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.
