means reason that impelled them.

``The decisions for which we are so greatly reproached,'' wrote
Billaud-Varenne, ``were more often than otherwise not intended or
desired by us two days or even one day beforehand: the crisis
alone evoked them.''

Not that we must consider the events of the Revolution as
dominated by an imperious fatality. The readers of our works
will know that we recognise in the man of superior qualities the
role of averting fatalities. But he can dissociate himself
only from a few of such, and is often powerless before the
sequence of events which even at their origin could scarcely be
ruled. The scientist knows how to destroy the microbe before it
has time to act, but he knows himself powerless to prevent the
evolution of the resulting malady.


When any question gives rise to violently contradictory opinions
we may be sure that it belongs to the province of beliefs and not
to that of knowledge.

We have shown in a preceding work that belief, of unconscious
origin and independent of all reason, can never be influenced by
reason.

The Revolution, the work of believers, has seldom been judged by
any but believers. Execrated by some and praised by others, it
has remained one of those dogmas which are accepted or rejected
as a whole, without the intervention of rational logic.