The Psychology of Socialism
Book 6: The Destinies of Socialism
Chapter 2: The Future of Socialism
Gustave Le Bon
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1. Summary: -- Summary of the conditions favourable or unfavourable to the development of Socialism-Present power of Socialism. 2. The elements of success of Socialism :-Fundamental principles of Socialists -Socialism constitutes a mental state rather than a doctrine-Its danger resides not in the adherence of the crowd, but in that of enlightened minds-Social upheavals begin always from above and not from below-The example of the Revolution-The prevailing state of mind at the time of the Revolution-Its analogy to the present time -The directing classes are to-day losing all faith in the justice of their cause-The promises of Socialism. 3. What will come of the success of Socialism iii the nations in which it triumphs: -- Opinion of eminent modern thinkers-They all arrive at the same conclusions-The immediate destiny of the nations in which Socialism should establish itself - Disorganisation and anarchy will promptly give rise to Caesarism -- Hypothesis of the peaceful and progressive establishment of Socialism. 4. How the Socialists might seize on the government of a country.-The modern armies and their mental state-The end of a society becomes inevitable when once its army turns against it-How the Hispano-American republics have fallen into anarchy through the disintegration of their armies. 5. How Socialism may be fought against :-The necessity of knowing the secrets of its strength and weakness, as well as the mental states of its disciples-The means of influencing crowds-Why a society must perish when its natural defenders shrink from conflict and exertion-Nations perish through effeminacy of character, not by the decrease of intelligence--How Athens, Rome; and Byzantium perished.
I. SUMMARY.
HAVE attempted in this book to indicate not the I unknown forms towards which the societies of the present day are evolving, but simply the tendencies resulting from the transformed environment produced
(396) by the new conditions of modern industry, the progress of the sciences, the connection of nation with nation by means of steam and electricity, and as many more such factors. 'Tan, like all living creatures, cannot live without adapting himself to his surroundings. This he can do only by slow evolution, not by revolution. The determining causes of modern evolution have too recently arisen to permit of our guessing to what they will lead ; so that we can only indicate in the case of each of these causes the general direction of its probable influence.
I have shown on what points the aspirations of the Socialists are in agreement with the course of evolution as we now see it. But such agreement is very rarely to be observed. We have seen, on the contrary, that most of the Socialist aspirations are in direct contradiction with the necessities which rule the modern world, and that their realisation would lead us back to lower phases which society has passed through long ago. For this reason the present position of the nations on the scale of civilisation may be measured with sufficient accuracy by their degree of resistance to Socialistic tendencies.
The association of similar interests-the only practical form of solidarity-and economic competition, are necessities of the modern period. Socialism hardly tolerates the former, and wishes to suppress the latter. The only power it respects is that of popular assemblies. The individual is nothing to Socialism ; but as soon as the individual becomes a crowd it recognises all its rights, and notably that of absolute sovereignty. Psychology, on the contrary, teaches us that as soon as the individual makes part of a crowd he loses the greater part of the Mental qualities which constitute his strength.
To suppress competition and association, as the Socialists would propose, would be to paralyse the
(397) chiefest levers of the present age. We need not inquire as to whether competition is beneficial or not ; we have only to inquire whether it is inevitable, and if we find it to be so we can only try to adapt ourselves to it.
We have seen that economic competition, which would end in crushing the individual worker, has found its natural antidote, formed spontaneously, without any theorising, in the association of similar interests. Associations of workers on the one and of employers on the other hand are able to fight on an equal footing, which the isolated individual could not do. This is doubtless only the substitution of collective for individual autocracy, and we have no reason for calling the first less severe than the second. Indeed, the contrary is sufficiently evident. It is evident also that collective tyrannies have ever been the most patiently supported. The most rapacious tyrant could never have permitted himself such acts of sanguinary despotism as were perpetrated with impunity during the Revolution by obscure anonymous committees acting in the name of the collective interests, real or imaginary.
We have also seen that although Socialism is in contradiction to all the data of modern science it possesses an enormous force by the very fact that it is tending to assume a religious form. Having assumed this form it will be no longer a debatable theory, but a dogma to be obeyed-a dogma whose power over the mind will finish by becoming absolute.
It is precisely for this reason that Socialism constitutes the most formidable of the dangers that have hitherto threatened modern societies. As its complete triumph over at least one society is by no means impossible, it will be as well to indicate its consequences for any nation that may think to assure its happiness by submitting to the prescriptions of the new religion.
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2. THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS OF SOCIALISM.
Let us first of all recall the principal Socialistic dogmas, and the factors that may end in their adoption.
If we set aside the fantastic portions of the innumerable Socialistic programmes, and consider only those parts which are essential, and which are rendered possible of realisation in certain countries by the natural evolution of things, we shall find that these programmes may be reduced to four principal points :-
1. The suppression of the too great inequality of wealth by progressive taxation, and especially by sufficiently high death duties.
2. The progressive extension of the rights of the State; or of the collectivity which will replace the State, and will differ from it only in name.3. The resumption of the soil, capital, industries, and enterprise of all sorts by the State ; that is to say, the expropriation of the present proprietors for the profit of the community.
4. Suppression of free competition and equalisation of salaries.
The realisation of the first point is evidently possible, and we may admit in theory that there would be an advantage, or at least a kind of equity, in returning to each generation of the community the surplus of the fortunes accumulated by the preceding generations, and thus to avoid the formation of a financial aristocracy, which is often more oppressive than the old feudal system.
As for the other points, and especially the progressive extension of the rights of the State, whence would result the suppression of open competition, and finally the equalisation of salaries, these could only be realised at the price of national ruin, for such measures are incompatible
(399) with the natural order of things, and would bring the nation which should submit to them into such a manifest state of inferiority, compared to its rivals, as would promptly result in their yielding its place to them. I do not say that this ideal will never be realised, for I have shown that certain nations are tending to a greater and greater extension of the part of the State ; but we have seen that these nations have by that very fact entered on the downward path of decadence.
The Socialist ideal may therefore still be realised with regard to these matters, and it may be realised according to the formula indicated by Mr. Benjamin Kidd :
"In the era upon which we are entering, the long uphill effort to secure equality of opportunity, as well as equality of political rights, will of necessity involve, not the restriction of the interference of the State, but the progressive extension of its sphere of action to almost every department of our social life. The movement in the direction of the regulation, control, and restriction of the rights of wealth and capital must be expected to continue, even to the extent of the State itself assuming these rights in cases where it is proved that their retention in private hands must unduly interfere with the rights and opportunities of the body of the people."
The Socialistic ideal is perfectly formulated in the preceding lines; an ideal of base equality and humiliating servitude, which would necessarily conduct the nations which should submit to it to the last degree of decadence. When we see such a programme proposed by educated people we perceive at the same moment the headway and the mischief which the Socialistic ideas have accomplished.
Herein lies their chief danger. Modern Socialism is far more of a mental state than a doctrine. What makes it so threatening is not the as yet very insignificant
(400) changes which it has produced in the popular mind, but the already very great changes which it has caused in the mind of the directing classes. The modern bourgeoisie are no longer sure of their rights. Or rather they are not sure of anything, and they do not know how to defend anything. They listen to everything, and they tremble before the most pitiable windbags. They are incapable of the firm will and the severe discipline, of the community of hereditary sentiments, which are the cement of society, and without which no human association has hitherto been able to exist.
They who believe in the revolutionary instincts of crowds are the victims of the most deceptive appearances. The upheavals of the crowd are only the fury of a moment. Returning to their conservative tendencies, they quickly return to the past, and they themselves clamour for the restoration of the very idols which they broke in a moment of violence. This our history repeats on every page for the last century. Scarcely had the Revolution completed its work of destruction, when almost all that it had overthrown-political institutions or religious institutions-was re-established under new names. The river had turned aside for a moment, and had resumed its course.
Social upheavals are commenced always from above, never from below. Was it the people who started our great Revolution ? Not they, indeed ! They had never dreamed of such a thing. It was let loose by the nobility and the controlling classes. This is a fact which, it appears, is still a little novel to many minds ; but it will become a platitude when a less summary psychology than that which contents us to-day shall have made it more clearly understood that material events are always the consequence of certain unconscious states of the mind.
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We know very well what was the general state of mind at the moment of the Revolution ; it was the same that we see growing up to-day: an emotional humanitarianism, which began by pastoral poems and the discourses of philosophers, and ended with the guillotine. This apparently so inoffensive sentiment it was that promptly led to the weakening and disorganisation of the directing classes. They no longer had faith in their own cause ; they were even, as Michelet has said, the enemies of their own cause. When on the night of the 4th of August, 1789, the nobility abjured its privileges and its secular rights, the Revolution was accomplished. The populace had merely to follow the hints which were given them, and as usual they carried matters to extremes. They were not long about chopping off the heads of the honest philosophers who thus abandoned their rights. History does not greatly mourn for them; but they at least deserve the indulgence of the psychologists, who are accustomed to determine the remote causes of our actions. These rights which the nobility renounced so easily-could they, as a matter of fact, have defended them any longer ? They were under the influence of the theories, accumulated theories, and discourses of a century ; how could they have acted otherwise ? The ideas which had gradually taken possession of their minds had finally gained such empire over them that they could no longer discuss them. The forces which our unconscious desires create are always irresistible. Reason does not know them, and if she did know them she could do nothing against them.
But it is nevertheless these obscure but sovereign forces that are the very soul of history. Man has only to bestir himself, acid they lead him. They knead him at their will, and will often make him act in contradiction to his most obvious interests. These are the mysterious
(402) threads which agitated the brilliant marionettes of history, of which century after century tells us the weaknesses and the exploits. We know no more of the secret causes which made them act as they did than did they themselves.
Here, I repeat, is the danger of the present hour. We are possessed of the same sentiments of sickly humanitarianism which have already given us the Revolution, the most despotic and bloodiest that the world has ever known- Napoleon, the Terror, Napoleon, and the death of three millions of men. What a service would be rendered to humanity by the benevolent divinity which should suppress, to the very last example, the lamentable race of philosophers, and at the same time the no less lamentable race of orators !
The experience of a century ago was not enough ; and it is the renascence of this very vague humanitarianism - a humanitarianism of words, not of sentiments-the disastrous heritage of our old Christian ideas, which has become the most serious element of success of modern Socialism. Under the unconscious but disintegrating influence of this sentiment the directing classes have lost all confidence in the justice of their cause. They surrender more and more to the leaders of the opposing party, who merely despise them in proportion to their concessions ; and the latter will be satisfied only when they have taken everything from their adversaries, their lives as well as their fortunes. The historian who shall know the ruin that our weakness will cause, and the downfall of the civilisations we have so ill defended, will not mourn us, and will decide that we shall have merited our fate.
We can by no means hope that the absurdity of the greater part of the Socialistic theories will hinder their triumph. As a matter of fact, these theories do not
(403) contain illusions more ridiculous than the religious beliefs which for so long ruled the minds of the nations. The defect of logic in a doctrine has never hindered its propagation. Now Socialism is far more a religious belief than a theory of reasoning. People submit to it ; they do not discuss it. But it is in every way immensely inferior to the other religions. The latter promised, after death, a happiness of which it was impossible to prove the chimerical side. The Socialist religion, instead of a celestial happiness, of which no one can prove the falsity, promises us a terrestrial happiness, of which we shall all be able easily to prove the non-fulfilment. Experience will promptly teach the disciples of the Socialist illusions the vanity of their dream, and then they will shatter with fury the idol they had adored without knowing.
3. WHAT WILL BE THE CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIALISM FOR THE NATIONS IN WHICH IT TRIUMPHS.
Before the hour of its triumph, which will be quickly followed by that of its fall, Socialism is destined to widen its influence, and no argument drawn from reason will be able to prevail against it.
Yet both the disciples of the new cult and their feeble adversaries will have received no lack of warnings. All the thinkers who have studied the subject of modern Socialism have indicated its dangers and have arrived at identical conclusions with regard to the future it holds in store for us. It would take too long to state all their opinions ; but it will not be uninteresting to quote a few.
We need go back no further than Proudhon. In his time Socialism was not nearly so threatening as it is to-day. He wrote a famous page on the future of Socialism which will doubtless be verified before very long.
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"The social revolution could only end in an immense cataclysm, of which the immediate effect would be to lay waste the earth, and to confine society in a strait-waistcoat ; and if it were possible that such a state of things should continue only a few weeks, to kill three or four millions of men by an unforeseen famine. When the Government is without resources ;when the country is without commerce and without produce ; when Paris, starving, blockaded by the provinces, receives from them neither money nor provisions ; when the workers, demoralised by the politics of their clubs and the idleness of their shops, seek their subsistence as best they may ; when the State requires the jewels and plate of the citizens to send to the Mint ; when house-to-house requisitions are the only means of collecting taxes ; when the first granary is pillaged, the first house entered, the first church profaned, the first torch kindled, the first blood spilt, the first head fallen-when the abomination of desolation has come upon all France-oh, then you will know what a social revolution is ; an unbridled multitude, in arms, drunk with vengeance and with fury, armed with pikes, with hatchets, with naked swords ; with cleavers and with hammers; the city mournful and silent ; the police at the threshold ; opinions suspected, words listened to, tears observed, sighs numbered, silence spied upon ; espionage and denunciations; inexorable requisitions, forced and increasing loans, depreciated paper-money ; war with neighbours on the frontiers, impitiable pro-consuls, the committee of public safety, a supreme body with a heart of brass ; behold the fruits of the democratic and social revolution ! With all my heart and soul I repudiate Socialism ! It is impotent, immoral, fit only to make dupes and pilferers ! This I declare in the face of the subterranean propaganda, the shameless sensualism, the muddy literature, the mendicity,
(405) and the besotted state of heart and mind that are beginning to take hold on a part of the workers. I am free of the follies of the Socialists ! "
M. de Laveleye, despite his indulgence for many Socialistic ideas, arrives at almost analogous conclusions when he pictures, at the conclusion of a victorious Socialist revolution, "our capitals ravaged by dynamite and petroleum in a more savage, and, above all, a more systematic, fashion than was Paris in 1871."
Herbert Spencer is no less gloomy. The triumph of Socialism, he says, would be the greatest disaster the world has ever known, and the end of it would be military despotism.
In the last volume of his treatise on Sociology, which ends the great work which has taken thirty-five years to write, he has developed the preceding conclusions, which are those of all modern thinkers. He observes that collectivism and communism would lead us back to primitive barbarism, and he fears such a revolution in the near future. This victorious phase of Socialism could not last ; but it would produce, he says, fearful ravages among the nations which suffered from it, and would end in the utter ruin of many of them.
Such will be, according to the most eminent thinkers, the inevitable consequences of the near advent of Socialism ; upheavals such as the times of the Terror and the Commune give us but a faint idea of ; then the inevitable era of Caesars, the Caesars of the decadence, capable of declaring their horses consuls, or of causing any one who does not regard them with sufficient respect to be immediately disembowelled before their eyes; but Caesars whom the populace would put up with, as did the Roman, when, tired of civil wars and futile discussions,
they threw themselves into the arms of tyrants. The tyrants were occasionally killed when they became too
(406) despotic, but they were incessantly replaced up to the hour of the final downfall and conquest by the Barbarians. Many European countries also seem fated to end under the yoke of despots, who will possibly be intelligent, but necessarily inaccessible to all pity, and supporting not the faintest appearance of contradiction.
The immediate fate of the nation which shall first see the triumph of Socialism may be traced in a few lines. The people will of course commence by despoiling and then shooting a few thousands of employers, capitalists, and members of the wealthy class; in a word, all the exploiters of labour. Intelligence and ability will be replaced by mediocrity. The equality of servitude will be established everywhere. The dream of the Socialists being accomplished, eternal felicity should reign on the earth, and Paradise descend.
Alas, no ! . . . It will be hell, a terrible hell. For what will be the end of it ?
The social disorganisation which the new rulers will immediately bring about will succeed horrible anarchy and general ruin. Then in all probability will appear a Marius, a Sylla, a Bonaparte, some or another general, who will re-establish peace with an iron rule, which will be preceded by immense hecatombs, which will not, as history has seen so many times, prevent him from being hailed as a liberator. And justly so, for that matter, for in default of a Caesar a nation subjected to a Socialist régime would be so speedily weakened by this régime and by its intestine divisions that it would find itself at the mercy of its neighbours, and incapable of resisting their invasions.
In this brief view of the dangers which Socialism has in store for use ( have not spoken of the rivalry between the various sects of Socialists which would make anarchy still worse. A man is not a Socialist without hating some
(407) person or thing. The Socialists detest modern society, but they detest one another more bitterly. Already these inevitable rivalries between the sects of Socialists have led to the fall of the redoubtable Internationale, which for many years made the Governments tremble, and is to-day forgotten.
"One fundamental cause," writes M. de Lavelaye, "contributed to the so rapid fall of the Internationale. This cause was personal rivalry. As in the Commune of 1871, there were divisions, suspicions, affronts, and finally definite schisms. No authority made itself felt. Understandings became impossible ; association dissolved in anarchy ; yet another warning. What ! you want to abolish the State and suppress the leaders of industry, and you expect that order will naturally issue from the free initiative of the federated corporations ? But if you, who constitute, apparently, the cream of the working classes are utterly unable to understand one another sufficiently to maintain a society which requires no sacrifice of you, and which had only one end, an end desired by all, ` Down with Capital ! ' how will ordinary workmen be able to remain united, when it is a question, a daily question, of regulating interests in perpetual conflict, and making decisions touching the remuneration of each separate individual ? You were unwilling to give in to a general council which imposed nothing at all on you ; how, in the shops, will you obey the orders of the men who will have to determine your task and direct your work ? "
We can imagine, however, the gradual and pacific establishment of Socialism by legal measures, and we have seen that such would appear to be the probable course of events among the Latin nations, who arc: prepared for it by their past, and who are more and more tending in the direction of State Socialism. But
(408) we have seen also that it is precisely because they have entered on this course that they are to-day in the steep downward slope of decadence. The evil would be less extreme in appearance, but it would not be less profound in reality. The State, having successively absorbed all branches of production, "would be obliged," as Signor Molinari remarks, "to subject a portion of the nation to forced labour for the lowest living wage; in a word, to establish slavery," for the cost price of articles produced by the State is necessarily, as we have seen, higher than the cost price of production in private industry. Servitude, misery, and Caesarism are the fatal precipices to which all the roads of the Socialists lead.
Nevertheless the frightful system would appear to be inevitable. One nation, at least, will have to suffer it for the instruction of the world. It will be one of those practical lessons which alone can enlighten the nations who are bemused with the dreams of happiness displayed before their eyes by the priest of the new faith.
Let us hope that our enemies will be the first to try this experiment. If it take place in Europe everything leads us to suppose that the victim will be a poor, half-ruined country, such as Italy. Many of her statesmen had already a presentiment of the danger when they tried for so many years to turn the storm aside by a war with their neighbours, under the guarantee of the German Alliance.
4. HOW THE SOCIALISTS MIGHT SEIZE ON THE GOVERNMENT OF A COUNTRY.
But by what means could Socialism attain the reins of Government ? How will it overturn the wall which constitutes the last support of modern societies, the
410) army ? This would be a difficult matter to-day, but it will soon be less and less difficult, thanks to the disappearance of permanent armies. This we have already seen when considering the struggles of the classes, it will be as well to repeat it.
Hitherto the strength of an army has been determined not by the number of its soldiers, nor the perfection of its armament, but by its soul, and this soul is not formed in a day.
The few nations, such as the English, who have been able to retain a professional army, are almost free from the Socialist danger, and for this reason will, in the future, enjoy a considerable superiority over their rivals. The armies created by universal service are steadily tending to become nothing but an ill-disciplined militia, and history teaches us what they are worth in the hour of danger. Let us remember that our 300,000 Gardes Nationale, at the time of the siege of Paris, found nothing better to do than to create the Commune and burn the city. The famous advocate who passed by the only chance which offered itself of disarming the multitude, was later on obliged publicly to demand " pardon of God and man " for having left them their arms. He might have offered the excuse that he knew nothing of the psychology of the crowd, but what excuse shall we offer, who have not profited by such a lesson ?
On the day when these armed crowds, without real cohesion, and without military instincts, turn themselves, as at the time of the Commune, against the society they are intended to defend, the end of that society will not be far off. Then we shall see capitals in flames ; then will come furious anarchy, then invasion, then the iron glove of the depot liberator, and then the final decadence.
The fate which threatens us is already that of certain
410) peoples. We need not fly to an unknown future to find nations in which the dissolution of society has been effected by their armies. We know in what a state of miserable anarchy the Latin republics of America live. Permanent revolution, utter dilapidation of the finances, demoralisation of all the citizens, and, above all, of the military element. What goes by the name of the army is nothing but a host of undisciplined mobs, who have no mind but for rapine, and are at the disposal of the first general who is willing to lead them to pillage. And every general who wishes in his turn to seize the reins of government will always find the armed bands necessary to have his rivals assassinated, and to set himself in their place. So frequent are such affairs in all the Latin-American republics that the European papers have almost given up recording them, and are scarcely more concerned with what passes in these lamentable countries than with the affairs of the Laps. The final lot of the southern half of America will be a return to primitive barbarism, at least unless the United States do it the immense service of conquering it.
Brazil alone had to some extent escaped the general fate of which had successively fallen on all the Latin republics of America ; but at last the inevitable era of pronunciamientos opened for her also. On the very morrow of the day on which the too benevolent emperor allowed himself to be overthrown, the disorganisation commenced, and it commenced, as always, by the army. To-day the disorganisation is complete, and the country is given over, like the rest of the Latin-American republics, to perpetual military revolutions, and will inevitably return to barbarism, after rapidly passing through all the Stases of decadence.
To drag down the richest countries of the earth to the level of the negro republics of San Domingo-this, alas !
(411) is what the Latin race has realised in less than a century for half of the American continent. What a contrast with that which the English have done in North America ! What a contrast-ay, and what a lesson ! And how lamentable to think that such a lesson should be lost!
5. HOW SOCIALISM MAY BE OPPOSED.
As the experiment of Socialism must be made in some country or another, since only such an experience can cure the nations of their illusions, all our efforts should be directed to secure the accomplishment of the experiment in any country but our own. It is the duty of the writer, however small his influence may be, to do his best to avert such a disaster in his own country. He must give fight to Socialism, and retard the hour of its triumph-and in such a manner that this triumph may realise itself abroad. For this he must know the secrets of its strength and weakness, and he must also know the psychology of its disciples. Such a study was the object of this work.
The necessary work of defence is not to be undertaken with arguments capable of influencing the scientist or the philosopher. Those who are not blinded by the desire of a loud popularity, or by the illusion, of which every demagogue has been the victim, that they can control at will the monster they have unchained, know very well that man does not re-fashion societies as he pleases, that we must submit to the natural laws which are stronger than we, that a civilisation, at any given moment, is a fragment of a chain to which all the years art- joined by invisible links, that the character of a people determines its institutions and its destinies ; that this character is the work of centuries ; that societies are
(412) very certainly undergoing an incessant evolution, and that they cannot be in the future what they are to-day ; but that very certainly this inevitable evolution will not be determined by our fantasies and dreams.
It is not, I repeat, by such arguments that one may influence crowds. Such arguments as are drawn from observation, and limited by reason, are unable to convince them. Little they care for reasoning, and for books ! Neither will they suffer themselves to be seduced by those who flatter them with the most humiliating servility, as is done to-day. They give their support to those that flatter them, but they support them with a just disdain, and immediately raise the level of their demands in proportion as the flatteries become more excessive. To act on the crowd one must know how to work on their sentiments, and especially on their unconscious sentiments ; and one must never appeal to their reason, for they have none. One must accordingly be familiar with their sentiments in order to manipulate them, and to be so familiar one must be incessantly mixing with them, as do the priests of the new religion that is growing under our eyes.
Are they difficult to direct, these crowds ? One must know little of their psychology and their history to think so. Is it necessary to be a founder of religion, such as Mahomet, a hero such as Napoleon, or a visionary such as Peter the Hermit, in order to steal their hearts ? No, no ! No need of these exceptional personalities. It is only a few years since we saw an obscure general, with no greater merits than plenty of audacity, the prestige of his uniform, and the beauty of his horse, reach the very verge of supreme power, a limit which he dared not cross. A Caesar without laurels and without faith, he recoiled before the Rubicon. Let us remember that history shows us that popular movements are in reality
(413) only the movements of a few leaders ; let us remember the simplicism of crowds, their immovable conservative instincts, and, finally, the mechanism of those elements of persuasion which I attempted to present in a preceding volume-affirmation, repetition, contagion and prestige. Let us remember, again, that in spite of all appearances it is not interest, powerful though it be in the individual, that leads the crowd. The crowd must have an ideal, a belief, and before it becomes impassioned by its ideal or belief it must become impassioned by its apostles. They, and they only, by their prestige, awaken in the popular mind those sentiments of admiration which furnish the most solid basis of faith.
One may direct the crowd at will when one has the will. The most uncomfortable régimes, the most intolerable of despots, are always acclaimed by reason of the sole fact that they have succeeded in establishing themselves. In less than a century the crowds have extended their suffrages to Marat, to Robespierre, to the Bourbons, to Napoleon, to the Republic, and to every chance adventurer as readily as to the great men. They have accepted liberty and servitude with equal resignation.
In order to defend ourselves, not against the crowd, but against its leaders, we have only to wish to do so. Unhappily the great moral malady of our times, and one that seems incurable among the Latins, is want of will. This decay of will, coinciding with the lack of initiative and the development of indifference, is the great danger which threatens us.
These, no doubt, are generalities, and it would be easy to descend from generalities to details. But how could the march of events be altered by the counsels that a writer might formulate ? Has he not completed his task when he has presented the general principles of which the consequences may easily be deduced ?
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Again, it is of less importance to indicate what we ought to do than to indicate what we ought not to do. The social body is a very delicate organism, which should be touched as seldom as possible. There is nothing more lamentable for a State than to be for ever subject to the fickle and unreflecting will of the crowd. If one ought to do a great deal for the crowd, at least one ought to do very little by means of it. It would be an immense progress if we could merely give up our perpetual prospects of reform, and also the idea that we must be always changing our constitutions, our institutions, and our laws. Above all ought we to limit, and not incessantly extend, the intervention of the State, so as to force the citizens to acquire a little of the initiative and the habit of self-government which they are losing by the perpetual tutelage that they cry for.
But once, again, what is the use of expressing such wishes ? Is not to wish for their realisation to wish to change our souls and to avert the course of destiny? The most immediately necessary of reforms, perhaps the only one of any real use, would be the reform of our education. But it is also the most difficult of accomplishment, for its realisation would really imply this veritable miracle-the transformation of the national mind.
How can we hope for it? And, on the other hand, how can we resign ourselves to silence, when we foresee the dangers that are approaching, and when, theoretically, it appears easy to avoid them ?
If we allow doubt, indifference, the spirit of negation and criticism, and futile barren discussions and rivalries to increase their hold on us-if we continue always to call for the intervention of the State in the least affairs-we shall soon be submerged by the barbarians. We shall be obliged to give place to more vigorous peoples, arid disappear from the face of the earth.
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Thus perished many civilisations of the past, when their natural defenders gave up struggle and effort. The ruin of nations has never been effected by the lowering of their intelligence, but by the lowering of their character. Thus ended Athens and Rome ; thus ended Byzantium, the heir of the civilisations of antiquity, of all the dreams and all the discoveries of humanity, all the treasures of art and thought that had accumulated since the beginning of the world.
The historians relate that when the Sultan Mahomet appeared before the great city, its inhabitants, occupied in subtle theological discussions and in perpetual rivalry, took little trouble to defend it. Thus the representative of a new faith triumphed easily over such adversaries. When he had entered the famous capital, the last refuge of the lights of the old world, his soldiers promptly deprived the more noisy of these babblers of their heads, and reduced the others to servitude.
Let us strive not to imitate these descendants of too ancient races, and let us beware of their fate. Let us lose no time in barren recriminations and discussions. Let us take care to defend ourselves against the enemies who threaten us within, while yet there is no need to defend ourselves against the enemies without. Do not let us disdain the slightest effort, and let each contribute it in his sphere, however modest it may be. Let us, without ceasing, study the problems with which the sphinx confronts us, and which we must answer under pain of being devoured by her. And when we think, in our secret hearts, that such counsels are perhaps as vain as the vows made to an invalid whose days have been numbered by fate, let us act as if we did not think so.
