《乌合之众·第三编·不同群体的分类与描述·议会集会》第12节
When parliamentary assemblies reach a certain pitch of excitement they become identical with ordinary heterogeneous crowds, and their sentiments in consequence present the peculiarity of being always extreme. They will be seen to commit acts of the greatest heroism or the worst excesses. The individual is no longer himself, and so entirely is this the case that he will vote measures most adverse to his personal interests. The history of the French Revolution shows to what an extent assemblies are capable of losing their self-consciousness, and of obeying suggestions most contrary to their interests. It was an enormous sacrifice for the nobility to renounce its privileges, yet it did so without hesitation on a famous night during the sittings of the Constituant Assembly. By renouncing their inviolability the men of the Convention placed themselves under a perpetual menace of death and yet they took this step, and were not afraid to decimate their own ranks, though perfectly aware that the scaffold to which they were sending their colleagues to-day might be their own fate to-morrow. The truth is they had attained to that completely automatic state which I have described elsewhere, and no consideration would hinder them from yielding to the suggestions by which they were hypnotised. The following passage from the memoirs of one of them, Billaud-Varennes, is absolutely typical on this score: "The decisions with which we have been so reproached," he says, "WERE NOT DESIRED BY US TWO DAYS, A SINGLE DAY BEFORE THEY WERE TAKEN: IT WAS THE CRISIS AND NOTHING ELSE THAT GAVE RISE TO THEM." Nothing can be more accurate.
注释摘要
勒庞在这一段里要论证的是，议会一旦被强烈的集体情绪裹挟，就不再是由理性个体组成的审议机构，而变成一个与街头异质性人群无异的心理群体。他最核心的依据来自法国大革命时期的两个著名场景：一是制宪议会上贵族们一夜之间放弃特权，二是国民公会的代表们投票取消议员不可侵犯权，从而把自己置于随时可能被送上断头台的危险之中。在这些时刻，个体的正常判断、自我保全本能，甚至是基…