces he no longer finds within him. The functions
of governments necessarily increase in proportion as the
indifference and helplessness of the citizens grow. They it is
who must necessarily exhibit the initiative, enterprising, and
guiding spirit in which private persons are lacking. It falls on
them to undertake everything, direct everything, and take
everything under their protection. The State becomes an
all-powerful god. Still experience shows that the power of such
gods was never either very durable or very strong.
This progressive restriction of all liberties in the case of
certain peoples, in spite of an outward license that gives them
the illusion that these liberties are still in their possession,
seems at least as much a consequence of their old age as of any
particular system. It constitutes one of the precursory symptoms
of that decadent phase which up to now no civilisation has
escaped.
Judging by the lessons of the past, and by the symptoms that
strike the attention on every side, several of our modern
civilisations have reached that phase of extreme old age which
precedes decadence. It seems inevitable that all peoples should
pass through identical phases of existence, since history is so
often seen to repeat its course.
It is easy to note briefly these common phases of the evolution
of civilisations, and I shall terminate this work with a summary
of them. This rapid sketch will perhaps throw some gleams of
light on the causes of the power at present wielded by crowds.
If we examine in their main lines the genesis of the greatness
and of the fall of the civilisations that preceded our own, what
do we see?
At the dawn of civilisation a swarm of men of various origin,
brought together by the chances of migrations, invasions, and
conquests. Of different blood, and of equally different
languages and beliefs, the only common bond of union between
these men is the half-recognised law of a chief. The
psychological characteristics of crowds are present in an eminent
degree in these confused agglomerations. They have the transient
cohesion of crowds, their heroism, their weaknesses, their
impulsiveness, and their violence. Nothing is stable in
connection with them. They are barbarians.
At length time accomplishes its work. The identity of
surroundings, the repeated intermingling of races, the
necessities of life in common exert their influence. The
assemblage of dissimilar units begins to blend into a whole, to
form a race; that is, an aggregate possessing common
characteristics and sentiments to which heredity will give
greater and greater fixity. The crowd has become a people, and
this people is able to emerge from its barbarous state. However,
it will only entirely emerge therefrom when, after long efforts,
struggles necessarily repeated, and innumerable recommencements,
it shall have acquired an ideal. The nature of this ideal is of
slight importance; whether it be the cult of Rome, the might of
Athens, or the triumph of Allah, it will suffice to endow all the
individuals of the race that is forming with perfect unity of
sentiment and thought.
At this stage a new civilisation, with its institutions, its
beliefs, and its arts, may be born. In pursuit of its ideal, the
race will acquire in succession the qualities necessary to give
it splendour, vigour, and grandeur. At times no doubt it will
still be a crowd, but henceforth, beneath the mobile and changing
characteristics of crowds, is found a solid substratum, the
genius of the race which confines within narrow limits the
transformations of a nation and overrules the play of chance.
After having exerted its creative action, time begins that work
of destruction from which neither gods nor men escape. Having
reached a certain level of strength and complexity a civilisation
ceases to grow, and having ceased to grow it is condemned to a
speedy decline. The hour of its old age has struck.
This inevitable hour is always marked by the weakening of the
ideal that was the mainstay of the race. In proportion as this
ideal pales all the religious, political, and social structures
inspired by it begin to be shaken.
With the progressive perishing of its ideal the race loses more
and more the qualities that lent it its cohesion, its unity, and
its strength. The personality and intelligence of the individual
may increase, but at the same time this collective egoism of the
race is replaced by an excessive development of the egoism of the
individual, accompanied by a weakening of character and a
lessening of the capacity for action. What constituted a people,
a unity, a whole, becomes in the end an agglomeration of
individualities lacking cohesion, and artificially held together
for a time by its traditions and institutions. It is at this
stage that men, divided by their interests and aspirations, and
incapable any longer of self-government, require directing in
their pettiest acts, and that the State exerts an absorbing
influence.
With the definite loss of its old ideal the genius of the race
entirely disappears; it is a mere swarm of isolated individuals
and returns to its original state--that of a crowd. Without
consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory
characteristics of crowds. Its civilisation is now without
stability, and at the mercy of every chance. The populace is
sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts. The civilisation
may still seem brilliant because it possesses an outward front,
the work of a long past, but it is in reality an edifice
crumbling to ruin, which nothing supports, and destined to fall
in at the first storm.
To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the
civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue,
to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people.