Taine, Le Régime Moderne, vol. ii, 1894. These pages are almost the last that Taine wrote. They resume admirably the results of the great philosopher’s long experience. Unfortunately they are in my opinion totally incomprehensible for such of our university professors who have not lived abroad. Education is the only means at our disposal of influencing to some extent the mind of a nation, and it is profoundly saddening to have to think that there is scarcely anyone in France who can arrive at understanding that our present system of teaching is a grave cause of rapid decadence, which instead of elevating our youth, lowers and perverts it.
A useful comparison may be made between Taine’s pages and the observations on American education recently made by M. Paul Bourget in his excellent book, Outre-Mer. He, too, after having noted that our education merely produces narrow-minded bourgeois, lacking in initiative and willpower, or anarchists—“those two equally harmful types of the civilised man, who degenerates into impotent platitude or insane destructiveness”—he too, I say, draws a comparison that cannot be the object of too much reflection between our French lycées (public schools), those factories of degeneration, and the American schools, which prepare a man admirably for life. The gulf existing between truly democratic nations and those who have democracy in their speeches, but in no wise in their thoughts, is clearly brought out in this comparison. ↩
In my book, The Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples, I have insisted at length on the differences which distinguish the Latin democratic ideal from the Anglo-Saxon democratic ideal. Independently, and as the result of his travels, M. Paul Bourget has arrived, in his quite recent book, Outre-Mer, at conclusions almost identical with mine. ↩
Daniel Lesueur. ↩
The opinion of the crowd was formed in this case by those rough-and-ready associations of dissimilar things, the mechanism of which I have previously explained. The French national guard of that period, being composed of peaceable shopkeepers, utterly lacking in discipline and quite incapable of being taken seriously, whatever bore a similar name, evoked the same conception and was considered in consequence as harmless. The error of the crowd was shared at the time by its leaders, as happens so often in connection with opinions dealing with generalisations. In a speech made in the Chamber on the 31st of December, 1867, and quoted in a book by M. E. Ollivier that has appeared recently, a statesman who often followed the opinion of the crowd but was never in advance of it—I allude to M. Thiers—declared that Prussia only possessed a national guard analogous to that of France, and in consequence without importance, in addition to a regular army about equal to the French regular army; assertions about as accurate as the predictions of the same statesman as to the insignificant future reserved for railways. ↩
My first observations with regard to the art of impressing crowds and touching the slight assistance to be derived in this connection from the rules of logic date back to the seige of Paris, to the day when I saw conducted to the Louvre, where the Government was then sitting, Marshal V⸺, whom a furious crowd asserted they had surprised in the act of taking the plans of the fortifications to sell them to the Prussians. A member of the Government (G. P⸺), a very celebrated orator, came out to harangue the crowd, which was demanding the immediate execution of the prisoner. I had expected that the speaker would point out the absurdity of the accusation by remarking that the accused Marshal was positively one of those who had constructed the fortifications, the plan of which, moreover, was on sale at every booksellers. To my immense stupefaction—I was very young then—the speech was on quite different lines. “Justice shall be done,” exclaimed the orator, advancing towards the prisoner, “and pitiless justice. Let the Government of the National Defence conclude your inquiry. In the meantime we will keep the prisoner in custody.” At once calmed by this apparent concession, the crowd broke up, and a quarter of an hour later the Marshal was able to return home. He would infallibly have been torn in pieces had the speaker treated the infuriated crowd to the logical arguments that my extreme youth induced me to consider as very convincing. ↩
Gustave le Bon, L’Homme et les Societes, vol. ii p. 116. 1881. ↩
The influence of titles, decorations, and uniforms on crowds is to be traced in all countries, even in those in which the sentiment of personal independence is the most strongly developed. I quote in this connection a curious
