The Psychology of Socialism
Book 2: Socialism as a Belief
Chapter 1: The Foundations of our Belief
Gustave Le Bon
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1. The ancestral origins of our beliefs: -- To understand Socialism it is necessary to examine how our beliefs are formed--Ancestral, or sentimental concepts-Acquired, or intellectual concepts--The influence of these two categories of concepts-Beliefs that appear now are always the offspring of older beliefs- Slowness with which beliefs change-Utility of common beliefs-Their establishment marks the culminating period of a civilisation--The great civilisations represent the efflorescence of a small number of beliefs-No civilisation has been able to maintain itself without basing itself on common beliefs. 2. The part played by beliefs with regard to our ideas and sentiments. Psychology of incomprehension :-How our knowledge of the world is obscured by our hereditary beliefs-They affect not only our conduct, but the senses we attach to words -- Individuals of different race and different class in reality speak different languages--Incomprehension separates them quite as much as the divergence of their interests-Why persuasion has never depended on reason -- The overwhelming influence of the dead in discussions between the living - The consequence of incomprehension-Impossibility of colonisation for peoples among whom incomprehension is too pronounced--Why histories are so far removed from the reality. 3. The ancestral formation of the moral idea :-The real motives of conduct are most often hereditary instincts-The Moral Idea only exists when it has become instinctive and hereditary-The slight value of precept in morals.
I. THE ANCESTRAL ORIGINS OF OUR BELIEFS.
All the civilisations that have succeeded one another in the course of ages have reposed on a certain number of beliefs, which beliefs have always played a fundamental part in the lives of the nations.
(61) How are these beliefs born, and how do they develop ? We have already treated this matter, in a summary fashion, in the Psychology of Peoples. It may be useful to return to the question. Socialism is a faith far more than a doctrine. Only by making ourselves perfectly familiar with the mechanism of the genesis of beliefs can we perceive what a part Socialism may perhaps be called upon to play.
Man cannot change, of his own will, the sentiments and beliefs which dominate him. Behind the vain struggles of the individual lurk always the influences of atavism. These are they that give to the crowd that narrow conservatism which their momentary revolts obscure. The thing that men are least able to support is a thing they never do support for long-change in their hereditary thoughts and habits.
These very ancestral influences are the influences which still protect civilisations that are already too old, of which we are the possessors, which we keep alive, and which many elements of destruction are threatening at the present day.
This slowness of the evolution of beliefs constitutes one of the most essential facts of history, and at the same time one of the facts the least explained by historians. Psychology alone permits us to determine its causes.
In addition to the exterior and variable conditions to which he is perforce subject, man is especially guided 1 11 life by conceptions of two kinds -- ancestral or sentimental concepts and acquired or intellectual concepts.
Ancestral concepts are the heritage of the race, the legacy of ancestors immediate or far removed, an unconscious legacy bestowed at birth, and which determines the principal motives of conduct.
Acquired or intellectual concepts are those which man acquires under the influence of his environment and
(62) education. They aid him to reason, to explain, to dis course, but are very rarely the cause of his conduct. Their influence over his actions remains practically nil, until, by repeated hereditary accumulations, they have penetrated his sub-consciousness less and have become sentiments. If the acquired concepts do sometimes succeed in contending with the ancestral concepts it is that the latter have been neutralised or annulled by contrary heritages, as happens, for example, in crosses between members of different races. The individual then becomes a sort of tabula rasa. He has lost his ancestral concepts; he is nothing but a hybrid without morals or character, at the mercy of every impulse.
One reason of the so heavy weight of secular heredity is that amongst the so numerous beliefs and opinions which are born every day we find so few, in the course of the ages, that become preponderant and universal. One might even say that, in a humanity already aged, no new general belief could form itself if this belief did not attach itself intimately to anterior beliefs. The nations have scarcely known such a thing as a totally new belief. Religions which seem original - such as Buddhism, Christianity, Islamism -when we consider only a advanced stage of their evolution, are in reality the simple efflorescence of former beliefs. They have only been able to develop when the beliefs replaced by them had lost their empire through the passage of time. They vary according to the various races which practise them, and are in nothing universal but in the letter of their dogmas. We have already seen, in another work, that in passing from nation to nation they become fundamentally transformed in order to graft themselves on the previous religions of those nations. A new faith becomes thus nothing but the rejuvenescence of a preceding faith. There are not only Jewish elements in Christianity; it has
(63) its sources in the most ancient religions of the peoples of Europe and Asia. The thread of water that trickled from the Sea of Galilee became an impetuous river only because all Pagan antiquity thither turned its waters. "The contributions of the Jews to Christian mythology," says M. Louis Ménard very truly, " are scarcely equal to those of the Egyptians and the Persians."
Simple and slight though these changes of faith may be, yet ages and ages are required to fix them in the soul of a people. A faith is quite other than an opinion which one debates ; it exists as a factor of conduct, and consequently is really possessed of power only when it has been handed down in the sub-consciousness, and has there formed the solid concretion called a sentiment. Then faith possesses the character which is essential if it is to be imperative, and keeps aloof from the influences of discussion and analysis.[1] Only in its beginnings, when it is still floating in the air, can a faith be rooted at all in the intelligence ; but to assure its triumph it is necessary, I repeat, that it should sink into the region
(64) of the sentiments, and so pass from the conscious into the unconscious or instinctive.
I must insist on this influence of the past in the elaboration of faiths, and on the fact that a new faith can only establish itself by attaching itself to an anterior faith. This establishment of beliefs is perhaps the most important phase of the evolution of civilisations. One of the greatest benefits of an established belief is to give a people common sentiments, to create common thoughts, and by consequence common words ; that is to say, to cause identity of ideas. The established faith finally creates a common state of mind, and this is why it sets its mark on all the elements of a civilisation. A common faith constitutes perhaps the most powerful factor of the creation of a national soul, a national mind, and consequently the identical orientation of national sentiments and ideas. The great civilisations have always been the logical efflorescence of a small number of beliefs, and the decadence of a nation is always near when the common beliefs are becoming dissociated.
A collective belief has the immense advantage of uniting in a single bundle all the manifold individual desires, of making a nation act as a single individual would act. It is with reason that people have said that the great periods of history have been precisely those at which a universal belief has established itself.
The part played in the life of nations by universal beliefs is so fundamental that its importance can hardly be exaggerated. History does not furnish an example of a civilisation establishing and maintaining itself without having at its base the common beliefs of all the individuals of a nation, or at the very least of a city. This community of beliefs gives the nation Which possesses it a formidable strength, even when the belief is transitory. We have seen how the French at the time
(65) of the Revolution, animated by a new faith, which could not last because it could not perform its promises, struggled victoriously against all Europe in arms.
2. THE PART PLAYED BY BELIEFS WITH REGARD TO OUR IDEAS AND SENTIMENTS-THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INCOMPREHENSION.
As soon as a belief is securely established in the understanding it becomes the regulator of life, the touchstone of judgment, the director of intelligence. The mind can receive nothing new that does riot conform to the new faith. Like Christianity in the Middle Ages and Islam among the Arabs, the prevailing faith sets its imprint on all the elements of civilisation, and notably on philosophy, literature, and the arts. It is the supreme criterion; it explains everything. The rationale of all our knowledge, for the sage as well as for the fool, consists in nothing else than in carrying the unknown to the known; that is to say, to what we think we know. Comprehension supposes the observation of a fact, and then its co-ordination with the small number of ideas already possessed by the individual. We thus relate unknown facts to facts we believe ourselves to understand, and each brain accomplishes this relation according to the sub-conscious concepts which rule it. From the most inferior mind to the highest the mechanism of explanation is always the same, and consists invariably of introducing a new idea in the midst of already acquired conceptions.
And it is precisely because we co-relate our perceptions of the world to particular ancestral conceptions that the individuals of the different have such different judgments. We perceive things only by deforming them, and we deform them according to our beliefs.
66)
Beliefs that have become transformed into sentiments act 'lot only upon our conduct in life, they influence also the sense we attach to words. The causes of the dissensions and the struggles which divide humanity are engendered for the most part by the same phenomena, but according to diverse mental constitutions and strongly differing ideas. Follow from century to century, from race to race, and from one sex to the other, the ideas evoked by the same words. Consider, for example, what are represented, to minds of differing origin, by the following words-religion, liberty, republic, bourgeoisie, property, capital, labour -- and you will see how profound are the abysses which separate these mental representations.[2] The different classes of the same society, individuals of different sex, seem to speak the same language, but it is only in appearance. The nuances of signification of this language are as numerous as the social and mental categories that employ it. Sometimes these nuances escape them reciprocally to the extent of leading them to absolute incomprehension.
The different classes of society, and still more the different nations, are as widely separated by divergence of conception as by divergence of interests ; this is why the conflict of classes and races, and not their chimerical concord, has always constituted a dominant fact of
(67) history. This discordance can only increase in the future. Far from tending to equalise men, civilisation tends to differentiate them more and more. Between a powerful feudal baron and the least of his retainers there was infinitely less mental difference than there is to-day between an engineer and the labourer he directs.
Between different races, different classes, different sexes, agreement is only possible on technical subjects into which the instinctive sentiments do not enter. In morals, in religion, in politics, on the contrary, agreement is impossible, or is only possible when the individuals in question have the same origin ; and then they agree, riot by reasoning, but by the identity of their conceptions. Persuasion is never rooted in reason. When people are gathered together to consider a question of politics, religions, or morals, they are the dead, not the living, who discuss. They are the souls of their ancestors that speak from their mouths, and their words are the echoes of the eternal voices of the dead, to which the living are always obedient.
Words, then, have senses very different according to our beliefs, and for this reason they evoke in our minds very different sentiments and ideas. Perhaps the most arduous effort of thought is to succeed in penetrating to the minds of individuals who constitute types differing from our own. We succeed in so doing with difficulty enough in the case of compatriots who differ from us only in age, sex, or in education ; how shall we succeed in the case of men of different race, above all when centuries separate us ? To make another person understand one must speak in his own tongue, with the nuances of his own personal conceptions. One may live for years beside another being without ever understanding him, as parents do by their children. All our usual psycho-
(68) -logy is based on the hypothesis that all men experience identical sentiments under similar exciting influences, and nothing is more erroneous.
We can never hope to see things as they really are, since we are aware only of states of consciousness created by our senses. We can no more hope that the deformation undergone may be identical for all men, for this deformation varies according to their various inherited or acquired conceptions ; that 1 is to say, according to race, sex, environment, and so forth ; and for this reason one may say that an almost total incomprehension most often qualifies the relations between individuals of different race, sex, or environment. They may employ the same words; they never speak the same language.
Our vision of things, therefore, is always a deformed vision, but we have no suspicion of this deformation. We are even generally persuaded that it cannot exist; it is almost impossible for us to admit that other men can think and act otherwise than exactly as we ourselves think and act. This incomprehension has for its final result an absolute intolerance, above all in respect of beliefs and opinions which repose entirely on the sentiments.
All those who profess different opinions to our own in religion, morals, art, or politics immediately become, in our eyes, persons of dubious character, or, at least, lamentable imbeciles. We also consider it our strict duty, as soon as we possess the power, rigorously to persecute such dangerous monsters. If we no longer burn them and guillotine them, it is because the decadence of manners and the regrettable mildness of the laws oppose such proceedings.
As for individuals of very different race : we freely admit, at least in theory, that they cannot think exactly as we do, but not without commiserating their lamen-
(69) -table blindness. We also consider it a benefit to them to convert them to our manners and customs and laws by the most energetic means, when by chance we become their masters. Arabs, negroes, Annamese, 'Malagasy, and go forth, oil whom we aspire to impress our manners, laws, and customs -- whom, as the politicians say, we desire to assimilate, have learned by experience what it costs to think otherwise than their conquerors. They continue certainly to retain their ancestral conceptions, but they have learned to hide their thoughts, and have acquired at the same time all implacable hatred for their new masters.
Incomprehension presents itself in different degrees among the different peoples. Among those who travel little or not at all-for example, the Latins-it is absolute, and their intolerance is accordingly complete. Our incapacity to understand the ideas of other peoples, civilised or not, is amazing. It is also the principal cause of the lamentable state of our colonies. The most eminent Latins, and even men of genius such as Napoleon, do not differ from the common run of men in this particular. Napoleon never had the vaguest notion of the psychology of a Spaniard or an Englishman. His judgments upon them were about as valuable as that one read, recently, in one of our great political journals, as to the conduct of England with regard to the African savages. 11 She intervenes always," said the worthy editor, with indignation, "to prevent the tribes from getting rid of their kings, and setting up republics." Nothing could be more incomprehensible and ingenuous.
The works of our historians teem with similar appreciations, and it is partly because their works are full of such that 1 have arrived at this conclusion, for which 1 have been reproached by the illustrious philologist
(70) Max Müller : that historical works are nothing but pure romances, absolutely removed from all reality. That which we learn from them is never the soul of history, but only that of the historian.
And again, because the concepts of the nations have no common denominator, and because the same words evoke such different ideas in different minds, I have come to yet another conclusion, apparently paradoxical : that written works are absolutely untranslatable from one language to another. This is true even of modern languages, and how much more of languages representing the ideas of extinct peoples ? There are hosts of examples; I will confine myself, in passing, to citing one.
When the translations of Ibsen's plays were represented in Paris, the critics immediately discovered in them profound and mysterious symbols, until one day a Scandinavian critic demonstrated to them that these profound and mysterious symbols were of their own fabrication, that Ibsen was a very simple and straightforward dramatist for people who lived in Scandanavian society, and that his personages meant to say only what they said. When, for example, in one of his plays, certain of his characters are advised to hunt the wolves in which Scandanavia abounds, what is meant is merely that they had best live the life of hunters, and this very ordinary remark had by no means the Socialistic meaning which was ascribed to it by the equally subtle and incomprehensive critics.
It is only, I repeat, between individuals of the same race, long subjected to the same conditions of life and the same environment, that a little comprehension may exist in reciprocal relations. Thanks to the hereditary mould of their ideas, the words they exchange are then able to evoke ideas almost similar.
3. THE ANCESTRAL FORMATION OF THE MORAL SENSE.
The part played by certain moral qualities in the destiny of peoples is altogether preponderant. I shall have occasion to show this presently, in studying the comparative psychology of the different nations. For the moment I would only indicate the fact that the moral qualities, like beliefs, are bequeathed by heredity, and form, consequently, part of the ancestral soul. It Is in this soil, that our forefathers have bequeathed to us, that the motives of our actions germinate, and our conscious activity serves us only to perceive their fruits. The general rules of our conduct have for their habitual guides the sentiments acquired by heredity, and are rarely influenced by reason.
These sentiments are very slowly acquired. The moral sense has but little stability until, being fixed by heredity, it has become unconscious, and consequently escapes from influences of reason, always egotistical, and most often contrary to the interests of the race. The principles of morality which education instils have a very slight influence ; I would say none at all if it were not necessary to take into account those beings of neutral character, whom Professor Ribot calls " amorphous subjects," and who are on that vague border-line from which the least factor may incline them towards good or evil. It is, above all, with regard to these neutral characters that codes of law and policemen are of use. They refrain from doing what the law and the police forbid, but they do not attain to a more elevated morality. An intelligent education -- that is, an education altogether neglecting the discussions and dissertations of philosopy -- may show them that it is entirely to their interest not to enter the policeman's sphere of action. Such a demonstration will strike them far more than vague
(72) generalisations and the fatiguing dissertations on which moral instruction is nowadays based.
The doctrine of Kant, which is to-day the basis of all the courses of philosophy in our educational establishments, and which one finds even in the manuals intended for children, may seem sufficiently elevated; but it is not, as M. Maurice Barrés justly observes, of the least practical value, for it addresses itself to an abstract and ideal person, always and everywhere identical with himself, whereas the real man, the only man we have to live with, varies according to time and race,
So long as our reason does not intervene our moral sense remains instinctive, and our motives of action do not differ from those of the most unthinking crowds. These motives are unreasoned, in the sense that they are instinctive, and not the product of reflection. They are not irrational, in the sense that they are the result of slow adaptations, induced by anterior necessities. It is in the popular mind that they are manifested in all their force, and this is why the instinct of the crowds is so profoundly conservative, and so ready to defend the collective interests of a race as long as the theorists and orators do not trouble it.
