The Psychology of Revolution Part 10

"Everywhere," writes Barrett Wendell, "this memory and these traditions are still endowed with such vitality that few persons are capable of considering them dispa.s.sionately. They still excite both enthusiasm and resentment; they are still regarded with a loyal and ardent spirit of partisans.h.i.+p. The better you come to understand France the more clearly you see that even to- day no study of the Revolution strikes any Frenchman as having been impartial."

This observation is perfectly correct. To be interpretable with equity, the events of the past must no longer be productive of results and must not touch the religious or political beliefs whose inevitable intolerance I have denoted.

We must not therefore be surprised that historians express very different ideas respecting the Revolution. For a long time to come some will still see in it one of the most sinister events of history, while to others it will remain one of the most glorious.

All writers on the subject have believed that they have related its course with impartiality, but in general they have merely supported contradictory theories of peculiar simplicity. The doc.u.ments being innumerable and contradictory, their conscious or unconscious choice has readily enabled them to justify their respective theories.

The older historians of the Revolution-Thiers, Quinet, and, despite his talent, Michelet himself, are somewhat eclipsed to- day. Their doctrines were by no means complicated; a historic fatalism prevails generally in their work. Thiers regarded the Revolution as the result of several centuries of absolute monarchy, and the Terror as the necessary consequence of foreign invasion. Quinet described the excesses of 1793 as the result of a long-continued despotism, but declared that the tyranny of the Convention was unnecessary, and hampered the work of the Revolution. Michelet saw in this last merely the work of the people, whom he blindly admired, and commenced the glorification continued by other historians.

The former reputation of all these historians has been to a great extent effaced by that of Taine. Although equally impa.s.sioned, he threw a brilliant light upon the revolutionary period, and it will doubtless be long before his work is superseded.

Work so important is bound to show faults. Taine is admirable in the representation of facts and persons, but he attempts to judge by the standard of rational logic events which were not dictated by reason, and which, therefore, he cannot interpret. His psychology, excellent when it is merely descriptive, is very weak as soon as it becomes explanatory. To affirm that Robespierre was a pedantic "swotter" is not to reveal the causes of his absolute power over the Convention, at a time when he had spent several months in decimating it with perfect impunity. It has very justly been said of Taine that he saw well and understood little.

Despite these restrictions his work is highly remarkable and has not been equalled. We may judge of his immense influence by the exasperation which he causes among the faithful defenders of Jacobin orthodoxy, of which M. Aulard, professor at the Sorbonne, is to-day the high priest. The latter has devoted two years to writing a pamphlet against Taine, every line of which is steeped in pa.s.sion. All this time spent in rectifying a few material errors which are not really significant has only resulted in the perpetration of the very same errors.

Reviewing his work, M. A. Cochin shows that M. Aulard has at least on every other occasion been deceived by his quotations, whereas Taine erred far more rarely. The same historian shows also that we must not trust M. Aulard's sources.

"These sources-proceedings, pamphlets, journals, and the speeches and writings of patriots-are precisely the authentic publications of patriotism, edited by patriots, and edited, as a rule, for the benefit of the public. He ought to have seen in all this simply the special pleading of the defendant: he had, before his eyes, a ready-made history of the Revolution, which presents, side by side with each of the acts of the `People,' from the ma.s.sacres of September to the law of Prairial, a ready- made explanation according to the republican system of defence."

Perhaps the fairest criticism that one can make of the work of Taine is that it was left incomplete. He studied more especially the role of the populace and its leaders during the revolutionary period. This inspired him with pages vibrating with an indignation which we can still admire, but several important aspects of the Revolution escaped him.

Whatever one may think of the Revolution, an irreducible difference will always exist between historians of the school of Taine and those of the school of M. Aulard. The latter regards the sovereign people as admirable, while the former shows us that when abandoned to its instincts and liberated from all social restraint it relapses into primitive savagery. The conception of M. Aulard, entirely contrary to the lessons of the psychology of crowds, is none the less a religious dogma in the eyes of modern Jacobins. They write of the Revolution according to the methods of believers, and take for learned works the arguments of virtual theologians.

2. The Theory of Fatalism in respect of the Revolution.

Advocates and detractors of the Revolution often admit the fatality of revolutionary events. This theory is well synthetised in the following pa.s.sage from the History of the Revolution, by Emile Olivier:-

"No man could oppose it. The blame belongs neither to those who perished nor to those who survived; there was no individual force capable of changing the elements and of foreseeing the events which were born of the nature of things and circ.u.mstances."

Taine himself inclines to this idea:-

"At the moment when the States General were opened the course of ideas and events was not only determined but even visible. Each generation unwittingly bears within itself its future and its past; from the latter its destinies might have been foretold long before the issue."

Other modern authors, who profess no more indulgence for the violence of the revolutionaries than did Taine, are equally convinced of this fatality. M. Sorel, after recalling the saying of Bossuet concerning the revolutions of antiquity: "Everything is surprising if we only consider particular causes, and yet everything goes forward in regular sequence," expresses an intention which he very imperfectly realises: "to show in the Revolution, which seems to some the subversion and to others the regeneration of the old European world, the natural and necessary result of the history of Europe, and to show, moreover, that this revolution had no result-not even the most unexpected-that did not ensue from this history, and was not explained by the precedents of the ancien regime."

Guizot also had formerly attempted to prove that our Revolution, which he quite wrongly compared to that of England, was perfectly natural and effected no innovations:-

"Far from having broken with the natural course of events in Europe, neither the English revolution nor our own did, intended, or said anything that had not been said, intended, and done a hundred years before its outbreak.

" ... Whether we regard the general doctrines of the two revolutions or the application made of them-whether we deal with the government of the State or with the civil legislation, with property or with persons, with liberty or with power, we shall find nothing of which the invention can be attributed to them, nothing that will not be encountered elsewhere, or that was not at least originated in times which we qualify as normal."

All these a.s.sertions merely recall the ba.n.a.l law that a phenomenon is simply the consequence of previous phenomena. Such very general propositions do not teach us much.

We must not try to explain too many events by the principle of fatality adopted by so many historians. I have elsewhere discussed the significance of such fatalities, and have shown that the whole effort of civilisation consists in trying to escape therefrom. Certainly history is full of necessities, but it is also full of contingent facts which were, and might not have been. Napoleon himself, on St. Helena, enumerated six circ.u.mstances which might have checked his prodigious career. He related, notably, that on taking a bath at Auxonne, in 1786, he only escaped death by the fortuitous presence of a sandbank. If Bonaparte had died, then we may admit that another general would have arisen, and might have become dictator. But what would have become of the Imperial epic and its consequences without the man of genius who led our victorious armies into all the capitals of Europe?

It is permissible to consider the Revolution as being partly a necessity, but it was above all-which is what the fatalistic writers already cited do not show us-a permanent struggle between theorists who were imbued with a new ideal, and the economic, social, and political laws which ruled mankind, and which they did not understand. Not understanding them, they sought in vain to direct the course of events, were exasperated at their failure, and finally committed every species of violence. They decreed that the paper money known as a.s.signats should be accepted as the equivalent of gold, and all their threats could not prevent the fict.i.tious value of such money falling almost to nothing. They decreed the law of the maximum, and it merely increased the evils it was intended to remedy. Robespierre declared before the Convention "that all the sans- culottes will be paid at the expense of the public treasury, which will be fed by the rich," and in spite of requisitions and the guillotine the treasury remained empty.

Having broken all human restraints, the men of the Revolution finally discovered that a society cannot live without them; but when they sought to create them anew they saw that even the strongest society, though supported by the fear of the guillotine, could not replace the discipline which the past had slowly built up in the minds of men. As for understanding the evolution of society, or judging men's hearts and minds, or foreseeing the consequences of the laws they enacted, they scarcely attempted to do so.

The events of the Revolution did not ensue from irreducible necessities. They were far more the consequence of Jacobin principles than of circ.u.mstances, and might have been quite other than they were. Would the Revolution have followed the same path if Louis XVI. had been better advised, or if the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had been less cowardly in times of popular insurrection? The theory of revolutionary fatality is only useful to justify violence by presenting it as inevitable.

Whether we are dealing with science or with history we must beware of the ignorance which takes shelter under the s.h.i.+bboleth of fatalism Nature was formerly full of a host of fatalities which science is slowly contriving to avoid. The function of the superior man is, as I have shown elsewhere, to avert such fatalities.

3. The Hesitations of recent Historians of the Revolution.

The historians whose ideas we have examined in the preceding chapter were extremely positive in their special pleading. Confined within the limits of belief, they did not attempt to penetrate the domain of knowledge. A monarchical writer was violently hostile to the Revolution, and a liberal writer was its violent apologist.

At the present time we can see the commencement of a movement which will surely lead to the study of the Revolution as one of those scientific phenomena into which the opinions and beliefs of a writer enter so little that the reader does not even suspect them.

This period has not yet come into being; we are still in the period of doubt. The liberal writers who used to be so positive are now so no longer. One may judge of this new state of mind by the following extracts from recent authors:-

M. Hanotaux, having vaunted the utility of the Revolution, asks whether its results were not bought too dearly, and adds:-

"History hesitates, and will, for a long time yet, hesitate to answer."

M. Madelin is equally dubious in the book he has recently published:-

"I have never felt sufficient authority to form, even in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a phenomenon as the French Revolution. To-day I find it even more difficult to form a brief judgement. Causes, facts, and consequences seem to me to be still extremely debatable subjects."

One may obtain a still better idea of the transformation of the old ideas concerning the Revolution by perusing the latest writings of its official defenders. While they professed formerly to justify every act of violence by representing it as a simple act of defence, they now confine themselves to pleading extenuating circ.u.mstances. I find a striking proof of this new frame of mind in the history of France for the use of schools, published by MM. Aulard and Debidour. Concerning the Terror we read the following lines:-

"Blood flowed in waves; there were acts of injustice and crimes which were useless from the point of view of national defence, and odious. But men had lost their heads in the tempest, and, hara.s.sed by a thousand dangers, the patriots struck out in their rage."

We shall see in another part of this work that the first of the two authors whom I have cited is, in spite of his uncompromising Jacobinism, by no means indulgent toward the men formerly qualified as the "Giants of the Convention."

The judgments of foreigners upon our Revolution are usually distinctly severe, and we cannot be surprised when we remember how Europe suffered during the twenty years of upheaval in France.

The Germans in particular have been most severe. Their opinion is summed up in the following lines by M. f.a.guet:-

"Let us say it courageously and patriotically, for patriotism consists above all in telling the truth to one's own country: Germany sees in France, with regard to the past, a people who, with the great words `liberty' and `fraternity' in its mouth, oppressed, trampled, murdered, pillaged, and fleeced her for fifteen years; and with regard to the present, a people who, with the same words on its banners, is organising a despotic, oppressive, mischievous, and ruinous democracy, which none would seek to imitate. This is what Germany may well see in France; and this, according to her books and journals, is, we may a.s.sure ourselves, what she does see."

For the rest, whatever the worth of the verdicts p.r.o.nounced upon the French Revolution, we may be certain that the writers of the future will consider it as an event as pa.s.sionately interesting as it is instructive.

A Government bloodthirsty enough to guillotine old men of eighty years, young girls, and little children: which covered France with ruins, and yet succeeded in repulsing Europe in arms; an archd.u.c.h.ess of Austria, Queen of France, dying on the scaffold, and a few years later another archd.u.c.h.ess, her relative, replacing her on the same throne and marrying a sub- lieutenant, turned Emperor-here are tragedies unique in human history. The psychologists, above all, will derive lessons from a history hitherto so little studied by them. No doubt they will finally discover that psychology can make no progress until it renounces chimerical theories and laboratory experiments in order to study the events and the men who surround us.[7]

[7] This advice is far from being ba.n.a.l. The psychologists of the day pay very little attention to the world about them, and are even surprised that any one should study it. I have come across an interesting proof of this indifferent frame of mind in a review of one of my books which appeared in the Revue philosophique and was inspired by the editor of the review. The author reproaches me with "exploring the world and the newspapers rather than books."

I most gladly accept this reproach. The manifold facts of the journals and the realities of the world are far more instructive than philosophical lucubrations such as the Revue is stuffed with.

Philosophers are beginning to see the puerility of such reproaches. It was certainly of the forty volumes of this fastidious publication that Mr. William James was thinking when he wrote that all these dissertations simply represented "a string of facts clumsily observed and a few quarrelsome discussions." Although he is the author of the best known treatise on psychology extant, the eminent thinker realises "the fragility of a science that oozes metaphysical criticism at every joint." For more than twenty years I have tried to interest psychologists in the study of realities, but the stream of university metaphysics is hardly yet turned aside, although it has lost its former force

4. Impartiality in History.

Impartiality has always been considered as the most essential quality of the historian. All historians since Tacitus have a.s.sured us that they are impartial.

In reality the writer sees events as the painter sees a landscape-that is, through his own temperament; through his character and the mind of the race.

A number of artists, placed before the same landscape, would necessarily interpret it in as many different fas.h.i.+ons. Some would lay stress upon details neglected by others. Each reproduction would thus be a personal work-that is to say, would be interpreted by a certain form of sensibility.