The Psychology of Socialism
Book I: The Socialistic Theories and Their Disciples:
Chapter 4: The Disciples of Socialism and Their Mental State
Gustave Le Bon
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I. The Classification of the disciples of Socialism :-What the different categories of Socialists have in common-The necessity of studying separately the different sects of Socialists. 2. The working classes: Divided into artisans and labourers--The differences of the Socialistic idea in these two classes-Psychology of the Parisian workman--His intelligence and independent spirit-His superiority over the class of clerks, etc--Impulsive and imprudent character of the workman--His artistic sense-His conservative instincts-His sociability and lack of egoism--Simplicism of his political opinions--What the Government represents to him-The Parisian working classes will be the most refractory towards the adoption of Socialism. 3. Directing classes :-Progress of sentimental Socialism among the educated classes-Causes of this progress-Influence of contagion, fear, scepticism and indifference. 4. The demi-savant and the doctrinaires :-- How one may be a demi-savant although highly educated. The demi-savant who has formed himself on books is always a stranger to the realities that surround him -- Rapid development of Socialism among the demi-savants -- The regrettable part played by the Universities and University men-The doctrinaires-Their elementary and obtuse nature.
I. THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE DISCIPLES OF SOCIALISM.
SOCIALISM comprises many strongly differing and sometimes strongly contradictory theories. The army of its disciples have scarcely anything in common, save an intense antipathy for the present state of things, and vague aspirations towards a new ideal, which is destined to procure them better conditions, and to replace the old ideals. Although all the soldiers of this army appear to be marching together towards the destruction
(38) of the inheritance of the past, they are animated by strongly differing sentiments. It is only by examining separately their principal sects that we can attain to at all a clear idea of their psychology, and hence of their receptivity towards the new doctrines.
At first sight Socialism would appear to draw the greater number of its recruits from the popular classes, and more especially from the working classes. The new ideal presents itself to them in this very elementary, and, therefore, very comprehensible shape : less work and more pleasure. In place of an uncertain salary, an often miserable old age, and the slavery of the workshop or factory, often very hard, they are promised a regenerated society in which, thanks to a re-distribution of riches by the omnipotence of the State, work will be thoroughly distributed, and very light.
It would seem as though the popular classes could not hesitate in the face of promises so enticing, and so often repeated : above all, when they hold all the reins in their hands, thanks to universal suffrage and the right to choose their legislators. Yet they do hesitate. The most astonishing thing to-day is not the rapidity, but the slowness with which the new doctrines propagate themselves. To understand the unequal influence of these doctrines in different environments it is imperative to study the various categories of Socialists as we are now about to do.
We shall examine, from this point of view, the following classes in turn : the working classes, the directing classes, the demi-savants, and the doctrinaires.
2. THE WORKING CLASSES.
The psychology of the working classes differ-. too greatly in respect of their particular trades, provinces, and surroundings, to be exposed in detail. It would
(39) demand, moreover, a very long and laborious study, to which great faculties of observation would be necessary, and for these reasons probably it has never been attempted.
In this chapter, therefore, I shall concern myself only with one class of workers, the only one I have been able to study at all closely : the class of Parisian workmen. The subject is one of peculiar interest in that our revolutions always take place in Paris, and are possible or impossible as their leaders have or have not at their backs the working classes of Paris.
This interesting class evidently contains many varieties: but, in the manner of a naturalist Who describes the general characteristics of a genera proper to all the species comprised in that genera, shall deal only with the general characteristics common to the greater number of the observed varieties.
But there is one division which we must clearly define at the outset, that we may not unite elements too dissimilar. We find in the working classes two well-defined subdivisions, each with a different psychology-the labourers and the artisans.
The class of labourers is the inferior as regards intelligence, but also the more numerous. It is the direct product of machinery, and is growing every day. The perfecting of machinery tends to render work more and more automatic, and consequently reduces, more and more, the quantum of intelligence necessary to perform it. The duty of a factory or workshop hand comprises hardly anything more than superintending the running of a thread, or feeding machines with sheets of metal that are bent, stamped, and sheared automatically. Certain everyday articles--for example, the cheap lanterns which are sold for twopence-halfpenny, and serve to light up the ditches-are made up of fifty pieces, each made
(40) by its special workman, who does nothing else all his life. As he performs an easy work he is inevitably ill paid, the more so as he is competing with women and children equally capable of performing the same task. As he does not know how to do anything but this one task, he is necessarily completely dependent on the manufacturer who employs him.
The class of labourers is the class that Socialism can most surely count on ; firstly, because it is the least intelligent, and secondly because it is the least happy, and is inevitably enamoured of all the doctrines that promise to better its condition. It will never take the initiative in a revolution, but it will follow all revolutions with docility.
At the side of, or rather very far above this class of workers, we have that of the artisans. It comprises the workers occupied in the building and engineering trades, in the industrial arts and minor industries--carpenters, cabinet-makers, fitters, electro-platers, foundry hands, electricians, painters, decorators, masons, &c. These have every day to undertake a new task, to overcome difficulties which oblige them to reflect and develop their intelligence.
This class of workers is the most familiar in Paris and this class, above all, I have in mind in the following pages. Its psychology is the more interesting because the characteristics of this particular class are very clearly defined, which is very far from being the case with many of the other social categories.
The Parisian artisan constitutes a caste, from which he rarely essays to issue. The son of a working man, he likes his sons to remain working men, while the dream of the peasant, on the of the small clerk or shop-hand, is to make gentlemen " of his sons.
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The clerk or shop-hand[1] despises the artisan, but the artisan despises the clerk far more, and thinks him an idle and incapable person. He knows he is less well dressed, less refined in his manners, but he thinks himself by far the superior in energy, activity, and intelligence ; and more often than not he is. The artisan advances only by merit, the employé by seniority. The employé is only of significance through the whole of which he is a part. The artisan represents a unit having a value by itself. If the artisan knows his trade thoroughly he is always sure of finding work wherever he goes ; the employé is not, and is always trembling before the principals who may make him lose his employment. The artisan has far more dignity and independence. The employé is incapable of moving outside of the narrow limits of regulations the observance of which constitutes his entire function. The artisan, on the contrary, encounters fresh difficulties every day, which stimulate his enterprise and intelligence. Finally, an artisan, being generally paid better than a clerk, and not being subjected to the same necessities of external decorum, is able to live a much fuller life. At twenty-five a fairly capable artisan is earning without difficulty a sum that a commercial or civil service clerk will scarcely receive till after twenty years of service.
The psychological characteristics I am about to treat of in detail are sufficiently general to allow of their being attributed to the majority of Parisian artisans of the same race. This ceases to be with regard to artisans of difference race, so true is it that the influences of race are greater than those of environment. I shall show in another part of this book in what manner English and Irish workers differ, though working in the same shop-that is to say, subjected to identical
(42) conditions of trade. Again, we in Paris have only to compare the Parisian workman with Italians or Germans working under the same conditions-that is to say, subjected to the same surrounding influences. We will not undertake to study the subject, but will confine ourselves to noticing that these racial influences are clearly to be seen in Parisian workmen who have come from certain provinces-for example, from Limousins. Several of the psychological characteristics enumerated further on by no means apply to the latter. The workman from Limousins is quiet, sober, and patient, and neither noise nor luxury are necessary to him. He frequents neither the wine-shop nor the theatre ; he keeps to the costume of his native province in the city, and his only dream is to save money and return to his village. He confines himself to a few difficult, but well-remunerated callings ; that of mason, for instance, in which his punctuality and sobriety make him much sought after.
These general principles and divisions being defined, we will now consider the psychology of the Parisian workmen, having more especially in view the class of artisans. Here are the more striking elements of their mental state :
The Parisian workman approaches the savage in his impulsive nature, his lack of foresight, his want of self-control, and his habit of having no guide but the instinct of the moment; but he possesses an artistic and sometimes critical sense extremely refined for his environment. Apart from the matters of his trade, which he performs excellently, though with more taste than finish, he reasons little or ill, and is hardly accessible to any argument but that of his sentiments.
He likes to commiserate himself, and is given to railing, but his complaints are more passive than active. He
43) is at heart a true conversative(sic) and stay-at-home, and has little stomach for change. Indifferent in the extreme to political doctrines, he has always submitted readily to all régimes, provided always that they had at their head individuals possessed of prestige. A general's panache always produces in him a species of respectful emotion that he can scarcely resist. With words and prestige one can easily manipulate him ; with reasons not at all.
He is very sociable, and fond of the company of his comrades; hence his custom of haunting the wineshop, the true club and salon of the people. It is not the taste for alcohol that takes him there, as is often supposed. Drink is a pretext that may become a habit ; but it is not the craving for alcohol that takes him to the cabaret.
If he escapes his home by means of the public-house, as the bourgeois escapes his by means of his club, it is because his home has nothing very attractive about it. His wife, his housekeeper, as he calls her, has undeniable qualities of economy and foresight, but she takes no interest in anything beyond her children, the prices of things, and bargaining. Totally refractory to general conceptions and to discussions, she enters into the latter only when the purse and the cupboard are empty. She, at least, is not one to choose the gallows merely to uphold a principle.
The practice of frequenting the wine-shops, theatres, and public meeting-places is for the Parisian workman the consequence of his craving for excitement, expansion, and emotion ; for uproarious discussion and the intoxication of words. Doubtless he would do better to please the moralists by soberly keeping to his room. But in order to do that he must have, in the place of the mental constitution of a workman, the brain of a moralist.
Political ideas do sometimes lead the workman, but
44) they hardly ever absorb him. He will readily become a rebel, a fanatic, for an instant, but he never remains a sectarian. He is so impulsive that no idea whatever can permanently impress itself on him. His hatred of the bourgeois is as often as not a convention, a wholly superficial sentiment.
One must know very little indeed of the workman to suppose him capable of pursuing seriously the realization of any ideal whatever, Socialistic or otherwise. The ideal of the workman, when by chance he has one, is everything that is not revolutionary, not Socialistic, and everything that is middle-class. His ideal is always the little house in the country ; a little house that must not be too far from the wine-seller's shop.
He possesses a great stock of generosity and confidence. He will most readily and cordially lodge a comrade in distress, often at great inconvenience to himself, and will every instant render him a host of little services which men of the world would never perform under the same circumstances. He has no egotism, and in this respect shows himself greatly the superior of the bourgeois, whose egotism is on the contrary very highly developed. From this point of view he deserves a sympathy of which the bourgeoisie are not always worthy. Besides, it is evident that this development of egotism in the superior classes is the necessary consequence of their wealth and culture, and proportional to the degree of their wealth and culture. Only the poor man is really humane, because only he really knows what misery is.
This absence of egotism, together with the readiness with which he becomes filled with enthusiasm for the individuals that charm him, render the Parisian workman liable to devote himself, it not to the triumph of an idea, at least to the leaders who have seduced his mind. The
(45) recent Boulangist adventure affords us an instructive example.
The Parisian workman willingly derides all matters of religion. At heart he has an unconscious respect for them ; his derision is directed never against religion as such, but against the clergy, whom he considers rather as a sort of branch of the Government. Marriages and burials without the rites of the Church are rare among the working classes of Paris. Married only at the mairie the workman would always feel himself badly married. His religious instincts-that is, his tendency to allow himself to be dominated by any creed whatever, political, social, or religious-are very tenacious. Instincts like these will one day constitute one of the elements of success of Socialism, which is in reality only a new creed. If Socialism does succeed in propagating itself among the workers, it will be not at all as the theorists hold, by the satisfactions it promises them, but by the disinterested devotion which its apostles will be able to awaken.
The political conceptions of the working man are very rudimentary and of an extreme simplicity. The Government represents for him a mysterious absolute power, able to decree at will the increase or decrease of salaries, but, as a general thing, hostile to the workers and favourable to the employers. Anything disagreeable happening to the working man is necessarily the fault of the Government ; this is why he so easily accepts the proposition to change it. For the rest, he cares little for the nature of the Government which directs him, and is only certain that there must be one. The good Government is that which protects the workers, raises wages, and molests the employer. Having little occasion to make use of ]us political liberties he cares little for them. If he has a sympathy for Socialism, it is that he beholds in it a system of government which will increase wages
(46) while reducing the hours of work. If he could realise to what a system of regimentation and surveillance the Socialists propose to subject themselves in their ideal society, he would at once become the implacable enemy of the new doctrines.
The theorists of Socialism think they know the min of the working classes well ; they really know very little about the matter. They imagine the elements of persuasion are found in discussion and argument ; in reality they have very different sources. What remains of all their speeches in the vulgar mind ? Very little indeed. When we freely question a workman who calls himself a Socialist, if we ignore the shreds of ready-made humanitarian phrases and the stale imprecations against capital which he repeats mechanically, we find that his Socialistic concept is a vague reverie, very like that of the early Christians. In a very distant future, too distant greatly to impress him, he perceives the advent of the kingdom of the poor, the poor in fortune and the poor in spirit; the kingdom from which the rich will be jealously expelled, the rich in money and the rich in mind.
As for the means of realising this remote ideal, the workman scarcely dreams of them. The theorists, who know very little of his real nature, have no suspicion that it is precisely in the plebeian that Socialism will one day meet its most formidable enemy; on the day when it shall seek to pass from theory to practice. The working classes, and still more the peasants, have the instinct of property at least as highly developed as the middle classes. They are anxious enough to increase their possessions, but they will elect to dispose of the fruits of their labour in their own fashion, rather than abandon them to a collectivity, although this collectivity may pretend to satisfy all their desires. Such a sentiment has
(47) secular origins, and it will always uprear itself as an inviolable wall against every attempt of Collectivism.
Although he is headstrong, turbulent, and always ready to side with the promoters of revolution, the working man is strongly attached to the old order of things ; lie is extremely arbitrary, a thorough conservative, and a firm believer in authority. He has always acclaimed those who have shattered altars and thrones, but he has acclaimed with far greater fervour those who have re-established them. When by chance he becomes employer in his turn he behaves like an absolute monarch, and is far harder on his former comrades than the employer of the middle class. General du Barrail describes in the following words the psychology of the workman who has emigrated to Algeria to become a colonist-a profession which consists simply in making the natives work by hitting them with a stick: "A democrat in soul, he entertained all the instincts of the feudal age ; escaped from the workshops of the manufacturing towns, he spoke and reasoned like the vassals of Pepin the Short or Charlemagne, or like the knights of William the Conqueror, who carved out vast domains from the territories of vanquished peoples."
Always a jester, often sprightly, he is an expert in seizing the comic side of things, and appreciates, above all, the humorous or rowdy side of political events. The arraignment of a minister by a deputy or a journalist amuses him immensely, but the opinions defended by the minister and his opponents interest him but little. A discussion carried on by exchange of invective excites him as much as a scene at the Ambigu,[2] while debate by exchange of arguments leaves him totally indifferent.
This characteristic turn of mind is naturally exemplified in his manner of conducting debates, as far as one
(48) is able to observe it at political meetings of the people. He never discusses the worth of an opinion ; only that of the person expressing it. He is seduced by the personal prestige of an orator, not by his reasoning. He does not attack the opinions of a speaker who displeases him, but only his person. The probity of his adversary is immediately called into question, and that adversary may consider himself lucky if he is treated simply as a poor fool, and has nothing harder than words about his head. As we know, the debates at public meetings consist invariably of an exchange of savage invective and promiscuous blows. This, however, is a racial vice which is by no means peculiar to the working man. To numbers of people it is impossible to hear any person give expression to an opinion widely differing from their own without becoming intimately persuaded that this individual is a complete imbecile or an infamous scoundrel. The comprehension of the ideas of others has always been inaccessible to the Latins.
The careless, impulsive, changeful, and turbulent character of the Parisian working classes has always prevented them from associating themselves to undertake important enterprises, as do the English workers. This incorrigible incapacity makes it impossible for them to dispense with direction, and condemns them by this alone to remain in perpetual tutelage. They feel an incurable need of having some one over them to govern them, to whom they can resort with regard to everything that may befall them. Here again we find a racial characteristic.
The only well-defined result of the Socialist propaganda among the working classes has been to sow the opinion that they are exploited by their employers, and that by changing the Government they would receive higher wages and far less work. But their conservative
(49) instincts withhold the majority of them from rallying to this idea. At the elections of 1893, out of ten million electors only 556,000 gave their votes to Socialist deputies, and the latter numbered only 49. This low percentage, which showed hardly any increase at the elections of 1898, proves how tenacious are the conservative interests of the working classes.
There is another fundamental reason which singularly hinders the propagation of Socialistic ideas. The number of workmen who are small proprietors and small stockholders is increasing on all hands. The little house, the smallest one can imagine, the small share, though it be only a fraction of a share, suddenly transforms its possessor into a calculating capitalist, and develops his instincts of property to an astonishing extent. As soon as he has a family, a house, and a few savings, the work man becomes immediately a stubborn Conservative. The Socialist, above all the Anarchist-Socialist, is usually a bachelor, without home, means, or family ; that is to say, a nomad, and in all ages the nomad has been a refractory and a barbarian. When the evolution of economics has made the workman the proprietor of a part, as small as one chooses to suppose, of the factory he works in, his conceptions of the relations between labour and capital will undergo a complete change. The proof is furnished by the few workshops in which such transformations have already been realised, and also by the mental state of the peasant.The latter, as a general thing, leads a far harder life than the urban workman, but he usually has a field to cultivate, and for that simple reason is scarcely ever a Socialist, unless the idea germinates in his primitive brain that it might be possible to take of field, without, of course, abandoning his own.
We may sum up the preceding remarks by observing
(50) that the class most refractory to Socialism will be precisely the working class on which the Socialists count so much. The propaganda of the Socialists have given rise to covetousness and hatred, but the new doctrines have not seriously affected the mind of the people. It is quite possible that the Socialists may recruit from the people the soldiers of a revolution, after one of those events-such as a long turn of idleness or a fall in wages as the result of some economic competition-which the working classes always attribute to the Government ; but it will be precisely these soldiers who will rally with all celerity round the plume of the Caesar -who shall arise to suppress this revolution.
3. THE DIRECTING CLASSES.
"A fact that largely aids the progress of Socialism," writes M. de Laveleye, " is its gradual invasion of the upper and educated classes."The factors of this invasion, to my mind, are of several orders : the contagion of fashionable beliefs, fear, and indifference.
"A large proportion of the middle classes," writes Signor Garofalo, " while regarding the Socialist movement with a certain trepidation, are convinced to-day that it is irresistible and inevitable. Among this number are those candid souls who are ingenuously enamoured of the Socialist ideal, and see in it the aspiration towards the reign of justice and universal felicity."
There we have simply the expression of a superficial and unreasoning sentiment, accepted through contagion. To adopt a political or social opinion only when, after mature reflection, it appears to respond to the reality of things, is a process apparently impossible to the average Latin mind. If in the adoption of an opinion--political, social, or religious--we were to employ a fractional part
(51) of the lucidity and reflection which the pettiest of grocers employs in a matter of business, we should not be, as we are in political or religious questions, at the mercy of our circumstances, of sentiments, of an hour's fashion ; we should riot be floating, as we are, at the mercy of the events and opinions of the moment.
Socialistic tendencies to-day are far more prevalent among the middle classes than among the populace. They spread by simple contagion, and with remarkable rapidity. Philosophers, littérateurs, and artists follow the movement with docility, and contribute actively to spread it. The theatre, books, pictures even, are becoming more and more steeped in this tearful and sentimental Socialism, which is entirely reminiscent of the humanitarianism of the controlling, classes at the time of the Revolution. The guillotine promptly taught them that in the struggle for life one cannot renounce self-defence without at the same stroke renouncing life. Considering with what complaisance the upper classes are to-day allowing themselves to be progressively disarmed, the historian of the future will feel only contempt for their lamentable want of foresight, and will not lament their fate.
Fear is another of the factors which favour the propagation of Socialism among the bourgeoisie. " The bourgeoisie," writes the author I quoted but now, " are afraid. They grope about irresolutely, and hope to save themselves by concessions, forgetting that this is the most insensate policy imaginable, and that indecision, parleyings, and the desire to content everybody, are faults of character which, by an eternal injustice, the world has always cruelly punished, more cruelly than if they had been crimes."
The last of the factors which I cited, the factor of indifference, if it does not directly favour the propagation of Socialism, at least facilitates it by restraining
(52) people from fighting it. Sceptical indifference, "je m'enfichisme," as the current saying goes, Is the great malady of the modern bourgeoisie. When, to the declamations and assaults of an increasing minority, which is pursuing with fervour the realisation of an ideal, nothing is opposed but indifference, one may be sure that the triumph of that minority is very near at hand. Are the worst enemies of society those that attack it, or those who do not even give themselves the trouble of defending it ?
4. DEMI-SAVANTS AND DOCTRINAIRES.
I apply the term demi-savant to those who have no other knowledge than that contained in books, and who consequently know absolutely nothing of the realities of life. They are the product of our schools and universities, those lamentable factories of degeneration whose disastrous effects have been exposed by Taine, Paul Bourget, and many others. A professor, a scholar, or a graduate of one of our great colleges is always for years, and often all his life, nothing but a demi-savant.
It is from the ranks of the demi-savant, and notably from the ranks of unemployed licentiates and bachelors of the universities, outcasts from society whom the State has been unable to place, ushers discontented with their lot, university professors who find their merits overlooked, that the most dangerous disciples of Socialism are recruited, and even the worst Anarchists. The last Anarchist executed in Paris was an unsuccessful candidate from the Ecole Polytechnique; a man unable to find any employment for his useless and superficial science, and consequently the enemy of a society which was riot wise enough to appreciate his merits, and naturally anxious to replace it it by a new world in which the vast capacities he supposed himself to possess would have found an outlet. The dis-
(53) -contented demi-savant is the worst of malcontents. It is this discontent that explains the frequency of Socialism among certain bodies of individuals-schoolmasters, for example, who always consider themselves ill-used and unappreciated.
The learned Italian criminologist, Signor Garofalo, recounts a remark made by one of his compatriots All the masters In Piedmont, where I spent some time last year, are ardent Socialists. You should hear them talk to their pupils ! "
It is the same in France, and it is perhaps from among our university instructors and professors that Socialism draws most recruits. The chief leader of the French Socialists is an ex-professor of the university. A judicious critic, AT. Maurice Talmeyr, has recently drawn attention, in a leading journal, to the stupefying fact, that this Socialist having applied for authorisation to deliver a course on collectivism at the Sorbonne, 16 professors out Of 37 supported his request.
To show what the opinions of the candidate for this chair of Socialism are like, M. Talmeyr gives the following extract from one of his lectures :-
" When we have destroyed everything, we shall construct from top to bottom the social republic on the bloodstained and smoking ruins of what was once reactionary France !."
Then he adds:
" What is the general spirit of the University to-day ? The majority of the professors are sane, but they are side by side with a minority who are afflicted with gangrene, and a singularly virulent gangrene. Is it not an unheard-of thing, and one full of incalculable promises, this rnanifestation of the sixteen of the Sorbonne at the present hour '? Are there really to be found there, instituted, maintained, and consecrated by the
54) State, sixteen professors of history, rhetoric, poetry, and what not, who are perfectly ready to suppress individual property, to abolish the army, and to continue on its ruins, from the sentry-boxes of the Prussian soldiers, the lessons they have delivered to us up to the present from their chairs ? Our university instructors make overmuch noise for their number, but their number, however, does not appear negligible, and all these muddy consciences of pedants,[3] who call themselves 'troubled consciences,' show us of what rancid pride and blustering hypocrisy they are made. The actual condition of certain university functionaries denotes more than the fondness of 'being in advance.' A cynical scepticism, an ardent habit of ranting, and a vague delirium of destruction are strangely combined in the impotent 'spirit of the day,' and plenty of our professors, to-day, are only too much of their time. They push too far the puerility of believing in nothing, and run too instinctively to anything that seems to represent a science, or to corrosive manifestations of any kind. They are too fond of dangerous courses and evil doctrines because they are dangerous courses and evil doctrines, and they give vent on too many occasions to too much fermented pretension and malevolence. Consider carefully the university professor and his unsolicited intervention in recent affairs, and you will see it exclusively under two aspects ; he was there to destroy and to exhibit himself. He puts himself forward without motive, in an attitude without frankness, sobbing without tears, and degrades, corrupts, and demolishes without reason. He has the appearance of a pedant ; he is an Anarchist."
55)
The part played to-day by university functionaries in the Latin countries is altogether threatening to the societies in which they live. " All these theorists of the absolute," as a penetrating thinker, M. Maurice Barrés, justly remarks, "always impede public affairs.,, They may be distinguished in their specialities,' but they are total strangers to the realities of the world, and by that reason are even incapable of understanding the artificial but necessary conditions which render the existence of a society possible. A society directed by an areopagus of scientists, such as Auguste Comte dreamed of, would not last six months. In questions of general interest the opinions of specialists in letters or science are of no greater value than that of ignorant people, and very often are of much less value, if these ignorant people be peasants or workmen whose profession has brought them into contact with the realities of life. I have elsewhere insisted on this point, which constitutes the most solid argument in favour of universal suffrage. It is among the crowd that we often find the political spirit, patriotism, and the sentiment of the value of social interests, but rarely found among the specialists.
By the crowd, in fact, is most often manifested the soul of a race and the comprehension of its interests. They are doubtless guided by instinct, not by reason ; but are not the acts determined by instinct, often enough, superior to those of reason ?
Instinct, which directs all the acts of our inorganic life,
(56) and the immense majority of the acts of intellectual life, is to the conscious life of the mind what the profound waters of the ocean are to the waves that ruffle their surface. If the incessant action of instinct were to cease, -man could not live a day. Renan, who was far more a poet than a philosopher, has, nevertheless, well defined the part played by this powerful factor in the following passage, which becomes extremely just if we substitute for the words 11 spontaneous," " hidden God," and " universal force," the simple word " instinct." The latter term represents simply the inheritance of all the adaptations acquired by our long series of ancestors, dating back to the monad of the first geological ages:--
"The mechanism of intelligence is difficult to analyse ; yet, without knowing its analysis, the simplest man knows how to touch its every spring. Applied to the spontaneous, the words easy and difficult have no meaning. The child learning his language, or humanity building up a science, meets with no more difficulties than a plant in growing, than an organic body in reaching its complete development. Everywhere is the hidden God, the universal force; which, acting in sleep, in the absence of the individual soul, produces these marvellous effects, as far above human artifice, as the Infinite Power surpasses finite powers."
It is because the half-science of the demi-savant obscures the instinctive intuitions, that its intervention in social affairs is so often harmful.
Social failures, misunderstood geniuses, lawyers without clients, writers without readers, doctors without patients, professors ill-paid, graduates without employment, clerks whose employers disdain them for their insufficiency, puffed-up university instructors-these are the natural adepts of Socialism. In reality they care -,-cry little for doctrines. Their dream is to create by violent means a society in which they will be the masters. Their
(57) cry of equality does not prevent them from having an intense scorn of the rabble who have not, as they have, learned out of books. They believe themselves greatly the superiors of the working man, and are really greatly his inferiors in their lack of practical sense and their exaggerated egotism. If they became masters their despotism would be no less than that of Marat, Saint-Just, or Robespierre, those excellent types of the unappreciated demi-savant. The hope of tyrannising in one's turn, when one has always been ignored, humiliated, thrust into the shade, must have created many disciples of Socialism. Their mental state may be compared to that of those Kaffirs whose rudimentary psychology was recently depicted in one of the journals in the following terms : " Attracted by the promise of gain, they enlist themselves en masse in the mines, where they work at very low wages, with the sole ambition of saving some fifty or sixty pounds, with which they return to their village, not without having first acquired a fashionable silk hat, a red umbrella, and a pair of boots. In this remarkable attire they install themselves at the doors of their huts, while making women and children work for them under pain of the lash."
To this category of demi-savants belong most often the doctrinaires who formulate, in poisonous publications, the theories their ingenuous disciples at once begin to propagate. These are the generals who appear to direct the soldiers, but who really confine themselves to following them. They form a small majority whose influence is far more apparent than real. In reality they do little else than transform aspirations which they have not created into noisy invective, and give them that dogmatic form which permits the leaders to appear in print. Their books arc often a sort of evangels, which no one ever reads, but from which one may cite in argument the title, or a few fragmentary phrases reproduced by special
(58) papers. There is not a Socialist who does not constantly invoke the work of Karl Marx on Capital, but I very much doubt if one in ten thousand has even turned over the leaves of this indigestible volume. The obscurity of such works is, however, a fundamental condition of their success. Like the Bible for the Protestant clergy, they constitute a sort of prophetic conjuring book, which one has only to open at random to find-provided that one possesses faith -the solution of any question in the world.
The doctrinaire, then, may be highly educated ; that in no way saves him from being always obtuse and ingenuous, and most often an envious malcontent as well. Struck only by one side of a question, he remains in ignorance of the march of events and their recurrence. He is incapable of understanding anything of the complexity of social phenomena, of economic necessities, of atavistic influences, of the passions which really rule men. Having no guide but a bookish and rudimentary logic he readily believes that his ideas are about to transform the evolution of humanity and overcome destiny.
The lucubrations of all these noisy doctrinaires are sufficiently vague, and their ideal of the future society sufficiently chimerical ; but one thing is not at all chimerical, and that is their furious hatred of the actual state of society, and their burning desire to destroy it.
If the revolutionaries of all ages have always shown themselves powerless to construct anything whatever, they have never found much difficulty in destroying. The hand of a child may set fire to all the treasures of art that centuries have hoarded together in a museum. Their influence may go so far as to provoke a successful and ruinous revolution, but it will not be able to go further. The incorrigible need of being governed which has always been manifested by a crowd would quickly
(59) bring these innovators under the sabre of a despot, no matter who, and whom they would be the first to acclaim, as our history proves. Revolutions cannot modify the minds of peoples; revolutions have never effected more than ironical changes of words and superficial transformations. Nevertheless, it is for the sake of insignificant changes that the world has been so often overturned, and will doubtless continue to be.
If one were to review the parts played by the various classes in the dissolution of society among the Latin peoples, one would say that the doctrinaires and malcontents manufactured by the universities act above all by attacking ideals, and are, by reason of the intellectual anarchy they give rise to, one of the most corrosive factors of destruction ; the middle classes help the downfall by their indifference, their egotism, their feeble will, and their absence of initiative or political perception ; the lower classes act in a revolutionary manner by seeking to destroy, so soon as It shall be sufficiently undermined, the edifice which is tottering on its foundations.
