《乌合之众·第二编·群体的意见与信念·群体信念与意见的变异限度》第3节
Nations have always been conscious of the utility of acquiring general beliefs, and have instinctively understood that their disappearance would be the signal for their own decline. In the case of the Romans, the fanatical cult of Rome was the belief that made them masters of the world, and when the belief had died out Rome was doomed to die. As for the barbarians who destroyed the Roman civilisation, it was only when they had acquired certain commonly accepted beliefs that they attained a measure of cohesion and emerged from anarchy. Plainly it is not for nothing that nations have always displayed intolerance in the defence of their opinions. This intolerance, open as it is to criticism from the philosophic standpoint, represents in the life of a people the most necessary of virtues. It was to found or uphold general beliefs that so many victims were sent to the stake in the Middle Ages and that so many inventors and innovators have died in despair even if they have escaped martyrdom. It is in defence, too, of such beliefs that the world has been so often the scene of the direst disorder, and that so many millions of men have died on the battlefield, and will yet die there.
注释摘要
勒庞在这一段进行了一场相当大胆甚至冷酷的辩护。他想证明的核心命题是：一个民族的存亡，系于它是否拥有某种牢固的普遍信仰。他举了罗马人的例子，指出那种近乎狂热的罗马崇拜——把罗马本身视为一种神圣的命运——曾经把这个城邦推上了已知世界的霸主地位，而当这种信仰熄灭之后，罗马帝国的覆亡便只是时间问题了。反过来，那些最终摧毁罗马文明的各个蛮族，本身也长期陷于内部混乱，…