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Review
Reviewed Work(s): The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. by Gustave Le Bon
Review by: Arthur F. Bentley
Source: American Journal of Sociology , Jan., 1897, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jan., 1897), pp. 612-
614
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2761765
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REVIEWS 613
foremost by the sociologist and all social phenomena must be explained

by reference to this soul as cause.
In the present work this theory appears throughout; for it is the
mind of the crowd that is primarily studied. The sub-title for the
English edition of the work is "A Study of the Popular Mind." This
raises in the thought of the reader at once all the difficulties which
were involved in the other work referred to.
One form of this difficulty may be illustrated by reference to what
Le Bon calls the "law of the mental unity of crowds." This law, pro-
pounded at the outset of the work, sets up for each crowd its own soul,
permanent or transitory as the case may be. While Le Bon has here
undoubtedly a firm basis of fact, his general theory leads him to give
it very inadequate expression. It is on this account, I think, that the
proposition estranges so many readers at the start. If the same phe-
nomena were stated in terms of a unity of activity (these activities
understood as intelligent) the proposition would be much fuller and
truer and would carry much more force than when stated as a mere
soul-unity in the sense, to me very abstract, which Le Bon gives to the
term " soul."
Another result of Le Bon's general theory is seen in his continual
use of the "unconscious" as a factor in society. Here again there are
at the basis of Le Bon's remarks facts which much need to be recog-
nized; but with a more adequate statement of them that mystic, awe-
inspiring unconscious would quickly disappear.
Although the question brought up in the points just referred to is
probably the most fundamental one which the book raises, involving,
as it does, the whole subject of social interpretation and of the adequate
statement of social phenoinena, it is not the most important matter in
the author's own intention, and should not be further insisted on in a
brief note.
Let us look, then, at the more concrete issues of the book.
Le Bon holds that this is an age of crowds, and that their activities
are increasing in range and in power day by day. The organized
crowd is a group of men acting together under stimuli which are in
most cases novel and transitory. The activities of crowds are usually
described as unconscious, and the best of them exhibit only very slight
rational elements. Pictures, symbols, sparkling superficiality can best
move them. Yet race characteristics of the men who compose them
act largely as determining elements. Their deeds are marked by an

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6I4 TH:E AMERICANf JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
intensity and immediateness which can best be characterized as "reli-

gious" in quality.
In Book I, "The Mind of Crowds," it is the processes of crowd
action which Le Bon mainly treats. In Book II, "The Opinions and
Beliefs of Crowds," the emphasis is on the content of their souls-that
is, the scope and concrete conditions of their activities. Book III
discusses several forms of heterogeneous crowds. Probably these
chapters on the criminal crowd, the jury, the electoral crowd, and the
parliamentary crowd are the ones which will excite the greatest prac-
tical interest. Assuredly anyone who has been watching from a non-
partisan standpoint those processes called discussion and argument in
the present political campaign will find much here to interest him.
The homogeneous crowds, sect, caste, and class are not discussed
in this volume, but a treatment of them is promised in a later work.
The translation is as a whole very satisfactory, though occasionally
an amusing error creeps in; rarely, however, to the serious detriment
of the sense. Despite the general good appearance of the volume, the
student cannot but regret the tripling in both bulk and price which it
has undergone in the process of reproduction.
ARTHUR F. BENTLEY.
Alterations of Personality. By ALFRED BINET, translated by Helen

Green Baldwin, with notes and preface by J. Mark Baldwin.
New York: D. Appleton & Company, I896. PP. x+396.
IT is a most gratifying and unusual experience to meet with a book
treating in a thoroughly sane manner the facts of abnormal and
morbid mental life such as are found in hypnotism, somnambulism
and the various types of hysteria. Indeed it has long been recog-
nized by conservative psychologists that hypnotism and the cognate
fields of investigation were intellectually and professionally " extra
hazardous," so seldom has a psychologist dabbled in them and come
off unscathed by fantastic and uncouth theories.
Professor Binet has in the main succeeded in fulfilling his avowed
purpose to suppress all merely theoretic and discursive matter and to
present simply a coherent statement of such phenomena as are agreed
upon by all observers of the disturbances of personality. Of course
he has his own theory of the nature of personality and he marshals
his facts in support of the same. But the facts are really allowed to

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Review

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2761765

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foremost by the sociologist and all social phenomena must be explained

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intensity and immediateness which can best be characterized as "reli-

Alterations of Personality. By ALFRED BINET, translated by Helen

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