The Royalist Constituent Assembly destroyed an ancient monarchy; the humanitarian Legislative Assembly allowed the massacres of September. The same pacific body led France into the most formidable campaigns.
There were similar contradictions during the Convention. The immense majority of its members abhorred violence. Sentimental philosophers, they exalted equality, fraternity, and liberty, yet ended by exerting the most terrible despotism.
The same contradictions were visible during the Directory. Extremely moderate in their intentions at the outset, the Assemblies were continually effecting bloodthirsty coups d'etat. They wished to re-establish religious peace, and finally sent thousands of priests into imprisonment. They wished to repair the ruins which covered France, and only succeeded in adding to them.
Thus there was always a complete contradiction between the individual wills of the men of the revolutionary period and the deeds of the Assemblies of which they were units.
The truth is that they obeyed invisible forces of which they were not the masters. Believing that they acted in the name of pure reason, they were really subject to mystic, affective, and collective influences, incomprehensible to them, and which we are only to-day beginning to understand.
Intelligence has progressed in the course of the ages, and has opened a marvellous outlook to man, although his character, the real foundation of his mind, and the sure motive of his actions, has scarcely changed. Overthrown one moment, it reappears the next. Human nature must be accepted as it is.
The founders of the Revolution did not resign themselves to the facts of human nature. For the first time in the history of humanity they attempted to transform men and society in the name of reason.
Never was any undertaking commenced with such chances of success. The theorists, who claimed to effect it, had a power in their hands greater than that of any despot.
Yet, despite this power, despite the success of the armies, despite Draconian laws and repeated coups d'etat, the Revolution merely heaped ruin upon ruin, and ended in a dictatorship.
Such an attempt was not useless, since experience is necessary to the education of the peoples. Without the Revolution it would have been difficult to prove that pure reason does not enable us to change human nature, and, consequently, that no society can be rebuilt by the will of legislators, however absolute their power.