224 The Intellectual Revolution 



■ The appeal to force by a minority in order to 

 maintain itself in power is likely to become less 

 and less frequent as the futility of force to with- 

 stand a united public opinion becomes more 

 apparent. With the cessation of reliance upon 

 force by minorities to thwart the will of majorities, 

 the occasion for the use of force by these majorities 

 will become increasingly rare and the political 

 revolutions, which embody the results of intellect- 

 ual revolutions, will take place without bloodshed 

 and violence. Since 1906, especially, the Russian 

 revolutionists have learned that they must rely 

 upon intellectual processes for ultimate victory, 

 and they have been tirelessly at work in the 

 intervening years. In so far as the Russian 

 Revolution of 1906 relied upon violence, like the 

 French Revolution, it became affected by the in- 

 strument which it used. It led to a cumulative 

 development of violence, and this in turn led to a 

 reign of terror, to a recoil of all the saner elements 

 who recognized the indispensable need of law 

 and order, to reaction, to the "man on horse- 

 back," and the inevitable failure to establish that 

 new heaven and new earth for which men were 

 willing to give their lives with such complete 

 abandonment and self-sacrifice. 



The realization of the futility of force to advance 

 the moral ideals of mankind will constitute the 

 most important effect of the intellectual revolu- 

 tion. Men will not fight until they are appealed 

 to on some moral issue, — on the ground of some 



