1. Gradual Propagation of Democratic Ideas after the
Revolution.
IDEAS which are firmly established, incrusted, as it were, in
men's minds, continue to act for several generations. Those
which resulted from the French Revolution were, like others,
subject to this law.
Although the life of the Revolution as a Government was
short, the influence of its principles was, on the contrary, very
long-lived. Becoming a form of religious belief, they profoundly
modified the orientation of the sentiments and ideas of several
generations.
Despite a few intervals, the French Revolution has
continued up to the present, and still survives. The
rôle of Napoleon was not confined to overturning the
world, changing the map of Europe, and remaking the exploits of
Alexander. The new rights of the people, created by the
Revolution and established by its institutions, have exercised a
profound influence. The military work of the conqueror was soon
dissolved, but the revolutionary principles which he contributed
to propagate have survived him.
The various restorations which followed the Empire caused
men at first to become somewhat forgetful of the principles of
the Revolution. For fifty years this propagation was far from
rapid. One might almost have supposed that the people had
forgotten them. Only a small number of theorists maintained
their influence. Heirs to the “simplicist” spirit of the
Jacobins, believing, like them, that societies can be remade from
top to bottom by the laws, and persuaded that the Empire had only
interrupted the task of revolution, they wished to resume it.
While waiting until they could recommence, they attempted
to spread the principles of the Revolution by means of their
writings. Faithful imitators of the men of the Revolution, they
never stopped to ask if their schemes for reform were in
conformity with human nature. They too were erecting a
chimerical society for an ideal man, and were persuaded that the
application of their dreams would regenerate the human species.
Deprived of all constructive power, the theorists of all
the ages have always been very ready to destroy. Napoleon at St.
Helena stated that “if there existed a monarchy of granite
the idealists and theorists would manage to reduce it to
powder.”
Among the galaxy of dreamers such as Saint-Simon, Fourier,
Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Quinet, &c., we find that only
Auguste Comte understood that a transformation of manners and
ideas must precede political reorganisation.
Far from favouring the diffusion of democratic ideas, the
projects of reform of the theorists of this period merely impeded
their progress. Communistic
Socialism, which several of them professed would restore the
Revolution, finally alarmed the
bourgeoisie and even the
working-classes. We have already seen that the fear of their
ideas was one of the principal causes of the restoration of the
Empire.
If none of the chimerical lucubrations of the writers of
the first half of the nineteenth century deserve to be discussed,
it is none the less interesting to examine them in order to
observe the part played by religious and moral ideas which to-day
are regarded with contempt. Persuaded that a new society could
not, any more than the societies of old, be built up without
religious and moral beliefs, the reformers were always
endeavouring to found such beliefs.
But on what could they be based? Evidently on reason. By
means of reason men create complicated machines: why not
therefore a religion and a morality, things which are apparently
so simple? Not one of them suspected the fact that no religious
or moral belief ever had rational logic as its basis. Auguste
Comte saw no more clearly. We know that he founded a so-called
positivist religion, which still has a few followers. Scientists
were to form a clergy directed by a new Pope, who was to replace
the Catholic Pope.
All these conceptions—political, religious, or moral—
had, I repeat, no other results for a long time than to turn the
multitude away from democratic principles.
If these principles did finally become widespread, it was
not on account of the theorists, but because new conditions of
life had arisen. Thanks to the discoveries of science, industry
developed and led to the
erection of immense factories. Economic necessities increasingly
dominated the wills of Governments and the people and finally
created a favourable soil for the extension of Socialism, and
above all of Syndicalism, the modern forms of democratic ideas.
