Henry Hamilton Fyfe

The Meaning of the World Revolution Henry Hamilton Fyfe

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919. Excerpt: ... THE MEANING OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION. " CHAPTER I. THE WORD AfD THE IDEA. Uppur si tnuove,--Galileo. Revolution! A word which suggests unpleasant images. When we think of it, we think of the French Revolution with its guillotinings and noyades. Or we think of the Russian Revolution which has seemed to most observers at a distance to consist so far of wholesale shootings, imprisonings, banishings, wholesale confiscations, industrial anarchy, the abolition of trade. We do not think of tle Revolution which abolished slavery, or the Revolution which substituted law for personal combat, or the Revolution which brought to an end among civilised peoples sports in which men strove to kill each other or were torn by wild beasts. You may object that these changes were the result, not of Revolutions, but of Evolution: that they were not made suddenly but as the consequence of the slow growth of a more humane and more logical consciousness. To which I would reply: that the same is true of all changes. However sudden they appear to be, they have been long preparing. Evolution is going on always. From time to time there arrive periods when mankind becomes aware that some vast change is in progress. Then there is felt a desire to speed it up. Then we have Revolutions. Evolution and Revolution are really the same process. They both result in change, as both words mean " change." They cause a turning round of man's thought. The bloodshed that often accompanies Revolution is due to the senseless opposition of those who try to resist changes, whose thought has not been turned round, because their brains are hardened by possessions or privilege. No one who understands what Revolutions really are would be so foolish as to oppose them any more than he would try to push back an ...