3. The Philosophical Ideas of the Bourgeoisie at the
Time of the Revolution.
It is by no means easy to say just what were the social and
political conceptions of a Frenchman of the middle classes at the
moment of the Revolution. They might be reduced to a few
formulæ concerning fraternity, equality, and popular
government, summed up in the celebrated Declaration of the Rights
of Man, of which we shall have occasion to quote a few passages.
The philosophers of the eighteenth century do not seem to
have been very highly rated by the men of the Revolution. Rarely
are they quoted in the speeches of the time. Hypnotised by their
classical memories of Greece and Rome, the new legislators re-read their Plato and their Plutarch. They wished to revive the
constitution of Sparta, with its manners, its frugal habits, and
its laws.
Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades, Manlius Torquatus, Brutus,
Mucius Scævola, even the fabulous Minos himself, became as
familiar in the tribune as in the theatre, and the public went
crazy over them. The
shades of the heroes of antiquity hovered over the revolutionary
assemblies. Posterity alone has replaced them by the shades of
the philosophers of the eighteenth century.
We shall see that in reality the men of this period,
generally represented as bold innovators guided by subtle
philosophers, professed to effect no innovations whatever, but to
return to a past long buried in the mists of history, and which,
moreover, they scarcely ever in the least understood.
The more reasonable, who did not go so far back for their
models, aimed merely at adopting the English constitutional
system, of which Montesquieu and Voltaire had sung the praises,
and which all nations were finally to imitate without violent
crises.
Their ambitions were confined to a desire to perfect the
existing monarchy, not to overthrow it. But in time of
revolution men often take a very different path from that they
propose to take. At the time of the convocation of the States
General no one would ever have supposed that a revolution of
peaceful bourgeoisie and men of letters would rapidly be
transformed into one of the most sanguinary dictatorships of
history.
