2. How the people regards Revolution.
The part of the people has been the same in all revolutions.
It is never the people that conceives them nor directs them. Its
activity is released by means of leaders.
Only when the direct interests of the people are involved
do we see, as recently in Champagne, any fraction of the people
rising spontaneously. A movement thus localised constitutes a
mere riot.
Revolution is easy when the leaders are very influential.
Of this Portugal and Brazil have recently furnished proofs. But
new ideas penetrate the people very slowly indeed. Generally it
accepts a revolution without knowing why, and when by chance it
does succeed in understanding why, the revolution is over long
ago.
The people will create a revolution because it is
persuaded to do so, but it does not understand very much of the
ideas of its leaders; it interprets them in its own fashion, and
this fashion is by no means that of the true authors of the
revolution. The French Revolution furnished a striking example
of this fact.
The Revolution of 1789 had as its real object the
substitution of the power of the nobility by that of the
bourgeoisie; that is, an old élite which had
become incapable was to be replaced by a new élite
which did possess capacity.
There was little question of the people in this first
phase of the Revolution. The sovereignty of the people was
proclaimed, but it amounted only to the right of electing its
representatives.
Extremely illiterate, not hoping, like the middle classes,
to ascend the social scale, not in any way feeling itself the
equal of the nobles, and not aspiring ever to become their equal,
the people had views and interests very different to those of the
upper classes of society.
The struggles of the assembly with the royal power led it
to call for the intervention of the people in these struggles.
It intervened more and more, and the bourgeois revolution rapidly
became a popular revolution.
An idea having no force of its own, and acting only by
virtue of possessing an affective and mystic substratum which
supports it, the theoretical ideas of the bourgeoisie,
before they could act on the people, had to be transformed into a
new and very definite faith, springing from obvious practical
interests.
This transformation was rapidly effected when the people
heard the men envisaged by it as the Government assuring it that
it was the equal of its former masters. It began to regard
itself as a victim, and proceeded to pillage, burn, and massacre,
imagining that in so doing it was exercising a right.
The great strength of the revolutionary principles was
that they gave a free course to the instincts of primitive
barbarity which had been restrained by the secular and inhibitory
action of environment, tradition, and law.
All the social bonds that formerly contained the multitude
were day by day dissolving, so that it conceived a notion of
unlimited power, and the joy of seeing its ancient masters
ferreted out and despoiled. Having become the sovereign people,
were not all things permissible to it?
The motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, a true
manifestation of hope and faith at the beginning of the
Revolution, soon merely served to cover a legal justification of
the sentiments of jealousy, cupidity, and hatred of superiors,
the true motives of crowds unrestrained by discipline. This is
why the Revolution so soon ended in disorder, violence, and
anarchy.
From the moment when the Revolution descended from the
middle to the lower classes of society, it ceased to be a
domination of the instinctive by the
rational, and became, on the contrary, the effort of the
instinctive to overpower the rational.
This legal triumph of the atavistic instincts was
terrible. The whole effort of societies an effort indispensable
to their continued existence—had always been to restrain, thanks
to the power of tradition, customs, and codes, certain natural
instincts which man has inherited from his primitive animality.
It is possible to dominate them—and the more a people does
overcome them the more civilised it is—but they cannot be
destroyed. The influence of various exciting causes will readily
result in their reappearance.
This is why the liberation of popular passions is so
dangerous. The torrent, once escaped from its bed, does not
return until it has spread devastation far and wide. “Woe to
him who stirs up the dregs of a nation,” said Rivarol at the
beginning of the Revolution. “There is no age of
enlightenment for the populace.”
