《乌合之众·第二编·群体的意见与信念·群体意见与信念的间接因素》第5节
The ideal for a people is in consequence to preserve the institutions of the past, merely changing them insensibly and little by little. This ideal is difficult to realise. The Romans in ancient and the English in modern times are almost alone in having realised it. It is precisely crowds that cling the most tenaciously to traditional ideas and oppose their being changed with the most obstinacy. This is notably the case with the category of crowds constituting castes. I have already insisted upon the conservative spirit of crowds, and shown that the most violent rebellions merely end in a changing of words and terms. At the end of the last century, in the presence of destroyed churches, of priests expelled the country or guillotined, it might have been thought that the old religious ideas had lost all their strength, and yet a few years had barely lapsed before the abolished system of public worship had to be re-established in deference to universal demands.[8] [8] The report of the ex-Conventionist, Fourcroy, quoted by Taine, is very clear on this point. "What is everywhere seen with respect to the keeping of Sunday and attendance at the churches proves that the majority of Frenchmen desire to return to their old usages and that it is no longer opportune to resist this natural tendency. . . . The great majority of men stand in need of religion, public worship, and priests. IT IS AN ERROR OF SOME MODERN PHILOSOPHERS, BY WHICH I MYSELF HAVE BEEN LED AWAY, to believe in the possibility of instruction being so general as to destroy religious prejudices, which for a great number of unfortunate persons are a source of consolation. . . . The mass of the people, then, must be allowed its priests, its altars, and its public worship."
注释摘要
勒庞在这一段要证明一个看似矛盾但实际上贯穿全书的主张：群体既是暴烈的反叛者，同时又是最顽固的保守派。他用来支撑这个主张的核心史例来自法国大革命时期的非基督教化运动——教堂被毁、教士被驱逐或送上断头台、公开的宗教崇拜被废除，表面上看，数百年的天主教传统似乎被连根拔起。但勒庞引用泰纳转述的前国民公会议员富克鲁瓦的报告指出，仅仅几年之后，法国绝大多数民众就强烈要…