ABSTRACT
The inferior reasoning of crowds is based, just as is reasoning of a high order, on the association of ideas, but between the ideas associated by crowds there are only apparent bonds of analogy or succession. The characteristics of the reasoning of crowds are the association of dissimilar things possessing a merely apparent connection between each other, and the immediate generalisation of particular cases. Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images. The power of conquerors and the strength of States is based on the popular imagination. It is more particularly by working upon this imagination that crowds are led. All great historical facts, the rise of Buddhism, of Christianity, of Islam, the Reformation, the French Revolution, and, in own time, the threatening invasion of Socialism, are the direct or indirect consequences of strong impressions produced on the imagination of the crowd.
