Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/60

 46 judgment of the world which is about to be pronounced. The author scrupulously endeavours to assign the responsibility, calculates the equivalence which ought to exist between a crime and its expiation, goes back to the original misdeeds which have engendered this series of acts of violence in Russia; all this is a philosophy of history strictly in accordance with the pure principles of the Corsican vendetta. Carried away by the lyricism of his subject, Lucien Herr concludes in the style of a prophet: "The battle will go on in this way, in suffering and in blood, abominable and odious, till that predestined day, which cannot be far off, when the throne itself, the homicidal throne, the throne which heaps up so many crimes, will fall down into the ditch that has to-day been dug for it." This prophecy has not yet been realised, but the true character of all great prophecies is never to be realised; the homicidal throne is much more secure than the cashbox of Humanité. But, after all, what can we learn from all this?

It is not the business of the historian to award prizes for virtue, to propose the erection of statues, or to establish any catechism whatever; his business is to understand what is least individual in the course of events; the questions which interest the chroniclers and excite novelists are those which he most willingly leaves on one side. And so I am not at all concerned to justify the perpetrators of violence, but to inquire into the function of violence of the working classes in contemporary Socialism.

It seems to me that the problem of violence has been very badly formulated by many Socialists; as a proof of this, I instance an article published in the Socialiste on October 21, 1905, by Rappoport. The author, who has written a book on the philosophy of history, ought, it