Psychologie des foules

Our previous work has been devoted to describing the soul of the races. We will now study the souls of the crowds. The set of common traits that heredity imposes on all individuals of a race is the soul of this race. But when a certain number of these individuals are assembled in crowds to act, the observation shows that, by the very fact of their bringing together, result certain new psychological characters which are superimposed on the characters of race, and which at times differ from it profoundly.