The psychology of Marat is rather more complicated, not only because his craving for murder was combined with other elements--wounded self-love, ambition, mystic beliefs, &c.--but also because we must regard him as a semi-lunatic, affected by megalomania, and haunted by fixed ideas.
Before the Revolution he had advanced great scientific pretensions, but no one attached much importance to his maunderings.Dreaming of place and honour, he had only obtained a very subordinate situation in the household of a great noble.
The Revolution opened up an unhoped-for future.Swollen with hatred of the old social system which had not recognised his merits, he put himself at the head of the most violent section of the people.Having publicly glorified the massacres of September, he founded a journal which denounced everybody and clamoured incessantly for executions.
Speaking continually of the interests of the people, Marat became their idol.The majority of his colleagues heartily despised him.Had he escaped the knife of Charlotte Corday, he certainly would not have escaped that of the guillotine.
5.The Destiny of those Members of the Convention who survived the Revolution.
Beside the members of the Convention whose psychology presents particular characteristics there were others--Barras, Fouche, Tallien, Merlin de Thionville, &c.--completely devoid of principles or belief, who only sought to enrich themselves.
They sought to build up enormous fortunes out of the public misery.In ordinary times they would have been qualified as simple scoundrels, but in periods of revolution all standards of vice and virtue seem to disappear.
Although a few Jacobins remained fanatics, the majority renounced their convictions as soon as they had obtained riches, and became the faithful courtiers of Napoleon.Cambaceres, who, on addressing Louis XVI.in prison, called him Louis Capet, under the Empire required his friends to call him ``Highness'' in public and ``Monseigneur'' in private, thus displaying the envious feeling which accompanied the craving for equality in many of the Jacobins.
``The majority of the Jacobins,'' writes M.Madelin ``were greatly enriched, and like Chabot, Bazire, Merlin, Barras, Boursault, Tallien, Barrere, &c., possessed chateaux and estates.Those who were not wealthy as yet were soon to become so...In the Committee of the year III.alone the staff of the Thermidorian party comprised a future prince, 13 future counts, 5future barons, 7 future senators of the Empire, and 6 future Councillors of State, and beside them in the Convention there were, between the future Duke of Otranto to the future Count Regnault, no less than 50 democrats who fifteen years later possessed titles, coats of arms, plumes, carriages, endowments, entailed estates, hotels, and chateaux.
Fouche died worth L600,000.''
The privileges of the ancien regime which had been so bitterly decried were thus very soon re-established for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.To arrive at this result it was necessary to ruin France, to burn entire provinces, to multiply suffering, to plunge innumerable families into despair, to overturn Europe, and to destroy men by the hundred thousand on the field of battle.
In closing this chapter we will recall what we have already said concerning the possibility of judging the men of this period.
Although the moralist is forced to deal severely with certain individuals, because he judges them by the types which society must respect if it is to succeed in maintaining itself, the psychologist is not in the same case.His aim is to understand, and criticism vanishes before a complete comprehension.
The human mind is a very fragile mechanism, and the marionettes which dance upon the stage of history are rarely able to resist the imperious forces which impel them.Heredity, environment, and circumstances are imperious masters.No one can say with certainty what would have been his conduct in the place of the men whose actions he endeavours to interpret.
