Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/57

 was his belief that man had been marching forward from the first towards liberty, which was another way for him of saying democracy. Every time that a fresh conquest was made anywhere by larger and larger masses of men, the day of emancipation for all was brought nearer. Finally came about the French Revolution. Great changes of that kind, he points out, cannot be the work of minorities—the immense majority of the nation willed the Revolution and it came. This was a great moment in the history of humanity. Why? Because it affirmed democracy as never before. Jaurès wrote: "It is a splendid idea to have proclaimed that in the political and social order of to-day, no one is turned out, no one is disavowed, every human person has his rights."

The Revolution, though it too came out of the past, was a great step forward.

French writers often speak of "the Revolution," not confining this term to the Revolution of 1789. but meaning by it all that came out of that Revolution, all that followed as a natural sequence. In this sense Jaurès was a revolutionist and he himself often used the term. As used by him the Revolution meant the whole body of thought which accepts every man and woman as in themselves of worth, and not as existing for the comfort and convenience of a small superior class. This was the very heart and centre of