s obtain the upper hand.

This very fact that crowds possess in common ordinary qualities explains
why they can never accomplish acts demanding a high degree of
intelligence. The decisions affecting matters of general interest come
to by an assembly of men of distinction, but specialists in different
walks of life, are not sensibly superior to the decisions that would be
adopted by a gathering of imbeciles. The truth is, they can only bring
to bear in common on the work in hand those mediocre qualities which are
the birthright of every average individual. In crowds it is stupidity
and not mother-wit that is accumulated. It is not all the world, as is
so often repeated, that has more wit than Voltaire, but assuredly
Voltaire that has more wit than all the world, if by "all the world"
crowds are to be understood.

If the individuals of a crowd confined themselves to putting in common
the ordinary qualities of which each of them has his share, there would
merely result the striking of an average, and not, as we have said is
actually the case, the creation of new characteristics. How is it that
these new characteristics are created? This is what we are now to
investigate.

Different causes determine the appearance of these characteristics
peculiar to crowds and not possessed by isolated individuals. The first
is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from
numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows
him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce
have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself
from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous and in consequence
irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls
individuals disappears entirely.

The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the
manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics, and at the
same time the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which
it is easy to establish the presence, but which it is not easy to
explain. It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order.
In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such
a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to
the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his
nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable except when he makes part
of a crowd.

A third cause, and by far