1. Psychological Influences active during the French
Revolution.
THE genesis of the French Revolution, as well as its duration,
was conditioned by elements of a rational, affective, mystic, and
collective nature, each category of which was ruled by a
different logic. It is, as I have said, because they have not
been able to dissociate the respective influences of these
factors that so many historians have interpreted this period so
indifferently
The rational element usually invoked as an explanation
exerted in reality but a very slight influence. It prepared the
way for the Revolution, but maintained it only at the outset,
while it was still exclusively middle-class. Its action was
manifested by many measures of the time, such as the proposals to
reform the taxes, the suppression of the privileges of a useless
nobility, &c.
As soon as the Revolution reached the people, the
influence of the rational elements speedily vanished before that
of the affective and collective elements. As for the mystic
elements, the foundation of the revolutionary faith, they made
the army fanatical and propagated the new belief throughout the
world.
We shall see these various elements as they appeared in
events and in the psychology of individuals. Perhaps the most
important was the mystic element. The Revolution cannot be
clearly comprehended—we cannot repeat it too often—unless it is
considered as the formation of a religious belief. What I have
said elsewhere of all beliefs applies equally to the Revolution.
Referring, for instance, to the chapter on the Reformation, the
reader will see that it presents more than one analogy with the
Revolution.
Having wasted so much time in demonstrating the slight
rational value of beliefs, the philosophers are to-day beginning
to understand their function better. They have been forced to
admit that these are the only factors which possess an influence
sufficient to transform all the elements of a civilisation.
They impose themselves on men apart from reason and have
the power to polarise men's thoughts and feelings in one
direction. Pure reason had never such a power, for men were
never impassioned by reason.
The religious form rapidly assumed by the Revolution
explains its power of expansion and the prestige which it
possessed and has retained.
Few historians have understood that this great monument
ought to be regarded as the foundation of a new religion. The
penetrating mind of Tocqueville, I believe, was the first to
perceive as much.
“The French Revolution,” he wrote, “was a
political revolution which operated in the manner of and assumed
something of the aspect of a religious revolution. See by what
regular and characteristic traits it finally resembled the
latter: not only did it spread itself far and wide like a
religious revolution, but, like the latter, it spread itself by
means of preaching and propaganda. A political revolution which
inspires proselytes, which is preached as passionately to
foreigners as it is accomplished at home: consider what a novel
spectacle was this.”
The religious side of the Revolution being granted, the
accompanying fury and devastation are easily explained. History
shows us that such are always the accompaniments of the birth of
religions. The Revolution was therefore certain to provoke the
violence and intolerance the triumphant deities demand from their
adepts. It overturned all Europe for twenty years, ruined
France, caused the death of millions of men, and cost the country
several invasions: but it is as a rule only at the cost of such
catastrophes that a people can change its beliefs.
Although the mystic element is always the foundation of
beliefs, certain affective and rational elements are quickly
added thereto. A belief thus serves to group sentiments and
passions and interests which belong to the affective domain.
Reason then envelops the whole, seeking to justify events in
which, however, it played no part whatever.
At the moment of the Revolution every one, according to
his aspirations, dressed the new belief in a different rational
vesture. The peoples saw in it only the suppression of the
religious and political despotisms
and hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers
like Goethe and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it
the triumph of reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France
“to breathe the air of liberty and to assist at the obsequies
of despotism.”
These intellectual illusions did not last long. The
evolution of the drama soon revealed the true foundations of the
dream.
