When an ideology attracts people, it is less due to its sophistication than to the promises it holds out. It appeals more to their desires than to their intelligence; for, if the heart sometimes may be the dupe of the head, the latter is much more frequently the dupe of the former. We do not accept a system because we deem it a true one, but because the truth we find in it suits us. Political or religious fanaticism, any theological or philosophical channel in which truth flows, always has its source in some ardent longing, some secret passion, some accumulation of intense, painful desire to which a theory affords and outlet. In the Jacobin, as well as in the Puritan, there is a fountain-head of this description. What feeds this source with the Puritan is the anxieties of a disturbed conscience which, forming for itself some idea of perfect justice, becomes rigid and multiplies the commandments it believes that God has promulgated; on being constrained to disobey these it rebels, and, to impose them on others, it becomes tyrannical even to despotism. The first effort of the Puritan, however, wholly internal, is self-control; before becoming political he becomes moral. With the Jacobin, on the contrary, the first precept is not moral, political; it is not his duties which he exaggerates but his rights, while his doctrine, instead of being a prick to his conscience, flatters his pride.1121 However vast and insatiate human pride may be, now it is satisfied, for never before has it had so much to feed upon.—In the program of the sect, do not look for the restricted prerogatives growing out of self-respect which the proud-spirited man claims for himself, such as civil rights accompanied by those liberties that serve as sentinels and guardians of these rights—security for life and property, the stability of the law, the integrity of courts, equality of citizens before the law and under taxation, the abolition of privileges and arbitrary proceedings, the election of representatives and the administration of public funds. Summing it up, the precious guarantees which render each citizen an inviolable sovereign on his limited domain, which protect his person and property against all species of public or private oppression and exaction, which maintain him calm and erect before competitors as well as adversaries, upright and respectful in the presence of magistrates and in the presence of the government.

A Malouet, a Mounier, a Mallet du Pan, partisans of the English Constitution and Parliament, may be content with such trifling gifts, but the Jacobin theory holds them all cheap, and, if need be, will trample them in the dust. Independence and security for the private citizen is not what it promises, not the right to vote every two years, not a moderate exercise of influence, not an indirect, limited and intermittent control of the commonwealth, but political dominion in the full and complete possession of France and the French people. There is no doubt on this point. In Rousseau's own words, the "Contrat Social" prescribes "the complete alienation to the community of each associate and all his rights," every individual surrendering himself wholly, "just as he may actually be, he himself and all his powers of which his possessions form a part," so that the state not only the recognized owner of property, but of minds and bodies as well, may forcibly and legitimately impose on every member of it such education, form of worship, religious faith, opinions and sympathies as it deems best.1122 Now each man, solely because he is a man, is by right a member of this despotic sovereignty. Whatever, accordingly, my condition may be, my incompetence, my ignorance, my insignificance in the career in which I have plodded along, I have full control over the fortunes, lives, and consciences of twenty-six million French people, being accordingly Czar and Pope, according to my share of authority.——But if I adhere strictly to this doctrine, I am yet more so than my quota warrants. This royal prerogative with which I am endowed is only conferred on those who, like myself, sign the Social Contract in full; others, merely because they reject some clause of it, incur a forfeiture; no one must enjoy the advantages of a pact of which some of the conditions are repudiated.—Even better, as this pact is based on natural right and is obligatory, he who rejects it or withdraws from it, becomes by that act a miscreant, a public wrong-doer and an enemy of the people. There were once crimes of royal lÈse-majesty; now there are crimes of popular lÈse-majesty. Such crimes are committed when by deed, word, or thought, any portion whatever of the more than royal authority belonging to the people is denied or contested. The dogma through which popular sovereignty is proclaimed thus actually ends in a dictatorship of the few, and a proscription of the many. Outside of the sect you are outside of the laws. We, the five or six thousand Jacobins of Paris, are the legitimate monarch, the infallible Pontiff, and woe betide the refractory and the lukewarm, all government agents, all private persons, the clergy, the nobles, the rich, merchants, traders, the indifferent among all classes, who, steadily opposing or yielding uncertain adhesion, dare to throw doubt on our unquestionable right.

One by one these consequences are to come into light, and it is evident that, let the logical machinery by which they unfold themselves be what it may, no ordinary person, unless of consummate vanity, will fully adopt them. He must have an exalted opinion of himself to consider himself sovereign otherwise than by his vote, to conduct public business with no more misgivings than his private business, to directly and forcibly interfere with this, to set himself up, he and his clique, as guides, censors and rulers of his government, to persuade himself that, with his mediocre education and average intellect, with his few scraps of Latin and such information as is obtained in reading-rooms, coffee-houses, and newspapers, with no other experience than that of a club, or a municipal council, he could discourse wisely and well on the vast, complex questions which superior men, specially devoted to them, hesitate to take up. At first this presumption existed in him only in germ, and, in ordinary times, it would have remained, for lack of nourishment, as dry-rot or creeping mold, But the heart knows not what strange seeds it contains! Any of these, feeble and seemingly inoffensive, needs only air and sunshine to become a noxious excrescence and a colossal plant. Whether third or fourth rate attorney, counselor, surgeon, journalist, curÉ, artist, or author, the Jacobin is like the shepherd that has just found, in one corner of his hut, a lot of old parchments which entitle him to the throne. What a contrasts between the meanness of his calling and the importance with which the theory invests him! With what rapture he accepts a dogma that raises him so high in his own estimation! Diligently conning the Declaration of Rights, the Constitution, all the official documents that confer on him such glorious prerogatives, charging his imagination with them, he immediately assumes a tone befitting his new position.1123—Nothing surpasses the haughtiness and arrogance of this tone. It declares itself at the outset in the harangues of the clubs and in the petitions to the Constituent Assembly. Loustalot, FrÉron, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, St. Just, always employ dictatorial language, that of the sect, and which finally becomes the jargon of their meanest valets. Courtesy or toleration, anything that denotes regard or respect for others, find no place in their utterances nor in their acts; a swaggering, tyrannical conceit creates for itself a language in its own image, and we see not only the foremost actors, but their minor associates, enthroned on their grandiloquent platform. Each in his own eyes is Roman, savior, hero, and great man.

"I stood in the tribune of the palace," writes Anarcharsis Clootz,1124 "at the head of the foreigners, acting as ambassador of the human species, while the ministers of the tyrants regarded me with a jealous and disconcerted air."

A schoolmaster at Troyes, on the opening of the club in that town, advises the women "to teach their children, as soon as they can utter a word, that they are free and have equal rights with the mightiest potentates of the universe."1125 PÉtion's account of the journey in the king's carriage, on the return from Varennes, must be read to see how far self-importance of a pedant and the self-conceit of a lout can be carried.1126 In their memoirs and even down to their epitaphs, Barbaroux, Buzot, PÉtion, Roland, and Madame Roland1127 give themselves certificates of virtue and, if we could take their word for it, they would pass for Plutarch's model characters.—This infatuation, from the Girondins to the Montagnards, continues to grow. St. Just, at the age of twenty-four, and merely a private individual, is already consumed with suppressed ambition. Marat says:

"I believe that I have exhausted every combination of the human intellect in relation to morality, philosophy and political science."

Robespierre, from the beginning to the end of the Revolution, is always, in his own eyes, Robespierre the unique, the one pure man, the infallible and the impeccable; no man ever burnt to himself the incense of his own praise so constantly and so directly.—At this level, conceit may drink the theory to the bottom, however revolting the dregs and however fatal its poison even to those defy its nausea for the sake of swallowing it. And, since it is virtue, no one may refuse it without committing a crime. Thus construed, the theory divides Frenchmen into two groups: one consisting of aristocrats, fanatics, egoists, the corrupt, bad citizens in short, and the other patriots, philosophers, and the virtuous, that is to say, those belonging to the sect.1128 Thanks to this reduction, the vast moral and social world with which they deal finds its definition, expression, and representation in a ready-made antithesis. The aim of the government is now clear: the wicked must submit to the good, or, which is briefer, the wicked must be suppressed. To this end let us employ confiscation, imprisonment, exile, drowning and the guillotine and a large scale. All means are justifiable and meritorious against these traitors; now that the Jacobin has canonized his slaughter, he slays through philanthropy.—Thus is the forming of his personality completed like that of a theologian who becomes inquisitor. Extraordinary contrasts are gathered to construct it:—a lunatic that is logical, and a monster that pretends to have a conscience. Under the pressure of his faith and egotism, he has developed two deformities, one of the head and the other of the heart; his common sense is gone, and his moral sense is utterly perverted. In fixing his mind on abstract formulas, he is no longer able to see men as they are. His self-admiration makes him consider his adversaries, and even his rivals, as miscreants deserving of death. On this downhill road nothing stops him, for, in qualifying things inversely to their true meaning, he has violated within himself the precious concepts which brings us back to truth and justice. No light reaches eyes which regard blindness as clear-sightedness; no remorse affects a soul which erects barbarism into patriotism, and which sanctions murder with duty.

1101 (return)
[ Cf. "The Ancient RÉgime," p. 242. Citations from the "Contrat Social."—Buchez et Roux, "Histoire Parlementaire," XXVI. 96. Declaration of rights read by Robespierre in the Jacobin club, April 21, 1793, and adopted by the club as its own. "The people is sovereign, the government is its work and its property, and public functionaries are its clerks. The people can displace its mandatories and change its government when it pleases."]

1102 (return)
[ Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other dictators that like that also organized elections and saw themselves as being the people, speaking and acting on their behalf and therefore entitled to do anything they pleased.(SR).]

1103 (return)
[ Rightly so, might Lenin have thought when he first read this text. Later, under his and Stalin's leadership the Party, guided by the first secretary of its central committee, aided by the secret police, should penetrate all affairs slowly extending their power or influence to the entire world through their secret party members, mutually ensuring their promotion into the highest posts, the party will eventually come to govern the world. (SR).]

1104 (return)
[ Buchez and Roux, III, 324.. (An article by Loustalot, Sept. 8, 1789). Ibid. 331 Motion of the District of CordÉliers, presided over by Danton.—Ibid 239.. Denunciation of the municipality by Marat.—V., 128, Vi. 24-41 (March, 1790). The majority of the districts demand the permanent authority of the districts, that is to say, of the sovereign political assemblies]

1105 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux. IV. 458. Meeting of Feb. 24, 1790, an article by Loustalot.—III 202. Speech by Robespierre, meeting of Oct. 21, 1789. Ibid. 219. Resolution of the district of St. Martin declaring that martial law shall not be enforced. Ibid. 222. Article by Loustalot.]

1106 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, X. 124, an article by Marat.—X. 1-22, speech by Robespierre at the meeting of May 9, 1791.-III. an article by Loustalot. III. 217, speech by Robespierre, meeting of Oct.22, 1789. Ibid. 431, article by Loustalot and Desmoulins, Nov., 1789.—VI. 336, articles by Loustalot and Marat, July, 1790.]

1107 (return)
[ Ernest Hamel, "Histoire de Robespierre", passim, (I.436). Robespierre proposed to confer political rights on the blacks.—Buchez et Roux, IX. 264 (March, 1791).]

1108 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, V. 146 (March, 1790); VI. 436 (July 26, 1790); VIII. 247 (Dec 1790); X. 224 (June, 1791).]

1109 (return)
[ Gustave Flaubert. "Tout notaire a rÊvÉ des sultanes." (All barristers have dreams of being sultans!) (Madame Bovary").—"FrÉdÉric trouvait que le bonheur mÉritÉ par l'excellence de son Âme tardait À venir." (FrÉdÉric found that the happiness he deserved due to his brilliancy was a long time coming.) ("L'Education sentimentale.)]

1110 (return)
[ Such has also been the effect of similar declarations set forth in the Constitutions of the United Nations, the European Community, as well as many individual nations. All that was required for the international Communist movement was then to await the slow promotion of the secret party members directed to seek a career inside the various legal administrations for, one day, to see all superior courts staffed by their men. (SR).]

1111 (return)
[ Mallet du Pan, "Correspondance politique." 1796.]

1112 (return)
[ "Entretiens du PÈre GÉrard," by Collot d'Herbois.—"Les Etrennes au Peuple," by BarrÈre.-"La Constitution franÇaise pour les habitants des campagnes," etc.—Later "L'Alphabet des Sans-Culottes, le Nouveau CatÉchisme rÉpublicain, les Commandements de la Patrie et de la RÉpublique (in verse), etc."]

1113 (return)
[ Mercure de France, an article by Mallet du Pan, April 7, 1792. (Summing up of the year 1791.)]

1114 (return)
[ Mercure de France, see the numbers of Dec. 30, 1791, and April 7, 1792. (Note the phrase, it is close to Marx statement in 1850 'that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.' SR.)]

1115 (return)
[ Fox, before deciding on any measure, consulted a Mr. H.—, one of the most uninfluential, and even narrow-minded members of the House of Commons. Some astonishment being expressed at this, he replied that he regarded Mr. H.—-as a perfect type of the faculties and prejudices of a country gentleman, and he used him as a thermometer. Napoleon likewise stated that before framing an important law, he imagined to himself the impression it would make on the mind of a burly peasant.]

1116 (return)
[ Just like the strong influence which the current fashionable principles and buzz-words introduced by the media have over today's audiences. (SR).]

1117 (return)
[ Alas! This phenomenon should be repeated with the interminable speeches held by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Mao and all the other inheritors of the Jacobin creed. (SR).]

1118 (return)
[ "Tableaux de la RÉvolution FranÇaise," by Schmidt (especially the reports by Dutard), 3 vols.]

1119 (return)
[ "Correspondence of Gouverneur Morris,"—"Memoirs of Mallet du Pan," John Moore']

1120 (return)
[ See, in "ProgrÈs de l'esprit humaine," the superiority awarded to the republican constitution of 1793. (Book IX.) "The principles from which the constitution and laws of France have been combined are purer, more exact, and deeper than those which governed the Americans: they have more completely escaped the influence of every sort of prejudice, etc."]

1121 (return)
[ Camille Desmoulins, the enfant terrible of the Revolution, confesses this, as well as other truths. After citing the Revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, "which derived their virtue from and had their roots in conscience, which were sustained by fanaticism and the hopes of another world," he thus concludes: "Our Revolution, purely political, is wholly rooted in egotism, in everybody's amour propre, in the combinations of which is found the common interest." ("Brissot dÉvoilÉ," by Camille Desmoulins, January, 1792)—Bouchez et Roux, XIII, 207.)]

1122 (return)
[ Rousseau's idea of the omnipotence of the State is also that of Louis XIV and Napoleon... It is curious to see the development of the same idea in the mind of a contemporary bourgeois, like RÉtif de la Bretonne, half literary and half one of the people ("Nuits de Paris," XVe nuit, 377, on the September Massacres) "No, I do not pity those fanatical priests; they have done the country too much mischief. Whatever a society, or a majority of it, desires, that is right. He who opposes this, who calls down war and vengeance on the Nation, is a monster. Order is always found in the agreement of the majority. The minority is always guilty, I repeat it, even if it is morally right. Nothing but common sense is needed to see that truth."—Ibid. (On the execution of Louis XVI.), p. 447. "Had the nation the right to condemn and execute him? No thinking person can ask such a question. The nation is everything in itself; its power is that which the whole human kind would have if but one nation, one single government governed the globe. Who would dare then dispute the power of humanity? It is this indisputable power that a nation has, to hang even an innocent man, felt by the ancient Greeks, which led them to exile Aristoteles and put Phocion to death. 'Oh truth, unrecognized by our contemporaries, what evil has arisen through forgetting it!'"]

1123 (return)
[ Moniteur, XI. 46. Speech by Isnard in the Assembly, Jan. 5, 1792. "The people are now conscious of their dignity. They know, according to the constitution, that every Frenchman's motto is: 'Live free, the equal of all, and one of the common sovereignty.'"—Guillon de MontlÉon, I. 445. Speech by Chalier, in the Lyons Central Club, March 21, 1793. "Know that you are kings, and more than kings. Do you not feel sovereignty circulating in your veins?"]

1124 (return)
[ Moniteur, V. 136. (Celebration of the Federation, July 14, 1790.)]

1125 (return)
[ Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes pendant la RÉvolution," I. 436 (April 10, 1790).]

1126 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux, "Histoire de la Terreur," I. 353. (PÉtion's own narrative of this journey.) This pert blockhead cannot even spell: he writes aselle for aisselle, etc. He is convinced that Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister, wants to seduce him, and that she makes advances to him: "If we had been alone, I believe that she would have fallen into my arms, and let the impulses of nature have their way." He makes a display of virtue however, and becomes only the more supercilious as he talks with the king, the young dauphin, and the ladies he is fetching back.]

1127 (return)
[ The "MÉmoires de Madame Roland" is a masterpiece of that conceit supposed to be so careflilly concealed as not to be visible and never off its stilts. "I am beautiful, I am affectionate, I am sensitive, I inspire love, I reciprocate, I remain virtuous, my mind is superior, and my courage indomitable. I am philosopher, statesman, and writer, worthy of the highest success," is constantly in her mind, and always perceptible in her phraseology. Real modesty never shows itself. On the contrary, many indecorous things are said and done by her from bravado, and to set herself above her sex. Cf. the "Memoirs of Mirs. Hutchinson," which present a great contrast. Madame Roland wrote: "I see no part in society which suits me but that of Providence."—The same presumption shines out in others, with less refined pretensions. The deputy Rouyer addresses the following letter, found among the papers of the iron wardrobe, to the king, "I have compared, examined, and foreseen everything. All I ask to carry out my noble purposes, is that direction of forces, which the law confers on you. I am aware of and brave the danger; weakness defers to this, while genius overcomes it I have turned my attention to all the courts of Europe, and am sure that I can force peace on them."—Robert, an obscure pamphleteer, asks Dumouriez to make him ambassador to Constantinople, while Louvet, the author of "Faublas," declares in his memoirs that liberty perished in 1792, because he was not appointed Minister of Justice.]

1128 (return)
[ Moniteur, p. 189. Speech by Collot d'Herbois, on the mitraillades at Lyons. "We too, possess sensibility! The Jacobins have every virtue; they are compassionate, humane, and generous. These virtues, however, are reserved for patriots, who are their brethren, but never for aristocrats."—Meillan, "MÉmoires," p. 4. "Robespierre was one day eulogizing a man named Desfieux, well known for his lack of integrity, and whom he finally sacrificed. 'But, I said to him, your man Desfieux is known to be a rascal.'—'No matter,' he replied, 'he is a good patriot.'—'But he is a fraudulent bankrupt.'-'He is a good patriot.'—'But he is a thief.'—'He is a good patriot.' I could not get more than these three words out of him."]