《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7节
Above the substratum of fixed beliefs, whose power we have just demonstrated, is found an overlying growth of opinions, ideas, and thoughts which are incessantly springing up and dying out. Some of them exist but for a day, and the more important scarcely outlive a generation. We have already noted that the changes which supervene in opinions of this order are at times far more superficial than real, and that they are always affected by racial considerations. When examining, for instance, the political institutions of France we showed that parties to all appearance utterly distinct--royalists, radicals, imperialists, socialists, &c.--have an ideal absolutely identical, and that this ideal is solely dependent on the mental structure of the French race, since a quite contrary ideal is found under analogous names among other races. Neither the name given to opinions nor deceptive adaptations alter the essence of things. The men of the Great Revolution, saturated with Latin literature, who (their eyes fixed on the Roman Republic), adopted its laws, its fasces, and its togas, did not become Romans because they were under the empire of a powerful historical suggestion. The task of the philosopher is to investigate what it is which subsists of ancient beliefs beneath their apparent changes, and to identify amid the moving flux of opinions the part determined by general beliefs and the genius of the race. In the absence of this philosophic test it might be supposed that crowds change their political or religious beliefs frequently and at will. All history, whether political, religious, artistic, or literary, seems to prove that such is the case.
注释摘要
在这段论述中，勒庞要证明一个核心命题：表面上剧烈变动的群众意见，其实浮在更深层的、几乎不动的种族心理结构之上。他用了一个地质学般的分层模型——固定信念是岩床，流变意见只是岩床上面吹积的流沙。对他来说，大革命时期的法国人时而拥护君主制、时而狂热共和、时而崇拜拿破仑、时而又去教堂虔诚举烛，这些看似翻天覆地的变换，并不能证明群体真的改变了自己的本性，只能证明同一…