2. Illusions respecting the Possibility of separating
Man from his Past and the Power of Transformation attributed to
the Law.
One of the principles which served as a foundation for the
revolutionary institutions was that man may readily be cut off
from his past, and that a society may be re-made in all its parts
by means of institutions. Persuaded in the light of reason that,
except for the primitive ages which were to serve as models, the
past represented an inheritance of errors and superstitions, the
legislators of the day resolved to break entirely with that past.
The better to
emphasise their intention, they founded a new era, transformed
the calendar, and changed the names of the months and seasons.
Supposing all men to be alike, they thought they could
legislate for the human race. Condorcet imagined that he was
expressing an evident truth when he said: “A good law must
be good for all men, just as a geometrical proposition is true
for all.”
The theorists of the Revolution never perceived, behind
the world of visible things, the secret springs which moved them.
A century of biological progress was needed to show how grievous
were their mistakes, and how wholly a being of whatever species
depends on its past.
With the influence of the past, the reformers of the
Revolution were always clashing, without ever understanding it.
They wanted to annihilate it, but were annihilated by it instead.
The faith of law-makers in the absolute power of laws and
institutions, rudely shaken by the end of the Revolution, was
absolute at its outbreak. Grégoire said from the tribune
of the Constituent Assembly, without provoking the least
astonishment: “We could if we would change religion, but we
do not want to.” We know that they did want to later, and we
know how miserably their attempt failed.
Yet the Jacobins had in their hands all the elements of
success. Thanks to the completest of tyrannies, all obstacles
were removed, and the laws which it pleased them to impose were
always accepted. After ten years of violence, of destruction and
burning and
pillage and massacre and general upheaval, their impotence was
revealed so startlingly that they fell into universal
reprobation. The dictator then invoked by the whole of France
was obliged to re-establish the greater part of that which had
been destroyed.
The attempt of the Jacobins to re-fashion society in the
name of pure reason constitutes an experiment of the highest
interest. Probably mankind will never have occasion to repeat it
on so vast a scale.
Although the lesson was a terrible one, it does not seem
to have been sufficient for a considerable class of minds, since
even in our days we hear Socialists propose to rebuild society
from top to bottom according to their chimerical plans.
