The Royalist Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly destroyed an ancient monarchy; the humanitarian Legislative a.s.sembly allowed the ma.s.sacres of September. The same pacific body led France into the most formidable campaigns.
There were similar contradictions during the Convention. The immense majority of its members abhorred violence. Sentimental philosophers, they exalted equality, fraternity, and liberty, yet ended by exerting the most terrible despotism.
The same contradictions were visible during the Directory. Extremely moderate in their intentions at the outset, the a.s.semblies were continually effecting bloodthirsty coups d"etat. They wished to re-establish religious peace, and finally sent thousands of priests into imprisonment. They wished to repair the ruins which covered France, and only succeeded in adding to them.
Thus there was always a complete contradiction between the individual wills of the men of the revolutionary period and the deeds of the a.s.semblies of which they were units.
The truth is that they obeyed invisible forces of which they were not the masters. Believing that they acted in the name of pure reason, they were really subject to mystic, affective, and collective influences, incomprehensible to them, and which we are only to-day beginning to understand.
Intelligence has progressed in the course of the ages, and has opened a marvellous outlook to man, although his character, the real foundation of his mind, and the sure motive of his actions, has scarcely changed. Overthrown one moment, it reappears the next. Human nature must be accepted as it is.
The founders of the Revolution did not resign themselves to the facts of human nature. For the first time in the history of humanity they attempted to transform men and society in the name of reason.
Never was any undertaking commenced with such chances of success. The theorists, who claimed to effect it, had a power in their hands greater than that of any despot.
Yet, despite this power, despite the success of the armies, despite Draconian laws and repeated coups d"etat, the Revolution merely heaped ruin upon ruin, and ended in a dictatorship.
Such an attempt was not useless, since experience is necessary to the education of the peoples. Without the Revolution it would have been difficult to prove that pure reason does not enable us to change human nature, and, consequently, that no society can be rebuilt by the will of legislators, however absolute their power.
Commenced by the middle cla.s.ses for their own profit, the Revolution speedily became a popular movement, and at the same time a struggle of the instinctive against the rational, a revolt against all the constraints which make civilisation out of barbarism. It was by relying on the principle of popular sovereignty that the reformers attempted to impose their doctrines. Guided by leaders, the people intervened incessantly in the deliberations of the a.s.semblies, and committed the most sanguinary acts of violence.
The history of the mult.i.tudes during the Revolution is eminently instructive. It shows the error of the politicians who attribute all the virtues to the popular soul.
The facts of the Revolution teach us, on the contrary, that a people freed from social constraints, the foundations of civilisation, and abandoned to its instinctive impulses, speedily relapses into its ancestral savagery. Every popular revolution which succeeds in triumphing is a temporary return to barbarism. If the Commune of 1871 had lasted, it would have repeated the Terror. Not having the power to kill so many people, it had to confine itself to burning the princ.i.p.al monuments of the capital.
The Revolution represents the conflict of psychological forces liberated from the bonds whose function it is to restrain them. Popular instincts, Jacobin beliefs, ancestral influences, appet.i.tes, and pa.s.sions unloosed, all these various influences engaged in a furious mutual conflict for the s.p.a.ce of ten years, during which time they soaked France in blood and covered the land with ruins.
Seen from a distance, this seems to be the whole upshot of the Revolution. There was nothing h.o.m.ogeneous about it. One must resort to a.n.a.lysis before one can understand and grasp the great drama and display the impulses which continually actuated its heroes. In normal times we are guided by the various forms of logic-rational, affective, collective, and mystic-which more or less perfectly balance one another. During seasons of upheaval they enter into conflict, and man is no longer himself.
We have by no means undervalued in this work the importance of certain acquisitions of the Revolution in respect of the rights of the people. But with many other historians, we are forced to admit that the prize gained at the cost of such ruin and bloodshed would have been obtained at a later date without effort, by the mere progress of civilisation. For a few years gained, what a load of material disaster, what moral disintegration! We are still suffering as a result of the latter. These brutal pages in the book of history will take long to efface: they are not effaced as yet.
Our young men of to-day seem to prefer action to thought. Disdaining the sterile dissertations of the philosophers, they take no interest in vain speculation concerning matters whose essential nature remains unknown.
Action is certainly an excellent thing, and all real progress is a result of action, but it is only useful when properly directed. The men of the Revolution were a.s.suredly men of action, yet the illusions which they accepted as guides led them to disaster.
Action is always hurtful when, despising realities, it professes violently to change the course of events. One cannot experiment with society as with apparatus in a laboratory. Our political upheavals show us what such social errors may cost.
Although the lesson of the Revolution was extremely categorical, many unpractical spirits, hallucinated by their dreams, are hoping to recommence it. Socialism, the modern synthesis of this hope, would be a regression to lower forms of evolution, for it would paralyse the greatest sources of our activity. By replacing individual initiative and responsibility by collective initiative and responsibility mankind would descend several steps on the scale of human values.
The present time is hardly favourable to such experiments. While dreamers are pursuing their dreams, exciting appet.i.tes and the pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude, the peoples are every day arming themselves more powerfully. All feel that amid the universal compet.i.tion of the present time there is no room for weak nations.
In the centre of Europe a formidable military Power is increasing in strength, and aspiring to dominate the world, in order to find outlets for its goods, and for an increasing population, which it will soon be unable to nourish.
If we continue to shatter our cohesion by intestine struggles, party rivalries, base religious persecutions, and laws which fetter industrial development, our part in the world will soon be over. We shall have to make room for peoples more solidly knit, who have been able to adapt themselves to natural necessities instead of pretending to turn back upon their course. The present does not repeat the past, and the details of history are full of unforeseen consequences; but in their main lines events are conditioned by eternal laws.