revolutions are reactionary, undemocratic, unprogressive. A revolution may be unnecessary.
Thus the real question is, what is the guiding motive and what the ultimate aim of revolution. We have to distinguish ephemeral tumults from deliberately planned reformative revolutions. But a revolt brought about by the stress of poverty, hunger; or despair, must not be harshly judged. Goethe, though of aristocratic temperament, blamed governments for revolutions; these were never the fault of the people.
No one should ever promote a revolution or participate in one in consequence of vengeful or angry feelings. Vera Zassulič did well to insist upon this point. A justifiable revolution will not be the outcome of romanticism and its fantasies, will not arise from tedium or from a cynical contempt for mankind; nor must we confuse the hodmen and the condottieri of revolution with the progressive-minded revolutionaries. These distinctions of motive and of type are manifest among the participators in every revolution. What we are concerned with is the dominant motive of those who initiate the movement and of those who assume its leadership with a deliberate sense of responsibility.
In appraising a revolution, therefore, we must distinguish carefully between the movement as a whole, and its individual phases, periods, and activities. Our ethical approval may be given to the revolution as a whole even while we condemn the acts of individual participators. Kropotkin prescribes a sound rule for revolutionaries when he says that bloodshed must be reduced to a minimum.
The psychologist, analysing the mass movement, will furnish the moralist with a knowledge of numerous extenuating circumstances, and will be able in particular to point to the general atmosphere of revolutionary excitement, and to show how this may at times assume morbid forms. But the moralist, like the sound tactician, will never fail to insist that excitement is a bad leader for reformers. A desirable revolution springs from the calm conviction that no other means can bring about the requisite progress, and that revolution is consequently indispensable.
True revolution is reformative revolution, and therefore those who defend and advocate revolution, continually insist that preparatory work in the mental sphere is essential, that
