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Today's excerpt begins on page 35 .
Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be good or bad, they present the double character of being very simple and very exaggerated.
On this point, as on so many others, an individual in a crowd resembles primitive beings.
Inaccessible to fine distinctions, he sees things as a whole, and is blind to their intermediate phases.
The exaggeration of the sentiments of a crowd is heightened by the fact that any feeling when once it is exhibited communicating itself very quickly by a process of suggestion and contagion, the evident approbation of which it is the object considerably increases its force.
The simplicity and exaggeration of the sentiments of crowds have result that a throng knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.
Like women it goes at once to extremes.
A suspicion transformation itself as soon as announced into incontrovertible evidence.
A commencement of antipathy or disapprobation, which in the case of an isolated individual would not gain strength, becomes at once furious hatred in the case of an individual in a crowd.
The violence of the feelings of crowds is also increased, especially in heterogeneous crowds, by the absence of all sense of responsibility.
The certainty of impunity, a certainty the stronger as the crowd is more numerous, and the notion of a considerable momentary force due to number, make possible in the case of crowds sentiments and acts impossible for the isolated individual.
In crowds the foolish, ignorant, and envious persons are freed from the sense of their insignificance and powerlessness, and are possessed instead by the notion of brutal and temporary but immense strength.
Unfortunately, this tendency of crowds towards exaggeration is often brought to bear upon bad sentiments.
These sentiments are atavistic residue of the instincts of the primitive man, which fear of punishment obliges the isolated and responsible individual to curb.
Thus it is that crowds are so easily led into the worst excesses.
Still this does not mean that crowds, skillfully influenced, are not capable of heroism and devotion and of evincing the loftiest virtues; they are even more capable of showing these qualities than the isolated individual.
We shall soon have occasion to revert to this point when we come to study the morality of crowds.
Given to exaggeration in its feelings, 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 are methods of argument well known to speakers at public meetings.
Moreover, a crowd exacts a like exaggeration in the sentiments of its heroes.
Their apparent qualities and virtues must always be amplified.
It has been justly remarked that on the stage a crowd demands from the hero of the piece a degree of courage, morality, and virtue that is never to be found in real life.
Quite rightly importance has been laid on the special standpoint from which matters are viewed in the theatre.
Such a standpoint exists no doubt, but its rules for the most part have nothing to do with common sense and logic.
The art of appealing to crowds is no doubt of an inferior order, but it demands quite special aptitudes.
It is often impossible on reading plays to explain their success.
Managers of theatres when accepting pieces are themselves, as a rule, very uncertain of their success, because to judge the matter it would be necessary that they should be able to transform themselves into a crowd.
'It is understandable for this reason why it sometimes happens that pieces refused by all theatrical managers obtain a prodigious success when by a stroke of chance they are put on the stage.
The recent success of Francois Coppee's play "Pour la Couronne" is well known, and yet, in spite of the name of its author, it was refused during ten years by the managers of the principal Parisian theatres.
"Charley's Aunt," refused at every theatre, and finally staged at the expense of a stockbroker, has had two hundred representations in France, and more than a thousand in London.
Without the explanation given above of the impossibility for theatrical managers to mentally substitute themselves for a crowd, such mistakes in judgment on the part of competent individuals, who are most interested not to commit such grave blunders, would be inexplicable.
This is a subject that I cannot deal with here, but it might worthily tempt the pen of a writer acquainted with theatrical matters, and at the same time a subtle psychologist — of such a writer, for instance, as M. Francisque Sarcey.
Here, once more, were we able to embark on more extensive explanations, we should show the preponderating influence of racial considerations.
A play which provokes the enthusiasm of the crowd in one country has sometimes no success in another, or has only a partial and conventional success, because it does not put in operation influences capable of working on an altered public.
I need not add that the tendency to exaggeration in crowds is only present in the case of sentiments and not at all in the matter of intelligence.
I have already shown that, by the mere fact that an individual forms part of a crowd, his intellectual standard is immediately and considerably lowered.
A learned magistrate, M. Tarde, has also verified this fact in his researches on the crimes of crowds.
It is only, then, with respect to sentiment that crowds can rise to a very high or, on the contrary, descend to a very low level.
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