《乌合之众·第一编·群体的心理·群体信念呈现的宗教形态》第6节
Certain historical events--and they are precisely the most important--I again repeat, are not to be understood unless one has attained to an appreciation of the religious form which the convictions of crowds always assume in the long run. There are social phenomena that need to be studied far more from the point of view of the psychologist than from that of the naturalist. The great historian Taine has only studied the Revolution as a naturalist, and on this account the real genesis of events has often escaped him. He has perfectly observed the facts, but from want of having studied the psychology of crowds he has not always been able to trace their causes. The facts having appalled him by their bloodthirsty, anarchic, and ferocious side, he has scarcely seen in the heroes of the great drama anything more than a horde of epileptic savages abandoning themselves without restraint to their instincts. The violence of the Revolution, its massacres, its need of propaganda, its declarations of war upon all things, are only to be properly explained by reflecting that the Revolution was merely the establishment of a new religious belief in the mind of the masses. The Reformation, the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the French religious wars, the Inquisition, the Reign of Terror are phenomena of an identical kind, brought about by crowds animated by those religious sentiments which necessarily lead those imbued with them to pitilessly extirpate by fire and sword whoever is opposed to the establishment of the new faith. The methods of the Inquisition are those of all whose convictions are genuine and sturdy. Their convictions would not deserve these epithets did they resort to other methods.
注释摘要
勒庞在此处展开的论证，是针对当时史学界过于倚重“自然主义”方法的一种反驳。他直接点名的泰纳（Hippolyte Taine），是十九世纪法国最具影响力的实证史家之一，其《现代法国的起源》用解剖生理学般的冷峻笔调，把大革命描写成一帮“癫痫的野蛮人”本能发作。勒庞认为，泰纳虽然对事实观察入微，却因为完全无视群体心理的机制，而始终抓不住事件发生的真正动因。于是，…