crises something even stronger than the men who appear to guide
them--the will of the event itself.

The Revolution in all its comprehensive bearings was not understood at
that period by any one except, perchance, Robespierre and the thorough
going democrats. The King viewed it only as a vast reform, the Duc
d'Orleans as a great faction, Mirabeau but in its political point of
view, La Fayette only in its constitutional aspect, the Jacobins as a
vengeance, the mob as the abasing of the higher orders, the nation as a
display of patriotism. None ventured as yet to contemplate its ultimate
consummation.

All was thus blind, except the Revolution itself. The virtue of the
Revolution was in the idea which forced these men on to accomplish it,
and not in those who actually accomplished it; all its instruments were
vitiated, corrupt, or personal; but the idea was pure, incorruptible,
divine. The vices, passions, selfishness of men were inevitably doomed
to produce in the coming crises those shocks, those violences, those
perversities, and those crimes which are to human passions what
consequences are to principles.

If each of the parties or men, mixed up from the first day with these
great events had taken their virtue, instead of their impulses as the
rule of their actions, all these disasters which eventually crushed
them, would have been saved to them and to their country. If the king
had been firm and sagacious, if the clergy had been free from a longing
for things temporal, and if the aristocracy had been good; if the people
had been moderate, if Mirabeau had been honest, if La Fayette had been
decided, if Robespierre had been humane, the Revolution would have
progressed, majestic and calm as a heavenly thought, through France, and