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diff --git a/1335-h/1335-h.htm b/1335-h/1335-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b37c57f --- /dev/null +++ b/1335-h/1335-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2999 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Ancien Regime</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Ancien Regime, by Charles Kingsley</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Ancien Regime, by Charles Kingsley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Ancien Regime + + +Author: Charles Kingsley + +Release Date: May 13, 2005 [eBook #1335] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIEN REGIME*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1902 “Historical Lectures and Essays” +Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>THE ANCIEN RÉGIME<br /> +by Charles Kingsley</h1> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> +<p>The rules of the Royal Institution forbid (and wisely) religious +or political controversy. It was therefore impossible for me in +these Lectures, to say much which had to be said, in drawing a just +and complete picture of the Ancien Régime in France. The +passages inserted between brackets, which bear on religious matters, +were accordingly not spoken at the Royal Institution.</p> +<p>But more. It was impossible for me in these Lectures, to bring +forward as fully as I could have wished, the contrast between the continental +nations and England, whether now, or during the eighteenth century. +But that contrast cannot be too carefully studied at the present moment. +In proportion as it is seen and understood, will the fear of revolution +(if such exists) die out among the wealthier classes; and the wish for +it (if such exists) among the poorer; and a large extension of the suffrage +will be looked on as—what it actually is—a safe and harmless +concession to the wishes—and, as I hold, to the just rights—of +large portion of the British nation.</p> +<p>There exists in Britain now, as far as I can see, no one of those +evils which brought about the French Revolution. There is no widespread +misery, and therefore no widespread discontent, among the classes who +live by hand-labour. The legislation of the last generation has +been steadily in favour of the poor, as against the rich; and it is +even more true now than it was in 1789, that—as Arthur Young told +the French mob which stopped his carriage—the rich pay many taxes +(over and above the poor-rates, a direct tax on the capitalist in favour +of the labourer) more than are paid by the poor. “In England” +(says M. de Tocqueville of even the eighteenth century) “the poor +man enjoyed the privilege of exemption from taxation; in France, the +rich.” Equality before the law is as well-nigh complete +as it can be, where some are rich and others poor; and the only privileged +class, it sometimes seems to me, is the pauper, who has neither the +responsibility of self-government, nor the toil of self-support.</p> +<p>A minority of malcontents, some justly, some unjustly, angry with +the present state of things, will always exist in this world. +But a majority of malcontents we shall never have, as long as the workmen +are allowed to keep untouched and unthreatened their rights of free +speech, free public meeting, free combination for all purposes which +do not provoke a breach of the peace. There may be (and probably +are) to be found in London and the large towns, some of those revolutionary +propagandists who have terrified and tormented continental statesmen +since the year 1815. But they are far fewer in number than in +1848; far fewer still (I believe) than in 1831; and their habits, notions, +temper, whole mental organisation, is so utterly alien to that of the +average Englishman, that it is only the sense of wrong which can make +him take counsel with them, or make common cause with them. Meanwhile, +every man who is admitted to a vote, is one more person withdrawn from +the temptation to disloyalty, and enlisted in maintaining the powers +that be—when they are in the wrong, as well as when they are in +the right. For every Englishman is by his nature conservative; +slow to form an opinion; cautious in putting it into effect; patient +under evils which seem irremediable; persevering in abolishing such +as seem remediable; and then only too ready to acquiesce in the earliest +practical result; to “rest and be thankful.” His faults, +as well as his virtues, make him anti-revolutionary. He is generally +too dull to take in a great idea; and if he does take it in, often too +selfish to apply it to any interest save his own. But now and +then, when the sense of actual injury forces upon him a great idea, +like that of Free-trade or of Parliamentary Reform, he is indomitable, +however slow and patient, in translating his thought into fact: and +they will not be wise statesmen who resist his dogged determination. +If at this moment he demands an extension of the suffrage eagerly and +even violently, the wise statesman will give at once, gracefully and +generously, what the Englishman will certainly obtain one day, if he +has set his mind upon it. If, on the other hand, he asks for it +calmly, then the wise statesman (instead of mistaking English reticence +for apathy) will listen to his wishes all the more readily; seeing in +the moderation of the demand, the best possible guarantee for moderation +in the use of the thing demanded.</p> +<p>And, be it always remembered, that in introducing these men into +the “balance of the Constitution,” we introduce no unknown +quantity. Statesmen ought to know them, if they know themselves; +to judge what the working man would do by what they do themselves. +He who imputes virtues to his own class imputes them also to the labouring +class. He who imputes vices to the labouring class, imputes them +to his own class. For both are not only of the same flesh and +blood, but, what is infinitely more important, of the same spirit; of +the same race; in innumerable cases, of the same ancestors. For +centuries past the most able of these men have been working upwards +into the middle class, and through it, often, to the highest dignities, +and the highest family connections; and the whole nation knows how they +have comported themselves therein. And, by a reverse process (of +which the physiognomist and genealogist can give abundant proof), the +weaker members of that class which was dominant during the Middle Age +have been sinking downward, often to the rank of mere day-labourers, +and carrying downward with them—sometimes in a very tragical and +pathetic fashion—somewhat of the dignity and the refinement which +they had learnt from their ancestors.</p> +<p>Thus has the English nation (and as far as I can see, the Scotch +likewise) become more homogeneous than any nation of the Continent, +if we except France since the extermination of the Frankish nobility. +And for that very reason, as it seems to me, it is more fitted than +any other European nation for the exercise of equal political rights; +and not to be debarred of them by arguments drawn from countries which +have been governed—as England has not been—by a caste.</p> +<p>The civilisation, not of mere book-learning, but of the heart; all +that was once meant by “manners”—good breeding, high +feeling, respect for self and respect for others—are just as common +(as far as I have seen) among the hand-workers of England and Scotland, +as among any other class; the only difference is, that these qualities +develop more early in the richer classes, owing to that severe discipline +of our public schools, which makes mere lads often fit to govern, because +they have learnt to obey: while they develop later—generally not +till middle age—in the classes who have not gone through in their +youth that Spartan training, and who indeed (from a mistaken conception +of liberty) would not endure it for a day. This and other social +drawbacks which are but too patent, retard the manhood of the working +classes. That it should be so, is a wrong. For if a citizen +have one right above all others to demand anything of his country, it +is that he should be educated; that whatever capabilities he may have +in him, however small, should have their fair and full chance of development. +But the cause of the wrong is not the existence of a caste, or a privileged +class, or of anything save the plain fact, that some men will be always +able to pay more for their children’s education than others; and +that those children will, inevitably, win in the struggle of life.</p> +<p>Meanwhile, in this fact is to be found the most weighty, if not the +only argument against manhood suffrage, which would admit many—but +too many, alas!—who are still mere boys in mind. To a reasonable +household suffrage it cannot apply. The man who (being almost +certainly married, and having children) can afford to rent a £5 +tenement in a town, or in the country either, has seen quite enough +of life, and learnt quite enough of it, to form a very fair judgment +of the man who offers to represent him in Parliament; because he has +learnt, not merely something of his own interest, or that of his class, +but—what is infinitely more important—the difference between +the pretender and the honest man.</p> +<p>The causes of this state of society, which is peculiar to Britain, +must be sought far back in the ages. It would seem that the distinction +between “earl and churl” (the noble and the non-noble freeman) +was crushed out in this island by the two Norman conquests—that +of the Anglo-Saxon nobility by Sweyn and Canute; and that of the Anglo-Danish +nobility by William and his Frenchmen. Those two terrible calamities, +following each other in the short space of fifty years, seem to have +welded together, by a community of suffering, all ranks and races, at +least south of the Tweed; and when the English rose after the storm, +they rose as one homogeneous people, never to be governed again by an +originally alien race. The English nobility were, from the time +of Magna Charta, rather an official nobility, than, as in most continental +countries, a separate caste; and whatever caste tendencies had developed +themselves before the Wars of the Roses (as such are certain to do during +centuries of continued wealth and power), were crushed out by the great +revolutionary events of the next hundred years. Especially did +the discovery of the New World, the maritime struggle with Spain, the +outburst of commerce and colonisation during the reigns of Elizabeth +and James, help toward this good result. It was in vain for the +Lord Oxford of the day, sneering at Raleigh’s sudden elevation, +to complain that as on the virginals, so in the State, “Jacks +went up, and heads went down.” The proudest noblemen were +not ashamed to have their ventures on the high seas, and to send their +younger sons trading, or buccaneering, under the conduct of low-born +men like Drake, who “would like to see the gentleman that would +not set his hand to a rope, and hale and draw with the mariners.” +Thus sprang up that respect for, even fondness for, severe bodily labour, +which the educated class of no nation save our own has ever felt; and +which has stood them in such good stead, whether at home or abroad. +Thus, too, sprang up the system of society by which (as the ballad sets +forth) the squire’s son might be a “’prentice good,” +and marry</p> +<blockquote><p>“The bailiff’s daughter dear<br /> +That dwelt at Islington,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>without tarnishing, as he would have done on the Continent, the scutcheon +of his ancestors. That which has saved England from a central +despotism, such as crushed, during the eighteenth century, every nation +on the Continent, is the very same peculiarity which makes the advent +of the masses to a share in political power safe and harmless; namely, +the absence of caste, or rather (for there is sure to be a moral fact +underlying and causing every political fact) the absence of that wicked +pride which perpetuates caste; forbidding those to intermarry whom nature +and fact pronounce to be fit mates before God and man.</p> +<p>These views are not mine only. They have been already set forth +so much more forcibly by M. de Tocqueville, that I should have thought +it unnecessary to talk about them, were not the rhetorical phrases, +“Caste,” “Privileged Classes,” “Aristocratic +Exclusiveness,” and such-like, bandied about again just now, as +if they represented facts. If there remain in this kingdom any +facts which correspond to those words, let them be abolished as speedily +as possible: but that such do remain was not the opinion of the master +of modern political philosophy, M. de Tocqueville.</p> +<p>He expresses his surprise “that the fact which distinguishes +England from all other modern nations, and which alone can throw light +on her peculiarities, . . . has not attracted more attention, . . . +and that habit has rendered it, as it were, imperceptible to the English +themselves—that England was the only country in which the system +of caste had been not only modified, but effectually destroyed. +The nobility and the middle classes followed the same business, embraced +the same professions, and, what is far more significant, intermarried +with each other. The daughter of the greatest nobleman” +(and this, if true of the eighteenth century, has become far more true +of the nineteenth) “could already, without disgrace, marry a man +of yesterday.” . . .</p> +<p>“It has often been remarked that the English nobility has been +more prudent, more able, and less exclusive than any other. It +would have been much nearer the truth to say, that in England, for a +very long time past, no nobility, properly so called, have existed, +if we take the word in the ancient and limited sense it has everywhere +else retained.” . . .</p> +<p>“For several centuries the word ‘gentleman’” +(he might have added, “burgess”) “has altogether changed +its meaning in England; and the word ‘roturier’ has ceased +to exist. In each succeeding century it is applied to persons +placed somewhat lower in the social scale” (as the “bagman” +of Pickwick has become, and has deserved to become, the “commercial +gentleman” of our day). “At length it travelled with +the English to America, where it is used to designate every citizen +indiscriminately. Its history is that of democracy itself.” +. . .</p> +<p>“If the middle classes of England, instead of making war upon +the aristocracy, have remained so intimately connected with it, it is +not especially because the aristocracy is open to all, but rather, because +its outline was indistinct, and its limit unknown: not so much because +any man might be admitted into it, as because it was impossible to say +with certainty when he took rank there: so that all who approached it +might look on themselves as belonging to it; might take part in its +rule, and derive either lustre or profit from its influence.”</p> +<p>Just so; and therefore the middle classes of Britain, of whatever +their special political party, are conservative in the best sense of +that word.</p> +<p>For there are not three, but only two, classes in England; namely, +rich and poor: those who live by capital (from the wealthiest landlord +to the smallest village shopkeeper); and those who live by hand-labour. +Whether the division between those two classes is increasing or not, +is a very serious question. Continued legislation in favour of +the hand-labourer, and a beneficence towards him, when in need, such +as no other nation on earth has ever shown, have done much to abolish +the moral division. But the social division has surely been increased +during the last half century, by the inevitable tendency, both in commerce +and agriculture, to employ one large capital, where several small ones +would have been employed a century ago. The large manufactory, +the large shop, the large estate, the large farm, swallows up the small +ones. The yeoman, the thrifty squatter who could work at two or +three trades as well as till his patch of moor, the hand-loom weaver, +the skilled village craftsman, have all but disappeared. The handworker, +finding it more and more difficult to invest his savings, has been more +and more tempted to squander them. To rise to the dignity of a +capitalist, however small, was growing impossible to him, till the rise +of that co-operative movement, which will do more than any social or +political impulse in our day for the safety of English society, and +the loyalty of the English working classes. And meanwhile—ere +that movement shall have spread throughout the length and breadth of +the land, and have been applied, as it surely will be some day, not +only to distribution, not only to manufacture, but to agriculture likewise—till +then, the best judges of the working men’s worth must be their +employers; and especially the employers of the northern manufacturing +population. What their judgment is, is sufficiently notorious. +Those who depend most on the working men, who have the best opportunities +of knowing them, trust them most thoroughly. As long as great +manufacturers stand forward as the political sponsors of their own workmen, +it behoves those who cannot have had their experience, to consider their +opinion as conclusive. As for that “influence of the higher +classes” which is said to be endangered just now; it will exist, +just as much as it deserves to exist. Any man who is superior +to the many, whether in talents, education, refinement, wealth, or anything +else, will always be able to influence a number of men—and if +he thinks it worth his while, of votes—by just and lawful means. +And as for unjust and unlawful means, let those who prefer them keep +up heart. The world will go on much as it did before; and be always +quite bad enough to allow bribery and corruption, jobbery and nepotism, +quackery and arrogance, their full influence over our home and foreign +policy. An extension of the suffrage, however wide, will not bring +about the millennium. It will merely make a large number of Englishmen +contented and loyal, instead of discontented and disloyal. It +may make, too, the educated and wealthy classes wiser by awakening a +wholesome fear—perhaps, it may be, by awakening a chivalrous emulation. +It may put the younger men of the present aristocracy upon their mettle, +and stir them up to prove that they are not in the same effete condition +as was the French noblesse in 1789. It may lead them to take the +warnings which have been addressed to them, for the last thirty years, +by their truest friends—often by kinsmen of their own. It +may lead them to ask themselves why, in a world which is governed by +a just God, such great power as is palpably theirs at present is entrusted +to them, save that they may do more work, and not less, than other men, +under the penalties pronounced against those to whom much is given, +and of whom much is required. It may lead them to discover that +they are in a world where it is not safe to sit under the tree, and +let the ripe fruit drop into your mouth; where the “competition +of species” works with ruthless energy among all ranks of being, +from kings upon their thrones to the weeds upon the waste; where “he +that is not hammer, is sure to be anvil;” and he who will not +work, neither shall he eat. It may lead them to devote that energy +(in which they surpass so far the continental aristocracies) to something +better than outdoor amusements or indoor dilettantisms. There +are those among them who, like one section of the old French noblesse, +content themselves with mere complaints of “the revolutionary +tendencies of the age.” Let them beware in time; for when +the many are on the march, the few who stand still are certain to be +walked over. There are those among them who, like another section +of the French noblesse, are ready, more generously than wisely, to throw +away their own social and political advantages, and play (for it will +never be really more than playing) at democracy. Let them, too, +beware. The penknife and the axe should respect each other; for +they were wrought from the same steel: but the penknife will not be +wise in trying to fell trees. Let them accept their own position, +not in conceit and arrogance, but in fear and trembling; and see if +they cannot play the man therein, and save their own class; and with +it, much which it has needed many centuries to accumulate and to organise, +and without which no nation has yet existed for a single century. +They are no more like the old French noblesse, than are the commercial +class like the old French bourgeoisie, or the labouring like the old +French peasantry. Let them prove that fact by their deeds during +the next generation; or sink into the condition of mere rich men, exciting, +by their luxury and laziness, nothing but envy and contempt.</p> +<p>Meanwhile, behind all classes and social forces—I had almost +said, above them all—stands a fourth estate, which will, ultimately, +decide the form which English society is to take: a Press as different +from the literary class of the Ancien Régime as is everything +else English; and different in this—that it is free.</p> +<p>The French Revolution, like every revolution (it seems to me) which +has convulsed the nations of Europe for the last eighty years, was caused +immediately—whatever may have been its more remote causes—by +the suppression of thought; or, at least, by a sense of wrong among +those who thought. A country where every man, be he fool or wise, +is free to speak that which is in him, can never suffer a revolution. +The folly blows itself off like steam, in harmless noise; the wisdom +becomes part of the general intellectual stock of the nation, and prepares +men for gradual, and therefore for harmless, change.</p> +<p>As long as the press is free, a nation is guaranteed against sudden +and capricious folly, either from above or from below. As long +as the press is free, a nation is guaranteed against the worse evil +of persistent and obstinate folly, cloaking itself under the venerable +shapes of tradition and authority. For under a free press, a nation +must ultimately be guided not by a caste, not by a class, not by mere +wealth, not by the passions of a mob: but by mind; by the net result +of all the common-sense of its members; and in the present default of +genius, which is un-common sense, common-sense seems to be the only, +if not the best, safeguard for poor humanity.</p> +<p>1867</p> +<h2>LECTURE I—CASTE</h2> +<p>[Delivered at the Royal Institution, London, 1867.]</p> +<p>These Lectures are meant to be comments on the state of France before +the French Revolution. To English society, past or present, I +do not refer. For reasons which I have set forth at length in +an introductory discourse, there never was any Ancien Régime +in England.</p> +<p>Therefore, when the Stuarts tried to establish in England a system +which might have led to a political condition like that of the Continent, +all classes combined and exterminated them; while the course of English +society went on as before.</p> +<p>On the contrary, England was the mother of every movement which undermined, +and at last destroyed, the Ancien Régime.</p> +<p>From England went forth those political theories which, transmitted +from America to France, became the principles of the French Revolution. +From England went forth the philosophy of Locke, with all its immense +results. It is noteworthy, that when Voltaire tries to persuade +people, in a certain famous passage, that philosophers do not care to +trouble the world—of the ten names to whom he does honour, seven +names are English. “It is,” he says, “neither +Montaigne, nor Locke, nor Boyle, nor Spinoza, nor Hobbes, nor Lord Shaftesbury, +nor Mr. Collins, nor Mr. Toland, nor Fludd, nor Baker, who have carried +the torch of discord into their countries.” It is worth +notice, that not only are the majority of these names English, but that +they belong not to the latter but to the former half of the eighteenth +century; and indeed, to the latter half of the seventeenth.</p> +<p>So it was with that Inductive Physical Science, which helped more +than all to break up the superstitions of the Ancien Régime, +and to set man face to face with the facts of the universe. From +England, towards the end of the seventeenth century, it was promulgated +by such men as Newton, Boyle, Sydenham, Ray, and the first founders +of our Royal Society.</p> +<p>In England, too, arose the great religious movements of the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries—and especially that of a body which I +can never mention without most deep respect—the Society of Friends. +At a time when the greater part of the Continent was sunk in spiritual +sleep, these men were reasserting doctrines concerning man, and his +relation to his Creator, which, whether or not all believe them (as +I believe them) to be founded on eternal fact, all must confess to have +been of incalculable benefit to the cause of humanity and civilisation.</p> +<p>From England, finally, about the middle of the eighteenth century, +went forth—promulgated by English noblemen—that freemasonry +which seems to have been the true parent of all the secret societies +of Europe. Of this curious question, more hereafter. But +enough has been said to show that England, instead of falling, at any +period, into the stagnation of the Ancien Régime, was, from the +middle of the seventeenth century, in a state of intellectual growth +and ferment which communicated itself finally to the continental nations. +This is the special honour of England; universally confessed at the +time. It was to England that the slowly-awakening nations looked, +as the source of all which was noble, true, and free, in the dawning +future.</p> +<p>It will be seen, from what I have said, that I consider the Ancien +Régime to begin in the seventeenth century. I should date +its commencement—as far as that of anything so vague, unsystematic, +indeed anarchic, can be defined—from the end of the Thirty Years’ +War, and the peace of Westphalia in 1648.</p> +<p>For by that time the mighty spiritual struggles and fierce religious +animosities of the preceding century had worn themselves out. +And, as always happens, to a period of earnest excitement had succeeded +one of weariness, disgust, half-unbelief in the many questions for which +so much blood had been shed. No man had come out of the battle +with altogether clean hands; some not without changing sides more than +once. The war had ended as one, not of nations, not even of zealots, +but of mercenaries. The body of Europe had been pulled in pieces +between them all; and the poor soul thereof—as was to be expected—had +fled out through the gaping wounds. Life, mere existence, was +the most pressing need. If men could—in the old prophet’s +words—find the life of their hand, they were content. High +and low only asked to be let live. The poor asked it—slaughtered +on a hundred battle-fields, burnt out of house and home: vast tracts +of the centre of Europe were lying desert; the population was diminished +for several generations. The trading classes, ruined by the long +war, only asked to be let live, and make a little money. The nobility, +too, only asked to be let live. They had lost, in the long struggle, +not only often lands and power, but their ablest and bravest men; and +a weaker and meaner generation was left behind, to do the governing +of the world. Let them live, and keep what they had. If +signs of vigour still appeared in France, in the wars of Louis XIV. +they were feverish, factitious, temporary—soon, as the event proved, +to droop into the general exhaustion. If wars were still to be +waged they were to be wars of succession, wars of diplomacy; not wars +of principle, waged for the mightiest invisible interests of man. +The exhaustion was general; and to it we must attribute alike the changes +and the conservatism of the Ancien Régime. To it is owing +that growth of a centralising despotism, and of arbitrary regal power, +which M. de Tocqueville has set forth in a book which I shall have occasion +often to quote. To it is owing, too, that longing, which seems +to us childish, after ancient forms, etiquettes, dignities, court costumes, +formalities diplomatic, legal, ecclesiastical. Men clung to them +as to keepsakes of the past—revered relics of more intelligible +and better-ordered times. If the spirit had been beaten out of +them in a century of battle, that was all the more reason for keeping +up the letter. They had had a meaning once, a life once; perhaps +there was a little life left in them still; perhaps the dry bones would +clothe themselves with flesh once more, and stand upon their feet. +At least it was useful that the common people should so believe. +There was good hope that the simple masses, seeing the old dignities +and formalities still parading the streets, should suppose that they +still contained men, and were not mere wooden figures, dressed artistically +in official costume. And, on the whole, that hope was not deceived. +More than a century of bitter experience was needed ere the masses discovered +that their ancient rulers were like the suits of armour in the Tower +of London—empty iron astride of wooden steeds, and armed with +lances which every ploughboy could wrest out of their hands, and use +in his own behalf.</p> +<p>The mistake of the masses was pardonable. For those suits of +armour had once held living men; strong, brave, wise; men of an admirable +temper; doing their work according to their light, not altogether well—what +man does that on earth?—but well enough to make themselves necessary +to, and loyally followed by, the masses whom they ruled. No one +can read fairly the “Gesta Dei per Francos in Oriente,” +or the deeds of the French Nobility in their wars with England, or those +tales—however legendary—of the mediæval knights, which +form so noble an element in German literature, without seeing, that +however black were these men’s occasional crimes, they were a +truly noble race, the old Nobility of the Continent; a race which ruled +simply because, without them, there would have been naught but anarchy +and barbarism. To their chivalrous ideal they were too often, +perhaps for the most part, untrue: but, partial and defective as it +is, it is an ideal such as never entered into the mind of Celt or Gaul, +Hun or Sclav; one which seems continuous with the spread of the Teutonic +conquerors. They ruled because they did practically raise the +ideal of humanity in the countries which they conquered, a whole stage +higher. They ceased to rule when they were, through their own +sins, caught up and surpassed in the race of progress by the classes +below them.</p> +<p>But, even when at its best, their system of government had in it—like +all human invention—original sin; an unnatural and unrighteous +element, which was certain, sooner or later, to produce decay and ruin. +The old Nobility of Europe was not a mere aristocracy. It was +a caste: a race not intermarrying with the races below it. It +was not a mere aristocracy. For that, for the supremacy of the +best men, all societies strive, or profess to strive. And such +a true aristocracy may exist independent of caste, or the hereditary +principle at all. We may conceive an Utopia, governed by an aristocracy +which should be really democratic; which should use, under developed +forms, that method which made the mediæval priesthood the one +great democratic institution of old Christendom; bringing to the surface +and utilising the talents and virtues of all classes, even to the lowest. +We may conceive an aristocracy choosing out, and gladly receiving into +its own ranks as equals, every youth, every maiden, who was distinguished +by intellect, virtue, valour, beauty, without respect to rank or birth; +and rejecting in turn, from its own ranks, each of its own children +who fell below some lofty standard, and showed by weakliness, dulness, +or baseness, incapacity for the post of guiding and elevating their +fellow-citizens. Thus would arise a true aristocracy; a governing +body of the really most worthy—the most highly organised in body +and in mind—perpetually recruited from below: from which, or from +any other ideal, we are yet a few thousand years distant.</p> +<p>But the old Ancien Régime would have shuddered, did shudder, +at such a notion. The supreme class was to keep itself pure, and +avoid all taint of darker blood, shutting its eyes to the fact that +some of its most famous heroes had been born of such left-handed marriages +as that of Robert of Normandy with the tanner’s daughter of Falaise. +“Some are so curious in this behalf,” says quaint old Burton, +writing about 1650, “as these old Romans, our modern Venetians, +Dutch, and French, that if two parties dearly love, the one noble, the +other ignoble, they may not, by their laws, match, though equal otherwise +in years, fortunes, education, and all good affection. In Germany, +except they can prove their gentility by three descents, they scorn +to match with them. A nobleman must marry a noblewoman; a baron, +a baron’s daughter; a knight, a knight’s. As slaters +sort their slates, do they degrees and families.”</p> +<p>And doubtless this theory—like all which have held their ground +for many centuries—at first represented a fact. These castes +were, at first, actually superior to the peoples over whom they ruled. +I cannot, as long as my eyes are open, yield to the modern theory of +the equality—indeed of the non-existence—of races. +Holding, as I do, the primæval unity of the human race, I see +in that race the same inclination to sport into fresh varieties, the +same competition of species between those varieties, which Mr. Darwin +has pointed out among plants and mere animals. A distinguished +man arises; from him a distinguished family; from it a distinguished +tribe, stronger, cunninger than those around. It asserts its supremacy +over its neighbours at first exactly as a plant or animal would do, +by destroying, and, where possible, eating them; next, having grown +more prudent, by enslaving them; next, having gained a little morality +in addition to its prudence, by civilising them, raising them more or +less toward its own standard. And thus, in every land, civilisation +and national life has arisen out of the patriarchal state; and the Eastern +scheik, with his wives, free and slave, and his hundreds of fighting +men born in his house, is the type of all primæval rulers. +He is the best man of his horde—in every sense of the word best; +and whether he have a right to rule them or not, they consider that +he has, and are the better men for his guidance.</p> +<p>Whether this ought to have been the history of primæval civilisation, +is a question not to be determined here. That it is the history +thereof, is surely patent to anyone who will imagine to himself what +must have been. In the first place, the strongest and cunningest +savage must have had the chance of producing children more strong and +cunning than the average; he would have—the strongest savage has +still—the power of obtaining a wife, or wives, superior in beauty +and in household skill, which involves superiority of intellect; and +therefore his children would—some of them at least—be superior +to the average, both from the father’s and the mother’s +capacities. They again would marry select wives; and their children +again would do the same; till, in a very few generations, a family would +have established itself, considerably superior to the rest of the tribe +in body and mind, and become assuredly its ruling race.</p> +<p>Again, if one of that race invented a new weapon, a new mode of tillage, +or aught else which gave him power, that would add to the superiority +of his whole family. For the invention would be jealously kept +among them as a mystery, a hereditary secret. To this simple cause, +surely, is to be referred the system of hereditary caste occupations, +whether in Egypt or Hindoostan. To this, too, the fact that alike +in Greek and in Teutonic legend the chief so often appears, not merely +as the best warrior and best minstrel, but as the best smith, armourer, +and handicraftsman of his tribe. If, however, the inventor happened +to be a low-born genius, its advantages would still accrue to the ruling +race. For nothing could be more natural or more easy—as +more than one legend intimates—than that the king should extort +the new secret from his subject, and then put him to death to prevent +any further publicity.</p> +<p>Two great inventive geniuses we may see dimly through the abysses +of the past, both of whom must have become in their time great chiefs, +founders of mighty aristocracies—it may be, worshipped after their +death as gods.</p> +<p>The first, who seems to have existed after the age in which the black +race colonised Australia, must have been surely a man worthy to hold +rank with our Brindleys, Watts, and Stephensons. For he invented +(and mind, one man must have invented the thing first, and by the very +nature of it, invented it all at once) an instrument so singular, unexpected, +unlike anything to be seen in nature, that I wonder it has not been +called, like the plough, the olive, or the vine, a gift of the immortal +gods: and yet an instrument so simple, so easy, and so perfect, that +it spread over all races in Europe and America, and no substitute could +be found for it till the latter part of the fifteenth century. +Yes, a great genius was he, and the consequent founder of a great aristocracy +and conquering race, who first invented for himself and his children +after him a—bow and arrow.</p> +<p>The next—whether before or after the first in time, it suits +me to speak of him in second place—was the man who was the potential +ancestor of the whole Ritterschaft, Chivalry, and knightly caste of +Europe; the man who first, finding a foal upon the steppe, deserted +by its dam, brought it home, and reared it; and then bethought him of +the happy notion of making it draw—presumably by its tail—a +fashion which endured long in Ireland, and had to be forbidden by law, +I think as late as the sixteenth century. A great aristocrat must +that man have become. A greater still he who first substituted +the bit for the halter. A greater still he who first thought of +wheels. A greater still he who conceived the yoke and pole for +bearing up his chariot; for that same yoke, and pole, and chariot, became +the peculiar instrument of conquerors like him who mightily oppressed +the children of Israel, for he had nine hundred chariots of iron. +Egyptians, Syrians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans—none of them improved +on the form of the conquering biga, till it was given up by a race who +preferred a pair of shafts to their carts, and who had learnt to ride +instead of drive. A great aristocrat, again, must he have been +among those latter races who first conceived the notion of getting on +his horse’s back, accommodating his motions to the beast’s, +and becoming a centaur, half-man, half-horse. That invention must +have tended, in the first instance, as surely toward democracy as did +the invention of firearms. A tribe of riders must have been always, +more or less, equal and free. Equal because a man on a horse would +feel himself a man indeed; because the art of riding called out an independence, +a self-help, a skill, a consciousness of power, a personal pride and +vanity, which would defy slavery. Free, because a tribe of riders +might be defeated, exterminated, but never enchained. They could +never become <i>gleboe adscripti</i>, bound to the soil, as long as +they could take horse and saddle, and away. History gives us more +than one glimpse of such tribes—the scourge and terror of the +non-riding races with whom they came in contact. Some, doubtless, +remember how in the wars between Alfred and the Danes, “the army” +(the Scandinavian invaders) again and again horse themselves, steal +away by night from the Saxon infantry, and ride over the land (whether +in England or in France), “doing unspeakable evil.” +To that special instinct of horsemanship, which still distinguishes +their descendants, we may attribute mainly the Scandinavian settlement +of the north and east of England. Some, too, may recollect the +sketch of the primeval Hun, as he first appeared to the astonished and +disgusted old Roman soldier Ammianus Marcellinus; the visages “more +like cakes than faces;” the “figures like those which are +hewn out with an axe on the poles at bridge-ends;” the rat-skin +coats, which they wore till they rotted off their limbs; their steaks +of meat cooked between the saddle and the thigh; the little horses on +which “they eat and drink, buy and sell, and sleep lying forward +along his narrow neck, and indulging in every variety of dream.” +And over and above, and more important politically, the common councils +“held on horseback, under the authority of no king, but content +with the irregular government of nobles, under whose leading they force +their way through all obstacles.” A race—like those +Cossacks who are probably their lineal descendants—to be feared, +to be hired, to be petted, but not to be conquered.</p> +<p>Instances nearer home of free equestrian races we have in our own +English borderers, among whom (as Mr. Froude says) the farmers and their +farm-servants had but to snatch their arms and spring into their saddles +and they became at once the Northern Horse, famed as the finest light +cavalry in the world. And equal to them—superior even, if +we recollect that they preserved their country’s freedom for centuries +against the superior force of England—were those troops of Scots +who, century after century, swept across the border on their little +garrons, their bag of oatmeal hanging by the saddle, with the iron griddle +whereon to bake it; careless of weather and of danger; men too swift +to be exterminated, too independent to be enslaved.</p> +<p>But if horsemanship had, in these cases, a levelling tendency it +would have the very opposite when a riding tribe conquered a non-riding +one. The conquerors would, as much as possible, keep the art and +mystery of horsemanship hereditary among themselves, and become a Ritterschaft +or chivalrous caste. And they would be able to do so: because +the conquered race would not care or dare to learn the new and dangerous +art. There are persons, even in England, who can never learn to +ride. There are whole populations in Europe, even now, when races +have become almost indistinguishably mixed, who seem unable to learn. +And this must have been still more the case when the races were more +strongly separated in blood and habits. So the Teutonic chief, +with his gesitha, comites, or select band of knights, who had received +from him, as Tacitus has it, the war-horse and the lance, established +himself as the natural ruler—and oppressor—of the non-riding +populations; first over the aborigines of Germany proper, tribes who +seem to have been enslaved, and their names lost, before the time of +Tacitus; and then over the non-riding Romans and Gauls to the South +and West, and the Wendish and Sclavonic tribes to the East. Very +few in numbers, but mighty in their unequalled capacity of body and +mind, and in their terrible horsemanship, the Teutonic Ritterschaft +literally rode roughshod over the old world; never checked, but when +they came in contact with the free-riding hordes of the Eastern steppes; +and so established an equestrian caste, of which the ιππεις of +Athens and the Equites of Rome had been only hints ending in failure +and absorption.</p> +<p>Of that equestrian caste the symbol was the horse. The favourite, +and therefore the chosen sacrifice of Odin, their ancestor and God, +the horse’s flesh was eaten at the sacrificial meal; the horse’s +head, hung on the ash in Odin’s wood, gave forth oracular responses. +As Christianity came in, and the eating of horse-flesh was forbidden +as impiety by the Church, while his oracles dwindled down to such as +that which Falada’s dead head gives to the goose-girl in the German +tale, the magic power of the horse figured only in ballads and legends: +but his real power remained.</p> +<p>The art of riding became an hereditary and exclusive science—at +last a pedantry, hampered by absurd etiquettes, and worse than useless +traditions; but the power and right to ride remained on the whole the +mark of the dominant caste. Terribly did they often abuse that +special power. The faculty of making a horse carry him no more +makes a man a good man, than the faculties of making money, making speeches, +making books, or making a noise about public abuses. And of all +ruffians, the worst, if history is to be trusted, is the ruffian on +a horse; to whose brutality of mind is superadded the brute power of +his beast. A ruffian on a horse—what is there that he will +not ride over, and ride on, careless and proud of his own shame? +When the ancient chivalry of France descended to that level, or rather +delegated their functions to mercenaries of that level—when the +knightly hosts who fought before Jerusalem allowed themselves to be +superseded by the dragoons and dragonnades of Louis XIV.—then +the end of the French chivalry was at hand, and came. But centuries +before that shameful fall there had come in with Christianity the new +thought, that domination meant responsibility; that responsibility demanded +virtue. The words which denoted rank, came to denote likewise +high moral excellencies. The nobilis, or man who was known, and +therefore subject to public opinion, was bound to behave nobly. +The gentleman—gentile-man—who respected his own gens, or +family and pedigree, was bound to be gentle. The courtier, who +had picked up at court some touch of Roman civilisation from Roman ecclesiastics, +was bound to be courteous. He who held an “honour” +or “edel” of land was bound to be honourable; and he who +held a “weorthig,” or worthy, thereof, was bound himself +to be worthy. In like wise, he who had the right to ride a horse, +was expected to be chivalrous in all matters befitting the hereditary +ruler, who owed a sacred debt to a long line of forefathers, as well +as to the state in which he dwelt; all dignity, courtesy, purity, self-restraint, +devotion—such as they were understood in those rough days—centred +themselves round the idea of the rider as the attributes of the man +whose supposed duty, as well as his supposed right, was to govern his +fellow-men, by example, as well as by law and force;—attributes +which gathered themselves up into that one word—Chivalry: an idea, +which, perfect or imperfect, God forbid that mankind should ever forget, +till it has become the possession—as it is the God-given right—of +the poorest slave that ever trudged on foot; and every collier-lad shall +have become—as some of those Barnsley men proved but the other +day they had become already:</p> +<blockquote><p>A very gentle perfect knight.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Very unfaithful was chivalry to its ideal—as all men are to +all ideals. But bear in mind, that if the horse was the symbol +of the ruling caste, it was not at first its only strength. Unless +that caste had had at first spiritual, as well as physical force on +its side, it would have been soon destroyed—nay, it would have +destroyed itself—by internecine civil war. And we must believe +that those Franks, Goths, Lombards, and Burgunds, who in the early Middle +Age leaped on the backs (to use Mr. Carlyle’s expression) of the +Roman nations, were actually, in all senses of the word, better men +than those whom they conquered. We must believe it from reason; +for if not, how could they, numerically few, have held for a year, much +more for centuries, against millions, their dangerous elevation? +We must believe it, unless we take Tacitus’s “Germania,” +which I absolutely refuse to do, for a romance. We must believe +that they were better than the Romanised nations whom they conquered, +because the writers of those nations, Augustine, Salvian, and Sidonius +Apollinaris, for example, say that they were such, and give proof thereof. +Not good men according to our higher standard—far from it; though +Sidonius’s picture of Theodoric, the East Goth, in his palace +of Narbonne, is the picture of an eminently good and wise ruler. +But not good, I say, as a rule—the Franks, alas! often very bad +men: but still better, wiser, abler, than those whom they ruled. +We must believe too, that they were better, in every sense of the word, +than those tribes on their eastern frontier, whom they conquered in +after centuries, unless we discredit (which we have no reason to do) +the accounts which the Roman and Greek writers give of the horrible +savagery of those tribes.</p> +<p>So it was in later centuries. One cannot read fairly the history +of the Middle Ages without seeing that the robber knight of Germany +or of France, who figures so much in modern novels, must have been the +exception, and not the rule: that an aristocracy which lived by the +saddle would have as little chance of perpetuating itself, as a priesthood +composed of hypocrites and profligates; that the mediæval Nobility +has been as much slandered as the mediæval Church; and the exceptions +taken—as more salient and exciting—for the average: that +side by side with ruffians like Gaston de Foix hundreds of honest gentlemen +were trying to do their duty to the best of their light, and were raising, +and not depressing, the masses below them—one very important item +in that duty being, the doing the whole fighting of the country at their +own expense, instead of leaving it to a standing army of mercenaries, +at the beck and call of a despot; and that, as M. de Tocqueville says: +“In feudal times, the Nobility were regarded pretty much as the +government is regarded in our own; the burdens they imposed were endured +in consequence of the security they afforded. The nobles had many +irksome privileges; they possessed many onerous rights: but they maintained +public order, they administered justice, they caused the law to be executed, +they came to the relief of the weak, they conducted the business of +the community. In proportion as they ceased to do these things, +the burden of their privileges appeared more oppressive, and their existence +became an anomaly in proportion as they ceased to do these things.” +And the Ancien Régime may be defined as the period in which they +ceased to do these things—in which they began to play the idlers, +and expected to take their old wages without doing their old work.</p> +<p>But in any case, government by a ruling caste, whether of the patriarchal +or of the feudal kind, is no ideal or permanent state of society. +So far from it, it is but the first or second step out of primeval savagery. +For the more a ruling race becomes conscious of its own duty, and not +merely of its own power—the more it learns to regard its peculiar +gifts as entrusted to it for the good of men—so much the more +earnestly will it labour to raise the masses below to its own level, +by imparting to them its own light; and so will it continually tend +to abolish itself, by producing a general equality, moral and intellectual; +and fulfil that law of self-sacrifice which is the beginning and the +end of all virtue.</p> +<p>A race of noblest men and women, trying to make all below them as +noble as themselves—that is at least a fair ideal, tending toward, +though it has not reached, the highest ideal of all.</p> +<p>But suppose that the very opposite tendency—inherent in the +heart of every child of man—should conquer. Suppose the +ruling caste no longer the physical, intellectual, and moral superiors +of the mass, but their equals. Suppose them—shameful, but +not without example—actually sunk to be their inferiors. +And that such a fall did come—nay, that it must have come—is +matter of history. And its cause, like all social causes, was +not a political nor a physical, but a moral cause. The profligacy +of the French and Italian aristocracies, in the sixteenth century, avenged +itself on them by a curse (derived from the newly-discovered America) +from which they never recovered. The Spanish aristocracy suffered, +I doubt not very severely. The English and German, owing to the +superior homeliness and purity of ruling their lives, hardly at all. +But the continental caste, instead of recruiting their tainted blood +by healthy blood from below, did all, under pretence of keeping it pure, +to keep it tainted by continual intermarriage; and paid, in increasing +weakness of body and mind, the penalty of their exclusive pride. +It is impossible for anyone who reads the French memoirs of the sixteenth +and seventeenth centuries, not to perceive, if he be wise, that the +aristocracy therein depicted was ripe for ruin—yea, already ruined—under +any form of government whatsoever, independent of all political changes. +Indeed, many of the political changes were not the causes but the effects +of the demoralisation of the noblesse. Historians will tell you +how, as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, Henry IV. +complained that the nobles were quitting their country districts; how +succeeding kings and statesmen, notably Richelieu and Louis XIV., tempted +the noblesse up to Paris, that they might become mere courtiers, instead +of powerful country gentlemen; how those who remained behind were only +the poor <i>hobereaux</i>, little hobby-hawks among the gentry, who +considered it degradation to help in governing the parish, as their +forefathers had governed it, and lived shabbily in their chateaux, grinding +the last farthing out of their tenants, that they might spend it in +town during the winter. No wonder that with such an aristocracy, +who had renounced that very duty of governing the country, for which +alone they and their forefathers had existed, there arose government +by intendants and sub-delegates, and all the other evils of administrative +centralisation, which M. de Tocqueville anatomises and deplores. +But what was the cause of the curse? Their moral degradation. +What drew them up to Paris save vanity and profligacy? What kept +them from intermarrying with the middle class save pride? What +made them give up the office of governors save idleness? And if +vanity, profligacy, pride, and idleness be not injustices and moral +vices, what are?</p> +<p>The race of heroic knights and nobles who fought under the walls +of Jerusalem—who wrestled, and not in vain, for centuries with +the equally heroic English, in defence of their native soil—who +had set to all Europe the example of all knightly virtues, had rotted +down to this; their only virtue left, as Mr. Carlyle says, being—a +perfect readiness to fight duels.</p> +<p>Every Intendant, chosen by the Comptroller-General out of the lower-born +members of the Council of State; a needy young plebeian with his fortune +to make, and a stranger to the province, was, in spite of his greed, +ambition, chicane, arbitrary tyranny, a better man—abler, more +energetic, and often, to judge from the pages of De Tocqueville, with +far more sympathy and mercy for the wretched peasantry—than was +the count or marquis in the chateau above, who looked down on him as +a roturier; and let him nevertheless become first his deputy, and then +his master.</p> +<p>Understand me—I am not speaking against the hereditary principle +of the Ancien Régime, but against its caste principle—two +widely different elements, continually confounded nowadays.</p> +<p>The hereditary principle is good, because it is founded on fact and +nature. If men’s minds come into the world blank sheets +of paper—which I much doubt—every other part and faculty +of them comes in stamped with hereditary tendencies and peculiarities. +There are such things as transmitted capabilities for good and for evil; +and as surely as the offspring of a good horse or dog is likely to be +good, so is the offspring of a good man, and still more of a good woman. +If the parents have any special ability, their children will probably +inherit it, at least in part; and over and above, will have it developed +in them by an education worthy of their parents and themselves. +If man were—what he is not—a healthy and normal species, +a permanent hereditary caste might go on intermarrying, and so perpetuate +itself. But the same moral reason which would make such a caste +dangerous—indeed, fatal to the liberty and development of mankind, +makes it happily impossible. Crimes and follies are certain, after +a few generations, to weaken the powers of any human caste; and unless +it supplements its own weakness by mingling again with the common stock +of humanity, it must sink under that weakness, as the ancient noblesse +sank by its own vice. Of course there were exceptions. The +French Revolution brought those exceptions out into strong light; and +like every day of judgment, divided between the good and the evil. +But it lies not in exceptions to save a caste, or an institution; and +a few Richelieus, Liancourts, Rochefoucaulds, Noailles, Lafayettes were +but the storks among the cranes involved in the wholesale doom due not +to each individual, but to a system and a class.</p> +<p>Profligacy, pride, idleness—these are the vices which we have +to lay to the charge of the Teutonic Nobility of the Ancien Régime +in France especially; and (though in a less degree perhaps) over the +whole continent of Europe. But below them, and perhaps the cause +of them all, lay another and deeper vice—godlessness—atheism.</p> +<p>I do not mean merely want of religion, doctrinal unbelief. +I mean want of belief in duty, in responsibility. Want of belief +that there was a living God governing the universe, who had set them +their work, and would judge them according to their work. And +therefore, want of belief, yea, utter unconsciousness, that they were +set in their places to make the masses below them better men; to impart +to them their own civilisation, to raise them to their own level. +They would have shrunk from that which I just now defined as the true +duty of an aristocracy, just because it would have seemed to them madness +to abolish themselves. But the process of abolition went on, nevertheless, +only now from without instead of from within. So it must always +be, in such a case. If a ruling class will not try to raise the +masses to their own level, the masses will try to drag them down to +theirs. That sense of justice which allowed privileges, when they +were as strictly official privileges as the salary of a judge, or the +immunity of a member of the House of Commons; when they were earned, +as in the Middle Age, by severe education, earnest labour, and life +and death responsibility in peace and war, will demand the abolition +of those privileges, when no work is done in return for them, with a +voice which must be heard, for it is the voice of truth and justice.</p> +<p>But with that righteous voice will mingle another, most wicked, and +yet, alas! most flattering to poor humanity—the voice of envy, +simple and undisguised; of envy, which moralists hold to be one of the +basest of human passions; which can never be justified, however hateful +or unworthy be the envied man. And when a whole people, or even +a majority thereof, shall be possessed by that, what is there that they +will not do?</p> +<p>Some are surprised and puzzled when they find, in the French Revolution +of 1793, the noblest and the foulest characters labouring in concert, +and side by side—often, too, paradoxical as it may seem, united +in the same personage. The explanation is simple. Justice +inspired the one; the other was the child of simple envy. But +this passion of envy, if it becomes permanent and popular, may avenge +itself, like all other sins. A nation may say to itself, “Provided +we have no superiors to fall our pride, we are content. Liberty +is a slight matter, provided we have equality. Let us be slaves, +provided we are all slaves alike.” It may destroy every +standard of humanity above its own mean average; it may forget that +the old ruling class, in spite of all its defects and crimes, did at +least pretend to represent something higher than man’s necessary +wants, plus the greed of amassing money; never meeting (at least in +the country districts) any one wiser or more refined than an official +or a priest drawn from the peasant class, it may lose the belief that +any standard higher than that is needed; and, all but forgetting the +very existence of civilisation, sink contented into a dead level of +intellectual mediocrity and moral barbarism, crying, “Let us eat +and drink, for to-morrow we die.”</p> +<p>A nation in such a temper will surely be taken at its word. +Where the carcase is, there the eagles will be gathered together; and +there will not be wanting to such nations—as there were not wanting +in old Greece and Rome—despots who will give them all they want, +and more, and say to them: “Yes, you shall eat and drink; and +yet you shall not die. For I, while I take care of your mortal +bodies, will see that care is taken of your immortal souls.”</p> +<p>For there are those who have discovered, with the kings of the Holy +Alliance, that infidelity and scepticism are political mistakes, not +so much because they promote vice, as because they promote (or are supposed +to promote) free thought; who see that religion (no matter of what quality) +is a most valuable assistant to the duties of a minister of police. +They will quote in their own behalf Montesquieu’s opinion that +religion is a column necessary to sustain the social edifice; they will +quote, too, that sound and true saying of De Tocqueville’s: <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a> +“If the first American who might be met, either in his own country, +or abroad, were to be stopped and asked whether he considered religion +useful to the stability of the laws and the good order of society, he +would answer, without hesitation, that no civilised society, but more +especially none in a state of freedom, can exist without religion. +Respect for religion is, in his eyes, the greatest guarantee of the +stability of the State, and of the safety of the community. Those +who are ignorant of the science of government, know that fact at least.”</p> +<p>M. de Tocqueville, when he wrote these words, was lamenting that +in France, “freedom was forsaken;” “a thing for which +it is said that no one any longer cares in France.” He did +not, it seems to me, perceive that, as in America the best guarantee +of freedom is the reverence for a religion or religions, which are free +themselves, and which teach men to be free; so in other countries the +best guarantee of slavery is, reverence for religions which are not +free, and which teach men to be slaves.</p> +<p>But what M. de Tocqueville did not see, there are others who will +see; who will say: “If religion be the pillar of political and +social order, there is an order which is best supported by a religion +which is adverse to free thought, free speech, free conscience, free +communion between man and God. The more enervating the superstition, +the more exacting and tyrannous its priesthood, the more it will do +our work, if we help it to do its own. If it permit us to enslave +the body, we will permit it to enslave the soul.”</p> +<p>And so may be inaugurated a period of that organised anarchy of which +the poet says:</p> +<blockquote><p>It is not life, but death, when nothing stirs.</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>LECTURE II—CENTRALISATION</h2> +<p>The degradation of the European nobility caused, of course, the increase +of the kingly power, and opened the way to central despotisms. +The bourgeoisie, the commercial middle class, whatever were its virtues, +its value, its real courage, were never able to stand alone against +the kings. Their capital, being invested in trade, was necessarily +subject to such sudden dangers from war, political change, bad seasons, +and so forth, that its holders, however individually brave, were timid +as a class. They could never hold out on strike against the governments, +and had to submit to the powers that were, whatever they were, under +penalty of ruin.</p> +<p>But on the Continent, and especially in France and Germany, unable +to strengthen itself by intermarriage with the noblesse, they retained +that timidity which is the fruit of the insecurity of trade; and had +to submit to a more and more centralised despotism, and grow up as they +could, in the face of exasperating hindrances to wealth, to education, +to the possession, in many parts of France, of large landed estates; +leaving the noblesse to decay in isolated uselessness and weakness, +and in many cases debt and poverty.</p> +<p>The system—or rather anarchy—according to which France +was governed during this transitional period, may be read in that work +of M. de Tocqueville’s which I have already quoted, and which +is accessible to all classes, through Mr. H. Reeve’s excellent +translation. Every student of history is, of course, well acquainted +with that book. But as there is reason to fear, from language +which is becoming once more too common, both in speech and writing, +that the general public either do not know it, or have not understood +it, I shall take the liberty of quoting from it somewhat largely. +I am justified in so doing by the fact that M. de Tocqueville’s +book is founded on researches into the French Archives, which have been +made (as far as I am aware) only by him; and contains innumerable significant +facts, which are to be found (as far as I am aware) in no other accessible +work.</p> +<p>The French people—says M. de Tocqueville—made, in 1789, +the greatest effort which was ever made by any nation to cut, so to +speak, their destiny in halves, and to separate by an abyss that which +they had heretofore been, from that which they sought to become hereafter. +But he had long thought that they had succeeded in this singular attempt +much less than was supposed abroad; and less than they had at first +supposed themselves. He was convinced that they had unconsciously +retained, from the former state of society, most of the sentiments, +the habits, and even the opinions, by means of which they had effected +the destruction of that state of things; and that, without intending +it, they had used its remains to rebuild the edifice of modern society. +This is his thesis, and this he proves, it seems to me, incontestably +by documentary evidence. Not only does he find habits which we +suppose—or supposed till lately—to have died with the eighteenth +century, still living and working, at least in France, in the nineteenth, +but the new opinions which we look on usually as the special children +of the nineteenth century, he shows to have been born in the eighteenth. +France, he considers, is still at heart what the Ancien Régime +made her.</p> +<p>He shows that the hatred of the ruling caste, the intense determination +to gain and keep equality, even at the expense of liberty, had been +long growing up, under those influences of which I spoke in my first +lecture.</p> +<p>He shows, moreover, that the acquiescence in a centralised administration; +the expectation that the government should do everything for the people, +and nothing for themselves; the consequent loss of local liberties, +local peculiarities; the helplessness of the towns and the parishes: +and all which issued in making Paris France, and subjecting the whole +of a vast country to the arbitrary dictates of a knot of despots in +the capital, was not the fruit of the Revolution, but of the Ancien +Régime which preceded it; and that Robespierre and his “Comité +de Salut Public,” and commissioners sent forth to the four winds +of heaven in bonnet rouge and carmagnole complete, to build up and pull +down, according to their wicked will, were only handling, somewhat more +roughly, the same wires which had been handled for several generations +by the Comptroller-General and Council of State, with their provincial +intendants.</p> +<p>“Do you know,” said Law to the Marquis d’Argenson, +“that this kingdom of France is governed by thirty intendants? +You have neither parliament, nor estates, nor governors. It is +upon thirty masters of request, despatched into the provinces, that +their evil or their good, their fertility or their sterility, entirely +depend.”</p> +<p>To do everything for the people, and let them do nothing for themselves—this +was the Ancien Régime. To be more wise and more loving +than Almighty God, who certainly does not do everything for the sons +of men, but forces them to labour for themselves by bitter need, and +after a most Spartan mode of education; who allows them to burn their +hands as often as they are foolish enough to put them into the fire; +and to be filled with the fruits of their own folly, even though the +folly be one of necessary ignorance; treating them with that seeming +neglect which is after all the most provident care, because by it alone +can men be trained to experience, self-help, science, true humanity; +and so become not tolerably harmless dolls, but men and women worthy +of the name; with</p> +<blockquote><p>The reason firm, the temperate will,<br /> +Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;<br /> +The perfect spirit, nobly planned<br /> +To cheer, to counsel, and command.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Such seems to be the education and government appointed for man by +the voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatum, and the education, therefore, +which the man of science will accept and carry out. But the men +of the Ancien Régime—in as far as it was a Régime +at all—tried to be wiser than the Almighty. Why not? +They were not the first, nor will be the last, by many who have made +the same attempt. So this Council of State settled arbitrarily, +not only taxes, and militia, and roads, but anything and everything. +Its members meddled, with their whole hearts and minds. They tried +to teach agriculture by schools and pamphlets and prizes; they sent +out plans for every public work. A town could not establish an +octroi, levy a rate, mortgage, sell, sue, farm, or administer their +property, without an order in council. The Government ordered +public rejoicings, saw to the firing of salutes, and illuminating of +houses—in one case mentioned by M. de Tocqueville, they fined +a member of the burgher guard for absenting himself from a Te Deum. +All self-government was gone. A country parish was, says Turgot, +nothing but “an assemblage of cabins, and of inhabitants as passive +as the cabins they dwelt in.” Without an order of council, +the parish could not mend the steeple after a storm, or repair the parsonage +gable. If they grumbled at the intendant, he threw some of the +chief persons into prison, and made the parish pay the expenses of the +horse patrol, which formed the arbitrary police of France. Everywhere +was meddling. There were reports on statistics—circumstantial, +inaccurate, and useless—as statistics are too often wont to be. +Sometimes, when the people were starving, the Government sent down charitable +donations to certain parishes, on condition that the inhabitants should +raise a sum on their part. When the sum offered was sufficient, +the Comptroller-General wrote on the margin, when he returned the report +to the intendant, “Good—express satisfaction.” +If it was more than sufficient, he wrote, “Good—express +satisfaction and sensibility.” There is nothing new under +the sun. In 1761, the Government, jealous enough of newspapers, +determined to start one for itself, and for that purpose took under +its tutelage the <i>Gazette de France</i>. So the public newsmongers +were of course to be the provincial intendants, and their sub-newsmongers, +of course, the sub-delegates.</p> +<p>But alas! the poor sub-delegates seem to have found either very little +news, or very little which it was politic to publish. One reports +that a smuggler of salt has been hung, and has displayed great courage; +another that a woman in his district has had three girls at a birth; +another that a dreadful storm has happened, but—has done no mischief; +a fourth—living in some specially favoured Utopia—declares +that in spite of all his efforts he has found nothing worth recording, +but that he himself will subscribe to so useful a journal, and will +exhort all respectable persons to follow his example: in spite of which +loyal endeavours, the journal seems to have proved a failure, to the +great disgust of the king and his minister, who had of course expected +to secure fine weather by nailing, like the schoolboy before a holiday, +the hand of the weather-glass.</p> +<p>Well had it been, if the intermeddling of this bureaucracy had stopped +there. But, by a process of evocation (as it was called), more +and more causes, criminal as well as civil, were withdrawn from the +regular tribunals, to those of the intendants and the Council. +Before the intendant all the lower order of people were generally sent +for trial. Bread-riots were a common cause of such trials, and +M. de Tocqueville asserts that he has found sentences, delivered by +the intendant, and a local council chosen by himself, by which men were +condemned to the galleys, and even to death. Under such a system, +under which an intendant must have felt it his interest to pretend at +all risks, that all was going right, and to regard any disturbance as +a dangerous exposure of himself and his chiefs—one can understand +easily enough that scene which Mr. Carlyle has dramatised from Lacretelle, +concerning the canaille, the masses, as we used to call them a generation +since:</p> +<p>“A dumb generation—their voice only an inarticulate cry. +Spokesman, in the king’s council, in the world’s forum, +they have none that finds credence. At rare intervals (as now, +in 1775) they will fling down their hoes, and hammers; and, to the astonishment +of mankind, flock hither and thither, dangerous, aimless, get the length +even of Versailles. Turgot is altering the corn trade, abrogating +the absurdest corn laws; there is dearth, real, or were it even factitious, +an indubitable scarcity of broad. And so, on the 2nd day of May, +1775, these waste multitudes do here, at Versailles chateau, in widespread +wretchedness, in sallow faces, squalor, winged raggedness, present as +in legible hieroglyphic writing their petition of grievances. +The chateau-gates must be shut; but the king will appear on the balcony +and speak to them. They have seen the king’s face; their +petition of grievances has been, if not read, looked at. In answer, +two of them are hanged, on a new gallows forty feet high, and the rest +driven back to their dens for a time.”</p> +<p>Of course. What more exasperating and inexpiable insult to +the ruling powers was possible than this? To persist in being +needy and wretched, when a whole bureaucracy is toiling day and night +to make them prosperous and happy? An insult only to be avenged +in blood. Remark meanwhile, that this centralised bureaucracy +was a failure; that after all the trouble taken to govern these masses, +they were not governed, in the sense of being made better, and not worse. +The truth is, that no centralised bureaucracy, or so-called “paternal +government,” yet invented on earth, has been anything but a failure, +or is it like to be anything else: because it is founded on an error; +because it regards and treats men as that which they are not, as things; +and not as that which they are, as persons. If the bureaucracy +were a mere Briareus giant, with a hundred hands, helping the weak throughout +the length and breadth of the empire, the system might be at least tolerable. +But what if the Government were not a Briareus with a hundred hands, +but a Hydra with a hundred heads and mouths, each far more intent on +helping itself than on helping the people? What if sub-delegates +and other officials, holding office at the will of the intendant, had +to live, and even provide against a rainy day? What if intendants, +holding office at the will of the Comptroller-General, had to do more +than live, and found it prudent to realise as large a fortune as possible, +not only against disgrace, but against success, and the dignity fit +for a new member of the Noblesse de la Robe? Would not the system, +then, soon become intolerable? Would there not be evil times for +the masses, till they became something more than masses?</p> +<p>It is an ugly name, that of “The Masses,” for the great +majority of human beings in a nation. He who uses it speaks of +them not as human beings, but as things; and as things not bound together +in one living body, but lying in a fortuitous heap. A swarm of +ants is not a mass. It has a polity and a unity. Not the +ants but the fir-needles and sticks, of which the ants have piled their +nest, are a mass.</p> +<p>The term, I believe, was invented during the Ancien Régime. +Whether it was or not, it expresses very accurately the life of the +many in those days. No one would speak, if he wished to speak +exactly, of the masses of the United States; for there every man is, +or is presumed to be, a personage; with his own independence, his own +activities, his own rights and duties. No one, I believe, would +have talked of the masses in the old feudal times; for then each individual +was someone’s man, bound to his master by ties of mutual service, +just or unjust, honourable or base, but still giving him a personality +of duties and rights, and dividing him from his class.</p> +<p>Dividing, I say. The poor of the Middle Age had little sense +of a common humanity. Those who owned allegiance to the lord in +the next valley were not their brothers; and at their own lord’s +bidding, they buckled on sword and slew the next lord’s men, with +joyful heart and good conscience. Only now and then misery compressed +them into masses; and they ran together, as sheep run together to face +a dog. Some wholesale wrong made them aware that they were brothers, +at least in the power of starving; and they joined in the cry which +was heard, I believe, in Mecklenburg as late as 1790: “Den Edelman +wille wi dodschlagen.” Then, in Wat Tyler’s insurrections, +in Munster Anabaptisms, in Jacqueries, they proved themselves to be +masses, if nothing better, striking for awhile, by the mere weight of +numbers, blows terrible, though aimless—soon to be dispersed and +slain in their turn by a disciplined and compact aristocracy. +Yet not always dispersed, if they could find a leader; as the Polish +nobles discovered to their cost in the middle of the seventeenth century. +Then Bogdan the Cossack, a wild warrior, not without his sins, but having +deserved well of James Sobieski and the Poles, found that the neighbouring +noble’s steward had taken a fancy to his windmill and his farm +upon the Dnieper. He was thrown into prison on a frivolous charge, +and escaped to the Tatars, leaving his wife dishonoured, his house burnt, +his infant lost in the flames, his eldest son scourged for protesting +against the wrong. And he returned, at the head of an army of +Tatars, Socinians, Greeks, or what not, to set free the serfs, and exterminate +Jesuits, Jews, and nobles, throughout Podolia, Volhynia, Red Russia; +to desecrate the altars of God, and slay his servants; to destroy the +nobles by lingering tortures; to strip noble ladies and maidens, and +hunt them to death with the whips of his Cossacks; and after defeating +the nobles in battle after battle, to inaugurate an era of misery and +anarchy from which Poland never recovered.</p> +<p>Thus did the masses of Southern Poland discover, for one generation +at least, that they were not many things, but one thing; a class, capable +of brotherhood and unity, though, alas! only of such as belongs to a +pack of wolves. But such outbursts as this were rare exceptions. +In general, feudalism kept the people divided, and therefore helpless. +And as feudalism died out, and with it the personal self-respect and +loyalty which were engendered by the old relations of master and servant, +the division still remained; and the people, in France especially, became +merely masses, a swarm of incoherent and disorganised things intent +on the necessaries of daily bread, like mites crawling over each other +in a cheese.</p> +<p>Out of this mass were struggling upwards perpetually, all who had +a little ambition, a little scholarship, or a little money, endeavouring +to become members of the middle class by obtaining a Government appointment. +“A man,” says M. de Tocqueville, “endowed with some +education and small means, thought it not decorous to die without having +been a Government officer.” “Every man, according +to his condition,” says a contemporary writer, “wants to +be something by command of the king.”</p> +<p>It was not merely the “natural vanity” of which M. de +Tocqueville accuses his countrymen, which stirred up in them this eagerness +after place; for we see the same eagerness in other nations of the Continent, +who cannot be accused (as wholes) of that weakness. The fact is, +a Government place, or a Government decoration, cross, ribbon, or what +not, is, in a country where self-government is unknown or dead, the +only method, save literary fame, which is left to men in order to assert +themselves either to themselves or their fellow-men.</p> +<p>A British or American shopkeeper or farmer asks nothing of his Government. +He can, if he chooses, be elected to some local office (generally unsalaried) +by the votes of his fellow-citizens. But that is his right, and +adds nothing to his respectability. The test of that latter, in +a country where all honest callings are equally honourable, is the amount +of money he can make; and a very sound practical test that is, in a +country where intellect and capital are free. Beyond that, he +is what he is, and wishes to be no more, save what he can make himself. +He has his rights, guaranteed by law and public opinion; and as long +as he stands within them, and (as he well phrases it) behaves like a +gentleman, he considers himself as good as any man; and so he is. +But under the bureaucratic Régime of the Continent, if a man +had not “something by command of the king,” he was nothing; +and something he naturally wished to be, even by means of a Government +which he disliked and despised. So in France, where innumerable +petty posts were regular articles of sale, anyone, it seems, who had +saved a little money, found it most profitable to invest it in a beadledom +of some kind—to the great detriment of the country, for he thus +withdrew his capital from trade; but to his own clear gain, for he thereby +purchased some immunity from public burdens, and, as it were, compounded +once and for all for his taxes. The petty German princes, it seems, +followed the example of France, and sold their little beadledoms likewise; +but even where offices were not sold, they must be obtained by any and +every means, by everyone who desired not to be as other men were, and +to become Notables, as they were called in France; so he migrated from +the country into the nearest town, and became a member of some small +body-guild, town council, or what not, bodies which were infinite in +number. In one small town M. de Tocqueville discovers thirty-six +such bodies, “separated from each other by diminutive privileges, +the least honourable of which was still a mark of honour.” +Quarrelling perpetually with each other for precedence, despising and +oppressing the very <i>menu peuple</i> from whom they had for the most +part sprung, these innumerable small bodies, instead of uniting their +class, only served to split it up more and more; and when the Revolution +broke them up, once and for all, with all other privileges whatsoever, +no bond of union was left; and each man stood alone, proud of his “individuality”—his +complete social isolation; till he discovered that, in ridding himself +of superiors, he had rid himself also of fellows; fulfilling, every +man in his own person, the old fable of the bundle of sticks; and had +to submit, under the Consulate and the Empire, to a tyranny to which +the Ancien Régime was freedom itself.</p> +<p>For, in France at least, the Ancien Régime was no tyranny. +The middle and upper classes had individual liberty—it may be, +only too much; the liberty of disobeying a Government which they did +not respect. “However submissive the French may have been +before the Revolution to the will of the king, one sort of obedience +was altogether unknown to them. They knew not what it was to bow +before an illegitimate and contested power—a power but little +honoured, frequently despised, but willingly endured because it may +be serviceable, or because it may hurt. To that degrading form +of servitude they were ever strangers. The king inspired them +with feelings . . . which have become incomprehensible to this generation +. . . They loved him with the affection due to a father; they revered +him with the respect due to God. In submitting to the most arbitrary +of his commands, they yielded less to compulsion than to loyalty; and +thus they frequently preserved great freedom of mind, even in the most +complete dependence. This liberty, irregular, intermittent,” +says M. de Tocqueville, “helped to form those vigorous characters, +those proud and daring spirits, which were to make the French Revolution +at once the object of the admiration and the terror of succeeding generations.”</p> +<p>This liberty—too much akin to anarchy, in which indeed it issued +for awhile—seems to have asserted itself in continual petty resistance +to officials whom they did not respect, and who, in their turn, were +more than a little afraid of the very men out of whose ranks they had +sprung.</p> +<p>The French Government—one may say, every Government on the +Continent in those days—had the special weakness of all bureaucracies; +namely, that want of moral force which compels them to fall back at +last on physical force, and transforms the ruler into a bully, and the +soldier into a policeman and a gaoler. A Government of parvenus, +uncertain of its own position, will be continually trying to assert +itself to itself, by vexatious intermeddling and intruding pretensions; +and then, when it meets with the resistance of free and rational spirits, +will either recoil in awkward cowardice, or fly into a passion, and +appeal to the halter and the sword. Such a Government can never +take itself for granted, because it knows that it is not taken for granted +by the people. It never can possess the quiet assurance, the courteous +dignity, without swagger, yet without hesitation, which belongs to hereditary +legislators; by which term is to be understood, not merely kings, not +merely noblemen, but every citizen of a free nation, however democratic, +who has received from his forefathers the right, the duty, and the example +of self-government.</p> +<p>Such was the political and social state of the Ancien Régime, +not only in France, but if we are to trust (as we must trust) M. de +Tocqueville, in almost every nation in Europe, except Britain.</p> +<p>And as for its moral state. We must look for that—if +we have need, which happily all have not—in its lighter literature.</p> +<p>I shall not trouble you with criticisms on French memoirs—of +which those of Madame de Sévigné are on the whole, the +most painful (as witness her comments on the Marquise de Brinvilliers’s +execution), because written by a woman better and more human than ordinary. +Nor with “Menagiana,” or other ‘ana’s—as +vain and artificial as they are often foul; nor with novels and poems, +long since deservedly forgotten. On the first perusal of this +lighter literature, you will be charmed with the ease, grace, lightness +with which everything is said. On the second, you will be somewhat +cured of your admiration, as you perceive how little there is to say. +The head proves to be nothing but a cunning mask, with no brains inside. +Especially is this true of a book, which I must beg those who have read +it already, to recollect. To read it I recommend no human being. +We may consider it, as it was considered in its time, the typical novel +of the Ancien Régime. A picture of Spanish society, written +by a Frenchman, it was held to be—and doubtless with reason—a +picture of the whole European world. Its French editor (of 1836) +calls it a <i>grande épopée</i>; “one of the most +prodigious efforts of intelligence, exhausting all forms of humanity”—in +fact, a second Shakespeare, according to the lights of the year 1715. +I mean, of course, “Gil Blas.” So picturesque is the +book, that it has furnished inexhaustible motifs to the draughtsman. +So excellent is its workmanship, that the enthusiastic editor of 1836 +tells us—and doubtless he knows best—that it is the classic +model of the French tongue; and that, as Le Sage “had embraced +all that belonged to man in his composition, he dared to prescribe to +himself to embrace the whole French language in his work.” +It has been the parent of a whole school of literature—the Bible +of tens of thousands, with admiring commentators in plenty; on whose +souls may God have mercy!</p> +<p>And no wonder. The book has a solid value, and will always +have, not merely from its perfect art (according to its own measure +and intention), but from its perfect truthfulness. It is the Ancien +Régime itself. It set forth to the men thereof, themselves, +without veil or cowardly reticence of any kind; and inasmuch as every +man loves himself, the Ancien Régime loved “Gil Blas,” +and said, “The problem of humanity is solved at last.” +But, ye long-suffering powers of heaven, what a solution! It is +beside the matter to call the book ungodly, immoral, base. Le +Sage would have answered: “Of course it is; for so is the world +of which it is a picture.” No; the most notable thing about +the book is its intense stupidity; its dreariness, barrenness, shallowness, +ignorance of the human heart, want of any human interest. If it +be an epos, the actors in it are not men and women, but ferrets—with +here and there, of course, a stray rabbit, on whose brains they may +feed. It is the inhuman mirror of an inhuman age, in which the +healthy human heart can find no more interest than in a pathological +museum.</p> +<p>That last, indeed, “Gil Blas” is; a collection of diseased +specimens. No man or woman in the book, lay or clerical, gentle +or simple, as far as I can remember, do their duty in any wise, even +if they recollect that they have any duty to do. Greed, chicane, +hypocrisy, uselessness are the ruling laws of human society. A +new book of Ecclesiastes, crying, “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity;” +the “conclusion of the whole matter” being left out, and +the new Ecclesiastes rendered thereby diabolic, instead of like that +old one, divine. For, instead of “Fear God and keep his +commandments, for that is the whole duty of main,” Le Sage sends +forth the new conclusion, “Take care of thyself, and feed on thy +neighbours, for that is the whole duty of man.” And very +faithfully was his advice (easy enough to obey at all times) obeyed +for nearly a century after “Gil Blas” appeared.</p> +<p>About the same time there appeared, by a remarkable coincidence, +another work, like it the child of the Ancien Régime, and yet +as opposite to it as light to darkness. If Le Sage drew men as +they were, Fénelon tried at least to draw them as they might +have been and still might be, were they governed by sages and by saints, +according to the laws of God. “Télémaque” +is an ideal—imperfect, doubtless, as all ideals must be in a world +in which God’s ways and thoughts are for ever higher than man’s; +but an ideal nevertheless. If its construction is less complete +than that of “Gil Blas,” it is because its aim is infinitely +higher; because the form has to be subordinated, here and there, to +the matter. If its political economy be imperfect, often chimerical, +it is because the mind of one man must needs have been too weak to bring +into shape and order the chaos, social and economic, which he saw around +him. M. de Lamartine, in his brilliant little life of Fénelon, +does not hesitate to trace to the influence of “Télémaque,” +the Utopias which produced the revolutions of 1793 and 1848. “The +saintly poet was,” he says, “without knowing it, the first +Radical and the first communist of his century.” But it +is something to have preached to princes doctrines till then unknown, +or at least forgotten for many a generation—free trade, peace, +international arbitration, and the “carrière ouverte aux +talents” for all ranks. It is something to have warned his +generation of the dangerous overgrowth of the metropolis; to have prophesied, +as an old Hebrew might have done, that the despotism which he saw around +him would end in a violent revolution. It is something to have +combined the highest Christian morality with a hearty appreciation of +old Greek life; of its reverence for bodily health and prowess; its +joyous and simple country society; its sacrificial feasts, dances, games; +its respect for the gods; its belief that they helped, guided, inspired +the sons of men. It is something to have himself believed in God; +in a living God, who, both in this life and in all lives to come, rewarded +the good and punished the evil by inevitable laws. It is something +to have warned a young prince, in an age of doctrinal bigotry and practical +atheism, that a living God still existed, and that his laws were still +in force; to have shown him Tartarus crowded with the souls of wicked +monarchs, while a few of kingly race rested in Elysium, and among them +old pagans—Inachus, Cecrops, Erichthon, Triptolemus, and Sesostris—rewarded +for ever for having done their duty, each according to his light, to +the flocks which the gods had committed to their care. It is something +to have spoken to a prince, in such an age, without servility, and without +etiquette, of the frailties and the dangers which beset arbitrary rulers; +to have told him that royalty, “when assumed to content oneself, +is a monstrous tyranny; when assumed to fulfil its duties, and to conduct +an innumerable people as a father conducts his children, a crushing +slavery, which demands an heroic courage and patience.”</p> +<p>Let us honour the courtier who dared speak such truths; and still +more the saintly celibate who had sufficient catholicity of mind to +envelop them in old Grecian dress, and, without playing false for a +moment to his own Christianity, seek in the writings of heathen sages +a wider and a healthier view of humanity than was afforded by an ascetic +creed.</p> +<p>No wonder that the appearance of “Télémaque,” +published in Holland without the permission of Fénelon, delighted +throughout Europe that public which is always delighted with new truths, +as long as it is not required to practise them. To read “Télémaque” +was the right and the enjoyment of everyone. To obey it, the duty +only of princes. No wonder that, on the other hand, this “Vengeance +de peuples, leçon des rois,” as M. de Lamartine calls it, +was taken for the bitterest satire by Louis XIV., and completed the +disgrace of one who had dared to teach the future king of France that +he must show himself, in all things, the opposite of his grandfather. +No wonder if Madame de Maintenon and the court looked on its portraits +of wicked ministers and courtiers as caricatures of themselves; portraits +too, which, “composed thus in the palace of Versailles, under +the auspices of that confidence which the king had placed in the preceptor +of his heir, seemed a domestic treason.” No wonder, also, +if the foolish and envious world outside was of the same opinion; and +after enjoying for awhile this exposure of the great ones of the earth, +left “Télémaque” as an Utopia with which private +folks had no concern; and betook themselves to the easier and more practical +model of “Gil Blas.”</p> +<p>But there are solid defects in “Télémaque”—indicating +corresponding defects in the author’s mind—which would have, +in any case, prevented its doing the good work which Fénelon +desired; defects which are natural, as it seems to me, to his position +as a Roman Catholic priest, however saintly and pure, however humane +and liberal. The king, with him, is to be always the father of +his people; which is tantamount to saying, that the people are to be +always children, and in a condition of tutelage; voluntary, if possible: +if not, of tutelage still. Of self-government, and education of +human beings into free manhood by the exercise of self-government, free +will, free thought—of this Fénelon had surely not a glimpse. +A generation or two passed by, and then the peoples of Europe began +to suspect that they were no longer children, but come to manhood; and +determined (after the example of Britain and America) to assume the +rights and duties of manhood, at whatever risk of excesses or mistakes: +and then “Télémaque” was relegated—half +unjustly—as the slavish and childish dream of a past age, into +the schoolroom, where it still remains.</p> +<p>But there is a defect in “Télémaque” which +is perhaps deeper still. No woman in it exercises influence over +man, except for evil. Minerva, the guiding and inspiring spirit, +assumes of course, as Mentor, a male form; but her speech and thought +is essentially masculine, and not feminine. Antiope is a mere +lay-figure, introduced at the end of the book because Telemachus must +needs be allowed to have hope of marrying someone or other. Venus +plays but the same part as she does in the Tannenhäuser legends +of the Middle Age. Her hatred against Telemachus is an integral +element of the plot. She, with the other women or nymphs of the +romance, in spite of all Fénelon’s mercy and courtesy towards +human frailties, really rise no higher than the witches of the Malleus +Maleficanum. Woman—as the old monk held who derived femina +from fe, faith, and minus, less, because women have less faith than +men—is, in “Télémaque,” whenever she +thinks or acts, the temptress, the enchantress; the victim (according +to a very ancient calumny) of passions more violent, often more lawless, +than man’s.</p> +<p>Such a conception of women must make “Télémaque,” +to the end of time, useless as a wholesome book of education. +It must have crippled its influence, especially in France, in its own +time. For there, for good and for evil, woman was asserting more +and more her power, and her right to power, over the mind and heart +of man. Rising from the long degradation of the Middle Ages, which +had really respected her only when unsexed and celibate, the French +woman had assumed, often lawlessly, always triumphantly, her just freedom; +her true place as the equal, the coadjutor, the counsellor of man. +Of all problems connected with the education of a young prince, that +of the influence of woman was, in the France of the Ancien Régime, +the most important. And it was just that which Fénelon +did not, perhaps dared not, try to touch; and which he most certainly +could not have solved. Meanwhile, not only Madame de Maintenon, +but women whose names it were a shame to couple with hers, must have +smiled at, while they hated, the saint who attempted to dispense not +only with them, but with the ideal queen who should have been the helpmeet +of the ideal king.</p> +<p>To those who believe that the world is governed by a living God, +it may seem strange, at first sight, that this moral anarchy was allowed +to endure; that the avenging, and yet most purifying storm of the French +Revolution, inevitable from Louis XIV.’s latter years, was not +allowed to burst two generations sooner than it did. Is not the +answer—that the question always is not of destroying the world, +but of amending it? And that amendment must always come from within, +and not from without? That men must be taught to become men, and +mend their world themselves? To educate men into self-government—that +is the purpose of the government of God; and some of the men of the +eighteenth century did not learn that lesson. As the century rolled +on, the human mind arose out of the slough in which Le Sage found it, +into manifold and beautiful activity, increasing hatred of shams and +lies, increasing hunger after truth and usefulness. With mistakes +and confusions innumerable they worked: but still they worked; planting +good seed; and when the fire of the French Revolution swept over the +land, it burned up the rotten and the withered, only to let the fresh +herbage spring up from underneath.</p> +<p>But that purifying fire was needed. If we inquire why the many +attempts to reform the Ancien Régime, which the eighteenth century +witnessed, were failures one and all; why Pombal failed in Portugal, +Aranda in Spain, Joseph II. in Austria, Ferdinand and Caroline in Naples—for +these last, be it always remembered, began as humane and enlightened +sovereigns, patronising liberal opinions, and labouring to ameliorate +the condition of the poor, till they were driven by the murder of Marie +Antoinette into a paroxysm of rage and terror—why, above all, +Louis XVI., who attempted deeper and wiser reforms than any other sovereign, +failed more disastrously than any—is not the answer this, that +all these reforms would but have cleansed the outside of the cup and +the platter, while they left the inside full of extortion and excess? +It was not merely institutions which required to be reformed, but men +and women. The spirit of “Gil Blas” had to be cast +out. The deadness, selfishness, isolation of men’s souls; +their unbelief in great duties, great common causes, great self-sacrifices—in +a word, their unbelief in God, and themselves, and mankind—all +that had to be reformed; and till that was done all outward reform would +but have left them, at best, in brute ease and peace, to that soulless +degradation, which (as in the Byzantine empire of old, and seeming in +the Chinese empire of to-day) hides the reality of barbarism under a +varnish of civilisation. Men had to be awakened; to be taught +to think for themselves, act for themselves, to dare and suffer side +by side for their country and for their children; in a word, to arise +and become men once more.</p> +<p>And, what is more, men had to punish—to avenge. Those +are fearful words. But there is, in this God-guided universe, +a law of retribution, which will find men out, whether men choose to +find it out or not; a law of retribution; of vengeance inflicted justly, +though not necessarily by just men. The public executioner was +seldom a very estimable personage, at least under the old Régime; +and those who have been the scourges of God have been, in general, mere +scourges, and nothing better; smiting blindly, rashly, confusedly; confounding +too often the innocent with the guilty, till they have seemed only to +punish crime by crime, and replace old sins by new. But, however +insoluble, however saddening that puzzle be, I must believe—as +long as I believe in any God at all—that such men as Robespierre +were His instruments, even in their crimes.</p> +<p>In the case of the French Revolution, indeed, the wickedness of certain +of its leaders was part of the retribution itself. For the noblesse +existed surely to make men better. It did, by certain classes, +the very opposite. Therefore it was destroyed by wicked men, whom +it itself had made wicked. For over and above all political, economic, +social wrongs, there were wrongs personal, human, dramatic; which stirred +not merely the springs of covetousness or envy, or even of a just demand +for the freedom of labour and enterprise: but the very deepest springs +of rage, contempt, and hate; wrongs which caused, as I believe, the +horrors of the Revolution.</p> +<p>It is notorious how many of the men most deeply implicated in those +horrors were of the artist class—by which I signify not merely +painters and sculptors—as the word artist has now got, somewhat +strangely, to signify, at least in England—but what the French +meant by <i>artistes</i>—producers of luxuries and amusements, +play-actors, musicians, and suchlike, down to that “distracted +peruke-maker with two fiery torches,” who, at the storm of the +Bastile, “was for burning the saltpetres of the Arsenal, had not +a woman run screaming; had not a patriot, with some tincture of natural +philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him, with butt of musket +on pit of stomach, overturned the barrels, and stayed the devouring +element.” The distracted peruke-maker may have had his wrongs—perhaps +such a one as that of poor Triboulet the fool, in “Le Roi s’amuse”—and +his own sound reasons for blowing down the Bastile, and the system which +kept it up.</p> +<p>For these very ministers of luxury—then miscalled art—from +the periwig-maker to the play-actor—who like them had seen the +frivolity, the baseness, the profligacy, of the rulers to whose vices +they pandered, whom they despised while they adored! Figaro himself +may have looked up to his master the Marquis as a superior being as +long as the law enabled the Marquis to send him to the Bastile by a +lettre de cachet; yet Figaro may have known and seen enough to excuse +him, when lettres de cachet were abolished, for handing the Marquis +over to a Comité de Salut Public. Disappointed play-actors, +like Collet d’Herbois; disappointed poets, like Fabre d’Olivet, +were, they say, especially ferocious. Why not? Ingenious, +sensitive spirits, used as lap-dogs and singing-birds by men and women +whom they felt to be their own flesh and blood, they had, it may be, +a juster appreciation of the actual worth of their patrons than had +our own Pitt and Burke. They had played the valet: and no man +was a hero to them. They had seen the nobleman expose himself +before his own helots: they would try if the helot was not as good as +the nobleman. The nobleman had played the mountebank: why should +not the mountebank, for once, play the nobleman? The nobleman’s +God had been his five senses, with (to use Mr. Carlyle’s phrase) +the sixth sense of vanity: why should not the mountebank worship the +same God, like Carriére at Nantes, and see what grace and gifts +he too might obtain at that altar?</p> +<p>But why so cruel? Because, with many of these men, I more than +suspect, there were wrongs to be avenged deeper than any wrongs done +to the sixth sense of vanity. Wrongs common to them, and to a +great portion of the respectable middle class, and much of the lower +class: but wrongs to which they and their families, being most in contact +with the noblesse, would be especially exposed; namely, wrongs to women.</p> +<p>Everyone who knows the literature of that time, must know what I +mean: what had gone on for more than a century, it may be more than +two, in France, in Italy, and—I am sorry to have to say it—Germany +likewise. All historians know what I mean, and how enormous was +the evil. I only wonder that they have so much overlooked that +item in the causes of the Revolution. It seems to me to have been +more patent and potent in the sight of men, as it surely was in the +sight of Almighty God, than all the political and economic wrongs put +together. They might have issued in a change of dynasty or of +laws. That, issued in the blood of the offenders. Not a +girl was enticed into Louis XV.’s Petit Trianon, or other den +of aristocratic iniquity, but left behind her, parents nursing shame +and sullen indignation, even while they fingered the ill-gotten price +of their daughter’s honour; and left behind also, perhaps, some +unhappy boy of her own class, in whom disappointment and jealousy were +transformed—and who will blame him?—into righteous indignation, +and a very sword of God; all the more indignant, and all the more righteous, +if education helped him to see, that the maiden’s acquiescence, +her pride in her own shame, was the ugliest feature in the whole crime, +and the most potent reason for putting an end, however fearful, to a +state of things in which such a fate was thought an honour and a gain, +and not a disgrace and a ruin; in which the most gifted daughters of +the lower classes had learnt to think it more noble to become—that +which they became—than the wives of honest men.</p> +<p>If you will read fairly the literature of the Ancien Régime, +whether in France or elsewhere, you will see that my facts are true. +If you have human hearts in you, you will see in them, it seems to me, +an explanation of many a guillotinade and fusillade, as yet explained +only on the ground of madness—an hypothesis which (as we do not +yet in the least understand what madness is) is no explanation at all.</p> +<p>An age of decay, incoherence, and makeshift, varnish and gilding +upon worm-eaten furniture, and mouldering wainscot, was that same Ancien +Régime. And for that very reason a picturesque age; like +one of its own landscapes. A picturesque bit of uncultivated mountain, +swarming with the prince’s game; a picturesque old robber schloss +above, now in ruins; and below, perhaps, the picturesque new schloss, +with its French fountains and gardens, French nymphs of marble, and +of flesh and blood likewise, which the prince has partially paid for, +by selling a few hundred young men to the English to fight the Yankees. +The river, too, is picturesque, for the old bridge has not been repaired +since it was blown up in the Seven Years’ War; and there is but +a single lazy barge floating down the stream, owing to the tolls and +tariffs of his Serene Highness; the village is picturesque, for the +flower of the young men are at the wars, and the place is tumbling down; +and the two old peasants in the foreground, with the single goat and +the hamper of vine-twigs, are very picturesque likewise, for they are +all in rags.</p> +<p>How sad to see the picturesque element eliminated, and the quiet +artistic beauty of the scene destroyed;—to have steamers puffing +up and down the river, and a railroad hurrying along its banks the wealth +of the Old World, in exchange for the wealth of the New—or hurrying, +it may be, whole regiments of free and educated citizen-soldiers, who +fight, they know for what. How sad to see the alto schloss desecrated +by tourists, and the neue schloss converted into a cold-water cure. +How sad to see the village, church and all, built up again brand-new, +and whitewashed to the very steeple-top;—a new school at the town-end—a +new crucifix by the wayside. How sad to see the old folk well +clothed in the fabrics of England or Belgium, doing an easy trade in +milk and fruit, because the land they till has become their own, and +not the prince’s; while their sons are thriving farmers on the +prairies of the far West. Very unpicturesque, no doubt, is wealth +and progress, peace and safety, cleanliness and comfort. But they +possess advantages unknown to the Ancien Régime, which was, if +nothing else, picturesque. Men could paint amusing and often pretty +pictures of its people and its places.</p> +<p>Consider that word, “picturesque.” It, and the +notion of art which it expresses, are the children of the Ancien Régime—of +the era of decay. The healthy, vigorous, earnest, progressive +Middle Age never dreamed of admiring, much less of painting, for their +own sake, rags and ruins; the fashion sprang up at the end of the seventeenth +century; it lingered on during the first quarter of our century, kept +alive by the reaction from 1815-25. It is all but dead now, before +the return of vigorous and progressive thought. An admirer of +the Middle Ages now does not build a sham ruin in his grounds; he restores +a church, blazing with colour, like a medieval illumination. He +has learnt to look on that which went by the name of picturesque in +his great-grandfather’s time, as an old Greek or a Middle Age +monk would have done—as something squalid, ugly, a sign of neglect, +disease, death; and therefore to be hated and abolished, if it cannot +be restored. At Carcassone, now, M. Viollet-le-Duc, under the +auspices of the Emperor of the French, is spending his vast learning, +and much money, simply in abolishing the picturesque; in restoring stone +for stone, each member of that wonderful museum of Middle Age architecture: +Roman, Visigothic, Moslem, Romaine, Early English, later French, all +is being reproduced exactly as it must have existed centuries since. +No doubt that is not the highest function of art: but it is a preparation +for the highest, a step toward some future creative school. As +the early Italian artists, by careful imitation, absorbed into their +minds the beauty and meaning of old Greek and Roman art; so must the +artists of our days by the art of the Middle Age and the Renaissance. +They must learn to copy, before they can learn to surpass; and, meanwhile, +they must learn—indeed they have learnt—that decay is ugliness, +and the imitation of decay, a making money out of the public shame.</p> +<p>The picturesque sprang up, as far as I can discover, suddenly, during +the time of exhaustion and recklessness which followed the great struggles +of the sixteenth century. Salvator Rosa and Callot, two of the +earliest professors of picturesque art, have never been since surpassed. +For indeed, they drew from life. The rags and the ruins, material, +and alas! spiritual, were all around them; the lands and the creeds +alike lay waste. There was ruffianism and misery among the masses +of Europe; unbelief and artificiality among the upper classes; churches +and monasteries defiled, cities sacked, farmsteads plundered and ruinate, +and all the wretchedness which Callot has immortalised—for a warning +to evil rulers—in his Misères de la Guerre. The world +was all gone wrong: but as for setting it right again—who could +do that? And so men fell into a sentimental regret for the past, +and its beauties, all exaggerated by the foreshortening of time; while +they wanted strength or faith to reproduce it. At last they became +so accustomed to the rags and ruins, that they looked on them as the +normal condition of humanity, as the normal field for painters.</p> +<p>Only now and then, and especially toward the latter half of the eighteenth +century, when thought began to revive, and men dreamed of putting the +world to rights once more, there rose before them glimpses of an Arcadian +ideal. Country life—the primæval calling of men—how +graceful and pure it might be! How graceful—if not pure—it +once had been! The boors of Teniers and the beggars of Murillo +might be true to present fact; but there was a fairer ideal, which once +had been fact, in the Eclogues of Theocritus, and the Loves of Daphnis +and Chloe. And so men took to dreaming of shepherds and shepherdesses, +and painting them on canvas, and modelling them in china, according +to their cockney notions of what they had been once, and always ought +to be. We smile now at Sèvres and Dresden shepherdesses; +but the wise man will surely see in them a certain pathos. They +indicated a craving after something better than boorishness; and the +many men and women may have become the gentler and purer by looking +even at them, and have said sadly to themselves: “Such might have +been the peasantry of half Europe, had it not been for devastations +of the Palatinate, wars of succession, and the wicked wills of emperors +and kings.”</p> +<h2>LECTURE III—THE EXPLOSIVE FORCES</h2> +<p>In a former lecture in this Institution, I said that the human race +owed more to the eighteenth century than to any century since the Christian +era. It may seem a bold assertion to those who value duly the +century which followed the revival of Greek literature, and consider +that the eighteenth century was but the child, or rather grandchild, +thereof. But I must persist in my opinion, even though it seem +to be inconsistent with my description of the very same era as one of +decay and death. For side by side with the death, there was manifold +fresh birth; side by side with the decay there was active growth;—side +by side with them, fostered by them, though generally in strong opposition +to them, whether conscious or unconscious. We must beware, however, +of trying to find between that decay and that growth a bond of cause +and effect where there is really none. The general decay may have +determined the course of many men’s thoughts; but it no more set +them thinking than (as I have heard said) the decay of the Ancien Régime +produced the new Régime—a loose metaphor, which, like all +metaphors, will not hold water, and must not be taken for a philosophic +truth. That would be to confess man—what I shall never confess +him to be—the creature of circumstances; it would be to fall into +the same fallacy of spontaneous generation as did the ancients, when +they believed that bees were bred from the carcass of a dead ox. +In the first place, the bees were no bees, but flies—unless when +some true swarm of honey bees may have taken up their abode within the +empty ribs, as Samson’s bees did in that of the lion. But +bees or flies, each sprang from an egg, independent of the carcass, +having a vitality of its own: it was fostered by the carcass it fed +on during development; but bred from it it was not, any more than Marat +was bred from the decay of the Ancien Régime. There are +flies which, by feeding on putridity, become poisonous themselves, as +did Marat: but even they owe their vitality and organisation to something +higher than that on which they feed; and each of them, however, defaced +and debased, was at first a “thought of God.” All +true manhood consists in the defiance of circumstances; and if any man +be the creature of circumstances, it is because he has become so, like +the drunkard; because he has ceased to be a man, and sunk downward toward +the brute.</p> +<p>Accordingly we shall find, throughout the 18th century, a stirring +of thought, an originality, a resistance to circumstances, an indignant +defiance of circumstances, which would have been impossible, had circumstances +been the true lords and shapers of mankind. Had that latter been +the case, the downward progress of the Ancien Régime would have +been irremediable. Each generation, conformed more and more to +the element in which it lived, would have sunk deeper in dull acquiescence +to evil, in ignorance of all cravings save those of the senses; and +if at any time intolerable wrong or want had driven it to revolt, it +would have issued, not in the proclamation of new and vast ideas, but +in an anarchic struggle for revenge and bread.</p> +<p>There are races, alas! which seem, for the present at least, mastered +by circumstances. Some, like the Chinese, have sunk back into +that state; some, like the negro in Africa, seem not yet to have emerged +from it; but in Europe, during the eighteenth century, were working +not merely new forces and vitalities (abstractions which mislead rather +than explain), but living persons in plenty, men and women, with independent +and original hearts and brains, instinct, in spite of all circumstances, +with power which we shall most wisely ascribe directly to Him who is +the Lord and Giver of Life.</p> +<p>Such persons seemed—I only say seemed—most numerous in +England and in Germany. But there were enough of them in France +to change the destiny of that great nation for awhile—perhaps +for ever.</p> +<p>M. de Tocqueville has a whole chapter, and a very remarkable one, +which appears at first sight to militate against my belief—a chapter +“showing that France was the country in which men had become most +alike.”</p> +<p>“The men,” he says, “of that time, especially those +belonging to the upper and middle ranks of society, who alone were at +all conspicuous, were all exactly alike.”</p> +<p>And it must be allowed, that if this were true of the upper and middle +classes, it must have been still more true of the mass of the lowest +population, who, being most animal, are always most moulded—or +rather crushed—by their own circumstances, by public opinion, +and by the wants of five senses, common to all alike.</p> +<p>But when M. de Tocqueville attributes this curious fact to the circumstances +of their political state—to that “government of one man +which in the end has the inevitable effect of rendering all men alike, +and all mutually indifferent to their common fate”—we must +differ, even from him: for facts prove the impotence of that, or of +any other circumstance, in altering the hearts and souls of men, in +producing in them anything but a mere superficial and temporary resemblance.</p> +<p>For all the while there was, among these very French, here and there +a variety of character and purpose, sufficient to burst through that +very despotism, and to develop the nation into manifold, new, and quite +original shapes. Thus it was proved that the uniformity had been +only in their outside crust and shell. What tore the nation to +pieces during the Reign of Terror, but the boundless variety and originality +of the characters which found themselves suddenly in free rivalry? +What else gave to the undisciplined levies, the bankrupt governments, +the parvenu heroes of the Republic, a manifold force, a self-dependent +audacity, which made them the conquerors, and the teachers (for good +and evil) of the civilised world? If there was one doctrine which +the French Revolution specially proclaimed—which it caricatured +till it brought it into temporary disrepute—it was this: that +no man is like another; that in each is a God-given “individuality,” +an independent soul, which no government or man has a right to crush, +or can crush in the long run: but which ought to have, and must have, +a “carrière ouverte aux talents,” freely to do the +best for itself in the battle of life. The French Revolution, +more than any event since twelve poor men set forth to convert the world +some eighteen hundred years ago, proves that man ought not to be, and +need not be, the creature of circumstances, the puppet of institutions; +but, if he will, their conqueror and their lord.</p> +<p>Of these original spirits who helped to bring life out of death, +and the modern world out of the decay of the mediæval world, the +French <i>philosophes</i> and encyclopædists are, of course, the +most notorious. They confessed, for the most part, that their +original inspiration had come from England. They were, or considered +themselves, the disciples of Locke; whose philosophy, it seems to me, +their own acts disproved.</p> +<p>And first, a few words on these same <i>philosophes</i>. One +may be thoroughly aware of their deficiencies, of their sins, moral +as well as intellectual; and yet one may demand that everyone should +judge them fairly—which can only be done by putting himself in +their place; and any fair judgment of them will, I think, lead to the +conclusion that they were not mere destroyers, inflamed with hate of +everything which mankind had as yet held sacred. Whatever sacred +things they despised, one sacred thing they reverenced, which men had +forgotten more and more since the seventeenth century—common justice +and common humanity. It was this, I believe, which gave them their +moral force. It was this which drew towards them the hearts, not +merely of educated bourgeois and nobles (on the <i>menu peuple</i> they +had no influence, and did not care to have any), but of every continental +sovereign who felt in himself higher aspirations than those of a mere +selfish tyrant—Frederick the Great, Christina of Sweden, Joseph +of Austria, and even that fallen Juno, Catharine of Russia, with all +her sins. To take the most extreme instance—Voltaire. +We may question his being a philosopher at all. We may deny that +he had even a tincture of formal philosophy. We may doubt much +whether he had any of that human and humorous common sense, which is +often a good substitute for the philosophy of the schools. We +may feel against him a just and honest indignation when we remember +that he dared to travestie into a foul satire the tale of his country’s +purest and noblest heroine; but we must recollect, at the same time, +that he did a public service to the morality of his own country, and +of all Europe, by his indignation—quite as just and honest as +any which we may feel—at the legal murder of Calas. We must +recollect that, if he exposes baseness and foulness with too cynical +a license of speech (in which, indeed, he sinned no more than had the +average of French writers since the days of Montaigne), he at least +never advocates them, as did Le Sage. We must recollect that, +scattered throughout his writings, are words in favour of that which +is just, merciful, magnanimous, and even, at times, in favour of that +which is pure; which proves that in Voltaire, as in most men, there +was a double self—the one sickened to cynicism by the iniquity +and folly which he saw around him—the other, hungering after a +nobler life, and possibly exciting that hunger in one and another, here +and there, who admired him for other reasons than the educated mob, +which cried after him “Vive la Pucelle.”</p> +<p>Rousseau, too. Easy it is to feel disgust, contempt, for the +“Confessions” and the “Nouvelle Heloise”—for +much, too much, in the man’s own life and character. One +would think the worse of the young Englishman who did not so feel, and +express his feelings roundly and roughly. But all young Englishmen +should recollect, that to Rousseau’s “Emile” they +owe their deliverance from the useless pedantries, the degrading brutalities, +of the medieval system of school education; that “Emile” +awakened throughout civilised Europe a conception of education just, +humane, rational, truly scientific, because founded upon facts; that +if it had not been written by one writhing under the bitter consequences +of mis-education, and feeling their sting and their brand day by day +on his own spirit, Miss Edgeworth might never have reformed our nurseries, +or Dr. Arnold our public schools.</p> +<p>And so with the rest of the <i>philosophes</i>. That there +were charlatans among them, vain men, pretentious men, profligate men, +selfish, self-seeking, and hypocritical men, who doubts? Among +what class of men were there not such in those evil days? In what +class of men are there not such now, in spite of all social and moral +improvement? But nothing but the conviction, among the average, +that they were in the right—that they were fighting a battle for +which it was worth while to dare, and if need be to suffer, could have +enabled them to defy what was then public opinion, backed by overwhelming +physical force.</p> +<p>Their intellectual defects are patent. No one can deny that +their inductions were hasty and partial: but then they were inductions +as opposed to the dull pedantry of the schools, which rested on tradition +only half believed, or pretended to be believed. No one can deny +that their theories were too general and abstract; but then they were +theories as opposed to the no-theory of the Ancien Régime, which +was, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”</p> +<p>Theories—principles—by them if men do not live, by them +men are, at least, stirred into life, at the sight of something more +noble than themselves. Only by great ideas, right or wrong, could +such a world as that which Le Sage painted, be roused out of its slough +of foul self-satisfaction, and equally foul self-discontent.</p> +<p>For mankind is ruled and guided, in the long run, not by practical +considerations, not by self-interest, not by compromises; but by theories +and principles, and those of the most abstruse, delicate, supernatural, +and literally unspeakable kind; which, whether they be according to +reason or not, are so little according to logic—that is, to speakable +reason—that they cannot be put into speech. Men act, whether +singly or in masses, by impulses and instincts for which they give reasons +quite incompetent, often quite irrelevant; but which they have caught +from each other, as they catch fever or small-pox; as unconsciously, +and yet as practically and potently; just as the nineteenth century +has caught from the philosophers of the eighteenth most practical rules +of conduct, without even (in most cases) having read a word of their +works.</p> +<p>And what has this century caught from these philosophers? One +rule it has learnt, and that a most practical one—to appeal in +all cases, as much as possible, to “Reason and the Laws of Nature.” +That, at least, the philosophers tried to do. Often they failed. +Their conceptions of reason and of the laws of nature being often incorrect, +they appealed to unreason and to laws which were not those of nature. +“The fixed idea of them all was,” says M. de Tocqueville, +“to substitute simple and elementary rules, deduced from reason +and natural law, for the complicated traditional customs which governed +the society of their time.” They were often rash, hasty, +in the application of their method. They ignored whole classes +of facts, which, though spiritual and not physical, are just as much +facts, and facts for science, as those which concern a stone or a fungus. +They mistook for merely complicated traditional customs, many most sacred +institutions which were just as much founded on reason and natural law, +as any theories of their own. But who shall say that their method +was not correct? That it was not the only method? They appealed +to reason. Would you have had them appeal to unreason? They +appealed to natural law. Would you have had them appeal to unnatural +law?—law according to which God did not make this world? +Alas! that had been done too often already. Solomon saw it done +in his time, and called it folly, to which he prophesied no good end. +Rabelais saw it done in his time; and wrote his chapters on the “Children +of Physis and the Children of Antiphysis.” But, born in +an evil generation, which was already, even in 1500, ripening for the +revolution of 1789, he was sensual and, I fear, cowardly enough to hide +his light, not under a bushel, but under a dunghill; till men took him +for a jester of jests; and his great wisdom was lost to the worse and +more foolish generations which followed him, and thought they understood +him.</p> +<p>But as for appealing to natural law for that which is good for men, +and to reason for the power of discerning that same good—if man +cannot find truth by that method, by what method shall he find it?</p> +<p>And thus it happened that, though these philosophers and encyclopædists +were not men of science, they were at least the heralds and the coadjutors +of science.</p> +<p>We may call them, and justly, dreamers, theorists, fanatics. +But we must recollect that one thing they meant to do, and did. +They recalled men to facts; they bid them ask of everything they saw—What +are the facts of the case? Till we know the facts, argument is +worse than useless.</p> +<p>Now the habit of asking for the facts of the case must deliver men +more or less from that evil spirit which the old Romans called “Fama;” +from her whom Virgil described in the Æneid as the ugliest, the +falsest, and the cruellest of monsters.</p> +<p>From “Fama;” from rumours, hearsays, exaggerations, scandals, +superstitions, public opinions—whether from the ancient public +opinion that the sun went round the earth, or the equally public opinion, +that those who dared to differ from public opinion were hateful to the +deity, and therefore worthy of death—from all these blasts of +Fame’s lying trumpet they helped to deliver men; and they therefore +helped to insure something like peace and personal security for those +quiet, modest, and generally virtuous men, who, as students of physical +science, devoted their lives, during the eighteenth century, to asking +of nature—What are the facts of the case?</p> +<p>It was no coincidence, but a connection of cause and effect, that +during the century of <i>philosopher</i> sound physical science throve, +as she had never thriven before; that in zoology and botany, chemistry +and medicine, geology and astronomy, man after man, both of the middle +and the noble classes, laid down on more and more sound, because more +and more extended foundations, that physical science which will endure +as an everlasting heritage to mankind; endure, even though a second +Byzantine period should reduce it to a timid and traditional pedantry, +or a second irruption of barbarians sweep it away for awhile, to revive +again (as classic philosophy revived in the fifteenth century) among +new and more energetic races; when the kingdom of God shall have been +taken away from us, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits +thereof.</p> +<p>An eternal heritage, I say, for the human race; which once gained, +can never be lost; which stands, and will stand; marches, and will march, +proving its growth, its health, its progressive force, its certainty +of final victory, by those very changes, disputes, mistakes, which the +ignorant and the bigoted hold up to scorn, as proofs of its uncertainty +and its rottenness; because they never have dared or cared to ask boldly—What +are the facts of the case?—and have never discovered either the +acuteness, the patience, the calm justice, necessary for ascertaining +the facts, or their awful and divine certainty when once ascertained.</p> +<p>[But these philosophers (it will be said) hated all religion.</p> +<p>Before that question can be fairly discussed, it is surely right +to consider what form of religion that was which they found working +round them in France, and on the greater part of the Continent. +The quality thereof may have surely had something to do (as they themselves +asserted) with that “sort of rage” with which (to use M. +de Tocqueville’s words) “the Christian religion was attacked +in France.”</p> +<p>M. de Tocqueville is of opinion (and his opinion is likely to be +just) that “the Church was not more open to attack in France than +elsewhere; that the corruptions and abuses which had been allowed to +creep into it were less, on the contrary, there than in most Catholic +countries. The Church of France was infinitely more tolerant than +it ever had been previously, and than it still was among other nations. +Consequently, the peculiar causes of this phenomenon” (the hatred +which it aroused) “must be looked for less in the condition of +religion than in that of society.”</p> +<p>“We no longer,” he says, shortly after, “ask in +what the Church of that day erred as a religious institution, but how +far it stood opposed to the political revolution which was at hand.” +And he goes on to show how the principles of her ecclesiastical government, +and her political position, were such that the <i>philosophes</i> must +needs have been her enemies. But he mentions another fact which +seems to me to belong neither to the category of religion nor to that +of politics; a fact which, if he had done us the honour to enlarge upon +it, might have led him and his readers to a more true understanding +of the disrepute into which Christianity had fallen in France.</p> +<p>“The ecclesiastical authority had been specially employed in +keeping watch over the progress of thought; and the censorship of books +was a daily annoyance to the <i>philosophes</i>. By defending +the common liberties of the human mind against the Church, they were +combating in their own cause: and they began by breaking the shackles +which pressed most closely on themselves.”</p> +<p>Just so. And they are not to be blamed if they pressed first +and most earnestly reforms which they knew by painful experience to +be necessary. All reformers are wont thus to begin at home. +It is to their honour if, not content with shaking off their own fetters, +they begin to see that others are fettered likewise; and, reasoning +from the particular to the universal, to learn that their own cause +is the cause of mankind.</p> +<p>There is, therefore, no reason to doubt that these men were honest, +when they said that they were combating, not in their own cause merely, +but in that of humanity; and that the Church was combating in her own +cause, and that of her power and privilege. The Church replied +that she, too, was combating for humanity; for its moral and eternal +well-being. But that is just what the <i>philosophes</i> denied. +They said (and it is but fair to take a statement which appears on the +face of all their writings; which is the one key-note on which they +ring perpetual changes), that the cause of the Church in France was +not that of humanity, but of inhumanity; not that of nature, but of +unnature; not even that of grace, but of disgrace. Truely or falsely, +they complained that the French clergy had not only identified themselves +with the repression of free thought, and of physical science, especially +that of the Newtonian astronomy, but that they had proved themselves +utterly unfit, for centuries past, to exercise any censorship whatsoever +over the thoughts of men: that they had identified themselves with the +cause of darkness, not of light; with persecution and torture, with +the dragonnades of Louis XIV., with the murder of Calas and of Urban +Grandier; with celibacy, hysteria, demonology, witchcraft, and the shameful +public scandals, like those of Gauffredi, Grandier, and Père +Giraud, which had arisen out of mental disease; with forms of worship +which seemed to them (rightly or wrongly) idolatry, and miracles which +seemed to them (rightly or wrongly) impostures; that the clergy interfered +perpetually with the sanctity of family life, as well as with the welfare +of the state; that their evil counsels, and specially those of the Jesuits, +had been patent and potent causes of much of the misrule and misery +of Louis XIV.’s and XV.’s reigns; and that with all these +heavy counts against them, their morality was not such as to make other +men more moral; and was not—at least among the hierarchy—improving, +or likely to improve. To a Mazarin, a De Retz, a Richelieu (questionable +men enough) had succeeded a Dubois, a Rohan, a Lomenie de Brienne, a +Maury, a Talleyrand; and at the revolution of 1789 thoughtful Frenchmen +asked, once and for all, what was to be done with a Church of which +these were the hierophants?</p> +<p>Whether these complaints affected the French Church as a “religious” +institution, must depend entirely on the meaning which is attached to +the word “religion”: that they affected her on scientific, +rational, and moral grounds, independent of any merely political one, +is as patent as that the attack based on them was one-sided, virulent, +and often somewhat hypocritical, considering the private morals of many +of the assailants. We know—or ought to know—that within +that religion which seemed to the <i>philosophes</i> (so distorted and +defaced had it become) a nightmare dream, crushing the life out of mankind, +there lie elements divine, eternal; necessary for man in this life and +the life to come. But we are bound to ask—Had they a fair +chance of knowing what we know? Have we proof that their hatred +was against all religion, or only against that which they saw around +them? Have we proof that they would have equally hated, had they +been in permanent contact with them, creeds more free from certain faults +which seemed to them, in the case of the French Church, ineradicable +and inexpiable? Till then we must have charity—which is +justice—even for the <i>philosophes</i> of the eighteenth century.</p> +<p>This view of the case had been surely overlooked by M. de Tocqueville, +when he tried to explain by the fear of revolutions, the fact that both +in America and in England, “while the boldest political doctrines +of the eighteenth-century philosophers have been adopted, their anti-religious +doctrines have made no way.”</p> +<p>He confesses that, “Among the English, French irreligious philosophy +had been preached, even before the greater part of the French philosophers +were born. It was Bolingbroke who set up Voltaire. Throughout +the eighteenth century infidelity had celebrated champions in England. +Able writers and profound thinkers espoused that cause, but they were +never able to render it triumphant as in France.” Of these +facts there can be no doubt: but the cause which he gives for the failure +of infidelity will surely sound new and strange to those who know the +English literature and history of that century. It was, he says, +“inasmuch as all those who had anything to fear from revolutions, +eagerly came to the rescue of the established faith.” Surely +there was no talk of revolutions; no wish, expressed or concealed, to +overthrow either government or society, in the aristocratic clique to +whom English infidelity was confined. Such was, at least, the +opinion of Voltaire, who boasted that “All the works of the modern +philosophers together would never make as much noise in the world as +was made in former days by the disputes of the Cordeliers about the +shape of their sleeves and hoods.” If (as M. de Tocqueville +says) Bolingbroke set up Voltaire, neither master nor pupil had any +more leaning than Hobbes had toward a democracy which was not dreaded +in those days because it had never been heard of. And if (as M. +de Tocqueville heartily allows) the English apologists of Christianity +triumphed, at least for the time being, the cause of their triumph must +be sought in the plain fact that such men as Berkeley, Butler, and Paley, +each according to his light, fought the battle fairly, on the common +ground of reason and philosophy, instead of on that of tradition and +authority; and that the forms of Christianity current in England—whether +Quaker, Puritan, or Anglican—offended, less than that current +in France, the common-sense and the human instincts of the many, or +of the sceptics themselves.]</p> +<p>But the eighteenth century saw another movement, all the more powerful, +perhaps, because it was continually changing its shape, even its purpose; +and gaining fresh life and fresh adherents with every change. +Propagated at first by men of the school of Locke, it became at last +a protest against the materialism of that school, on behalf of all that +is, or calls itself, supernatural and mysterious. Abjuring, and +honestly, all politics, it found itself sucked into the political whirlpool +in spite of itself, as all human interests which have any life in them +must be at last. It became an active promoter of the Revolution; +then it helped to destroy the Revolution, when that had, under Napoleon, +become a levelling despotism; then it helped, as actively, to keep revolutionary +principles alive, after the reaction of 1815:—a Protean institution, +whose power we in England are as apt to undervalue as the governments +of the Continent were apt, during the eighteenth century, to exaggerate +it. I mean, of course, Freemasonry, and the secret societies which, +honestly and honourably disowned by Freemasonry, yet have either copied +it, or actually sprung out of it. In England, Freemasonry never +was, it seems, more than a liberal and respectable benefit-club; for +secret societies are needless for any further purposes, amid free institutions +and a free press. But on the Continent during the eighteenth century, +Freemasonry excited profound suspicion and fear on the part of statesmen +who knew perfectly well their friends from their foes; and whose precautions +were, from their point of view, justified by the results.</p> +<p>I shall not enter into the deep question of the origin of Freemasonry. +One uninitiate, as I am, has no right to give an opinion on the great +questions of the mediæval lodge of Kilwinning and its Scotch degrees; +on the seven Templars, who, after poor Jacques Molay was burnt at Paris, +took refuge on the Isle of Mull, in Scotland, found there another Templar +and brother Mason, ominously named Harris; took to the trowel in earnest, +and revived the Order;—on the Masons who built Magdeburg Cathedral +in 876; on the English Masons assembled in Pagan times by “St. +Albone, that worthy knight;” on the revival of English Masonry +by Edwin, son of Athelstan; on Magnus Grecus, who had been at the building +of Solomon’s Temple, and taught Masonry to Charles Martel; on +the pillars Jachin and Boaz; on the masonry of Hiram of Tyre, and indeed +of Adam himself, of whose first fig-leaf the masonic apron may be a +type—on all these matters I dare no more decide than on the making +of the Trojan Horse, the birth of Romulus and Remus, or the incarnation +of Vishnoo.</p> +<p>All I dare say is, that Freemasonry emerges in its present form into +history and fact, seemingly about the beginning of George I.’s +reign, among Englishmen and noblemen, notably in four lodges in the +city of London: (1) at The Goose and Gridiron alehouse in St. Paul’s +Churchyard; (2) at The Crown alehouse near Drury Lane; (3) at The Apple +Tree tavern near Covent Garden; (4) at The Rummer and Grapes tavern, +in Charnel Row, Westminster. That its principles were brotherly +love and good fellowship, which included in those days port, sherry, +claret, and punch; that it was founded on the ground of mere humanity, +in every sense of the word; being (as was to be expected from the temper +of the times) both aristocratic and liberal, admitting to its ranks +virtuous gentlemen “obliged,” says an old charge, “only +to that religion wherein all men agree, leaving their particular opinions +to themselves: that is, to be good men and true, or men of honour and +honesty, by whatever denominations or persuasions they may be distinguished; +whereby Masonry becomes the centre of union and means of conciliating +true friendship among persons that otherwise must have remained at a +distance.”</p> +<p>Little did the honest gentlemen who established or re-established +their society on these grounds, and fenced it with quaint ceremonies, +old or new, conceive the importance of their own act; we, looking at +it from a distance, may see all that such a society involved, which +was quite new to the world just then; and see, that it was the very +child of the Ancien Régime—of a time when men were growing +weary of the violent factions, political and spiritual, which had torn +Europe in pieces for more than a century, and longed to say: “After +all, we are all alike in one thing—for we are at least men.”</p> +<p>Its spread through England and Scotland, and the seceding bodies +which arose from it, as well as the supposed Jacobite tendency of certain +Scotch lodges, do not concern us here. The point interesting to +us just now is, that Freemasonry was imported to the Continent exclusively +by English and Scotch gentlemen and noblemen. Lord Derwentwater +is said by some to have founded the “Loge Anglaise” in Paris +in 1725; the Duke of Richmond one in his own castle of Aubigny shortly +after. It was through Hanoverian influence that the movement seems +to have spread into Germany. In 1733, for instance, the English +Grand Master, Lord Strathmore, permitted eleven German gentlemen and +good brethren to form a lodge in Hamburg. Into this English Society +was Frederick the Great, when Crown Prince, initiated, in spite of strict +old Frederick William’s objections, who had heard of it as an +English invention of irreligious tendency. Francis I. of Austria +was made a Freemason at the Hague, Lord Chesterfield being in the chair, +and then became a Master in London under the name of “Brother +Lothringen,” to the discontent of Maria Theresa, whose woman’s +wit saw farther than her husband. Englishmen and Scotchmen introduced +the new society into Russia and into Geneva. Sweden and Poland +seem to have received it from France; while, in the South, it seems +to have been exclusively an English plant. Sackville, Duke of +Middlesex, is said to have founded the first lodge at Florence in 1733, +Lord Coleraine at Gibraltar and Madrid, one Gordon in Portugal; and +everywhere, at the commencement of the movement, we find either London +or Scotland the mother-lodges, introducing on the Continent those liberal +and humane ideas of which England was then considered, to her glory, +as the only home left on earth.</p> +<p>But, alas! the seed sown grew up into strange shapes, according to +the soil in which it rooted. False doctrine, heresy, and schism, +according to Herr Findel, the learned and rational historian whom I +have chiefly followed, defiled the new Church from its infancy. +“In France,” so he bemoans himself, “first of all +there shot up that baneful seed of lies and frauds, of vanity and presumption, +of hatred and discord, the mischievous high degrees; the misstatement +that our order was allied to the Templars, and existed at the time of +the Crusades; the removal of old charges, the bringing in surreptitiously +of a multitude of symbols and forms which awoke the love of secrecy; +knighthood; and, in fact, all which tended to poison Freemasonry.” +Herr Findel seems to attribute these evils principally to the “high +degrees.” It would have been more simple to have attributed +them to the morals of the French noblesse in the days of Louis Quinze. +What could a corrupt tree bring forth, but corrupt fruit? If some +of the early lodges, like those of “La Félicité” +and “L’Ancre,” to which women were admitted, resembled +not a little the Bacchic mysteries of old Rome, and like them called +for the interference of the police, still no great reform was to be +expected, when those Sovereign Masonic Princes, the “Emperors +of the East and West,” quarrelled—knights of the East against +knights of the West—till they were absorbed or crushed by the +Lodge “Grand Orient,” with Philippe Egalité, Duc +de Chartres, as their grand master, and as his representative, the hero +of the diamond necklace, and disciple of Count Cagliostro—Louis, +Prince de Rohan.</p> +<p>But if Freemasonry, among the frivolous and sensual French noblesse, +became utterly frivolous and sensual itself, it took a deeper, though +a questionably fantastic form, among the more serious and earnest German +nobility. Forgetful as they too often were of their duty to their +peoples—tyrannical, extravagant, debauched by French opinions, +French fashions, French luxuries, till they had begun to despise their +native speech, their native literature, almost their native land, and +to hide their native homeliness under a clumsy varnish of French outside +civilisation, which the years 1807-13 rubbed off them again with a brush +of iron—they were yet Germans at heart; and that German instinct +for the unseen—call it enthusiasm, mysticism, what you will, you +cannot make it anything but a human fact, and a most powerful, and (as +I hold) most blessed fact—that instinct for the unseen, I say, +which gives peculiar value to German philosophy, poetry, art, religion, +and above all to German family life, and which is just the complement +needed to prevent our English common-sense, matter-of-fact Lockism from +degenerating into materialism—that was only lying hidden, but +not dead, in the German spirit.</p> +<p>With the Germans, therefore, Freemasonry assumed a nobler and more +earnest shape. Dropping, very soon, that Lockite and <i>Philosophe</i> +tone which had perhaps recommended it to Frederick the Great in his +youth, it became mediævalist and mystic. It craved after +a resuscitation of old chivalrous spirit, and the virtues of the knightly +ideal, and the old German <i>biederkeit und tapferkeit</i>, which were +all defiled and overlaid by French fopperies. And not in vain; +as no struggle after a noble aim, however confused or fantastic, is +ever in vain. Freemasonry was the direct parent of the Tugenbund, +and of those secret societies which freed Germany from Napoleon. +Whatever follies young members of them may have committed; whatever +Jahn and his Turnerei; whatever the iron youths, with their iron decorations +and iron boot-heels; whatever, in a word, may have been said or done +amiss, in that childishness which (as their own wisest writers often +lament) so often defaces the noble childlikeness of the German spirit, +let it be always remembered that under the impulse first given by Freemasonry, +as much as that given by such heroes as Stein and Scharnhorst, Germany +shook off the chains which had fallen on her in her sleep; and stood +once more at Leipsic, were it but for a moment, a free people alike +in body and in soul.</p> +<p>Remembering this, and the solid benefits which Germany owed to Masonic +influences, one shrinks from saying much of the extravagances in which +its Masonry indulged before the French Revolution. Yet they are +so characteristic of the age, so significant to the student of human +nature, that they must be hinted at, though not detailed.</p> +<p>It is clear that Masonry was at first a movement confined to the +aristocracy, or at least to the most educated classes; and clear, too, +that it fell in with a temper of mind unsatisfied with the dry dogmatism +into which the popular creeds had then been frozen—unsatisfied +with their own Frenchified foppery and pseudo-philosophy—unsatisfied +with want of all duty, purpose, noble thought, or noble work. +With such a temper of mind it fell in: but that very temper was open +(as it always is) to those dreams of a royal road to wisdom and to virtue, +which have haunted, in all ages, the luxurious and the idle.</p> +<p>Those who will, may read enough, and too much, of the wonderful secrets +in nature and science and theosophy, which men expected to find and +did not find in the higher degrees of Masonry, till old Voss—the +translator of Homer—had to confess, that after “trying for +eleven years to attain a perfect knowledge of the inmost penetralia, +where the secret is said to be, and of its invisible guardians,” +all he knew was that “the documents which he had to make known +to the initiated were nothing more than a well got-up farce.”</p> +<p>But the mania was general. The high-born and the virtuous expected +to discover some panacea for their own consciences in what Voss calls, +“A multitude of symbols, which are ever increasing the farther +you penetrate, and are made to have a moral application through some +arbitrary twisting of their meaning, as if I were to attempt expounding +the chaos on my writing-desk.”</p> +<p>A rich harvest-field was an aristocracy in such a humour, for quacks +of every kind; richer even than that of France, in that the Germans +were at once more honest and more earnest, and therefore to be robbed +more easily. The carcass was there: and the birds of prey were +gathered together.</p> +<p>Of Rosa, with his lodge of the Three Hammers, and his Potsdam gold-making;—of +Johnson, alias Leuchte, who passed himself off as a Grand Prior sent +from Scotland to resuscitate the order of Knights Templars; who informed +his disciples that the Grand Master Von Hund commanded 26,000 men; that +round the convent (what convent, does not appear) a high wall was erected, +which was guarded day and night; that the English navy was in the hands +of the Order; that they had MSS. written by Hugo de Paganis (a mythic +hero who often figures in these fables); that their treasure was in +only three places in the world, in Ballenstadt, in the icy mountains +of Savoy, and in China; that whosoever drew on himself the displeasure +of the Order, perished both body and soul; who degraded his rival Rosa +to the sound of military music, and after having had, like every dog, +his day, died in prison in the Wartburg;—of the Rosicrucians, +who were accused of wanting to support and advance the Catholic religion—one +would think the accusation was very unnecessary, seeing that their actual +dealings were with the philosopher’s stone, and the exorcism of +spirits: and that the first apostle of the new golden Rosicrucian order, +one Schröpfer, getting into debt, and fearing exposure, finished +his life in an altogether un-catholic manner at Leipsic in 1774, by +shooting himself;—of Keller and his Urim and Thummim;—of +Wöllner (who caught the Crown Prince Frederick William) with his +three names of Chrysophiron, Heliconus, and Ophiron, and his fourth +name of Ormesus Magnus, under which all the brethren were to offer up +for him solemn prayers and intercessions;—of Baron Heinrich von +Ekker and Eckenhofen, gentleman of the bed-chamber and counsellor of +the Duke of Coburg Saalfeld, and his Jewish colleague Hirschmann, with +their Asiatic brethren and order named Ben Bicca, Cabalistic and Talmudic; +of the Illuminati, and poor Adam Weisshaupt, Professor of Canon and +National Law at Ingoldstadt in Bavaria, who set up what he considered +an Anti-Jesuitical order on a Jesuit model, with some vague hope, according +to his own showing, of “perfecting the reasoning powers interesting +to mankind, spreading the knowledge of sentiments both humane and social, +checking wicked inclinations, standing up for oppressed and suffering +virtue against all wrong, promoting the advancement of men of merit, +and in every way facilitating the acquirement of knowledge and science;”—of +this honest silly man, and his attempts to carry out all his fine projects +by calling himself Spartacus, Bavaria Achaia, Austria Egypt, Vienna +Rome, and so forth;—of Knigge, who picked his honest brains, quarrelled +with him, and then made money and fame out of his plans, for as long +as they lasted;—of Bode, the knight of the lilies of the valley, +who, having caught Duke Ernest of Saxe Gotha, was himself caught by +Knigge, and his eight, nine, or more ascending orders of unwisdom;—and +finally of the Jesuits who, really with considerable excuses for their +severity, fell upon these poor foolish Illuminati in 1784 throughout +Bavaria, and had them exiled or imprisoned;—of all this you may +read in the pages of Dr. Findel, and in many another book. For, +forgotten as they are now, they made noise enough in their time.</p> +<p>And so it befell, that this eighteenth century, which is usually +held to be the most “materialistic” of epochs, was, in fact, +a most “spiritualistic” one; in which ghosts, demons, quacks, +philosophers’ stones, enchanters’ wands, mysteries and mummeries, +were as fashionable—as they will probably be again some day.</p> +<p>You have all heard of Cagliostro—“pupil of the sage Althotas, +foster-child of the Scheriff of Mecca, probable son of the last king +of Trebizond; named also Acharat, and ‘Unfortunate child of Nature;’ +by profession healer of diseases, abolisher of wrinkles, friend of the +poor and impotent; grand-master of the Egyptian Mason-lodge of High +Science, spirit-summoner, gold-cook, Grand-Cophta, prophet, priest, +Thaumaturgic moralist, and swindler”—born Giuseppe Balsamo +of Palermo;—of him, and of his lovely Countess Seraphina—née +Lorenza Feliciani? You have read what Goethe—and still more +important, what Mr. Carlyle has written on him, as on one of the most +significant personages of the age? Remember, then, that Cagliostro +was no isolated phenomenon; that his success—nay, his having even +conceived the possibility of success in the brain that lay within that +“brass-faced, bull-necked, thick-lipped” head—was +made possible by public opinion. Had Cagliostro lived in our time, +public opinion would have pointed out to him other roads to honour—on +which he would doubtless have fared as well. For when the silly +dace try to be caught and hope to be caught, he is a foolish pike who +cannot gorge them. But the method most easy for a pike-nature +like Cagliostro’s, was in the eighteenth century, as it may be +in the latter half of the nineteenth, to trade, in a materialist age, +on the unsatisfied spiritual cravings of mankind. For what do +all these phantasms betoken, but a generation ashamed of its own materialism, +sensuality, insincerity, ignorance, and striving to escape therefrom +by any and every mad superstition which seemed likely to give an answer +to the awful questions—What are we, and where? and to lay to rest +those instincts of the unseen and infinite around it, which tormented +it like ghosts by day and night: a sight ludicrous or pathetic, according +as it is looked on by a cynical or a human spirit.</p> +<p>It is easy to call such a phenomenon absurd, improbable. It +is rather rational, probable, say certain to happen. Rational, +I say; for the reason of man tells him, and has always told him, that +he is a supernatural being, if by nature is meant that which is cognisable +by his five senses: that his coming into this world, his relation to +it, his exit from it—which are the three most important facts +about him—are supernatural, not to be explained by any deductions +from the impressions of his senses. And I make bold to say, that +the recent discoveries of physical science—notably those of embryology—go +only to justify that old and general belief of man. If man be +told that the microscope and scalpel show no difference, in the first +stage of visible existence, between him and the lower mammals, then +he has a right to answer—as he will answer—So much the worse +for the microscope and scalpel: so much the better for my old belief, +that there is beneath my birth, life, death, a substratum of supernatural +causes, imponderable, invisible, unknowable by any physical science +whatsoever. If you cannot render me a reason how I came hither, +and what I am, I must go to those who will render me one. And +if that craving be not satisfied by a rational theory of life, it will +demand satisfaction from some magical theory; as did the mind of the +eighteenth century when, revolting from materialism, it fled to magic, +to explain the ever-astounding miracle of life.</p> +<p>The old Régime. Will our age, in its turn, ever be spoken +of as an old Régime? Will it ever be spoken of as a Régime +at all; as an organised, orderly system of society and polity; and not +merely as a chaos, an anarchy, a transitory struggle, of which the money-lender +has been the real guide and lord?</p> +<p>But at least it will be spoken of as an age of progress, of rapid +developments, of astonishing discoveries.</p> +<p>Are you so sure of that? There was an age of progress once. +But what is our age—what is all which has befallen since 1815—save +after-swells of that great storm, which are weakening and lulling into +heavy calm? Are we on the eve of stagnation? Of a long check +to the human intellect? Of a new Byzantine era, in which little +men will discuss, and ape, the deeds which great men did in their forefathers’ +days?</p> +<p>What progress—it is a question which some will receive with +almost angry surprise—what progress has the human mind made since +1815?</p> +<p>If the thought be startling, do me the great honour of taking it +home, and verifying for yourselves its truth or its falsehood. +I do not say that it is altogether true. No proposition concerning +human things, stated so broadly, can be. But see for yourselves, +whether it is not at least more true than false; whether the ideas, +the discoveries, of which we boast most in the nineteenth century, are +not really due to the end of the eighteenth. Whether other men +did not labour, and we have only entered into their labours. Whether +our positivist spirit, our content with the collecting of facts, our +dread of vast theories, is not a symptom—wholesome, prudent, modest, +but still a symptom—of our consciousness that we are not as our +grandfathers were; that we can no longer conceive great ideas, which +illumine, for good or evil, the whole mind and heart of man, and drive +him on to dare and suffer desperately.</p> +<p>Railroads? Electric telegraphs? All honour to them in +their place: but they are not progress; they are only the fruits of +past progress. No outward and material thing is progress; no machinery +causes progress; it merely spreads and makes popular the results of +progress. Progress is inward, of the soul. And, therefore, +improved constitutions, and improved book instruction—now miscalled +education—are not progress: they are at best only fruits and signs +thereof. For they are outward, material; and progress, I say, +is inward. The self-help and self-determination of the independent +soul—that is the root of progress; and the more human beings who +have that, the more progress there is in the world. Give me a +man who, though he can neither read nor write, yet dares think for himself, +and do the thing he believes: that man will help forward the human race +more than any thousand men who have read, or written either, a thousand +books apiece, but have not dared to think for themselves. And +better for his race, and better, I believe, in the sight of God, the +confusions and mistakes of that one sincere brave man, than the second-hand +and cowardly correctness of all the thousand.</p> +<p>As for the “triumphs of science,” let us honour, with +astonishment and awe, the genius of those who invented them; but let +us remember that the things themselves are as a gun or a sword, with +which we can kill our enemy, but with which also our enemy can kill +us. Like all outward and material things, they are equally fit +for good and for evil. In England here—they have been as +yet, as far as I can see, nothing but blessings: but I have my very +serious doubts whether they are likely to be blessings to the whole +human race, for many an age to come. I can conceive them—may +God avert the omen!—the instruments of a more crushing executive +centralisation, of a more utter oppression of the bodies and souls of +men, than the world has yet seen. I can conceive—may God +avert the omen!—centuries hence, some future world-ruler sitting +at the junction of all railroads, at the centre of all telegraph-wires—a +world-spider in the omphalos of his world-wide web; and smiting from +thence everything that dared to lift its head, or utter a cry of pain, +with a swiftness and surety to which the craft of a Justinian or a Philip +II. were but clumsy and impotent.</p> +<p>All, all outward things, be sure of it, are good or evil, exactly +as far as they are in the hands of good men or of bad.</p> +<p>Moreover, paradoxical as it may seem, railroads and telegraphs, instead +of inaugurating an era of progress, may possibly only retard it. +“Rester sur un grand succès,” which was Rossini’s +advice to a young singer who had achieved a triumph, is a maxim which +the world often follows, not only from prudence, but from necessity. +They have done so much that it seems neither prudent nor possible to +do more. They will rest and be thankful.</p> +<p>Thus, gunpowder and printing made rapid changes enough; but those +changes had no farther development. The new art of war, the new +art of literature, remained stationary, or rather receded and degenerated, +till the end of the eighteenth century.</p> +<p>And so it may be with our means of locomotion and intercommunion, +and what depends on them. The vast and unprecedented amount of +capital, of social interest, of actual human intellect invested—I +may say locked up—in these railroads, and telegraphs, and other +triumphs of industry and science, will not enter into competition against +themselves. They will not set themselves free to seek new discoveries +in directions which are often actually opposed to their own, always +foreign to it. If the money of thousands are locked up in these +great works, the brains of hundreds of thousands, and of the very shrewdest +too, are equally locked up therein likewise; and are to be subtracted +from the gross material of social development, and added (without personal +fault of their owners, who may be very good men) to the dead weight +of vested selfishness, ignorance, and dislike of change.</p> +<p>Yes. A Byzantine and stationary age is possible yet. +Perhaps we are now entering upon it; an age in which mankind shall be +satisfied with the “triumphs of science,” and shall look +merely to the greatest comfort (call it not happiness) of the greatest +number; and like the debased Jews of old, “having found the life +of their hand, be therewith content,” no matter in what mud-hole +of slavery and superstition.</p> +<p>But one hope there is, and more than a hope—one certainty, +that however satisfied enlightened public opinion may become with the +results of science, and the progress of the human race, there will be +always a more enlightened private opinion or opinions, which will not +be satisfied therewith at all; a few men of genius, a few children of +light, it may be a few persecuted, and a few martyrs for new truths, +who will wish the world not to rest and be thankful, but to be discontented +with itself, ashamed of itself, striving and toiling upward, without +present hope of gain, till it has reached that unknown goal which Bacon +saw afar off, and like all other heroes, died in faith, not having received +the promises, but seeking still a polity which has foundations, whose +builder and maker is God.</p> +<p>These will be the men of science, whether physical or spiritual. +Not merely the men who utilise and apply that which is known (useful +as they plainly are), but the men who themselves discover that which +was unknown, and are generally deemed useless, if not hurtful, to their +race. They will keep the sacred lamp burning unobserved in quiet +studies, while all the world is gazing only at the gaslights flaring +in the street. They will pass that lamp on from hand to hand, +modestly, almost stealthily, till the day comes round again, when the +obscure student shall be discovered once more to be, as he has always +been, the strongest man on earth. For they follow a mistress whose +footsteps may often slip, yet never fall; for she walks forward on the +eternal facts of Nature, which are the acted will of God. A giantess +she is; young indeed, but humble as yet: cautious and modest beyond +her years. She is accused of trying to scale Olympus, by some +who fancy that they have already scaled it themselves, and will, of +course, brook no rival in their fancied monopoly of wisdom.</p> +<p>The accusation, I believe, is unjust. And yet science may scale +Olympus after all. Without intending it, almost without knowing +it, she may find herself hereafter upon a summit of which she never +dreamed; surveying the universe of God in the light of Him who made +it and her, and remakes them both for ever and ever. On that summit +she may stand hereafter, if only she goes on, as she goes now, in humility +and in patience; doing the duty which lies nearest her; lured along +the upward road, not by ambition, vanity, or greed, but by reverent +curiosity for every new pebble, and flower, and child, and savage, around +her feet.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> Mr. H. +Reeve’s translation of De Tocqueville’s “France before +the Revolution of 1789.” p. 280.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIEN REGIME***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1335-h.htm or 1335-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/3/1335 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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