Gustave Le Bon

Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon

(French: [ɡystav lə bɔ̃]; 7 May 1841 – 13
December 1931) was a leading French
polymath whose areas of interest
included anthropology, psychology,
sociology, medicine, invention, and
physics.[1][2][3] He is best known for his
1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the
Popular Mind, which is considered one of
the seminal works of crowd
psychology.[4][5]
 Gustave Le Bon

Gustave Le Bon, 1888

Born Charles-Marie-
Gustave Le Bon
7 May 1841
Nogent-le-Rotrou,
France

Died 13 December 1931

(aged 90)
 Marnes-la-Coquette,

Resting place France

Père Lachaise
Cemetery

Nationality French

Alma mater University of Paris

(M.D.)

Scientific career

Influences Bénédict Morel,

Charles Darwin,
Jean-Martin Charcot,
Paul Broca, Herbert
Spencer, Gabriel
Tarde, Ernst Haeckel,
Hippolyte Taine

Influenced Benito Mussolini,

José Ortega y
 Gasset, Sigmund
Freud, Wilfred Trotter,
Oswald Spengler,
Adolf Hitler, Vladimir
Lenin, Edward
Bernays, Robert E.
Park, Wilfred Bion,
Muhammad Abduh

A native of Nogent-le-Rotrou, Le Bon

qualified as a doctor of medicine at the
University of Paris in 1866. He opted
against the formal practice of medicine
as a physician, instead beginning his
writing career the same year of his
graduation. He published a number of
medical articles and books before joining
the French Army after the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War. Defeat in the war
coupled with being a first-hand witness
to the Paris Commune of 1871 strongly
shaped Le Bon's worldview. He then
travelled widely, touring Europe, Asia and
North Africa. He analysed the peoples
and the civilisations he encountered
under the umbrella of the nascent field of
anthropology, developing an essentialist
view of humanity, and invented a portable
cephalometer during his travels.

In the 1890s, he turned to psychology

and sociology, in which fields he released
his most successful works. Le Bon
developed the view that crowds are not
the sum of their individual parts,
proposing that within crowds there forms
a new psychological entity, the
characteristics of which are determined
by the "racial unconscious" of the crowd.
At the same time he created his
psychological and sociological theories,
he performed experiments in physics and
published popular books on the subject,
anticipating the mass–energy
equivalence and prophesising the Atomic
Age. Le Bon maintained his eclectic
interests up until his death in 1931.

Ignored or maligned by sections of the

French academic and scientific
establishment during his life due to his
politically conservative and reactionary
views, Le Bon was critical of democracy
and socialism. Le Bon's works were
influential to such disparate figures as
Theodore Roosevelt and Benito
Mussolini, Sigmund Freud and José
Ortega y Gasset, Adolf Hitler and
Vladimir Lenin.

Biography

Youth …

Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon was born

in Nogent-le-Rotrou, Centre-Val de Loire
on 7 May 1841 to a family of Breton
ancestry. At the time of Le Bon's birth, his
mother, Annette Josephine Eugénic
Tétiot Desmarlinais, was twenty-six and
his father, Jean-Marie Charles Le Bon,
was forty-one and a provincial
functionary of the French government.[6]
Le Bon was a direct descendant of Jean-
Odet Carnot, whose grandfather, Jean
Carnot, had a brother, Denys, from whom
the fifth president of the French Third
Republic, Marie François Sadi Carnot,
was directly descended.[7]

When Le Bon was eight years old, his

father obtained a new post in French
government and the family, including
Gustave's younger brother Georges, left
Nogent-le-Rotrou never to return.
Nonetheless, the town was proud that
Gustave Le Bon was born there and later
named a street after him.[7] Little else is
known of Le Bon's childhood, except for
his attendance at a lycée in Tours, where
he was an unexceptional student.[8]

In 1860, he began medicinal studies at

the University of Paris. He completed his
internship at Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, and
received his doctorate in 1866. From that
time on, he referred to himself as
"Doctor" though he never formally worked
as a physician. During his university
years, Le Bon wrote articles on a range of
medical topics, the first of which related
to the maladies that plagued those who
lived in swamp-like conditions. He
published several other about loa loa
filariasis and asphyxia before releasing
his first full-length book in 1866, La mort
apparente et inhumations prématurées.
This work dealt with the definition of
death, preceding 20th-century legal
debates on the issue.[9]

Life in Paris …
Portrait of Gustave Le Bon, c. 1870

After his graduation, Le Bon remained in

Paris, where he taught himself English
and German by reading Shakespeare's
works in each language.[10] He
maintained his passion for writing and
authored several papers on physiological
studies, as well as an 1868 textbook
about sexual reproduction, before joining
the French Army as a medical officer
after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian
War in July 1870.[11] During the war, Le
Bon organised a division of military
ambulances. In that capacity, he
observed the behaviour of the military
under the worst possible condition—total
defeat, and wrote about his reflections on
military discipline, leadership and the
behaviour of man in a state of stress and
suffering. These reflections garnered
praise from generals, and were later
studied at Saint-Cyr and other military
academies in France. At the end of the
war, Le Bon was named a Chevalier of the
Legion of Honour.[12]

Le Bon also witnessed the Paris

Commune of 1871, which deeply
affected his worldview. The then thirty-
year-old Le Bon watched on as Parisian
revolutionary crowds burned down the
Tuileries Palace, the library of the Louvre,
the Hôtel de Ville, the Gobelins
Manufactory, the Palais de Justice, and
other irreplaceable works of architectural
art.[13]

From 1871 on, Le Bon was an avowed

opponent of socialist pacifists and
protectionists, who he believed were
halting France's martial development and
stifling her industrial growth; stating in
1913: "Only people with lots of cannons
have the right to be pacifists."[14] He also
warned his countrymen of the
deleterious effects of political rivalries in
the face of German military might and
rapid industrialisation, and therefore was
uninvolved in the Dreyfus Affair which
dichotomised France.[13]
Widespread travels …

Le Bon in Algiers, 1880

Le Bon became interested in the

emerging field of anthropology in the
1870s and travelled throughout Europe,
Asia and North Africa. Influenced by
Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer and
Ernst Haeckel, Le Bon supported
biological determinism and a hierarchical
view of the races and sexes; after
extensive field research, he posited a
correlation between cranial capacity and
intelligence in Recherches anatomiques
et mathématiques sur les variations de
volume du cerveau et sur leurs relations
avec l'intelligence (1879), which earned
him the Godard Prize from the French
Academy of Sciences.[15] During his
research, he invented a portable
cephalometer to aid with measuring the
physical characteristics of remote
peoples, and in 1881 published a paper,
"The Pocket Cephalometer, or Compass
of Coordinates", detailing his invention
and its application.[16]
In 1884, he was commissioned by the
French government to travel around Asia
and report on the civilisations there.[11]
The results of his journeys were a
number of books, and a development in
Le Bon's thinking to also view culture to
be influenced chiefly by hereditary
factors such as the unique racial features
of the people.[17][18] The first book,
entitled La Civilisation des Arabes, was
released in 1884. In this, Le Bon praised
Arabs highly for their contributions to
civilisation, but criticised Islamism as an
agent of stagnation.[19][20] He also
described their culture as superior to that
of the Turks who governed them, and
translations of this work were
inspirational to early Arab
nationalists.[21][22] He followed this with a
trip to Nepal, becoming the first
Frenchman to visit the country, and
released Voyage au Népal in 1886.[23]

He next published Les Civilisations de

l'Inde (1887), in which he applauded
Indian architecture, art and religion but
argued that Indians were comparatively
inferior to Europeans in regard to
scientific advancements, and that this
had facilitated British domination.[24] In
1889, he released Les Premières
Civilisations de l'Orient, giving in it an
overview of the Mesopotamian, Indian,
Chinese and Egyptian civilisations. The
same year, he delivered a speech to the
International Colonial Congress
criticising colonial policies which
included attempts of cultural
assimilation, stating: "Leave to the
natives their customs, their institutions
and their laws."[25] Le Bon released the
last book on the topic of his travels,
entitled Les monuments de l'Inde, in
1893, again praising the architectural
achievements of the Indian people.[26]

Development of theories …
Gustave Le Bon on horseback

On his travels, Le Bon travelled largely on

horseback and noticed that techniques
used by horse breeders and trainers
varied dependent on the region. He
returned to Paris and in 1892, while riding
a high-spirited horse, he was bucked off
and narrowly escaped death. He was
unsure as to what caused him to be
thrown off the horse, and decided to
begin a study of what he had done wrong
as a rider.[27] The result of his study was
L'Équitation actuelle et ses principes.
Recherches expérimentales (1892), which
consisted of numerous photographs of
horses in action combined with analysis
by Le Bon. This work became a
respected cavalry manual, and Le Bon
extrapolated his studies on the behaviour
of horses to develop theories on early
childhood education.[28]

Le Bon's behavioural study of horses also

sparked a long-standing interest in
psychology, and in 1894 he released Lois
psychologiques de l'évolution des
peuples. This work was dedicated to his
friend Charles Richet though it drew
much from the theories of Théodule-
Armand Ribot, to whom Le Bon
dedicated Psychologie des Foules
(1895).[29] Psychologie des Foules was in
part a summation of Le Bon's 1881 work,
L'Homme et les sociétés, to which Émile
Durkheim referred in his doctoral
dissertation, De la division du travail
social.[30]

Both were best-sellers, with Psychologie

des Foules being translated into nineteen
languages within one year of its
appearance.[31] Le Bon followed these
with two more books on psychology,
Psychologie du Socialisme and
Psychologie de l'Éducation, in 1896 and
1902 respectively. These works rankled
the largely socialist academic
establishment of France.[32]

Gustave Le Bon, c. 1900

Le Bon constructed a home laboratory in

the early 1890s, and in 1896 reported
observing "black light", a new kind of
radiation that he believed was distinct
from, but possibly related to, X-rays and
cathode rays.[33] Not the same type of
radiation as what is now known as black
light, its existence was never confirmed
and, similar to N rays, it is now generally
understood to be non-existent, but the
discovery claim attracted much attention
among French scientists at the time,
many of whom supported it and Le Bon's
general ideas on matter and radiation,
and he was even nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903.[34]

In 1902, Le Bon began a series of weekly

luncheons to which he invited prominent
intellectuals, nobles and ladies of
fashion. The strength of his personal
networks is apparent from the guest list:
participants included cousins Henri and
Raymond Poincaré, Paul Valéry,
Alexander Izvolsky, Henri Bergson,
Marcellin Berthelot and Aristide
Briand.[35]

In L'Évolution de la Matière (1905), Le Bon

anticipated the mass–energy
equivalence, and in a 1922 letter to Albert
Einstein complained about his lack of
recognition. Einstein responded and
conceded that a mass–energy
equivalence had been proposed before
him, but only the theory of relativity had
cogently proved it.[36] Gaston Moch gave
Le Bon credit for anticipating Einstein's
theory of relativity.[37] In L'Évolution des
Forces (1907), Le Bon prophesied the
Atomic Age.[38][39] He wrote about "the
manifestation of a new force—namely
intra-atomic energy—which surpasses all
others by its colossal magnitude," and
stated that a scientist who discovered a
way to dissociate rapidly one gram of any
metal would "not witness the results of
his experiments ... the explosion
produced would be so formidable that
his laboratory and all neighbouring
houses, with their inhabitants, would be
instantaneously pulverised."[40][41]
Doctor Gustave Le Bon, 1914

Le Bon discontinued his research in

physics in 1908, and turned again to
psychology. He released La Psychologie
politique et la défense sociale, Les
Opinions et les croyances, La Révolution
Française et la Psychologie des
Révolutions, Aphorismes du temps
présent, and La Vie des vérités in back-to-
back years from 1910 to 1914,
expounding in which his views on
affective and rational thought, the
psychology of race, and the history of
civilisation.

Later life and death …

Le Bon in 1929, aged eighty-eight

Le Bon continued writing throughout

World War I, publishing Enseignements
Psychologiques de la Guerre Européenne
(1915), Premières conséquences de la
guerre: transformation mentale des
peuples (1916) and Hier et demain.
Pensées brèves (1918) during the war.

He then released Psychologie des Temps

Nouveaux (1920) before resigning from
his position as Professor of Psychology
and Allied Sciences at the University of
Paris and retiring to his home.

He released Le Déséquilibre du Monde,

Les Incertitudes de l'heure présente and
L'évolution actuelle du monde, illusions et
réalités in 1923, 1924 and 1927
respectively, giving in them his views of
the world during the volatile interwar
period.

He became a Grand-Croix of the Legion

of Honour in 1929. He published his last
work, entitled Bases scientifiques d'une
philosophie de l'histoire, in 1931 and on
13 December, died in Marnes-la-
Coquette, Île-de-France at the age of
ninety.[42]

In putting an end to the long,

diverse and fruitful activity of
Gustave Le Bon, death
deprived our culture of a truly
remarkable man. His was a
man of most exceptional
 intelligence; it sprang entirely
from within himself; he was his
own master, his own
initiator.... Science and
philosophy have suffered a
cruel loss.[43]

Le Bonian thought
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Convinced that human actions are

guided by eternal laws, Le Bon attempted
to synthesise Auguste Comte and
Herbert Spencer with Jules Michelet and
Alexis de Tocqueville.
Inspirations …

According to Steve Reicher, Le Bon was

not the first crowd psychologist: "The
first debate in crowd psychology was
actually between two criminologists,
Scipio Sighele and Gabriel Tarde,
concerning how to determine and assign
criminal responsibility within a crowd and
hence who to arrest."[44] While this
previous attribution may be valid, it is
worth pointing out that Le Bon specified
that the influence of crowds was not only
a negative phenomenon, but could also
have a positive impact. He considered
this as a shortcoming from those
authors who only considered the criminal
aspect of crowd psychology.[45]

Crowds …

Le Bon theorised that the new entity, the

"psychological crowd", which emerges
from incorporating the assembled
population not only forms a new body
but also creates a collective
"unconsciousness". As a group of people
gather together and coalesces to form a
crowd, there is a "magnetic influence
given out by the crowd" that transmutes
every individual's behaviour until it
becomes governed by the "group mind".
This model treats the crowd as a unit in
its composition which robs every
individual member of their opinions,
values and beliefs; as Le Bon states: "An
individual in a crowd is a grain of sand
amid other grains of sand, which the
wind stirs up at will".

Le Bon detailed three key processes that

create the psychological crowd: i)
Anonymity, ii) Contagion and iii)
Suggestibility. Anonymity provides to
rational individuals a feeling of
invincibility and the loss of personal
responsibility. An individual becomes
primitive, unreasoning, and emotional.
This lack of self-restraint allows
individuals to "yield to instincts" and to
accept the instinctual drives of their
"racial unconscious". For Le Bon, the
crowd inverts Darwin's law of evolution
and becomes atavistic, proving Ernst
Haeckel's embryological theory:
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny".
Contagion refers to the spread in the
crowd of particular behaviours and
individuals sacrifice their personal
interest for the collective interest.
Suggestibility is the mechanism through
which the contagion is achieved; as the
crowd coalesces into a singular mind,
suggestions made by strong voices in
the crowd create a space for the racial
unconscious to come to the forefront
and guide its behaviour. At this stage, the
psychological crowd becomes
homogeneous and malleable to
suggestions from its strongest members.
"The leaders we speak of," says Le Bon,
"are usually men of action rather than of
words. They are not gifted with keen
foresight... They are especially recruited
from the ranks of those morbidly nervous
excitable half-deranged persons who are
bordering on madness."

Influence
"The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have
the semblance of a Caesar. His insignia attracts
them, his authority overawes them, and his sword
instills them with fear."

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George Lachmann Mosse claimed that

fascist theories of leadership that
emerged during the 1920s owed much to
Le Bon's theories of crowd psychology.
Adolf Hitler is known to have read The
Crowd and in Mein Kampf drew on the
propaganda techniques proposed by Le
Bon.[46][47] Benito Mussolini also made a
careful study of Le Bon.[48] Le Bon also
influenced Vladimir Lenin and the
Bolsheviks.[49]

Just prior to World War I, Wilfred Trotter

introduced Wilfred Bion to Le Bon's
writings and Sigmund Freud's work Group
Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
Trotter's book Instincts of the Herd in
Peace and War (1919) forms the basis
for the research of both Wilfred Bion and
Ernest Jones who established what
would be called group dynamics. During
the first half of the twentieth century, Le
Bon's writings were used by media
researchers such as Hadley Cantril and
Herbert Blumer to describe the reactions
of subordinate groups to media.

Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund

Freud, was influenced by Le Bon and
Trotter. In his influential book
Propaganda, he declared that a major
feature of democracy was the
manipulation of the electorate by the
mass media and advertising. Theodore
Roosevelt as well as Charles G. Dawes
and many other American progressives
in the early 20th century were also deeply
affected by Le Bon's writings.[50]

Works
 Bibliography compiled from the 1984
reissue of Psychologie du
Socialisme.[51]

Medical

La mort apparente et inhumations

prématurées (1866); ("Apparent Death
and Premature Burials")
Traité pratique des maladies des
organes génitaux-urinaires (1869);
("Practical Treatise of Diseases of the
Genitourinary System")
La vie (Traité de physiologie humaine)
(1874); ("Life (Treatise of Human
Physiology)")

Anthropology, psychology and sociology

Histoire des origines et du
développement de l'homme et des
sociétés (1877); ("History of the
Origins and Development of Man and
Society")
Voyage aux Monts-Tatras (1881);
("Travel to Tatra Mountains")
L'Homme et les sociétés (1881); ("Man
and Society")
La Civilisation des Arabes (1884); The
World of Islamic Civilization (1884)
Voyage au Népal (1886); ("Travel to
Nepal")
Les Civilisations de l'Inde (1887); ("The
Civilisations of India")
Les Premières Civilisations de l'Orient
(1889); ("The First Civilisations of the
Orient")
Les Monuments de l'Inde (1893); ("The
Monuments of India")
Les Lois Psychologiques de l'Évolution
des Peuples (1894); ("The Psychology
of Peoples" , 1898) Audiobook
available .
Psychologie des Foules (1895); ("The
Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind",
1986) Full text available ; Audiobook
available .
Psychologie du Socialisme (1896); The
Psychology of Socialism (1899)
Psychologie de l'éducation (1902);
("The Psychology of Education")
La Psychologie politique et la défense
sociale (1910); ("The Psychology of
Politics and Social Defense")
Les Opinions et les croyances (1911);
("Opinions and Beliefs")
La Révolution Française et la
Psychologie des Révolutions (1912);
The Psychology of Revolution (1913)
Audiobook available ; The French
Revolution and the Psychology of
Revolution (1980).
Aphorismes du temps présent (1913);
("Aphorisms of Present Times")
La Vie des vérités (1914); ("Truths of
Life")
Enseignements Psychologiques de la
Guerre Européenne (1915); The
Psychology of the Great War (1916)
Premières conséquences de la guerre:
transformation mentale des peuples
(1916); ("First Consequences of War:
Mental Transformation of Peoples")
Hier et demain. Pensées brèves (1918);
("Yesterday and Tomorrow. Brief
thoughts")
Psychologie des Temps Nouveaux
(1920); The World in Revolt (1921)
Le Déséquilibre du Monde (1923); The
World Unbalanced (1924)
 Les Incertitudes de l'heure présente
(1924); ("The Uncertainties of the
Present Hour")
L'évolution actuelle du monde, illusions
et réalités (1927); ("The Current
Evolution of the World, Illusions and
Realities")
Bases scientifiques d'une philosophie
de l'histoire (1931); ("Scientific Basis
for a Philosophy of History")

Natural science

La Méthode graphique et les appareils

enregistreurs (1878); ("The Graphical
Method and recording devices")
Recherches anatomiques et
mathématiques sur les variations de
volume du cerveau et sur leurs relations
avec l'intelligence (1879); ("Anatomical
and mathematical research on the
changes in brain volume and its
relationships with intelligence")
La Fumée du tabac (1880); ("Tobacco
smoke")
Les Levers photographiques (1888);
("Photographic surveying")
L'Équitation actuelle et ses principes.
Recherches expérimentales (1892);
("Equitation: The Psychology of the
Horse")
 L'Évolution de la Matière (1905); The
Evolution of Matter (1907)
La naissance et l'évanouissement de la
matière (1907); ("The birth and
disappearance of matter")
L'Évolution des Forces (1907); The
Evolution of Forces (1908)

Notes
1. Saler, Michael (2015). The Fin-de-
Siècle World. Routledge. p. 450.
ISBN 9780415674133.
2. Piette, Bernard (2014). The Universe
of Maxwell. Lulu Press Inc. p. 67.
ISBN 9781291960082.
3. Beck, Matthias (2013). Risk : A Study
of Its Origins, History and Politics.
World Scientific Publishing
Company. p. 111. ISBN 978-
9814383202.
4. Rancière, Jacques (2016). The
Method of Equality: Interviews with
Laurent Jeanpierre and Dork
Zabunyan. Polity. p. 95. ISBN 978-
0745680620.
5. Drury, John; Scott, Clifford (2015).
Crowds in the 21st Century:
Perspectives from Contemporary
Social Science. Routledge. p. 169.
ISBN 978-1138922914.
 6. Adas, Michael (1990). Machines as
the Measure of Men: Science,
Technology, and Ideologies of
Western Dominance . Cornell
University Press. p. 195 .
ISBN 9780801497605.
7. Widener 1979, p. 25
8. van Ginneken 1992, p. 132
9. Widener 1979, p. 26
10. Widener 1979, p. 21
11. Staff writer(s) (10 May 1941).
"Gustave Le Bon" . Nature: 573.
doi:10.1038/147573a0 .
12. Widener 1979, p. 27
13. Widener 1979, p. 28
14. Le Bon, Gustave (1913). Aphorismes
du temps présent. Ernest
Flammarion.
15. Staum 2011, p. 65
16. Bud, Robert; Warner, Deborah Jean
(1998). Instruments of Science: An
Historical Encyclopedia. Taylor &
Francis. p. 157.
ISBN 9780815315612.
17. Söyler, Mehtap (2015). The Turkish
Deep State: State Consolidation,
Civil-Military Relations and
Democracy. Routledge. p. 70.
ISBN 9781317668800.
18. Mitter, Partha (1992). Much
Maligned Monsters: A History of
 European Reactions to Indian Art.
University of Chicago Press. p. 268.
ISBN 9780226532394.
19. Quinn, Frederick (2007). The Sum of
All Heresies: The Image of Islam in
Western Thought. Oxford University
Press. p. 104. ISBN 9780199886760.
20. Hourani, Albert (1962). Arabic
Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-
1939 . Cambridge University Press.
p. 173 . ISBN 9780521274234.
21. Kedourie, Sylvia (1962). Arab
Nationalism: An Anthology .
Cambridge University Press. p. 182 .
ISBN 9780520026452.
22. Kramer, Martin Seth (2011). Arab
Awakening and Islamic Revival: The
Politics of Ideas in the Middle East.
Transaction Publishers. p. 63.
ISBN 9781412817394.
23. Carey, John (2012). The Intellectuals
and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice
Among the Literary Intelligentsia
1880-1939. Faber & Faber. p. 31.
ISBN 9780571265107.
24. Seymore, Sarah (2013). Close
Encounters of the Invasive Kind:
Imperial History in Selected British
Novels of Alien-Encounter Science
Fiction After World War II. LIT Verlag
 Münster. p. 108.
ISBN 9783643903914.
25. Betts 1960, p. 68
26. Sills, David L. (1968). International
Encyclopedia of the Social
Sciences . Macmillan. p. 82 .
ISBN 9780028661520.
27. Widener 1979, p. 14
28. Widener 1979, p. 15
29. van Ginneken 1992, p. 172
30. Wagner, Gerhard (November 1993).
"Who's Afraid of "Dr. Le Bon"?".
Sociological Theory. American
Sociological Association: 321–323.
31. Ewen, Stuart; Ewen, Elizabeth (2011).
Typecasting: On the Arts and
 Sciences of Human Inequality. Seven
Stories Press. p. 346.
ISBN 9781583229491.
32. Nye, Robert A. (1969). An Intellectual
Portrait of Gustave Le Bon: A Study
of the Development and Impact of
the Social Scientist in His Historical
Setting. Xerox University Microfilms.
p. 5.
33. Nye, Mary (1974). Gustave Le Bon's
Black Light: A Study in Physics and
Philosophy in France at the Turn of
the Century. pp. 163–195.
34. Kragh, Helge (1999). Quantum
Generations: A History of Physics in
 the Twentieth Century . Princeton
University Press. pp. 11–12 .
35. Betts 1960, p. 65
36. Jammer, Max (2009). Concepts of
Mass in Contemporary Physics and
Philosophy. Princeton University
Press. p. 72. ISBN 9781400823789.
37. Swiderski, Richard M. (2012). X-Ray
Vision: A Way of Looking. Universal-
Publishers. p. 67.
ISBN 9781612331089.
38. Widener 1979, p. 13
39. Crosland, Maurice (2002). Science
Under Control: The French Academy
of Sciences 1795-1914. Cambridge
University Press. p. 347.
40. Widener 1979, p. 19
41. Kayman, Martin A. (1986).
Modernism Of Ezra Pound: The
Science Of Poetry. Springer. p. 83.
ISBN 9781349182473.
42. McClelland, J. S. (2005). A History of
Western Political Thought.
Routledge. p. 660.
ISBN 9781134812103.
43. Staff writer(s) (14 December 1931).
"Gustave Le Bon obituary". Journal
des débats.
44. Reicher, Steve (2003). Blackwell
Handbook of Social Psychology:
Group Processes. Wiley-Blackwell.
p. 185.
45. The Crowd: A study of the Popular
Mind. Gustave Le Bon. 1841 [1931]
Dover Publications, p. 9.
46. Eley, Geoff (2008). Citizenship and
National Identity in Twentieth-
century Germany. Stanford
University Press. p. 284.
47. Gonen, Jay Y. (2013). The Roots of
Nazi Psychology: Hitler's Utopian
Barbarism. University Press of
Kentucky. p. 92.
48. van Ginneken 1992, p. 186
49. Ohlberg 2014, p. 162
50. Ewen, Stuart (1996). PR!: A Social
History of Spin. Basic Books. p. 63.
51. Le Bon, Gustave (1984). Psychologie
du Socialisme . pp. 415–416.

References
Barrows, Susanna (1981), Distorting Mirrors
– Visions of the Crowd in Late 19th Century
France, Yale University Press
Nye, Robert (1975), The Origins of Crowd
Psychology – Gustave Le Bon and the Crisis
of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic,
Sage
van Ginneken, Jaap (1992), Crowds,
Psychology, and Politics, 1871-1899,
Cambridge University Press
Betts, Raymond F. (1960), Assimilation and
Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890-
1914, U of Nebraska Press
 Staum, Martin S. (2011), Nature and Nurture
in French Social Sciences, 1859–1914 and
Beyond, McGill-Queen's Press
de Benoist, Alain (1977), Vu de droite.
Anthologie critique des idées
contemporaines, Copernic
Terrier, Jean (2011), Visions of the Social:
Society as a Political Project in France,
1750-1950, BRILL
Ohlberg, Marieke (2014), The Era of Crowds:
Gustave Le Bon, Crowd Psychology and
Conceptualizations of Mass-Elite Relations
in China, Springer
Widener, Alice (1979), Gustave Le Bon, the
Man and His Works, Liberty Press

External links
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Gutenberg
Works by Gustave Le Bon at LibriVox
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Works by or about Gustave Le Bon at
Internet Archive
Gustave Le Bon's works: Page on
Gustave Le Bon with his works
available in French and in English
 Les Classiques des Sciences Sociales:
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