ABSTRACT
The mobility of crowds renders them very difficult to govern, especially when a measure of public authority has fallen into their hands. A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. The simplicity and exaggeration of sentiments of crowds have for result that a throng knows neither doubt nor uncertainty. The violence of feelings of crowds is also increased, especially in heterogeneous crowds, by absence of all sense of responsibility. Crowds are only cognisant of simple and extreme sentiments; the opinions, ideas, and beliefs suggested to them are accepted or rejected as a whole, and considered as absolute truths or as not less absolute errors. Dictatorialness and intolerance are common to categories of crowds, but they are met with in a varying degree of intensity. Authoritativeness and intolerance are sentiments of which crowds have a very clear notion, which they easily conceive and which they entertain as readily as they put them in practice when once they are imposed upon them.
