almanacs; it is even possible that
nothing which they contain will ever come to pass--as was the case with
the catastrophe expected by the first Christians. In our own daily life,
are we not familiar with the fact that what actually happens is very
different from our preconceived notion of it? And that does not prevent
us from continuing to make resolutions. Psychologists say that there is
heterogeneity between the ends in view and the ends actually realised:
the slightest experience of life reveals this law to us, which Spencer
transferred into nature, to extract therefrom his theory of the
multiplication of effects.

The myth must be judged as a means of acting on the present; any attempt
to discuss how far it can be taken literally as future history is devoid
of sense. _It is the myth in its entirety which is alone important:_ its
parts are only of interest in so far as they bring out the main idea. No
useful purpose is served, therefore, in arguing about the incidents
which may occur in the course of a social war, and about the decisive
conflicts which may give victory to the proletariat; even supposing the
revolutionaries to have been wholly and entirely deluded in setting up
this imaginary picture of the general strike, this picture may yet have
been, in the course of the preparation for the revolution, a great
element of strength, if it has embraced all the aspirations of
socialism, and if it has given to the whole body of revolutionary
thought a precision and a rigidity which no other method of thought
could have given.

To estimate, then, the significance of the idea of the general strike,
all the methods of discussion which are current among politicians,
sociologists, or people with pretensions to political science, must be
abandoned. Everything which its opponents endeavour to establish may be
conceded to them, without reducing in any way the value of the theory
which they think they have refuted. The question whether the general
strike is a partial reality, or only a product of popular imagination,
is of little importance. All that it is necessary to know is, whether
the general strike contains everything that the socialist doctrine
expects of the revolutionary proletariat.

To solve this question, we are no longer compelled to argue learnedly
about the future; we are not obliged to indulge in lofty reflections
about philosophy, history, or economics; we are not on the plane of
theories, and we can remain