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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: accompaniments of the great political and religious revolutions,
notably of the Reformation and the French Revolution.
Certain periods of French history remain incomprehensible if we
forget the affective and mystic origin of beliefs, their
necessary intolerance, the impossibility of reconciling them when
they come into mutual contact, and, finally, the power conferred
by mystic beliefs upon the sentiments which place themselves at
their service.
The foregoing conceptions are too novel as yet to have modified
the mentality of the historians. They will continue to attempt
to explain, by means of rational logic, a host of phenomena which
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