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ancestors by the harsh necessities of existence, during which they had either to kill or die of hunger, while
to-day there is no longer any legitimate excuse for it. But so it is, and we can do nothing; probably we
shall never break the chains of a slavery which has bound us for so long. We cannot prevent ourselves
from feeling an intense, often passionate, pleasure in shedding the blood of animals towards whom, when
the love of the chase possesses us, we lose all feeling of pity. The gentlest and prettiest creatures, the
song- birds, the charm of our springtime, fall to our guns or are choked in our snares, and not a shudder
of pity troubles our pleasure at seeing them terrified, bleeding, writhing in the horrible suffering we inflict
on them, seeking to flee on their poor broken paws or desperately beating their wings, which can no
longer support them. . . . The excuse is the impulse of that imperious atavism which the best of us have
not the strength to resist.
At ordinary times this singular atavism, restrained by fear of the laws, can only be exercised on animals.
When codes are no longer operative it immediately applies itself to man, which is why so many terrorists
took an intense pleasure in killing. Carrier's remark concerning the joy he felt in contemplating the faces
of his victims during their torment is very typical. In many civilised men ferocity is a restrained instinct, but
it is by no means eliminated.
3.Danton and Robespierre .
Danton and Robespierre represented the two principal personages of the Revolution I shall say little of
the former: his psychology, besides being simple, is familiar. A club orator firstly, impulsive and violent, he
showed himself always ready to excite the people. Cruel only in his speeches, he often regretted their
effects. From the outset he shone in the first rank, while his future rival, Robespierre, was vegetating
almost in the lowest.
At one given moment Danton became the soul of the Revolution, but he was deficient in tenacity and
fixity of conduct. Moreover, he was needy, while Robespierre was not. The continuous fanaticism of the
latter defeated the intermittent efforts of the former. Nevertheless, it was an amazing spectacle to see so
powerful a tribune sent to the scaffold by his pale, venemous enemy and mediocre rival.
Robespierre, the most influential man of the Revolution and the most frequently studied, is yet the least
explicable. It is difficult to understand the prodigious influence which gave him the power of life and
death, not only over the enemies of the Revolution but also over colleagues who could not have been
considered as enemies of the existing Government.
We certainly cannot explain the matter by saying with Taine that Robespierre was a pedant lost in
abstractions, nor by asserting with the Michelet that he succeeded on account of his principles, nor by
repeating with his contemporary Williams that one of the secrets of his government was to take men
marked by opprobrium or soiled with crime as stepping-stones to his ambition.
It is impossible to regard his eloquence as the cause of his success. His eyes protected by goggles, he
painfully read his speeches, which were composed of cold and indefinite abstractions. The Assembly
contained orators who possessed an immensely superior talent, such as Danton and the Girondists; yet it
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was Robespierre who destroyed them.
We have really no acceptable explanation of the ascendancy which the dictator finally obtained. Without
influence in the National Assembly, he gradually became the master of the Convention and of the
Jacobins. When he reached the Committee of Public Safety he was already, said Billaud-- Varennes,
the most important person in France.
His history, writes Michelet, is prodigious, far more marvellous than that of Bonaparte. The threads,
the wheels, the preparation of forces, are far less visible. It is an honest man, an austere but pious figure,
of middling talents, that shoots up one morning, borne upward by I know not what cataclysm. There is
nothing like it in theArabianNights . And in a moment he goes higher than the throne. He is set upon the
altar. Astonishing story!
Certainly circumstances helped him considerably. People turned to him as to the master of whom all felt
the need. But then he was already there, and what we wish to discover is the cause of his rapid ascent. I
would willingly suppose in him the existence of a species of personal fascination which escapes us to-day.
His successes with women might be quoted in support of this theory. On the days when he speaks the
passages are choked with women . . . there are seven or eight hundred in the tribunes, and with what
transports they applaud! At the Jacobins, when he speaks there are sobs and cries of emotion, and men
stamp as though they would bring the hall down. A young widow, Mme. de Chalabre, possessed of
sixteen hundred pounds a year, sends him burning love-letters and is eager to marry him.
We cannot seek in his character for the causes of his popularity. A hypochondriac by temperament, of
mediocre intelligence, incapable of grasping realities, confined to abstractions, crafty and dissimulating, his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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