[Gutenberg 40865] • Paris and the Social Revolution / A Study of the Revolutionary Elements in the Various Classes of Parisian Society

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905. Excerpt: ... maims' Cathedrale; of regret, like Bazin's Terre qui Meurt; of unmoral pessimism, like De Maupassant's Bel-Ami; and the whole range of disquieting feminist fiction, --may turn out to be the most active social ferments and the real forerunners (little as their authors would wish it) of violent change, --of revolt and revolution! All contemporary fiction, in fact, has in it something of the doubt, the trouble, and the protest of the period; and, once upon this tack, nothing less than a minute examination of every novel and volume of short stories that has appeared since the FrancoPrussian war would be imposed. Of the essayists, critics, and philosophers who are more or less militant iconoclasts and revoltes, the most important are: --A. Ferdinand Herold, who expounds his attitude as follows: "From the time I was able to think a little for myself, I have had an anarchist mind. I mean that I have always had a horror of undisputed authority, of dogmatism, and of conventional ideas, --ideas which, the greater part of the time, one does not attempt to justify to himself"; Camille Mauclair, who says: "If anarchy is primarily the reform of ethics, in accordance with the principles of individualism, I can declare squarely that anarchy was born in me, with the study of metaphysics and the awakening of sensibility in the period when I began to know myself.... Furthermore, pity for the disinherited and execration of the spoliators is a point of honour for the few clean and upright people who are still to be found in the world"; Bernard Lazare, f who says: "Authority, its value, and its raison d'etre are things which I have never been able to comprehend. That a man arrogate to himself the right to domineer over his fellows, in any fashion whatsoever, is still inconceivable ...