she would not have descended the path of decadence which led to
her disappearance from the map of Europe.

We have shewn in this chapter that political revolutions may be
accompanied by important social transformations. We shall soon
see how slight are these transformations compared to those
produced by religious revolutions.



CHAPTER II

RELIGIOUS REVOLUTIONS

1. The importance of the study of Religious Revolutions in
respect of the comprehension of the great Political Revolutions.


A portion of this work will be devoted to the French Revolution.
It was full of acts of violence which naturally had their
psychological causes.

These exceptional events will always fill us with astonishment,
and we even feel them to be inexplicable. They become
comprehensible, however, if we consider that the French
Revolution, constituting a new religion, was bound to obey the
laws which condition the propagation of all beliefs. Its fury
and its hecatombs will then become intelligible.

In studying the history of a great religious revolution, that of