The crowd 读书笔记Ch2
CHAPTER IITHE SENTIMENTS AND MORALITY OF CROWDS
1⃣️ Impulsiveness, mobility, and irritability of crowds.
isolated individual possesses the capacity of dominating his reflex actions, while a crowd is devoid of this capacity.
it might be said that the normal condition of a crowd baulked in its wishes is just such a state of furious passion.
2⃣️ The suggestibility and credulity of crowds.
a crowd, as a rule, is in a state of expectant attention, which renders suggestion easy
All will depend on the nature of the exciting cause, and no longer on the relations existing between the act suggested and the sum total of the reasons which may be urged against its realisation.
creation of legends： . A crowd thinks/ observe in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first. ——> As the result of contagion the perversions are of the same kind, and take the same shape in the case of all the assembled individuals. The first perversion of the truth affected by one of the individuals of the gathering is the starting point of the contagious suggestion. By dint of suggestion and contagion the miracle signalized by a single person was immediately accepted by all.
🛑example, by Julian Felix, a naval lieutenant, in his book on “Sea Currents,”
- every one, officers and sailors, clearly perceived a raft covered with men towed by boats which were displaying signals of distress. Yet this was nothing more than a collective hallucination. (a few branches of trees covered with leaves )
🛑 Monsieur Davey’s investigation
🛑 two little girls found drowned in the Seine. As in several of the examples previously cited, the affirmation of the first witness, himself a victim of illusion, had sufficed to influence the other witnesses.
🟢steps: suggestion from illusion——>contagion——> What the observer then sees is no longer the object itself, but the image evoked in his mind
these recognitions are most often made by the most impressionable persons
🟤ledgends: in themselves no stability. The imagination of the crowd continually transforms them as the result of the lapse of time and especially in consequence of racial causes E.G. the Buddha worshipped in China has no traits in common with that venerated in India.
-The transformation occasionally takes place within a few years
e.g. Bourbons Napoleon: from philanthropist to a sanguinary despot.
crowds: console themselves easily for this uncertainty——history is scarcely capable of preserving the memory of anything except myths
3⃣️ The exaggeration and ingenuousness of the sentiments of crowds.
- they present the feelings double character of being very simple and very exaggerated
reason: in crowd, people see things as a whole, and is blind to their intermediate phases. any feeling when once it is exhibited communicating itself very quickly by a process of suggestion and contagion.
a throng knows neither doubt nor uncertainty, it goes at once to extremes
-The violence of the feelings of crowds is also increased:
reason: certainty of impunity; the notion of a considerable momentary; certainty the stronger as the crowd is more numerous
- These sentiments are atavistic residuum of the instincts of the primitive man
- 🔴 crowds, skillfully influenced, are capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest virtues
-a crowd is only impressed by excessive sentiments. An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning.
4⃣️ The intolerance, dictatorialness and conservatism of crowds.
-Crowds are only cognisant of simple and extreme sentiments; the opinions, ideas, and beliefs suggested to them are accepted or rejected as a whole, and considered as absolute truths or as not less absolute errors
- An individual may accept contradiction and discussion; a crowd will never do so. / the slightest contradiction on the part of an orator is immediately received with howls of fury and violent invective
-Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, and are but slightly impressed by kindness
The type of hero dear to crowds will always have the semblance of a Caesar. His insignia attracts them, his authority overawes them, and his sword instills them with fear (是比喻？）
- anarchy, servitude 反复横跳（
