《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12节
[22] These remarks refer to the French newspaper press.--Note of the Translator. The close watching of the course of opinion has become to-day the principal preoccupation of the press and of governments. The effect produced by an event, a legislative proposal, a speech, is without intermission what they require to know, and the task is not easy, for nothing is more mobile and changeable than the thought of crowds, and nothing more frequent than to see them execrate to-day what they applauded yesterday. This total absence of any sort of direction of opinion, and at the same time the destruction of general beliefs, have had for final result an extreme divergency of convictions of every order, and a growing indifference on the part of crowds to everything that does not plainly touch their immediate interests. Questions of doctrine, such as socialism, only recruit champions boasting genuine convictions among the quite illiterate classes, among the workers in mines and factories, for instance. Members of the lower middle class, and working men possessing some degree of instruction, have either become utterly sceptical or extremely unstable in their opinions.
注释摘要
这段注释前的说明提醒读者，勒庞在此分析的是法国报业的状况——这是十九世纪末特定的媒体生态，不能直接挪用到其他国家的语境里。勒庞在这一段想论证的问题是：随着普遍信仰的瓦解，舆论已经失去了稳定的锚，报纸和政府都不敢再主导意见，只能焦虑地追随群体情绪的变化。他观察到一个悖论式的现象——昨天被喝彩的人今天被唾骂，群情反复无常，以致衡量舆论本身成了一件极困难的事。 …