Content note: A French book of 1912 in a 1913 English translation that describes peoples and races in the terms of its day, including claims about racial character, and discusses revolutionary violence. Shown as printed. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Gustave Le Bon applied the ideas of his earlier book The Crowd (also in the Library) to revolutions, above all the French Revolution of 1789. It is a work of its time and school, and its claims about racial character, crowds and leaders are the author's, not established findings.
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- Introduction: The Revision of History 2,319 words
- Part I: The Psychological Elements of Revolutionary Movements / Book I: General Characteristics of Revolutions
- Book I, Chapter 1: Scientific and Political Revolutions 2,541 words
- Book I, Chapter 2: Religious Revolutions 3,815 words
- Book I, Chapter 3: The Action of Governments in Revolutions 2,715 words
- Book I, Chapter 4: The Part Played by the People in Revolutions 3,746 words
- Part I: The Psychological Elements of Revolutionary Movements / Book II: The Forms of Mentality Prevalent During Revolution
- Book II, Chapter 1: Individual Variations of Character in Time of Revolution 2,506 words
- Book II, Chapter 2: The Mystic Mentality and the Jacobin Mentality 2,700 words
- Book II, Chapter 3: The Revolutionary and Criminal Mentalities 997 words
- Book II, Chapter 4: The Psychology of Revolutionary Crowds 2,705 words
- Book II, Chapter 5: The Psychology of the Revolutionary Assemblies 1,970 words
- Part II: The French Revolution / Book I: The Origins of the French Revolution
- Book I, Chapter 1: The Opinions of Historians Concerning the French Revolution 3,547 words
- Book I, Chapter 2: The Psychological Foundations of the Ancien Regime 2,582 words
- Book I, Chapter 3: Mental Anarchy at the Time of the Revolution and the Influence Attributed to the Philosophers 2,720 words
- Book I, Chapter 4: Psychological Illusions Respecting the French Revolution 2,021 words
- Part II: The French Revolution / Book II: The Rational, Affective, Mystic, and Collective Influences Active During the Revolution
- Book II, Chapter 1: The Psychology of the Constituent Assembly 4,083 words
- Book II, Chapter 2: The Psychology of the Legislative Assembly 1,536 words
- Book II, Chapter 3: The Psychology of the Convention 2,894 words
- Book II, Chapter 4: The Government of the Convention 2,502 words
- Book II, Chapter 5: Instances of Revolutionary Violence 2,356 words
- Book II, Chapter 6: The Armies of the Revolution 2,175 words
- Book II, Chapter 7: Psychology of the Leaders of the Revolution 5,107 words
- Part II: The French Revolution / Book III: The Conflict Between Ancestral Influences and Revolutionary Principles
- Book III, Chapter 1: The Last Convulsions of Anarchy — the Directory 3,182 words
- Book III, Chapter 2: The Restoration of Order. The Consular Republic 2,342 words
- Book III, Chapter 3: Political Consequences of the Conflict Between Traditions and Revolutionary Principles During the Last Century 2,957 words
- Part III: The Recent Evolution of the Revolutionary Principles
- Chapter 1: The Progress of Democratic Beliefs Since the Revolution 2,589 words
- Chapter 2: The Results of Democratic Evolution 3,989 words
- Chapter 3: The New Forms of Democratic Belief 2,456 words
- Conclusions 2,724 words
Download as plain text 77,776 words, with the provenance header above the text
Provenance and rights
- Edition
- The Psychology of Revolution, translated by Bernard Miall. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1913); a translation of La Revolution francaise et la psychologie des revolutions (1912). Text from Project Gutenberg ebook #448, which does not name the translator or the printing. The translator and the Putnam printing were identified from the Internet Archive scan psychologyofrevo00leboiala, whose title page names Miall and Putnam 1913; eleven of twelve sampled passages from the Gutenberg text matched that scan letter for letter and one differed (the cause was not traced).
- Text source
- Project Gutenberg, ebook #448 (checked against Internet Archive item psychologyofrevo00leboiala)
- Text basis
- Machine-read text: Gutenberg's 1996 release was scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage OCR. It is not shown to have been proofread, so recognition errors may remain.
- Rights
- The English translation was published in New York in 1913, so in the public domain in the United States; Project Gutenberg marks it "Public domain in the USA". Le Bon died in 1931. The translator's death date was not checked here, so the translation's status outside the United States was not assessed. Checked October 2, 2026.
- Changes made
- Gutenberg's licence header and footer, its scanning credit, the title page and the contents list are not included. Line wraps rejoined; part, book and chapter headings set in title case; the double spaces after full stops, Gutenberg's typewriter quote marks (`` and '') and the numbered footnotes, which follow the paragraph that cites them, are kept. Wording, spelling and punctuation are Gutenberg's.
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