The Behavior Of Crowds

CONTENTS


CHAPTER PAGE

FOREWORD vii

I. THE CROWD AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM OF TO-DAY 1

II. HOW CROWDS ARE FORMED 11

III. THE CROWD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 51

IV. THE EGOISM OF THE CROWD-MIND 73

V. THE CROWD A CREATURE OF HATE 92

VI. THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWD-MIND 133

VII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONARY CROWDS 166

VIII. THE FRUITS OF REVOLUTION--NEW CROWD-TYRANNIES
FOR OLD 219

IX. FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT BY CROWDS 233

X. EDUCATION AS A POSSIBLE CURE FOR CROWD-THINKING 281

INDEX 305




FOREWORD


Since the publication of Le Bon's book, _The Crowd_, little has been
added to our knowledge of the mechanisms of crowd-behavior. As a
practical problem, the habit of crowd-making is daily becoming a more
serious menace to civilization. Events are making it more and more clear
that, pressing as are certain economic questions, the forces which
threaten society are really psychological.

Interest in the economic struggle has to a large extent diverted
attention from the significance of the problems of social psychology.
Social psychology is still a rather embryonic science, and this
notwithstanding the fact that psychiatry has recently provided us with a
method with which we may penetrate more deeply than ever before into the
inner sources of motive and conduct.

The remedy which I have suggested in Chapter X deserves a much more
extended treatment than I have given it. It involves one of the great
mooted questions of modern philosophical discussion. It is, however, not
within the province of this book to enter upon a discussion of the
philosophy of Humanism. The subject has been thoroughly thrashed over in
philosophical journals and in the writings of James, Schiller, Dewey,
and others. It is sufficient for my purpose merely to point out the fact
that the humanist way of thinking may provide us with just that
educational method which will break up the logical forms in which the
crowd-mind intrenches itself.

Those who expect to find a prescribed formula or ideal scheme of
organization as a remedy for our social ills may feel that the solution
to which I have come--namely, a new educational method--is too vague.
But the problem of the crowd is really concerned with the things of the
mind. And if I am correct in my thesis that there is a necessary
connection between crowd-thinking and the various traditional systems of
intellectualist, absolutist, and rationalist philosophy, the way out
must be through the formation of some such habits of thinking as I have
suggested.