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Tacitus have assured us that they are impartial.
In reality the writer sees events as the painter sees a landscape--that is, through his own temperament;
through his character and the mind of the race.
A number of artists, placed before the same landscape, would necessarily interpret it in as many different
fashions. Some would lay stress upon details neglected by others. Each reproduction would thus be a
personal work--that is to say, would be interpreted by a certain form of sensibility.
It is the same with the writer. We can no more speak of the impartiality of the historian than we can
speak of the impartiality of the painter.
Certainly the historian may confine himself to the reproduction of documents, and this is the present
tendency. But these documents, for periods as near us as the Revolution, are so abundant that a man's
whole life would not suffice to go through them. Therefore the historian must make a choice.
Consciously sometimes, but more often unconsciously, the author will select the material which best
corresponds with his political, moral, and social opinions.
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It is therefore impossible, unless he contents himself with simple chronologies summing up each event
with a few words and a date, to produce a truly impartial volume of history. No author could be
impartial; and it is not to be regretted. The claim to impartiality, so common to-day, results in those flat,
gloomy, and prodigiously wearisome works which render the comprehension of a period completely
impossible.
Should the historian, under a pretext of impartiality, abstain from judging men--that is, from speaking in
tones of admiration or reprobation?
This question, I admit, allows of two very different solutions, each of which is perfectly correct,
according to the point of view assumed--that of the moralist or that of the psychologist.
The moralist must think exclusively of the interest of society, and must judge men only according to that
interest. By the very fact that it exists and wishes to continue to exist a society is obliged to admit a
certain number of rules, to have an indestructible standard of good and evil, and consequently to create
very definite distinctions between vice and virtue. It thus finally creates average types, to which the man
of the period approaches more or less closely, and from which he cannot depart very widely without peril
to society.
It is by such similar types and the rules derived from social necessities that the moralist must judge the
men of the past. Praising those which were useful and blaming the rest, he thus helps to form the moral
types which are indispensable to the progress of civilisation and which may serve others as models. Poets
such as Corneille, for example, create heroes superior to the majority of men, and possibly inimitable; but
they thereby help greatly to stimulate our efforts. The example of heroes must always be set before a
people in order to ennoble its mind.
Such is the moralist's point of view. That of the psychologist would be quite different. While a society
has no right to be tolerant, because its first duty is to live, the psychologist may remain indifferent.
Considering things as a scientist, he no longer asks their utilitarian value, but seeks merely to explain
them.
His situation is that of the observer before any phenomenon. It is obviously difficult to read in cold blood
that Carrier ordered his victims to be buried up to the neck so that they might then be blinded and
subjected to horrible torments. Yet if we wish to comprehend such acts we must be no more indignant
than the naturalist before the spider slowly devouring a fly. As soon as the reason is moved it is no longer
reason, and can explain nothing.
The functions of the historian and the psychologist are not, as we see, identical, but of both we may
demand the endeavour, by a wise interpretation of the facts, to discover, under the visible evidences, the
invisible forces which determine them.
CHAPTER II
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF
THEANCIEN RÉGIME
1.The Absolute Monarchy
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and the Bases of the Ancien
Régime .
MANY historians assure us that the Revolution was directed against the autocracy of the monarchy. In
reality the kings of France had ceased to be absolute monarchs long before its outbreak.
Only very late in history--not until the reign of Louis XIV.--did they finally obtain incontestable power.
All the preceding sovereigns, even the most powerful, such as Francis I., for example, had to sustain a
constant struggle either against the seigneurs, or the clergy, or the parliaments, and they did not always
win. Francis himself had not sufficient power to protect his most intimate friends against the Sorbonne
and the Parliament. His friend and councillor Berquin, having offended the Sorbonne, was arrested upon
the order of the latter body. The king ordered his release, which was refused. He was obliged to send
archers to remove him from the Conciergerie, and could find no other means of protecting him than that
of keeping him beside him in the Louvre. The Sorbonne by no means considered itself beaten. Profiting [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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