Here is yet another important consideration for helping us to understand the individual in a group: 'Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.'(p. 36.) He then dwells especially upon the lowering in intellectual ability which an individual experiences when he becomes merged in a group.[1]
Let us now leave the individual, and turn to the group mind, as it has been outlined by Le Bon. It shows not a single feature which a psycho-analyst would find any difficulty in placing or in deriving from its source. Le Bon himself shows us the way by pointing to its similarity with the mental life of primitive people and of children (p. 40). A group is impulsive, changeable and irritable. It is led almost exclusively by the unconscious [2] The
- ↑ Compare Schiller's couplet:
Jeder, sieht man ihn einzeln, ist leidlich klug und verständig;
Sind sie in corpore, gleich wird euch ein Dummkopf daraus.
[Everyone, seen by himself, is passably shrewd and discerning;
When they're in corpore, then straightway you'll find he's an ass.] - ↑ 'Unconscious' is used here correctly by Le Bon in the descriptive sense, where it does not only mean the 'repressed'.
