[163] G. Sorel, _Preface_ to Pelloutier's _Histoire des Bourses du Travail_. The workingmen can find the moral training necessary for the triumph of socialism only in the syndicats and in the experience of syndical life. The syndicats develop the administrative and organizing capacities of the workingmen. In the syndicats the workingmen learn to do their business themselves and to reject the dictatorship of "intellectuals" who have conquered the field of politics which they have made to serve their ambitions. The greatest organizing and educating force created by the syndicalist movement is the idea of the general strike. The general strike means a complete and "absolute" revolution. It is the idea of a decisive battle between the bourgeoisie and the working-class assuring the triumph of the latter. This idea is a "social myth" and hence its tremendous historic force. "Social myths" always arise during great social movements. The men who participate in great social movements, represent to themselves their actions in the near future in the form of images of battles assuring the triumph of their cause. These images are "myths." The images of the early Christians on the coming of Christ and on the ruin of the pagan world are an illustration of a "social myth." The period of the Reformation saw the rise of "social myths," because the conditions were such as to make it necessary for the "men of heart" who were inspired by "the will of deliverance" to create "images" which satisfying their "sentiments of struggle" kept up their zeal and their devotion. The "social myth" presupposes a social group which harbors an intense desire of deliverance, which feels all the difficulties in its way and which finds deep satisfaction in picturing to itself its future struggles and future triumph. Such images must not and cannot be analyzed like a thing; they must be taken _en bloc_, and it is particularly necessary to avoid comparing the real historic facts with the representations which were in circulation before the facts took place. "Myths" are indispensable for a revolutionary movement; they concentrate the force of the rising class and intensify it to the point of action. No myth can possibly be free from utopian conceptions. But the utopian elements are not essential. The essentials are the hope back of the myth, the ideal strengthened by the myth, and the impatience of deliverance embodied in the myth.