Among the factors which determine the birth and development of the basic elements of a civilization, one of the most important - perhaps the most important because it represents the synthesis of all the others - is race, that is to say, the ensemble of the physical, moral and intellectual qualities which characterize a people. At the moment when the races of mankind first appeared in history, they has in general already acquired fairly stable qualities which could only be transformed very slowly afterwards. The oldest Egyptian bas-reliefs, upon which are found reproduced the diverse peoples...

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by French social theorist Gustave Le Bon is a short treatise on the principles of large gatherings of people. The ideas in Le Bon's book were popular at the time of the late 19th century but are no longer in vogue today. The reasons for this are obvious, as LeBon unpretentiously puts to fault all the rhetoric about "democracy," "equality," "fraternity," and "equality" as being mere catchphrases that self-serving demagogues use to control the spirit of the masses. He cites the French Revolution and the demands of Socialism and Communism during his time....

Vous avez entre les mains deux livres essentiels pour la comprehension de notre epoque. Ils constituent les deux parties d'un meme et unique livre. Les lois psychologiques est la sulfureuse et scandaleuse introduction de la psychologie des foules. Nombreux sont ceux qui se sont revendiques de ses idees. La liste est longue. Elle va d'Adolf Hitler, a Benito Mussolini, de Mao Tse-toung a Staline. Pour les plus frequentables d'entre eux, nous avons Roosevelt, Clemenceau, Churchill ou De Gaulle. Dans la periode actuelle, on peut sentir l'influence de l'auteur sur la campagne electorale de Nicolas...