Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/95

 Rh of directing public opinion. The Dreyfus affair showed that the enlightened middle class was in a strange mental state; people who had long and loudly served the Conservative party co-operated with anarchists, took part in violent attacks on the army, or even definitely enrolled themselves in the Socialist party; on the other hand, newspapers, which make it their business to defend traditional institutions, dragged the magistrates of the Court of Cassation in the mire. This strange episode in our contemporary history brought to light the state of dislocation of the classes.

Jaurès, who was very much mixed up in all the ups and downs of Dreyfusism, had rapidly judged the mentality of the upper middle class, into which he had not yet penetrated. He saw that this upper middle class was terribly ignorant, gapingly stupid, politically absolutely impotent; he recognised that with people who understand nothing of the principles of capitalist economics it is easy to contrive a policy of compromise on the basis of an extremely broad Socialism; he calculated the proportions in which it is necessary to mix together flattery of the superior intelligence of the imbeciles whose seduction was aimed at, appeals to the disinterested sentiments of speculators who pride themselves on having invented the ideal, and threats of revolution in order to obtain the leadership of people void of ideas. Experience has shown that he had a very remarkable intuition of the forces which exist at this present moment in the middle-class world. Vaillant, on the contrary, is very little acquainted with this world; he believes that the only weapon that can be employed to move the middle class is fear; doubtless fear is an excellent weapon, but it might provoke obstinate resistance if you went beyond a certain limit. Vaillant does not possess those remarkable qualities of suppleness of mind, and perhaps even of peasant duplicity, which shine in Jaurès, and which have often caused