Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/73

 A PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF REVOLUTIONS S7

A more usual outcome, however, to the chronic revolutionary condition is the " dictatorship." How this can arise from the conditions in revolutionary times is not difficult to understand. The labors of ethnologists have shown us that democracy in some shape is the natural and primitive form of government among all races of mankind; that despotism has arisen every- where through social stresses and strains, usually those accom- panying prolonged war, when a strong centralized system of social control becomes necessary } if the group is to survive. Now, in that internal war which we call a revolution, if it is prolonged, it is evident that we have all the conditions favorable to the rise of despotism. When the party of revolt are unable to agree among themselves, and can offer to the population no adequate stimulus for the reconstruction of the social order, nothing is more natural than that that stimulus should be found in the personality of some hero ; for social organization is primi- tively based upon sentiments of personal attachment and loyalty far more than upon abstract principles of social justice and expe- diency. The personality of a military hero affords, then, the most natural stimulus around which a new social order can, so to speak, crystallize itself, when other means of reconstructing social institutions have failed, and when continued social danger demands a strong centralized social control. The dictatorship, in other words, does not arise because some superior man hypno- tizes his social group by his brilliant exploits, but because such a man is " selected " by his society to reconstruct the social order. Caesar, Cromwell, and Napoleon, these typical dictators of revo- lutionary eras, would probably have had their places filled by other, though perhaps inferior, men, had they themselves never existed.

Here may be briefly explained, finally, the reaction which frequently follows revolutions. No revolution is, of course, complete; it is never more than a partial destruction of old habits and institutions. Now new habits, psychology tells us, have to be erected on the basis of old habits. What remains of the old social habits after a revolution must serve, therefore, as the foundation for the new institutions, since no other foundation