There are great difficulties in the way of establishing a general belief, but when it is definitely implanted its power is for a long time to come invincible, and however false it be philosophically it imposes itself upon the most luminous intelligence.Have not the European peoples regarded as incontrovertible for more than fifteen centuries religious legends which, closely examined, are as barbarous[21] as those of Moloch? The frightful absurdity of the legend of a God who revenges himself for the disobedience of one of his creatures by inflicting horrible tortures on his son remained unperceived during many centuries.Such potent geniuses as a Galileo, a Newton, and a Leibnitz never supposed for an instant that the truth of such dogmas could be called in question.Nothing can be more typical than this fact of the hypnotising effect of general beliefs, but at the same time nothing can mark more decisively the humiliating limitations of our intelligence.
[21] Barbarous, philosophically speaking, I mean.In practice they have created an entirely new civilisation, and for fifteen centuries have given mankind a glimpse of those enchanted realms of generous dreams and of hope which he will know no more.
As soon as a new dogma is implanted in the mind of crowds it becomes the source of inspiration whence are evolved its institutions, arts, and mode of existence.The sway it exerts over men's minds under these circumstances is absolute.Men of action have no thought beyond realising the accepted belief, legislators beyond applying it, while philosophers, artists, and men of letters are solely preoccupied with its expression under various shapes.
From the fundamental belief transient accessory ideas may arise, but they always bear the impress of the belief from which they have sprung.The Egyptian civilisation, the European civilisation of the Middle Ages, the Mussulman civilisation of the Arabs are all the outcome of a small number of religious beliefs which have left their mark on the least important elements of these civilisations and allow of their immediate recognition.
Thus it is that, thanks to general beliefs, the men of every age are enveloped in a network of traditions, opinions, and customs which render them all alike, and from whose yoke they cannot extricate themselves.Men are guided in their conduct above all by their beliefs and by the customs that are the consequence of those beliefs.These beliefs and customs regulate the smallest acts of our existence, and the most independent spirit cannot escape their influence.The tyranny exercised unconsciously on men's minds is the only real tyranny, because it cannot be fought against.Tiberius, Ghengis Khan, and Napoleon were assuredly redoubtable tyrants, but from the depth of their graves Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Mahomet have exerted on the human soul a far profounder despotism.A conspiracy may overthrow a tyrant, but what can it avail against a firmly established belief? In its violent struggle with Roman Catholicism it is the French Revolution that has been vanquished, and this in spite of the fact that the sympathy of the crowd was apparently on its side, and in spite of recourse to destructive measures as pitiless as those of the Inquisition.The only real tyrants that humanity has known have always been the memories of its dead or the illusions it has forged itself.
The philosophic absurdity that often marks general beliefs has never been an obstacle to their triumph.Indeed the triumph of such beliefs would seem impossible unless on the condition that they offer some mysterious absurdity.In consequence, the evident weakness of the socialist beliefs of to-day will not prevent them triumphing among the masses.Their real inferiority to all religious beliefs is solely the result of this consideration, that the ideal of happiness offered by the latter being realisable only in a future life, it was beyond the power of anybody to contest it.The socialist ideal of happiness being intended to be realised on earth, the vanity of its promises will at once appear as soon as the first efforts towards their realisation are made, and simultaneously the new belief will entirely lose its prestige.Its strength, in consequence, will only increase until the day when, having triumphed, its practical realisation shall commence.For this reason, while the new religion exerts to begin with, like all those that have preceded it, a destructive influence, it will be unable, in the future, to play a creative part.
2.THE CHANGEABLE OPINIONS OF CROWDS
Above the substratum of fixed beliefs, whose power we have just demonstrated, is found an overlying growth of opinions, ideas, and thoughts which are incessantly springing up and dying out.
Some of them exist but for a day, and the more important scarcely outlive a generation.We have already noted that the changes which supervene in opinions of this order are at times far more superficial than real, and that they are always affected by racial considerations.When examining, for instance, the political institutions of France we showed that parties to all appearance utterly distinct--royalists, radicals, imperialists, socialists, &c.--have an ideal absolutely identical, and that this ideal is solely dependent on the mental structure of the French race, since a quite contrary ideal is found under analogous names among other races.Neither the name given to opinions nor deceptive adaptations alter the essence of things.