prove fruitful, I resolved to apply them to the study of concrete
instances, and was thus led to deal with the Psychology of
Revolutions--notably that of the French Revolution.

Proceeding in the analysis of our great Revolution, the
greater part of the opinions determined by the reading of books
deserted me one by one, although I had considered them
unshakable.

To explain this period we must consider it as a whole, as many
historians have done. It is composed of phenomena simultaneous
but independent of one another.

Each of its phases reveals events engendered by psychological
laws working with the regularity of clockwork. The actors in
this great drama seem to move like the characters of a previously
determined drama. Each says what he must say, acts as he is
bound to act.

To be sure, the actors in the revolutionary drama differed from
those of a written drama in that they had not studied their
parts, but these were dictated by invisible forces.

Precisely because they were subjected to the inevitable
progression of logics incomprehensible to them we see them as
greatly astonished by the events of which they were the heroes as
are we ourselves. Never did they suspect the invisible powers
which forced them to act. They were the masters neither of their
fury nor their weakness. They spoke in the name of reason,
pretending to be guided by reason, but in reality it was by no