The Psychology of Socialism
Book 6: The Destinies of Socialism
Chapter 1: The Limits of Historical Prevision
Gustave Le Bon
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1. The idea of necessity in the modern conception of social phenomena: - The change effected by science in our modern conception of the world-The idea of evolution and necessity-Why sociology does not in its present state constitute a science-Its inability to foresee events -Historical foresight would be possible to an intelligence immensely superior to that of man-The utility of the idea of the necessity of phenomena. 2. The prevision of social phenomena :-Impossibility of foreseeing social phenomena with any certainty, although they are subject to laws-For previsions are only hypotheses based on analogies, and must limit themselves to the very near future-Our general ignorance of the first causes of all phenomena.
I. THE IDEA OF NECESSITY IN THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF SOCIAL PHENOMENA.
SHALL very soon have occasion to sum up my predictions on the future of Socialism. In the meantime it will be not without use to inquire within what limits science allows such predictions, and in what degree it is possible to formulate them.
When the progress of science revealed to man the Order of the universe, and the ordered sequence of phenomena, his general conceptions of things were transformed. It is not yet so very long ago that a
(385) benevolent Providence used to guide the course of events, leading man by the hand, presiding over battles and the destinies of empires. How could its decrees be foreseen ? They were unfathomable. How could they be debated ? They were omnipotent. The nations could but prostrate themselves before it, and seek, by means of humble prayers, to conjure its furies or its caprices.
The new conceptions of the world which have arisen from the discoveries of science have enfranchised man from the power of the gods whom his imagination created of old. The new conceptions have not made him freer, but they have taught him that it is useless to seek to influence by prayer the heavy and imperturbable machinery of the necessities which direct the universe.
After having shown us the hierarchy of these necessities, science has shown us also the general procedure of the transformation of our planet, and the mechanism of evolution which has changed, in the course of time, the humble creatures of the first geological periods to the present forms.
The laws of this evolution having been determined as regards individuals, it was attempted to apply them to human societies. Modern research has proved that societies also have passed through a series of inferior forms before reaching their present level.
Of these researches is born sociology, an order of knowledge which will one day, perhaps, compose itself, but which hitherto has had to limit itself to recording phenomena without being able to predict them.
It is on account of this inability to foresee that sociology cannot be regarded as a science, or even as the
(386) beginning of a science. An order of knowledge deserves the name of science only when it allows us to determine he conditions of a phenomena, and, consequently, to reproduce it, or at least to foretell its occurrence. Such sciences are chemistry, physics, astronomy, and even, within certain limits, biology. Sociology is nothing of the kind. All that it can tell us-and it is not sociology, as a matter of fact, that has told us this-is that the moral world, as well as the physical world, is ruled by inflexible laws. "'hat we call chance is merely the infinite concatenation of causes that we are unacquainted with.
But all precise prediction is rendered impossible by the complicated entanglement of these causes. We are able, not to foresee social phenomena, but merely to understand them a little, by studying separately each of the factors which give rise to them, and then seeking to discover the reciprocal action of these factors. Theoretically the method is the same as that of the chemist who analyses a compound body, or of the astronomer who seeks to determine the orbit of a planet. But when the elements acting on one another are too numerous, modern science confesses her inability to discover the definitive effect of so many causes. To determine the relative positions of three bodies, of which the masses and times are different, and which exercise an inter-ethereal attraction on one another, is a problem that for along time defied the sagacity of the most illustrious mathematicians, and it needed the genius of a Poincaré to resolve it.
And in the matter of social phenomena we have to consider that it is a question not of three bodies, but of millions of elements, of which we have to discover the reciprocal action. How are we to foresee the final result of such a tangle ? To obtain not certitudes, nor even approximations, but simply general and summary indications, it is necessary to act as the astronomer, who, seeking to deduct the position of an unknown planet by
(387) the perturbations which it produces in the orbit of a fixed planet, does not attempt to embrace in his formula the action of all the bodies in the universe. He neglects the secondary perturbations, which would render the problem insoluble, and contents himself with approximations.[1]
Even in the most exact sciences the best results that our imperfect intelligence can attain are only approximate. But an intelligence like that of which Laplace speaks, "which for a given instant should know all the forces by which Nature is animated, and the respective positions of the particles of which she is composed, granting that it were vast enough to submit all these data to analysis, would then embrace in the same formula the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom. '.Nothing would be uncertain to it, and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes."
We do not know if among the millions of worlds which pursue their silent ways through the firmament there has ever arisen this intelligence of which Laplace speaks, an intelligence which would have been able to read in the nebula that became the solar system the birth
(388) of man, the phases of his history, and the last hours of the last living beings on our frozen earth. Do not let us envy such an intelligence too greatly. If the book of destiny were laid open before our eyes the most powerful motives of human activity would be destroyed. Those whom the Sybil of antiquity instructed in the future paled with terror, and rushed towards the sacred spring whose waters produced oblivion.
The most eminent of thinkers-Rant, Stuart Mill, and quite recently such psychologists as Gumplowicz-affirm that if the psychology of individuals and nations were well known we should be able to foresee their conduct ; but this amounts to enunciating in other terms the hypothesis of Laplace, which supposes known elements too numerous to know, and acting on one another in too complex a fashion for us to submit it to analysis.
We must therefore limit ourselves to the knowledge that the moral world is subject to fixed laws, and must resign ourselves to ignorance of the future consequences of these laws.
The notion of necessity which all the discoveries of modern science increasingly confirm is not a mere vain and useless theory. It teaches us at least tolerance, and permits of our entering upon the study of social phenomena with the coldness of a chemist who analyses a compound or determines the density of a gas. It teaches us to be no more irritated at events which offend our ideas than the scientist at the unforeseen result of an experiment. It is impossible that the indignation of a philosopher should be aroused by phenomena which are subject to inevitable laws; he must limit himself to studying them, in the persuasion that nothing could have prevented their occurrence.
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2. THE PREVISION OF SOCIAL PHENOMENA.
Sociology, then, must limit itself to recording phenomena. Whenever even its most illustrious professors have attempted, as did Auguste Comte, to enter into the region of previsions, they have lamentably erred.
Statesmen even, though they are immersed in the sphere of political events, and are, one would imagine, the best qualified to observe their sequence, are least able of any to foresee them.
" How many times," writes M. Fouillée, " have the prophets been given the lie by events ! Napoleon announced that Europe would soon become Cossack. He predicted that Wellington would establish himself in England as a despot `because he was too great to remain a mere subject.' ` If you accord independence to the United States,' said Lord Shelburne, no less blind from his point of view, `the sun of England will set, and her glory will be for ever eclipsed.' Burke and Fox were rival false prophets at the time of the Revolution. The former announced that France would shortly be divided like Poland. Thinkers of all sorts, apparently strangers to the affairs of this world, have almost always proved to be more clear-sighted than mere statesmen. A Rousseau and a Goldsmith foretold the French Revolution ; Arthur Young foresaw for France, after transitory violence, `a lasting well-being, resulting from her reforms.' Tocqueville, thirty years before the event, announced that the Southern States of America would attempt secession. Heine told us, years in advance, `You, you French, have more to fear from a free and united Germany than from the whole Holy Alliance, or all the Cossacks united.' Quinct predicted in 1832 the changes that were to take place in Germany, the rôle of Prussia, the threat which would be held over our
(390) heads, and the iron hand that would attempt to regain the keys of Alsace. The fact is that as most statesmen are absorbed in the things of the present hour, myopia is their natural state."
We must accordingly be extremely reserved in our predictions, attempting none but indications of a very general character, drawn more especially from the profound study of the characters and histories of races, and for the rest we must confine ourselves to observations.
The optimistic or pessimistic form in which we express these observations merely represents the nuances of language which may facilitate our explanations, but in themselves are of no importance. They depend on our temperaments and frames of mind. The thinker, accustomed to observe the inflexible inevitableness of things, will generally have a pessimistic appreciation of them ; the philosopher, who sees in the world only a curious spectacle, will have a resigned or indifferent appreciation of them. The systematically optimistic conception of them is hardly ever found except in complete imbeciles, who are favoured by fortune and satisfied with their destiny. But if the thinker, the philosopher, and (by chance) the imbecile knew how to observe, their statements of phenonema would be necessarily identical, as identical as the photographs of the same monument taken by different operators.
To make, as the historians do, a statement of past events, and to distribute responsibilities, blame, and praise, is a puerile task that the scholars of the future will justly despise. The train of causes which create events is far stronger than the individuals that have accomplished them. The most memorable events of history -the tall of Babylon or of Athens, the decadence of the Roman Empire, the Revolution, and the recent disasters of the French-are to be attributed not to men, but to genera-
(391) -tions of men. The marionette who, unconscious of the threads which make him move, should blame or praise the movements of other marionettes, would assuredly be altogether in the wrong. We are influenced by our environment, by circumstances, and by the thoughts of the dead ; that is to say, by those mysterious hereditary forces which survive in us. They determine the greater number of our actions, and are all the more powerful in that we do not see them. Our thoughts, when by rare chance we have any personal thoughts, will have scarcely any influence save on generations that are yet unborn. We can have very little influence on the present, because the present is the outcome of a past which we can do nothing to change. Children of this long past, our actions will have all their consequences only in a future that we shall not see. The present hour is the only one that has any value for us, and yet, in the existence of a race, this short hour is of all but no account. It is even impossible for us to appreciate the true significance of the events which take place under our eyes, because their influence on our own destiny leads us immensely to exaggerate their importance. They might be compared to the ripples which arise and die incessantly on the surface of a river, without disturbing its flow. The insect derelict on the leaf that these ripples rock takes them for mountains, and justly fears their impact. But effect on the flow of the river they have none.
The profound study of social phenomena accordingly leads us to this conclusion : on the one hand, that these phenomena are determined by the interaction of necessities, and are consequently capable of being foreseen try a superior intelligence ; and on the other Band, that such predictions are almost always impossible to limited beings like ourselves.
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Nevertheless, man will always seek to raise the curtain which hides the impenetrable future, and the philosophers themselves are unable to escape from this futile curiosity. But at least they know that their predictions are only hypothetical, based more especially upon analogies borrowed from the past, or deduced from the general trend of affairs and the fundamental characteristics of the nations. They know also that even those predictions which are apparently the most assured must limit themselves to the very immediate future, and that even then many unknown causes may give them the lie. A fairly penetrating mind might doubtless have foretold the Revolution a few years before it broke out by studying the general state of mind, but how could it have foretold Bonaparte, the conquest of Europe, and the Empire ?
A scientist, then, cannot give as certain 'a social prediction relating to a distant date. He sees some nations rising and others falling, and as he knows by the past that the slope of decline does not remount, he is justified in saying that those nations which are on the slope of decadence will continue to descend. He knows that institutions cannot be changed at the will of legislators, and seeing that the Socialists desire entirely to overthrow the institutions on which our civilisations repose, he can readily predict the catastrophes which will follow such events. These are predictions, of a very general kind, which have perhaps a little in common with those simple and eternal truths which we call platitudes. The most advanced science is obliged to content itself with such sorry approximations.
And what can we say of the future, we who know next to nothing of the world in which we live, we who hurl ourselves against an impenetrable wall so soon as we seek to discover the cause of phenomena, and the realities which hide themselves under appearances
392) Are things create or uncreate, real or unreal, ephemeral or eternal ? Has the world a reason for being or has it not ? Are the birth and evolution of the universe conditioned by the will of superior beings, or by blind necessities, by the imperious destiny to which both gods and men, according to the ancient conception, must both obey ? And the atom, which seems to form the intimate basis of all things in the world, from the mineral to ourselves-is it anything more than a theoretical conception of our minds ? We find it at the base of all the theories of science. Without it they would crumble to fragments, and nevertheless no human eye has ever seen this mysterious substratum, without beginning and without end, indestructible and eternal.
And our uncertainty is no less in the moral world. Whence do we come ? Whither are we going ? Are our dreams of happiness, justice, and truth anything snore than illusions created by a congested state of the brain, and in flagrant disagreement with the murderous laws of the struggle for life ? Let us at least remain in doubt, for doubt is almost hope. We are voyaging blindly on an unknown sea of unknown things, which only become the more mysterious as we seek to discover their essence. Rarely, in this impenetrable chaos, we catch sight of sometimes a few fugitive lights, a few relative truths, which we call laws if they be not too ephemeral. Let us resign ourselves to knowing no more than these uncertainties ; they are fickle guides, no doubt, but they are none the less all that are accessible to us. Science can invoke no others. The gods of barbarism gave us no better. Truly they gave man hopes, but it was not the gods who taught him to utilise to his own profit the forces that surrounded him, and thus to render his existence less painful.
Happily for humanity, it has no need to seek its motives
394) of action in the cold and inaccessible regions of pure science. It has always demanded illusions to charm it, and dreamers to lead it. They have never been lacking : political chimeras, religious chimeras, military chimeras, social chimeras, they have always exercised a sovereign empire over us. These deceiving phantoms have been and will always be our masters. Since the time, thousands of years ago, when man first emerged from primitive savagery, he has never ceased from creating himself illusions to adore, nor from founding his civilisations upon them. Each has charmed him for a certain period, long or short, but the hour has always sounded when they have ceased to charm him, and then he deposes them with as great efforts as those with which he enthroned them. Once again humanity returns to its eternal task; without doubt the only one that can make it forget its hardness of its destiny. The theorists of Socialism are only recommencing the heavy task of erecting a new god, destined to replace those of the past, until the time when inevitable evolution condemns it to perish in its turn.
