The struggles of the assembly with the royal power led it to call for the intervention of the people in these struggles. It intervened more and more, and the bourgeois revolution rapidly became a popular revolution. An idea having no force of its own, and acting only by virtue of possessing an affective and mystic substratum which supports it, the theoretical ideas of the bourgeoisie, before they could act on the people, had to be transformed into a new and very definite faith, springing from obvious practical interests. This transformation was rapidly effected when the people heard the men envisaged by it as the Government assuring it that it was the equal of its former masters. It began to regard itself as a victim, and proceeded to pillage, burn, and massacre, imagining that in so doing it was exercising a right. The great strength of the revolutionary principles was that they gave a free course to the instincts of primitive barbarity which had been restrained by the secular and inhibitory action of environment, tradition, and law. All the social bonds that formerly contained the multitude were day by day dissolving, so that it conceived a notion of unlimited power, and the joy of seeing its ancient masters ferreted out and despoiled. Having become the sovereign people, were not all things permissible to it? The motto of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, a true manifestation of hope and faith at the beginning of the Revolution, soon merely served to cover a legal justification of the sentiments of jealousy, cupidity, and hatred of superiors, the true motives of crowds unrestrained by discipline. This is why the Revolution so soon ended in disorder, violence, and anarchy. From the moment when the Revolution descended from the middle to the lower classes of society, it ceased to be a domination of the instinctive by the rational, and became, on the contrary, the effort of the instinctive to overpower the rational. This legal triumph of the atavistic instincts was terrible. The whole effort of societies an effort indispensable to their continued existence--had always been to restrain, thanks to the power of tradition, customs, and codes, certain natural instincts which man has inherited from his primitive animality. It is possible to dominate them--and the more a people does overcome them the more civilised it is--but they cannot be destroyed. The influence of various exciting causes will readily result in their reappearance. This is why the liberation of popular passions is so dangerous. The torrent, once escaped from its bed, does not return until it has spread devastation far and wide. ``Woe to him who stirs up the dregs of a nation,'' said Rivarol at the beginning of the Revolution. ``There is no age of enlightenment for the populace.'' 3. The supposed Part of the People during Revolution.