《乌合之众·第一编·群体的心理·群体的情感与道德》第11节
Analogous examples are innumerable. As I write these lines the papers are full of the story of two little girls found drowned in the Seine. These children, to begin with, were recognised in the most unmistakable manner by half a dozen witnesses. All the affirmations were in such entire concordance that no doubt remained in the mind of the juge d'instruction. He had the certificate of death drawn up, but just as the burial of the children was to have been proceeded with, a mere chance brought about the discovery that the supposed victims were alive, and had, moreover, but a remote resemblance to the drowned girls. As in several of the examples previously cited, the affirmation of the first witness, himself a victim of illusion, had sufficed to influence the other witnesses. In parallel cases the starting-point of the suggestion is always the illusion produced in an individual by more or less vague reminiscences, contagion following as the result of the affirmation of this initial illusion. If the first observer be very impressionable, it will often be sufficient that the corpse he believes he recognises should present-- apart from all real resemblance--some peculiarity, a scar, or some detail of toilet which may evoke the idea of another person. The idea evoked may then become the nucleus of a sort of crystallisation which invades the understanding and paralyses all critical faculty. What the observer then sees is no longer the object itself, but the image evoked in his mind. In this way are to be explained erroneous recognitions of the dead bodies of children by their own mother, as occurred in the following case, already old, but which has been recently recalled by the newspapers. In it are to be traced precisely the two kinds of suggestion of which I have just pointed out the mechanism.
注释摘要
勒庞在此处援引了一个他亲身经历的当代事件，以强化其关于群体观察力和集体幻觉的论点。他叙述道：巴黎报刊正热议一桩塞纳河女童溺亡案，最初有五六名证人斩钉截铁地指认了死者身份。这些证词高度一致，连预审法官都深信不疑，甚至已开具了死亡证明。然而，在葬礼即将举行之际，一个偶然的机会揭开了真相——那两名被指认的女童其实活着，且与真正的溺水者仅略有相似。勒庞借此指出，这…