|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: the September massacres--Their reasoning, their sensibility,
their ferocity, and their morality.
Owing to the fact that crowds, after a period of excitement,
enter upon a purely automatic and unconscious state, in which
they are guided by suggestion, it seems difficult to qualify them
in any case as criminal. I only retain this erroneous
qualification because it has been definitely brought into vogue
by recent psychological investigations. Certain acts of crowds
are assuredly criminal, if considered merely in themselves, but
criminal in that case in the same way as the act of a tiger
devouring a Hindoo, after allowing its young to maul him for
|
