The distinction between the varieties of revolution previously enumerated is based upon differences in causation. In some cases a revolution may arise from a momentary and transient dissatisfaction, or even from a more enduring dissatisfaction, and may aim merely at such a change as the removal of one or two oppressive personalities, or at the transformation of individual measures or institutions. Very different is the deliberate aim at the reconstruction of an entire political regime and of all-the institutions of society.
Thus the French revolution at the close of the eighteenth century is rightly distinguished as the "great" revolution. The peculiar significance of the French revolution and its sequels was that they aimed at revolution in the true sense of the word, at a fundamental transformation. There were philosophical, ethical, and religious preparations for the change; man was to be renovated, and the whole of life was to be built up anew from its very foundations. The reaction and the restoration served only to strengthen this aspiration; philosophically and historically, the revolution was represented as a necessary process of renewal, the reconstitution of society and mankind. This is the explanation of the modern faith in progress (§ 40), of the idea of the new age and of novelty in general, an idea which has now secured general recognition in theory, in practice, and in statecraft.
In our account of Marxism (§ 160) we pointed out that the idea of progress and evolution furnishes many persons with arguments against revolution. It is contended that the development of human history must be gradational, just as the world and the cosmos have evolved by infinitesimal stages.
The question arises here, whether those who argue thus have rightly understood the data of history. We learn from the history of revolutions, and above all from the history of the French revolution, that these happenings cannot be explained into non-existence by analogies drawn from the modern theories of those geologists and cosmologists who will hear nothing of catastrophe. Psychology and sociology teach us that in the spiritual or psychical sphere individual development, and therefore also the development of society, is characterised by crises, by crude contrasts, by revolutions. Struve is utterly wrong in deducing from the theory of evolution, the view that revolution is epistemologically inconceivable.
