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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: the crowd charged with the massacre.
The crowd of murderers numbered some three hundred persons, and
was a perfectly typical heterogeneous crowd. With the exception
of a very small number of professional scoundrels, it was
composed in the main of shopkeepers and artisans of every trade:
bootmakers, locksmiths, hairdressers, masons, clerks, messengers,
&c. Under the influence of the suggestion received they are
perfectly convinced, as was the cook referred to above, that they
are accomplishing a patriotic duty. They fill a double office,
being at once judge and executioner, but they do not for a moment
regard themselves as criminals.
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