《乌合之众·第一编·群体的心理·群体的情感与道德》第6节
[3] Persons who went through the siege of Paris saw numerous examples of this credulity of crowds. A candle alight in an upper story was immediately looked upon as a signal given the besiegers, although it was evident, after a moment of reflection, that it was utterly impossible to catch sight of the light of the candle at a distance of several miles. The creation of the legends which so easily obtain circulation in crowds is not solely the consequence of their extreme credulity. It is also the result of the prodigious perversions that events undergo in the imagination of a throng. The simplest event that comes under the observation of a crowd is soon totally transformed. A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first. We can easily conceive this state by thinking of the fantastic succession of ideas to which we are sometimes led by calling up in our minds any fact. Our reason shows us the incoherence there is in these images, but a crowd is almost blind to this truth, and confuses with the real event what the deforming action of its imagination has superimposed thereon. A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images evoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed fact.
注释摘要
这段注释里，勒庞用巴黎围城时期的实例来展开他对群体轻信与想象机制的论证。他的核心主张是：群体不仅极度轻信，更关键的是它会用一种形象化的、近乎幻觉的方式彻底改写观察到的事实。他的例证很有力——阁楼上的一支蜡烛，经过片刻理性思考就能明白，几英里外的敌军根本不可能看见，但在围城那种高度紧张、人人期待信号的环境里，这个简单的光点立刻被接受为通敌的证据。勒庞想要证明…