THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRATIC BELIEFS SINCE THE REVOLUTION1.Gradual Propagation of Democratic Ideas after the Revolution.
Ideas which are firmly established, incrusted, as it were, in men's minds, continue to act for several generations.Those which resulted from the French Revolution were, like others, subject to this law.
Although the life of the Revolution as a Government was short, the influence of its principles was, on the contrary, very long-lived.Becoming a form of religious belief, they profoundly modified the orientation of the sentiments and ideas of several generations.
Despite a few intervals, the French Revolution has continued up to the present, and still survives.The role of Napoleon was not confined to overturning the world, changing the map of Europe, and remaking the exploits of Alexander.The new rights of the people, created by the Revolution and established by its institutions, have exercised a profound influence.The military work of the conqueror was soon dissolved, but the revolutionary principles which he contributed to propagate have survived him.
The various restorations which followed the Empire caused men at first to become somewhat forgetful of the principles of the Revolution.For fifty years this propagation was far from rapid.
One might almost have supposed that the people had forgotten them.Only a small number of theorists maintained their influence.Heirs to the ``simplicist'' spirit of the Jacobins, believing, like them, that societies can be remade from top to bottom by the laws, and persuaded that the Empire had only interrupted the task of revolution, they wished to resume it.
While waiting until they could recommence, they attempted to spread the principles of the Revolution by means of their writings.Faithful imitators of the men of the Revolution, they never stopped to ask if their schemes for reform were in conformity with human nature.They too were erecting a chimerical society for an ideal man, and were persuaded that the application of their dreams would regenerate the human species.
Deprived of all constructive power, the theorists of all the ages have always been very ready to destroy.Napoleon at St.Helena stated that ``if there existed a monarchy of granite the idealists and theorists would manage to reduce it to powder.''
Among the galaxy of dreamers such as Saint-Simon, Fourier, Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Quinet, &c., we find that only Auguste Comte understood that a transformation of manners and ideas must precede political reorganisation.
Far from favouring the diffusion of democratic ideas, the projects of reform of the theorists of this period merely impeded their progress.Communistic Socialism, which several of them professed would restore the Revolution, finally alarmed the bourgeoisie and even the working-classes.We have already seen that the fear of their ideas was one of the principal causes of the restoration of the Empire.
If none of the chimerical lucubrations of the writers of the first half of the nineteenth century deserve to be discussed, it is none the less interesting to examine them in order to observe the part played by religious and moral ideas which to-day are regarded with contempt.Persuaded that a new society could not, any more than the societies of old, be built up without religious and moral beliefs, the reformers were always endeavouring to found such beliefs.
But on what could they be based? Evidently on reason.By means of reason men create complicated machines: why not therefore a religion and a morality, things which are apparently so simple?
Not one of them suspected the fact that no religious or moral belief ever had rational logic as its basis.Auguste Comte saw no more clearly.We know that he founded a so-called positivist religion, which still has a few followers.Scientists were to form a clergy directed by a new Pope, who was to replace the Catholic Pope.
All these conceptions--political, religious, or moral--had, Irepeat, no other results for a long time than to turn the multitude away from democratic principles.
If these principles did finally become widespread, it was not on account of the theorists, but because new conditions of life had arisen.Thanks to the discoveries of science, industry developed and led to the erection of immense factories.Economic necessities increasingly dominated the wills of Governments and the people and finally created a favourable soil for the extension of Socialism, and above all of Syndicalism, the modern forms of democratic ideas.
2.The Unequal Influence of the Three Fundamental Principles of the Revolution.
The heritage of the Revolution is summed up in its entirety in the one phrase--Liberty, equality, and Fraternity.The principle of equality, as we have seen, has exerted a powerful influence, but the two others did not share its lot.
Although the sense of these terms seems clear enough, they were comprehended in very different fashions according to men and times.We know that the various interpretation of the same words by persons of different mentality has been one of the most frequent causes of the conflicts of history.
To the member of the Convention liberty signified merely the exercise of its unlimited despotism.To a young modern ``intellectual'' the same word means a general release from everything irksome: tradition, law, superiority, &c.To the modern Jacobin liberty consists especially in the right to persecute his adversaries.
Although political orators still occasionally mention liberty in their speeches, they have generally ceased to evoke fraternity.
It is the conflict of the different classes and not their alliance that they teach to-day.Never did a more profound hatred divide the various strata of society and the political parties which lead them.
