2. The Jacobin Spirit and the Mentality created by
Democratic Beliefs.
Existing generations have inherited, not only the
revolutionary principles but also the special mentality which
achieves their success.
Describing this mentality when we were examining the
Jacobin spirit, we saw that it always endeavours to impose by
force illusions which it regards as the truth. The Jacobin
spirit has finally become so general in France and in other Latin
countries that it has affected all political parties, even the
most conservative. The bourgeoisie is strongly affected
by it, and the people still more so.
This increase of the Jacobin spirit has resulted in the
fact that political conceptions, institutions, and laws tend to
impose themselves by force. Syndicalism, peaceful enough in
other countries, immediately assumed in France an uncompromising
and anarchical aspect, which betrayed itself in the shape of
riots, sabotage, and incendiarism.
Not to be repressed by timid Governments, the Jacobin
spirit produces melancholy ravages in minds of mediocre capacity.
At a recent congress of railway men a third of the delegates
voted approval of sabotage, and one of the secretaries of
the Congress began his speech by saying: “I send all
saboteurs my fraternal greeting and all my
admiration.”
This general mentality engenders an increasing anarchy.
That France is not in a permanent state of anarchy is, as I have
already remarked, due to
the fact that the parties by which she is divided produce
something like equilibrium. They are animated by a mortal hatred
for one another, but none of them is strong enough to enslave its
rivals.
This Jacobin intolerance is spreading to such an extent
that the rulers themselves employ without scruple the most
revolutionary tactics with regard to their enemies, violently
persecuting any party that offers the least resistance, and even
despoiling it of its property. Our rulers to-day behave as the
ancient conquerors used; the vanquished have nothing to hope from
the victors.
Far from being peculiar to the lower orders, intolerance
is equally prominent among the ruling classes. Michelet remarked
long ago that the violence of the cultivated classes is often
greater than that of the people. It is true that they do not
break the street lamps, but they are ready enough to cause heads
to be broken. The worst violence of the revolution was the work
of cultivated bourgeoisie—professors, lawyers, &c.,
possessors of that classical education which is supposed to
soften the manners. It has not done so in these days, any more
than it did of old. One can make sure of this by reading the
advanced journals, whose contributors and editors are recruited
chiefly from among the professors of the University.
Their books are as violent as their articles, and one
wonders how such favourites of fortune can have secreted such
stores of hatred.
One would find it hard to credit them did they assure us
that they were consumed by an intense passion for altruism. One
might more readily
admit that apart from a narrow religious mentality the hope of
being remarked by the mighty ones of the day, or of creating a
profitable popularity, is the only possible explanation of the
violence recommended in their written propaganda.
I have already, in one of my preceding works, cited some
passages from a book written by a professor at the College of
France, in which the author incites the people to seize upon the
riches of the bourgeoisie, whom he furiously abuses, and
have arrived at the conclusion that a new revolution would
readily find among the authors of such books the Marats, Robes-pierres, and Carriers whom it might require.
The Jacobin religion—above all in its Socialist form—has
all the power of the ancient faiths over feeble minds Blinded by
their faith, they believe that reason is their guide, but are
really actuated solely by their passions and their dreams.
The evolution of democratic ideas has thus produced not
only the political results already mentioned, but also a
considerable effect upon the mentality of modern men.
If the ancient dogmas have long ago exhausted their power,
the theories of democracy are far from having lost theirs, and we
see their consequences increasing daily. One of the chief
results has been the general hatred of superiority.
This hatred of whatever passes the average in social
fortune or intelligence is to-day general in all classes, from
the working-classes to the upper strata of the
bourgeoisie. The results are envy, detraction, and a love
of attack, of raillery, of persecution, and a habit of
attributing all actions to low motives, of refusing to believe in
probity, disinterestedness, and intelligence.
Conversation, among the people as among the most
cultivated Frenchmen, is stamped with the craze for abasing and
abusing everything and everyone. Even the greatest of the dead
do not escape this tendency. Never were so many books written to
depreciate the merit of famous men, men who were formerly
regarded as the most precious patrimony of their country.
Envy and hatred seem from all time to have been
inseparable from democratic theories, but the spread of these
sentiments has never been so great as to-day. It strikes all
observers.
“There is a low demagogic instinct,” writes M.
Bourdeau, “without any moral inspiration, which dreams of
pulling humanity down to the lowest level, and for which any
superiority, even of culture, is an offence to society. . . it is
the sentiment of ignoble equality which animated the Jacobin
butchers when they struck off the head of a Lavoisier or a
Chénier.
This hatred of superiority, the most prominent element in
the modern progress of Socialism, is not the only characteristic
of the new spirit created by democratic ideas.
Other consequences, although indirect, are not less
profound. Such, for example, are the progress of
“statism,” the diminution of the power of the
bourgeoisie, the increasing activity of financiers, the
conflict of the classes, the vanishing of the old social
constraints, and the degradation of morality.
All these effects are displayed in a general
insubordination and anarchy. The son revolts against the
father, the employee against his patron, the soldier
against his officers. Discontent, hatred, and envy reign
throughout.
A social movement which continues is necessarily like a
machine in movement which accelerates its motion. We shall
therefore find that the results of this mentality will become yet
more important. It is betrayed from time to time by incidents
whose gravity is daily increasing—railway strikes, postmen's
strikes, explosions on board ironclads, &c. A propos of
the destruction of the Liberté, which cost more
than two million pounds and slew two hundred men in the space of
a minute, an ex-Minister of Marine, M. de Lanessan, expresses
himself as follows:—
The evil that is gnawing at our fleet is the same as that
which is devouring our army, our public administrations, our
parliamentary system, our governmental system, and the whole
fabric of our society. This evil is anarchy—that is to say,
such a disorder of minds and things that nothing is done as
reason would dictate, and no one behaves as his professional or
moral duty should require him to behave.”
On the subject of the catastrophe of the
Liberté, which followed that of the
Iéna, M. Felix Roussel said, in a speech delivered
as president of the municipal council of Paris:—
“The causes of the evil are not peculiar to our day.
The evil is more general, and bears a triple name:
irresponsibility, indiscipline, and anarchy.”
These quotations, which state facts with which everyone is
familiar, show that the staunchest upholders of the republican
system themselves recognise the progress of social
disorganisation.12 Everyone
sees it, while he is conscious of his own impotence to change
anything. It results, in fact, from mental influences whose
power is greater than that of our wills.
