Extremely illiterate, not hoping, like the middle classes, to
ascend the social scale, not in any way feeling itself the equal
of the nobles, and not aspiring ever to become their equal, the
people had views and interests very different to those of the
upper classes of society.

The struggles of the assembly with the royal power led it to call
for the intervention of the people in these struggles. It
intervened more and more, and the bourgeois revolution rapidly
became a popular revolution.

An idea having no force of its own, and acting only by virtue of
possessing an affective and mystic substratum which supports it,
the theoretical ideas of the bourgeoisie, before they could act
on the people, had to be transformed into a new and very definite
faith, springing from obvious practical interests.

This transformation was rapidly effected when the people heard
the men envisaged by it as the Government assuring it that it was
the equal of its former masters. It began to regard itself as a
victim, and proceeded to pillage, burn, and massacre, imagining
that in so doing it was exercising a right.

The great strength of the revolutionary principles was that they
gave a free course to the instincts of primitive barbarity which
had been restrained by the secular and inhibitory action of
environment, tradition, and law.

All the social bonds that formerly contained the multitude were
day by day dissolving, so that it conceived a notion of unlimited