social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilisation are
rooted. The second is the creation of entirely new conditions of
existence and thought as the result of modern scientific and
industrial discoveries.

The ideas of the past, although half destroyed, being still very
powerful, and the ideas which are to replace them being still in
process of formation, the modern age represents a period of
transition and anarchy.

It is not easy to say as yet what will one day be evolved from
this necessarily somewhat chaotic period. What will be the
fundamental ideas on which the societies that are to succeed our
own will be built up? We do not at present know. Still it is
already clear that on whatever lines the societies of the future
are organised, they will have to count with a new power, with the
last surviving sovereign force of modern times, the power of
crowds. On the ruins of so many ideas formerly considered beyond
discussion, and to-day decayed or decaying, of so many sources of
authority that successive revolutions have destroyed, this power,
which alone has arisen in their stead, seems soon destined to
absorb the others. While all our ancient beliefs are tottering
and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way
one by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing
menaces, and of which the prestige is continually on the
increase. The age we are about to enter will in truth be the ERA
OF CROWDS.

Scarcely a century ago the traditional policy of European states
and the rivalries of sovereigns were the principal factors that