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The conception of M. Aulard, entirely contrary to the lessons of the psychology of crowds, is none the less a religious dogma in the eyes of modern Jacobins. They write of the Revolution according to the methods of believers, and take for learned works the arguments of virtual theologians. The Theory of Fatalism in respect of the Revolution.
He was a militant republican, editor of the Memoirs of his father, of Grégoire, and of Barère, and M. Aulard praises his book, with the sympathy of a co-religionist, as the best existing narrative. Other good republicans prefer what Henri Martin wrote in continuation of his history of France.
We may judge of his immense influence by the exasperation which he causes among the faithful defenders of Jacobin orthodoxy, of which M. Aulard, professor at the Sorbonne, is to-day the high priest. The latter has devoted two years to writing a pamphlet against Taine, every line of which is steeped in passion.
It overthrew Charles X. because of his Ordinances without having any idea of the contents of the latter, and would have been greatly embarrassed had it been asked at a later date why it overthrew Louis-Philippe. Deceived by appearances, many authors, from Michelet to Aulard, have supposed that the people effected our great Revolution. ``The principal actor, said Michelet, ``is the people.
In the eighth volume of the General History, now appearing in France, Aulard gives the political outline of the Revolution. It may be called the characteristic product of the year 1889. When the anniversary came round, for the hundredth time, and found the Republic securely established, and wielding a power never dreamed of by the founders, men began to study its history in a new spirit.
Vast pains and vast sums were expended in collecting, arranging, printing, the most authentic and exact information; and there was less violence and partiality, more moderation and sincerity, as became the unresisted victor. In this new school the central figure was M. Aulard.
Their most fervent defenders, such as M. Aulard, are obliged to admit as much. This is how M. Aulard puts it in his History of the French Revolution: ``It has been said that the generation which from 1789 to 1799 did such great and terrible things was a generation of giants, or, to put it more plainly, that it was a generation more distinguished than that which preceded it or that which followed.
This is what reality teaches us, though the illusions of the Jacobins do not permit them to accept the fact. In the historical manuals which M. Aulard has prepared for the use of classes in collaboration with M. Debidour the role attributed to the people as an entity is even more marked. We see it intervening continually and spontaneously; here are a few examples:
Perhaps some one will then compose a history as far beyond the latest that we possess as Sorel, Aulard, Rambaud, Flammermont are in advance of Taine and Sybel, or Taine and Sybel of Michelet and Louis Blanc; or of the best that we have in English, the three chapters in the second volume of Buckle, or the two chapters in the fifth volume of Lecky.
I find a striking proof of this new frame of mind in the history of France for the use of schools, published by MM. Aulard and Debidour. Concerning the Terror we read the following lines: ``Blood flowed in waves; there were acts of injustice and crimes which were useless from the point of view of national defence, and odious.
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