The Psychology of Revolution

While our legislators are reforming and legislating at hazard, the natural evolution of the world is slowly pursuing its course. New interests arise, the economic competition be...

Having in several chapters described the various mentalities which predominate in times of disturbance, we need not return to the subject now. They constitute general types whic...

The genesis of the French Revolution, as well as its duration, was conditioned by elements of a rational, affective, mystic, and collective nature, each category of which was ru...

We have seen that natural laws do not agree with the aspirations of democracy. We know, also, that such a statement has never affected doctrines already in men's minds. The man...

These exceptional events will always fill us with astonishment, and we even feel them to be inexplicable. They become comprehensible, however, if we consider that the French Rev...

The knowledge of a people at any given moment of its history involves an understanding of its environment and above all of its past. Theoretically one may deny that past, as did...

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...

At ordinary periods this would have been so, for a constant environment means constancy of character. But when circumstances change as rapidly as they did under the Revolution,...

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 throu...

The history of the Convention is not merely fertile in psychological documents. It also shows how powerless the witnesses of any period and even their immediate successors are t...

The outward life of men in every age is moulded upon an inward life consisting of a framework of traditions, sentiments, and moral influences which direct their conduct and main...

Many modern nations--France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Poland, Japan, Turkey, Portugal, &c.--have known revolutions within the last century. These were usually characterised by the...

Man, as part of a multitude, is a very different being from the same man as an isolated individual. His conscious individuality vanishes in the unconscious personality of the cr...

The classifications without which the study of the sciences is impossible must necessarily establish the discontinuous in the continuous, and for that reason are to a certain ex...

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 ot...

Many historians assure us that the Revolution was directed against the autocracy of the monarchy. In reality the kings of France had ceased to be absolute monarchs long before i...

We generally apply the term revolution to sudden political changes, but the expression may be employed to denote all sudden transformations, or transformations apparently sudden...

I have dwelt at length elsewhere upon a certain theory of character, without which it is absolutely impossible to understand divers transformations or inconsistencies of conduct...

We have already seen what was their influence on the preceding Assemblies. It became overwhelming during the Convention. The history of this latter is in reality that of the clu...

Humanitarian and sentimental, they exalted liberty and fraternity. But, as in many religions, we can observe a complete contradiction between doctrine and action. In practice no...

The history of the Consulate is as rich as the preceding period in psychological material. In the first place it shows us that the work of a powerful individual is superior to t...

1. The conflict between Capital and Labour 2. The evolution of the Working Classes and the Syndicalist Movement 3. Why certain modern Democratic Governments are gradually being...

If nothing were known of the revolutionary Assemblies, and notably of the Convention, beyond their internal dissensions, their weakness, and their acts of violence, their memory...

We have already repeated, and shall again repeat, that the errors of a doctrine do not hinder its propagation, so that all we have to consider here is its influence upon men's m...

A great political assembly, 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 grou...

Before examining the mental characteristics of the Legislative Assembly let us briefly sum up the considerable political events which marked its short year's life. They naturall...

We have just seen that the mystic elements are one of the components of the Jacobin mentality. We shall now see that they enter into another form of mentality which is also clea...

1. The importance of the study of Religious Revolutions in respect of the comprehension of the great Political Revolutions 2. The beginnings of the Reformation and its first dis...

REVOLUTION 1. Illusions respecting Primitive Man, the return to the State of Nature, and the Psychology of the People 2. Illusions respecting the possibility of separating Man f...

AND THE INFLUENCE ATTRIBUTED TO THE PHILOSOPHERS 1. Origin and Propagation of Revolutionary Ideas 2. The supposed influence of the Philosophers of the eighteenth century upon th...

1. Mentality of the men of the Revolution. The respective influence of violent and feeble characters 2. Psychology of the Commissaries or Representatives ``on Mission'' 3. Danto...

1. The influence upon social evolution of theories of no rational value 2. The Jacobin Spirit and the Mentality created by Democratic Beliefs 3. Universal Suffrage and its repre...

1. The feeble resistance of Governments in time of Revolution 2. How the resistance of Governments may overcome Revolution 3. Revolutions effected by Governments. Examples: Chin...

REVOLUTION 1. Gradual propagation of Democratic Ideas after the Revolution 2. The unequal influence of the three fundamental principles of the Revolution 3. The Democracy of the...

1. The activity of the Clubs and the Commune during the Convention 2. The Government of France during the Convention: the Terror 3. The End of the Convention. The Beginnings of...

1. How the work of the Revolution was confirmed by the Consulate 2. The re-organisation of France by the Consulate 3. Psychological elements which determined the success of the...

TRADITIONS AND THE REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES DURING THE LAST CENTURY 1. The psychological causes of the continued Revolutionary Movements to which France has been subject 2. Summ...

1. The stability and malleability Of the national mind 2. How the People regards Revolution 3. The supposed part of the People during Revolution 4. The popular entity and its co...

1. General characteristics of the crowd 2. How the stability of the racial mind limits the oscillations of the mind of the crowd 3. The role of the leader in Revolutionary Movem...

1. The Absolute Monarchy and the Basis of the Ancien Regime 2. The inconveniences of the Ancien Regime 3. Life under the Ancien Regime 4. Evolution of Monarchical feeling during...

REVOLUTION 1. The Historians of the Revolution 2. The theory of Fatalism in respect of the Revolution 3. The hesitation of recent Historians of the Revolution 4. Impartiality in...