1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF
REVOLUTIONS
CHAPTER I
SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS
1. Classification of Revolutions.
WE generally apply the term revolution to sudden
political changes, but the expression may be employed to denote
all sudden transformations, or transformations apparently sudden,
whether of beliefs, ideas, or doctrines.
We have considered elsewhere the part played by the
rational, affective, and mystic factors in the genesis of the
opinions and beliefs which determine conduct. We need not
therefore return to the subject here.
A revolution may finally become a belief, but it often
commences under the action of perfectly rational motives: the
suppression of crying abuses, of a detested despotic government,
or an unpopular sovereign, &c.
Although the origin of a revolution may be perfectly
rational, we must not forget that the reasons invoked in
preparing for it do not influence the crowd
until they have been transformed into sentiments. Rational logic
can point to the abuses to be destroyed, but to move the
multitude its hopes must be awakened. This can only be effected
by the action of the affective and mystic elements which give man
the power to act. At the time of the French Revolution, for
example, rational logic, in the hands of the philosophers,
demonstrated the inconveniences of the
ancien
régime, and excited the desire to change it. Mystic
logic inspired belief in the virtues of a society created in all
its members according to certain principles. Affective logic
unchained the passions confined by the bonds of ages and led to
the worst excesses. Collective logic ruled the clubs and the
Assemblies and impelled their members to actions which neither
rational nor affective nor mystic logic would ever have caused
them to commit.
Whatever its origin, a revolution is not productive of
results until it has sunk into the soul of the multitude. Then
events acquire special forms resulting from the peculiar
psychology of crowds. Popular movements for this reason have
characteristics so pronounced that the description of one will
enable us to comprehend the others.
The multitude is, therefore, the agent of a revolution;
but not its point of departure. The crowd represents an
amorphous being which can do nothing, and will nothing, without a
head to lead it. It will quickly exceed the impulse once
received, but it never creates it.
The sudden political revolutions which strike the
historian most forcibly are often the least important. The great
revolutions are those of manners and
thought. Changing the name of a government does not transform
the mentality of a people. To overthrow the institutions of a
people is not to re-shape its soul.
The true revolutions, those which transform the destinies
of the peoples, are most frequently accomplished so slowly that
the historians can hardly point to their beginnings. The term
evolution is, therefore, far more appropriate than revolution.
The various elements we have enumerated as entering into
the genesis of the majority of revolutions will not suffice to
classify them. Considering only the designed object, we will
divide them into scientific revolutions, political revolutions,
and religious revolutions.
2. Scientific Revolutions.
Scientific revolutions are by far the most important.
Although they attract but little attention, they are often
fraught with remote consequences, such as are not engendered by
political revolutions. We will therefore put them first,
although we cannot study them here.
For instance, if our conceptions of the universe have
profoundly changed since the time of the Revolution, it is
because astronomical discoveries and the application of
experimental methods have revolutionised them, by demonstrating
that phenomena, instead of being conditioned by the caprices of
the gods, are ruled by invariable laws.
Such revolutions are fittingly spoken of as evolution, on
account of their slowness. But there are others which, although
of the same order, deserve the name of revolution by reason of
their rapidity: we
his instance the theories of Darwin, overthrowing the whole
science of biology in a few years; the discoveries of Pasteur,
which revolutionised medicine during the lifetime of their
author; and the theory of the dissociation of matter, proving
that the atom, formerly supposed to be eternal, is not immune
from the laws which condemn all the elements of the universe to
decline and perish.
These scientific revolutions in the domain of ideas are
purely intellectual. Our sentiments and beliefs do not affect
them. Men submit to them without discussing them. Their results
being controllable by experience, they escape all criticism.
3. Political Revolutions.
Beneath and very remote from these scientific revolutions,
which generate the progress of civilisations, are the religious
and political revolutions, which have no kinship with them.
While scientific revolutions derive solely from rational
elements, political and religious beliefs are sustained almost
exclusively by affective and mystic factors. Reason plays only a
feeble part in their genesis.
I insisted at some length in my book Opinions and
Beliefs on the affective and mystic origin of beliefs,
showing that a political or religious belief constitutes an act
of faith elaborated in unconsciousness, over which, in spite of
all appearances, reason has no hold. I also showed that belief
often reaches such a degree of intensity that nothing can be
opposed to it. The man hypnotised by his faith becomes an
Apostle, ready to sacrifice his interests, his happiness, and
even his life for the triumph of his faith. The absurdity of
his belief matters little; for him it is a burning reality.
Certitudes of mystic origin possess the marvellous power of
entire domination over thought, and can only be affected by time.
By the very fact that it is regarded as an absolute truth
a belief necessarily becomes intolerant. This explains the
violence, hatred, and persecution which were the habitual
accompaniments of the great political and religious revolutions,
notably of the Reformation and the French Revolution.
Certain periods of French history remain incomprehensible
if we forget the affective and mystic origin of beliefs, their
necessary intolerance, the impossibility of reconciling them when
they come into mutual contact, and, finally, the power conferred
by mystic beliefs upon the sentiments which place themselves at
their service.
The foregoing conceptions are too novel as yet to have
modified the mentality of the historians. They will continue to
attempt to explain, by means of rational logic, a host of
phenomena which are foreign to it.
Events such as the Reformation, which overwhelmed France
for a period of fifty years, were in no wise determined by
rational influences. Yet rational influences are always invoked
in explanation, even in the most recent works. Thus, in the
General History of Messrs. Lavisse and Rambaud, we read
the following explanation of the Reformation:—
“It was a spontaneous movement, born here and there
amidst the people, from the reading of the Gospels and the free
individual reflections which were suggested to simple persons by
an extremely pious conscience and a very bold reasoning
power.”
Contrary to the assertion of these historians, we may say
with certainty, in the first place, that such movements are never
spontaneous, and secondly, that reason takes no part in their
elaboration.
The force of the political and religious beliefs which
have moved the world resides precisely in the fact that, being
born of affective and mystic elements, they are neither created
nor directed by reason.
Political or religious beliefs have a common origin and
obey the same laws. They are formed not with the aid of reason,
but more often contrary to all reason. Buddhism, Islamism, the
Reformation, Jacobinism, Socialism, &c., seem very different
forms of thought. Yet they have identical affective and mystic
bases, and obey a logic that has no affinity with rational logic.
Political revolutions may result from beliefs established
in the minds of men, but many other causes produce them. The
word discontent sums them up. As soon as discontent is
generalised a party is formed which often becomes strong enough
to struggle against the Government.
Discontent must generally have been accumulating for a
long time in order to produce its effects. For this reason a
revolution does not always represent a phenomenon in process of
termination followed by another which is commencing but rather a
continuous phenomenon, having somewhat accelerated its evolution.
All the modern revolutions, however, have been abrupt movements,
entailing the instantaneous overthrow of governments. Such, for
example, were the Brazilian, Portuguese, Turkish, and Chinese
revolutions.
To the contrary of what might be supposed, the
very conservative peoples are addicted to the most violent
revolutions. Being conservative, they are not able to evolve
slowly, or to adapt themselves to variations of environment, so
that when the discrepancy
becomes too extreme they are bound to adapt themselves suddenly.
This sudden evolution constitutes a revolution.
Peoples able to adapt themselves progressively do not
always escape revolution. It was only by means of a revolution
that the English, in 1688, were able to terminate the struggle
which had dragged on for a century between the monarchy, which
sought to make itself absolute, and the nation, which claimed the
right to govern itself through the medium of its representatives.
The great revolutions have usually commenced from the top,
not from the bottom; but once the people is unchained it is to
the people that revolution owes its might.
It is obvious that revolutions have never taken place, and
will never take place, save with the aid of an important fraction
of the army. Royalty did not disappear in France on the day when
Louis XVI. was guillotined, but at the precise moment when his
mutinous troops refused to defend him.
It is more particularly by mental contagion that armies
become disaffected, being indifferent enough at heart to the
established order of things. As soon as the coalition of a few
officers had succeeded in overthrowing the Turkish Government the
Greek officers thought to imitate them and to change their
government, although there was no analogy between the two
régimes,
A military movement may overthrow a government—and in the
Spanish republics the Government is hardly ever destroyed by any
other means—but if the revolution is to be productive of great
results it must always be based upon general discontent and
general hopes.
Unless it is universal and excessive, discontent alone is
not sufficient to bring about a revolution. It is easy to lead a
handful of men to pillage, destroy, and massacre, but to raise a
whole people, or any great portion of that people, calls for the
continuous or repeated action of leaders. These exaggerate the
discontent; they persuade the discontented that the government is
the sole cause of all the trouble, especially of the prevailing
dearth, and assure men that the new system proposed by them will
engender an age of felicity. These ideas germinate, propagating
themselves by suggestion and contagion, and the moment arrives
when the revolution is ripe.
In this fashion the Christian Revolution and the French
Revolution were prepared. That the latter was effected in a few
years, while the first required many, was due to the fact that
the French Revolution promptly had an armed force at its
disposal, while Christianity was long in winning material power.
In the beginning its only adepts were the lowly, the poor, and
the slaves, filled with enthusiasm by the prospect of seeing
their miserable life transformed into an eternity of delight. By
a phenomenon of contagion from below, of which history affords us
more than one example, the doctrine finally invaded the upper
strata of the nation, but it was a long time before an
emperor considered the new faith sufficiently widespread to be
adopted as the official religion.
4. The Results of Political Revolutions.
When a political party is triumphant it naturally seeks to
organise society in accordance with its interests. The
organisation will differ accordingly as the revolution has been
effected by the soldiers, the Radicals, or the Conservatives, &c.
The new laws and institutions will depend on the interests of the
triumphant party and of the classes which have assisted it—the
clergy for instance.
If the revolution has triumphed only after a violent
struggle, as was the case with the French Revolution, the victors
will reject at one sweep the whole arsenal of the old law. The
supporters of the fallen régime will be persecuted,
exiled, or exterminated.
The maximum of violence in these persecutions is attained
when the triumphant party is defending a belief in addition to
its material interests. Then the conquered need hope for no
pity. Thus may be explained the expulsion of the Moors from
Spain, the autodafés of the Inquisition, the executions of
the Convention, and the recent laws against the religious
congregations in France.
The absolute power which is assumed by the victors leads
them sometimes to extreme measures, such as the Convention's
decree that gold was to be replaced by paper, that goods were to
be sold at determined prices, &c. Very soon it runs up against a
wall of unavoidable necessities, which turn opinion against its
tyranny, and finally leave it defenceless before attack, as
befell at the end of the French Revolution. The
same thing happened recently to a Socialist Australian ministry
composed almost exclusively of working-men. It enacted laws so
absurd, and accorded such privileges to the trade unions, that
public opinion rebelled against it so unanimously that in three
months it was overthrown.
But the cases we have considered are exceptional. The
majority of revolutions have been accomplished in order to place
a new sovereign in power. Now this sovereign knows very well
that the first condition of maintaining his power consists in not
too exclusively favouring a single class, but in seeking to
conciliate all. To do this he will establish a sort of
equilibrium between them, so as not to be dominated by any one of
these classes. To allow one class to become predominant is to
condemn himself presently to accept that class as his master.
This law is one of the most certain of political psychology. The
kings of France understood it very well when they struggled so
energetically against the encroachments first of the nobility and
then of the clergy. If they had not done so their fate would
have been that of the German Emperors of the Middle Ages, who,
excommunicated by the Pope, were reduced, like Henry IV. at
Canossa, to make a pilgrimage and humbly to sue for the Pope's
forgiveness.
This same law has continually been verified during the
course of history. When at the end of the Roman Empire the
military caste became preponderant, the emperors depended
entirely upon their soldiers, who appointed and deposed them at
will.
It was therefore a great advantage for France that she was
so long governed by a monarch almost
absolute, supposed to hold his power by divine right, and
surrounded therefore by a considerable prestige. Without such an
authority he could have controlled neither the feudal nobility,
nor the clergy, nor the parliaments. If Poland, towards the end
of the sixteenth century, had also possessed an absolute and
respected monarchy, she would not have descended the path of
decadence which led to her disappearance from the map of Europe.
We have shewn in this chapter that political revolutions
may be accompanied by important social transformations. We shall
soon see how slight are these transformations compared to those
produced by religious revolutions.