the delight of Camille Desmoulins and Danton and St. Just,
that Robespierre read it through once every day." In the perspective of
history, no one feels that he has said the last word about a philosophy
like Rousseau's after demonstrating its "untruth." Good or bad, it has
meant too much for any such easy disposal. What shall we call an idea,
objectively untrue, but practically of the highest importance?

The thinker who has faced this difficulty most radically is Georges Sorel
in the "Reflexions sur la Violence." His doctrine of the "social myth"
has seemed to many commentators one of those silly paradoxes that only a
revolutionary syndicalist and Frenchman could have put forward. M. Sorel
is engaged in presenting the General Strike as the decisive battle of the
class struggle and the core of the socialist movement. Now whatever else
he may be, M. Sorel is not naive: the sharp criticism of other socialists
was something he could not peacefully ignore. They told him that the
General Strike was an idle dream, that it could never take place, that,
even if it could, the results would not be very significant. Sidney Webb,
in the customary Fabian fashion, had dismissed the General Strike as a
sign of socialist immaturity. There is no doubt that M. Sorel felt the
force of these attacks. But he was not ready to abandon his favorite idea
because it had been shown to be unreasonable and impossible. Just the
opposite effect showed itself and he seized the opportunity of turning an
intellectual defeat into a spiritual triumph. This performance must have
delighted him to the very bottom of his soul, for he has boasted that his
task in life is to aid in ruining "le prestige de la culture bourgeoise."

M. Sorel's defence of the General Strike is very startling. He admits
that it may never take place, that it is not a true picture of the goal
of the socialist movement. Without a blush he informs us that this
central gospel of the working class is simply a "myth." The admission
frightens M. Sorel not at all. "It doesn't matter much," he remarks,
"whether myths contain details actually destined to realization _in the
scheme_ of an historical future; they are not astrological almanacks; it
may even be that nothing of what they express will actually happen--as in
the case of that catastrophe which the early Christians expected. Are we
not accustomed in daily life to recognizing that the reality differs very
greatly from the ideas of it tha