Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/101



great social changes that are called revolutions cannot, or rather can no longer, be accomplished by a minority. A revolutionary minority, no matter how intelligent and energetic, is not enough, in modern societies at least, to bring about a revolution. The co-operation and adhesion of a majority, and an immense majority, is needed.

It is possible—and history has here a difficult problem to solve—that there have been periods and lands where the human multitude has been so passive and so unstable in character that it has been moulded by the will of certain strong individuals or small groups. But since the constitution of modern nations, since the Reformation and the Renaissance, there is hardly a single individual who is not a distinct force. There is hardly a single individual who has not got his own personal interests, his ties that bind him to the present, his ideas about the future, his passions and his thoughts. In modern Europe, then, for several centuries, every human being has been