The evolution of the present age--The great changes in civilisation are the consequence of changes in National thought--Modern belief in the power of crowds--It transforms the traditional policy of the European states--How the rise of the popular classes comes about, and the manner in which they exercise their power--The necessary consequences of the power of the crowd--Crowds unable to play a part other than destructive--The dissolution of worn-out civilisations is the work of the crowd--General ignorance of the psychology of crowds--Importance of the study of crowds for legislators and statesmen.
The great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the Arabian Empire, seem at first sight determined more especially by political transformations, foreign invasion, or the overthrow of dynasties.But a more attentive study of these events shows that behind their apparent causes the real cause is generally seen to be a profound modification in the ideas of the peoples.The true historical upheavals are not those which astonish us by their grandeur and violence.The only important changes whence the renewal of civilisations results, affect ideas, conceptions, and beliefs.The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought.The reason these great events are so rare is that there is nothing so stable in a race as the inherited groundwork of its thoughts.
The present epoch is one of these critical moments in which the thought of mankind is undergoing a process of transformation.
Two fundamental factors are at the base of this transformation.
The first is the destruction of those religious, political, and social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilisation are rooted.The second is the creation of entirely new conditions of existence and thought as the result of modern scientific and industrial discoveries.
The ideas of the past, although half destroyed, being still very powerful, and the ideas which are to replace them being still in process of formation, the modern age represents a period of transition and anarchy.
It is not easy to say as yet what will one day be evolved from this necessarily somewhat chaotic period.What will be the fundamental ideas on which the societies that are to succeed our own will be built up? We do not at present know.Still it is already clear that on whatever lines the societies of the future are organised, they will have to count with a new power, with the last surviving sovereign force of modern times, the power of crowds.On the ruins of so many ideas formerly considered beyond discussion, and to-day decayed or decaying, of so many sources of authority that successive revolutions have destroyed, this power, which alone has arisen in their stead, seems soon destined to absorb the others.While all our ancient beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way one by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces, and of which the prestige is continually on the increase.The age we are about to enter will in truth be the ERAOF CROWDS.
Scarcely a century ago the traditional policy of European states and the rivalries of sovereigns were the principal factors that shaped events.The opinion of the masses scarcely counted, and most frequently indeed did not count at all.To-day it is the traditions which used to obtain in politics, and the individual tendencies and rivalries of rulers which do not count; while, on the contrary, the voice of the masses has become preponderant.
It is this voice that dictates their conduct to kings, whose endeavour is to take note of its utterances.The destinies of nations are elaborated at present in the heart of the masses, and no longer in the councils of princes.
The entry of the popular classes into political life--that is to say, in reality, their progressive transformation into governing classes--is one of the most striking characteristics of our epoch of transition.The introduction of universal suffrage, which exercised for a long time but little influence, is not, as might be thought, the distinguishing feature of this transference of political power.The progressive growth of the power of the masses took place at first by the propagation of certain ideas, which have slowly implanted themselves in men's minds, and afterwards by the gradual association of individuals bent on bringing about the realisation of theoretical conceptions.It is by association that crowds have come to procure ideas with respect to their interests which are very clearly defined if not particularly just, and have arrived at a consciousness of their strength.The masses are founding syndicates before which the authorities capitulate one after the other; they are also founding labour unions, which in spite of all economic laws tend to regulate the conditions of labour and wages.They return to assemblies in which the Government is vested, representatives utterly lacking initiative and independence, and reduced most often to nothing else than the spokesmen of the committees that have chosen them.
To-day the claims of the masses are becoming more and more sharply defined, and amount to nothing less than a determination to utterly destroy society as it now exists, with a view to making it hark back to that primitive communism which was the normal condition of all human groups before the dawn of civilisation.Limitations of the hours of labour, the nationalisation of mines, railways, factories, and the soil, the equal distribution of all products, the elimination of all the upper classes for the benefit of the popular classes, &c., such are these claims.