2. CHAPTER II
THE MYSTIC MENTALITY AND THE JACOBIN
MENTALITY
1. Classification of Mentalities predominant in Time
of Revolution.
THE classifications without which the study of the sciences is
impossible must necessarily establish the discontinuous in the
continuous, and for that reason are to a certain extent
artificial. But they are necessary, since the continuous is only
accessible in the form of the discontinuous.
To create broad distinctions between the various
mentalities observable in time of revolution, as we are about to
do, is obviously to separate elements which encroach upon one
another, which are fused or superimposed. We must resign
ourselves to losing a little in exactitude in order to gain in
lucidity. The fundamental types enumerated at the end of the
preceding chapter, and which we are about to describe, synthetise
groups which would escape analysis were we to attempt to study
them in all their complexity.
We have shown that man is influenced by different logics,
which under normal conditions exist in juxtaposition, without
mutually influencing one another. Under the action of various
events they enter into mutual conflict, and the irreducible
differences
which divide them are visibly manifested, involving considerable
individual and social upheavals.
Mystic logic, which we shall presently consider as it
appears in the Jacobin mind, plays a very important part. But it
is not alone in its action. The other forms of logic—affective
logic, collective logic, and rational logic—may predominate
according to circumstances.
2. The Mystic Mentality.
Leaving aside for the moment the influence of affective,
rational, and collective logic, we will occupy ourselves solely
with the considerable part played by the mystic elements which
have prevailed in so many revolutions, and notably in the French
Revolution.
The chief characteristic of the mystic temperament
consists in the attribution of a mysterious power to superior
beings or forces, which are incarnated in the form of idols,
fetiches, words, or formulæ.
The mystic spirit is at the bottom of all the religious
and most political beliefs. These latter would often vanish
could we deprive them of the mystic elements which are their
chief support.
Grafted on the sentiments and passionate impulses which it
directs, mystic logic constitutes the might of the great popular
movements. Men who would be by no means ready to allow
themselves to be killed for the best of reasons will readily
sacrifice their lives to a mystic ideal which has become an
object of adoration.
The principles of the Revolution speedily inspired a wave
of mystic enthusiasm analogous to those provoked by the various
religious beliefs which had preceded it. All they did was to
change the
orientation of a mental ancestry which the centuries had
solidified.
So there is nothing astonishing in the savage zeal of the
men of the Convention. Their mystic mentality was the same as
that of the Protestants at the time of the Reformation. The
principal heroes of the Terror—Couthon, Saint-Just, Robespierre,
&c.—were Apostles. Like Polyeuctes, destroying the altars of
the false gods to propagate his faith, they dreamed of converting
the globe. Their enthusiasm spilled itself over the earth.
Persuaded that their magnificent formulæ were sufficient to
overturn thrones, they did not hesitate to declare war upon
kings. And as a strong faith is always superior to a doubtful
faith, they victoriously faced all Europe.
The mystic spirit of the leaders of the Revolution was
betrayed in the least details of their public life. Robespierre,
convinced that he was supported by the Almighty, assured his
hearers in a speech that the Supreme Being had “decreed the
Republic since the beginning of time.” In his quality of
High Pontiff of a State religion he made the Convention vote a
decree declaring that “the French People recognises the
existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the
soul.” At the festival of this Supreme Being, seated on a
kind of throne, he preached a lengthy sermon.
The Jacobin Club, directed by Robespierre, finally assumed
all the functions of a council. There Maximilien proclaimed
“the idea of a Great Being who watches over oppressed
innocence and who punishes triumphant crime.”
All the heretics who criticised the Jacobin orthodoxy
were excommunicated—that is, were sent to the Revolutionary
Tribunal, which they left only for the scaffold.
The mystic mentality of which Robespierre was the most
celebrated representative did not die with him. Men of identical
mentality are to be found among the French politicians of to-day.
The old religious beliefs no longer rule their minds, but they
are the creatures of political creeds which they would very soon
force on others, as did Robespierre, if they had the chance of so
doing. Always ready to kill if killing would spread their faith,
the mystics of all ages have employed the same means of
persuasion as soon as they have become the masters.
It is therefore quite natural that Robespierre should
still have many admirers. Minds moulded like his are to be met
with in their thousands. His conceptions were not guillotined
with him. Old as humanity, they will only disappear with the
last believer.
This mystic aspect of all revolutions has escaped the
majority of the historians. They will persist for a long time
yet in trying to explain by means of rational logic a host of
phenomena which have nothing to do with reason. I have already
cited a passage from the history of MM. Lavisse and Rambaud, in
which the Reformation is explained as “the result of the free
individual reflections suggested to simple folk by an extremely
pious conscience, and a bold and courageous reason.”
Such movements are never comprehended by those who imagine
that their origin is rational. Political or religious, the
beliefs which have moved the world
possess a common origin and follow the same laws. They are
formed, not by the reason, but more often contrary to reason.
Buddhism, Christianity, Islamism, the Reformation, sorcery,
Jacobinism, socialism, spiritualism, &c., seem very different
forms of belief, but they have, I repeat, identical mystic and
affective bases, and obey forms of logic which have no affinity
with rational logic. Their might resides precisely in the fact
that reason has as little power to create them as to transform
them.
The mystic mentality of our modern political apostles is
strongly marked in an article dealing with one of our recent
ministers, which I cite from a leading journal:
“One may ask into what category does M. A—fall?
Could we say, for instance, that he belongs to the group of
unbelievers? Far from it! Certainly M. A— has not adopted
any positive faith; certainly he curses Rome and Geneva,
rejecting all the traditional dogmas and all the known Churches.
But if he makes a clean sweep it is in order to found his own
Church on the ground so cleared, a Church more dogmatic than all
the rest; and his own inquisition, whose brutal intolerance would
have no reason to envy the most notorious of Torquemadas.
“ `We cannot,' he says, `allow such a thing as
scholastic neutrality. We demand lay instruction in all its
plenitude, and are consequently the enemies of educational
liberty.' If he does not suggest erecting the stake and the
pyre, it is only on account of the evolution of manners, which he
is forced to take into account to a certain extent, whether he
will or no. But, not being able to commit men to the torture, he
invokes the secular arm to condemn their doctrines to death.
This is exactly the point of view of the great inquisitors. It
is the same attack upon thought. This freethinker has so free a
spirit that every philosophy he does not accept appears to him,
not only ridiculous and grotesque, but criminal. He flatters
himself that he alone is in possession of the absolute truth. Of
this he is so entirely sure that everyone who contradicts him
seems to him an execrable monster and a public enemy. He does
not suspect for a moment that after all his personal views are
only hypotheses, and that he is all the more laughable for
claiming a Divine right for them precisely because they deny
divinity. Or, at least, they profess to do so; but they
re-establish it in another shape, which immediately makes
one regret the old. M. A— is a sectary of the goddess
Reason, of whom he has made a Moloch, an oppressive deity
hungry for sacrifice. No more liberty of thought for any
one except for himself and his friends; such is the free
thought of M. A—. The outlook is truly attractive.
But perhaps too many idols have been cast down
during the last few centuries for men to bow before this
one.”
We must hope for the sake of liberty that these gloomy
fanatics will never finally become our masters.
Given the silent power of reason over mystic beliefs, it
is quite useless to seek to discuss, as is so often done, the
rational value of revolutionary or political ideas. Only their
influence can interest us. It matters little that the theories
of the supposed equality of men, the original goodness of
mankind, the possibility of re-making society by means of laws,
have
been given the lie by observation and experience. These empty
illusions must be counted among the most potent motives of action
that humanity has known.
3. The Jacobin Mentality.
Although the term “Jacobin mentality” does not really
belong to any true classification, I employ it here because it
sums up a clearly defined combination which constitutes a
veritable psychological species.
This mentality dominates the men of the French Revolution,
but is not peculiar to them, as it still represents one of the
most active elements in our politics.
The mystic mentality which we have already considered is
an essential factor of the Jacobin mind, but it is not in itself
enough to constitute that mind. Other elements, which we shall
now examine, must be added.
The Jacobins do not in the least suspect their mysticism.
On the contrary, they profess to be guided solely by pure reason.
During the Revolution they invoked reason incessantly, and
considered it as their only guide to conduct.
The majority of historians have adopted this rationalist
conception of the Jacobin mind, and Taine fell into the same
error. It is in the abuse of rationalism that he seeks the
origin of a great proportion of the acts of the Jacobins. The
pages in which he has dealt with the subject contain many truths,
however, and as they are in other ways very remarkable, I
reproduce the most important passages here:—
“Neither exaggerated self-love nor dogmatic
reasoning is rare in the human species. In all countries these
two roots of the Jacobin spirit subsist, secret and
indestructible. . . . At twenty years of age, when a young man
is entering into the world, his reason is stimulated
simultaneously with his pride. In the first place, whatever
society he may move in, it is contemptible to pure reason, for it
has not been constructed by a philosophic legislator according to
a principle, but successive generations have arranged it
according to their multiple and ever-changing needs. It is not
the work of logic, but of history, and the young reasoner shrugs
his shoulders at the sight of this old building, whose site is
arbitrary, whose architecture is incoherent, and whose
inconveniences are obvious. . . . The majority of young people,
above all those who have their way to make, are more or less
Jacobin on leaving college. . . . Jacobinism is born of social
decomposition just as mushrooms are born of a fermenting soil.
Consider the authentic monuments of its thought—the speeches of
Robespierre and Saint-Just, the debates of the Legislative
Assembly and the Convention, the harangues, addresses, and
reports of Girondists and Montagnards. Never did men speak so
much to say so little; the empty verbiage and swollen emphasis
swamp any truth there may be beneath their monotony and their
turgidity. The Jacobin is full of respect for the phantoms of
his reasoning brain; in his eyes they are more real than living
men, and their suffrage is the only suffrage he recognises—he
will march onward in all sincerity at the head of a procession of
imaginary followers. The millions of metaphysical wills which he
has created in the image of his own will sustain
him by their unanimous assent, and he will project outwards, like
a chorus of triumph and acclamation, the inward echo of his own
voice.”
While admiring Taine's description, I think he has not
exactly grasped the psychology of the Jacobin.
The mind of the true Jacobin, at the time of the
Revolution as now, was composed of elements which we must analyse
if we are to understand its function.
This analysis will show in the first place that the
Jacobin is not a rationalist, but a believer. Far from building
his belief on reason, he moulds reason to his belief, and
although his speeches are steeped in rationalism he employs it
very little in his thoughts and his conduct.
A Jacobin who reasoned as much as he is accused of
reasoning would be sometimes accessible to the voice of reason.
Now, observation proves, from the time of the Revolution to our
own days, that the Jacobin is never influenced by reasoning,
however just, and it is precisely here that his strength resides.
And why is he not accessible to reason? Simply because
his vision of things, always extremely limited, does not permit
of his resisting the powerful and passionate impulses which guide
him.
These two elements, feeble reason and strong passions,
would not of themselves constitute the Jacobin mind. There is
another.
Passion supports convictions, but hardly ever creates
them. Now, the true Jacobin has forcible convictions. What is
to sustain them? Here the mystic elements whose action we have
already studied come into play. The Jacobin is a mystic who has
replaced the old divinities by new gods. Imbued with the power
of words and formulæ, he attributes to these a mysterious
power. To serve these exigent divinities he does not shrink from
the most violent measures. The laws voted by our modern Jacobins
furnish a proof of this fact.
The Jacobin mentality is found especially in narrow and
passionate characters. It implies, in fact, a narrow and rigid
mind, inaccessible to all criticism and to all considerations but
those of faith.
The mystic and affective elements which dominate the mind
of the Jacobin condemn him to an extreme simplicity. Grasping
only the superficial relations of things, nothing prevents him
from taking for realities the chimerical images which are born of
his imagination. The sequence of phenomena and their results
escape him. He never raises his eyes from his dream.
As we may see, it is not by the development of his logical
reason that the Jacobin exceeds. He possesses very little logic
of this kind, and therefore he often becomes dangerous. Where a
superior man would hesitate or halt the Jacobin, who has placed
his feeble reason at the service of his impulses, goes forward
with certainty.
So that although the Jacobin is a great reasoner, this
does not mean that he is in the least guided by reason. When he
imagines he is being led by reason it is really his passions and
his mysticism that lead him. Like all those who are convinced
and hemmed in by the walls of faith, he can never escape there-from.
A true aggressive theologian, he is astonishingly
like the disciples of Calvin described in a previous chapter.
Hypnotised by their faith, nothing could deter them from their
object. All those who contradicted their articles of faith were
considered worthy of death. They too seemed to be powerful
reasoners. Ignorant, like the Jacobins, of the secret forces
that led them, they believed that reason was their sole guide,
while in reality they were the slaves of mysticism and passion.
The truly rationalistic Jacobin would be incomprehensible,
and would merely make reason despair. The passionate and
mystical Jacobin is, on the contrary, easily intelligible.
With these three elements—a very weak reasoning power,
very strong passions, and an intense mysticism—we have the true
psychological components of the mind of the Jacobin.
