Conclusions

The French Revolution is "an inexhaustible mine" for examining psychology, particularly for examining the transitory mentality of crowds as an aggregate of individuals. It is a protracted period of time in which individuals and groups acted upon various motivational factors.

Arranged by the middle classes of society for their own profit, the revolution represented a struggle between the instinctive and the rational, and a revolt against the constraints that make a civilized society out of barbarism. The two parts of a revolution, the tearing-down of the old regime and the institution of the new, reveal the motivations and desires of the people.

The contradiction between the ideas of an individual man and the deeds of the groups who claimed to be inspired by them are plainly evident in the documents and accounts of that time. Similarly evident are the normally invisible forces that influence human behavior, which are seldom recognized or understood.

The revolution provides examples of the character of man: what he aspires to achieve, and the means he will undertake to achieve it. If this does not manifest itself in any consistent and rational way, it is because human nature itself is inconsistent and irrational.

It can be seen that the philosophers who are seen as the founders of the revolution counted on the rational nature of mankind - and the degree to which the revolution itself deviated from their design again reveals that the nature of mankind is not rational. It can plainly be seen that a people liberated from social constraints become abandoned to instinctive impulses and ancestral savagery.

But this is not uncommon: any revolution must entail a temporary return to barbarism. The conflict between ideologies led to a furious conflict for over a decade, which "soaked France in blood and covered the land with ruins." The violence of the period left no room for pretense. In times of peace we may, in quiet repose, consider humanity as we wish it to be. But in times of strive, when people are desperate, they make no pretenses about what they desire, and their actions are genuinely representative.

In Le Bon's time, it was observed that the "young men" of society prefer action to thought and are disdainful of philosophy. They are eager to do things, without putting much thought into what they do. This is a change to an opposite pole, which is no more productive or desirable. To think without acting produces nothing; to act without thinking destroys.

There is no laboratory in which society may be studied, so the practice of shaping a society must be done as a series of field experiments. But any experiment has the potential to do harm, so to tinker with a society in this manner caries with it great risk: the experimenter may destroy the very thing he is hoping to improve.

And this is likely a description of politics in any time: a well-intentioned experiment that does harm in an attempt to do good. There are in that sense valuable lessons to be taken from history, so that the present does not repeat the past - but such may be inevitable.