Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd it must be communicated by contagion.

Amiel contrasts two modes of receiving ideas: rational “assimilation” versus affective “contagion.” He suggests that what is most exacting—“pure truth”—rarely becomes a shared possession through careful, collective understanding. Instead, it spreads socially and psychologically: through example, charisma, imitation, and the authority of those who embody it. The remark is also a warning about mass reception: crowds tend to simplify, sentimentalize, or instrumentalize ideas rather than grasp them in their full rigor. Truth, in this view, reaches the many indirectly—carried by persons, movements, or moods—rather than by argument alone.