Le Bon - Bovo 2021; Korpa 2020; Navarro 2014; Childers 2014; Ohlberg 2015; Hawkins 1997; Consolim 2008; Chaves 2003; Rougier e Rollet 2002; Marpeau 2000; Wagner 1993; Clark 1981; Widener 1979; Nye 1975; Motono 1914; Picard 1909

BOVO 2021

KORPA 2020

NAVARRO 2014

• The first is Gustave Le Bon, the right-wing anthropologist and social psychologist. He began his career as a positivist. He used a Social Darwinist conception of society to argue that struggle and inequality were necessary for society. In his words, “to live is to struggle.”73 Yet his work highlights one of the underlying questions about the meaning of progress: did scientific progress create morality or destroy it? According to Le Bon, progress was in fact double; scientific and technological advance rapidly transformed society, but human nature itself, and its sense of morality lagged behind. This was a problem, because while science destroyed religious conceptions of the world, no new ideas arrived to replace them. Western civilization was in a state of transition, losing its unifying beliefs and solidarity. 18
• From the beginning of his career, he held two competing theories; one, a positivist idea of science and progress, and the other, a criticism of positivism. I argue that this tension continued the basic uncertainties over modernity which were at the heart of positivism from the beginning. Later, he rejected positivism 55
• He argued that a civilization’s progress followed a natural path; like Darwinian evolution, change was slow and had to follow a set progression, but maintained a belief in the inevitability of change (l'homme 3-21) 56
•  progress itself was fundamentally antiegalitarian; industry created the intellectual elite while lowering the intelligence of the masses 56-7
• Pessimismo geral com tudo
• “the European in the East loses all of his qualities and descends, in terms of morality, well below those whom he exploits.”263 In this way, Le Bon criticized, not just colonialism, but the idea of Western superiority itself. He identified the West with a decadent, enervated intellectualism 58-9  
• Using Darwinism, he argued that the growth of a society, like the evolution of a species, had to be slow and gradual. 60
• Le Bon viewed rationalism as a dangerous force. It destroyed morality and perhaps society as a whole.276 Le Bon urged caution. He argued that it was the power of heredity which formed a people and its identity.277 Most importantly, it created a moral discipline. Hereditary influence was the reason why modern people retained their civilized state even when they left Western civilization.278 The forces of rationalization, in contrast, were destructive; like Comte, Le Bon viewed science as replacing religious conceptions.279 Unlike Comte, however, he viewed reason as insufficient. “Reason can teach man, but it cannot create a religion for him.”280 Because humanity still needed a religion, they found it in the dangerous ideas of the revolutionary movement. 60-1
• Le Bon argued that there were two forms of progress in society; the first, involving scientific and technological change, and the second involving the moral “character” of a people. 61
•  There was thus a fundamental clash in development, with the scientific breaking down the old moral order without anything to replace it. In the future, humanity could attain a new synthesis in which the moral and the intellectual came into accord, but that time had not yet come. For the moment, society remained in a state of transitional crisis, not yet ready to advance. In this context, his rejection of the civilizing mission took on a new meaning. He argued that the less advanced, such as Indians, were unready for Western civilization. Similarly, the Western man himself, despite his civilized state, was unready for the very modernity which he had built. All of this supported a universal vision of hierarchy and authority; humanity was uncivilized, so it needed to be controlled, both in the metropole and in the colonies. Yet, though his theory was centered on the abstract, civilized man, he identified harmful change with those elements of the world which he viewed as traditional: women and non-Western people. He viewed them as the key to maintaining order; each had a fixed place in society, and would topple the social order if they left it. 62
• women
• Le Bon continued this idea of women as both superior and inferior, but incorporated an evolutionary, materialist perspective. He argued that women indeed had a basic altruistic nature. They sought to serve and to care for others, whether they were children, animals, or objects. He saw this not as a true morality, but as an animal-like instinct. 63
• Furthermore, because women were intellectually inferior, similar to children, they were able to better understand and educate children.297 Thus, Le Bon's ideal was a totally altruistic woman who lived to serve others. 64
• . He argued that equal education would overwhelm women, making them unhappy and physically ill ... Le Bon argued, instead, for a limited education for women, which would “prepare them to be excellent wives. 64
• By the late 1880s, Le Bon had developed a complete theory of progress as the development of hierarchy. He argued that, as society developed, the races, sexes, and classes became more unequal. The superior man rose above the rest, claiming a place as the only true, mature individual of the world. All others remained in a state of primitive, savage or childlike underdevelopment 65
• Le Bon thus constructed a thorough critique of egalitarian thought which set a stable idea of national identity and particularity, in which, against a destructive idea of universal human unity, which sought to remake the world in the image of the supposedly superior people. The latter idea, he argued, was the cause of all of modern history's greatest disasters, including war and revolution. He wrote that it was “this chimerical notion of the equality of men which has shaken the world, brought about an enormous revolution in Europe, launched America into a bloody war of secession and brought all of France's colonies to a state of lamentable decadence.” 66
• the crowd
•  In this sense, socialism, along with the civilizing mission, formed a unified challenge to hierarchy. While the civilizing mission and gender equality threatened to elevate the inferior elements in society, these revolutionaries sought to bring down that which was superior. The result was the same in all cases: leveling, and thus savagery 69
• The idea of heredity was central to nineteenth century thought. Degeneration theory posited modernity as disease, with social ills translating to physical ills, passing from generation to generation.336 Revolution followed the same pattern. It grew from unhealthy settings, spread like a disease, and reappeared over time, in new forms.337 For Le Bon, all of history passed in the same way. Revolution, that supposed break with the past, in fact did little; equality and modern rights would have happened anyway, as part of general modernization. Its only real accomplishment was its massive death toll.338 69-70
• In summary, Le Bon's ideas appear to be in complete accord, from his argument against the civilizing mission to his argument against revolution. His theories legitimized social norms and discredited drastic change. He saw progress as tending toward greater inequality, so attempts to impose equality meant a reversion to a primitive state. Revolution then appeared regressive, moving against his idea of progress. Le Bon’s theory system located racial superiority exclusively in the civilized European male. This man was the only one with the intellect and the rationality to understand the world around him and to act on it. He held the right to power over what he viewed as the inferior people of the world: women, workers, and other races. Yet Le Bon's ideas were more complicated. First, the European male was not rational, but savage. Revolution did not contradict historical development, but advanced its course. Le Bon thus held two contradictory theories, one conservative and the other rejecting stability as impossible. The rest of this chapter will analyze this contradiction. 71
• He argued that struggle was natural and normal, whether in colonial conflict or class conflict. 78
• By the end of the Belle Époque, Gustave Le Bon appears to have fully renounced any traces of belief in the Enlightenment and its positivist legacy. He argued that the modern belief in science, rationality, and the intellect was false. Science was a “false god.”530 It “creates more mysteries than it resolves.”531 He argued that it was the “creators of belief [who] drive history.”532 “Nothing resists a strong and continued will; neither nature, nor men, nor even fatalism itself.”533 Despite his strident anti-rationalism, he continued his positivist belief in creating an intellectual synthesis to stabilize modern society. He argued that “reason,” while limited, played a role in “creat[ing] progress.”534 108
• By this time, advances in physics had discredited the positivist idea of universal scientific laws.595 Le Bon himself had rejected positivism's central ideas. 1910s

CHILDERS 2014

• Apanhado do impacto do foules 78
• Breve bio
• Trained as a physician and caring little for the pastoral life into which he was born, Le Bon moved to Paris in 1860 to begin interning at the Hôtel Dieu de Paris, the city’s oldest hospital, and was awarded his medical license in 1866. Based on his studies, Le Bon achieved some early success with his 1868 Physiologie de las Génération de l’Homme et des Principaux Êtres Vivants, “a massive tome on reproduction and heredity, [which] enjoyed ten editions in four years” (Nye 1975, 14). Although Le Bon soon decided not to pursue a career in medicine, his time working and writing on medical issues proved foundational to his later thinking. According to historian Richard Nye’s reading of his later work, Le Bon “simply enlarged the horizons of individual pathology to include social and political ‘diseases’, for which he devised an elaborate analogical sociologistic [sic] terminology transported directly from a medical context” (1975, 14). Indeed, Le Bon’s later writing on society, crowds, and politics is filled with terms taken from medicine and applied to social phenomena.
• A second major influence on Le Bon’s later writings was the FrancoPrussian War and the Paris Commune. In the preface to his 1872 work La Vie: Physiologie Humaine Appliquée a l’Hygiéne et a la Medicine, Le Bon directly references the military and political conflicts of the previous two years as the reason for scientific study of human organization. Specifically, he notes that the “disastrous war and the social crises” that followed it were clear indications of the dangers of an ignorant population (2). Such disasters and crises called for a new way of understanding their underlying causes. As Le Bon wrote, science was necessary: “To the banal theories of the rhetoricians, modern science substitutes precise laws to which no one must be unaware” (2). 
• A third major influence on Le Bon was his rejection by the French academy. In dismissing the importance of Le Bon’s work, they argued that it did not offer anything new and often simply presented a synthesis of ideas others had previously articulated. In the face of this rejection, Le Bon chose not to heed the criticisms of his work. Instead, he pushed forward and changed his approach to publishing. By the time Le Bon published Psychology of the Peoples in 1894, he had changed his writing style to appeal to a larger, more general audience instead of the academic one he had been striving for previously. 
• With his medical training as the foundation for his understanding of human nature, a great deal of skepticism about the average person’s ability for self-governance, and the need to find a more general audience for his writings, Le Bon wrote and published Psychology of Peoples and The Crowd back to back in 1894 and 1895. Neither book was particularly original. The Psychology of Peoples was largely a synthesis of his previous work and built off the work of such social Darwinists as Herbert Spencer. The Crowd pulled together many ideas that were popular at the time and did so in a way that was not always internally consistent, playing fast and loose with key terms and ideas. Nevertheless, the books were written with an accessible style that made them easily translatable and widely read. 78-9
• Unlike so many others of the time, Le Bon does not reduce racial disparities to mere biological differences. Instead, he argues that the differences between races arise from the differing qualities of ideas that their ancestors developed and passed down. As Le Bon writes, “What is important in the history of peoples, and what has a far-reaching influence on their destiny, is neither revolutions nor wars—their ruins are quickly effaced— but the changes in their fundamental ideas” (1898, 185). Moreover, these changing ideas must proceed in a balanced way: “The most civilized peoples are those whose leading ideas have been able to maintain an equal distance between variability and fixity. History is strewn with the debris of the peoples who have been unable to maintain this equilibrium” (170). A race progresses from being primitive to being superior through the gradual creation and acceptance of new ideas. 81
• For Gustave Le Bon, the masses, when they became a psychological crowd, were nothing less than men and women at their worst—a devolved version of their better human selves. The only way to handle such peoples was through the manipulation of words and images that could effect them to act in ways best suited to the ends of individual leaders. That is, Le Bon believed the only way to deal with the masses was to employ a decidedly unreasoned rhetoric. Given such a belief, it is clear that Le Bon had very little faith in the idealism of democracy. 84-5

OHLBERG 2015

• Second, Le Bon’s Crowd is the only work on ‘crowd psychology’ that has been substantially revived in the post-Mao period and is currently experiencing a second heyday among political elites, administrators, and the general public. 158 NOTA QUINZE fala de turquia e japão; tbm hitler, mussolini, lenin, us military 162

HAWKINS 1997

• Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) is best remembered for his studies on crowd and racial psychology. 8 Much less well known, but crucial to an understanding of the intellectual underpinnings of his work, is his two- volume UHomme et les societes, published in 1881. 9 Here he explicitly endorsed all the components of the Darwinian world view. He embraced uniformitarianism and repudiated creationism, arguing for a condition of constant flux in nature wrought by the accretion of imperceptible changes leading to the increasing complexity of all phenomena (I, 1-11). In the realm of organic nature this process of perfection was brought about through the natural selection of favourable variations. Selection itself stemmed from a struggle for existence deriving from the super- fecundity of living beings (I, 124-5), a struggle that was at its most intense between organisms belonging to the same species (I, 131). For Le Bon, the source of variations was the acquisition of characters through adaptation which were then transmitted to subsequent genera- tions (I, 126-7). Natural selection ensured that inherited variations were useful and was responsible for all modification, whether to form, structure or character: 'It is the struggle for existence which has made beings more and more divergent 5 (I, 135). 
• This process was equally at work in human evolution, although less actively so because social organisation tended to protect the weak and allow them to procreate. Fortunately, such practices did not annul natural selection so much as transform it: c In all living beings, from insect to man, the selection that results from the combat for existence will always remain the essential condition of progress. In human societies, this struggle takes several names, notably that of competition; but, beneath its diverse appellations, its results always remain the same, that is to say, the triumph of the fittest and the elimination of the less well-adapted' (I, 196-7). 
• Selection had formed the different races of mankind, which for Le Bon represented distinct species distinguished by physical characteristics and different mental traits and capabilities. He argued that whereas crossings between superior races were usually beneficial, those between an inferior and a superior race were disastrous, resulting in the elimination of the latter. If miscegenation did not take place it was the lower race that succumbed and was annihilated in the case of prolonged contact between the two. To Le Bon, nature was aristocratic, and mercilessly punished impure blood (I, 199-200). 186-7
• Guerras (II 88-9, 95), filantropia (II, 96 105) e mulheres (II 156) 188
• Social
• This argument highlights a notable feature of Le Bon's use of Social Darwinism, one already encountered in other theorists. Throughout his writings Le Bon constantly reiterated the point that nature was in constant flux, and in human civilisation variability rather than fixity was the norm. 10 Yet these statements were juxtaposed with others which conveyed exactly the opposite impression, i.e. that certain aspects of human nature, particularly those characters and sentiments which were the major determinants of racial and sexual identities, were refractory to change. Thus he proclaimed the existence of two tiers to the anatomical and mental structures of any species - a small number of irreducible elements around which were grouped secondary traits. The latter were modifiable, the former much less so. 11 With human races, these irreducible elements were those comprising 'character', such as the sentiments of perseverance, energy, will, etc. Character governed the history of a people, and it was the incompatibility of different racial characters that brought about inter-racial conflicts. 12 Character was resistant to change through education, but it could rapidly atrophy if peace led to the death of the military virtues in favour of the pursuit of wealth and an untrammelled egoism. 13 Thus Le Bon posited the existence of a human nature which sometimes appeared resistant to 'artificial' change and had remained fixed for six millennia, and at other times was portrayed as fragile, susceptible to precisely those cultural transformations which were elsewhere dismissed as powerless against heredity and natural selection. This opportunism was undoubtedly prompted by his desire to demonstrate that the policies proposed by feminists and socialists were futile because unrealistic, or else harmful because they promoted degeneracy. As a result, Le Bon sometimes denied the possibility of any genuine moral transformations, bringing him close to an implicit essentialism despite his express commitment to the protocols of Darwinism 188-9
• 'Nature is neither cruel nor kind. She thinks only of the species, and remains indifferent - formidably indifferent - to the individual.' 16 The species - or its human counterpart, the race - became the reference point against which the progressive or the degenerative potential of change was to be judged. The outcome was to derive harder, harsher consequences from Social Darwinism. Darwin, Royer, Haeckel and Spencer had all warned against the indiscriminate spread of charity and altruism but all had, nevertheless, esteemed both to be important and desirable expressions of the development of human character. Not so Le Bon, who unequi- vocally repudiated such foolishness: 'The term solidarity signifies merely association, and by no means charity or altruism. Charity is a noxious and anti-social sentiment; altruism is an artificial and impotent senti- ment.' 17 Unlike the first pioneers for whom Social Darwinism implied moral perfection in the long run, Le Bon portrayed such perfection as not only chimerical but, should anyone attempt to realise it, as detrimental to the future of racial progress. Le Bon's theories, then, mark an important development in Social Darwinism due to their insistence on the permanence of hereditary traits and their advocacy of public policies based upon recognition of this fact. 189

CONSOLIM 2008

• O pai de Le Bon era um “agente de hipotecas” (receveur d’enregistrement), uma função letrada, mas subalterna, numa cidade francesa pobre e de feições rurais, Nogent-leRotrou (Vale do Loire). Le Bon nasceu e fez os estudos primários na escola comunal dessa cidade e, posteriormente, migrou para Tours para fazer o secundário no liceu. Considerandose que, no período, a educação burguesa era tarefa de um preceptor, sua vida foi marcada pelo deslocamento entre a falta de recursos econômicos e a ambição pelo cultivo das letras e da alta cultura, carência de capital econômico e, em conseqüência, cultural, que de certo modo marcou suas disposições intelectuais. Ele desenvolveu desde cedo um misto de ambição desmedida e de insegurança intelectual, o que preparou o terreno onde se desenvolveu uma trajetória de relativo sucesso, mas também de derrotas e ressentimentos. Segundo um amigo e pertencente ao seu círculo, Edmond Picard, Le Bon foi um aluno medíocre no primário e cumpriu, do ensino secundário e superior, apenas o mínimo necessário para passar pelos programas oficiais, insuportáveis segundo ele a uma natureza marcada pelo espírito de “independência” e de “originalidade”4 . Este retrato de Le Bon é bastante significativo, pois foi o que o próprio autor adotou para enaltecer sua posição de “intelectual livre” 5 diante da figura do pedagogo, professor de escola pública e, principalmente, da figura nascente do especialista, produto da universidade republicana. Visto pelas lentes das lutas no campo intelectual, esse discurso, como veremos, representa de maneira típica as posições conservadoras, ou seja, resistentes à especialização e à profissionalização do trabalho intelectual.
•  Le Bon vai para Paris nos anos 60 e não se sabe se obteve ou não o baccalauréat. De todo modo, ele conseguiu ingressar no curso prático de medicina (officier de santé) da Faculdade de Medicina de Paris - um curso mais rápido e de menor prestígio do que o de medicina e que seria extinto em 1892. Depois de cursar apenas dois anos de medicina, ou seja, metade do curso, ele solicitou ao Dr. Pierre-Adolphe Piorry, um grande nome da medicina da época, um falso certificado de conclusão do curso e, a partir de então, ingressou na carreira de vulgarizador científico ostentando o título “Dr. Le Bon”. Esse percurso era o mínimo necessário para credenciar o autor à atividade de escritor, uma vez que ele pretendia escrever sobre ciência para um público amplo, mas ser reconhecido como autoridade legítima. Fazia questão de assinar o “doutor” à frente do nome, o que revela grande preocupação com o prestígio social proveniente da titulação acadêmica. Um crítico dos títulos universitários que fazia questão de ostentar e mesmo de falsificar o seu: essa foi sua marca e uma das muitas contradições entre o vivido e o escrito.
• Le Bon nunca exerceu a profissão de médico. Contudo, com a ajuda do Dr. Piorre, fez contatos que lhe permitiram trabalhar como voluntário na guerra franco-prussiana de 1870 na função de cirurgião-chefe de ambulatório de primeiros socorros. Por causa dessa participação recebeu o título de cavaleiro da Legião de Honra, em 18716 , e foi nesse contexto que definiu sua carreira futura: publicou em 1874 o livro La vie: physiologie humaine appliquée à l'hygiène et à la médecine, primeira obra de sucesso que revelaria o talento do futuro grande vulgarizador científico. Após a experiência da guerra e, principalmente, da Comuna de Paris, Le Bon tornou-se pessimista em relação à evolução histórica, de modo que passou a interpretar tais fatos com base na “decadência da raça latina”, tese recorrente em suas obras de psicologia. Após esse período, Le Bon deixa para trás o otimismo em relação ao progresso social em sua integralidade e passa a adotar progressivamente uma visão pessimista e fatalista sobre a evolução social.
• Le Bon teve uma carreira intelectual bastante conturbada e instável. Sua origem social pequeno-burguesa lhe deu disposições que a vida de escritor de vulgarização científica só fez reforçar. Ambicioso antes do tempo para a sua posição social, uma vez que não pôde ser beneficiado por bolsas como a geração republicana e universitária que lhe sobreveio, era imperativo fazer sucesso entre o grande público, mesmo que à custa do desprezo por parte dos especialistas. Viveu desde os anos 70 de sua própria pena, o que exigiu um investimento enorme em relações pessoais e em contatos com editoras comerciais, impelindo-o à escrita de gêneros acessíveis ao público mais amplo e num estilo palatável ao leitor não especialista. Autor flexível, uma vez que dependia de demandas editoriais diversas, Le Bon escreveu sobre higienismo, antropologia, história das civilizações, psicologia social, política internacional, física, química, fotografia, tabaco e adestramento de cavalos8 . 
• Nos anos 80, publicou uma série de obras sobre história das civilizações orientais, tema típico das publicações de vulgarização científica e com grande apelo visual, ilustradas por litografias e gravuras de monumentos, paisagens, artes e personagens exóticos.9 Para escrevê-las optou por visitar alguns países, tais como a Índia e o Nepal, e o fez tanto com recursos próprios quanto com subsídios governamentais, estes conquistados através da influência de Sadi Carnot, futuro Presidente da República e um parente distante. A pretensão desse tipo de publicação era resumir séculos de história de um determinado povo em algumas centenas de páginas e volumes, semelhante a uma enciclopédia ilustrada. O método seguido era o da descrição naturalista de tipos e paisagens (raça, meio geográfico, hereditariedade física e psicológica), instituições políticas e psicologia dos “grandes homens”. Através desses estudos Le Bon pretendia demonstrar sua tese sobre a importância do fator hereditário na mentalidade de um povo, bem como, nos moldes da filosofia da história francesa, enfatizar a importância dos líderes ou dos “grandes homens” para a evolução social.
• Ao longo das últimas décadas do século travava-se um debate em torno das causas da evolução ou da civilização de um povo e as respostas dividiam-se entre os que consideravam o povo, tomado como um tipo médio, como fator evolutivo e os que, por oposição, enfatizavam o papel das elites. Le Bon defendia a segunda hipótese, ainda que por vezes adotasse a primeira para alfinetar as elites intelectuais que o desprezavam. Segundo ele, os fatores biológicos e psicológicos de uma raça são hereditários e, além disso, necessariamente nivelam e limitam a evolução dos “povos inferiores” ou os “grupos sociais inferiores” dos povos civilizados, tais como mulheres, crianças e classes populares. Por outro lado, apesar de não responsáveis ou mesmo impermeáveis ao progresso, as grandes crenças da massa da população seriam responsáveis pela coesão e pela estabilidade social, o que significa que as elites deveriam conhecê-las - a psicologia ou a mentalidade de um povo - para reduzir sua possível interferência (negativa) sobre a diferenciação ou individuação dos homens superiores. Ao enfatizar o caráter hereditário das crenças populares e a desigualdade psicológica entre elites e massas - em detrimento de sua ascensão pela educação - a teoria da Le Bon atingia o cerne da crença republicana na meritocracia e na “educação para a democracia”, o que lhe rendeu vários inimigos no campo do poder e no campo intelectual.10 Diante do caráter imutável do tipo “médio” da população, mal se entende como pode ocorrer evolução intelectual, processo caracterizado pela diferenciação de indivíduos favorecidos por uma inteligência superior e, portanto, legítimos representantes da “aristocracia intelectual”, mais especificamente, uma “(...) pequena elite de cientistas, inventores, artistas, escritores, grupo infinitamente restrito em relação ao resto da população, mas que é o único responsável pelo nível de um país na escala intelectual da civilização”11. 
• Dois pontos merecem ser destacados nos estudos antropológicos e psicológicos de Le Bon: as conseqüências políticas de sua visão elitista e aristocrática do mundo e sua visão de ciência social. Ao adotar o modelo de coesão social das sociedades tradicionais, baseado na idéia de homogeneidade intelectual e social, projetando-o, sem mediação, sobre as classes populares das sociedades européias modernas, fez uma leitura depreciativa dos movimentos coletivos contemporâneos e, em especial, das lutas trabalhistas. Quanto à sua visão das ciências sociais, ela é típica da posição de “intelectual livre” que ocupa no campo intelectual, uma vez que valoriza a viagem e o conhecimento in loco, a importância do “vivido” e da “experiência”, em detrimento do “livresco”, ou seja, dos estudos dos especialistas. Essa oposição é estrutural ao campo das ciências sociais, pois representa a tentativa de legitimação de uma prática mais intuitiva e individualista do saber científico, que se pretende inovador, contra formas mais coletivistas e profissionais de trabalho intelectual. 1-5
• nos anos 90 ela [a psicologia] passou a ter prestígio no debate público, ao mesmo tempo em que, como disciplina, mantinha um programa de pesquisa eclético, a meio passo entre a filosofia e a medicina. Seu prestígio social nesse período foi tão amplo que influenciou até mesmo o campo literário através do romance psicológico 6
• Ribor revue philosophique leva a Richet e a revue scientifique 6
• Ao publicar a Psicologia das Multidões, Le Bon adotou muitas das idéias de seus antecedentes e as adaptou às suas teses sobre a hereditariedade da raça e das crenças coletivas, o que gerou uma disputa acirrada pela precedência intelectual da teoria 9 [isso aparece em ohlberg 2015 p 161 tbm]
• Crowds
• toda a primeira parte da obra é dedicada a demonstrar que a historiografia universitária ou republicana é falsa e a pôr na cena histórica povos fanáticos e bárbaros no lugar de líderes e massas racionais. Ao mesmo tempo, Le Bon criticava a economia política por sua crença na universalidade do homus economicus racional. Desse modo, Le Bon mantinha o discurso sobre o “social” sob a dominação das ciências naturais, tanto por redução à psicologia coletiva quanto à antropologia. Ora, nos anos 90 esse vínculo estava se esgarçando, uma vez que o naturalismo sociológico e o organicismo foram atacados por várias correntes pedagógicas e universitárias. Nessa década, a proliferação de revistas, coleções, cursos, e sociedades científicas na área sociológica, econômica e histórica fez com que novos paradigmas científicos se estabelecessem em detrimento do biológico e do psicológico. Baseada num conhecimento generalista e fundado na hereditariedade, a psicologia leboniana desconsiderava o avanço da especialização científica e da autonomia disciplinar no campo das ciências sociais e, por ser fatalista ou ao menos anti-reformista, afrontava as crenças republicanas no progresso social pela educação. 
• A antropologia republicana procurava moderar o fator “racial” enfatizando a importância do “meio” ou da “educação” na evolução de um povo, o que significa que era otimista em relação à civilização de todas as raças e condições sociais. Além disso, adotava as teses lamarckianas de transmissão às gerações futuras de caracteres adquiridos, o que abria possibilidades de mudança do caráter de um povo pela reforma social. Ora, para Le Bon, as instituições européias não poderiam ser implantadas nas colônias porque a inferioridade de uma raça era impermeável à aquisição de traços civilizatórios, ou seja, ele negava a evolução por contato/contágio e pela educação. Além disso, ele afirmava que as nações européias eram provenientes de raças distintas - o que dava força às correntes e movimentos nacionalistas e xenófobos, pelo que ficou conhecido como “darwinista social”, expressão pejorativa à época e indicativa de adesão à tese do conflito racial. Em 1894, ao publicar um artigo na Revue scientifique em que pretendia demonstrar a necessidade da guerra e, mais do que isso, seus benefícios para a evolução de um povo, foi alvo de protesto imediato pelo diretor da revista, Charles Richet, que lamentou vivamente as opiniões do autor, eximiu a revista de qualquer responsabilidade e, por oposição, defendeu o valor da “humanidade” 10
• Positivismo
• Apesar de reivindicar a herança materialista e positivista dos intelectuais dos anos 60, a psicologia leboniana rompeu com algumas de suas teses centrais a partir dos anos 90, em parte porque sua posição no campo intelectual se distanciava cada vez mais da dos herdeiros de Taine, portadores de carreiras universitárias. Ainda que o autor recorresse a teorias científicas reconhecidas, o caráter militante de suas obras jogava contra o anseio por legitimidade científica nos meios mais especializados. Suas obras de psicologia são orientadas por uma pergunta clássica - inquirir sobre as causas da grandeza e da decadência de uma civilização ou raça - e por uma função social - tirar lições para a condução da vida pública. A obrigação do trabalho publicista e o ímpeto de se tornar um intelectual público fez com que sua psicologia se tornasse um instrumento de suas concepções políticas, e estas, uma função de sua posição no campo intelectual. 11
• Várias teses anti republicanas e de educação no Crowds. Decadência da frança 12-4
• Síntese
•  Le Bon manteve a crença na capacidade evolutiva dos níveis superiores das camadas sociais e, principalmente, nas elites intelectuais e científicas, criticando o que considerava um aprisionamento da “razão” pela instituição universitária ou pedagógica. Por outro lado, é inegável seu desprezo por certos grupos sociais: as crianças, os povos primitivos, as mulheres e as classes populares são para ele não apenas seres inferiores, ou seja, dominados pelos instintos e pela constituição biológica e mental da raça, mas também, e essa é uma diferença importante em relação aos pedagogos e universitários, incapazes de evolução no sentido da individualidade ou da racionalidade. 
• Os estudiosos de Le Bon divergem enormemente sobre como classificá-lo em termos políticos. Ele foi considerado desde um liberal-democrata até um proto-fascista, multiplicidade que se compreende uma vez que o texto leboniano está orientado muito mais para a intervenção no seu próprio tempo do que para a elaboração de uma teoria internamente coerente. Por essa razão, os trabalhos com maior sensibilidade histórica avançaram mais no debate, tais como o de Robert Nye e o de Benoit Marpeau. Para o primeiro, Le Bon teve uma fase positivista e liberal-conservadora até o fim do século, mas guinou à direita e ao pensamento autoritário ao aceitar, após 1902, a religião como princípio da coesão social. A defesa de um “ideal comum” e da “devoção patriótica das multidões” seria um primeiro passo na direção do que, posteriormente, seria produzido pelo pensamento fascista23. Marpeau, pelo contrário, afirma que não encontrou nos textos e nos meios sociais de Le Bon nenhum empreendimento de manipulação das multidões e que todo projeto de intervenção social se reduziu à educação, sempre com a preocupação de construir a individualidade.24 O estudo de Marpeau me parece definitivo. A crença na racionalidade individual está de tal forma arraigada no meio social de Le Bon que não se pode, sem cometer anacronismo, considerá-lo um teórico da sociedade de massas ou um ideólogo da dominação das massas no sentido que lhe dará o século XX. 15
  

CHAVES 2003

ROUGIER 2002

• Around 1919, Gustave Le Bon wrote a letter to Poincare's wife. As the director ofthe Bibliotheque de Philosophie Scientifique at Flammarion, he asked her for the permission to publish a new posthumous volume. Apparently, the project did not come from him but from Louis Rougier, a young philosopher who was at that time professor of philosophy in the secondary school of Algiers. According to Le Bon, Rougier had noticed that several articles of Poincare could constitute a new volume for this collection. He had conversed with Emile Boutroux and his son Pierre about this project and they had agreed on the necessity of the publication. Emile Boutroux was Poincare's brother-in-law (he had married Poincare's sister, Aline, in 1876). He was one of the most prominent French philosophers ofthe time and his philosophy of contingency had exerted a profound influence over the formulation of Poincare's conventionalism. Louis Rougier was professeur agrege and was about to publish his doctoral thesis about Poincare's geometrical philosophy. x
• For all these reasons [Leon Daum e Louise Poincaré], Louis Rougier and Gustave Le Bon's project failed. xi

ROLLET 2002

• Fundou a Bibliothéque de Philosophie Scientifique de Flammarion 149
• Le Bon's objective was not to create a scientific popularization collection comparable to Alcan's Bibliotheque Scientifique Internationale, which had started in 1879, but to offer to an educated public a general point of view on the sciences which did not only help to accumulate precise information in a specialized domain, but also allowed one to build a personal philosophy ofthe world. 151
• In this advertisement the word 'popularization' did not appear at any moment although it was present between the lines. The ambiguity ofthe formulation was probably deliberate. Le Bon intended to place the collection under the honorable patronage of philosophy and to obtain a favorable echo from philosophical, scientific and popular audiences. Clearly, most of the books in this collection were commissioned works in which the authors tried to present previous articles and conferences in a logic of popularization. 151
• Bio de Le Bon
• Born in 1841 in Nogent-le-Rotrou, Le Bon's father was a minor official of the financial administration (he was receveur de ['enregistrement). Le Bon's secondary studies were quite mediocre and it is probable that he did not obtain his baccalaureat. In 1860, he followed his father's steps and entered the administration of indirect taxation as a supernumerary employee (i.e. without retribution). Four years later he started medical studies in order to obtain a position as a medical officer. I I He then became a disciple of Pierre Adolphe Piorry and, even though he did not manage to get a diploma, he succeeded in gaining a reputation within the medical community. From 1862 until 1880 he published numerous articles in popularization reviews as well as medical treatises: Physiologie de la generation de I'homme et des principaux etres vivants (1868), Traite pratique des maladies des organes genito-urinaires (1869), Traite de physiologie humaine (1873), etc. In 1884 he directed an archaeological mission in India and Nepal and came back to France with the material for several books which sold very well: Les civilisations de I'[nde (1887), Les premieres civilisations (1889) and Les monuments de I'[nde (1893). In 1895 he published Lapsychologie desfoules, one of his most famous books, which contributed to establish his intellectual authority.12 In 1902, Le Bon was 61 years old, he was rich and his reputation was immense inside and outside the country. 
• He was one the rare French intellectuals who lived by his pen but he was on the fringe of the academic society. For this reason, he always tried, during his lifetime, to keep regular (and useful) contacts with scientists, politicians, philosophers and intellectuals. In this perspective, he had founded in 1893, together with his friend Theodule Ribot, his famous Banquet des XX; every last Friday ofthe month, this dinner gathered academics, high-ranking officials, members ofthe government and general officers (the prince Roland Bonaparte, Henri and Raymond Poincare, Camille Flammarion, Paul Painleve etc.). A few years later, in 1902, he founded his Dejeuner du mercredi which gathered every week about fifteen guests: Aristide Briand, Charles Mangin, Camille Saint-Saens, Marie Bonaparte, Paul Valery or Gabriel Hanotaux were regularly invited. These social whirls were not organized without ulterior motives: Le Bon's aim was to constitute a solid network, to establish fruitful contacts within the intellectual community in order to enhance his reputation and the standing of his collection. He thus used his network to promote the Bibliotheque de Phi!osophie Scientifique. 152-3
• Gerente ideológico da coleção. Lhe gerou fortuna. 153-4 
• Poincaré é o primeiro a ser escolhido e eles mantém contato 154-5 mas
• Nevertheless, it was mainly disseminated through Gustave Le Bon and Flammarion's Bibliotheque de Philosophie Scientifique. And this fact is not without consequences for its understanding and interpretation: on the one hand, the presentation of heterogeneous articles within the same books gives an appearance of consistency and coherence, which is quite problematic since Poincare did not aim at elaborating a philosophical system. On the other hand, the emendations ofthe original articles can be rather misleading: most of the time the simplicity and the clarity ofthese books is only apparent. Indeed Rougier was very aware ofthis fact when he wrote to Leon Daum that among the 24.000 customers of La science et I'hypothese only 1000 persons were probably able to understand the book 158
• Lab
• Le Bon possessed a small private laboratory in which he made experiments on light polarization. In 1896 he had been convinced that he had discovered a new kind ofradiation - which he called black light - and he had asked some of his scientific acquaintances to expose his results at the Academie des Sciences. Poincare and Lippmann had seemed quite interested by Le Bon's results and had given him some support. 154
• Jean Becquerel finally demonstrated in 1897 that Le Bon's results were due to infrared radiation ...... Throughout his lifetime, Le Bon published more than twenty notes in the Comptesrendus de l'Academie des &iences. In 1903, he tried to obtain the Nobel prize for his scientific works (see [Marpeau 2000], pp. 254-257, as well as the chapter concerning his relationships with 'official science'). In July 1922, he also exchanged a short correspondence with Albert Einstein concerning the priority for the discovery ofthe equivalence between mass and energy. 154

MARPEAU 2000*

WAGNER 1993

CLARK 1981

• Like Demolins the social psychologist Gustave Le Bon linked the term "struggle for life" to economic competition.67 He also employed it to describe relationships between nations and races. A medical doctor who did not practice, Le Bon long persisted in annoying spokesmen for official culture with his claims that despite the familiar republican rhetoric about "liberty, equality, and fraternity," unremitt~g struggle and inequality actually characterized human life. L'Homme et les soci6t&s, his first major venture into social evolutionism in 1879, contained approving references to Spencer's arguments on the dangers of keeping the unfit alive through artificial state interference with the process of natural selection.69 A discussion of war in Darwinian terms figured prominently in Les premieres civilisations where Le Bon wrote: "The struggle for existence is the natural and permanent state of human races as well as animal species. Far from being, as some have wished to believe, a residue of barbarism in the process of disappearing, war seems an essential condition of the existence of civilization."70 Those who were most successful in combat and other forms of the struggle for-existence were judged a natural elite of the fittest: "The right of the strongest! It is in vain that the humanitarian philosophers would contest its power from the confines of their studies. It is the only law which is always imposed, and it is also the one which has made humanity progress the most."71 After Le Don's classic, La Psychologie des foules, made him a literary celebrity in 1895, he acquired a reading audience much larger than that of most academic philosophers and sociologists. Moreover, as Robert Nye has shown, Le Bon had contacts with ce5ain conservative republican political and military leaders. Nonetheless, Le Bon's social Darwinist positions were not characteristic of the social philosophy publicly professed by most republican politicians, ideologues, and academicians. Complaining in 1910 about the neglect of his social theories by universitaires, Le Bon noted his distance from official culture when he remarked that "one should never hesitate to si what ought to be said even when one is alone in saying it." 137-8;

WIDENER 1979

• Conspiração do silêncio por motivos políticos desde a contemporaneidade. 17-20
• Experimentos de física 1896-1908
• Posicionamento
• Gustave Le Bon was most certainly antisocialist— but was he a conservative? The answer depends on individual interpretation: he was a progressive thinker, he eagerly disregarded shibboleths and shams, he searched avidly for the true nature of man and society. Like Sir Francis Bacon during the Renaissance, Le Bon opposed the narrow, rigidly hierarchical educational system of his times. He refused to accept whatever was written, even by the most eminent academicians, as gospel. 21
• Vida 25-26
• Depois passa muitas páginas analisando os aforismos

NYE 1975

• l..eBon arrived in the capital in 1860, following an indifferent lycee education at Tours and a suffocating childhood in Nogent-le-Rotrou (L'Eure et Loir), a prosperous farming community near Chartres. He had been born on May 7, 1841 into a family with deep roots in the area and a heritage of bureaucratic service extending back to the seventeenth century . 1 Though his brother Georges followed the family calling, Le Bon felt a thoroughgoing contempt for the example of the provincial functionary provided by his father and grandfather, and spoke of his rural origins in later years with reluctance and distaste. 2 There is no evidence that he ever returned to Nogent-le-Rotrou after 1860.3 
• Following six apparently difficult years as an intern at the new Hotel Dieu, LeBon received the licence to practise medicine. The medical degree in nineteenth-century Paris by no means confined its recipients exclusively to the healing of the sick, but included a curriculum broad enough to serve as a base for the more specialized study of anatomy, physiology, anthropology, psychiatry and other auxiliary sciences. Having made the decision that medical practice wouJd not win the palms of academic favor or the plaudits of the social recognition he thirsted for, LeBon decided to capitalize on his broad scientific education to become a synthesizer and popular writer on science. He had every reason to expect success from such a venture. 7-8
• Cientismo
• As a young writer on scientific subjects, LeBon skillfully combined these proven formulas of scientism with a canny sense of relevance in popular scientific taste. From a provocative handling of the burning question of spontaneous generation - where he sided with Pouchet against Pasteur - in 1862, 1 6 to accounts of uniforrnitarian geology and physiological reductionism 1 7 in 1867, LeBon spent his first decade in Paris chronicling new developments with a missionary zeal and an unrestrained enthusiasm for the new currents of materialism and determinism. 13
• Médico da sociedade
• Even in the sixties LeBon began to show a marked interest in extending his diagnoses to certain categories of decline in French national life 14
• Pop sci
•  The skillful mixture of popular science and social commentary was LeBon's apparent forte; he was successful enough that by 1875 when he wrot&-, ''the pocketbook: the key to success'', 2 3 he was already one of the rare independent scientists who could claim to be living largely from the sale of his publications. He also supplemented his income by inventing and manufacturing technical scientific equipment useful to experimental scientists or educators. 14
• Pessimismo, cinismo e frustração
• Worldly success in Paris was neither autom,tic nor enduring, as . Lucien de Rubempre, another of Balzac's enterprising young·provincials had discovered some decades earlier. The young GustaVt LeBon found that popular recognition did not always bring institutional endorsement, nor his independent means the entry into haute societe that he coveted. What gains he won in the sixties and early seventies were dearly bought: frequent rebuffs brought frustration and, later, bitterness and misanthropy. LeBon's first three decades of residence in the capital were spent in an unwilling apprenticeship to fame from which he emerged with a constitutional obduracy and a reservoir' of hostility for the ''establishment'' that he believed had consciously deprived him of his rewards. Before he had passed too many years in the COtJlpetitive Parisian ambience he began to reveal glimpses of his· mature cynicism. His papers yield some unpublished aphorisms dating from the mid-seventies, including a definition of ''happiness'' as ''the quality that one has generally when one Jtas not the force to be wicked'', and a ''friend'' as someone ''much more dangerous than an enemy'' 15 > mulheres [meio incel] [16 mais notas pessimistas]
• Pessimismo geral na frança após derrota contra a alemanha. Comuna segue depois. Busca por regeneração.
• Positivista no início 1870s 24
• Vida
• As if to implement this notion, and to keep himself abreast of the most recent developments in scientific progress, LeBon set up a chemical laboratory in the rue Guenegaud shortly after the restoration of order in Paris. To supplement his growing publishing income he converted his lab into a business operation where he advertised testing facilities for diabetes dosages, albumin and urea percentages in urine, and phosphate percentages in milk. Though LeBon was not unwilling to exploit financial opportunities opened up by new horizons in science, his continuous exploration of new scientific fields reflects a more immediately felt need to win the academic respectability that was generally denied the common medical practitioner. 29
• To indicate to the social world that his earning capacity was not inconsequential, LeBon took a private residence at about this time on the rue Vignon, in the fashionable district between the Opera and the Place de la Madeleine. 29

• Começa o interesse em psico a partir de 1875 29. Ribot e a revue 30. Craniometria 33
• is system of measurements indicated to him that Western Europeans were more intelligent than modem savages, men greatly superior to women, and scientists and upper-middle classes (particularly industrialists) superior in the number of large skulls to groupinp of peasants, urban factory workers and domestic servants. He accounted for these variations by appealing to the adaptive struggle for existence. Whereas man's brain, he argued, had expanded over the years under the constant necessity of providing for his family, woman's brain had correspondingly shrunk as familial specialization left her only the duties of caring for her children 33
• Embate com Royer 1879 34
• Várias rejeições institucionais e científicas levam a
• Following the rejection of his two-volume L 'Homme et les Societes by the Society's Prix Godard committee in late 1881 on account of its ''vulgarizing'' tendencies, LeBon began to strike back at his antagonists.  34
• The issues separating LeBon and the Society centered on anthropological methodology. His own measurements and statistics had been heavily criticized, and his theoretical generalizations condemned as unempirical. In reaction to this rebuff he was to tum even further toward theoretical speculation and popular science. Though he had not yet abandoned his cherished hope to be accepted by the scientific elite of France as an acknowledged specialist in some area, his envy and bitterness of the ''establishment'', especially the Sorbonne ''mandarinat," continued to grow. 34 
• L'Homme inspirado por evolucionismo, comtismo e romantimso 39
• First, LeBon constructed an eclectic but ''positive'' structure to give the appearance of solidity to his pronouncements. He genuflected before Comte, appropriating his hierarchy of the sciences and his ''theological, metaphysical, positive'' stages of intellectual evolution. 4 He praised Spencer's First Principles, particularly the renowned formula that all matter passes from a state of homogeneity to one of increasing , diversity and heterogeneity. 5 And, he borrowed the statistical system for plotting uniformities in social data from La Physique Sociale, the work of the Belgian Adolphe Quetelet. 6 But the most useful of LeBon's source_s proved to be that all-embracing process, evolution. 
• By 1881 the prestige of Darwinian evolution was at its greatest height. For thinkers like LeBon, a developmental theory was, as Henry Adams observed, "the very best substitute for religion; a safe, conservative, practical, thoroughly common-law deity''. 7 In L 'Homme et les Societes evolution was omnicompetent: the struggle for existence, adaptation, Larnarckian inheritance of acquired characters, the power of modification of the milieu were treated as mechanisms regulating and shaping men and matter over the broad reaches of the past. By studying all aspects of past culture as derived from these guiding mechanisms, one could, LeBon stated in confident positivistic terms, ''reconstitute the exact image of the past''. 40
• Engenharia social 40
• Reason restrained 42
• This schema allowed LeBon to accomplish two central tasks. First, he was able to portray man, alone and in groups, as tom between the primal elements of sentiment and reason, the latter having emerged only recently in human evolution and seldom exercising real influence on human affairs. Consequently, LeBon described sentiment in modem civilization as an atavistic characteristic perpetuated by heredity beyond the stage of social evolution where it served a real adaptive function. Thus all the emotions, fear, hate, and sexual passions, were survivals of savagery, and, according to LeBon, especially dominant in those who lacked the opposite principle, reason. LeBon remained indebted in one way or another to these conclusions from immediate post-Darwinian anthropology for the rest of his life; while working anthropologists gradually rejected this model, Le Bon found in it an enduring source of imagery for his anti-democratic polemic. 
• At the very least his evolutionary perspective _on race provided LeBon and other fin-de-siecle racist theorists with a considerable advantage over the romantic-biblical formulations of Count Arthur de Gobineau. 42
• Pop
• Though this characteristic taste for social relevance proved to be LeBon's greatest strength as a publicist, it was his most telling weakness in the eyes of an established intellectual community which deplored such tendencies. 47 
• Viagens para Arábia e Índia. 47-8
• Race science
• Along with a generation of European thinkers, I.eBon sought to extend the logic of race to the very limits of the ''scientific imagination'' (a favorite · term of his) so that it might ultimately incorporate in itself a total explanation of the history of man and the modem world. By providing a ''scientific'' explanation of race based on psychological and character traits, but with the concrete durability and hereditary transmissibility of physical characteristics, l.eBon avoided the weaknesses of the ''caliper'' race thinker whose data was so often conflicting. His more flexible definition, though it clearly took its initial inspiration from the body-mind analogy, explained psychological differen~s which demarked social classes, linguistic groups, sexes and religious categories, yet it still retained the deterministic overtones which the nineteenth century understood so well, and which clearly favored the power of ''blood'' over education. The integrity and uniqueness of race, class, language, and culture, which many Europeans perceived to be the psychological extension of a people's hereditary apparatus, was a dominan~ theme in that era of burgeoning nationalism and class consciousness. The invention of a flexible definition of ''race psychology'' was Gustave I.eBon's own contribution to these movements. The greatest danger, he intoned, was ''assimilation of any sort''.
• In the 1880s the principal subjects of I.eBon's formulations of hereditary psychology were criminals, women, and humanitarian exponents of ethnic brotherhood. Arguing against the emerging  interpretation of the social origins of crime, LeBon proposed that criminals were ''born'' with certain ''mental constitutions'' which predisposed them to criminal behavior. As the likelihood of their amelioration wm minimal, society ought to act in its own defense by shipping all recidivists - LeBon assumed all multiple offenders to be born criminals - to colonial prisons for life. 3 8 He protested against the ''false humanitarianism'' which pressed for rehabilitation but which in truth resulted in a rapidly proliferating anny of social malcontents and incipient revolutionaries. He employed the same accusation of misled humanitarianism in branding the leaders of women's rights movements in France as scientifically inadequate. Modem rights and higher education for women, he argued, would confuse a women's primitive maternal instincts, cause her to bear neurotic offspring, and tum France into a chamel-house of nihilistic chaos. The psychology of women, inbred genetically for millenia, could not be transformed over a few decades. 49-50
• Mais veneno contra o colonialismo assimalacionista.  Não se deve educar os nativos 50
• Lois Psychologiques 1894 54
• Distrust in democracy 60
• O Crowds é meio que um desenvolvimento do l'homme 69-71
• Mais pessimismo e paranoia 156
• flammarion 162-3
• Turkey, Arab North Africa, and Rumania. Japão; URSS 164-7 (este capítulo é uma resenha do impacto geral de le bon)

BARNES 1920

• Of course it is obvious that a man who ranges at will over a dozen fields of research, any one of which could only be partially traversed with thoroughness in a lifetime, is not likely to have excelled in any of them. This is certainly true of Le Bon, whatever his mental powers may be. Professor G. E. Vincent has thus characterized him in a fairly accurate manner: "M. Le Bon may be described as an intellectual kodak fiend. His books are filled with snapshots at truth, interesting in themselves, but sadly unconnected and out of focus."2 At the same time, Le Bon's works are all highly interesting, and many of his generalizations sound plausible. His arguments are bolstered up by copious citations of a per- tinent nature. Le Bon is one of those writers who exploits his theories in his own works. In discussing crowd psychology, for example, he tells the reader that the sure and certain method to be successful in convincing an audience of the truth of an assertion is to affirm the matter repeatedly, and, at the same time, to be careful to avoid any attempt at thor- ough analysis or any reference to a possible exception to its applicability. Nothing is more characteristic of Le Bon's own procedure than this very method. Taking a few rather striking psychological postulates which have the virtue of modernity, novelty, and suggestiveness, he applies these con- ceptions to nearly every phase of contemporary life in gen- eral and to French social conditions in particular. These theses are repeated and reiterated without detailed analysis or candid statement of exceptions to their application, until even a wary reader is likely to be beguiled by the facile phrase- ology of the author. Aside from his brilliant but uncritical dogmatism and "cock-sureness," another characteristic of Le Bon's socio-psychological writings should be noted. That is what Herbert Spencer would call his "anti-patriotic bias" and his "class bias." At least up to the outbreak of the World War, Le Bon could see little good in what he alleged to be the characteristics of the modern Romance peoples. Their assumed tendency towards a crowd-psychological con- dition and their desire to suppress individuality and put into power the incompetent masses reveal little of promise from his viewpoint. The oft-asserted Anglo-Saxon initiative, en- ergy, will-power, and individualism, attract him as strongly as the alleged French traits repel him. 
• Again, Le Bon finds little to arouse his enthusiasm in the traits of the masses; from his viewpoint progress and civiliza-tion are almost exclusively the contribution of the intellectually elite. There can be no doubt that Le Bon's exaggerations are in part due to his generalizations from French conditions though even these he views in an extreme and exaggerated light. The relation of Le Bon's doctrines to his social en- vironment is not of that subtle type which is likely to escape the attention of the reader, but is so prominent in all his works as to make them full of generalizations which are highly inaccurate and distorted when viewed as sociological propositions of general import. His fundamental doctrines- the idea of national character, the psychology of crowds and revolutions, his "anti-patriotic" and "class" bias, his con- tinual scenting of impending calamities, and his bitter attacks upon socialism and syndicalism, are all directly and in large part traceable to his reactions to his French " milieu." At the same time, no one can deny that Le Bon has pointed out tendencies, conditions, and psychological laws which had pre- viously been overlooked or undeveloped, and, when his works are read with the understanding which allows the discounting of his exaggerations and prejudices, they constitute an im- portant contribution to sociological literature. It seems prob- able that Le Bon's contributions to social and political theory can best be understood through an examination of his main works on social psychology, noting their general doctrines briefly and devoting special attention to their bearing upon social and political problems.333-5
• Síntese
• Le Bon's salient doctrines may be summarized as follows: Every race possesses certain definite psychic traits built up by the slow accumulations of experience, and perpetuated by tradition. These psychic traits, rather than institutions, are the determining factors in civilization, the latter being simply an objective expression of the former. Among these psychic traits which constitute national character, or the soul of the race, the affective, mystic, and unconscious factors are the most powerful, quite overshadowing the conscious, rational and intellectual elements, though it is to the influence of the latter that progress is due. Without a coherent and unified group of psychic traits constituting the soul of the race, the civilization of that race cannot develop or be perpetuated. It is futile to attempt to change these fundamental psychic traits by a revolutionary or any other artificial transformation of institutions. Therefore, an excessive degree of state activity is worse than useless; law-making power should be confined to the codification of well-established and persistent customs; and government, in general, should be limited to that minimum of activity which is necessary to preserve order and secure the proper degree of mental discipline for the individual citi- zen. Both socialism and syndicalism are, thus, dangerous movements; the former wishing to procure excessive state activity, and the latter desiring to abolish the state altogether. Owing to such results of the Industrial Revolution as the growth of cities and the consequent concentration of popula- tion, the improvements in communication, and the extension of the suffrage, modern political life has tended to become dominated by crowds. The crowd is abnormal in its psycho- logical characteristics, being highly emotional, exceptionally weak intellectually, and exceedingly susceptible to suggestion. It is easily guided, however, by leaders possessing prestige, who, to be successful, make use of those principles of affirma- tion, repetition, contagion, and imitation, whereby a crowd may be persuaded and convinced.. Hence, it is highly es- sential that society shall assure the highest quality of leader- ship for crowds, and thus be able to direct their dynamic energy into activities which are conducive to the public wel- fare. If this is not done, and crowds are left to the exploita-tion of shortsighted and selfish demagogues, they must con- tinue to be a constant menace to the integrity, well-being and even the existence of modern society. The World War was produced by the domination of the mob or crowd mind, oper- ating over national areas and submerging all rational factors and processes. In its most fundamental aspects the conflict was a psychological struggle between contending sets of na- tional ideas and emotions. It constituted a great psychic up- heaval and transformation, destined to bring in its wake a new psychological and cultural era. War can be eliminated only when society is brought under the control of that leader- ship of the real intellectual aristocracy which is needed to guide the crowd mind in times of peace. Only under such leadership can society be brought to understand the growing and vital interdependence of nations, international relations be brought under the control of legal forms and processes, and those false ideas regarding the biological and social benefits of war and the conquering mission of any nation be forever destroyed. 368-9

MOTONO 1914

PICARD 1909