New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-10-09
DEMOCRACY
Crowd Psychology and the Af-
fairs of Nations.

POLITICS AND CROWD-MORAl1TY. A study
cir.es.sd '' rlan.a,ca rom the paniSh by ~
& 60. '''' ~
Madison said that if every Athenian
citizen had been a Socrates, still every
Athenian assembly would have been a
mob; and Madison was a pretty good
Jeffersonian Democrat. Mr.. Christensen
considers TO what extent the indlct-
ment is true. especially in politics,
which is the department Of human ac-
tivity in which the crowd most figures.
The inquiry is pertinent and profitable,
since the crowd defined as a group
Of individuals consciously filed
through suggestion with common ides
or desires an increasingly important
factor in the business of the world.
mo idea" says our author, "can con
quer until a crowd has inscribed it on
its banner; no poet can flourish with
out the crowd; no monarch, no gov
eminent can exist without crowds TO
swear allegiance to 1t. Every form Of
government (absolutism no less than
democratic constitutional government
is in reality an expression Of the will
Of the crowd"
The crowd is, in the authors view,
at once the creature and the agent of
suggestion. 1t is suggestion which
forms a crowd, and also which moves
il to action. All the movements" with
which history deals, including war and
peace, are operations Of suggestion.
Battles are fought out, rebellions and
revolutions are carried out in an in
toxication of suggestions; cults spring
up are transformed and perish under
the unceesing slow and stubborn &C
tion Of social suggestion" History
teens with examples, from Antony's
Grafton over Caesar 10 the French
Revolution, the Dreyfus case, and the
Russian Revolution of 1905. Nor are
the transactions of senates and parlia-
ments free from the crowd quality.
Again and again has so-called de-
Lucrative assembly been transforr ed
into an ecstatic and therefore wholly
irresponsible mob. Sometimes the re
suit is conducive TO high moral con
a disregard Of morals as could be
manifested by single perverted in
dividual. Ii is sometimes thus. through
crowd ecstasies, that issues Of war and
peace are determined, despite the ira
ditional notion that war IS the game
Of kings in which the subjects ara
helpless pawns.
We all remember Noltaire's mordant
satire, in which the visitor from Sirius
is told that hundred thousand hat
wearing fools are about TO kill. or 20 be
killed by. a hundred thousand turban
wearing fools, over the question
whether certain bits Of ground shall
belong 10 a man called a Sultan or 10
man called an Emperor. Noltaire's
mundane philosopher explained that
these two hundred thousand men were
not themselves at fault, but rather the
idle barbarisns who sit In their stud
les and, while they digest their food
give orders FOR the slaughter OF a mill
ion men" But, as Mr.. Christensen
points out, since Voltsire's time the
nations-the people-have acquired the
right OF free action. and yet wars have
not been made 20 cease. On the con-
trary, the nineteenth century, the CEN
] luI! OF llDeIh4iHHi, DtChint 'Ht tpoCn
/ of national wars. Now individualistic
liberalism is being overshadowed by
democratism. and the end of wars is
/ not yet
In the authors view, then, the NOR
Atty Of the crowd, IN both domestic
and international politics, is not SUI
perior to that OF the monarch He IS
no believer In pure democracy. Tn.
/ conception OF the sovereignty Of the
people he regards as Roussesu's fatal
I legacy 20 the modern world. and he
I looks and hopes 20 see the world rid
itself Of Il and adopt in It's place an
other system which will avoid the evils
OF the crowd. His ideal is not aboli-
/ tiou Of popular sovereignty, but q
modification OF its exercise such as
Will base popular representation in
parliaments, not upon the people indis-
criminately, but rather upon trade
gTouSs and corporations, each Of which