THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY1.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 indifferentlyThe 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.
2.Dissolution of the Ancien Regime.The assembling of the States General.
Before they are realised in action, revolutions are sketched out in men's thoughts.Prepared by the causes already studied, the French Revolution commenced in reality with the reign of Louis XVI.More discontented and censorious every day, the middle classes added claim to claim.Everybody was calling for reform.
Louis XVI.thoroughly understood the utility of reform, but he was too weak to impose it on the clergy and the nobility.He could not even retain his reforming ministers, Malesherbes and Turgot.What with famines and increased taxation, the poverty of all classes increased, and the huge pensions drawn by the Court formed a shocking contrast to the general distress.
The notables convoked to attempt to remedy the financial situation refused a system of equal taxation, and granted only insignificant reforms which the Parliament did not even consent to register.It had to be dissolved.The provincial Parliaments made common cause with that of Paris, and were also dissolved.
But they led opinion, and in all parts of France promoted the demand for a meeting of the States General, which had not been convoked for nearly two hundred years.
