《乌合之众·第二编·群体的意见与信念·群体意见的直接因素》第5节
The word "liberty," again, what signification could it have in any way resembling that we attribute to it to-day at a period when the possibility of the liberty of thought was not even suspected, and when there was no greater and more exceptional crime than that of discussing the gods, the laws and the customs of the city? What did such a word as "fatherland" signify to an Athenian or Spartan unless it were the cult of Athens or Sparta, and in no wise that of Greece, composed of rival cities always at war with each other? What meaning had the same word "fatherland" among the ancient Gauls, divided into rival tribes and races, and possessing different languages and religions, and who were easily vanquished by Caesar because he always found allies among them? It was Rome that made a country of Gaul by endowing it with political and religious unity. Without going back so far, scarcely two centuries ago, is it to be believed that this same notion of a fatherland was conceived to have the same meaning as at present by French princes like the great Conde, who allied themselves with the foreigner against their sovereign? And yet again, the same word had it not a sense very different from the modern for the French royalist emigrants, who thought they obeyed the laws of honour in fighting against France, and who from their point of view did indeed obey them, since the feudal law bound the vassal to the lord and not to the soil, so that where the sovereign was there was the true fatherland?
注释摘要
在这一段里，勒庞继续推进他在“群体意见的直接因素”这一节的核心论证：词语和套话之所以能支配群体，不在于它们有精确的含义，恰恰相反，在于它们的含义极度模糊、流动不定，因而能在不同时代、不同民族心中唤起完全不同的意象。他要证明的是，真正影响群体的，并不是词语在哲学家或语言学家那里被精确定义的内容，而是它在特定时刻、特定群体想象中所激起的画面和情感。因此，同一个…