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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: grandfathers by such words as the "king" and the "royal family."
What, then, is likely to be the case with terms still more
complex?
Words, then, have only mobile and transitory significations which
change from age to age and people to people; and when we desire
to exert an influence by their means on the crowd what it is
requisite to know is the meaning given them by the crowd at a
given moment, and not the meaning which they formerly had or may
yet have for individuals of a different mental constitution.
Thus, when crowds have come, as the result of political upheavals
or changes of belief, to acquire a profound antipathy for the
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