CHAPTER III
THE REVOLUTIONARY AND CRIMINAL
MENTALITIES
1. The Revolutionary Mentality.
WE have just seen that the mystic elements are one of the
components of the Jacobin mentality. We shall now see that they
enter into another form of mentality which is also clearly
defined, the revolutionary mentality.
In all ages societies have contained a certain number of
restless spirits, unstable and discontented, ready to rebel
against any established order of affairs. They are actuated by
the mere love of revolt, and if some magic power could realise
all their desires they would simply revolt again.
This special mentality often results from a faulty
adaptation of the individual to his surroundings, or from an
excess of mysticism, but it may also be merely a question of
temperament or arise from pathological disturbances.
The need of revolt presents very different degrees of
intensity, from simple discontent expressed in words directed
against men and things to the need of destroying them. Sometimes
the individual turns upon himself the revolutionary frenzy that
he cannot otherwise exercise. Russia is full of these madmen,
who, not content with committing arson or throwing bombs at
hazard into the crowd, finally mutilate themselves, like the
Skopzis and other analogous sects.
These perpetual rebels are generally highly suggestible
beings, whose mystic mentality is obsessed by fixed ideas.
Despite the apparent energy indicated by their actions they are
really weak characters, and are incapable of mastering themselves
sufficiently to resist the impulses that rule them. The mystic
spirit which animates them furnishes pretexts for their violence,
and enables them to regard themselves as great reformers.
In normal times the rebels which every society contains
are restrained by the laws, by their environment—in short, by
all the usual social constraints, and therefore remain
undetected. But as soon as a time of disturbance begins these
constraints grow weaker, and the rebel can give a free reign to
his instincts. He then becomes the accredited leader of a
movement. The motive of the revolution matters little to him; he
will give his life indifferently for the red flag or the white,
or for the liberation of a country which he has heard vaguely
mentioned.
The revolutionary spirit is not always pushed to the
extremes which render it dangerous. When, instead of deriving
from affective or mystic impulses, it has an intellectual origin,
it may become a source of progress. It is thanks to those
spirits who are sufficiently independent to be intellectually
revolutionary that a civilisation is able to escape from the yoke
of tradition and habit when this becomes too heavy. The
sciences, arts, and industries especially have progressed
by the aid of such men. Galileo, Lavoisier, Darwin, and Pasteur
were such revolutionaries.
Although it is not necessary that a nation should possess
any large number of such spirits, it is very necessary that it
should possess some. Without them men would still be living in
caves.
The revolutionary audacity which results in discoveries
implies very rare faculties. It necessitates notably an
independence of mind sufficient to escape from the influence of
current opinions, and a judgement that can grasp, under
superficial analogies, the hidden realities. This form of
revolutionary spirit is creative, while that examined above is
destructive.
The revolutionary mentality may, therefore, be compared to
certain physiological states in the life of the individual which
are normally useful, but which, when exaggerated, take a
pathological form which is always hurtful.
2. The Criminal Mentality.
All the civilised societies inevitably drag behind them a
residue of degenerates, of the unadapted, of persons affected by
various taints. Vagabonds, beggars, fugitives from justice,
thieves, assassins, and starving creatures that live from day to
day, may constitute the criminal population of the great cities.
In ordinary times these waste products of civilisation are more
or less restrained by the police. During revolution nothing
restrains them, and they can easily gratify their instincts to
murder and plunder. In the dregs of society the revolutionaries
of all times are sure of finding recruits. Eager only to kill
and to plunder, little matters to them the cause they are
sworn to defend. If the chances of murder and pillage are better
in the party attacked, they will promptly change their colours.
To these criminals, properly so called, the incurable
plague of all societies, we must add the class of semi-criminals.
Wrongdoers on occasion, they never rebel so long as the fear of
the established order restrains them, but as soon as it weakens
they enrol themselves in the army of revolution.
These two categories—habitual and occasional criminals—
form an army of disorder which is fit for nothing but the
creation of disorder. All the revolutionaries, all the founders
of religious or political leagues, have constantly counted on
their support.
We have already stated that this population, with its
criminal mentality, exercised a considerable influence during the
French Revolution. It always figured in the front rank of the
riots which occurred almost daily. Certain historians have
spoken with respect and emotion of the way in which the sovereign
people enforced its will upon the Convention, invading the hall
armed with pikes, the points of which were sometimes decorated
with newly severed heads. If we analyse the elements composing
the pretended delegations of the sovereign people, we shall find
that, apart from a small number of simple souls who submitted to
the impulses of the leaders, the mass was almost entirely formed
of the bandits of whom I have been speaking. To them were due
the innumerable murders of which the massacres of September and
the killing of the Princesse de Lamballe were merely typical.
They terrorised all the great Assemblies, from the Constituent
Assembly to the Convention, and for ten years they helped to
ravage France. If by some miracle this army of criminals could
have been eliminated, the progress of the Revolution would have
been very different. They stained it with blood from its dawn to
its decline. Reason could do nothing with them but they could do
much against reason.
