第50章

CROWDS TERMED CRIMINAL CROWDS

Crowds termed criminal crowds--A crowd may be legally yet not psychologically criminal--The absolute unconsciousness of the acts of crowds--Various examples--Psychology of the authors of the September massacres--Their reasoning, their sensibility, their ferocity, and their morality.

Owing to the fact that crowds, after a period of excitement, enter upon a purely automatic and unconscious state, in which they are guided by suggestion, it seems difficult to qualify them in any case as criminal.I only retain this erroneous qualification because it has been definitely brought into vogue by recent psychological investigations.Certain acts of crowds are assuredly criminal, if considered merely in themselves, but criminal in that case in the same way as the act of a tiger devouring a Hindoo, after allowing its young to maul him for their amusement.

The usual motive of the crimes of crowds is a powerful suggestion, and the individuals who take part in such crimes are afterwards convinced that they have acted in obedience to duty, which is far from being the case with the ordinary criminal.

The history of the crimes committed by crowds illustrates what precedes.

The murder of M.de Launay, the governor of the Bastille, may be cited as a typical example.After the taking of the fortress the governor, surrounded by a very excited crowd, was dealt blows from every direction.It was proposed to hang him, to cut off his head, to tie him to a horse's tail.While struggling, he accidently kicked one of those present.Some one proposed, and his suggestion was at once received with acclamation by the crowd, that the individual who had been kicked should cut the governor's throat.

"The individual in question, a cook out of work, whose chief reason for being at the Bastille was idle curiosity as to what was going on, esteems, that since such is the general opinion, the action is patriotic and even believes he deserves a medal for having destroyed a monster.With a sword that is lent him he strikes the bared neck, but the weapon being somewhat blunt and not cutting, he takes from his pocket a small black-handled knife and (in his capacity of cook he would be experienced in cutting up meat) successfully effects the operation."The working of the process indicated above is clearly seen in this example.We have obedience to a suggestion, which is all the stronger because of its collective origin, and the murderer's conviction that he has committed a very meritorious act, a conviction the more natural seeing that he enjoys the unanimous approval of his fellow-citizens.An act of this kind may be considered crime legally but not psychologically.

The general characteristics of criminal crowds are precisely the same as those we have met with in all crowds: openness to suggestion, credulity, mobility, the exaggeration of the sentiments good or bad, the manifestation of certain forms of morality, &c.

We shall find all these characteristics present in a crowd which has left behind it in French history the most sinister memories--the crowd which perpetrated the September massacres.

In point of fact it offers much similarity with the crowd that committed the Saint Bartholomew massacres.I borrow the details from the narration of M.Taine, who took them from contemporary sources.

It is not known exactly who gave the order or made the suggestion to empty the prisons by massacring the prisoners.Whether it was Danton, as is probable, or another does not matter; the one interesting fact for us is the powerful suggestion received by the crowd charged with the massacre.

The crowd of murderers numbered some three hundred persons, and was a perfectly typical heterogeneous crowd.With the exception of a very small number of professional scoundrels, it was composed in the main of shopkeepers and artisans of every trade:

bootmakers, locksmiths, hairdressers, masons, clerks, messengers, &c.Under the influence of the suggestion received they are perfectly convinced, as was the cook referred to above, that they are accomplishing a patriotic duty.They fill a double office, being at once judge and executioner, but they do not for a moment regard themselves as criminals.