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.
