The Psychology of Revolution Part 9

The leader acts especially through suggestion. His success depends on his fas.h.i.+on of provoking this suggestion. Many experiments have shown to what point a collectivity may be subjected to suggestion.[6]

[6] Among the numerous experiments made to prove this fact one of the most remarkable was performed on the pupils of his cla.s.s by Professor Glosson and published in the Revue Scientifique for October 28, 1899.

"I prepared a bottle filled with distilled water carefully wrapped in cotton and packed in a box. After several other experiments I stated that I wished to measure the rapidity with which an odour would diffuse itself through the air, and asked those present to raise their hands the moment they perceived the odour... . I took out the bottle and poured the water on the cotton, turning my head away during the operation, then took up a stop-watch and awaited the result... . I explained that I was absolutely sure that no one present had ever smelt the odour of the chemical composition I had spilt... . At the end of fifteen seconds the majority of those in front had held up their hands, and in forty seconds the odour had reached the back of the hall by fairly regular waves. About three-quarters of those present declared that they perceived the odour. A larger number would doubtless have succ.u.mbed to suggestion, if at the end of a minute I had not been forced to stop the experiment, some of those in the front rows being unpleasantly affected by the odour, and wis.h.i.+ng to leave the hall."

According to the suggestions of the leaders, the mult.i.tude will be calm, furious, criminal, or heroic. These various suggestions may sometimes appear to present a rational aspect, but they will only appear to be reasonable. A crowd is in reality inaccessible to reason; the only ideas capable of influencing it will always be sentiments evoked in the form of images.

The history of the Revolution shows on every page how easily the mult.i.tude follows the most contradictory impulses given by its different leaders. We see it applaud just as vigorously at the triumph of the Girondists, the Hebertists, the Dantonists, and the Terrorists as at their successive downfalls. One may be quite sure, also, that the crowd understood nothing of these events.

At a distance one can only confusedly perceive the part played by the leaders, for they commonly work in the shade. To grasp this clearly we must study them in contemporary events. We shall then see how readily the leader can provoke the most violent popular movements. We are not thinking here of the strikes of the postmen or railway men, in which the discontent of the employees might intervene, but of events in which the crowd was not in the least interested. Such, for example, was the popular rising provoked by a few Socialist leaders amidst the Parisian populace on the morrow of the execution of Ferrer, in Spain. The French crowd had never heard of Ferrer. In Spain his execution was almost unnoticed. In Paris the incitements of a few leaders sufficed to hurl a regular popular army upon the Spanish Emba.s.sy, with the intention of burning it. Part of the garrison had to be employed to protect it. Energetically repulsed, the a.s.sailants contented themselves with sacking a few shops and building some barricades.

At the same time, the leaders gave another proof of their influence. Finally understanding that the burning of a foreign emba.s.sy might be extremely dangerous, they ordered a pacific demonstration for the following day, and were as faithfully obeyed as if they had ordered the most violent riot. No example could better show the importance of leaders and the submission of the crowd

The historians who, from Michelet to M. Aulard, have represented the revolutionary crowd as having acted on its own initiative, without leaders, do not comprehend its psychology.

CHAPTER V

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY a.s.sEMBLIES

1. Psychological Characteristics of the great Revolutionary a.s.semblies.

A great political a.s.sembly, a parliament for example, is a crowd, but a crowd which sometimes fails in effectual action on account of the contrary sentiments of the hostile groups composing it.

The presence of these groups, actuated by different interests, must make us consider an a.s.sembly as formed of superimposed and heterogeneous crowds, each obeying its particular leaders. The law of the mental unity of crowds is manifested only in each group, and it is only as a result of exceptional circ.u.mstances that the different groups act with a single intention.

Each group in an a.s.sembly represents a single being. The individuals contributing to the formation of this being are no longer themselves, and will unhesitatingly vote against their convictions and their wishes. On the eve of the day when Louis XVI. was to be condemned Vergniaud protested with indignation against the suggestion that he should vote for his death; but he did so vote on the following day.

The action of a group consists chiefly in fortifying hesitating opinions. All feeble individual convictions become confirmed upon becoming collective.

Leaders of great repute or unusual violence can sometimes, by acting on all the groups of an a.s.sembly, make them a single crowd. The majority of the members of the Convention enacted measures entirely contrary to their opinions under the influence of a very small number of such leaders.

Collectivities have always given way before active sectaries. The history of the revolutionary a.s.semblies shows how pusillanimous they were, despite the boldness of their language respecting kings, before the leaders of the popular riots. The invasion of a band of energumens commanded by an imperious leader was enough to make them vote then and there the most absurd and contradictory measures.

An a.s.sembly, having the characteristics of a crowd, will, like a crowd, be extreme in its sentiments. Excessive in its violence, it will be excessive in its cowardice. In general it will be insolent to the weak and servile before the strong.

We remember the fearful humility of the Parliament when the youthful Louis XIV. entered, whip in hand, to p.r.o.nounce his brief speech. We know with what increasing impertinence the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly treated Louis XVI. as it felt that he was becoming defenceless. Finally, we recall the terror of the Convention under the reign of Robespierre.

This characteristic of a.s.semblies being a general law, the convocation of an a.s.sembly by a sovereign when his power is failing must be regarded as a gross error in psychology. The a.s.sembling of the States General cost the life of Louis XVI. It all but lost Henry III. his throne, when, obliged to leave Paris, he had the unhappy idea of a.s.sembling the Estates at Blois. Conscious of the weakness of the king, the Estates at once spoke as masters of the situation, modifying taxes, dismissing officials, and claiming that their decisions should have the force of law.

This progressive exaggeration of sentiments was plainly demonstrated in all the a.s.semblies of the Revolution. The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, at first extremely respectful toward the royal authority and its prerogatives, finally proclaimed itself a sovereign a.s.sembly, and treated Louis XVI as a mere official. The Convention, after relatively moderate beginnings, ended with a preliminary form of the Terror, when judgments were still surrounded by certain legal guarantees: then, quickly increasing its powers, it enacted a law depriving all accused persons of the right of defence, permitting their condemnation upon the mere suspicion of being suspect. Yielding more and more to its sanguinary frenzy, it finally decimated itself. Girondists, Hebertists, Dantonists, and Robespierrists successively ended their careers at the hands of the executioner.

This exaggeration of the sentiments of a.s.semblies explains why they were always so little able to control their own destinies and why they so often arrived at conclusions exactly contrary to the ends proposed. Catholic and royalist, the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, instead of the const.i.tutional monarchy it wished to establish and the religion it wished to defend, rapidly led France to a violent republic and the persecution of the clergy.

Political a.s.semblies are composed, as we have seen, of heterogeneous groups, but they have sometimes been formed of h.o.m.ogeneous groups, as, for instance, certain of the clubs, which played so enormous a part during the Revolution, and whose psychology deserves a special examination.

2. The Psychology of the Revolutionary Clubs.

Small a.s.semblies of men possessing the same opinions, the same beliefs, and the same interests, which eliminate all dissentient voices, differ from the great a.s.semblies by the unity of their sentiments and therefore their wills. Such were the communes, the religious congregations, the corporations, and the clubs during the Revolution, the secret societies during the first half of the nineteenth century, and the Freemasons and syndicalists of to-day.

The points of difference between a heterogeneous a.s.sembly and a h.o.m.ogeneous club must be thoroughly grasped if we are to comprehend the progress of the French Revolution. Until the Directory and especially during the Convention the Revolution was directed by the clubs.

Despite the unity of will due to the absence of dissident parties the clubs obey the laws of the psychology of crowds. They are consequently subjugated by leaders. This we see especially in the Jacobin Club, which was dominated by Robespierre.

The function of the leader of a club, a h.o.m.ogeneous crowd, is far more difficult than that of a leader of a heterogeneous crowd. The latter may easily be led by harping on a small number of strings, but in a h.o.m.ogeneous group like a club, whose sentiments and interests are identical, the leader must know how to humour them and is often himself led.

Part of the strength of h.o.m.ogeneous agglomerations resides in their anonymity. We know that during the Commune of 1871 a few anonymous orders sufficed to effect the burning of the finest monuments of Paris: the Hotel de Ville, the Tuileries, the Cour des Comptes, the buildings of the Legion of Honour, &c. A brief order from the anonymous committees, "Burn Finances, burn Tuileries," &c., was immediately executed. An unlooked-for chance only saved the Louvre and its collections. We know too what religious attention is in our days accorded to the most absurd injunctions of the anonymous leaders of the trades unions.

The clubs of Paris and the insurrectionary Commune were not less scrupulously obeyed at the time of the Revolution. An order emanating from these was sufficient to hurl upon the a.s.sembly a popular army which dictated its wishes.

Summing up the history of the Convention in another chapter, we shall see how frequent were these irruptions, and with what servility the a.s.sembly, which according to the legends was so powerful bowed itself before the most imperative injunctions of a handful of rioters. Instructed by experience, the Directory closed the clubs and put an end to the invasion of the populace by energetically shooting them down.

The Convention had early grasped the superiority of h.o.m.ogeneous groups over heterogeneous a.s.semblies in matters of government, which is why it subdivided itself into committees composed each of a limited number of individuals. These committees-of Public Safety, of Finance, &c.-formed small sovereign a.s.semblies in the midst of the larger a.s.sembly. Their power was held in check only by that of the clubs.

The preceding considerations show the power of groups over the wills of the members composing them. If the group is h.o.m.ogeneous, this action is considerable; if it is heterogeneous, it is less considerable but may still become important, either because the more powerful groups of an a.s.sembly will dominate those whose cohesion is weaker or because certain contagious sentiments will often extend themselves to all the members of an a.s.sembly.

A memorable example of this influence of groups occurred at the time of the Revolution, when, on the night of the 4th of August, the n.o.bles voted, on the proposition of one of their members, the abandonment of feudal privileges. Yet we know that the Revolution resulted in part from the refusal of the clergy and the n.o.bles to renounce their privileges. Why did they refuse to renounce them at first? Simply because men in a crowd do not act as the same men singly. Individually no member of the n.o.bility would ever have abandoned his rights.

Of this influence of a.s.semblies upon their members Napoleon at St. Helena cited some curious examples: "Nothing was more common than to meet with men at this period quite unlike the reputation that their acts and words would seem to justify. For instance, one might have supposed Monge to be a terrible fellow; when war was decided upon he mounted the tribune of the Jacobins and declared that he would give his two daughters to the two first soldiers to be wounded by the enemy. He wanted the n.o.bles to be killed, &c. Now, Monge was the most gentle and feeble of men, and wouldn't have had a chicken killed if he had had to do it with his own hands, or even to have it done in his presence."

3. A Suggested Explanation of the Progressive Exaggeration of Sentiments in a.s.semblies.

If collective sentiments were susceptible of exact quant.i.tative measurement, we might translate them by a curve which, after a first gradual ascent, runs upward with extreme rapidity and then falls almost vertically. The equation of this curve might be called the equation of the variations of collective sentiments subjected to a constant excitation.

It is not always easy to explain the acceleration of certain sentiments under the influence of a constant exciting cause. Perhaps, however, one may say that if the laws of psychology are comparable to those of mechanics, a cause of invariable dimensions acting in a continuous fas.h.i.+on will rapidly increase the intensity of a sentiment. We know, for example, that a force which is constant in dimension and direction, such as gravity acting upon a ma.s.s, will cause an accelerated movement. The speed of a free object falling in s.p.a.ce under the influence of gravity will be about 32 feet during the first second, 64 feet during the next, 96 feet during the next, &c. It would be easy, were the moving body allowed to fall from a sufficient height, to give it a velocity sufficient to perforate a plate of steel.

But although this explanation is applicable to the acceleration of a sentiment subjected to a constant exciting cause, it does not tell us why the effects of acceleration finally and suddenly cease. Such a fall is only comprehensible if we bring in physiological factors-that is, if we remember that pleasure, like pain, cannot exceed certain limits, and that all sensations, when too violent, result in the paralysis of sensation. Our organism can only support a certain maximum of joy, pain, or effort, and it cannot support that maximum for long together. The hand which grasps a dynamometer soon exhausts its effort, and is obliged suddenly to let go.

The study of the causes of the rapid disappearance of certain groups of sentiments in a.s.semblies will remind us of the fact that beside the party which is predominant by means of its strength or prestige there are others whose sentiments, restrained by this force or prestige, have not reached their full development. Some chance circ.u.mstance may somewhat weaken the prevailing party, when immediately the suppressed sentiments of the adverse parties may become preponderant. The Mountain learned this lesson after Thermidor.

All a.n.a.logies that we may seek to establish between the laws of material phenomena and those which condition the evolution of affective and mystic factors are evidently extremely rough. They must be so until the mechanism of the cerebral functions is better understood than it is to-day.

PART II

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

BOOK I

THE ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

CHAPTER I

THE OPINIONS OF HISTORIANS CONCERNING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

1. The Historians of the Revolution.

The most contradictory opinions have been expressed respecting the French Revolution, and although only a century separates us from the period in question it seems impossible as yet to judge it calmly. For de Maistre it was "a satanic piece of work," and "never was the action of the spirit of darkness so evidently manifested." For the modern Jacobins it has regenerated the human race.

Foreigners who live in France still regard it as a subject to be avoided in conversation.