History of the Girondists, Volume I | Page 8

French Revolution announced all that was great in this world, the
advent of a new idea in human kind, the democratic idea, and
afterwards the democratic government.
This idea was an emanation of Christianity. Christianity finding men in

serfage and degraded all over the earth, had arisen on the fall of the
Roman Empire, like a mighty vengeance, though under the aspect of a
resignation. It had proclaimed the three words which 2000 years
afterwards was re-echoed by French philosophy--liberty, equality,
fraternity--amongst mankind. But it had for a time hidden this idea in
the recesses of the Christian heart. As yet too weak to attack civil laws,
it had said to the powers--"I leave you still for a short space of time
possession of the political world, confining myself to the moral world.
Continue if you can to enchain, class, keep in bondage, degrade the
people, I am engaged in the emancipation of souls. I shall occupy 2000
years, perchance, in renewing men's minds before I become apparent in
human institutions. But the day will come when my doctrines will
escape from the temple, and will enter into the councils of the people;
on that day the social world will be renewed."
This day had now arrived; it had been prepared by an age of philosophy,
sceptical in appearance but in reality replete with belief. The scepticism
of the 18th century only affected exterior forms, and the supernatural
dogmata of Christianity, whilst it adopted with enthusiasm, morality
and the social sense. What Christianity called revelation, philosophy
called reason. The words were different, the meaning identical. The
emancipation of individuals, of castes, of people, were alike derived
from it. Only the ancient world had been enfranchised in the name of
Christ, whilst the modern world was freed in the name of the rights
which every human creature has received from the hand of God; and
from both flowed the enfranchisement of God or nature. The political
philosophy of the Revolution could not have invented a word more true,
more complete, more divine than Christianity, to reveal itself to Europe,
and it had adopted the dogma and the word of fraternity. Only the
French Revolution attacked the form of this ruling religion; because it
was incrusted in the forms of government, monarchical, theocratic, or
aristocratic, which they sought to destroy. It is the explanation of that
apparent contradiction of the mind of the 18th century, which borrowed
all from Christianity in policy, and denied, whilst it despoiled, it. There
was at one and the same time a violent attraction and a violent
repulsion in the two doctrines. They recognised whilst they struggled
against each other, and yearned to recognise each other even more

completely when the contest was terminated by the triumph of liberty.
Three things were then evident to reflecting minds from and after the
month of April, 1791; the one, that the march of the revolutionary
movement advanced from step to step to the complete restoration of all
the rights of suffering humanity--from those of the people by their
government, to those of citizens by castes, and of the workman by the
citizen; thus it assailed tyranny, privilege, inequality, selfishness, not
only on the throne, but in the civil law; in the administration, in the
legal distribution of property, in the conditions of industry, labour,
family, and in all the relations of man with man, and man with woman:
the second,--that this philosophic and social movement of democracy
would seek its natural form in a form of government analogous to its
principle, and its nature; that is to say, representing the sovereignty of
the people; republic with one or two heads: and, finally, that the social
and political emancipation would involve in it the intellectual and
religious emancipation of the human mind; that the liberty of thought,
of speaking and acting, should not pause before the liberty of belief;
that the idea of God confined in the sanctuaries, should shine forth
pouring into each free conscience the right of liberty itself; that this
light, a revelation for some, and reason for others, would spread more
and more with truth and justice, which emanate from God to
overspread the earth.
VII.
Human thought, like God, makes the world in its own image.
Thought was revived by a philosophical age.
It had to transform the social world.
The French Revolution was therefore in its essence a sublime and
impassioned spirituality. It had a divine and universal ideal. This is the
reason why its passion spread beyond the frontiers of France. Those
who limit, mutilate it. It was the accession of three moral
sovereignties:--

The sovereignty of right over force;
The sovereignty of intelligence over prejudices;
The sovereignty of people over governments.
Revolution in rights; equality.
Revolution in ideas; reasoning substituted for authority.
Revolution in facts;