The crowd : a study of the popular mind.

  • Le Bon, Gustave, 1841-1931.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The crowd : a study of the popular mind. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

    231/245 (page 231)
    always inferior, whatever its nature, to that of an isolated individual. It is specialists who safe- guard 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 con- sequence 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 the electors, will not venture to seem to disregard the interests of the latter by