CONCLUSIONS
THE principal revolutions of history have been studied in this
volume. But we have dealt more especially with the most
important of all—that which for more than twenty years
overwhelmed all Europe, and whose echoes are still to be heard.
The French Revolution is an inexhaustible mine of
psychological documents. No period of the life of humanity has
presented such a mass of experience, accumulated in so short a
time.
On each page of this great drama we have found numerous
applications of the principles expounded in my various works,
concerning the transitory mentality of crowds and the permanent
soul of the peoples, the action of beliefs, the influence of
mystic, affective, and collective elements, and the conflict
between the various forms of logic.
The Revolutionary Assemblies illustrate all the known laws
of the psychology of crowds. Impulsive and timid, they are
dominated by a small number of leaders, and usually act in a
sense contrary to the wishes of their individual members.
The Royalist Constituent Assembly destroyed an ancient
monarchy; the humanitarian Legislative Assembly allowed the
massacres of September. The same pacific body led France into
the most formidable campaigns.
There were similar contradictions during the Convention.
The immense majority of its members abhorred violence.
Sentimental philosophers, they exalted equality, fraternity, and
liberty, yet ended by exerting the most terrible despotism.
The same contradictions were visible during the Directory.
Extremely moderate in their intentions at the outset, the
Assemblies were continually effecting bloodthirsty coups
d'état. They wished to re-establish religious peace,
and finally sent thousands of priests into imprisonment. They
wished to repair the ruins which covered France, and only
succeeded in adding to them.
Thus there was always a complete contradiction between the
individual wills of the men of the revolutionary period and the
deeds of the Assemblies of which they were units.
The truth is that they obeyed invisible forces of which
they were not the masters. Believing that they acted in the name
of pure reason, they were really subject to mystic, affective,
and collective influences, incomprehensible to them, and which we
are only to-day beginning to understand.
Intelligence has progressed in the course of the ages, and
has opened a marvellous outlook to man, although his character,
the real foundation of his mind, and the sure motive of his
actions, has scarcely changed. Overthrown one moment, it re-appears the next. Human nature must be accepted as it is.
The founders of the Revolution did not resign themselves
to the facts of human nature. For the
first time in the history of humanity they attempted to transform
men and society in the name of reason.
Never was any undertaking commenced with such chances of
success. The theorists, who claimed to effect it, had a power in
their hands greater than that of any despot.
Yet, despite this power, despite the success of the
armies, despite Draconian laws and repeated coups
d'état, the Revolution merely heaped ruin upon ruin,
and ended in a dictatorship.
Such an attempt was not useless, since experience is
necessary to the education of the peoples. Without the
Revolution it would have been difficult to prove that pure reason
does not enable us to change human nature, and, consequently,
that no society can be rebuilt by the will of legislators,
however absolute their power.
Commenced by the middle classes for their own profit, the
Revolution speedily became a popular movement, and at the same
time a struggle of the instinctive against the rational, a revolt
against all the constraints which make civilisation out of
barbarism. It was by relying on the principle of popular
sovereignty that the reformers attempted to impose their
doctrines. Guided by leaders, the people intervened incessantly
in the deliberations of the Assemblies, and committed the most
sanguinary acts of violence.
The history of the multitudes during the Revolution is
eminently instructive. It shows the error of the politicians who
attribute all the virtues to the popular soul.
The facts of the Revolution teach us, on the contrary,
that a people freed from social constraints, the foundations of
civilisation, and abandoned to its instinctive impulses, speedily
relapses into its ancestral savagery. Every popular revolution
which succeeds in triumphing is a temporary return to barbarism.
If the Commune of 1871 had lasted, it would have repeated the
Terror. Not having the power to kill so many people, it had to
confine itself to burning the principal monuments of the capital.
The Revolution represents the conflict of psychological
forces liberated from the bonds whose function it is to restrain
them. Popular instincts, Jacobin beliefs, ancestral influences,
appetites, and passions unloosed, all these various influences
engaged in a furious mutual conflict for the space of ten years,
during which time they soaked France in blood and covered the
land with ruins.
Seen from a distance, this seems to be the whole upshot of
the Revolution. There was nothing homogeneous about it. One
must resort to analysis before one can understand and grasp the
great drama and display the impulses which continually actuated
its heroes. In normal times we are guided by the various forms
of logic—rational, affective, collective, and mystic—which more
or less perfectly balance one another. During seasons of
upheaval they enter into conflict, and man is no longer himself.
We have by no means undervalued in this work the
importance of certain acquisitions of the Revolution in respect
of the rights of the people. But with many
other historians, we are forced to admit that the prize gained at
the cost of such ruin and bloodshed would have been obtained at a
later date without effort, by the mere progress of civilisation.
For a few years gained, what a load of material disaster, what
moral disintegration! We are still suffering as a result of the
latter. These brutal pages in the book of history will take long
to efface: they are not effaced as yet.
Our young men of to-day seem to prefer action to thought.
Disdaining the sterile dissertations of the philosophers, they
take no interest in vain speculation concerning matters whose
essential nature remains unknown.
Action is certainly an excellent thing, and all real
progress is a result of action, but it is only useful when
properly directed. The men of the Revolution were assuredly men
of action, yet the illusions which they accepted as guides led
them to disaster.
Action is always hurtful when, despising realities, it
professes violently to change the course of events. One cannot
experiment with society as with apparatus in a laboratory. Our
political upheavals show us what such social errors may cost.
Although the lesson of the Revolution was extremely
categorical, many unpractical spirits, hallucinated by their
dreams, are hoping to recommence it. Socialism, the modern
synthesis of this hope, would be a regression to lower forms of
evolution, for it would paralyse the greatest sources of our
activity. By replacing individual initiative and responsibility
by collective initiative and responsibility mankind would descend
several steps on the scale of human values.
The present time is hardly favourable to such experiments.
While dreamers are pursuing their dreams, exciting appetites and
the passions of the multitude, the peoples are every day arming
themselves more powerfully. All feel that amid the universal
competition of the present time there is no room for weak
nations.
In the centre of Europe a formidable military Power is
increasing in strength, and aspiring to dominate the world, in
order to find outlets for its goods, and for an increasing
population, which it will soon be unable to nourish.
If we continue to shatter our cohesion by intestine
struggles, party rivalries, base religious persecutions, and laws
which fetter industrial development, our part in the world will
soon be over. We shall have to make room for peoples more
solidly knit, who have been able to adapt themselves to natural
necessities instead of pretending to turn back upon their course.
The present does not repeat the past, and the details of history
are full of unforeseen consequences; but in their main lines
events are conditioned by eternal laws.
