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Today's excerpt begins on page 54.
It cannot absolutely be said that crowds do not reason and are not to be influenced by reasoning.
However, the arguments they employ and those which are capable of influencing them are, from a logical point of view, of such an inferior kind that it is only by way of analogy that they can be described as reasoning.
The inferior reasoning of crowds is based, just as is reasoning of a high order, on the association of ideas, but between the ideas associated by crowds there are only apparent bonds of analogy or succession.
The mode of reasoning of crowds resembles that of the Esquimaux who, knowing from experience that ice, a transparent body, melts in the mouth, concludes that glass, also a transparent body, should also melt in the mouth; or that of the savage who imagines that by eating the heart of a courageous foe he acquires his bravery; or of the workman who, having been exploited by one employer of labour, immediately concludes that all employers exploit their men.
The characteristics of the reasoning of crowds are the association of dissimilar things, posessing a merely apparent connection between each other, and the immediate generalisation of particular cases.
It is arguments of this kind that are always presented to crowds by those who know how to manage them.
They are the only arguments by which crowds are to be influenced.
A chain of logical argumentation is totally incomprehensible to crowds, and for this reason it is permissible to say that they do not reason or that they reason falsely and are not to be influenced by reasoning.
Astonishment is felt at times on reading certain speeches at their weakness, and yet they had an enormous influence on the crowds which listened to them, but it is forgotten that they were intended to persuade collectivities and not to be read by philosophers.
An orator in intimate communication with a crowd can evoke images by which it will be seduced.
If he is successful his object has been attained, and twenty volumes of harangues — always the outcome of reflection — are not worth the few phrases which appealed to the brains it was required to convince.
It would be superfluous to add that the powerlessness of crowds to reason aright prevents them displaying any trace of the critical spirit, prevents them, that is, from being capable of discerning truth from error, or of forming a precise judgment on any matter.
Judgments accepted by crowds are merely judgments forced upon them and never judgments adopted after discussion.
In regard to this matter the individuals who do not rise above the level of a crowd are numerous.
The ease with which certain opinions obtain general acceptance results more especially from the impossibility experienced by the majority of men of forming an opinion peculiar to themselves and based on reasoning of their own.
This series of posts will insure that these free thinkers' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
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