The great changes in personality occur mostly in the sphere of feelings. In that of intelligence, the changes are very slight. An imbecile will always be one.

Affective Memory

Memory of feelings exists as does that of intelligence, but to a much lesser degree. Time weakens it very quickly.

The customary inferiority of affective memory to intellectual memory is generally considerable. The persistence of the latter is such that, for centuries, voluminous works such as the Vedas and songs of Homer were transmitted from generation to generation only with the aid of memory. In times when books were rare and costly, in the thirteenth century for example, students knew how to retain the courses that were recited to them. . . .

If memory of feelings were as tenacious as intellectual memory, the persistent remembrance of our sufferings would render life unendurable.

To the theory of the short duration of affective memory, one could oppose the persistence of class hatreds and race hatreds over many generations. This apparent duration is merely an incessant renewal produced by continually repeated causes. An unnourished hatred does not endure. That of the Germans for the French would have disappeared long ago if German newspapers had not constantly stirred it up. . . .

The Russian Alliance and the Anglo-French Entente show how quickly peoples who were former enemies forget hatreds not nourished. When Britain became our friend, however, we were not far from the terrible humiliation of Fashoda. This concept of the essential brevity of affective memory explains many phenomena in the life of peoples. One must not count on their gratitude, but also one must not dread too much their hatred.

The Elements of Character

Character is composed of an aggregate of affective elements on which are superimposed, while being only very slightly mingled, some intellectual elements. It is always the former that give an individual his true personality.

The affective elements being numerous, their association forms various kinds of character: active, reflective, apathetic, sensitive, etc. Each of them behaves differently under the action of similar stimulants.

The aggregates forming character can be strongly or feebly cemented together. Solid aggregates correspond to strong individualities able to maintain themselves despite variations in surroundings and circumstances.

Poorly cemented aggregates correspond to weak mentalities, uncertain and changeable. They would modify themselves from moment to moment under the slightest influences if certain necessities of daily life did not orient them, as the banks of a river confine its course....

Moral causes act on character or at least on its orientation. Following a conversion profane love becomes divine love. A fanatical and persecuting clergyman sometimes ends up as a free thinker equally fanatical and not less persecuting.

Opinions and beliefs being molded on our character, they naturally follow its variations. There does not exist . . . any parallelism between the development of character and that of intelligence. The former, on the contrary, tends to become weakened as the latter develops. Great civilizations were destroyed by inferior intellectual elements endowed with strong will.

Courageous, decisive minds ignore the obstacles signaled by intelligence. Reason does not found great religions and powerful empires. In societies brilliant with intelligence but of weak character, power ends by falling into the hands of narrow-minded bold men. I agree with Faguet that a pacifist Europe will be conquered “by the last people remaining military and relatively feudal.” Such a people will reduce the others to slavery and will put to forced labor for their profit all the pacifists loaded with intelligence but void of energy born of will.

The Collective Characteristics of Peoples

Each people possesses collective characteristics common to most of its members, which is what makes veritable psychological species of different nations.These characteristics create . . . similar opinions among them on a certain number of essential subjects.

The fundamental characteristics of a people are not necessarily numerous. Firmly fixed, they mark its destiny. Let us consider the English, for example. The elements directing their history can be summed up easily in a few lines: the cult of persistent effort preventing retreat in the face of obstacles and consideration of a calamity as irremediable; a religious respect for traditions and for all that has been validated by the passage of time; a need for action and disdain of idle speculative thought; an intense sense of duty; self-control regarded as an essential quality and carefully maintained by special education.

Certain defects of character insupportable in individuals become virtues when collective—pride, for example. This feeling is very different from vanity. . . .

Collective pride is one of the great stimulants of a people’s activity. Due to it, the Roman legionary found full compensation in being a part of a people dominating the universe. The unflinching courage of the Japanese during the last war [Russo-Japanese] came from similar pride. This sentiment, besides, is a source of progress. As soon as a nation is convinced of its superiority, it carries to the maximum the effort necessary to maintain it.

It is character and not intelligence that distinguishes peoples and creates irreducible antipathies or sympathies among them. Intelligence is the same for all. Character, on the contrary, offers strong differences. Peoples being differently impressed by the same things will conduct themselves differently under apparently identical circumstances. Moreover, whether peoples or individuals are concerned, men always are divided more by the contrasts of their character than by those of their interests or intelligence.

The Evolution of Elements of Character

The fundamental feelings forming the web of character evolve slowly over the ages, as is proved by the persistence of national characteristics. The psychological agglomerations forming them are as stable as the anatomical agglomerations.

But around these fundamental characteristics are found in all living beings secondary characteristics which can vary according to the times, environment, etc. It is above all. . . the subjects on which feelings are exercised that change. Love of family, of tribe, of city and country are adaptations of an identical feeling for different groups and not the creation of new feelings.
Internationalism and pacifism represent the latest extensions of the same feeling.

A little less than a century ago, German patriotism was unknown. Germany was divided into rival provinces. If today pan-Germanism is a virtue, that virtue is merely the extension of ancient feelings to new categories of individuals.

Affective states are so stable that their simple adaptation to new subjects requires immense effort. To acquire, for example, a little, a very little of that quality of altruism known as tolerance, it was necessary, says Lavisse correctly, “that martyrs died by the thousands under torture, and that blood flowed in rivers on battlefields.” It is very dangerous for a people to wish to create by means of reason feelings which are contrary to those fixed by nature in their soul. This kind of error weighs heavily on us since the [French] Revolution. It engendered the development of socialism which pretends to be able to change the natural course of things and remake the soul of a nation. . . .

And if, at present, the future seems very dark, it is because the feelings of the masses are tending to undergo new orientation. Under the growth of socialist illusions, everyone—from the workman to the professor—has become dissatisfied with his lot and is persuaded that he merits a different fate. Each workman believes himself to be exploited by the ruling classes and dreams of seizing their wealth by force. In the realm of the affective, illusions have a strength that renders them very dangerous because reason does not affect them.

The Disaggregation of Character and the Oscillations of Personality

We have said that the stability of aggregates forming character is as great as that of anatomical aggregates. The former, like the latter, can undergo morbid changes and even complete disaggregation. These phenomena, which do not arise exclusively in the realm of pathology, have considerable influence on the formation of opinions and beliefs. . . .

Under various disturbances, represented by motives, the combinations forming character can be modified. Then our sensibilities change; the orientation of life becomes different. The personality is renewed.

Such variations are observed above all when—the balance established between affective elements and surroundings having undergone sudden change—the social environment is strongly altered. . . .

Any being, whether inert or living matter, is the result of a certain balance between environment and itself. The latter cannot change without a simultaneous change in the former. A rigid steel bar can, under the influence of a suitable environment, become a light vapor.

The degree of the tendency of disassociation of psychic elements forming character depends on the stability of the latter as well as on the important environmental changes to which they are subjected. Also, they will vary following previously undergone impressions.

Observations made about anatomical aggregates are also valid for psychological aggregates. The lessening of the sensibility of the former under the influence of certain exterior influences is called, as we know, immunization. Future study of the pathology of [psy-chological] characteristics also will comprise that of their immunization.

The true statesman possesses the art, still a mystery, of knowing how to modify some elements of national character for the sake of balance in order to make them predominate according to the necessities of the times.

The Oscillations of Personality

The foregoing considerations tend to show that our personality can become quite variable. It depends, in effect, on two inseparable factors: the being itself and its environment. .. .

Our self is a total. It is the sum of innumerable self cells. Each cell competes with the unity of the whole, in the same manner as a soldier does in an army. The homogeneity of thousands of individuals of which it is composed is the result only of their community of action that numerous causes can destroy.

It is useless to object that people’s personality seems in general quite stable. If it seems hardly to vary, it is because the social environment remains just about constant. But if it is suddenly modified, as in the time of revolution, a person’s personality can change entirely.

It is thus that one saw, during the [Reign of] Terror, good kindly bourgeois become bloodthirsty fanatics. The torment gone and the former environment restored, they recovered their peaceful personality. . . .

What are the elements composing the self of which the synthesis forms our personality? Psychology remains silent on the subject. Without pretending to be too precise, we shall say that all the elements of self are the result of a residue of ancestral personalities, that is to say, they were created by their previous existences.

The self, I insist, is not a unity but a total of millions of cellular lives composing the organism. These can en¬ gender innumerable combinations.

Violent emotional excitements, certain observable pathological states among [spiritualist] mediums, ecstatics, hypnotized individuals, etc., can evoke some of these combinations and obtain, at least momentarily, a different personality in the same person, either inferior or superior to the usual personality. Each of us possesses possibilities of action going beyond our normal capacity that certain circumstances can awaken.

Ancestral residues form the most profound and stable layer of character in peoples and individuals. It is in their ancestral self that an Englishmen, a Frenchman, a Chinese differ so profoundly. But on these far away atavisms are overlaid elements engendered by social milieu (caste, class, profession, etc.), by education and by many other influences. These lend a quite stable orientation to our personality. It is on this somewhat artificial self that we lead our everyday lives.

Among all the elements forming our personality, the most active, after that of race, is that which is determined by the social group to which we belong.

The tyranny of social groups ... is not useless. If men didn’t have the opinions and conduct of their own circle as a guide, where would they find the mental di¬ rection most of them need? Thanks to the group in which they are embedded, they possess a rather con¬ stant way of acting and reacting. Thanks also to it, people of rather spineless nature are oriented and sustained in life.

Thus canalized, the members of an ordinary social group possess along with a temporary or lasting but quite definite personality a power for action which no individual member dreamed of. The great massacres of the Revolution were not the work of individuals.

Their authors acted in groups: Girondists, Dantonists, Hebertists, Robespierrists, Thermidorians, etc. It was these groups rather than individuals who fought one another. They had then to bring to their struggle the furious ferocity and narrow-minded fanaticism characteristic of demonstrations by violent collectivities.

Difficulty of Predicting Conduct

The self being variable and dependent on circumstances, no man ought to pretend to know another. He can only assert that when circumstances do not vary, the conduct of a given individual will hardly change.

The head of a bureau, having directed it honestly for twenty years will doubtless continue to do so with the same honesty, but one must not count too much on this. New circumstances having erupted—a passion overcoming his good sense, a danger menacing his home—the insignificant bureaucrat can become a scoundrel or hero.

The great changes in personality occur mostly in the sphere of feelings. In that of intelligence, the changes are very slight. An imbecile will always be one.

The possible variations of personality which prevent our knowing others also prevent us from knowing ourselves. The ancient philosophers’ adage “Know thyself” is unrealizable. . . . The exterior self usually represents a personage of assumed untruth. This is so, not only because we imagine ourselves to be endowed with many good qualities and do not recognize our faults, but also because though the self contains a small portion of conscious elements, it is for the most part formed of unconscious elements inaccessible to observation.

The only means of discovering one’s real self ... is in one’s actions. One knows oneself a little after having observed one’s own conduct in given circumstances.

To pretend to know in advance how we will behave in a given situation is deceptive. When Marshal Ney swore to Louis XVIII to bring him Napoleon in an iron cage, he was of good faith but didn’t know himself. One look from the master was enough to melt his resolve. The unhappy marshal paid with his own life for his ignorance of his own real personality. Had Louis XVIII been more familiar with the laws of psychology, he probably would have pardoned him. . . .

The theories set forth in this book pertaining to character sometimes seem contradictory. On the one hand, we have insisted on the fixity of sentiments forming character, and on the other we have shown the possible variations of personality. These contradictions disappear when bearing in mind the following points:

1. Characteristics are formed by an aggregate of almost unchanging fundamental affective elements to which are added easily changed accessory elements. These last correspond to the modifications that the art of the stock-breeder makes a species undergo without altering the essential characteristics [of the species].

2. Like anatomical species, psychological species depend narrowly on their milieu. They must adapt themselves to all changes in that milieu and indeed they do adapt themselves providing the changes are neither too considerable nor sudden.

3. The same sentiments appear to change when directed toward different subjects, yet their real nature has not undergone any modification whatsoever. Profane love which has become divine love in certain conversions is a sentiment which has changed its name but not its nature.

All these findings are of very practical interest since they are the very basis of several important modern problems, notably that of education.

Believing that this last modifies intelligence, or at least the sum of our individual knowledge, it was concluded that it could also modify feelings. This was to forget entirely that affective and intellectual states have no parallel evolution.

The deeper one goes into the subject, the more one is obliged to acknowledge that education and political institutions play a rather weak role in the destiny of individuals and peoples.

This doctrine, contrary, by the way, to our democratic beliefs, seems sometimes to contradict the facts observed among certain modern peoples and that is what will always prevent its easy acceptance. In the introduction which he wrote to the Japanese translation of my works, one of the most eminent statesmen of the Far East, Baron Motono, [Japanese] Ambassador to St. Petersburg [Russia], pointed out in objection the many changes produced in the Japanese mentality by the influence of European ideas. Nevertheless, I do not believe that these prove a genuine modification of this mentality. The European ideas simply entered into the ancestral armature of the Japanese soul without modifying its essential aspects. The substitution of insurrection for religious rule [as in the French Revolution] could completely alter the destiny of a people without transforming its national character.

Gustave Le Bon, the Man and His Works ...