The Psychology of Revolution
INTRODUCTION
THE REVISION OF HISTORY
THE present age is not merely an epoch of discovery; it is
also a period of revision of the various elements of knowledge.
Having recognised that there are no phenomena of which the first
cause is still accessible, science has resumed the examination of
her ancient certitudes, and has proved their fragility. To-day
she sees her ancient principles vanishing one by one. Mechanics
is losing its axioms, and matter, formerly the eternal substratum
of the worlds, becomes a simple aggregate of ephemeral forces in
transitory condensation.
Despite its conjectural side, by virtue of which it to
some extent escapes the severest form of criticism, history has
not been free from this universal revision. There is no longer a
single one of its phases of which we can say that it is certainly
known. What appeared to be definitely acquired is now once more
put in question.
Among the events whose study seemed completed was the
French Revolution. Analysed by several generations of writers,
one might suppose it to be
perfectly elucidated. What new thing can be said of it, except
in modification of some of its details?
And yet its most positive defenders are beginning to
hesitate in their judgments. Ancient evidence proves to be far
from impeccable. The faith in dogmas once held sacred is shaken.
The latest literature of the Revolution betrays these
uncertainties. Having related, men are more and more chary of
drawing conclusions.
Not only are the heroes of this great drama discussed
without indulgence, but thinkers are asking whether the new
dispensation which followed the ancien régime would
not have established itself naturally, without violence, in the
course of progressive civilisation. The results obtained no
longer seem in correspondence either with their immediate cost or
with the remoter consequences which the Revolution evoked from
the possibilities of history.
Several causes have led to the revision of this tragic
period. Time has calmed passions, numerous documents have
gradually emerged from the archives, and the historian is
learning to interpret them independently.
But it is perhaps modern psychology that has most
effectually influenced our ideas, by enabling us more surely to
read men and the motives of their conduct.
Among those of its discoveries which are henceforth
applicable to history we must mention, above all, a more profound
understanding of ancestral influences, the laws which rule the
actions of the crowd, data relating to the disaggregation of
personality, mental contagion, the unconscious formation of
beliefs, and the distinction between the various forms of logic.
To tell the truth, these applications of science, which
are utilised in this book, have not been so utilised hitherto.
Historians have generally stopped short at the study of
documents, and even that study is sufficient to excite the doubts
of which I have spoken.
The great events which shape the destinies of peoples—
revolutions, for example, and the outbreak of religious beliefs—
are sometimes so difficult to explain that one must limit oneself
to a mere statement.
From the time of my first historical researches I have
been struck by the impenetrable aspect of certain essential
phenomena, those relating to the genesis of beliefs especially; I
felt convinced that something fundamental was lacking that was
essential to their interpretation. Reason having said all it
could say, nothing more could be expected of it, and other means
must be sought of comprehending what had not been elucidated.
For a long time these important questions remained obscure
to me. Extended travel, devoted to the study of the remnants of
vanished civilisations, had not done much to throw light upon
them.
Reflecting upon it continually, I was forced to recognise
that the problem was composed of a series of other problems,
which I should have to study separately. This I did for a period
of twenty years, presenting the results of my researches in a
succession of volumes.
One of the first was devoted to the study of the
psychological laws of the evolution of peoples. Having
shown that the historic races—that is, the races formed by the
hazards of history—finally acquired psychological
characteristics as stable as their anatomical characteristics, I
attempted to explain how a people transforms its institutions,
its languages, and its arts. I explained in the same work why it
was that individual personalities, under the influence of sudden
variations of environment, might be entirely disaggregated.
But besides the fixed collectivities formed by the
peoples, there are mobile and transitory collectivities known as
crowds. Now these crowds or mobs, by the aid of which the great
movements of history are accomplished, have characteristics
absolutely different from those of the individuals who compose
them. What are these characteristics, and how are they evolved?
This new problem was examined in The Psychology of the
Crowd.
Only after these studies did I begin to perceive certain
influences which had escaped me.
But this was not all. Among the most important factors of
history one was preponderant—the factor of beliefs. How are
these beliefs born, and are they really rational and voluntary,
as was long taught? Are they not rather unconscious and
independent of all reason? A difficult question, which I dealt
with in my last book, Opinions and Beliefs.
So long as psychology regards beliefs as voluntary and
rational they will remain inexplicable. Having proved that they
are usually irrational and always involuntary, I was able to
propound the solution of this important problem; how it was that
beliefs which no reason could justify were admitted with
out difficulty by the most enlightened spirits of all
ages.
The solution of the historical difficulties which had so
long been sought was thenceforth obvious. I arrived at the
conclusion that beside the rational logic which conditions
thought, and was formerly regarded as our sole guide, there exist
very different forms of logic: affective logic, collective logic,
and mystic logic, which usually overrule the reason and engender
the generative impulses of our conduct.
This fact well established, it seemed to me evident that
if a great number of historical events are often uncomprehended,
it is because we seek to interpret them in the light of a logic
which in reality has very little influence upon their genesis.
All these researches, which are here summed up in a few
lines, demanded long years for their accomplishment. Despairing
of completing them, I abandoned them more than once to return to
those labours of the laboratory in which one is always sure of
skirting the truth and of acquiring fragments at least of
certitude.
But while it is very interesting to explore the world of
material phenomena, it is still more so to decipher men, for
which reason I have always been led back to psychology.
Certain principles deduced from my researches appearing
likely to prove fruitful, I resolved to apply them to the study
of concrete instances, and was thus led to deal with the
Psychology of Revolutions—notably that of the French Revolution.
Proceeding in the analysis of our great Revolution,
the greater part of the opinions determined by the reading of
books deserted me one by one, although I had considered them
unshakable.
To explain this period we must consider it as a whole, as
many historians have done. It is composed of phenomena
simultaneous but independent of one another.
Each of its phases reveals events engendered by
psychological laws working with the regularity of clockwork. The
actors in this great drama seem to move like the characters of a
previously determined drama. Each says what he must say, acts as
he is bound to act.
To be sure, the actors in the revolutionary drama differed
from those of a written drama in that they had not studied their
parts, but these were dictated by invisible forces.
Precisely because they were subjected to the inevitable
progression of logics incomprehensible to them we see them as
greatly astonished by the events of which they were the heroes as
are we ourselves. Never did they suspect the invisible powers
which forced them to act. They were the masters neither of their
fury nor their weakness. They spoke in the name of reason,
pretending to be guided by reason, but in reality it was by no
means reason that impelled them.
“The decisions for which we are so greatly
reproached,” wrote Billaud-Varenne, “were more often than
otherwise not intended or desired by us two days or even one day
beforehand: the crisis alone evoked them.”
Not that we must consider the events of the
Revolution as dominated by an imperious fatality. The readers of
our works will know that we recognise in the man of superior
qualities the
rôle of averting fatalities. But he
can dissociate himself only from a few of such, and is often
powerless before the sequence of events which even at their
origin could scarcely be ruled. The scientist knows how to
destroy the microbe before it has time to act, but he knows
himself powerless to prevent the evolution of the resulting
malady.
When any question gives rise to violently contradictory
opinions we may be sure that it belongs to the province of
beliefs and not to that of knowledge.
We have shown in a preceding work that belief, of
unconscious origin and independent of all reason, can never be
influenced by reason.
The Revolution, the work of believers, has seldom been
judged by any but believers. Execrated by some and praised by
others, it has remained one of those dogmas which are accepted or
rejected as a whole, without the intervention of rational logic.
Although in its beginnings a religious or political
revolution may very well be supported by rational elements, it is
developed only by the aid of mystic and affective elements which
are absolutely foreign to reason.
The historians who have judged the events of the French
Revolution in the name of rational logic could not comprehend
them, since this form of logic did not dictate them. As the
actors of these events themselves understood them but ill, we
shall not be far from the truth in saying that our Revolution
was a phenomenon equally misunderstood by those who caused it and
by those who have described it. At no period of history did men
so little grasp the present, so greatly ignore the past, and so
poorly divine the future.
. . . The power of the Revolution did not reside in the
principles—which for that matter were anything but novel—which
it sought to propagate, nor in the institutions which it sought
to found. The people cares very little for institutions and even
less for doctrines. That the Revolution was potent indeed, that
it made France accept the violence, the murders, the ruin and the
horror of a frightful civil war, that finally it defended itself
victoriously against a Europe in arms, was due to the fact that
it had founded not a new system of government but a new religion.
Now history shows us how irresistible is the might of a strong
belief. Invincible Rome herself had to bow before the armies of
nomad shepherds illuminated by the faith of Mahommed. For the
same reason the kings of Europe could not resist the
tatterdemalion soldiers of the Convention. Like all apostles,
they were ready to immolate themselves in the sole end of
propagating their beliefs, which according to their dream were to
renew the world.
The religion thus founded had the force of other
religions, if not their duration. Yet it did not perish without
leaving indelible traces, and its influence is active still.
We shall not consider the Revolution as a clean
sweep in history, as its apostles believed it. We know that to
demonstrate their intention of creating a world distinct from the
old they initiated a new era and professed to break entirely with
all vestiges of the past.
But the past never dies. It is even more truly within us
than without us. Against their will the reformers of the
Revolution remained saturated with the past, and could only
continue, under other names, the traditions of the monarchy, even
exaggerating the autocracy and centralisation of the old system.
Tocqueville had no difficulty in proving that the Revolution did
little but overturn that which was about to fall.
If in reality the Revolution destroyed but little it
favoured the fruition of certain ideas which continued
thenceforth to develop. The fraternity and liberty which it
proclaimed never greatly seduced the peoples, but equality became
their gospel: the pivot of socialism and of the entire evolution
of modern democratic ideas. We may therefore say that the
Revolution did not end with the advent of the Empire, nor with
the successive restorations which followed it. Secretly or in
the light of day it has slowly unrolled itself and still affects
men's minds.
The study of the French Revolution to which a great part
of this book is devoted will perhaps deprive the reader of more
than one illusion, by proving to him that the books which recount
the history of the Revolution contain in reality a mass of
legends very remote from reality.
These legends will doubtless retain more life than
history itself. Do not regret this too greatly. It may interest
a few philosophers to know the truth, but the peoples will always
prefer dreams. Synthetising their ideal, such dreams will always
constitute powerful motives of action. One would lose courage
were it not sustained by false ideas, said Fontenelle. Joan of
Arc, the Giants of the Convention, the Imperial epic—all these
dazzling images of the past will always remain sources of hope in
the gloomy hours that follow defeat. They form part of that
patrimony of illusions left us by our fathers, whose power is
often greater than that of reality. The dream, the ideal, the
legend—in a word, the unreal—it is that which shapes history.