ABSTRACT
Present in all collective behavior is some kind of belief that prepares the participants for action. Le Bon, for example, writes:
… It now remains for us to study the … immediate factors of the opinions of crowds … Images, Words and Formulas … Illusions… .
… To bring home conviction to crowds it is necessary first of all to comprehend thoroughly the sentiments by which they are animated, to pretend to share these sentiments, then to endeavour to modify them by calling up, by means of rudimentary associations, certain eminently suggestive notions, to be capable, if need be, of going back to the point of view from which a start was made, and, above all, to divine from instant to instant the sentiments to which one’s discourse is giving birth. 1
