t we made before we acted? Yet that
doesn't hinder us from making resolutions.... Myths must be judged as
instruments for acting upon present conditions; all discussion about the
manner of applying them concretely to the course of history is senseless.
_The entire myth is what counts...._ There is no use then in reasoning
about details which might arise in the midst of the class struggle ...
even though the revolutionists should be deceiving themselves through and
through in making a fantastic picture of the general strike, this picture
would still have been a power of the highest order in preparing for
revolution, so long as it expressed completely all the aspirations of
socialism and bound together revolutionary ideas with a precision and
firmness that no other methods of thought could have given."

It may well be imagined that this highly sophisticated doctrine was
regarded as perverse. All the ordinary prejudices of thought are
irritated by a thinker who frankly advises masses of his fellow-men to
hold fast to a belief which by all the canons of common sense is nothing
but an illusion. M. Sorel must have felt the need of closer statement,
for in a letter to Daniel Halevy, published in the second edition, he
makes his position much clearer. "Revolutionary myths ..." we read,
"enable us to understand the activity, the feelings, and the ideas of a
populace preparing to enter into a decisive struggle; _they are not
descriptions of things, but expressions of will_." The italics are mine:
they set in relief the insight that makes M. Sorel so important to our
discussion. I do not know whether a quotation torn from its context can
possibly do justice to its author. I do know that for any real grasp of
this point it is necessary to read M. Sorel with great sympathy.

One must grant at least that he has made an accurate observation. The
history of the world is full of great myths which have had the most
concrete results. M. Sorel cites primitive Christianity, the Reformation,
the French Revolution and the Mazzini campaign. The men who took part in
those great social movements summed up their aspiration in pictures of
decisive battles resulting in the ultimate triumph of their cause. We in
America might add an example from our own political life. For it is
Theodore Roosevelt who is actually attempting to make himself and his
admirers the heroes of a new social myth. Did he not announce from the
platform at Chicago--"we stand a