The Eve of the Revolution

ii Copyright, 1918
by Yale University Press

PREFACE

In this brief sketch I have chiefly endeavoredto convey to the reader, not a record of what men did, but a sense of howthey thought and felt about what they did. To give the quality and textureof the state of mind and feeling of an individual or class, to create forthe reader the illusion (not delusion, O able Critic!) of theintellectual atmosphere of past times, I have as a matter of courseintroduced manyquotations; but I have also ventured to resort frequentlyto the literary device (this, I know, gives the whole thing away) oftelling the story by means of a rather free paraphrase of what someimagined spectator or participant might have thought or said about thematter in hand. If the critic says that the product of such methods isnot history, I am willing to call it by any name that is better; thepoint of greatest relevance being the truth and effectiveness of theviiiillusion aimed at—the extent to which it reproduces the quality ofthe thought and feeling of those days, the extent to which it enables thereader to enter into such states of mind and feeling. The truth of suchhistory (or whatever the critic wishes to call it) cannot of course bedetermined by a mere verification of references.

To one of my colleagues, who has read the entire manuscript, I am under obligations for many suggestions and corrections in matters of detail; and I would gladly mention his name if it could be supposed that an historian of established reputation would wish to be associated, even in any slight way, with an enterprise of questionable orthodoxy.

Carl Becker.

Ithaca, New York,
January 6, 1918.