The historians whose ideas we have examined in the preceding chapter were extremely positive in their special pleading.
Confined within the limits of belief, they did not attempt to penetrate the domain of knowledge.A monarchical writer was violently hostile to the Revolution, and a liberal writer was its violent apologist.
At the present time we can see the commencement of a movement which will surely lead to the study of the Revolution as one of those scientific phenomena into which the opinions and beliefs of a writer enter so little that the reader does not even suspect them.
This period has not yet come into being; we are still in the period of doubt.The liberal writers who used to be so positive are now so no longer.One may judge of this new state of mind by the following extracts from recent authors:--M.Hanotaux, having vaunted the utility of the Revolution, asks whether its results were not bought too dearly, and adds:--``History hesitates, and will, for a long time yet, hesitate to answer.''
M.Madelin is equally dubious in the book he has recently published:--``I have never felt sufficient authority to form, even in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a phenomenon as the French Revolution.To-day I find it even more difficult to form a brief judgement.Causes, facts, and consequences seem to me to be still extremely debatable subjects.''
One may obtain a still better idea of the transformation of the old ideas concerning the Revolution by perusing the latest writings of its official defenders.While they professed formerly to justify every act of violence by representing it as a simple act of defence, they now confine themselves to pleading extenuating circumstances.I find a striking proof of this new frame of mind in the history of France for the use of schools, published by MM.Aulard and Debidour.Concerning the Terror we read the following lines:--``Blood flowed in waves; there were acts of injustice and crimes which were useless from the point of view of national defence, and odious.But men had lost their heads in the tempest, and, harassed by a thousand dangers, the patriots struck out in their rage.''
We shall see in another part of this work that the first of the two authors whom I have cited is, in spite of his uncompromising Jacobinism, by no means indulgent toward the men formerly qualified as the ``Giants of the Convention.''
The judgments of foreigners upon our Revolution are usually distinctly severe, and we cannot be surprised when we remember how Europe suffered during the twenty years of upheaval in France.
The Germans in particular have been most severe.Their opinion is summed up in the following lines by M.Faguet:--``Let us say it courageously and patriotically, for patriotism consists above all in telling the truth to one's own country:
Germany sees in France, with regard to the past, a people who, with the great words `liberty' and `fraternity' in its mouth, oppressed, trampled, murdered, pillaged, and fleeced her for fifteen years; and with regard to the present, a people who, with the same words on its banners, is organising a despotic, oppressive, mischievous, and ruinous democracy, which none would seek to imitate.This is what Germany may well see in France;and this, according to her books and journals, is, we may assure ourselves, what she does see.''
For the rest, whatever the worth of the verdicts pronounced upon the French Revolution, we may be certain that the writers of the future will consider it as an event as passionately interesting as it is instructive.
A Government bloodthirsty enough to guillotine old men of eighty years, young girls, and little children: which covered France with ruins, and yet succeeded in repulsing Europe in arms; an archduchess of Austria, Queen of France, dying on the scaffold, and a few years later another archduchess, her relative, replacing her on the same throne and marrying a sub-lieutenant, turned Emperor--here are tragedies unique in human history.The psychologists, above all, will derive lessons from a history hitherto so little studied by them.No doubt they will finally discover that psychology can make no progress until it renounces chimerical theories and laboratory experiments in order to study the events and the men who surround us.[7]
[7] This advice is far from being banal.The psychologists of the day pay very little attention to the world about them, and are even surprised that any one should study it.I have come across an interesting proof of this indifferent frame of mind in a review of one of my books which appeared in the Revue philosophique and was inspired by the editor of the review.The author reproaches me with ``exploring the world and the newspapers rather than books.''
