China is at the present time making a very interesting but impossible experiment, in seeking, by means of the government, suddenly to renew the inst.i.tutions of the country. The revolution which overturned the dynasty of her ancient sovereigns was the indirect consequence of the discontent provoked by reforms which the government had sought to impose with a view to ameliorating the condition of China. The suppression of opium and gaming, the reform of the army, and the creation of schools, involved an increase of taxation which, as well as the reforms themselves, greatly indisposed the general opinion.
A few cultured Chinese educated in the schools of Europe profited by this discontent to raise the people and proclaim a republic, an inst.i.tution of which the Chinese could have had no conception.
It surely cannot long survive, for the impulse which has given birth to it is not a movement of progress, but of reaction. The word republic, to the Chinaman intellectualised by his European education, is simply synonymous with the rejection of the yoke of laws, rules, and long-established restraints. Cutting off his pigtail, covering his head with a cap, and calling himself a Republican, the young Chinaman thinks to give the rein to all his instincts. This is more or less the idea of a republic that a large part of the French people entertained at the time of the great Revolution.
China will soon discover the fate that awaits a society deprived of the armour slowly wrought by the past. After a few years of b.l.o.o.d.y anarchy it will be necessary to establish a power whose tyranny will inevitably be far severer than that which was overthrown. Science has not yet discovered the magic ring capable of saving a society without discipline. There is no need to impose discipline when it has become hereditary, but when the primitive instincts have been allowed to destroy the barriers painfully erected by slow ancestral labours, they cannot be reconst.i.tuted save by an energetic tyranny.
As a proof of these a.s.sertions we may instance an experiment a.n.a.logous to that undertaken by China; that recently attempted by Turkey. A few years ago young men instructed in European schools and full of good intentions succeeded, with the aid of a number of officers, in overthrowing a Sultan whose tyranny seemed insupportable. Having acquired our robust Latin faith in the magic power of formulae, they thought they could establish the representative system in a country half-civilised, profoundly divided by religious hatred, and peopled by divers races.
The attempt has not prospered hitherto. The authors of the reformation had to learn that despite their liberalism they were forced to govern by methods very like those employed by the government overthrown. They could neither prevent summary executions nor wholesale ma.s.sacres of Christians, nor could they remedy a single abuse.
It would be unjust to reproach them. What in truth could they have done to change a people whose traditions have been fixed so long, whose religious pa.s.sions are so intense, and whose Mohammedans, although in the minority, legitimately claim to govern the sacred city of their faith according to their code? How prevent Islam from remaining the State religion in a country where civil law and religious law are not yet plainly separated, and where faith in the Koran is the only tie by which the idea of nationality can be maintained?
It was difficult to destroy such a state of affairs, so that we were bound to see the re-establishment of an autocratic organisation with an appearance of const.i.tutionalism-that is to say, practically the old system once again. Such attempts afford a good example of the fact that a people cannot choose its inst.i.tutions until it has transformed its mind.
4. Social elements which survive the changes of Government after Revolution.
What we shall say later on as to the stable foundation of the national soul will enable us to appreciate the force of systems of government that have been long established, such as ancient monarchies. A monarch may easily be overthrown by conspirators, but these latter are powerless against the principles which the monarch represents. Napoleon at his fall was replaced not by his natural heir, but by the heir of kings. The latter incarnated an ancient principle, while the son of the Emperor personified ideas that were as yet imperfectly established in men"s minds.
For the same reason a minister, however able, however great the services he has rendered to his country, can very rarely overthrow his Sovereign. Bismarck himself could not have done so. This great minister had single-handed created the unity of Germany, yet his master had only to touch him with his finger and he vanished. A man is as nothing before a principle supported by opinion.
But even when, for various reasons, the principle incarnated by a government is annihilated with that government, as happened at the time of the French Revolution, all the elements of social organisation do not perish at the same time.
If we knew nothing of France but the disturbances of the last hundred years and more we might suppose the country to live in a state of profound anarchy. Now her economic, industrial, and even her political life manifests, on the contrary, a continuity that seems to be independent of all revolutions and governments.
The fact is that beside the great events of which history treats are the little facts of daily life which the books neglect to tell. They are ruled by imperious necessities which halt for no man. Their total ma.s.s forms the real framework of the life of the people.
While the study of great events shows us that the nominal government of France has been frequently changed in the s.p.a.ce of a century, an examination of the little daily events will prove, on the contrary, that her real government has been little altered.
Who in truth are the real rulers of a people? Kings and ministers, no doubt, in the great crises of national life, but they play no part whatever in the little realities which make up the life of every day. The real directing forces of a country are the administrations, composed of impersonal elements which are never affected by the changes of government. Conservative of traditions, they are anonymous and lasting, and const.i.tute an occult power before which all others must eventually bow. Their action has even increased to such a degree that, as we shall presently show, there is a danger that they may form an anonymous State more powerful than the official State. France has thus come to be governed by heads of departments and government clerks. The more we study the history of revolutions the more we discover that they change practically nothing but the label. To create a revolution is easy, but to change the soul of a people is difficult indeed.
CHAPTER IV
THE PART PLAYED BY THE PEOPLE IN REVOLUTIONS
1. The stability and malleability of the national mind.
The knowledge of a people at any given moment of its history involves an understanding of its environment and above all of its past. Theoretically one may deny that past, as did the men of the Revolution, as many men of the present day have done, but its influence remains indestructible.
In the past, built up by slow acc.u.mulations of centuries, was formed the aggregation of thoughts, sentiments, traditions, and prejudices const.i.tuting the national mind which makes the strength of a race. Without it no progress is possible. Each generation would necessitate a fresh beginning.
The aggregate composing the soul of a people is solidly established only if it possesses a certain rigidity, but this rigidity must not pa.s.s a certain limit, or there would be no such thing as malleability.
Without rigidity the ancestral soul would have no fixity, and without malleability it could not adapt itself to the changes of environment resulting from the progress of civilization.
Excessive malleability of the national mind impels a people to incessant revolutions. Excess of rigidity leads it to decadence. Living species, like the races of humanity, disappear when, too fixedly established by a long past, they become incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions of existence.
Few peoples have succeeded in effecting a just equilibrium between these two contrary qualities of stability and malleability. The Romans in antiquity and the English in modern times may be cited among those who have best attained it.
The peoples whose mind is most fixed and established often effect the most violent revolutions. Not having succeeded in evolving progressively, in adapting themselves to changes of environment, they are forced to adapt themselves violently when such adaptation becomes indispensable.
Stability is only acquired very slowly. The history of a race is above all the story of its long efforts to establish its mind. So long as it has not succeeded it forms a horde of barbarians without cohesion and strength. After the invasions of the end of the Roman Empire France took several centuries to form a national soul.
She finally achieved one; but in the course of centuries this soul finally became too rigid. With a little more malleability, the ancient monarchy would have been slowly transformed as it was elsewhere, and we should have avoided, together with the Revolution and its consequences, the heavy task of remaking a national soul.
The preceding considerations show us the part of race in the genesis of revolutions, and explain why the same revolutions will produce such different effects in different countries; why, for example, the ideas of the French Revolution, welcomed with such enthusiasm by some peoples, were rejected by others.
Certainly England, although a very stable country, has suffered two revolutions and slain a king; but the mould of her mental armour was at once stable enough to retain the acquisitions of the past and malleable enough to modify them only within the necessary limits. Never did England dream, as did the men of the French Revolution, of destroying the ancestral heritage in order to erect a new society in the name of reason.
"While the Frenchman," writes M. A. Sorel, "despised his government, detested his clergy, hated the n.o.bility, and revolted against the laws, the Englishman was proud of his religion, his const.i.tution, his aristocracy, his House of Lords. These were like so many towers of the formidable Bastille in which he entrenched himself, under the British standard, to judge Europe and cover her with contempt. He admitted that the command was disputed inside the fort, but no stranger must approach."
The influence of race in the destiny of the peoples appears plainly in the history of the perpetual revolutions of the Spanish republics of South America. Composed of half-castes, that is to say, of individuals whose diverse heredities have dissociated their ancestral characteristics, these populations have no national soul and therefore no stability. A people of half-castes is always ungovernable.
If we would learn more of the differences of political capacity which the racial factor creates we must examine the same nation as governed by two races successively.
The event is not rare in history. It has been manifested in a striking manner of late in Cuba and the Philippines, which pa.s.sed suddenly from the rule of Spain to that of the United States.
We know in what anarchy and poverty Cuba existed under Spanish rule; we know, too, to what a degree of prosperity the island was brought in a few years when it fell into the hands of the United States.
The same experience was repeated in the Philippines, which for centuries had been governed by Spain. Finally the country was no more than a vast jungle, the home of epidemics of every kind, where a miserable population vegetated without commerce or industry. After a few years of American rule the country was entirely transformed: malaria, yellow fever, plague and cholera had entirely disappeared. The swamps were drained; the country was covered with railways, factories and schools. In thirteen years the mortality was reduced by two-thirds.
It is to such examples that we must refer the theorist who has not yet grasped the profound significance of the word race, and how far the ancestral soul of a people rules over its destiny.
2. How the people regards Revolution.
The part of the people has been the same in all revolutions. It is never the people that conceives them nor directs them. Its activity is released by means of leaders.
Only when the direct interests of the people are involved do we see, as recently in Champagne, any fraction of the people rising spontaneously. A movement thus localised const.i.tutes a mere riot.
Revolution is easy when the leaders are very influential. Of this Portugal and Brazil have recently furnished proofs. But new ideas penetrate the people very slowly indeed. Generally it accepts a revolution without knowing why, and when by chance it does succeed in understanding why, the revolution is over long ago.
The people will create a revolution because it is persuaded to do so, but it does not understand very much of the ideas of its leaders; it interprets them in its own fashion, and this fashion is by no means that of the true authors of the revolution. The French Revolution furnished a striking example of this fact.
The Revolution of 1789 had as its real object the subst.i.tution of the power of the n.o.bility by that of the bourgeoisie; that is, an old elite which had become incapable was to be replaced by a new elite which did possess capacity.
There was little question of the people in this first phase of the Revolution. The sovereignty of the people was proclaimed, but it amounted only to the right of electing its representatives.
Extremely illiterate, not hoping, like the middle cla.s.ses, to ascend the social scale, not in any way feeling itself the equal of the n.o.bles, and not aspiring ever to become their equal, the people had views and interests very different to those of the upper cla.s.ses of society.
The struggles of the a.s.sembly with the royal power led it to call for the intervention of the people in these struggles. It intervened more and more, and the bourgeois revolution rapidly became a popular revolution.
An idea having no force of its own, and acting only by virtue of possessing an affective and mystic substratum which supports it, the theoretical ideas of the bourgeoisie, before they could act on the people, had to be transformed into a new and very definite faith, springing from obvious practical interests.
This transformation was rapidly effected when the people heard the men envisaged by it as the Government a.s.suring it that it was the equal of its former masters. It began to regard itself as a victim, and proceeded to pillage, burn, and ma.s.sacre, imagining that in so doing it was exercising a right.
The great strength of the revolutionary principles was that they gave a free course to the instincts of primitive barbarity which had been restrained by the secular and inhibitory action of environment, tradition, and law.
All the social bonds that formerly contained the mult.i.tude were day by day dissolving, so that it conceived a notion of unlimited power, and the joy of seeing its ancient masters ferreted out and despoiled. Having become the sovereign people, were not all things permissible to it?