We have travelled a long way since the time when historians, in their singular blindness, and great poets, who possessed more talent than psychology, would hold forth in indignant accents against the coup d'etat of Brumaire. What profound illusions underlay the assertion that ``France lay fair in Messidor's great sun''! And other illusions no less profound underlay such verdicts as that of Victor Hugo concerning this period. We have seen that the ``Crime of Brumaire'' had as an enthusiastic accomplice, not only the Government itself but the whole of France, which it delivered from anarchy.
One may wonder how intelligent men could so misjudge a period of history which is nevertheless so clear. It was doubtless because they saw events through their own convictions, and we know what transformations the truth may suffer for the man who is imprisoned in the valleys of belief. The most luminous facts are obscured, and the history of events is the history of his dreams.
The psychologist who desires to understand the period which we have so briefly sketched can only do so if, being attached to no party, he stands clear of the passions which are the soul of parties. He will never dream of recriminating a past which was dictated by such imperious necessities. Certainly Napoleon has cost France dear: his epic was terminated by two invasions, and there was yet to be a third, whose consequences are felt even to-day, when the prestige which he exerted even from the tomb set upon the throne the inheritor of his name.
All these events are narrowly connected in their origin. They represent the price of that capital phenomenon in the evolution of a people, a change of ideal. Man can never make the attempt to break suddenly with his ancestors without profoundly affecting the course of his own history.
CHAPTER III
POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN TRADITIONS AND REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES DURING THE LAST CENTURY
1. The Psychological Causes of the continued Revolutionary Movements to which France has been subject.
In examining, in a subsequent chapter, the evolution of revolutionary ideas during the last century, we shall see that during more than fifty years they very slowly spread through the various strata of society.
During the whole of this period the great majority of the people and the bourgeoisie rejected them, and their diffusion was effected only by a very limited number of apostles. But their influence, thanks principally to the faults of Governments, was sufficient to provoke several revolutions. We shall examine these briefly when we have examined the psychological influences which gave them birth.
The history of our political upheavals during the last century is enough to prove, even if we did not yet realise the fact, that men are governed by their mentalities far more than by the institutions which their rulers endeavour to force upon them.