majority of their acts are considered, crowds display a
singularly inferior mentality; yet there are other acts in which
they appear to be guided by those mysterious forces which the
ancients denominated destiny, nature, or providence, which we
call the voices of the dead, and whose power it is impossible to
overlook, although we ignore their essence. It would seem, at
times, as if there were latent forces in the inner being of
nations which serve to guide them. What, for instance, can be
more complicated, more logical, more marvellous than a language?
Yet whence can this admirably organised production have arisen,
except it be the outcome of the unconscious genius of crowds?
The most learned academics, the most esteemed grammarians can do
no more than note down the laws that govern languages; they would
be utterly incapable of creating them. Even with respect to the
ideas of great men are we certain that they are exclusively the
offspring of their brains? No doubt such ideas are always
created by solitary minds, but is it not the genius of crowds
that has furnished the thousands of grains of dust forming the
soil in which they have sprung up?

Crowds, doubtless, are always unconscious, but this very
unconsciousness is perhaps one of the secrets of their strength.
In the natural world beings exclusively governed by instinct
accomplish acts whose marvellous complexity astounds us. Reason
is an attribute of humanity of too recent date and still too
imperfect to reveal to us the laws of the unconscious, and still
more to take its place. The part played by the unconscious in
all our acts is immense, and that played by reason very small.
The unconscious acts like a force still unknown.