BOOK VI.

CONSOLIDATION


Chapter 1.6.I.

Make the Constitution.

Here perhaps is the place to fix, a little more precisely, what these
two words, French Revolution, shall mean; for, strictly considered, they
may have as many meanings as there are speakers of them. All things are
in revolution; in change from moment to moment, which becomes sensible
from epoch to epoch: in this Time-World of ours there is properly
nothing else but revolution and mutation, and even nothing else
conceivable. Revolution, you answer, means speedier change. Whereupon
one has still to ask: How speedy? At what degree of speed; in what
particular points of this variable course, which varies in velocity, but
can never stop till Time itself stops, does revolution begin and end;
cease to be ordinary mutation, and again become such? It is a thing that
will depend on definition more or less arbitrary.

For ourselves we answer that French Revolution means here the open
violent Rebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy against corrupt
worn-out Authority: how Anarchy breaks prison; bursts up from the
infinite Deep, and rages uncontrollable, immeasurable, enveloping a
world; in phasis after phasis of fever-frenzy;--'till the frenzy burning
itself out, and what elements of new Order it held (since all Force