The French Revolution, vol 3 | Page 4

rights of Man.
* The social contract.
Once adopted, their practical results unfolded themselves naturally. In
three years these dogmas installed the crocodile on the purple carpet
insides the sanctuary behind the golden veil. He was selected for the
place on account of the energy of his jaws and the capacity of his
stomach; he became a god through his qualities as a destructive brute
and man-eater. -- Comprehending this, the rites which consecrate him
and the pomp which surrounds him need not give us any further
concern. -- We can observe him, like any ordinary animal, and study
his various attitudes, as he lies in wait for his prey, springs upon it,
tears it to pieces, swallows it, and digests it. I have studied the details
of his structure, the play of his organs, his habits, his mode of living,
his instincts, his faculties, and his appetites. -- Specimens abounded. I
have handled thousands of them, and have dissected hundreds of every
species and variety, always preserving the most valuable and
characteristic examples, but for lack of room I have been compelled to

let many of them go because my collections was too large. Those that I
was able to bring back with me will be found here, and, among others,
about twenty individuals of different dimensions, which -- a difficult
undertaking -- I have kept alive with great pains. At all events, they are
intact and perfect, and particularly the three largest. These seem to me,
of their kind, truly remarkable, and those in which the divinity of the
day might well incarnate himself. - Authentic and rather well kept
cookbooks inform us about the cost of the cult: We can more or less
estimate how much the sacred crocodiles consumed in ten years; we
know their bills of daily fare, their favorite morsels. Naturally, the god
selected the fattest victims, but his voracity was so great that he
likewise bolted down, and blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater
number than the fattest. Moreover, by virtue of his instincts, and an
unfailing effect of the situation, he ate his equals once or twice a year,
except when they succeeded in eating him. -- This cult certainly is
instructive, at least to historians and men of pure science. If any
believers in it still remain I do not aim to convert them; one cannot
argue with a devotee on matters of faith. This volume, accordingly, like
the others that have gone before it, is written solely for amateurs of
moral zoology, for naturalists of the understanding, for seekers of truth,
of texts, and of proofs -- for these alone and not for the public, whose
mind is made up and which has its own opinion on the Revolution. This
opinion began to be formed between 1825 and 1830, after the
retirement or withdrawal of eye witnesses. When they disappeared it
was easy to convince a credulous public that crocodiles were
philanthropists; that many possessed genius; that they scarcely ate
others than the guilty, and that if they sometimes ate too many it was
unconsciously and in spite of themselves, or through devotion and
self-sacrifice for the common good.
H. A. Taine, Menthon Saint Bernard, July 1884.
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BOOK FIRST. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE
REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER I.
I.
Weakness of former governments. - Energy of the new government. -
The despotic creed and instincts of the Jacobin.
So far, the weakness of the legal government is extreme. During four
years, whatever its kind, it has constantly and everywhere been
disobeyed. For four years it never dared enforce obedience. Recruited
among the cultivated and refined class, the rulers of the country have
brought with them into power the prejudices and sensibilities of the
epoch. Under the influence of the prevailing dogma they have
submitted to the will of the multitude and, with too much faith in the
rights of Man, they have had too little in the authority of the magistrate.
Moreover, through humanity, they have abhorred bloodshed and,
unwilling to repress, they have allowed themselves to be repressed.
Thus from the 1st of May, 1789, to June 2, 1793, they have
administrated or legislated, escaping countless insurrections, almost all
of them going unpunished ; while their constitution, an unhealthy
product of theory and fear, have done no more than transform
spontaneous anarchy into legal anarchy. Deliberately and through
distrust of authority they have undermined the principle of command,
reduced the King to the post of a decorative puppet, and almost
annihilated the central power: from the top to the bottom of the
hierarchy the superior has lost his hold on the inferior, the minister on
the departments, the departments on the districts, and the districts on
the communes. Throughout all branches of the service, the chief,
elected on the