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Must it be believed that with a restricted suffrage a suffrage restricted to those intellectually capable if it be desired an improvement would be effected in the votes of crowds? I cannot admit for a moment that this would be the case, and that for the reasons I have already given touching the mental inferiority of all collectivities, whatever their composition.
Men and their actions form part of a whole, of a society and of a process of evolution. But in order to imagine relations it is necessary to have a conception of collectivities or wholes, and the documents only give isolated elements. Here again the historian is obliged to use a subjective method.
Such an enterprise indicated that the queen, despite her subtlety, knew nothing of the laws of mystic logic. Not in all history can one cite an example of a belief destroyed or reduced by means of refutation. Catherine did not even know that although toleration is with difficulty possible between individuals, it is impossible between collectivities. Her attempt failed completely.
We have sketched in this work the general characteristics common to psychological crowds. It remains to point out the particular characteristics which accompany those of a general order in the different categories of collectivities, when they are transformed into a crowd under the influences of the proper exciting causes. We will, first of all, set forth in a few words a classification of crowds.
And, from another point of view, what is the famous doctrine of "class-struggle" which Marx revealed as the positive key of human history, but the Darwinian law of the "struggle for life" transformed from a chaotic strife between individuals to a conflict between collectivities? Just the same as every individual, every class or social group struggles for its existence.
Appeals to sentiments of glory, honour, and patriotism are particularly likely to influence the individual forming part of a crowd, and often to the extent of obtaining from him the sacrifice of his life. History is rich in examples analogous to those furnished by the Crusaders and the volunteers of 1793. Collectivities alone are capable of great disinterestedness and great devotion.
The resolutions by which collectivities are suddenly carried away arise out of these immediate factors; it is due to them that a riot breaks out or a strike is decided upon, and to them that enormous majorities invest one man with power to overthrow a government. The successive action of these two kinds of factors is to be traced in all great historical events.
ELECTORAL crowds that is to say, collectivities invested with the power of electing the holders of certain functions constitute heterogeneous crowds, but as their action is confined to a single clearly determined matter, namely, to choosing between different candidates, they present only a few of the characteristics previously described.
I explained in the same work why it was that individual personalities, under the influence of sudden variations of environment, might be entirely disaggregated. But besides the fixed collectivities formed by the peoples, there are mobile and transitory collectivities known as crowds.
Leaders of great repute or unusual violence can sometimes, by acting on all the groups of an assembly, make them a single crowd. The majority of the members of the Convention enacted measures entirely contrary to their opinions under the influence of a very small number of such leaders. Collectivities have always given way before active sectaries.
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