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diff --git a/1335.txt b/1335.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b3f40d --- /dev/null +++ b/1335.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3059 @@ +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*** + + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1902 "Historical Lectures and Essays" Macmillan and +Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +THE ANCIEN REGIME +by Charles Kingsley + + +PREFACE + + +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 Regime in France. The passages inserted +between brackets, which bear on religious matters, were accordingly not +spoken at the Royal Institution. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 pound 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. + +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 + + "The bailiff's daughter dear + That dwelt at Islington," + +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. + +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. + +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." . . . + +"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." . . . + +"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." . . . + +"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." + +Just so; and therefore the middle classes of Britain, of whatever their +special political party, are conservative in the best sense of that word. + +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. + +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 Regime as is everything else English; and different +in this--that it is free. + +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. + +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. + +1867 + + + + +LECTURE I--CASTE + + +[Delivered at the Royal Institution, London, 1867.] + +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 Regime in England. + +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. + +On the contrary, England was the mother of every movement which +undermined, and at last destroyed, the Ancien Regime. + +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. + +So it was with that Inductive Physical Science, which helped more than +all to break up the superstitions of the Ancien Regime, 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. + +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. + +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 Regime, 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. + +It will be seen, from what I have said, that I consider the Ancien Regime +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. + +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 Regime. 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. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +But the old Ancien Regime 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." + +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 primaeval 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 primaeval 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. + +Whether this ought to have been the history of primaeval 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_gleboe adscripti_, 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. + +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. + +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 [Greek +text] of Athens and the Equites of Rome had been only hints ending in +failure and absorption. + +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. + +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: + + A very gentle perfect knight. + +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. + +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 mediaeval +Nobility has been as much slandered as the mediaeval 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 Regime 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_hobereaux_, 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? + +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. + +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. + +Understand me--I am not speaking against the hereditary principle of the +Ancien Regime, but against its caste principle--two widely different +elements, continually confounded nowadays. + +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. + +Profligacy, pride, idleness--these are the vices which we have to lay to +the charge of the Teutonic Nobility of the Ancien Regime 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. + +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. + +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? + +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." + +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." + +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: {1} "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." + +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. + +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." + +And so may be inaugurated a period of that organised anarchy of which the +poet says: + + It is not life, but death, when nothing stirs. + + + + +LECTURE II--CENTRALISATION + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 Regime made her. + +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. + +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 +Regime which preceded it; and that Robespierre and his "Comite 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. + +"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." + +To do everything for the people, and let them do nothing for +themselves--this was the Ancien Regime. 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 + + The reason firm, the temperate will, + Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; + The perfect spirit, nobly planned + To cheer, to counsel, and command. + +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 +Regime--in as far as it was a Regime 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 _Gazette +de France_. So the public newsmongers were of course to be the +provincial intendants, and their sub-newsmongers, of course, the +sub-delegates. + +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. + +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: + +"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." + +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? + +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. + +The term, I believe, was invented during the Ancien Regime. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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 Regime 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 _menu peuple_ 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 Regime was freedom itself. + +For, in France at least, the Ancien Regime 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." + +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. + +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. + +Such was the political and social state of the Ancien Regime, 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. + +And as for its moral state. We must look for that--if we have need, +which happily all have not--in its lighter literature. + +I shall not trouble you with criticisms on French memoirs--of which those +of Madame de Sevigne 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 Regime. 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 _grande +epopee_; "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! + +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 Regime 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 Regime 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. + +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. + +About the same time there appeared, by a remarkable coincidence, another +work, like it the child of the Ancien Regime, and yet as opposite to it +as light to darkness. If Le Sage drew men as they were, Fenelon 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. +"Telemaque" 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 Fenelon, does not hesitate to +trace to the influence of "Telemaque," 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 "carriere 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." + +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. + +No wonder that the appearance of "Telemaque," published in Holland +without the permission of Fenelon, delighted throughout Europe that +public which is always delighted with new truths, as long as it is not +required to practise them. To read "Telemaque" 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, lecon 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 "Telemaque" as an Utopia with which private folks had no +concern; and betook themselves to the easier and more practical model of +"Gil Blas." + +But there are solid defects in "Telemaque"--indicating corresponding +defects in the author's mind--which would have, in any case, prevented +its doing the good work which Fenelon 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 Fenelon 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 "Telemaque" was relegated--half unjustly--as the slavish and +childish dream of a past age, into the schoolroom, where it still +remains. + +But there is a defect in "Telemaque" 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 Tannenhauser +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 Fenelon'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 "Telemaque," +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. + +Such a conception of women must make "Telemaque," 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 Regime, the most important. And it was just that +which Fenelon 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. + +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. + +But that purifying fire was needed. If we inquire why the many attempts +to reform the Ancien Regime, 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. + +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 Regime; 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. + +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. + +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 +_artistes_--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. + +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 Comite 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 Carriere at Nantes, and see +what grace and gifts he too might obtain at that altar? + +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. + +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. + +If you will read fairly the literature of the Ancien Regime, 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. + +An age of decay, incoherence, and makeshift, varnish and gilding upon +worm-eaten furniture, and mouldering wainscot, was that same Ancien +Regime. 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. + +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 Regime, which was, if nothing else, picturesque. Men could paint +amusing and often pretty pictures of its people and its places. + +Consider that word, "picturesque." It, and the notion of art which it +expresses, are the children of the Ancien Regime--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. + +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 Miseres 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. + +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 primaeval 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 +Sevres 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." + + + + +LECTURE III--THE EXPLOSIVE FORCES + + +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 Regime produced the new Regime--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 +Regime. 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. + +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 Regime 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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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 "carriere 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. + +Of these original spirits who helped to bring life out of death, and the +modern world out of the decay of the mediaeval world, the French +_philosophes_ and encyclopaedists 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. + +And first, a few words on these same _philosophes_. 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 _menu peuple_ 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." + +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. + +And so with the rest of the _philosophes_. 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. + +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 Regime, which was, "Let us eat +and drink, for to-morrow we die." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +And thus it happened that, though these philosophers and encyclopaedists +were not men of science, they were at least the heralds and the +coadjutors of science. + +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. + +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 AEneid as the ugliest, the falsest, and +the cruellest of monsters. + +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? + +It was no coincidence, but a connection of cause and effect, that during +the century of _philosopher_ 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. + +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. + +[But these philosophers (it will be said) hated all religion. + +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." + +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." + +"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 _philosophes_ 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. + +"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 _philosophes_. 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." + +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. + +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 _philosophes_ 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 Pere 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? + +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 +_philosophes_ (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 _philosophes_ of the eighteenth century. + +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." + +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.] + +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. + +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 mediaeval 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. + +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." + +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 +Regime--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." + +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. + +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 Felicite" +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 +Egalite, 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. + +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. + +With the Germans, therefore, Freemasonry assumed a nobler and more +earnest shape. Dropping, very soon, that Lockite and _Philosophe_ tone +which had perhaps recommended it to Frederick the Great in his youth, it +became mediaevalist and mystic. It craved after a resuscitation of old +chivalrous spirit, and the virtues of the knightly ideal, and the old +German _biederkeit und tapferkeit_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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." + +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. + +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 Schropfer, 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 Wollner (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. + +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. + +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--nee 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. + +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. + +The old Regime. Will our age, in its turn, ever be spoken of as an old +Regime? Will it ever be spoken of as a Regime 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? + +But at least it will be spoken of as an age of progress, of rapid +developments, of astonishing discoveries. + +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? + +What progress--it is a question which some will receive with almost angry +surprise--what progress has the human mind made since 1815? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 succes," 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +FOOTNOTES + + +{1} Mr. H. Reeve's translation of De Tocqueville's "France before the +Revolution of 1789." p. 280. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANCIEN REGIME*** + + +******* This file should be named 1335.txt or 1335.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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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