latest literature of the Revolution betrays these uncertainties.
Having related, men are more and more chary of drawing
conclusions.

Not only are the heroes of this great drama discussed without
indulgence, but thinkers are asking whether the new dispensation
which followed the ancien regime would not have established
itself naturally, without violence, in the course of progressive
civilisation. The results obtained no longer seem in
correspondence either with their immediate cost or with the
remoter consequences which the Revolution evoked from the
possibilities of history.

Several causes have led to the revision of this tragic period.
Time has calmed passions, numerous documents have gradually
emerged from the archives, and the historian is learning to
interpret them independently.

But it is perhaps modern psychology that has most effectually
influenced our ideas, by enabling us more surely to read men and
the motives of their conduct.

Among those of its discoveries which are henceforth applicable to
history we must mention, above all, a more profound understanding
of ancestral influences, the laws which rule the actions of the
crowd, data relating to the disaggregation of personality, mental
contagion, the unconscious formation of beliefs, and the
distinction between the various forms of logic.

To tell the truth, these applications of science, which are