this Time-World of ours there is properly
nothing else but revolution and mutation, and even nothing else
conceivable. Revolution, you answer, means speedier change. Whereupon
one has still to ask: How speedy? At what degree of speed; in what
particular points of this variable course, which varies in velocity, but
can never stop till Time itself stops, does revolution begin and end;
cease to be ordinary mutation, and again become such? It is a thing that
will depend on definition more or less arbitrary.

For ourselves we answer that French Revolution means here the open
violent Rebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy against corrupt
worn-out Authority: how Anarchy breaks prison; bursts up from the
infinite Deep, and rages uncontrollable, immeasurable, enveloping a
world; in phasis after phasis of fever-frenzy;--'till the frenzy burning
itself out, and what elements of new Order it held (since all Force
holds such) developing themselves, the Uncontrollable be got, if not
reimprisoned, yet harnessed, and its mad forces made to work towards
their object as sane regulated ones. For as Hierarchies and Dynasties
of all kinds, Theocracies, Aristocracies, Autocracies, Strumpetocracies,
have ruled over the world; so it was appointed, in the decrees
of Providence, that this same Victorious Anarchy, Jacobinism,
Sansculottism, French Revolution, Horrors of French Revolution, or what
else mortals name it, should have its turn. The 'destructive wrath'
of Sansculottism: this is what we speak, having unhappily no voice for
singing.

Surely a great Phenomenon: nay it is a transcendental one, overstepping
all rules and experience; the crowning Phenomenon of our Modern Time.
For here again, most unexpectedly, comes antique Fanaticism in new and
newest vesture; miraculous, as all Fanaticism is. Call it the Fanaticism
of 'making away with formulas, de humer les formulas.' The world
of formulas, the formed regulated world, which all habitable world
is,--must needs hate such Fanaticism like death; and be at deadly
variance with it. The world of formulas must conquer it; or failing
that, must die execrating it, anathematising it;--can nevertheless in
nowise prevent its being and its having been. The Anathemas are there,
and the miraculous Thing is there.

Whence it cometh? Whither it goeth? These are questions! When the age
of Miracles lay faded into the distance as an incredible tradition, and
even the age of Conventionalities was