Note 706 — Chapter XI · THE STATE (B) STATE AND HISTORY (continued 2)

A. Wahl, Vorgeschichte d. franz. Revolution, II (1907); this work is the only presentation of the subject from the world-historical point of view. All Frenchmen, even the most modern, such as Aulard and Sorel, see things from one or another partisan angle. It is materialistic nonsense to talk of economic causes for a Revolution like this. Even the peasantry was better off than in most other countries, and in any case it was not among them that it began. It was amongst the educated that the catastrophe started, the educated of all the classes—in the high nobility and the clergy even sooner than in the higher bourgeoisie, because the course of the first assembly of Notables (1787) had disclosed the possibility of radically reshaping the form of government according to class-desires.