I.

Its Barrenness and Artificiality.--Return to Nature and sentiment.

Mere pleasure, in the long run, ceases to gratify, and however agreeable this drawing room life may be, it ends in a certain hollowness. Something is lacking without any one being able to say precisely what that something is; the soul becomes restless, and slowly, aided by authors and artists, it sets about investigating the cause of its uneasiness and the object of its secret longings. Barrenness and artificiality are the two traits of this society, the more marked because it is more complete, and, in this one, pushed to extreme, because it has attained to supreme refinement. In the first place naturalness is excluded from it; everything is arranged and adjusted,--decoration, dress, attitude, tone of voice, words, ideas and even sentiments. "A genuine sentiment is so rare," said M. de V--, "that, when I leave Versailles, I sometimes stand still in the street to see a dog gnaw a bone."[2301] Man, in abandoning himself wholly to society, had withheld no portion of his personality for himself while decorum, clinging to him like so much ivy, had abstracted from him the substance of his being and subverted every principle of activity.

"There was then," says one who was educated in this style,[2302] "a certain way of walking, of sitting down, of saluting, of picking up a glove, of holding a fork, of tendering any article, in short, a complete set of gestures and facial expressions, which children had to be taught at a very early age in order that habit might become a second nature, and this conventionality formed so important an item in the life of men and women in aristocratic circles that the actors of the present day, with all their study, are scarcely able to give us an idea of it."

Not only was the outward factitious but, again, the inward; there was a certain prescribed mode of feeling and of thinking, of living and of dying. It was impossible to address a man without placing oneself at his orders, or a woman without casting oneself at her feet, Fashion, 'le bon ton,' regulated every important or petty proceeding, the manner of making a declaration to a woman and of breaking an engagement, of entering upon and managing a duel, of treating an equal, an inferior and a superior. If any one failed in the slightest degree to conform to this code of universal custom, he is called "a specimen." A man of heart or of talent, D'Argenson, for example, bore a surname of "simpleton," because his originality transcended the conventional standard. "That has no name, there is nothing like it!" embodies the strongest censure. In conduct as in literature, whatever departs from a certain type is rejected. The quantity of authorized actions is as great as the number of authorized words. The same super-refined taste impoverishes the initiatory act as well as the initiatory expression, people acting as they write, according to acquired formulas and within a circumscribed circle. Under no consideration can the eccentric, the unforeseen, the spontaneous, vivid inspiration be accepted. Among twenty instances I select the least striking since it merely relates to a simple gesture, and is a measure of other things. Mademoiselle de--obtains, through family influence, a pension for Marcel, a famous dancing-master, and runs off, delighted, to his domicile to convey him the patent. Marcel receives it and at once flings it on the floor: "Mademoiselle, did I teach you to offer an object in that manner? Pick up that paper and hand it to me as you ought to." She picks up the patent and presents it to him with all suitable grace. "That's very well, Mademoiselle, I accept it, although your elbow was not quite sufficiently rounded, and I thank you."[2303] So many graces end in becoming tiresome; after having eaten rich food for years, a little milk and dry bread becomes welcome.

Among all these social flavorings one is especially abused; one which, unremittingly employed, communicates to all dishes its frigid and piquant relish, I mean insincerity (badinage). Society does not tolerate passion, and in this it exercises its right. One does not enter company to be either vehement or somber; a strained air or one of concentration would appear inconsistent. The mistress of a house is always right in reminding a man that his emotional constraint brings on silence. "Monsieur Such-a-one, you are not amiable to day." To be always amiable is, accordingly, an obligation, and, through this training, a sensibility that is diffused through innumerable little channels never produces a broad current. "One has a hundred friends, and out of these hundred friends two or three may have some chagrin every day; but one could not award them sympathy for any length of time as, in that event, one would be wanting in consideration for the remaining ninety-seven;"[2304] one might sigh for an instant with some one of the ninety-seven, and that would be all. Madame du Deffant, having lost her oldest friend, the President Hénault, that very day goes to sup in a large assemblage: "Alas," she exclaimed, "he died at six o'clock this evening; otherwise you would not see me here." Under this constant régime of distractions and diversions there are no longer any profound sentiments; we have nothing but an epidermic exterior; love itself is reduced to "the exchange of two fantasies."--And, as one always falls on the side to which one inclines, levity becomes deliberate and a matter of elegance.[2305] Indifference of the heart is in fashion; one would be ashamed to show any genuine emotion. One takes pride in playing with love, in treating woman as a mechanical puppet, in touching one inward spring, and then another, to force out, at will, her anger or her pity. Whatever she may do, there is no deviation from the most insulting politeness; the very exaggeration of false respect which is lavished on her is a mockery by which indifference for her is fully manifested.--But they go still further, and in souls naturally unfeeling, gallantry turns into wickedness. Through ennui and the demand for excitement, through vanity, and as a proof of dexterity, delight is found in tormenting, in exciting tears, in dishonoring and in killing women by slow torture. At last, as vanity is a bottomless pit, there is no species of blackness of which these polished executioners are not capable; the personages of Laclos are derived from these originals.[2306]--Monsters of this kind are, undoubtedly, rare; but there is no need of reverting to them to ascertain how much egotism is harbored in the gallantry of society. The women who erected it into an obligation are the first to realize its deceptiveness, and, amidst so much homage without heat, to pine for the communicative warmth of a powerful sentiment.--The character of the century obtains its last trait and "the man of feeling comes on the stage.

II. Return To Nature And Sentiment.

Final trait of the century, an increased sensitivity in the best circles.--Date of its advent.--Its symptoms in art and in literature.--Its dominion in private.--Its affectations.-- Its sincerity.--Its delicacy.

It is not that the groundwork of habits becomes different, for these remain equally worldly and dissipated up the last. But fashion authorizes a new affectation, consisting of effusions, reveries, and sensibilities as yet unknown. The point is to return to nature, to admire the country, to delight in the simplicity of rustic manners, to be interested in village people, to be human, to have a heart, to find pleasure in the sweetness and tenderness of natural affections, to be a husband and a father, and still more, to possess a soul, virtues, and religious emotions, to believe in Providence and immortality, to be capable of enthusiasm. One wants to be all this, or at least show an inclination that way. In any event, if the desire does exist it is one the implied condition, that one shall not be too much disturbed in his ordinary pursuits, and that the sensations belonging to the new order of life shall in no respect interfere with the enjoyments of the old one. Accordingly the exaltation which arises is little more than cerebral fermentation, and the idyll is to be almost entirely performed in the drawing-rooms. Behold, then, literature, the drama, painting and all the arts pursuing the same sentimental road to supply heated imaginations with factitious nourishment.[2307] Rousseau, in labored periods, preaches the charms of an uncivilized existence, while other masters, between two madrigals, fancy the delight of sleeping naked in the primeval forest. The lovers in "La Nouvelle Héloise" interchange passages of fine style through four volumes, whereupon a person "not merely methodical but prudent," the Comtesse de Blot, exclaims, at a social gathering at the Duchesse de Chartres', "a woman truly sensitive, unless of extraordinary virtue, could refuse nothing to the passion of Rousseau."[2308] People collect in a dense crowd in the Exhibition around "L'Accordée de Village," "La Cruche Cassée," and the "Retour de nourrice," with other rural and domestic idylls by Greuze; the voluptuous element, the tempting undercurrent of sensuality made perceptible in the fragile simplicity of his artless maidens, is a dainty bit for the libertine tastes which are kept alive beneath moral aspirations.[2309] After these, Ducis, Thomas, Parny, Colardeau, Boucher, Delille, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Marmontel, Florian, the mass of orators, authors and politicians, the misanthrope Champfort, the logician La Harpe, the minister Necker, the versifiers and the imitators of Gessner and Young, the Berquins, the Bitaubés, nicely combed and bedizened, holding embroidered handkerchiefs to wipe away tears, are to marshal forth the universal eclogue down to the acme of the Revolution. Marmontel's "Moral Tales" appear in the columns of the "Mercure" for 1791 and 1792,[2310] while the number following the massacres of September opens with verses "to the manes of my canary-bird."

Consequently, in all the details of private life, sensibility displays its magniloquence. A small temple to Friendship is erected in a park. A little altar to Benevolence is set up in a private closet. Dresses à la Jean-Jacques-Rousseau are worn "analogous to the principles of that author." Head-dresses are selected with "puffs au sentiment" in which one may place the portrait of one's daughter, mother, canary or dog, the whole "garnished with the hair of one's father or intimate friend."[2311] People keep intimate friends for whom "they experience something so warm and so tender that it nearly amounts to a passion" and whom they cannot go three hours a day without seeing. "Every time female companions interchange tender ideas the voice suddenly changes into a pure and languishing tone, each fondly regarding the other with approaching heads and frequently embracing," and suppressing a yawn a quarter of an hour after, with a nap in concert, because they have no more to say. Enthusiasm becomes an obligation. On the revival of "Le père de famille" there are as many handkerchiefs counted as spectators, and ladies faint away. "It is customary, especially for young women, to be excited, to turn pale, to melt into tears and, generally, to be seriously affected on encountering M. de Voltaire; they rush into his arms, stammer and weep, their agitation resembling that of the most passionate love."[2312]--When a society-author reads his work in a drawing-room, fashion requires that the company should utter exclamations and sob, and that some pretty fainting subject should be unlaced. Mme. de Genlis, who laughs at these affectations, is no less affected than the rest. Suddenly some one in the company is heard to say to the young orphan whom she is exhibiting: "Pamela, show us Héloise," whereupon Pamela, loosening her hair, falls on her knees and turns her eyes up to heaven with an air of inspiration, to the great applause of the assembly.[2313] Sensibility becomes an institution. The same Madame de Genlis founds an order of Perseverance which soon includes "as many as ninety chevaliers in the very best society." To become a member it is necessary to solve some riddle, to answer a moral question and pronounce a discourse on virtue. Every lady or chevalier who discovers and publishes "three well-verified virtuous actions" obtains a gold medal. Each chevalier has his "brother in arms," each lady has her bosom friend and each member has a device, and each device, framed in a little picture, figures in the "Temple of Honor," a sort of tent gallantly decorated, and which M. de Lauzun causes to be erected in the middle of a garden.[2314]--The sentimental parade is complete, a drawing room masquerade being visible even in this revival of chivalry.

The froth of enthusiasm and of fine words nevertheless leaves in the heart a residuum of active benevolence, trustfulness, and even happiness, or, at least, expansiveness and freedom. Wives, for the first time, are seen accompanying their husbands into garrison; mothers desire to nurse their infants, and fathers begin to interest themselves in the education of their children. Simplicity again forms an element of manners. Hair-powder is no longer put on little boys' heads; many of the seigniors abandon laces, embroideries, red heels and the sword, except when in full dress. People appear in the streets "dressed à la Franklin, in coarse cloth, with a knotty cane and thick shoes."[2315] The taste no longer runs on cascades, statues and stiff and pompous decorations; the preference is for the English garden.[2316] The queen arranges a village for herself at the Trianon, where, "dressed in a frock of white cambric muslin and a gauze neck-handkerchief, and with a straw hat," she fishes in the lake and sees her cows milked. Etiquette falls away like the paint scaling off from the skin, disclosing the bright hue of natural emotions. Madame Adelaide takes up a violin and replaces an absent musician to let the peasant girls dance. The Duchesse de Bourbon goes out early in the morning incognito to bestow alms, and "to see the poor in their garrets." The Dauphine jumps out of her carriage to assist a wounded post-boy, a peasant knocked down by a stag. The king and the Comte d'Artois help a carter to extract his cart from the mud. People no longer think about self-constraint, and self-adjustment, and of keeping up their dignity under all circumstances, and of subjecting the weaknesses of human nature to the exigencies of rank. On the death of the first Dauphin,[2317] whilst the people in the room place themselves before the king to prevent him from entering it, the queen falls at his knees, and he says to her, weeping, "Ah, my wife, our dear child is dead, since they do not wish me to see him." And the narrator adds with admiration; "I always seem to see a good farmer and his excellent wife a prey to the deepest despair at the loss of their beloved child." Tears are no longer concealed, as it is a point of honor to be a human being. One becomes human and familiar with one's inferiors. A prince, on a review, says to the soldiers on presenting the princess to them, "My boys, here is my wife." There is a disposition to make people happy and to take great delight in their gratitude. To be kind, to be loved is the object of the head of a government, of a man in place. This goes so far that God is prefigured according to this model. The "harmonies of nature" are construed into the delicate attentions of Providence; on instituting filial affection the Creator "deigned to choose for our best virtue our sweetest pleasure."[2318]--The idyll which is imagined to take place in heaven corresponds with the idyll practiced on earth. From the public up to the princes, and from the princes down to the public, in prose, in verse, in compliments at festivities, in official replies, in the style of royal edicts down to the songs of the market-women, there is a constant interchange of graces and of sympathies. Applause bursts out in the theater at any verse containing an allusion to princes, and, a moment after, at the speech which exalts the merits of the people, the princes return the compliment by applauding in their turn.[2319]--On all sides, just as this society is vanishing, a mutual deference, a spirit of kindliness arises, like a soft and balmy autumnal breeze, to dissipate whatever harshness remains of its aridity and to mingle with the radiance of its last hours the perfume of dying roses. We now encounter acts and words of infinite grace, unique of their kind, like a lovely, exquisite little figure on old Sèvres porcelain. One day, on the Comtesse Amélie de Boufflers speaking somewhat flippantly of her husband, her mother-in-law interposes, "You forget that you are speaking of my son."--"True, mamma, I thought I was only speaking of your son-in-law." It is she again who, on playing "the boat," and obliged to decide between this beloved mother-in-law and her own mother, whom she scarcely knew, replies, "I would save my mother and drown with my mother-in-law."[2320] The Duchesse de Choiseul, the Duchesse de Lauzun, and others besides, are equally charming miniatures. When the heart and the mind combine their considerations they produce masterpieces, and these, like the art, the refinements and the society which surrounds them, possess a charm unsurpassed by anything except their own fragility.

III. Personality Defects.

The failings of character thus formed.--Adapted to one situation but not to a contrary situation.--Defects of intelligence.--Defects of disposition.--Such a character is disarmed by good-breeding.

The reason is that, the better people have become adapted to a certain situation the less prepared are they for the opposite situation. The habits and faculties that serve them in the previous condition become prejudicial to them in the new one. In acquiring talents adapted to tranquil times they lose those suited to times of agitation, reaching the extreme of feebleness at the same time with the extreme of urbanity. The more polished an aristocracy becomes the weaker it becomes, and when no longer possessing the power to please it not longer possesses the strength to struggle. And yet, in this world, we must struggle if we would live. In humanity, as in nature, empire belongs to force. Every creature that loses the art and energy of self-defense becomes so much more certainly a prey according as its brilliancy, imprudence and even gentleness deliver it over in advance to the gross appetites roaming around it. Where find resistance in characters formed by the habits we have just described? To defend ourselves we must, first of all, look carefully around us, see and foresee, and provide for danger. How could they do this living as they did? Their circle is too narrow and too carefully enclosed. Confined to their castles and mansions they see only those of their own sphere, they hear only the echo of their own ideas, they imagine that there is nothing beyond the public seems to consist of two hundred persons. Moreover, disagreeable truths are not admitted into a drawing-room, especially when of personal import, an idle fancy there becoming a dogma because it becomes conventional. Here, accordingly, we find those who, already deceived by the limitations of their accustomed horizon, fortify their delusion still more by delusions about their fellow men. They comprehend nothing of the vast world, which envelops their little world; they are incapable of entering into the sentiments of a bourgeois, of a villager; they have no conception of the peasant as he is but as they would like him to be. The idyll is in fashion, and no one dares dispute it; any other supposition would be false because it would be disagreeable, and as the drawing rooms have decided that all will go well, all must go well. Never was a delusion more complete and more voluntary. The Duc d'Orléans offers to wager a hundred louis that the States-General will dissolve without accomplishing anything, not even abolishing the lettre-de-cachet.. After the demolition has begun, and yet again after it is finished, they will form opinions no more accurate. They have no idea of social architecture; they know nothing about its materials, its proportions, or its harmonious balance; they have had no hand in it, they have never worked at it. They are entirely ignorant of the old building[2321] in which they occupy the first story. They are not qualified to calculate either its pressure or its resistance.[2322] They conclude, finally, that it is better to let the thing tumble in, and that the restoration of the edifice in their behalf will follow its own course, and that they will return to their drawing-room, expressly rebuilt for them, and freshly gilded, to begin over again the pleasant conversation which an accident, some tumult in the street, had interrupted.[2323] Clear-sighted in society, they are obtuse in politics. They examine everything by the artificial light of candles; they are disturbed and bewildered in the powerful light of open day. The eyelid has grown stiff through age. The organ so long bent on the petty details of one refined life no longer takes in the popular life of the masses, and, in the new sphere into which it is suddenly plunged, its refinement becomes the source of its blindness.

Nevertheless action is necessary, for danger is seizing them by the throat. But the danger is of an ignoble species, while their education has provided them with no arms suitable for warding it off. They have learned how to fence, but not how to box. They are still the sons of those at Fontenoy, who, instead of being the first to fire, courteously raised their hats and addressed their English antagonists, "No, gentlemen, fire yourselves." Being the slaves of good-breeding they are not free in their movements. Numerous acts, and those the most important, those of a sudden, vigorous and rude stamp, are opposed to the respect a well-bred man entertains for others, or at least to the respect which he owes to himself. They do not consider these allowable among themselves; they do not dream of their being allowed, and, the higher their position the more their rank fetters them. When the royal family sets out for Varennes the accumulated delays by which they are lost are the result of etiquette. Madame de Touzel insists on her place in the carriage to which she is entitled as governess of the Children of France. The king, on arriving, is desirous of conferring the marshal's baton on M. de Bouillé, and after running to and fro to obtain a baton he is obliged to borrow that of the Duc de Choiseul. The queen cannot dispense with a traveling dressing-case and one has to be made large enough to contain every imaginable implement from a warming-pan to a silver porridge-dish, with other dishes besides; and, as if there were no shifts to be had in Brussels, there had to be a complete outfit in this line for herself and her children.[2324]--A fervent devotion, even humanness, the frivolity of the small literary spirit, graceful urbanity, profound ignorance,[2325] the lack or rigidity of the comprehension and determination are still greater with the princes than with the nobles.--All are impotent against the wild and roaring outbreak. They have not the physical superiority that can master it, the vulgar charlatanism which can charm it away, the tricks of a Scapin to throw it off the scent, the bull's neck, the mountebank's gestures, the stentor's lungs, in short, the resources of the energetic temperament and of animal cunning, alone capable of diverting the rage of the unchained brute. To find such fighters, they seek three or four men of a different race and education, men having suffered and roamed about, a brutal commoner like the abbé Maury, a colossal and dirty satyr like Mirabeau, a bold and prompt adventurer like that Dumouriez who, at Cherbourg, when, through the feebleness of the Duc de Beuvron, the stores of grain were given up and the riot began, hooted at and nearly cut to pieces, suddenly sees the keys of the storehouse in the hands of a Dutch sailor, and, yelling to the mob that it was betrayed through a foreigner having got hold of the keys, himself jumps down from the railing, seizes the keys and hands them to the officer of the guard, saying to the people, "I am your father, I am the man to be responsible for the storehouse!"[2326] To entrust oneself with porters and brawlers, to be collared by a political club, to improvise on the highways, to bark louder than the barkers, to fight with the fists or a cudgel, as much later with the young and rich gangs, against brutes and lunatics incapable of employing other arguments, and who must be answered in the same vein, to mount guard over the Assembly, to act as volunteer constable, to spare neither one's own hide nor that of others, to be one of the people to face the people, all these are simple and effectual proceedings, but so vulgar as to appear to them disgusting. The idea of resorting to such means never enters their head; they neither know how, nor do they care to make use of their hands in such business.[2327] They are skilled only in the duel and, almost immediately, the brutality of opinion, by means of assaults, stops the way to polite combats. Their arms, the shafts of the drawing-room, epigrams, witticisms, songs, parodies, and other needle thrusts are impotent against the popular bull.[2328] Their personality lacks both roots and resources; through super-refinement it has weakened; their nature, impoverished by culture, is incapable of the transformations by which we are renewed and survive.--An all-powerful education has repressed, mollified, and enfeebled their very instincts. About to die, they experience none of the reactions of blood and rage, the universal and sudden restoration of the forces, the murderous spasm, the blind irresistible need of striking those who strike them. If a gentleman is arrested in his own house by a Jacobin we never find him splitting his head open.[2329] They allow themselves to be taken, going quietly to prison; to make an uproar would be bad taste; it is necessary, above all things, to remain what they are, well-bred people of society. In prison both men and women dress themselves with great care, pay each other visits and keep up a drawing-room; it may be at the end of a corridor, by the light of three or four candles; but here they circulate jests, compose madrigals, sing songs and pride themselves on being as gallant, as gay and as gracious as ever: need people be morose and ill-behaved because accident has consigned them to a poor inn? They preserve their dignity and their smile before their judges and on the cart; the women, especially, mount the scaffold with the ease and serenity characteristic of an evening entertainment. It is the supreme characteristic of good-breeding, erected into an unique duty, and become to this aristocracy a second nature, which is found in its virtues as well as in its vices, in its faculties as well as in its impotencies, in its prosperity as at its fall, and which adorns it even in the death to which it conducts.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 2301: Champfort, 110.]

[Footnote 2302: George Sand, V. 59. "I was rebuked for everything; I never made a movement which was not criticized."]

[Footnote 2303: "Paris, Versailles, et les provinces," I. 162.--"The king of Sweden is here; he wears rosettes on his breeches; all is over; he is ridiculous, and a provincial king." ("Le Gouvernement de Normandie," by Hippeau, IV. 237, July 4, 1784.]

[Footnote 2304: Stendhal, "Rome, Naples and Florence," 379. Stated by an English lord.]

[Footnote 2305: Marivaux, "La Petit-Maître corrigé.--Gresset, "Le Méchant." Crébillon fils, "La Nuit et le Moment," (especially the scene between the scene between Citandre and Lucinde).--Collé, "La Verité dans le Vin," (the part of the abbé with the with the présidente).--De Bezenval, 79. (The comte de Frise and Mme. de Blot). "Vie privée du Maréchal de Richelieu," (scenes with Mme. Michelin).--De Goncourt, 167 to 174.]

[Footnote 2306: Laclos, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." Mme. de Merteuil was copied after a Marquise de Grenoble.--Remark the difference between Lovelace and Valmont, one being stimulated by pride and the other by vanity.]

[Footnote 2307: The growth of sensibility is indicated by the following dates: Rousseau, "Sur l'influence des lettres et des arts," 1749; "Sur l'inégalité," 1753; "Nouvelle Héloise," 1759. Greuze, "Le Pére de Famille lisant la Bible," 1755; "L'Accordée de Village," 1761. Diderot, "Le fils natural," 1757; "Le Pére de Famille," 1758.]

[Footnote 2308: Mme. de Genlis, "Mémoires," chap. XVII.--George Sand, I. 72. The young Mme. de Francueil, on seeing Rousseau for the first time, burst into tears.]

[Footnote 2309: This point has been brought out with as much skill as accuracy by Messieurs de Goncourt in "L'Art au dix-huitième siècle," I. 433-438.]

[Footnote 2310: The number for August, 1792, contains "Les Rivaux d'eux-mêmes."--About the same time other pieces are inserted in the "Mercure," such as "The federal union of Hymen and Cupid," "Les Jaloux," "A Pastoral Romance," "Ode Anacréontique à Mlle. S. D. . . . "etc.]

[Footnote 2311: Mme. de Genlis, "Adéle et Théodore," I. 312.--De Goncourt, "La Femme an dixhuitième siècle," 318.--Mme. d'Oberkirk, I. 56.--Description of the puff au sentiment of the Duchesse de Chartres (de Goncourt, 311): "In the background is a woman seated in a chair and holding an infant, which represents the Duc de Valois and his nurse. On the right is a parrot pecking at a cherry, and on the left a little Negro, the duchess's two pets: the whole is intermingled with locks of hair of all the relations of Mme. de Chartres, the hair of her husband, father and father-in-law."]

[Footnote 2312: Mme. de Genlis, "Les Dangers du Monde." I, scène VII; II, scène IV;--"Adèle et Théodore," I. 312;--"Souvenirs de Félicie," 199;--Bachaumont, IV, 320.]

[Footnote 2313: Mme. de la Rochejacquelein, "Mémoires."]

[Footnote 2314: Mme. de Genlis, "Mémoires," chap. XX.--De Lauzun, 270.]

[Footnote 2315: Mme. d'Oberkirk, II. 35 (1783-1784). Mme. Campan, III. 371.--Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," passim.]

[Footnote 2316: "Correspondance" by Métra, XVII. 55, (1784).--Mme. d'Oberkirk, II. 234.--"Marie Antoinette," by d'Arneth and Geffroy, II. 63, 29.]

[Footnote 2317: "Le Gouvernement de Normandie," by Hippeau, IV. 387 (Letters of June 4, 1789, by an eye-witness).]

[Footnote 2318: Florian, "Ruth".]

[Footnote 2319: Hippeau, IV. 86 (June 23, 1773), on the representation of "Le Siege de Calais," at the Comédie Française, at the moment when Mlle. Vestris has pronounced these words:

Le Français dans son prince aime à trouver un frère Qui, né fils de l'Etat, en devienne le père.

"Long and universal plaudits greeted the actress who had turned in the direction of the Dauphin." In another place these verses recur:

Quelle leçon pour vous, superbes potentats! Veillez sur vos sujets dans le rang le plus bas, Tel, loin de vos regards, dans la misère expire, Qui quelque jour peut-être, eût sauvé votre empire.

"The Dauphin and the Dauphine in turn applauded the speech. This demonstration of their sensibility was welcomed with new expressions of affection and gratitude."]

[Footnote 2320: Madame de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," 76, 161.]

[Footnote 2321: M. de Montlosier; in the Constituent Assembly, is about the only person familiar with feudal laws.]

[Footnote 2322: "A competent and impartial man who would estimate the chances of the success of the Révolution would find that there are more against it than against the five winning numbers in a lottery; but this is possible, and unfortunately, this time, they all came out" (Duc de Lévis, "Souvenirs," 328.)]

[Footnote 2323: "Corinne," by Madame de Staël, the character of the Comte d'Erfeuil.--Malonet, "Mémoires," II. 297 (a memorable instance of political stupidity).]

[Footnote 2324: Mme. Campan, II. 140, 313.--Duc de Choiseul, "Mémoires."]

[Footnote 2325: Journal of Dumont d'Urville, commander of the vessel which transported Charles X. into exile in 1830.--See note 4 at the end of the volume.]

[Footnote 2326: Dumouriez, "Mémoires," III. chap. III. (July 21, 1789).]

[Footnote 2327: "All these fine ladies and gentlemen who knew so well how to bow and courtesy and walk over a carpet, could not take three steps on God's earth without getting dreadfully fatigued. They could not even open or shut a door; they had not even strength enough to lift a log to put it on the fire; they had to call a servant to draw up a chair for them; they could not come in or go out by themselves. What could they have done with their graces, without their valets to supply the place of hands and feet?" (George Sand, V. 61.)]

[Footnote 2328: When Madame de F--had expressed a clever thing she felt quite proud of it. M--remarked that on uttering something clever about an emetic she was quite surprised that she was not purged. Champfort, 107.]

[Footnote 2329: The following is an example of what armed resistance can accomplish for a man in his own house. "A gentleman of Marseilles, proscribed and living in his country domicile, has provided himself with gun, pistols and saber, and never goes out without this armament, declaring that he will not be taken alive. Nobody dared to execute the order of arrest. (Anne Plumptree, "A Residence of three years in France," (1802-1805), II. 115.]

BOOK THIRD. THE SPIRIT AND THE DOCTRINE.

## CHAPTER I. SCIENTIFIC ACQUISITION.

The composition of the revolutionary spirit.--Scientific acquisition its first element.

On seeing a man with a somewhat feeble constitution, but healthy in appearance and of steady habits, greedily swallow some new kind of cordial and then suddenly fall to the ground, foam at the mouth, act deliriously and writhe in convulsions, we at once surmise that this agreeable beverage contained some dangerous substance; but a delicate analysis is necessary to detect and decompose the poison. The philosophy of the eighteenth century contained poison, and of a kind as potent as it was peculiar; for, not only is it a long historic elaboration, the final and condensed essence of the tendency of the thought of the century, but again its two principal ingredients have this peculiarity, that, separate, they are salutary, and in combination they form a venomous compound.

I. Scientific Progress.

The accumulation and progress of discoveries in science and in nature.--They serve as a starting-point for the new philosophers.

The first is scientific discovery, admirable on all sides, and beneficent in its nature; it is made up of masses of facts slowly accumulated and then summarily presented, or in rapid succession. For the first time in history the sciences expand and affirm each other to the extent of providing, not, as formerly, under Galileo and Descartes, constructive fragments, or provisional scaffolding, but a definite and demonstrated system of the universe, that of Newton.[3101] Around this capital fact, almost all the discoveries of the century, either as complementary or as prolongations, range themselves. In pure mathematics we have the Infinitesimal Calculus discovered simultaneously by Leibnitz and Newton, mechanics reduced by d'Alembert to a single theorem, and that superb collection of theories which, elaborated by the Bernouillis, Euler, Clairaut, d'Alembert, Taylor and Maclaurin, is finally completed at the end of the century by Monge, Lagrange, and Laplace.[3102] In astronomy, the series of calculations and observations which, from Newton to Laplace, transforms science into a problem of mechanics, explains and predicts the movements of the planets and of their satellites, indicating the origin and formation of our solar system, and, extending beyond this, through the discoveries of Herschel, affording an insight into the distribution of the stellar archipelagos, and of the grand outlines of celestial architecture. In physics, the decomposition of light and the principles of optics discovered by Newton, the velocity of sound, the form of its undulations, and from Sauveur to Chladni, from Newton to Bernouilli and Lagrange, the experimental laws and leading theorems of Acoustics, the primary laws of the radiation of heat by Newton, Kraft and Lambert, the theory of latent heat by Black, the proportions of caloric by Lavoisier and Laplace, the first true conceptions of the source of fire and heat, the experiments, laws, and means by which Dufay, Nollet, Franklin, and especially Coulomb explain, manipulate and, for the first time, utilize electricity.--In Chemistry, all the foundations of the science: isolated oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, the composition of water, the theory of combustion, chemical nomenclature, quantitative analysis, the indestructibility of matter, in short, the discoveries of Scheele, Priestley, Cavendish and Stahl, crowned with the clear and concise theory of Lavoisier.--In Mineralogy, the goniometer, the constancy of angles and the primary laws of derivation by Romé de Lisle, and next the discovery of types and the mathematical deduction of secondary forms by Haüy.--In Geology, the verification and results of Newton's theory, the exact form of the earth, the depression of the poles, the expansion of the equator,[3103] the cause and the law of the tides, the primitive fluidity of the planet, the constancy of its internal heat, and then, with Buffon, Desmarets, Hutton and Werner, the aqueous or igneous origin of rocks, the stratifications of the earth, the structure of beds of fossils, the prolonged and repeated submersion of continents, the slow growth of animal and vegetable deposits, the vast antiquity of life, the stripping, fracturing and gradual transformation of the terrestrial surface,[3104] and, finally the grand picture in which Buffon describes in approximate manner the entire history of our globe, from the moment it formed a mass of glowing lava down to the time when our species, after so many lost or surviving species, was able to inhabit it.--Upon this science of inorganic matter we see arising at the same time the science of organic matter. Grew, and then Vaillant had just demonstrated the sexual system and described the fecundating of plants; Linnaeus invents botanical nomenclature and the first complete classifications; the Jussieus discover the subordination of characteristics and natural classification. Digestion is explained by Réaumur and Spallanzani, respiration by Lavoisier; Prochaska verifies the mechanism of reflex

## actions; Haller and Spallanzani experiment on and describe the

conditions and phases of generation. Scientists penetrate to the lowest stages of animal life. Réaumur publishes his admirable observations on insects and Lyonnet devotes twenty years to portraying the willow-caterpillar; Spallanzani resuscitates his rotifers, Tremblay dissects his fresh-water polyps, and Needham reveals his infusoria. The experimental conception of life is deduced from these various researches. Buffon already, and especially Lamarck, in their great and incomplete sketches, outline with penetrating divination the leading features of modern physiology and zoology. Organic molecules everywhere diffused or everywhere growing, species of globules constantly in course of decay and restoration, which, through the blind and spontaneous development, transform themselves, multiply and combine, and which, without either foreign direction or any preconceived end, solely through the effect of their structure and surroundings, unite together to form those masterly organisms which we call plants and animals: in the beginning, the simplest forms, and next a slow, gradual, complex and perfected organization; the organ created through habits, necessity and surrounding medium; heredity transmitting acquired modifications,[3105] all denoting in advance, in a state of conjecture and approximation, the cellular theory of later physiologists[3106] and the conclusions of Darwin. In the picture which the human mind draws of nature, the general outline is marked by the science of the eighteenth century, the arrangement of its plan and of the principal masses being so correctly marked, that to day the leading lines remain intact. With the exception of a few partial corrections we have nothing to efface.

This vast supply of positive or probable facts, either demonstrated or anticipated, furnishes food, substance and impulse to the intellect of the eighteenth century. Consider the leaders of public opinion, the promoters of the new philosophy: they are all, in various degrees, versed in the physical and natural sciences. Not only are they familiar with theories and authorities, but again they have a personal knowledge of facts and things. Voltaire[3108] is among the first to explain the optical and astronomical theories of Newton, and again to make calculations, observations and experiments of his own. He writes memoirs for the Academy of Sciences "On the Measure of Motive Forces," and "On the Nature and Diffusion of Heat." He handles Réamur's thermometer, Newton's prism, and Muschenbrock's pyrometer. In his laboratory at Cirey he has all the known apparatus for physics and chemistry. He experiments with his own hand on the reflection of light in space, on the increase of weight in calcified metals, on the renewal of amputated parts of animals, and in the spirit of a true savant, persistently, with constant repetitions, even to the beheading of forty snails and slugs, to verify an assertion made by Spallanzani.--The same curiosity and the same preparation prevails with all imbued with the same spirit. In the other camp, among the Cartesians, about to disappear, Fontenelle is an excellent mathematician, the competent biographer of all eminent men of science, the official secretary and true representative of the Academy of Sciences. In other places, in the Academy of Bordeaux, Montesquieu reads discourses on the mechanism of the echo, and on the use of the renal glands; he dissects frogs, tests the effect of heat and cold on animated tissues, and publishes observations on plants and insects.--Rousseau, the least instructed of all, attends the lectures of the chemist Rouelle, botanizing and appropriating to himself all the elements of human knowledge with which to write his "Emile."--Diderot taught mathematics and devoured every science and art even to the technical processes of all industries. D'Alembert stands in the first rank of mathematicians. Buffon translated Newton's theory of flux, and the Vegetable Statics of Hales; he is in turn a metallurgist, optician, geographer, geologist and, last of all, an anatomist. Condillac, to explain the use of signs and the relation of ideas, writes abridgments of arithmetic, algebra, mechanics and astronomy.[3109] Maupertuis, Condorcet and Lalande are mathematicians, physicists and astronomers; d'Holbach, Lamettrie and Cabanis are chemists, naturalists physiologists and physicians.--Prophets of a superior or inferior kind, masters or pupils, specialists or simple amateurs, all draw directly or indirectly from the living source that has just burst forth. This is their basis when they begin to teach about Man, what he is, from whence he came, where he is going, what he may become and what he should be. A new point of departure leads to new points of view; so that the idea, which was then entertained of the human being will become completely transformed.

II. Science Detached From Theology.

Change of the point of view in the science of man.--It is detached from theology and is united with the natural sciences.

Let us suppose a mind thoroughly imbued with these new truths, to be placed on the orbit of Saturn, and let him observe[3110]. Amidst this vast and overwhelming space and in these boundless solar archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the earth, what a grain of sand! What multitudes of worlds beyond our own, and, if life exists in them, what combinations are possible other than those of which we are the result! What is life, what is organic substance in the monstrous universe but an indifferent mass, a passing accident, the corruption of a few epidermic

## particles? And if this be life, what is that humanity which is so small

a fragment of it?--Such is Man in nature, an atom, and an ephemeral

## particle; let this not be lost sight of in our theories concerning his

origin, his importance, and his destiny.

"A mite that would consider itself as the center of all things would be grotesque, and therefore it is essential that an insect almost infinitely small should not show conceit almost infinitely great."[3111]--

How slow has been the evolution of the globe itself! What myriads of ages between the first cooling of its mass and the beginnings of life![3112] Of what consequence is the turmoil of our ant-hill compared to the geological tragedy in which we have born no part, the strife between fire and water, the thickening of the earth's crust, formation of the universal sea, the construction and separation of continents! Previous to our historical record what a long history of vegetable and animal existence! What a succession of flora and fauna! What generations of marine organisms in forming the strata of sediment! What generations of plans in forming the deposits of coal! What transformations of climate to drive the pachydermata away from the pole!--And now comes Man, the latest of all, he is like the uppermost bud on the top of a tall ancient tree, flourishing there for a while, but, like the tree, destined to perish after a few seasons, when the increasing and foretold congelation allowing the tree to live shall force the tree to die. He is not alone on the branch; beneath him, around him, on a level with him, other buds shoot forth, born of the same sap; but he must not forget, if he would comprehend his own being, that, along with himself, other lives exist in his vicinity, graduated up to him and issuing from the same trunk. If he is unique he is not isolated, being an animal among other animals;[3113] in him and with them, substance, organization and birth, the formation and renewal of the functions, senses and appetites, are similar, while his superior intelligence, like their rudimentary intelligence, has for an indispensable organ a nervous matter whose structure is the same with him as with them.--Thus surrounded, brought forth and borne along by nature, is it to be supposed that in nature he is an empire within an empire? He is there as the part of a whole, by virtue of being a physical body, a chemical composition, an animated organism, a sociable animal, among other bodies, other compositions, other social animals, all analogous to him; and by virtue of these classifications, he is, like them, subject to laws.--For, if the first cause is unknown to us, and we dispute among ourselves to know what it is, whether innate or external, we affirm with certainty the mode of its

## action, and that it operates only according to fixed and general

laws. Every circumstance, whatever it may be, is conditioned, and, its conditions being given, it never fails to conform to them. Of two links forming a chain, the first always draws on the second. There are laws:

* for numbers, forms, and motions,

* for the revolution of the planets and the fall of bodies,

* for the diffusion of light and the radiation of heat,

* for the attractions and repulsion of electricity,

* for chemical combinations, and

* for the birth, equilibrium and dissolution of organic bodies.

They exist for the birth, maintenance, and development of human societies, for the formation, conflict, and direction of ideas, passions and determinations of human individuals.[3114] In all this, Man is bound up with nature; hence, if we would comprehend him, we must observe him in her, after her, and like her, with the same independence, the same precautions, and in the same spirit. Through this remark alone the method of the moral sciences is fixed. In history, in psychology, in morals, in politics, the thinkers of the preceding century, Pascal, Bossuet, Descartes, Fenelon, Malebrance, and La Bruyère, all based their thoughts on dogma; It is plain to every one qualified to read them that their base is predetermined. Religion provided them with a complete theory of the moral order of things; according to this theory, latent or exposed, they described Man and accommodated their observations to the preconceived model. The writers of the eighteenth century rejected this method: they dwell on Man, on the observable Man, and on his surroundings; in their eyes, conclusions about the soul, its origin, and its destiny, must come afterwards and depend wholly, not on that which the Revelation provided, but on that which observation does and will provide. The moral sciences are now divorced from theology and attach themselves, as if a prolongation of them, to the physical sciences.

III. The Transformation Of History.

Voltaire.--Criticism and conceptions of unity.-- Montesquieu.--An outline of social laws.

Through the separation from theology and the attachment to natural science the humanities become science. In history, every foundation on which we now build, is laid. Compare Bossuet's "Discours sur l'histoire universelle," with Voltaire's "Essai sur les moeurs," and we at once see how new and profound these foundations were.--The critics of religious dogma here establish their fundamental principle: in view of the fact that the laws of nature are universal and permanent it follows that, in the moral world, as in the physical world, there can be no exception from them, and that no arbitrary or foreign force intervenes to disturb the regular scientific procedures, which will provide a sure means of discerning myth from truth.[3115] Biblical exegesis is born out of this maxim, and not alone that of Voltaire, but also the critical explanatory methods of the future. [3116] Meanwhile they skeptically examine the annals of all people, carelessly cutting away and suppressing; too hastily, extravagantly, especially where the ancients are concerned, because their historical expedition is simply a scouting trip; but nevertheless with such an overall insight that we may still approve almost all the outlines of their summary chart. The (newly discovered) primitive Man was not a superior being, enlightened from above, but a coarse savage, naked and miserable, slow of growth, sluggish in progress, the most destitute and most needy of all animals, and, on this account, sociable, endowed like the bee and the beaver with an instinct for living in groups, and moreover an imitator like the monkey, but more intelligent, capable of passing by degrees from the language of gesticulation to that of articulation, beginning with a monosyllabic idiom which gradually increases in richness, precision and subtlety.[3117] How many centuries are requisite to attain to this primitive language! How many centuries more to the discovery of the most necessary arts, the use of fire, the fabrication of "hatches of silex and jade", the melting and refining of metals, the domestication of animals, the production and modification of edible plants, the formation of early civilized and durable communities, the discovery of writing, figures and astronomical periods.[3118] Only after a dawn of vast and infinite length do we see in Chaldea and in China the commencement of an accurate chronological history. There are five or six of these great independent centers of spontaneous civilization, China, Babylon, ancient Persia, India, Egypt, Phoenicia, and the two American empires. On collecting these fragments together, on reading such of their books as have been preserved, and which travelers bring to us, the five Kings of the Chinese, the Vedas of the Hindus, the Zoroastrians of the ancient Persians, we find that all contain religions, moral theories, philosophies and institutions, as worthy of study as our own. Three of these codes, those of India, China and the Muslims, still at the present time govern countries as vast as our Europe, and nations of equal importance. We must not, like Bossuet, "overlook the universe in a universal history," and subordinate humanity to a small population confined to a desolate region around the Dead Sea.[3119] Human history is a thing of natural growth like the rest; its direction is due to its own elements; no external force guides it, but the inward forces that create it; it is not tending to any prescribed end but developing a result. And the chief result is the progress of the human mind. "Amidst so many ravages and so much destruction, we see a love of order secretly animating the human species, and forestalling its utter ruin. It is one of the springs of nature ever recovering its energy; it is the source of the formation of the codes of nations; it causes the law and the ministers of the law to be respected in Tinquin and in the islands of Formosa as well as in Rome." Man thus possesses, said Voltaire, a "principle of Reason," namely, a "an instinct for engineering" suggesting to him useful implements;[3120] also an instinct of right suggesting to him his moral conceptions. These two instincts form a part of his makeup; he has them from his birth, "as birds have their feathers, and bears their hair. Hence he is perfectible through nature, and merely conforms to nature in improving his mind and in bettering his condition. Extend the idea farther along with Turgot and Condorcet,[3121] and, with all its exaggerations, we see arising, before the end of the century, our modern theory of progress, that which founds all our aspirations on the boundless advance of the sciences, on the increase of comforts which their applied discoveries constantly bring to the human condition, and on the increase of good sense which their discoveries, popularized, slowly deposit in the human brain.

A second principle has to be established to complete the foundations of history. Discovered by Montesquieu it still to-day serves as a constructive support, and, if we resume the work, as if on the substructure of the master's edifice, it is simply owing to accumulated erudition placing at our disposal more substantial and more abundant materials. In human society all parts are interdependent; no modification of one can take place without effecting proportionate changes in the others. Institutions, laws and customs are not mingled together, as in a heap, through chance or caprice, but connected one with the other through convenience or necessity, as in a harmony.[3122] According as authority is in all, in several or in one hand, according as the sovereign admits or rejects laws superior to himself, with intermediary powers below him, everything changes or tends to differ in meaning and in importance:

* public intelligence,

* education,

* the form of judgments,

* the nature and order of penalties,

* the condition of women,

* military organization

* and the nature and the extent of taxation.

A multitude of subordinate wheels depend on the great central wheel. For if the clock runs, it is owing to the harmony of its various parts, from which it follows that, on this harmony ceasing, the clock gets out of order. But, besides the principal spring, there are others which, acting on or in combination with it, give to each clock a special character and a peculiar movement. Such, in the first place, is climate, that is to say, the degree of heat or cold, humidity or dryness, with its infinite effects on man's physical and moral attributes, followed by its influence on political, civil and domestic servitude or freedom. Likewise the soil, according to its fertility, its position and its extent. Likewise the physical régime, according as a people is composed of hunters, shepherds or agriculturists. Likewise the fecundity of the race, and the consequent slow or rapid increase of population, and also the excess in number, now of males and now of females. And finally, likewise, are national character and religion.--All these causes, each added to the other, or each limited by the other, contribute together to form a total result, namely society. Simple or complex, stable or unstable, barbarous or civilized, this society contains within itself its explanations of its being. Strange as a social structure may be, it can be explained; also its institutions, however contradictory. Neither prosperity, nor decline, nor despotism, nor freedom, is the result of a throw of the dice, of luck or an unexpected turn of events caused by rash men. They are conditions we must live with. In any event, it is useful to understand them, either to improve our situation or bear it patiently, sometimes to carry out appropriate reforms, sometimes to renounce impracticable reforms, now to assume the authority necessary for success, and now the prudence making us abstain.

IV. The New Psychology.

The transformation of psychology.--Condillac.--The theory of sensation and of signs.

We now reach the core of moral science; the human being in general. The natural history of the mind must be dealt with, and this must be done as we have done the others, by discarding all prejudice and adhering to facts, taking analogy for our guide, beginning with origins and following, step by step, the development by which the infant, the savage, the uncultivated primitive man, is converted into the rational and cultivated man. Let us consider life at the outset, the animal at the lowest degree on the scale, the human being as soon as it is born. The first thing we find is perception, agreeable or disagreeable, and next a want, propensity or desire, and therefore at last, by means of a physiological mechanism, voluntary or involuntary movements, more or less accurate and more or less appropriate and coordinated. And this elementary fact is not merely primitive; it is, again, constant and universal, since we encounter it at each moment of each life, and in the most complicated as well as in the simplest. Let us accordingly ascertain whether it is not the thread with which all our mental cloth is woven, and whether its spontaneous unfolding, and the knotting of mesh after mesh, is not finally to produce the entire network of our thought and passion.--Condillac (1715-1780)provides us here with an incomparable clarity and precision with the answers to all our questions, which, however the revival of theological prejudice and German metaphysics was to bring into discredit in the beginning of the nineteenth century, but which fresh observation, the establishment of mental pathology, and dissection have now (in 1875) brought back, justified and completed.[3123] Locke had already stated that our ideas all originate in outward or inward experience. Condillac shows further that the actual elements of perception, memory, idea, imagination, judgment, reasoning, knowledge are sensations, properly so called, or revived sensations; our loftiest ideas are derived from no other material, for they can be reduced to signs which are themselves sensations of a certain kind. Sensations accordingly form the substance of human or of animal intelligence; but the former infinitely surpasses the latter in this, that, through the creation of signs, it succeeds in isolating, abstracting and noting fragments of sensations, that is to say, in forming, combining and employing general conceptions.--This being granted, we are able to verify all our ideas, for, through reflection, we can revive and reconstruct the ideas we had formed without any reflection. No abstract definitions exist at the outset; abstraction is ulterior and derivative; foremost in each science must be placed examples, experiences, evident facts; from these we derive our general idea. In the same way we derive from several general ideas of the same degree another general idea, and so on successively, step by step, always proceeding according to the natural order of things, by constant analysis, using expressive signs, as with mathematicians in passing from calculation by the fingers to calculation by numerals, and from this to calculation by letters, and who, calling upon the eyes to aid Reason, depict the inward analogy of quantities by the outward analogy of symbols. In this way science becomes complete by means of a properly organized language.[3124]--Through this reversal of the usual method we summarily dispose of disputes about words, escape the illusions of human speech, simplify study, remodel education, enhance discoveries, subject every assertion to control, and bring all truths within reach of all understandings.

V. The Analytical Method.

The analytical method.--Its principle.--The conditions requisite to make it productive.--These conditions wanting or inadequate in the 18th century.--The truth and survival of the principle.

Such is the course to be pursued with all the sciences, and especially with the moral and political sciences. To consider in turn each distinct province of human activity, to decompose the leading notions out of which we form our conceptions, those of religion, society and government, those of utility, wealth and exchange, those of justice, right and duty. To revert to manifest facts, to first experiences, to the simple circumstances in which the elements of our ideas are included; to extricate from these the precious lode without omission or mixture; to recompose our idea with these, to define its meaning and determine its value; to substitute for the vague and vulgar notion with which we started out the precise scientific definition we arrive at, and for the impure metal we received the refined metal we recovered, constituted the prevalent method taught by the philosophers under the name of analysis, and which sums up the whole progress of the century.--Up to this point, and not farther, they are right; truth, every truth, is found in observable things, and only from these can it be derived; there is no other pathway leading to discovery. The operation, undoubtedly, is productive only when the vein is rich, and we possess the means of extracting the ore. To obtain a just notion of government, of religion, of right, of wealth, a man must be a historian beforehand, a jurisconsult and economist, and have gathered up myriad of facts; and, besides all this, he must possess a vast erudition, an experienced and professional perspicacity. If these conditions are only

## partially complied with, the result will only be a half finished product

or a doubtful alloy, a few rough drafts of the sciences, the rudiments of pedagogy as with Rousseau, of political economy with Quesnay, Smith, and Turgot, of linguistics with Des Brosses, and of arithmetical morals and criminal legislation with Bentham. Finally, if none of these conditions are complied with, the same efforts will, in the hands of philosophical amateurs and oratorical charlatans, undoubtedly only produce mischievous compounds and destructive explosions.--Nevertheless good procedure remains good even when ignorant and the impetuous men make a bad use of it; and if we of to day resume the abortive effort of the eighteenth century, it should be within the guidelines they set out.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 3101: "Philosophioe naturalis principia," 1687; "Optics," 1704.]

[Footnote 3102: See concerning this development Comte's "Philosophie Positive," vol. I.--At the beginning of the eighteenth century, mathematical instruments are carried to such perfection as to warrant the belief that all physical phenomena may be analyzed, light, electricity, sound, crystallization, heat, elasticity, cohesion and other effects of molecular forces.--See "Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences. II., III.]

[Footnote 3103: The travels of La Condamine in Peru and of Maupertuis in Lapland.]

[Footnote 3104: Buffon, "Théorie de la terre," 1749; "Epoques de la Nature," 1788.--"Carte géologique de l'Auvergne," by Desmarets, 1766.]

[Footnote 3105: See a lecture by M. Lacaze-Duthier on Lamarck, "Revue Scientifique," III. 276-311.]

[Footnote 3106: Buffon, "Histoire Naturelle, II. 340: "All living beings contain a vast quantity of living and active molecules. Vegetal and animal life seem to be only the result of the actions of all the small lives peculiar to each of the active molecules whose life is primitive." Cf. Diderot, "Revue d'Alembert."]

[Footnote 3108: "Philosophie de Newton," 1738, and "Physique," by Voltaire.--Cf. du Bois-Raymond, "Voltaire physician," (Revue des Cours Scientifique, V. 539), and Saigey, "la Physique de Voltaire,"--"Had Voltaire," writes Lord Brougham, "continued to devote himself to experimental physics he would undoubtedly have inscribed his name among those of the greatest discoverers of his age."]

[Footnote 3109: See his "Langue des Calculs," and his "Art de Raisonner."]

[Footnote 3110: For a popular exposition of these ideas see Voltaire, passim, and particularly the "Micromégas" and "Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield."]

[Footnote 3111: Cf. Buffon, ibid.. I. 31: "Those who imagine a reply with final causes do not reflect that they take the effect for the cause. The relationship which things bear to us having no influence whatever on their origin, moral convenience can never become a physical explanation."--Voltaire, "Candide": "When His High Mightiness sends a vessel to Egypt is he in any respect embarrassed about the comfort of the mice that happen to be aboard of it?"]

[Footnote 3112: Buffon, ibid. . "Supplement," II. 513; IV. ("Epoques de la Nature"), 65, 167. According to his experiments with the cooling of a cannon ball he based the following periods: From the glowing fluid mass of the planet to the fall of rain 35,000 years. From the beginning of life to its actual condition 40,000 years. From its actual condition to the entire congealing of it and the extinction of life 93,000 years. He gives these figures simply as the minima. We now know that they are much too limited.]

[Footnote 3113: Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, ib. I. 12: "The first truth derived from this patient investigation of nature is, perhaps, a humiliating truth for man, that of taking his place in the order of animals."]

[Footnote 3114: Voltaire, "Philosophie, Du principe d'action:" "All beings, without exception, are subject to invariable laws."]

[Footnote 3115: Voltaire "Essay sur les Moeurs,", chap. CXLVII., the summary; "The intelligent reader readily perceives that he must believe only in those great events which appear plausible, and view with pity the fables with which fanaticism, romantic taste and credulity have at all times filled the world."]

[Footnote 3116: Note this expression," exegetical methods". (Chambers defines an exegetist as one who interprets or expounds.) Taine refers to methods which should allow the Jacobins, socialists, communists, and other ideologists to, from an irrefutable idea or expression, to deduct, infer, conclude and draw firm and, to them, irrefutable conclusions. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3117: "Traité de Metaphysique," chap. I. "Having fallen on this little heap of mud, and with no more idea of man than man has of the inhabitants of Mars and Jupiter, I set foot on the shore of the ocean of the country of Caffraria and at once began to search for a man. I encounter monkeys, elephants and Negroes, with gleams of imperfect intelligence, etc"--The new method is here clearly apparent.]

[Footnote 3118: "Introduction à l'Essay sur les Moeurs: Des Sauvages."--Buffon, in "Epoques de la nature," the seventh epoch, precedes Darwin in his ideas on the modifications of the useful species of animals.]

[Footnote 3119: Voltaire, "Remarques de l'essay sur les Moeurs." "We may speak of this people in connection with theology but they are not entitled to a prominent place in history."--"Entretien entre A, B, C," the seventh.]

[Footnote 3120: Franklin defined man as a maker of tools.]

[Footnote 3121: Condorcet, "Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain."]

[Footnote 3122: Montesquieu: "Esprit des Lois," preface. "I, at first, examined men, thinking that, in this infinite diversity of laws and customs, they were not wholly governed by their fancies. I brought principles to bear and I found special cases yielding to them as if naturally, the histories of all nations being simply the result of these, each special law being connected with another law or depending on some general law."]

[Footnote 3123: Pinel, (1791), Esquirol (1838), on mental diseases.--Prochaska, Legallois (1812) and then Flourens for vivisection.--Hartley and James Mill at the end of the eighteenth century follow Condillac on the same psychological road; all contemporary psychologists have entered upon it. (Wundt, Helmholz, Fechner, in Germany, Bain, Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Carpenter, in England).]

[Footnote 3124: Condillac, passim, and especially in his last two works the "Logique," and the "Langue des Calculs."]

## CHAPTER II. THE CLASSIC SPIRIT, THE SECOND ELEMENT.

This grand and magnificent system of new truths resembles a tower of which the first story, quickly finished, at once becomes accessible to the public. The public ascends the structure and is requested by its constructors to look about, not at the sky and at surrounding space, but right before it, towards the ground, so that it may at last become familiar with the country in which it lives. Certainly, the point of view is good, and the advice is well thought-out. The conclusion that the public will have an accurate view is not warranted, for the state of its eyes must be examined, to ascertain whether it is near or far-sighted, or if the retina naturally, or through habit, is sensitive to certain colors. In the same way the French of the eighteenth century must be considered, the structure of their inward vision, that is to say, the fixed form of their intelligence which they are bringing with them, unknowingly and unwillingly, up upon their new tower.

I. Through Colored Glasses.

Its signs, duration and power.--Its origin and public supporters.--Its vocabulary, grammar and style.--Its method, merits and defects.

This fixed intelligence consists of the classic spirit, which applied to the scientific acquisitions of the period, produces the philosophy of the century and the doctrines of the Revolution. Various signs denote its presence, and notably its oratorical, regular and correct style, wholly consisting of ready-made phrases and contiguous ideas. It lasts two centuries, from Malherbe and Balzac to Delille and de Fontanes, and during this long period, no man of intellect, save two or three, and then only in private memoirs, as in the case of Saint-Simon, also in familiar letters like those of the marquis and bailly de Mirabeau, either dares or can withdraw himself from its empire. Far from disappearing with the ancient regime it forms the matrix out of which every discourse and document issues, even the phrases and vocabulary of the Revolution. Now, what is more effective than a ready-made mold, enforced, accepted, in which by virtue of natural tendency, of tradition and of education, everyone can enclose their thinking? This one, accordingly, is a historic force, and of the highest order; to understand it let us consider how it came into being.--It appeared together with the regular monarchy and polite conversation, and it accompanies these, not accidentally, but naturally and automatically. For it is product of the new society, of the new regime and its customs: I mean of an aristocracy left idle due the encroaching monarchy, of people well born and well educated who, withdrawn from public activity, fall back on conversation and pass their leisure sampling the different serious or refined pleasures of the intellect.[3201] Eventually, they have no other role nor interest than to talk, to listen, to entertain themselves agreeably and with ease, on all subjects, grave or gay, which may interest men or even women of society, that's their great affair. In the seventeenth century they are called "les honnêtes gens"[3202] and from now on a writer, even the most abstract, addresses himself to them. "A gentleman," says Descartes, "need not have read all books nor have studiously acquired all that is taught in the schools;" and he entitles his last treatise, "A search for Truth according to natural light, which alone, without aid of Religion or Philosophy, determines the truths a gentleman should possess on all matters forming the subjects of his thoughts."[3203] In short, from one end of his philosophy to the other, the only qualification he demands of his readers is "natural good sense" added to the common stock of experience acquired by contact with the world.--As these make up the audience they are likewise the judges. "One must study the taste of the court," says Molière,[3204] "for in no place are verdicts more just. . . With simple common sense and intercourse with people of refinement, a habit of mind is there obtained which, without comparison, forms a more accurate, judgment of things than the rusty attainments of the pedants." From this time forth, it may be said that the arbiter of truth and of taste is not, as before, an erudite Scaliger, but a man of the world, a La Rochefoucauld, or a Tréville.[3205] The pedant and, after him, the savant, the specialist, is set aside. "True honest people," says Nicole after Pascal, "require no sign. They need not be divined; they join in the conversation going on as they enter the room. They are not styled either poets or surveyors, but they are the judges of all these."[3206] In the eighteenth century they constitute the sovereign authority. In the great crowd of blockheads sprinkled with pedants, there is, says Voltaire, "a small group apart called good society, which, rich, educated and polished, forms, you might say, the flower of humanity; it is for this group that the greatest men have labored; it is this group which accords social recognition."[3207] Admiration, favor, importance, belong not to those who are worthy of it but to those who address themselves to this group. "In 1789," said the Abbé Maury, "the French Academy alone enjoyed any esteem in France, and it really bestowed a standing. That of the Sciences signified nothing in public opinion, any more than that of Inscriptions. . . The languages is considered a science for fools. D'Alembert was ashamed of belonging to the Academy of Sciences. Only a handful of people listen to a mathematician, a chemist, etc. but the man of letters, the lecturer, has the world at his feet."[3208]--Under such a strong pressure the mind necessarily follows a literary and verbal route in conformity with the exigencies, the proprieties, the tastes, and the degree of attention and of instruction of its public.[3209] Hence the classic mold,--formed out of the habit of speaking, writing and thinking for a drawing room audience.[3210]

This is immediately evident in its style and language. Between Amyot, Rabelais and Montaigne on the one hand, and Châteaubriand, Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac on the other, classic French comes into being and dies. From the very first it is described at the language of "honest people." It is fashioned not merely for them, but by them, and Vaugelas,[3211] their secretary, devotes himself for thirty years to the registry of decisions according to the usages only of good society. Hence, throughout, both in vocabulary and in grammar, the language is refashioned over and over again, according to the cast of their intellects, which is the prevailing intellect.--

In the first place the vocabulary is diminished:

* Most of the words specially employed on erudite and technical subjects, expressions that are too Greek or too Latin, terms peculiar to the schools, to science, to occupations, to the household, are excluded from discourse;

* those too closely denoting a particular occupation or profession are not considered proper in general conversation.

* A vast number of picturesque and expressive words are dropped, all that are crude, gaulois or naifs, all that are local and provincial, or personal and made-up, all familiar and proverbial locutions,[3212] many brusque, familiar and frank turns of thought, every haphazard, telling metaphor, almost every description of impulsive and dexterous utterance throwing a flash of light into the imagination and bringing into view the precise, colored and complete form, but of which a too vivid impression would run counter to the proprieties of polite conversation.

"One improper word," said Vaugelas, "is all that is necessary to bring a person in society into contempt,"

and, on the eve of the Revolution, an objectionable term denounced by Madame de Luxembourg still consigns a man to the rank of "espèces," because correct expression is ever an element of good manners.--Language, through this constant scratching, is attenuated and becomes colorless: Vaugelas estimates that one-half of the phrases and terms employed by Amyot are set aside.[3213] With the exception of La Fontaine, an isolated and spontaneous genius, who reopens the old sources, and La Bruyère, a bold seeker, who opens a fresh source, and Voltaire an incarnate demon who, in his anonymous and pseudonymous writings, gives the rein to the violent, crude expressions of his inspiration,[3214] the terms which are most appropriate fall into desuetude. One day, Gresset, in a discourse at the Academy, dares utter four or five of these,[3215] relating, I believe, to carriages and head-dresses, whereupon murmurs at once burst forth. During his long retreat he had become provincial and lost the touch.--By degrees, discourses are composed of "general expressions" only. These are even employed, in accordance with Buffon's precept, to designate concrete objects. They are more in conformity with the polished courtesy which smoothes over, appeases, and avoids rough or familiar expressions, to which some views appear gross or rude unless partly hidden by a veil. This makes it easier for the superficial listener; prevailing terms alone will immediately arouse current and common ideas; they are intelligible to every man from the single fact that he belongs to the drawing-room; special terms, on the contrary, demand an effort of the memory or of the imagination. Suppose that, in relation to Franks or to savages, I should mention "a battle-ax," which would be at once understood; should I mention a "tomahawk," or a "francisque,"[3216] many would imagine that I was speaking Teuton or Iroquois.[3217] In this respect the more fashionable and refined the style, the more punctilious the effort. Every appropriate term is banished from poetry; if one happens to enter the mind it must be evaded or replaced by a paraphrase. An eighteenth century poet can hardly permit himself to employ more than one-third of the dictionary, poetic language at last becomes so restricted as to compel a man with anything to say not to express himself in verse.[3218]

On the other hand the more you prune the more you thin out. Reduced to a select vocabulary the Frenchman deals with fewer subjects, but he describes them more agreeably and more clearly. "Courtesy, accuracy", (Urbanité, exactitude!), these two words, born at the same time with the French Academy, describes in a nutshell the reform of which it is the tool, and which the drawing-room, by it, and alongside of it, imposes on the public. Grand seigniors in retirement, and unoccupied fine ladies, enjoy the examination of the subtleties of words for the purpose of composing maxims, definitions and characters. With admirable scrupulousness and infinitely delicate tact, writers and people society apply themselves to weighing each word and each phrase in order to fix its sense, to measure its force and bearing, to determine its affinities, use and connections This work of precision is carried on from the earliest academicians, Vaugelas, Chapelain and Conrart, to the end of the classic epoch, in the Synonymes by Bauzée and by Girard, in the Remarque by Duclos, in the Commentaire by Voltaire on Corneille, in the Lycée by la Harpe,[3219] in the efforts, the example, the practice and the authority of the great and the inferior writers of which all are correct. Never did architects, obliged to use ordinary broken highway stones in building, better understand each piece, its dimensions, its shape, its resistance, its possible connections and suitable position.--Once this was learned, the task was to construct with the least trouble and with the utmost solidity; the grammar was consequently changed at the same time and in the same way as the dictionary. Hence no longer permitting the words to reflect the way impressions and emotions were felt; they now had to be regularly and rigorously assigned according to the invariable hierarchy of concepts. The writer may no longer begin his text with the leading figure or the main purpose of his story; the setting is given and the places assigned beforehand. Each part of the discourse has its own place; no omission or transposition is permitted, as was done in the sixteenth century[3220]. All parts must be included, each in its definite place: at first the subject of the sentence with its appendices, then the verb, then the object direct, and, finally, the indirect connections. In this way the sentence forms a graduated scaffolding, the substance coming foremost, then the quality, then the modes and varieties of the quality, just as a good architect in the first place poses his foundation, then the building, then the accessories, economically and prudently, with a view to adapt each section of the edifice to the support of the section following after it. No sentence demands any less attention than another, nor is there any in which one may not at every step verify the connection or incoherence of the parts.[3221]--The procedure used in arranging a simple sentence also governs that of the period, the paragraph and the series of paragraphs; it forms the style as it forms the syntax. Each small edifice occupies a distinct position, and but one, in the great total edifice. As the discourse advances, each section must in turn file in, never before, never after, no parasitic member being allowed to intrude, and no regular member being allowed to encroach on its neighbor, while all these members bound together by their very positions must move onward, combining all their forces on one single point. Finally, we have for the first time in a writing, natural and distinct groups, complete and compact harmonies, none of which infringe on the others or allow others to infringe on them. It is no longer allowable to write haphazard, according to the caprice of one's inspiration, to discharge one's ideas in bulk, to let oneself be interrupted by parentheses, to string along interminable rows of citations and enumerations. An end is proposed; some truth is to be demonstrated, some definition to be ascertained, some conviction to be brought about; to do this we must march, and ever directly onward. Order, sequence, progress, proper transitions, constant development constitute the characteristics of this style. To such an extent is this pushed, that from the very first, personal correspondence, romances, humorous pieces, and all ironical and gallant effusions, consist of morsels of systematic eloquence.[3222] At the Hôtel Rambouillet, the explanatory period is displayed with as much fullness and as rigorously as with Descartes himself. One of the words most frequently occurring with Mme. de Scudéry is the conjunction for (in French car). Passion is worked out through close-knit arguments. Drawing room compliments stretch along in sentences as finished as those of an academical dissertation. Scarcely completed, the instrument already discloses its aptitudes. We are aware of its being made to explain, to demonstrate, to persuade and to popularize. Condillac, a century later, is justified in saying that it is in itself a systematic means of decomposition and of recomposition, a scientific method analogous to arithmetic and algebra. At the very least it possesses the incontestable advantage of starting with a few ordinary terms, and of leading the reader along with facility and promptness, by a series of simple combinations, up to the loftiest.[3223] By virtue of this, in 1789, the French tongue ranks above every other. The Berlin Academy promises a prize to for anyone who best can explain its pre-eminence. It is spoken throughout Europe. No other language is used in diplomacy. As formerly with Latin, it is international, and appears that, from now on, it is to be the preferred tool whenever men are to reason.

It is the organ only of a certain kind of reasoning, la raison raisonnante, that requiring the least preparation for thought, giving itself as little trouble as possible, content with its acquisitions, taking no pains to increase or renew them, incapable of, or unwilling to embrace the plenitude and complexity of the facts of real life. In its purism, in its disdain of terms suited to the occasion, in its avoidance of lively sallies, in the extreme regularity of its developments, the classic style is powerless to fully portray or to record the infinite and varied details of experience. It rejects any description of the outward appearance of reality, the immediate impressions of the eyewitness, the heights and depths of passion, the physiognomy, at once so composite yet absolute personal, of the breathing individual, in short, that unique harmony of countless traits, blended together and animated, which compose not human character in general but one

## particular personality, and which a Saint-Simon, a Balzac, or a

Shakespeare himself could not render if the rich language they used, and which was enhanced by their temerities, did not contribute its subtleties to the multiplied details of their observation.[3224] Neither the Bible, nor Homer, nor Dante, nor Shakespeare[3225] could be translated with this style. Read Hamlet's monologue in Voltaire and see what remains of it, an abstract piece of declamation, with about as much of the original in it as there is of Othello in his Orosmane. Look at Homer and then at Fenelon in the island of Calypso; the wild, rocky island, where "gulls and other sea-birds with long wings," build their nests, becomes in pure French prose an orderly park arranged "for the pleasure of the eye." In the eighteenth century, contemporary novelists, themselves belonging to the classic epoch, Fielding, Swift, Defoe, Sterne and Richardson, are admitted into France only after excisions and much weakening; their expressions are too free and their scenes are to impressive; their freedom, their coarseness, their peculiarities, would form blemishes; the translator abbreviates, softens, and sometimes, in his preface, apologizes for what he retains. Room is found, in this language, only for a partial lifelikeness, for some of the truth, a scanty portion, and which constant refining daily renders still more scanty. Considered in itself, the classic style is always tempted to accept slight, insubstantial commonplaces for its subject materials. It spins them out, mingles and weaves them together; only a fragile filigree, however, issues from its logical apparatus; we may admire the elegant workmanship; but in practice, the work is of little, none, or negative service.

From these characteristics of style we divine those of the mind for which it serves as a tool.--Two principal operations constitute the

## activity of the human understanding.--Observing things and events,

it receives a more or less complete, profound and exact impression of these; and after this, turning away from them, it analyses its impressions, and classifies, distributes, and more or less skillfully expresses the ideas derived from them.--In the second of these operations the classicist is superior. Obliged to adapt himself to his audience, that is to say, to people of society who are not specialists and yet critical, he necessarily carries to perfection the art of exciting attention and of making himself heard; that is to say, the art of composition and of writing.--With patient industry, and multiplied precautions, he carries the reader along with him by a series of easy rectilinear conceptions, step by step, omitting none, beginning with the lowest and thus ascending to the highest, always progressing with steady and measured peace, securely and agreeably as on a promenade. No interruption or diversion is possible: on either side, along the road, balustrades keep him within bounds, each idea extending into the following one by such an insensible transition, that he involuntarily advances, without stopping or turning aside, until brought to the final truth where he is to be seated. Classic literature throughout bears the imprint of this talent; there is no branch of it into which the qualities of a good discourse do not enter and form a part.--They dominate those sort of works which, in themselves, are only half-literary, but which, by its help, become fully so, transforming manuscripts into fine works of art which their subject-matter would have classified as scientific works, as reports of action, as historical documents, as philosophical treatises, as doctrinal expositions, as sermons, polemics, dissertations and demonstrations. It transforms even dictionaries and operates from Descartes to Condillac, from Bossuet to Buffon and Voltaire, from Pascal to Rousseau and Beaumarchais, in short, becoming prose almost entirely, even in official dispatches, diplomatic and private correspondence, from Madame de Sévigné to Madame du Deffant; including so many perfect letters flowing from the pens of women who were unaware of it.--Such prose is paramount in those works which, in themselves, are literary, but which derive from it an oratorical turn. Not only does it impose a rigid plan, a regular distribution of parts[3226] in dramatic works, accurate proportions, suppressions and connections, a sequence and progress, as in a passage of eloquence, but again it tolerates only the most perfect discourse. There is no character that is not an accomplished orator; with Corneille and Racine, with Molière himself, the confidant, the barbarian king, the young cavalier, the drawing room coquette, the valet, all show themselves adepts in the use of language. Never have we encountered such adroit introductions, such well-arranged evidence, such just reflections, such delicate transitions, such conclusive summing ups. Never have dialogues borne such a strong resemblance to verbal sparring matches. Each narration, each portrait, each detail of action, might be detached and serve as a good example for schoolboys, along with the masterpieces of the ancient tribune. So strong is this tendency that, on the approach of the final moment, in the agony of death, alone and without witnesses, the character finds the means to plead his own frenzy and die eloquently.

II. Its Original Deficiency.

Its original deficiency.--Signs of this in the 17th century.--It grows with time and success.--Proofs of this growth in the 18th century.--Serious poetry, the drama, history and romances.--Short-sighted views of man and of human existence.

This excess indicates a deficiency. In the two operations which the human mind performs, the classicist is more successful in the second than in the first. The second, indeed, stands in the way of the first, the obligation of always speaking correctly makes him refrain from saying all that ought to be said. With him the form is more important than abundant contents, the firsthand observations which serve as a living source losing, in the regulated channels to which they are confined, their force, depth and impetuosity. Real poetry, able to convey dream and illusion, cannot be brought forth. Lyric poetry proves abortive, and likewise the epic poem.[3227] Nothing sprouts on these distant fields, remote and sublime, where speech unites with music and painting. Never do we hear the involuntary scream of intense torment, the lonely confession of a distraught soul,[3228] pouring out his heart to relieve himself. When a creation of characters is imperative, as in dramatic poetry, the classic mold fashions but one kind, that which through education, birth, or impersonation, always speak correctly, in other words, like so many people of high society. No others are portrayed on the stage or elsewhere, from Corneille and Racine to Marivaux and Beaumarchais. So strong is the habit that it imposes itself even on La Fontaine's animals, on the servants of Molière, on Montesquieu's Persians, and on the Babylonians, the Indians and the Micromégas of Voltaire.--It must be stated, furthermore, that these characters are only partly real. In real persons two kinds of characteristics may be noted; the first, few in number, which he or she shares with others of their kind and which any reader readily may identify; and the other kind, of which there are a great many, describing only one particular person and these are much more difficult to discover. Classic art concerns itself only with the former; it purposely effaces, neglects or subordinates the latter. It does not build individual persons but generalized characters, a king, a queen, a young prince, a confidant, a high-priest, a captain of the guards, seized by some passion, habit or inclination, such as love, ambition, fidelity or perfidy, a despotic or a yielding temper, some species of wickedness or of native goodness. As to the circumstances of time and place, which, amongst others, exercise a most powerful influence in shaping and diversifying man, it hardly notes them, even setting them aside. In a tragedy the scene is set everywhere and any time, the contrary, that the action takes place nowhere in no specific epoch, is equally valid. It may take place in any palace or in any temple,[3229] in which, to get rid of all historic or personal impressions, habits and costumes are introduced conventionally, being neither French nor foreign, nor ancient, nor modern. In this abstract world the address is always "you"(as opposed to the familiar thou),[3230] "Seigneur" and "Madame," the noble style always clothing the most different characters in the same dress. When Corneille and Racine, through the stateliness and elegance of their verse, afford us a glimpse of contemporary figures they do it unconsciously, imagining that they are portraying man in himself; and, if we of the present time recognize in their pieces either the gentleman, the duelists, the bullies, the politicians or the heroines of the Fronde, or the courtiers, princes and bishops, the ladies and gentlemen in waiting of the regular monarchy, it is because they have inadvertently dipped their brush in their own experience, some of its color having fallen accidentally on the bare ideal outline which they wished to trace. We have simply a contour, a general sketch, filled up with the harmonious gray tone of correct diction.--Even in comedy, necessarily employing current habits, even with Molière, so frank and so bold, the model is unfinished, all individual peculiarities being suppressed, the face becoming for a moment a theatrical mask, and the personage, especially when talking in verse, sometimes losing its animation in becoming the mouth-piece for a monologue or a dissertation.[3231] The stamp of rank, condition or fortune, whether gentleman or bourgeois, provincial or Parisian, is frequently overlooked.[3232] We are rarely made to appreciate physical externals, as in Shakespeare, the temperament, the state of the nervous system, the bluff or drawling tone, the impulsive or restrained action, the emaciation or obesity of a character.[3233] Frequently no trouble is taken to find a suitable name, this being either Chrysale, Orgon, Damis, Dorante, or Valère. The name designates only a simple quality, that of a father, a youth, a valet, a grumbler, a gallant, and, like an ordinary cloak, fitting indifferently all forms alike, as it passes from the wardrobe of Molière to that of Regnard, Destouche, Lesage or Marivaux.[3234] The character lacks the personal badge, the unique, authentic appellation serving as the primary stamp of an individual. All these details and circumstances, all these aids and accompaniments of a man, remain outside of the classic theory. To secure the admission of some of them required the genius of Molière, the fullness of his conception, the wealth of his observation, the extreme freedom of his pen. It is equally true again that he often omits them, and that, in other cases, he introduces only a small number of them, because he avoids giving to these general characters a richness and complexity that might interfere with the story. The simpler the theme the clearer its development, the first duty of the author throughout this literature being to clearly develop the restricted theme of which he makes a selection.

There is, accordingly, a radical defect in the classic spirit, the defect of its qualities, and which, at first kept within proper bounds, contributes towards the production of its purest master-pieces, but which, in accordance with the universal law, goes on increasing and turns into a vice through the natural effect of age, use, and success. Contracted at the start, it is to become yet more so. In the eighteenth century the description of real life, of a specific person, just as he is in nature and in history, that is to say, an undefined unit, a rich plexus, a complete organism of peculiarities and traits, superposed, entangled and co-ordinated, is improper. The capacity to receive and contain all these is wanting. Whatever can be discarded is cast aside, and to such an extent that nothing is left at last but a condensed extract, an evaporated residuum, an almost empty name, in short, what is called a hollow abstraction. The only characters in the eighteenth century exhibiting any life are the off-hand sketches, made in passing and as if contraband, by Voltaire, Baron de Thundertentronk and Milord Watthen, the lesser figures in his stories, and five or six portraits of secondary rank, Turcaret, Gil Blas, Marianne, Manon Lescaut, Rameau, and Figaro, two or three of the rough sketches of Crébillon the younger and of Collé, all so many works in which sap flows through a familiar knowledge of things, comparable with those of the minor masters in painting, Watteau, Fragonard, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, Lancret, Pater, and Beaudouin, and which, accepted with difficulty, or as a surprise, by the official drawing room are still to subsist after the grander and soberer canvases shall have become moldy through their wearisome exhalations. Everywhere else the sap dries up, and, instead of blooming plants, we encounter only flowers of painted paper. What are all the serious poems, from the "la Henriade" of Voltaire to the "Mois" by Roucher or the "l'Imagination" by Delille, but so many pieces of rhetoric garnished with rhymes? Examine the innumerable tragedies and comedies of which Grimm and Collé gives us mortuary extracts, even the meritorious works of Voltaire and Crébillon, and later, those of authors of repute, Du Belloy, Laharpe, Ducis, and Marie Chénier? Eloquence, art, situations, correct verse, all exist in these except human nature; the personages are simply well-taught puppets, and generally mere mouthpieces by which the author makes his declamation public; Greeks, Romans, Medieval knights, Turks, Arabs, Peruvians, Giaours, or Byzantines, they have all the same declamatory mechanisms. The public, meanwhile, betrays no surprise. It is not aware of history. It assumes that humanity is everywhere the same. It establishes the success alike of the "Incas" by Marmontel, and of "Gonsalve" and the "Nouvelles" by Florian; also of the peasants, mechanics, Negroes, Brazilians, Parsees, and Malabarites that appear before it churning out their exaggerations. Man is simply regarded as a reasoning being, alike in all ages and alike in all places; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre endows his pariah with this habit, like Diderot, in his Tahitians. The one recognized principle is that every human being must think and talk like a book.--And how inadequate their historical background! With the exception of "Charles XII.," a contemporary on whom Voltaire, thanks to eye eye-witnesses, bestows fresh life, also his spirited sketches of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians and Germans, scattered through his stories, where are real persons to be found? With Hume, Gibbon and Robertson, belonging to the French school, and who are at once adopted in France, in the researches into our middle ages of Dubos and of Mably, in the "Louis XI" of Duclos, in the "Anarcharsis" of Barthélemy, even in the "Essai sur les Moeurs," and in the "Siecle de Louis XIV" of Voltaire, even in the "Grandeur des Romains," and the "Esprit des Lois" of Montesquieu, what peculiar deficiency! Erudition, criticism, common sense, an almost exact exposition of dogmas and of institutions, philosophic views of the relationships between events and on the general run of these, nothing is lacking but the people! On reading these it seems as if the climates, institutions and civilizations which so completely modifies the human intellect, are simply so many outworks, so many fortuitous exteriors, which, far from reflecting its depths scarcely penetrate beneath its surface. The vast differences separating the men of two centuries, or of two peoples, escape them entirely.[3235] The ancient Greek, the early Christian, the conquering Teuton, the feudal man, the Arab of Mahomet, the German, the Renaissance Englishman, the puritan, appear in their books as in engravings and frontispieces, with some difference in costume, but the same bodies, the same faces, the same countenances, toned down, obliterated, proper, adapted to the conventionalities of good manners. That sympathetic imagination by which the writer enters into the mind of another, and reproduces in himself a system of habits and feelings so different from his own, is the talent the most absent in the eighteenth century. With the exception of Diderot, who uses it badly and capriciously, it almost entirely disappears in the last half of the century. Consider in turn, during the same period, in France and in England, where it is most extensively used, the romance, a sort of mirror everywhere transportable, the best adapted to reflect all phrases of nature and of life. After reading the series of English novelists, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith down to Miss Burney and Miss Austen, I have become familiar with England in the eighteenth century; I have encountered clergymen, country gentlemen, farmers, innkeepers, sailors, people of every condition in life, high and low; I know the details of fortunes and of careers, how much is earned, how much is expended, how journeys are made and how people eat and drink: I have accumulated for myself a file of precise biographical events, a complete picture in a thousand scenes of an entire community, the amplest stock of information to guide me should I wish to frame a history of this vanished world. On reading a corresponding list of French novelists, the younger Crébillon, Rousseau, Marmontel, Laclos, Restif de la Breton, Louvet, Madame de Staël, Madame de Genlis and the rest, including Mercier and even Mme. Cottin, I scarcely take any notes; all precise and instructive little facts are left out; I find civilities, polite acts, gallantries, mischief-making, social dissertations and nothing else. They carefully abstain from mentioning money, from giving me figures, from describing a wedding, a trial, the administration of a piece of property; I am ignorant of the situation of a curate, of a rustic noble, of a resident prior, of a steward, of an intendant. Whatever relates to a province or to the rural districts, to the bourgeoisie or to the shop,[3236] to the army or to a soldier, to the clergy or to convents, to justice or to the police, to business or to housekeeping remains vaguely in my mind or is falsified; to clear up any point I am obliged to recur to that marvelous Voltaire who, on laying aside the great classic coat, finds plenty of elbow room and tells all. On the organs of society of vital importance, on the practices and regulations that provoke revolutions, on feudal rights and seigniorial justice, on the mode of recruiting and governing monastic bodies, on the revenue measures of the provinces, of corporations and of trade-unions, on the tithes and the corvées,[3237] literature provides me with scarcely any information. Drawing-rooms and men of letters are apparently its sole material. The rest is null and void. Outside the good society that is able to converse France appears perfectly empty.--On the approach of the Revolution the elimination increases. Look through the harangues of the clubs and of the tribune, through reports, legislative bills and pamphlets, and through the mass of writings prompted by passing and exciting events; in none of them do we see any sign of the human creature as we see him in the fields and in the street; he is always regarded as a simple robot, a well known mechanism. Among writers he was a moment ago a dispenser of commonplaces, among politicians he is now a pliable voter; touch him in the proper place and he responds in the desired manner. Facts are never apparent; only abstractions, long arrays of sentences on nature, Reason, and the people, on tyrants and liberty, like inflated balloons, uselessly conflicting with each other in space. Were we not aware that all this would terminate in terrible practical effects then we could regard it as competition in logic, as school exercises, academic parades, or ideological compositions. It is, in fact, Ideology, the last product of the century, which will stamp the classic spirit with its final formula and last word.

III. The Mathematical Method.

The philosophic method in conformity with the Classic Sprit. --Ideology.--Abuse of the mathematical process.--Condillac, Rousseau, Mably, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyès, Cabanis, and de Tracy.--Excesses of simplification and boldness of organization.

The natural process of the classic spirit is to pursue in every research, with the utmost confidence, without either reserve or precaution, the mathematical method: to derive, limit and isolate a few of the simplest generalized notions and then, setting experience aside, comparing them, combining them, and, from the artificial compound thus obtained, by pure reasoning, deduce all the consequences they involve. It is so deeply implanted as to be equally encountered in both centuries, as well with Descartes, Malebranche[3238] and the partisans of innate ideas as with the partisans of sensation, of physical needs and of primary instinct, Condillac, Rousseau, Helvétius, and later, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyès, Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy. In vain do the latter assert that they are the followers of Bacon and reject (the theory of) innate ideas; with another starting point than the Cartesians they pursue the same path, and, as with the Cartesians, after borrowing a little, they leave experience behind them. In this vast moral and social world, they only remove the superficial bark from the human tree with its innumerable roots and branches; they are unable to penetrate to or grasp at anything beyond it; their hands cannot contain more. They have no suspicion of anything outside of it; the classic spirit, with limited comprehension, is not far-reaching. To them the bark is the entire tree, and, the operation once completed, they retire, bearing along with them the dry, dead epidermis, never returning to the trunk itself. Through intellectual incapacity and literary pride they omit the characteristic detail, the animating fact, the specific circumstance, the significant, convincing and complete example. Scarcely one of these is found in the "Logique" and in the "Traité des Sensations" by Condillac, in the "Idéologie" by Destutt de Tracy, or in the "Rapports du Physique et du Morale" by Cabanis.[3239] Never, with them, are we on the solid and visible ground of personal observation and narration, but always in the air, in the empty space of pure generalities. Condillac declares that the arithmetical method is adapted to psychology and that the elements of our ideas can be defined by a process analogous "to the rule of three." Sieyès holds history in profound contempt, and believes that he had "perfected the science of politics"[3240] at one stroke, through an effort of the brain, in the style of Descartes, who thus discovers analytic geometry. Destutt de Tracy, in undertaking to comment on Montesquieu, finds that the great historian has too servilely confined himself to history, and attempts to do the work over again by organizing society as it should be, instead of studying society as it is.--Never were such systematic and superficial institutions built up with such a moderate extract of human nature.[3241] Condillac, employing sensation, animates a statue, and then, by a process of pure reasoning, following up its effects, as he supposes, on smell, taste, hearing, sight and touch, fashions a complete human soul. Rousseau, by means of a contract, founds political association, and, with this given idea, pulls down the constitution, government and laws of every balanced social system. In a book which serves as the philosophical testament of the century,[3242] Condorcet declares that this method is the "final step of philosophy, that which places a sort of eternal barrier between humanity and its ancient infantile errors." "By applying it to morals, politics and political economy the moral sciences have progressed nearly as much as the natural sciences. With its help we have been able to discover the rights of man." As in mathematics, they have been deduced from one primordial statement only, which statement, similar to a first principle in mathematics, becomes a fact of daily experience, seen by all and therefore self-evident.--This school of thought is to endure throughout the Revolution, the Empire and even into the Restoration,[3243] together with the tragedy of which it is the sister, with the classic spirit their common parent, a primordial, sovereign power, as dangerous as it is useful, as destructive as it is creative, as capable of propagating error as truth, as astonishing in the rigidity of its code, the narrow-mindedness of its yoke and in the uniformity of its works as in the duration of its reign and the universality of its ascendancy.[3244]

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 3201: Voltaire, "Dict. Phil.," see the articles on Language. "Of all the languages in Europe the French is most generally used because it is the best adapted to conversation. Its character is derived from that of the people who speak it. For more than a hundred and fifty years past, the French have been the most familiar with (good) society and the first to avoid all embarrassment. . . It is a better currency than any other, even if it should lack weight."]

[Footnote 3202: HIST: honnête homme means gentleman. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3203: Descartes, ed. Cousin, XI. 333, I. 121,. . . Descartes depreciates "simple knowledge acquired without the aid of reflection, such as languages, history, geography, and, generally, whatever is not based on experience. . . . It is no more the duty of an honest man to know Greek or Latin than to know the Swiss or Breton languages, nor the history of the Romano-Germanic empire any more than of the smallest country in Europe."]

[Footnote 3204: Molière, "Les Femmes Savantes," and "La Critique de l'école des femmes." The parts of Dorante with Lycidas and of Clitandre with Trissotin.]

[Footnote 3205: The learned Huet, (1630-1721), true to the taste of the sixteenth century, describes this change very well from his point of view. "When I entered the world of letters these were still flourishing; great reputations maintained their supremacy. I have seen letters decline and finally reach an almost entire decay. For I scarcely know a person of the present time that one can truly call a savant." The few Benedictines like Ducange and Mabillon, and later, the academician Fréret, the president Bouhier of Dijon, in short, the veritable erudites exercise no influence.]

[Footnote 3206: Nicole, "Oeuvres morales," in the second essay on Charity and Self-love, 142.]

[Footnote 3207: Voltaire, "Dialogues," "L'intendant des menus et l'abbé Grizel," 129.]

[Footnote 3208: Maury adds with his accustomed coarseness, "We, in the French Academy, looked upon the members of the Academy of Sciences as our valets."--These valets at that time consisted of Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Lagrange, Laplace, etc. (A narrative by Joseph de Maistre, quote by Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," IV. 283.)]

[Footnote 3209: This description makes me think of the contemporary attitudes pejoratively called "politically correctness." Thus the drawings-room audience of the 18th century have today been replaced by the "political correct" elite holding sway in teacher training schools, schools of journalism, the media and hence among the television public. The same mechanism which moved the upper class in the 18th century moves it in the 20th century.. (S.R.)]

[Footnote 3210: Today in 1999 we may speak of the TV mold forced by the measured popularity or "ratings" of the programs. (SR.]

[Footnote 3211: Vaugelas, "Remarques sur la langue française:" "It is the mode of speech of the most sensible portion of the court, as well as the mode of writing of the most sensible authors of the day. It is better to consult women and those who have not studied than those who are very learned in Greek and in Latin."]

[Footnote 3212: One of the causes of the fall and discredit of the Marquis d'Argenson in the eighteenth century, was his habit of using these.]

[Footnote 3213: Vaugelas, ibid.. "Although we may have eliminated one-half of his phrases and terms we nevertheless obtain in the other half all the riches of which we boast and of which we make a display."--Compare together a lexicon of two or three writers of the sixteenth century and one of two or three writers of the seventeenth. A brief statement of the results of the comparison is here given. Let any one, with pen in hand, note the differences on a hundred pages of any of these texts, and he will be surprised at it. Take, for examples, two writers of the same category, and of secondary grade, Charron and Nicole.]

[Footnote 3214: For instance, in the article "Ignorance," in the "Dict. Philosophique."]

[Footnote 3215: La Harpe, "Cours de Littérature," ed. Didot. II. 142.]

[Footnote 3216: A battle-axe used by the Franks.--TR.]

[Footnote 3217: I cite an example haphazard from the "Optimiste" (1788), by Colin d'Harleville. In a certain description, "The scene represents a bosquet filled with odoriferous trees."--The classic spirit rebels against stating the species of tree, whether lilacs, lindens or hawthorns.--In paintings of landscapes of this era we have the same thing, the trees being generalized,--of no known species.]

[Footnote 3218: This evolution is seen today as well, television having the same effect upon its actors as the 18th century drawing-room. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3219: See in the "Lycée," by la Harpe, after the analysis of each piece, his remarks on detail in style.]

[Footnote 3220: The omission of the pronouns, I, he, we, you, they, the article the, and of the verb, especially the verb to be.--Any page of Rabelais, Amyot or Montaigne, suffices to show how numerous and various were the transpositions.]

[Footnote 3221: Vaugelas, ibid. "No language is more inimical to ambiguities and every species of obscurity."]

[Footnote 3222: See the principal romances of the seventeenth century, the "Roman Bourgeois," by Furetière, the "Princess de Clèves," by Madame de Lafayette, the "Clélie," by Mme. de Scudéry, and even Scarron's "Roman Comique."--See Balzac's letters, and those of Voiture and their correspondents, the "Récit des grands jours d'Auvergne," by Fléchier, etc. On the oratorical peculiarities of this style cf. Sainte-Beuve, "Port-Royal," 2nd ed. I. 515.]

[Footnote 3223: Voltaire, 'Esay sur le poème épique', "Our nation, regarded by strangers as superficial is, with the pen in its hand, the wisest of all. Method is the dominant quality of all our writers."]

[Footnote 3224: Milton's works are built up with 8,000. "Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words and the Old Testament says all it has to say with 5,642 words." (Max Müller, "Lectures on the Science of language," I. 309.)--It would be interesting to place alongside of this Racine's restricted vocabulary. That of Mme. de Scudery is extremely limited. In the best romance of the XVIIth century, the "Princesse de Clèves," the number of words is reduced to the minimum. The Dictionary of the old French Academy contains 29,712 words; the Greek Thesaurus, by H. Estienne, contains about 150,000.]

[Footnote 3225: Compare together the translations of the Bible made by de Sacy and Luther; those of Homer by Dacier, Bitaubé and Lecomte de Lisle; those of Herodotus, by Larcher and Courrier, the popular tales of Perrault and those by Grimm, etc.]

[Footnote 3226: See the "Discours académique," by Racine, on the reception of Thomas Corneille: "In this chaos of dramatic poetry your illustrious brother brought Reason on the stage, but Reason associated with all the pomp and the ornamentation our language is capable of."]

[Footnote 3227: Voltaire, "Essay sur le poème épique," 290. "It must be admitted that a Frenchman has more difficulty in writing an epic poem than anybody else. . . . Dare I confess it? Our own is the least poetic of all polished nations. The works in verse the most highly esteemed in France are those of the drama, which must be written in a familiar style approaching conversation."]

[Footnote 3228: Except in "Pensées," by Pascal, a few notes dotted down by a morbidly exalted Christian, and which certainly, in the perfect work, would not have been allowed to remain as they are.]

[Footnote 3229: See in the Cabinet of Engravings the theatrical costumes of the middle of the XVIIIth century.--Nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of the classic drama than the parts of Esther and Brittannicus, as they are played nowadays, in the accurate costumes and with scenery derived from late discoveries at Pompeii or Nineveh.]

[Footnote 3230: The formality which this indicates will be understood by those familiar with the use of the pronoun thou in France, denoting intimacy and freedom from restraint in contrast with ceremonious and formal intercourse.--Tr.]

[Footnote 3231: See the parts of the moralizers and reasoners like Cléante in "Tartuffe," Ariste in "Les Femmes Savantes," Chrysale in "L'Ecole des Femmes," etc. See the discussion between the two brothers in "Le Festin de Pierre," III. 5; the discourse of Ergaste in "L'Ecole des Maris"; that of Eliante, imitated from Lucretius in the "Misanthrope," II. 5; the portraiture, by Dorine in "Tartuffe," I. 1.--The portrait of the hypocrite, by Don Juan in "Le Festin de Pierre," V. 2.]

[Footnote 3232: For instance the parts of Harpagon and Arnolphe.]

[Footnote 3233: We see this in Tartuffe, but only through an expression of Dorine, and not directly. Cf. in Shakespeare, the parts of Coriolanus, Hotspur, Falstaff, Othello, Cleopatra, etc.]

[Footnote 3234: Balzac passed entire days in reading the "Almanach des cent mille adresses," also in a cab in the streets during the afternoons, examining signs for the purpose of finding suitable names for his characters. This little circumstance shows the difference between two diverse conceptions of mankind.]

[Footnote 3235: "At the present day, whatever may be said, there is no such thing as Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, and Englishmen, for all are Europeans. All have the same tastes, the same passions, the same habits, none having obtained a national form through any specific institution." Rousseau, "Sur le gouvernement de Pologne," 170.]

[Footnote 3236: Previous to 1750 we find something about these in "Gil-Blas," and in "Marianne," (Mme. Dufour the sempstress and her shop).--Unfortunately the Spanish travesty prevents the novels of Lesage from being as instructive as they might be.]

[Footnote 3237: Interesting details are found in the little stories by Diderot as, for instance, "Les deux amis de Bourbonne." But elsewhere he is a partisan, especially in the "Religieuse," and conveys a false impression of things.]

[Footnote 3238: "To attain to the truth we have only to fix our attention on the ideas which each one finds within his own mind." (Malebranche, "Recherche de la Vérité," book I. ch. 1.)--"Those long chains of reasoning, all simple and easy, which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, suggested to me that all things which come within human knowledge must follow each other in a similar chain." (Descartes, "Discours de la Methode," I. 142).--In the seventeenth century In the 17th century constructions a priori were based on ideas, in the 18th century on sensations, but always following the same mathematical method fully displayed in the "Ethics" of Spinoza.]

[Footnote 3239: See especially his memoir: "De l'influence du climat sur les habitudes morales," vague, and wholly barren of illustrations excepting one citation from Hippocrates.]

[Footnote 3240: These are Sieyès own words.--He adds elsewhere, "There is no more reality in assumed historical truths than in assumed religious truths." ("Papiers de Sieyès," the year 1772, according to Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," V. 194).--Descartes and Malebranche already expressed this contempt for history.]

[Footnote 3241: Today, in 1998, we know that Taine was right. The research on animal and human behavior, on animal and human brain circuitry, and the behavior of the cruel human animal during the 20th century, confirmed his views. Still mankind persists in preferring simple solutions and ideas to complex ones. This is the way our brains and our nature as gregarious animals make us think and feel. This our basic human nature make ambitious men able to appeal to and dominate the crowd. (SR.)]

[Footnote 3242: Condorcet, "Esquisse d'un tableau historique de l'esprit humain," ninth epoch.]

[Footnote 3243: See the "Tableau historique," presented to the Institute by Chénier in 1808, showing by its statements that the classic spirit still prevails in all branches of literature.--Cabanis died in 1818, Volney in 1820, de Tracy and Sieyès in 1836, Daunou in 1840. In May, 1845, Saphary and Valette are still professors of Condillac's philosophy in the two lycées in Paris.]

[Footnote 3244: The world did not heed Taine's warnings. The leaders and the masses of the Western world were to be seduced by the terrible new ideologies of the 20th century. The ideology of socialism persists making good use of the revised 20th century editions of the Rights of Man, enlarged to cover the physical well-being and standard of living of man, woman, child and animal and in this manner allowing the state to replace all individual responsibility and authority, thus, as Taine saw, dealing a death blow to the family, to individual responsibility and enterprise and to effective local government. (SR.).]

## CHAPTER III. COMBINATION OF THE TWO ELEMENTS.

I. Birth Of A Doctrine, A Revelation.

The doctrine, its pretensions, and its character.--A new authority for Reason in the regulation of human affairs.-- Government thus far traditional.

OUT of the scientific acquisitions thus set forth, elaborated by the spirit we have just described, is born a doctrine, seemingly a revelation, and which, under this title, was to claim the government of human affairs. On the approach of 1789 it is generally admitted that man is living in "a century of light," in "the age of Reason;" that, previously, the human species was in its infancy and that now it has attained to its "majority." Truth, finally, is made manifest and, for the first time, its reign on earth is apparent. The right is supreme because it is truth itself. It must direct all things because through its nature it is universal. The philosophy of the eighteenth century, in these two articles of faith, resembles a religion, the Puritanism of the seventeenth century, and Islam in the seventh century. We see the same outburst of faith, hope and enthusiasm, the same spirit of propaganda and of dominion, the same rigidity and intolerance, the same ambition to recast man and to remodel human life according to a preconceived type. The new doctrine is also to have its scholars, its dogmas, its popular catechism, its fanatics, its inquisitors and its martyrs. It is to speak as loudly as those preceding it, as a legitimate authority to which dictatorship belongs by right of birth, and against which rebellion is criminal or insane. It differs, however, from the preceding religions in this respect, that instead of imposing itself in the name of God, it imposes itself in the name of Reason.

The authority, indeed, was a new one. Up to this time, in the control of human actions and opinions, Reason had played but a small and subordinate part. Both the motive and its direction were obtained elsewhere; faith and obedience were an inheritance; a man was a Christian and a subject because he was born Christian and subject.--Surrounding the nascent philosophy and the Reason which enters upon its great investigation, is a system of recognized laws, an established power, a reigning religion; all the stones of this structure hold together and each story is supported by a preceding story. But what does the common cement consist of, and where is the basic foundation?--Who sanctions all these civil regulations which control marriages, testaments, inheritances, contracts, property and persons, these fanciful and often contradictory regulations? In the first place immemorial custom, varying according to the province, according to the title to the soil, according to the quality and condition of the person; and next, the will of the king who caused the custom to be inscribed and who sanctioned it.--Who authorizes this will, this sovereignty of the prince, this first of public obligations? In the first place, eight centuries of possession, a hereditary right similar to that by which each one enjoys his own field and domain, a property established in a family and transmitted from one eldest son to another, from the first founder of the State to his last living successor; and, in addition to this, a religion directing men to submit to the constituted powers.--And who, finally, authorizes this religion? At first, eighteen centuries of tradition, the immense series of anterior and concordant proofs, the steady belief of sixty preceding generations; and after this, at the beginning of it, the presence and teachings of Christ, then, farther back, the creation of the world, the command and the voice of God.--Thus, throughout the moral and social order of things the past justifies the present; antiquity provides its title, and if beneath all these supports which age has consolidated, the deep primitive rock is sought for in subterranean depths, we find it in the divine will.--During the whole of the seventeenth century this theory still absorbs all souls in the shape of a fixed habit and of inward respect; it is not open to question. It is regarded in the same light as the heart of the living body; whoever would lay his hand upon it would instantly draw back, moved by a vague sentiment of its ceasing to beat in case it were touched. The most independent, with Descartes at the head, "would be grieved" at being confounded with those chimerical speculators who, instead of pursuing the beaten track of custom, dart blindly forward "in a direct line across mountains and over precipices." In subjecting their belief to systematic investigation not only do they leave out and set apart "the truths of faith,"[3301] but again the dogma they think they have thrown out remains in their mind latent and active, to guide them on unconsciously and to convert their philosophy into a preparation for, or a confirmation of, Christianity.[3302]--Summing it all up, faith, the performance of religious duties, with religious and political institutions, are at base of all thought of the seventeenth century. Reason, whether she admits it or is ignorant of it, is only a subaltern, an oratorical agency, a setter-in-motion, forced by religion and the monarchy to labor in their behalf. With the exception of La Fontaine, whom I regard as unique in this as in other matters, the greatest and most independent, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, La Bruyère, borrows from the established society their basic concepts of nature, man, society, law and government.[3303] So long as Reason is limited to this function its work is that of a councilor of State, an extra preacher dispatched by its superiors on a missionary tour in the departments of philosophy and of literature. Far from proving destructive it consolidates; in fact, even down to the Regency, its chief employment is to produce good Christians and loyal subjects.

But now the roles are reversed; tradition descends from the upper to the lower ranks, while Reason ascends from the latter to the former.--On the one hand religion and monarchy, through their excesses and misdeeds under Louis XIV, and their laxity and incompetence under Louis XV, demolish piece by piece the basis of hereditary reverence and filial obedience so long serving them as a foundation, and which maintained them aloft above all dispute and free of investigation; hence the authority of tradition insensibly declines and disappears. On the other hand science, through its imposing and multiplied discoveries, erects piece by piece a basis of universal trust and deference, raising itself up from an interesting subject of curiosity to the rank of a public power; hence the authority of Reason augments and occupies its place.--A time comes when, the latter authority having dispossessed the former, the fundamental ideas tradition had reserved to itself fall into the grasp of Reason. Investigation penetrates into the forbidden sanctuary. Instead of deference there is verification, and religion, the state, the law, custom, all the organs, in short, of moral and practical life, become subject to analysis, to be preserved, restored or replaced, according to the prescriptions of the new doctrine.

II. Ancestral Tradition And Culture.

Origin, nature and value of hereditary prejudice.--How far custom, religion and government are legitimate.

Nothing could be better had the new doctrine been complete, and if Reason, instructed by history, had become critical, and therefore qualified to comprehend the rival she replaced. For then, instead of regarding her as an usurper to be repelled she would have recognized in her an elder sister whose part must be left to her. Hereditary prejudice is a sort of Reason operating unconsciously. It has claims as well as reason, but it is unable to present these; instead of advancing those that are authentic it puts forth the doubtful ones. Its archives are buried; to exhume these it is necessary to make researches of which it is incapable; nevertheless they exist, and history at the present day is bringing them to light.--Careful investigations shows that, like science, it issues from a long accumulation of experiences; a people, after a multitude of gropings and efforts, has discovered that a certain way of living and thinking is the only one adapted to its situation, the most practical and the most salutary, the system or dogma now seeming arbitrary to us being at first a confirmed expedient of public safety. Frequently it is so still; in any event, in its leading features it is indispensable; it may be stated with certainty that, if the leading prejudices of the community should suddenly disappear, Man, deprived of the precious legacy transmitted to him by the wisdom of ages, would at once fall back into a savage condition and again become what he was at first, namely, a restless, famished, wandering, hunted brute. There was a time when this heritage was lacking; there are populations to day with which it is still utterly lacking.[3304] To abstain from eating human flesh, from killing useless or burdensome aged people, from exposing, selling or killing children one does not know what to do with, to be the one husband of but one woman, to hold in horror incest and unnatural practices, to be the sole and recognized owner of a distinct field, to be mindful of the superior injunctions of modesty, humanity, honor and conscience, all these observances, formerly unknown and slowly established, compose the civilization of human beings. Because we accept them in full security they are not the less sacred, and they become only the more sacred when, submitted to investigation and traced through history, they are disclosed to us as the secret force which has converted a herd of brutes into a society of men. In general, the older and more universal a custom, the more it is based on profound motives, on physiological motives on those of hygiene, and on those instituted for social protection. At one time, as in the separation of castes, a heroic or thoughtful stock must be preserved by preventing the mixtures by which inferior blood introduces mental debility and low instincts.[3305] At another, as in the prohibition of spirituous liquors, and of animal food, it is necessary to conform to the climate prescribing a vegetable diet, or to the race-temperament for which strong drink is pernicious.[3306]At another, as in the institution of the right of first-born to inherit title and castle, it was important to prepare and designate beforehand the military commander who the tribe would obey, or the civil chieftain that would preserve the domain, superintend its cultivation, and support the family.[3307]--If there are valid reasons for legitimizing custom there are reasons of higher import for the consecration of religion Consider this point, not in general and according to a vague notion, but at the outset, at its birth, in the texts, taking for an example one of the faiths which now rule in society, Christianity, Hinduism, the law of Mohammed or of Buddha. At certain critical moments in history, a few men, emerging from their narrow and daily routine of life, are seized by some generalized conception of the infinite universe; the august face of nature is suddenly unveiled to them; in their sublime emotion they seem to have detected its first cause; they have at least detected some of its elements. Through a fortunate conjunction of circumstances these elements are just those which their century, their people, a group of peoples, a fragment of humanity is in a state to comprehend. Their point of view is the only one at which the graduated multitudes below them are able to accept. For millions of men, for hundreds of generations, only through them is any access to divine things to be obtained. Theirs is the unique utterance, heroic or affecting, enthusiastic or tranquilizing; the only one which the hearts and minds around them and after them will heed; the only one adapted to profound cravings, to accumulated aspirations, to hereditary faculties, to a complete intellectual and moral organism; Yonder that of Hindostan or of the Mongolian; here that of the Semite or the European; in our Europe that of the German, the Latin or the Slave; in such a way that its contradictions, instead of condemning it, justify it, its diversity producing its adaptation and its adaptation producing benefits.--This is no barren formula. A sentiment of such grandeur, of such comprehensive and penetrating insight, an idea by which Man, compassing the vastness and depth of things, so greatly oversteps the ordinary limits of his mortal condition, resembles an illumination; it is easily transformed into a vision; it is never remote from ecstasy; it can express itself only through symbols; it evokes divine figures.[3308]Religion in its nature is a metaphysical poem accompanied by faith. Under this title it is popular and efficacious; for, apart from an invisible select few, a pure abstract idea is only an empty term, and truth, to be apparent, must be clothed with a body. It requires a form of worship, a legend, and ceremonies in order to address the people, women, children, the credulous, every one absorbed by daily cares, any understanding in which ideas involuntarily translate themselves through imagery. Owing to this palpable form it is able to give its weighty support to the conscience, to counterbalance natural egoism, to curb the mad onset of brutal passions, to lead the will to abnegation and devotion, to tear Man away from himself and place him wholly in the service of truth, or of his kind, to form ascetics, martyrs, sisters of charity and missionaries. Thus, throughout society, religion becomes at once a natural and precious instrumentality. On the one hand men require it for the contemplation of infinity and to live properly; if it were suddenly to be taken away from them their souls would be a mournful void, and they would do greater injury to their neighbors. Besides, it would be vain to attempt to take it away from them; the hand raised against it would encounter only its envelope; it would be repelled after a sanguinary struggle, its germ lying too deep to be extirpated.

And when, at length, after religion and custom, we regard the State, that is to say, the armed power possessing both physical force and moral authority, we find for it an almost equally noble origin. It has, in Europe at least, from Russia to Portugal and from Norway to the two Sicilies, in its origin and essence, a military foundation in which heroism constitutes itself the champion of right. Here and there in the chaos of tribes and crumbling societies, some man has arisen who, through his ascendancy, rallies around him a loyal band, driving out intruders, overcoming brigands, re-establishing order, reviving agriculture, founding a patrimony, and transmitting as property to his descendants his office of hereditary justiciary and born general. Through this permanent delegation a great public office is removed from competition, fixed in one family, sequestered in safe hands; thenceforth the nation possesses a vital center and each right obtains a visible protector. If the sovereign confines himself to his traditional responsibilities, is restrained in despotic tendencies, and avoids falling into egoism, he provides the country with the best government of which the world has any knowledge. Not alone is it the most stable, capable of continuation, and the most suitable for maintaining together a body of 20 or 30 million people, but again one of the most noble because devotion dignifies both command and obedience and, through the prolongation of military tradition, fidelity and honor, from grade to grade, attaches the leader to his duty and the soldier to his commander.--Such are the strikingly valid claims of social traditions which we may, similar to an instinct, consider as being a blind form of reason. That which makes it fully legitimate is that reason herself, to become efficient, is obliged to borrow its form. A doctrine becomes inspiring only through a blind medium. To become of practical use, to take upon itself the government of souls, to be transformed into a spring of action, it must be deposited in minds given up to systematic belief, of fixed habits, of established tendencies, of domestic traditions and prejudice, and that it, from the agitated heights of the intellect, descends into and become amalgamated with the passive forces of the will; then only does it form a part of the character and become a social force. At the same time, however, it ceases to be critical and clairvoyant; it no longer tolerates doubt and contradiction, nor admits further restrictions or nice distinctions; it is either no longer cognizant of, or badly appreciates, its own evidences. We of the present day believe in infinite progress about the same as people once believed in original sin; we still receive ready-made opinions from above, the Academy of Sciences occupying in many respects the place of the ancient councils. Except with a few special savants, belief and obedience will always be unthinking, while Reason would wrongfully resent the leadership of prejudice in human affairs, since, to lead, it must itself become prejudiced.

III. Reason At War With Illusion.

The classic intellect incapable of accepting this point of view.--The past and present usefulness of tradition are misunderstood.--Reason undertakes to set them aside.

Unfortunately, in the eighteenth century, reason was classic; not only the aptitude but the documents which enable it to comprehend tradition were absent. In the first place, there was no knowledge of history; learning was, due to its dullness and tediousness, refused; learned compilations, vast collections of extracts and the slow work of criticism were held in disdain. Voltaire made fun of the Benedictines. Montesquieu, to ensure the acceptance of his "Esprit des lois," indulged in wit about laws. Reynal, to give an impetus to his history of commerce in the Indies, welded to it the declamation of Diderot. The Abbé Barthélemy covered over the realities of Greek manners and customs with his literary varnish. Science was expected to be either epigrammatic or oratorical; crude or technical details would have been objectionable to a public composed of people of the good society; correctness of style therefore drove out or falsified those small significant facts which give a peculiar sense and their original relief to ancient personalities.--Even if writers had dared to note them, their sense and bearing would not have been understood. The sympathetic imagination did not exist[3309]; people were incapable of going out of themselves, of betaking themselves to distant points of view, of conjecturing the peculiar and violent states of the human brain, the decisive and fruitful moment during which it gives birth to a vigorous creation, a religion destined to rule, a state that is sure to endure. The imagination of Man is limited to personal experiences, and where in their experience, could individuals in this society have found the material which would have allowed them to imagine the convulsions of a delivery? How could minds, as polished and as amiable as these, fully adopt the sentiments of an apostle, of a monk, of a barbarian or feudal founder; see these in the milieu which explains and justifies them; picture to themselves the surrounding crowd, at first souls in despair and haunted by mystic dreams, and next the rude and violent intellects given up to instinct and imagery, thinking with half-visions, their resolve consisting of irresistible impulses? A speculative reasoning of this stamp could not imagine figures like these. To bring them within its rectilinear limits they require to be reduced and made over; the Macbeth of Shakespeare becomes that of Ducis, and the Mahomet of the Koran that of Voltaire. Consequently, as they failed to see souls, they misconceived institutions. The suspicion that truth could have been conveyed only through the medium of legends, that justice could have been established only by force, that religion was obliged to assume the sacerdotal form, that the State necessarily took a military form, and that the Gothic edifice possessed, as well as other structures, its own architecture, proportions, balance of parts, solidity, and even beauty, never entered their heads.--Furthermore, unable to comprehend the past, they could not comprehend the present. They knew nothing about the mechanic, the provincial bourgeois, or even the lesser nobility; these were seen only far away in the distance, half-effaced, and wholly transformed through philosophic theories and sentimental haze. "Two or three thousand"[3310] polished and cultivated individuals formed the circle of ladies and gentlemen, the so-called honest folks, and they never went outside of their own circle. If they fleeting had a glimpse of the people from their chateaux and on their journeys, it was in passing, the same as of their post-horses, or of the cattle on their farms, showing compassion undoubtedly, but never divining their anxious thoughts and their obscure instincts. The structure of the still primitive mind of the people was never imagined, the paucity and tenacity of their ideas, the narrowness of their mechanical, routine existence, devoted to manual labor, absorbed with the anxieties for daily bread, confined to the bounds of a visible horizon; their attachment to the local saint, to rites, to the priest, their deep-seated rancor, their inveterate distrust, their credulity growing out of the imagination, their inability to comprehend abstract rights, the law and public affairs, the hidden operation by which their brains would transform political novelties into nursery fables or into ghost stories, their contagious infatuations like those of sheep, their blind fury like that of bulls, and all those traits of character the Revolution was about to bring to light. Twenty millions of men and more had scarcely passed out of the mental condition of the middle ages; hence, in its grand lines, the social edifice in which they could dwell had necessarily to be mediaeval. It had to be cleaned up, windows put in and walls pulled down, but without disturbing the foundations, or the main building and its general arrangement; otherwise after demolishing it and living encamped for ten years in the open air like savages, its inmates would have been obliged to rebuild it on the same plan. In uneducated minds, those having not yet attained to reflection, faith attaches itself only to the corporeal symbol, obedience being brought about only through physical restraint; religion is upheld by the priest and the State by the policeman.--One writer only, Montesquieu, the best instructed, the most sagacious, and the best balanced of all the spirits of the age, made these truths apparent, because he was at once an erudite, an observer, a historian and a jurisconsult. He spoke, however, as an oracle, in maxims and riddles; and every time he touched matters belonging to his country and epoch he hopped about as if upon red hot coals. That is why he remained respected but isolated, his fame exercising no influence. The classic reason refused[3311] to go so far as to make a careful study of both the ancient and the contemporary human being. It found it easier and more convenient to follow its original bent, to shut its eyes on man as he is, to fall back on its stores of current notions, to derive from these an idea of man in general, and build in empty space.--Through this natural and complete state of blindness it no longer heeds the old and living roots of contemporary institutions; no longer seeing them makes it deny their existence. Custom now appears as pure prejudice; the titles of tradition are lost, and royalty seems based on robbery. So from now on Reason is armed and at war with its predecessor to wrench away its control over the minds and to replace a rule of lies with a rule of truth.

IV. Casting Out The Residue Of Truth And Justice.

Two stages in this operation.--Voltaire, Montesquieu, the deists and the reformers represent the first one.--What they destroy and what they respect.

In this great undertaking there are two stages. Owing to common sense or timidity many stop half-way. Motivated by passion or logic others go to the end.--A first campaign results in carrying the enemy's out-works and his frontier fortresses, the philosophical army being led by Voltaire. To combat hereditary prejudice, other prejudices are opposed to it whose empire is as extensive and whose authority is not less recognized. Montesquieu looks at France through the eyes of a Persian, and Voltaire, on his return from England, describes the English, an unknown species. Confronting dogma and the prevailing system of worship, accounts are given, either with open or with disguised irony, of the various Christian sects, the Anglicans, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the Socinians, those of ancient or of remote people, the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Muslims, and Guebers, of the worshippers of Brahma, of the Chinese and of pure idolaters. In relation to established laws and customs, expositions are made, with evident intentions, of other constitutions and other social habits, of despotism, of limited monarchy, of a republic, here the church subject to the state, there the church free of the state, in this country castes, in another polygamy, and, from country to country, from century to century, the diversity, contradiction and antagonism of fundamental customs which, each on its own ground, are all equally consecrated by tradition, all legitimately forming the system of public rights. From now on the charm is broken. Ancient institutions lose their divine prestige; they are simply human works, the fruits of the place and of the moment, and born out of convenience and a covenant. Skepticism enters through all the breaches. With regard to Christianity it at once enters into open hostility, into a bitter and prolonged polemical warfare; for, under the title of a state religion this occupies the ground, censuring free thought, burning writings, exiling, imprisoning or disturbing authors, and everywhere

## acting as a natural and official adversary. Moreover, by virtue of being

an ascetic religion, it condemns not only the free and cheerful ways tolerated by the new philosophy but again the natural tendencies it sanctions, and the promises of terrestrial felicity with which it everywhere dazzles the eyes. Thus the heart and the head both agree in their opposition.--Voltaire, with texts in hand, pursues it from one end to the other of its history, from the first biblical narration to the latest papal bulls, with unflagging animosity and energy, as critic, as historian, as geographer, as logician, as moralist, questioning its sources, opposing evidences, driving ridicule like a pick-ax into every weak spot where an outraged instinct beats against its mystic walls, and into all doubtful places where ulterior patchwork disfigures the primitive structure.--He respects, however, the first foundation, and, in this particular, the greatest writers of the day follow the same course. Under positive religions that are false there is a natural religion that is true. This is the simple and authentic text of which the others are altered and amplified translations. Remove the ulterior and divergent excesses and the original remains; this common essence, on which all copies harmonize, is deism.--The same operation is to be made on civil and political law. In France, where so many survive their utility, where privileges are no longer paid for with service, where rights are changed into abuses, how incoherent is the architecture of the old Gothic building! How poorly adapted to a modern nation! Of what use, in an unique and compact state, are those feudal compartments separating orders, corporations and provinces? What a living paradox is the archbishop of a semi-province, a chapter owning 12,000 serfs, a drawing room abbé well supported by a monastery he never saw, a lord liberally pensioned to figure in antechambers, a magistrate purchasing the right to administer justice, a colonel leaving college to take the command of his inherited regiment, a Parisian trader who, renting a house for one year in Franche-Comté, alienates through this act alone the ownership of his property and of his person. Throughout Europe there are others of the same character. The best that can be said of "a civilized nation" [3312] is that its laws, customs and practices are composed "one-half of abuses and one-half of tolerable usage".--But, underneath these concrete laws, which contradict each other, and of which each contradicts itself, a natural law exists, implied in the codes, applied socially, and written in all hearts.

"Show me a country where it is honest to steal the fruits of my labor, to violate engagements, to lie for injurious purposes, to calumniate, to assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful to one's benefactor, to strike one's father and mother on offering you food".--"Justice and injustice is the same throughout the universe," and, as in the worst community force always, in some respects, is at the service of right, so, in the worst religion, the extravagant dogma always in some fashion proclaims a supreme architect.--Religions and communities, accordingly, disintegrated under the investigating process, disclose at the bottom of the crucible, some residue of truth, others a residue of justice, a small but precious balance, a sort of gold ingot of preserved tradition, purified by Reason, and which little by little, freed from its alloys, elaborated and devoted to all usage, must solely provide the substance of religion and all threads of the social warp.

V. The Dream Of A Return To Nature.

The second stage, a return to nature.--Diderot, d'Holbach and the materialists.--Theory of animated matter and spontaneous organization.--The moral of animal instinct and self-interest properly understood.

Here begins the second philosophic expedition. It consists of two armies: the first composed of the encyclopedists, some of them skeptics like d'Alembert, others pantheists like Diderot and Lamarck, the second open atheists and materialists like d'Holbach, Lamettrie and Helvétius, and later Condorcet, Lalande and Volney, all different and independent of each other, but unanimous in regarding tradition as the common enemy. As a result of prolonged hostilities the parties become increasingly exasperated and feel a desire to be master of everything, to push the adversary to the wall, to drive him out of all his positions. They refuse to admit that Reason and tradition can occupy and defend the same citadel together; as soon as one enters the other must depart; henceforth one prejudice is established against another prejudice.--In fact, Voltaire, "the patriarch, does not desire to abandon his redeeming and avenging God;"[3313] let us tolerate in him this remnant of superstition on account of his great services; let us nevertheless examine this phantom in man which he regards with infantile vision. We admit it into our minds through faith, and faith is always suspicious. It is forged by ignorance, fear, and imagination, which are all deceptive powers. At first it was simply the fetish of savages; in vain have we striven to purify and aggrandize it; its origin is always apparent; its history is that of a hereditary dream which, arising in a rude and doting brain, prolongs itself from generation to generation, and still lasts in the healthy and cultivated brain. Voltaire wanted that this dream should be true because, otherwise, he could not explain the admirable order of the world. Since a watch suggests a watchmaker he had firstly to prove that the world is a watch and, then see if the half-finished arrangement, such as it is and which we have observed, could not better be explained by a simpler theory, more in conformity with experience, that of eternal matter in which motion is eternal. Mobile and active particles, of which the different kinds are in different states of equilibrium, these are minerals, inorganic substances, marble, lime, air, water and coal.[3314] I form humus out of this, "I sow peas, beans and cabbages;" plants find their nourishment in the humus, and "I find my nourishment in the plants." At every meal, within me, and through me, inanimate matter becomes animate; "I convert it into flesh. I animalize it. I render it sensitive." It harbors latent, imperfect sensibility rendered perfect and made manifest. Organization is the cause, and life and sensation are the effects; I need no spiritual monad to account for effects since I am in possession of the cause. "Look at this egg, with which all schools of theology and all the temples of the earth can be overthrown. What is this egg? An inanimate mass previous to the introduction of the germ. And what is it after the introduction of the germ? An insensible mass, an inert fluid." Add heat to it, keep it in an oven, and let the operation continue of itself, and we have a chicken, that is to say, "sensibility, life, memory, conscience, passions and thought." That which you call soul is the nervous center in which all sensitive chords concentrate. Their vibrations produce sensations; a quickened or reviving sensation is memory; our ideas are the result of sensations, memory and signs. Matter, accordingly, is not the work of an intelligence, but matter, through its own arrangement, produces intelligence. Let us fix intelligence where it is, in the organized body; we must not detach it from its support to perch it in the sky on an imaginary throne. This disproportionate conception, once introduced into our minds, ends in perverting the natural play of our sentiments, and, like a monstrous parasite, abstracts for itself all our substance.[3315] The first interest of a sane person is to get rid of it, to discard every superstition, every "fear of invisible powers."[3316]--Then only can he establish a moral order of things and distinguish "the natural law." The sky consisting of empty space, we have no need to seek commands from on high. Let us look down to the ground; let us consider man in himself, as he appears in the eyes of the naturalist, namely, an organized body, a sensitive animal possessing wants, appetites and instincts. Not only are these indestructible but they are legitimate. Let us throw open the prison in which prejudice confines them; let us give them free air and space; let them be displayed in all their strength and all will go well. According to Diderot,[3317] a lasting marriage is an abuse, being "the tyranny of a man who has converted the possession of a woman into property." Purity is an invention and conventional, like a dress;[3318] happiness and morals go together only in countries where instinct is sanctioned; as in Tahiti, for instance, where marriage lasts but a month, often only a day, and sometimes a quarter of an hour, where, in the evening and with hospitable intent, a host offers his daughters and wife to his guests, where the son espouses his mother out of politeness, where the union of the sexes is a religious festivity celebrated in public.--And, pushing things to extremes, the logician ends with five or six pages calculated "to make one's hair stand on end,"[3319] himself avowing that his doctrine is "neither suited for children nor for adults."--With Diderot, to say the least, these paradoxes have their correctives. In his pictures of modern ways and habits, he is the moralist. He not only is familiar with all the chords of the human keyboard, but he classifies each according to its rank. He loves fine and pure tones, and is full of enthusiasm for noble harmonies; his heart is equal to his genius.[3320] And better still, on the question of primitive impulses arising, he assigns, side by side with vanity, an independent and superior position to pity, friendship, kindness and charity; to every generous affection of the heart displaying sacrifice and devotion without calculation or personal benefit.--But associated with him are others, cold and narrow, who form moral systems according to the mathematical methods of the ideologists, [3321] after the style of Hobbes. One motive alone satisfies these, the simplest and most palpable, utterly gross, almost mechanical, completely physiological, the natural animal tendency of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure:

"Pain and pleasure," says Helvétius, "form the only springs of the moral universe, while the sentiment of vanity is the only basis on which we can lay the foundations of moral usefulness. What motive but that of self-interest could lead a man to perform a generous action? He can as little love good for the sake of good as evil for the sake of evil."[3322] "The principles of natural law, say the disciples, are reduced to one unique and fundamental principle, self-preservation."[3323] "To preserve oneself, to be happy," is instinct, right and duty. "Oh, yea,"[3324] says nature, "who, through the impulsion I bestow on you, tending towards happiness at every moment of your being, resist not my sovereign law, strive for your own felicity, enjoy fearlessly and be happy!" But to be happy, contribute to the happiness of others; if you wish them to be useful to you, be useful to them. "every man, from birth to death, has need of mankind." "Live then for them, that they may live for you." "Be good, because goodness links hearts together; be gentle, because gentleness wins affection; be modest, because pride repels beings full of their self-importance. . . . Be citizens, because your country is necessary to ensure your safety and well-being. Defend your country, because it renders you happy and contains your possessions."

Virtue thus is simply egotism furnished with a telescope; man has no other reason for doing good but the fear of doing himself harm, while self-devotion consists of self-interest.

One goes fast and far on this road. When the sole law for each person is to be happy, each wishes to be so immediately and in his own way; the herd of appetites is let loose, rushing ahead and breaking down all barriers. And the more readily because it has been demonstrated to them that every barrier is an evil, invented by cunning and malicious shepherds, the better to milk and shear them:

"The state of society is a state of warfare of the sovereign against all, and of each member against the rest.[3325]. . We see on the face of the globe only incapable, unjust sovereigns, enervated by luxury, corrupted by flattery, depraved through unpunished license, and without talent, morals, or good qualities. . . . Man is wicked not because he is wicked, but because he has been made so."-"Would you know the story, in brief, of almost all our wretchedness? Here it is. There existed the natural man, and into this man was introduced an artificial man, whereupon a civil war arose within him, lasting through life. [3326]. . If you propose to become a tyrant over him,. . . do your best to poison him with a theory of morals against nature; impose every kind of fetter on him; embarrass his movements with a thousand obstacles; place phantoms around him to frighten him. . . . Would you see him happy and free? Do not meddle with his affairs. . . Remain convinced of this, (wrote Diderot) that these wise legislators have formed and shaped you as they have done, not for your benefit, but for their own. I appeal to every civil, religious, and political institution; examine these closely, and, if I am not mistaken, you will find the human species, century after century, subject to a yoke which a mere handful of knaves chose to impose on it.... Be wary of him who seeks to establish order; to order is to obtain the mastery of others by giving them trouble."

There nothing any more to be ashamed of; the passions are good, and if the herd would eat freely, its first care must be to trample under its wooden shoes the mitered and crowned animals who keep it in the fold for their own advantage.[3327]

VI. The Abolition Of Society. Rousseau.

Rousseau and the spiritualists.--The original goodness of man.--The mistake committed by civilization.--The injustice of property and of society.

A return to nature, meaning by this the abolition of society, is the war-cry of the whole encyclopedic battalion. The same shout is heard in another quarter, coming the battalion of Rousseau and the socialists who, in their turn, march up to the assault of the established régime. The mining and the sapping of the walls practiced by the latter seems less extensive, but are nevertheless more effective, and the destructive machinery it employs consists of a new conception of human nature. This Rousseau has drawn exclusively from the spectacle in his own heart: [3328] Rousseau, a strange, original and superior man, who, from his infancy, harbored within him a germ of insanity, and who finally became wholly insane; a wonderful, ill-balanced mind in which sensations, emotions and images are too powerful: at once blind and perspicacious, a veritable poet and a morbid poet, who, instead of things and events beheld reveries, living in a romance and dying in a nightmare of his own creation; incapable of controlling and of behaving himself, confounding resolution with action, vague desire with resolution, and the role he assumed with the character he thought he possessed; wholly disproportionate to the ordinary ways of society, hitting, wounding and soiling himself against every hindrance on his way; at times extravagant, mean and criminal, yet preserving up to the end a delicate and profound sensibility, a humanity, pity, the gift of tears, the faculty of living, the passion for justice, the sentiment of religion and of enthusiasm, like so many vigorous roots in which generous sap is always fermenting, whilst the stem and the branches prove abortive and become deformed or wither under the inclemency of the atmosphere. How explain such a contrast? How did Rousseau himself account for it? A critic, a psychologist would merely regard him as a singular case, the effect of an extraordinarily discordant mental formation, analogous to that of Hamlet, Chatterton, René or Werther, adopted to poetic spheres, but unsuitable for real life. Rousseau generalizes; occupied with himself, even to infatuation, and, seeing only himself, he imagines mankind to be like himself, and "describes it as the feels it inside himself". His pride, moreover, finds this profitable; he is gratified at considering himself the prototype of humanity; the statue he erects of himself becomes more important; he rises in his own estimation when, in confessing to himself, he thinks he is confessing the human species. Rousseau convokes the assembly of generations with the trumpet of the day of judgment, and boldly stands up in the eyes of all men and of the Supreme Judge, exclaiming, "Let anyone say, if he dares: 'I was a better man than Thou!'"[3329] All his blemishes must be the fault of society; his vices and his baseness must be attributed to circumstances:

"If I had fallen into the hands of a better master....I should have been a good Christian, a good father, a good friend, a good workman, a good man in all things."

The wrong is thus all on the side of society.--In the same way, with Man in general, his nature is good.

"His first impulses are always right..... The fundamental principle of all moral questions which I have argued in all my writings, is that Man is naturally good, and loving justice and order..... 'Emile,' especially, is a treatise on the natural goodness of Man, intended to show how vice and error, foreign to his constitution, gradually find their way into it from without and insensibly change him.....Nature created Man happy and good, while society has depraved him and made him miserable."[3330]

Imagine him divested of his factitious habits, of his superadded necessities, of his false prejudices; put aside systems, study your own heart, listen to the inward dictates of feeling, let yourself be guided by the light of instinct and of conscience, and you will again find the first Adam, like an incorruptible marble statue that has fallen into a marsh, a long time lost under a crust of slime and mud, but which, released from its foul covering, may be replaced on its pedestal in the completeness of its form and in the perfect purity of its whiteness.

Around this central idea a reform occurs in the spiritualistic doctrine.--A being so noble cannot possibly consist of a simple collection of organs; he is something more than mere matter; the impression he derives from his senses do not constitute his full being.

"I am not merely a sensitive and passive being, but an active and intelligent being, and, whatever philosophy may say, I dare claim the honor of thinking."

And better still, this thinking principle, in Man, at least, is of a superior kind.

"Show me another animal on the globe capable of producing fire and of admiring the sun. What? I who am able to observe, to comprehend beings and their associations; who can appreciate order, beauty and virtue; who can contemplate the universe and exalt myself to the hand which controls it; who can love the good and do good, should I compare myself to brutes!" Man is free, capable of deciding between two actions, and therefore the creator of his actions; he is accordingly a first and original cause, "an immaterial substance," distinct from the body, a soul hampered by the body and which may survive the body.--This immortal soul imprisoned within the flesh has conscience for its organ. "O Conscience, divine instinct, immortal and celestial voice, unfailing guide of an ignorant and finite but free and intelligent being, infallible judge between good and evil, and rendering Man similar to God, Thou foremost the superiority of his nature!"

Alongside of vanity, by which we subordinate everything to ourselves, there is a love of order by which we subordinate ourselves to the whole. Alongside of egoism, by which Man seeks happiness even at the expense of others, is sympathy, by which he seeks the happiness of others even at the expense of his own. Personal enjoyment does not suffice him; he still needs tranquillity of conscience and the effusions of the heart.--Such is Man as God designed and created him; in his organization there is no defect. Inferior elements are as serviceable as the superior elements; all are essential, proportionate, in proper place, not only the heart, the conscience, the intellect, and the faculties by which we surpass brutes, but again the inclinations in common with animals, the instinct of self-preservation and of self-defense, the need of physical

## activity, sexual appetite, and other primitive impulses as we observe

them in the child, the savage and the uncultivated Man.[3331] None of these in themselves are either vicious or injurious. None are too strong, even the love of self. None come into play out of season. If we would not interfere with them, if we would impose no constraint on them, if we would permit these sparkling fountains to flow according to their bent, if we would not confine them to our artificial and foul channels, we should never see them boiling over and becoming turbid. We look with wonder on their ravages and on their stains; we forget that, in the beginning, they were pure and undefiled. The fault is with us, in our social arrangements, in our encrusted and formal channels whereby we cause deviations and windings, and make them heave and bound. "Your very governments are the cause of the evils which they pretend to remedy. Ye scepters of iron! ye absurd laws, ye we reproach for our inability to fulfill our duties on earth!" Away with these dikes, the work of tyranny and routine! An emancipated nature will at once resume a direct and healthy course and man, without effort, will find himself not only happy but virtuous as well.[3332] On this principle the attack begins: there is none that is pushed further, nor conducted with more bitter hostility. Thus far existing institutions are described simply as oppressive and unreasonable; but now they are now they are accused of being unjust and corrupting as well. Reason and the natural desires were the only insurgents; conscience and pride are now in rebellion. With Voltaire and Montesquieu all I might hope for is that fewer evils might be anticipated. With Diderot and d'Holbach the horizon discloses only a glowing El Dorado or a comfortable Cythera. With Rousseau I behold within reach an Eden where I shall immediately recover a nobility inseparable from my happiness. It is my right; nature and Providence summon me to it; it is my heritage. One arbitrary institution alone keeps me away from it, the creator of my vices as of my misery. With what rage and fury I will overthrow this ancient barrier!--We detect this in the vehement tone, in the embittered style, and in the sombre eloquence of the new doctrine. Fun and games are no longer in vogue, a serious tone is maintained; people become exasperated, while the powerful voice now heard penetrates beyond the drawing-room, to the rude and suffering crowd to which no word had yet been spoken, whose mute resentment for the first time finds an interpreter, and whose destructive instincts are soon to be set in motion at the summons of its herald.--Rousseau is a man of the people, and not a man of high society. He feels awkward in a drawing-room.[3333] He is not capable of conversing and of appearing amiable; the nice expressions only come into his head too late, on the staircase as he leaves the house; he keeps silent with a sulky air or utters stupidities, redeeming his awkwardness with the sallies of a clown or with the phrases of a vulgar pedant. Elegance annoys him, luxury makes him uncomfortable, politeness is a lie, conversation mere prattle, ease of manner a grimace, gaiety a convention, wit a parade, science so much charlatanry, philosophy an affection and morals utter corruption. All is factitious, false and unwholesome,[3334] from the make-up, toilet and beauty of women to the atmosphere of the apartments and the ragouts on the dinner-table, in sentiment as in amusement, in literature as in music, in government as in religion. This civilization, which boasts of its splendor, is simply the restlessness of over-excited, servile monkeys each imitating the other, and each corrupting the other to, through sophistication, end up in worry and boredom. Human culture, accordingly, is in itself bad, while the fruit it produces is merely excrescence or poison.--Of what use are the sciences? Uncertain and useless, they afford merely a pasture-ground for idlers and wranglers.[3335]

"Who would want to pass a lifetime in sterile observation, if they, apart from their duties and nature's demands, had had to bestow their time on their country, on the unfortunate and on their friends!"--Of what use are the fine arts? They serve only as public flattery of dominant passions. "The more pleasing and the more perfect the drama, the more baneful its influence;" the theater, even with Molière, is a school of bad morals, "inasmuch as it excites deceitful souls to ridicule, in the name of comedy, the candor of artless people." Tragedy, said to be moralizing, wastes in counterfeit effusions the little virtue that still remains. "When a man has been admiring the noble feats in the fables what more is expected of him? After paying homage to virtue is he not discharged from all that he owes to it? What more would they have him do? Must he practice it himself? He has no part to play, he is not a comedian."--The sciences, the fine arts, the arts of luxury, philosophy, literature, all this serve only to effeminate and distract the mind; all that is only made for the small crowd of brilliant and noisy insects buzzing around the summits of society and sucking away all public substance.--As regards the sciences, but one is important, that of our duties, and, without so many subtleties and so much study, our innermost conscience suffice to show us the way.--As regards the arts and the skills, only those should be tolerated which, ministering to our prime necessities, provide us with bread to feed us, with a roof to shelter us, clothing to cover us, and arms with which to defend ourselves.--In the way of existence that only is healthy which enables us to live in the country, artlessly, without display, in family union, devoted to cultivation, living on the products of the soil and among neighbors that are equals and with servants that one trusts as friends.[3336]--As for the classes, but one is respectable, that of laboring men, especially that of men working with their own hands, artisans and mechanics, only these being really of service, the only ones who, through their situation, are in close proximity to the natural state, and who preserve, under a rough exterior, the warmth, the goodness and the integrity of primitive instincts.--Accordingly, let us call by its true name this elegance, this luxury, this urbanity, this literary delicacy, this philosophical eccentricity, admired by the prejudiced as the flower of the life of humanity; it is only mold and mildew. In like manner esteem at its just value the swarm that live upon it, namely, the indolent aristocracy, the fashionable world, the privileged who direct and make a display, the idlers of the drawing room who talk, divert themselves and regard themselves as the elect of humanity, but who are simply so many parasites. Whether parasitic or excretory, one attracts the other, and the tree can only be well if we get rid of both.

If civilization is bad, society is worse. [3337] For this could not have been established except by destroying primitive equality, while its two principal institutions, property and government, are encroachments.

"He who first enclosed a plot of ground, and who took it into his to say this belongs to me, and who found people simple enough to believe him,[3338] was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, what wars, what murders, what misery and what horrors would have been spared the human race if he who, pulling up the landmark and filling up the ditch, had cried out to his fellows: Be wary of that impostor; you are lost if you forget that no one has a right to the land and that its fruits are the property of all!"--The first ownership was a robbery by which an individual abstracted from the community a portion of the public domain. Nothing could justify the outrage, nothing added by him to the soil, neither his industry, nor his trouble, nor his valor. "In vain may he assert that he built this wall, and acquired this land by his labor. Who marked it out for him, one might ask, and how do you come to be paid for labor which was never imposed on you? Are you not aware that a multitude of your brethren are suffering and perishing with want because you have too much, and that the express and unanimous consent of the whole human species is requisite before appropriating to yourself more than your share of the common subsistence?"--

Underneath this theory we recognize the personal attitude, the grudge of the poor embittered commoner, who, on entering society, finds the places all taken, and who is incapable of creating one for himself; who, in his confessions, marks the day when he ceased to feel hungry; who, for lack of something better, lives in concubinage with a serving-woman and places his five children in an orphanage; who is in turn servant, clerk, vagabond, teacher and copyist, always on the look-out, using his wits to maintain his independence, disgusted with the contrast between what he is outwardly and what he feels himself inwardly, avoiding envy only by disparagement, and preserving in the folds of his heart an old grudge "against the rich and the fortunate in this world as if they were so at his expense, as if their assumed happiness had been an infringement on his happiness." [3339]--Not only is there injustice in the origin of property but again there is injustice in the power it secures to itself, the wrong increasing like a canker under the partiality of law.

"Are not all the advantages of society for the rich and for the powerful?[3340] Do they not absorb to themselves all lucrative positions? Is not the public authority wholly in their interest? If a man of position robs his creditors or commits other offenses is he not certain of impunity? Are not the blows he bestows, his violent assaults, the murders and the assassinations he is guilty of, matters that are hushed up and forgotten in a few months?--Let this same man be robbed and the entire police set to work, and woe to the poor innocents they suspect!--Has he to pass a dangerous place, escorts overrun the country. If the axle of his coach breaks down everybody runs to help him.--Is a noise made at his gate, a word from him and all is silent.--Does the crowd annoy him, he makes a sign and order reigns.--Does a carter chance to cross his path, his attendants are ready to knock him down, while fifty honest pedestrians might be crushed rather than delaying a rascal in his carriage.--All these considerations do not cost him a penny.; they are a rich man's entitlements and not the price for being rich.--What a different picture of the poor! The more humanity owes them the more it refuses them. All doors are closed to them even when they have the right to have them opened, and if they sometimes obtain justice they have more trouble than others in obtaining favors. If there is statute labor to be carried out, a militia to raise, the poor are the most eligible. It always bears burdens from which its wealthier neighbor with influence secures exemption. At the least accident to a poor man everybody abandons him. Let his cart topple over and I regard him as fortunate if he escapes the insults of the smart companions of a young duke passing by. In a word all assistance free of charge is withheld from him in time of need, precisely because he cannot pay for it. I regard him as a lost man if he is so unfortunate as to be honest and have a pretty daughter and a powerful neighbor.--Let us sum up in a few words the social pact of the two estates:

You need me because I am rich and you are poor: let us then make an agreement together. I will allow you the honor of serving me on condition that you give me the little that remains to you for the trouble I have in governing you."

This shows the spirit, the aim and the effect of political society.--At the start, according to Rousseau, it consisted of an unfair bargain, made by an adroit rich man with a poor dupe, "providing new fetters for the weak and fresh power for the rich," and, under the title of legitimate property, consecrating the usurpation of the soil.--To day the contract is still more unjust "by means of which a child may govern an old man, a fool lead the wise, and a handful of people live in abundance whilst a famished multitude lack the necessities for life." It is the nature of inequality to grow; hence the authority of some increases along with the dependence of the rest, so that the two conditions, having at last reached their extremes, the hereditary and perpetual objection of the people seems to be a divine right equally with the hereditary and perpetual despotism of the king.--This is the present situation and, any change, will be for the worse. "For,[3341] the occupation of all kings, or of those charged with their functions, consists wholly of two objects, to extend their sway abroad and to render it more absolute at home." When they plead some other cause it is only a pretext. "The terms public good, happiness of subjects, the glory of the nation, so heavily employed in government announcements, never denote other than disastrous commands, and the people shudder beforehand when its masters allude to their paternal solicitude."--However, this fatal point once reached, "the contract with the government is dissolved; the despot is master only while remaining the most powerful, and, as soon as he can be expelled, it is useless for him to cry out against violence." Because right can only exist through consent, and no consent nor right can exist between master and slave.

Whether between one man and another man, or between one man and a people, the following is an absurd address: 'I make an agreement with you wholly at your expense and to my advantage which I shall respect as long as I please and which you shall respect as long as it pleases me.'"--

Only madmen may sign such a treaty, but, as madmen, they are not in a condition to negotiate and their signature is not binding. Only the vanquished on the ground, with swords pointed at their throats, may accept such conditions but, being under constraint, their promise is null and void. Madmen and the conquered may for a thousand years have bound over all subsequent generations, but a contract for a minor is not a contract for an adult, and on the child arriving at the age of Reason he belongs to himself. We at last have become adults, and we have only to make use of our rights to reduce the pretensions of this self-styled authority to their just value. It has power on its side and nothing more. But "a pistol in the hand of a brigand is also power," but do you think that I should be morally obliged to give him my purse?--I obey only compelled by force and I will have my purse back as soon as I can take his pistol away from him.

VII: The Lost Children.

The lost children of the philosophic party.--Naigeon, Sylvain Maréchal, Mably, Morelly.--The entire discredit of traditions and institutions derived from it.

We stop here. It is pointless to follow the lost children of the party, Naigeon and Sylvain Maréchal, Mably and Morelly, the fanatics that set atheism up as an obligatory dogma and a superior duty; the socialists who, to suppress egoism, propose a community of property, and who found a republic in which any man that proposes to re-establish "detestable ownership" shall be declared an enemy of humanity, treated as a "raging maniac" and shut up in a dungeon for life. It is sufficient to have studied the operations of large armies and of great campaigns.--With different gadgets and opposite tactics, the various attacks have all had the same results, all the institutions have been undermined from below. The governing ideology has withdrawn all authority from custom, from religion, from the State. Not only is it assumed that tradition in itself is false, but again that it is harmful through its works, that it builds up injustice on error, and that by rendering man blind it leads him to oppress. Henceforth it is outlawed. Let this "loathsome thing" with its supporters be crushed out. It is the great evil of the human species, and, when suppressed, only goodness will remain.

"The time will then come[3342] when the sun will shine only on free men recognizing no other master than Reason; when tyrants and slaves, and priests with their senseless or hypocritical instruments will exist only in history and on the stage; when attention will no longer be bestowed on them except to pity their victims and their dupes, keeping oneself vigilant and useful through horror of their excesses, and able to recognize and extinguish by the force of Reason the first germs of superstition and of tyranny, should they ever venture to reappear."

The millennium is dawning and it is once more Reason, which should set it up. In this way we shall owe everything to its salutary authority, the foundation of the new order of things as well as the destruction of the old one.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 3301: "Discours de la Methode."]

[Footnote 3302: This is evident with Descartes in the second step he takes. (The theory of pure spirit, the idea of God, the proof of his existence, the veracity of our intelligence demonstrated the veracity of God, etc.)]

[Footnote 3303: See Pascal, "Pensées" (on the origin of property and rank). The "Provinciales" (on homicide and the right to kill).--Nicole, "Deuxième traité de la charité, et de l'amour-propre" (on the natural man and the object of society). Bossuet, "Politique tirée de l'Ecriture sainte." La Bruyère, "Des Esprits forts."]

[Footnote 3304: Cf. Sir. John Lubbock, "Origine de la Civilisation."--Gerand-Teulon, "Les Origines de la famille."]

[Footnote 3305: The principle of caste in India; we see this in the contrast between the Aryans and the aborigines, the Soudras and the Pariahs.]

[Footnote 3306: In accordance with this principle the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands passed a law forbidding the sale of liquor to the natives and allowing it to Europeans. (De Varigny, "Quatorze ans aux iles Sandwich.")]

[Footnote 3307: Cf. Le Play, "De l'Organization de la famille," (the history of a domain in the Pyrenees.)]

[Footnote 3308: See, especially, in Brahmin literature the great metaphysical poems and the Puranas.]

[Footnote 3309: Montaigne (1533-92) apparently also had 'sympathetic imagination' when he wrote: "I am most tenderly symphathetic towards the afflictions of others," ("On Cruelty"). (SR.)]

[Footnote 3310: Voltaire, "Dic. Phil." the article on Punishments.]

[Footnote 3311: "Resumé des cahiers," by Prud'homme, preface, 1789.]

[Footnote 3312: Voltaire, Dialogues, Entretiens entre A. B. C.]

[Footnote 3313: Voltaire, "Dict.Phil.," the article on Religion. "If there is a hamlet to be governed it must have a religion."]

[Footnote 3314: "Le rêve de d'Alembert," by Diderot, passim.]

[Footnote 3315: "If a misanthrope (a hater of mankind) had proposed to himself to injure humanity what could he have invented better than faith in an incomprehensible being, about which men never could come to any agreement, and to which they would attach more importance than to their own existence?" Diderot, "Entretien d'un philosophe avec la Maréchale de....." (And that is just what our Marxist sociologist, psychologists etc have done in inventing a human being bereft of those emotions which in other animals force them to give in to their maternal, paternal and leadership instincts thereby making them happy in the process.. SR.)]

[Footnote 3316: Cf. "Catéchisme Universel," by Saint-Lambert, and the "Loi naturelle ou Catéchisme du citoyen français," by Volney.]

[Footnote 3317: "Supplément au voyage de Bougainville."]

[Footnote 3318: Cf. "Mémoires de Mm. D'Epinay," a conversation with Duclos and Saint-Lambert at the house of Mlle. Quinault.--Rousseau's "Confessions," part I, book V. These are the same principles taught by M. de la Tavel to Mme. De Warens.]

[Footnote 3319: "Suite du rêve de d'Alembert." "Entretien entre Mlls. de Lespinasse et Bordeu."--"Mémoires de Diderot," a letter to Mlle. Volant, III. 66.]

[Footnote 3320: Cf. his admirable tales, "Entretiens d'un père avec ses enfants," and "Le neveu de Rameau."]

[Footnote 3321: Volney, ibid. "The natural law. . . consists wholly of events whose repetition may be observed through the senses and which create a science as precise and accurate as geometry and mathematics."]

[Footnote 3322: Helvétius, "De l'Esprit." passim.]

[Footnote 3323: Volney, ibid. Chap. III. Saint-Lambert, ibid. The first dialogue.]

[Footnote 3324: D'Holbach, "Systeme de la Nature," II. 408 493.]

[Footnote 3325: D'Holbach, "Système de la nature," I. 347.]

[Footnote 3326: Diderot, "Supplément au voyage de Bougainville."]

[Footnote 3327: Diderot, "Les Eleuthéromanes."

Et ses mains, ourdissant les entrailles du prêtre, En feraient un cordon pour le dernier des rois.

Brissot: "Necessity being the sole title to property the result is that when a want is satisfied man is no longer a property owner. . . . Two prime necessities are due to the animal constitution, food and waste . . . . May men nourish themselves on their fallen creatures? (Yes for) all beings may justly nourish themselves on any material calculated to supply their wants. . . Man of nature, fulfill your desire, give heed to your cravings, your sole masters and your only guide. Do you feel your veins throbbing with inward fires at the sight of a charming creature? She is yours, your caresses are innocent and your kisses pure. Love alone entitles to enjoyment as hunger is the warrant for property." (An essay published in 1780, and reprinted in 1782 in the "Bibliothèque du Législateur," quoted by Roux and Buchez "Histoire parlementaire," XIII, 431.]

[Footnote 3328: The words of Rousseau himself ("Rousseau juge de Jan-Jacques," third dialogue, p 193): From whence may the painter and apologist of nature, now so disfigured and so calumniated, derive his model if not from his own heart?]

[Footnote 3329: "Confessions," Book I. p.1, and the end of the fifth book.--First letter to M. de Malesherbes: "I know my great faults, and am profoundly sensible of my vices. Even so I shall die with the conviction that of all the men I have encountered no one was better than myself".--To Madame B--, March 16, 1770, he writes: "You have awarded me esteem for my writings; your esteem would be yet greater for my life if it were open to you inspection, and still greater for my heart if it were exposed to your view. Never was there a better one, a heart more tender or more just.... My misfortunes are all due to my virtues."--To Madame de la Tour, "Whoever is not enthusiastic in my behalf in unworthy of me."]

[Footnote 3330: Letter to M. de Beaumont. p.24.--Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, troisième entretien, 193.]

[Footnote 3331: "Emile," book I, and the letter to M. de Beaumont, passim.]

[Footnote 3332: Article I. "All Frenchmen shall be virtuous." Article II. "All Frenchmen shall be happy." Draft of a constitution found among the papers of Sismondi, at that time in school. (My French dictionary writes: "SISMONDI, (Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de) Genève, 1773--id. 1842, Swiss historian and economist of Italian origin. He was a forerunner of dirigisme and had influenced Marx with his book: "Nouveaux principes d'économie politique.1819. SR.)]

[Footnote 3333: "Confessions," part 2, book IX. 368. "I cannot comprehend how any one can converse in a circle. . . . I stammer out a few words, with no meaning in them, as quickly as I can, very glad if they convey no sense. . . . I should be as fond of society as anybody if I were not certain of appearing not merely to disadvantage but wholly different from what I really am."--Cf. in the "Nouvelle Héloise," 2nd part, the letter of Saint-Preux on Paris. Also in "Emilie," the end of

## book IV.]

[Footnote 3334: "Confessions," part 2, IX. 361. "I was so weary of drawing-rooms, of jets of water, of bowers, of flower-beds and of those that showed them to me; I was so overwhelmed with pamphlets, harpsichords, games, knots, stupid witticisms, simpering looks, petty story-tellers and heavy suppers, that when I spied out a corner in a hedge, a bush, a barn, a meadow, or when, on passing through a hamlet, I caught the smell of a good parsley omelet. . I sent to the devil all the rouge, frills, flounces and perfumery, and, regretting a plain dinner and common wine, I would gladly have closed the mouth of both the head cook and the butler who forced me to dine when I generally sup, and to sup when a generally go to bed, but, especially the lackeys that envied me every morsel I ate and who, at the risk of my dying with thirst, sold me the drugged wine of their master at ten times the price I would have to pay for a better wine at a tavern."]

[Footnote 3335: "Discours sur l'influence des sciences et des arts"--The letter to d'Alembert on theatrical performances.]

[Footnote 3336: Does it not read like a declaration of intent for forming a Kibbutz? (SR.)]

[Footnote 3337: "The high society (La societé) is as natural to the human species as decrepitude to the individual. The people require arts, laws, and governments, as old men require crutches." See the letter M. Philopolis, p. 248.]

[Footnote 3338: See the discourse on the "Origine de l'Inégalite," passim.]

[Footnote 3339: "Emile," book IV. Rousseau's narrative. P. 13.]

[Footnote 3340: "Discours sur l'économie politique," 326.]

[Footnote 3341: "Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inégalité," 178, "Contrat Social," I. ch. IV.]

[Footnote 3342: Condorcet, "Tableau des progrès de l'esprit humain," the tenth epoch.]

## CHAPTER IV. ORGANIZING THE FUTURE SOCIETY.

I. Liberty, Equality And Sovereignty Of The People.

The mathematical method.--Definition of man in the abstract.--The social contract.--Independence and equality of the contractors.--All equal before the law and each sharing in the sovereignty.

Consider future society as it appears at this moment to our legislators in their study, and bear in mind that it will soon appear under the same aspect to the legislators of the Assembly.--In their eyes the decisive moment has come. Henceforth two histories are to exist;[3401] one, that of the past, the other, that of the future, formerly a history of Man still deprived of his reason, and at present the history of the rational human being. The rule of right is at last to begin. Of all that the past generations have founded and transmitted nothing is legitimate. Overlaying the natural Man they created an artificial Man, either ecclesiastic or laic, noble or commoner, sovereign or subject, proprietor or proletary, ignorant or cultivated, peasant or citizen, slave or master, all being phony qualities which we are not to heed, as their origin is tainted with violence and robbery. Strip off these superfluous garments; let us take Man in himself, the same under all conditions, in all situations, in all countries, in all ages, and strive to ascertain what sort of association is the best adapted to him. The problem thus stated, the rest follows.--In accordance with the customs of the classic mentality, and with the precepts of the prevailing ideology, a political system is now constructed after a mathematical model.[3402] A simple statement is selected, and set apart, very general, familiar, readily apparent, and easily understood by the most ignorant and inattentive schoolboy. Reject every difference, which separates one man from other men; retain of him only the portion common to him and to others. The remainder constitutes Man in general, or in other words, "a sensitive and rational being who, thus endowed, avoids pain and seeks pleasure," and therefore aspiring to happiness, namely, a stable condition in which one enjoys greater pleasure than pain,"[3403] or, again, "a sensitive being capable of forming rational opinions and of acquiring moral ideas."[3404]

Anyone (they say) may by himself experience this elementary idea, and can verify it at the first glance. Such is the social unit; let several of these be combined, a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, twenty-six millions, and you have the French people. Men born at twenty-one years of age, without relations, without a past, without traditions, without a country, are supposed to be assembled for the first time and, for the first time, to treat with each other. In this position, at the moment of contracting together, all are equal: for, as the definition states, the extrinsic and spurious qualities through which alone all differ have been rejected. All are free; for, according to the definition, the unjust thralldom imposed on all by brute force and by hereditary prejudice has been suppressed.--But if all men are equal, no reason exists why, in this contract, any special advantage should be conceded to one more than to another. Accordingly all shall be equal before the law; no person, or family, or class, shall be allowed any privilege; no one shall claim a right of which another might be deprived; no one shall be subject to any duty from another is exempt.--On the other hand, all being free, each enters with a free will along with the group of wills constitute the new community; it is necessary that in the common resolutions he should fully concur. Only on these conditions does he bind himself; he is bound to respect laws only because he has assisted in making them, and to obey magistrates only because he has aided in electing them. Underneath all legitimate authority his consent or his vote must be apparent, while, in the humblest citizen, the most exalted of public powers must recognize a member of their own sovereignty. No one may alienate or lose this portion of his sovereignty; it is inseparable from his person, and, on delegating it to another, he reserves to himself full possession of it.--The liberty, equality and sovereignty of the people constitute the first articles of the social contract. These are rigorously deduced from a primary definition; other rights of the citizen are to be no less rigorously deduced from it, the main features of the constitution, the most important civil and political laws, in short, the order, the form and the spirit of the new state.

II. Naive Convictions

The first result.--The theory easily applied.--Confidence in it due to belief in man's inherent goodness and reasonableness.

Hence, two consequences.--In the first place, a society thus organized is the only just one; for, the reverse of all others, it is not the result of a blind subjection to traditions, but of a contract concluded among equals, examined in open daylight, and assented to in full freedom.[3405] The social contract, composed of demonstrated theorems, has the authority of geometry; hence an equal value at all times, in every place, and for every people; it is accordingly rightfully established. Those who put an obstacle in its way are enemies of the human race; whether a government, an aristocracy or a clergy, they must be overthrown. Revolt is simply just defense; in withdrawing ourselves from their hands we only recover what is wrongfully held and which legitimately belongs to us.--In the second place, this social code, as just set forth, once promulgated, is applicable without misconception or resistance; for it is a species of moral geometry, simpler than any other, reduced to first principles, founded on the clearest and most popular notions, and, in four steps, leading to capital truths. The comprehension and application of these truths demand no preparatory study or profound reflection; Reason is enough, and even common sense. Prejudice and selfishness alone might impair the testimony; but never will testimony be wanting in a sound brain and in an upright heart. Explain the rights of man to a laborer or to a peasant and at once he becomes an able politician; teach children the citizen's catechism and, on leaving school, they comprehend duties and rights as well as the four fundamental principles.--Thereupon hope spreads her wings to the fullest extent, all obstacles seem removed. It is admitted that, of itself, and through its own force, the theory engenders its own application, and that it suffices for men to decree or accept the social compact to acquire suddenly by this act the capacity for comprehending it and the disposition to carry it out.

What a wonderful confidence, at first inexplicable, which assume with regard to man an idea which we no longer hold. Man, indeed, was regarded as essentially good and reasonable.--Rational, that is to say, capable of assenting to a plain obvious principle, of following an ulterior chain of argument, of understanding and accepting the final conclusion, of extracting for himself, on the occasion calling for it, the varied consequences to which it leads: such is the ordinary man in the eyes of the writers of the day; they judged him by themselves. To them the human intellect is their own, the classic intellect. For a hundred and fifty years it ruled in literature, in philosophy, in science, in education, in conversation, by virtue of tradition, of usage and of good taste. No other was tolerated and no other was imagined; and if, within this closed circle, a stranger succeeds in introducing himself, it is on condition of adopting the oratorical idiom which the raison raisonnante imposes on all its guests, on Greeks, Englishmen, barbarians, peasants and savages, however different from each other and however different they may be amongst themselves. In Buffon, the first man, on narrating the first hours of his being, analyses his sensations, emotions and impulses, with as much subtlety as Condillac himself. With Diderot, Otou the Tahitian, with Bernardin de St. Pierre, a semi-savage Hindu and an old colonist of the Ile-de-France, with Rousseau a country vicar, a gardener and a juggler, are all accomplished conversationalists and moralists. In Marmontel and in Florian, in all the literature of inferior rank preceding or accompanying the Revolution, also in the tragic or comic drama, the chief talent of the personage, whoever he may be, whether an uncultivated rustic, tattooed barbarian or naked savage, consists in being able to explain himself, in arguing and in following an abstract discourse with intelligence and attention, in tracing for himself, or in the footsteps of a guide, the rectilinear pathway of general ideas. Thus, to the spectators of the eighteenth century, Reason is everywhere and she stands alone in the world. A form of intellect so universal necessarily strikes them as natural, they resemble people who, speaking but one language, and one they have always spoken with facility, cannot imagine another language being spoken, or that they may be surrounded by the deaf and the dumb. And so much the more in as much as their theory authorizes this prejudice. According to the new ideology all minds are within reach of all truths. If the mind does not grasp them the fault is ours in not being properly prepared; it will comprehend if we take the trouble to guide it properly. For it has senses the same as our own; and sensations, revived, combined and noted by signs, suffice to form "not only all our conceptions but again all our faculties."[3406] An exact and constant relationship of ideas attaches our simplest perceptions to the most complex sciences, and, from the lowest to the highest degree, a scale is practicable; if the scholar stops on the way it is owing to our having left too great an interval between two degrees of the scale; let no intermediary degrees be omitted and he will mount to the top of it. To this exalted idea of the faculties of man is added a no less exalted idea of his heart. Rousseau having declared this to be naturally good, the refined class plunge into the belief with all the exaggerations of fashion and all the sentimentality of the drawing-room. The conviction is widespread that man, and especially the man of the people, is sensitive and affectionate by nature; that he is immediately impressed by benefactions and disposed to be grateful for them, that he softens at the slightest sign of interest in him, and that he is capable of every refinement. A series of engravings represents two children in a dilapidated cottage,[3407] one five and the other three years old, by the side of an infirm grandmother, one supporting her head and the other giving her drink; the father and mother enter and, on seeing this touching incident, "these good people find themselves so happy in possessing such children they forget they are poor." "Oh, my father," cries a shepherd youth of the Pyrénées,[3408] "accept this faithful dog, so true to me for seven years; in future let him follow and defend you, thus serving me better than in any other manner." It would require too much space to follow in the literature of the end of the century, from Marmontel to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and from Florian to Berquin and Bitaubé, the interminable repetition of these sweet insipidities. The illusion even reaches statesmen. "Sire," says Turgot, on presenting the king with a plan of political education,[3409] "I venture to assert that in ten years your nation will no longer be recognizable, and through enlightenment and good morals, in intelligent zeal for your service and for the country, it will rise above all other nations. Children who are now ten years of age will then be men prepared for the state, loving their country, submissive to authority, not through fear but through Reason, aiding their fellow-citizens, and accustomed to recognizing and respecting justice."--In the months of January, 1789,[3410] Necker, to whom M. de Bouillé pointed out the imminent danger arising from the unswerving efforts of the Third-Estate, "coldly replied, turning his eyes upward, 'reliance must be placed on the moral virtues of man.'"--In the main, on the imagination forming any conception of human society, this consists of a vague, semi-bucolic, semi-theatrical scene, somewhat resembling those displayed on the frontispieces of illustrated works on morals and politics. Half-naked men with others clothed in skins, assemble together under a large oak tree; in the center of the group a venerable old man arises and makes an address, using "the language of nature and Reason," proposing that all should be united, and explaining how men are bound together by mutual obligations; he shows them the harmony of private and of public interests, and ends by making them appreciate of the beauty of virtue.[3411] All utter shouts of joy, embrace each other, gather round the speaker and elect him chief magistrate; dancing is going on under the branches in the background, and henceforth happiness on earth is fully established.--This is no exaggeration. The National Assembly addresses the nation in harangues of this style. For many years the government speaks to the people as it would to one of Gessner's shepherds. The peasants are entreated not to burn castles because it is painful for their good king to see such sights. They are exhorted "to surprise him with their virtues in order that he may be the sooner rewarded for his own."[3412] At the height of the Jacquerie tumults the sages of the day seem to think they are living in a state of pastoral simplicity, and that with an air on the flute they may restore to its fold the howling pack of bestial animosities and unchained appetites.

III. Our True Human Nature.

The inadequacy and fragility of reason in man.--The rarity and inadequacy of reason in humanity.--Subordination of reason in human conduct.--Brutal and dangerous forces.--The nature and utility of government. Government impossible under the new theory.

It is a sad thing to fall asleep in a sheep-shed and, on awakening, to find the sheep transformed into wolves; and yet, in the event of a revolution that is what we may expect. What we call reason in Man is not an innate endowment, basic and enduring, but a tardy acquisition and a fragile composition. The slightest physiological knowledge will tell us that it is a precarious act of balance, dependent on the no less greater instability of the brain, nerves, circulation and digestion. Take women that are hungry and men that have been drinking; place a thousand of these together, and let them excite each other with their cries, their anxieties, and the contagious reaction of their ever-deepening emotions; it will not be long before you find them a crowd of dangerous maniacs. This becomes evident, and abundantly so, after 1789.--Now, consult psychology. The simplest mental operation, a sensuous perception, is an act of memory, the appliance of a name, an ordinary act of judgment is the play of complicated mechanism, the joint and final result of several millions of wheels which, like those of a clock,[3413] turn and propel blindly, each for itself, each through its own force, and each kept in place and in functional activity by a system of balance and compensation.[3414] If the hands mark the hour with any degree of accuracy it is due to a wonderful if not miraculous conjunction, while hallucination, delirium and monomania, ever at the door, are always ready to enter it. Properly speaking Man is mad, as the body is sick, by nature; the health of our mind, like the health of our organs, is simply a repeated achievement and a happy accident. If such happens to be the case with the coarse woof and canvas, with the large and approximately strong threads of our intellect, what are the chances for the ulterior and superadded embroidery, the subtle and complicated netting forming reason properly so called, and which is composed of general ideas? Formed by a slow and delicate process of weaving, through a long system of signs, amidst the agitation of pride, of enthusiasm and of dogmatic obstinacy, what risk, even in the most perfect brain, for these ideas only inadequately to correspond with outward reality! All that we require in this connection is to witness the operation of the idyll in vogue with the philosophers and politicians.--These being the superior minds, what can be said of the masses of the people, of the uncultivated or semi-cultivated brains? According as reason is crippled in man so is it rare in humanity. General ideas and accurate reasoning are found only in a select few. The comprehension of abstract terms and the habit of making accurate deductions requires previous and special preparation, a prolonged mental exercise and steady practice, and besides this, where political matters are concerned, a degree of composure which, affording every facility for reflection, enables a man to detach himself for a moment from himself for the consideration of his interests as a disinterested observer. If one of these conditions is wanting, reason, especially in relation to politics, is absent.--In a peasant or a villager, in any man brought up from infancy to manual labor, not only is the network of superior conceptions defective, but again the internal machinery by which they are woven is not perfected. Accustomed to the open air, to the exercise of his limbs, his attention flags if he stands inactive for a quarter of an hour; generalized expressions find their way into his mind only as sound; the mental combination they ought to excite cannot be produced. He becomes drowsy unless a powerful vibrating voice contagiously arouses in him the instincts of flesh and blood, the personal cravings, the secret enmities which, restrained by outward discipline, are always ready to be set free.--In the half-cultivated mind, even with the man who thinks himself cultivated and who reads the newspapers, principles are generally disproportionate guests; they are above his comprehension; he does not measure their bearings, he does not appreciate their limitations, he is insensible to their restrictions and he falsifies their application. They are like those preparations of the laboratory which, harmless in the chemist's hands, become destructive in the street under the feet of passing people.--Too soon will this be apparent when, in the name of popular sovereignty, each commune, each mob, shall regard itself as the nation and act accordingly; when Reason, in the hands of its new interpreters, shall inaugurate riots in the streets and peasant insurrections in the fields.[3415]

This is owing to the philosophers of the age having been mistaken in two ways. Not only is reason not natural to Man nor universal in humanity, but again, in the conduct of Man and of humanity, its influence is small. Except with a few cool and clear intellects, a Fontenelle, a Hume, a Gibbon, with whom it may prevail because it encounters no rivals, it is very far from playing a leading part; it belongs to other forces born within us, and which, by virtue of being the first comers, remain in possession of the field. The place obtained by reason is always restricted; the office it fulfills is generally secondary. Openly or secretly, it is only a convenient subaltern, a domestic advocate constantly suborned, employed by the proprietors to plead in their behalf; if they yield precedence in public it is only through decorum. Vainly do they proclaim it the recognized sovereign; they grant it only a passing authority, and, under its nominal control, they remain the inward masters. These masters of Man consists of physical temperament, bodily needs, animal instinct, hereditary prejudice, imagination, generally the dominant passion, and more particularly personal or family interest, also that of caste or party. We are making a big mistake were we assume men to be naturally good, generous, pleasant, or at any rate gentle, pliable, and ready to sacrifice themselves to social interests or to those of others. There are several, and among them the strongest, who, left to themselves, would only wreak havoc.--In the first place, if there is no certainty of Man being a remote blood cousin of the monkey, it is at least certain that, in his structure, he is an animal closely related to the monkey, provided with canine teeth, carnivorous, formerly cannibal and, therefore, a hunter and bellicose. Hence there is in him a steady substratum of brutality and ferocity, and of violent and destructive instincts, to which must be added, if he is French, gaiety, laughter, and a strange propensity to gambol and act insanely in the havoc he makes; we shall see him at work.--In the second place, at the outset, his condition casts him naked and destitute on an ungrateful soil, on which subsistence is difficult, where, at the risk of death, he is obliged to save and to economize. Hence a constant preoccupation and the rooted idea of acquiring, accumulating, and possessing, rapacity and avarice, more particularly in the class which, tied to the globe, fasts for sixty generations in order to support other classes, and whose crooked fingers are always outstretched to clutch the soil whose fruits they cause to grow;-we shall see this class at work.--Finally, his more delicate mental organization makes of him from the earliest days an imaginative being in which swarming fancies develop themselves into monstrous chimeras to expand his hopes, fears and desires beyond all bounds. Hence an excess of sensibility, sudden outbursts of emotion, contagious agitation, irresistible currents of passion, epidemics of credulity and suspicion, in short, enthusiasm and panic, especially if he is French, that is to say, excitable and communicative, easily thrown off his balance and prompt to accept foreign impulsion, deprived of the natural ballast which a phlegmatic temperament and concentration of lonely meditations secure to his German and Latin neighbors; and all this we shall see at work.--These constitute some of the brute forces that control human life. In ordinary times we pay no attention to them; being subordinated they do not seem to us formidable. We take it for granted that they are allayed and pacified; we flatter ourselves that the discipline imposed on them has made them natural, and that by dint of flowing between dikes they are settled down into their accustomed beds. The truth is that, like all brute forces, like a stream or a torrent, they only remain in these under constraint; it is the dike which, through its resistance, produces this moderation. Another force equal to their force had to be installed against their outbreaks and devastation, graduated according to their scale, all the firmer as they are more menacing, despotic if need be against their despotism, in any event constraining and repressive, at the outset a tribal chief, later an army general, all modes consisting in an elective or hereditary man-at-arms, possessing vigilant eyes and vigorous arms, and who, with blows, excites fear and, through fear, maintains order. In the regulation and limitation of his blows divers instrumentalities are employed, a pre-established constitution, a division of powers, a code of laws, tribunals, and legal formalities. At the bottom of all these wheels ever appears the principal lever, the efficacious instrument, namely, the policeman armed against the savage, brigand and madman each of us harbors, in repose or manacled, but always living, in the recesses of his own breast.[3416]

On the contrary, in the new theory, every principle promulgated, every precaution taken, every suspicion awaked is aimed against the policeman. In the name of the sovereignty of the people all authority is withdrawn from the government, every prerogative, every initiative, its continuance and its force. The people, being sovereign the government is simply its clerk, and less than its clerk, merely its domestic.--Between them "no contract" indefinite or at least enduring, "and which may be canceled only by mutual consent or the unfaithfulness of one of the two

## parties. It is against the nature of a political body for the sovereign

to impose a law on himself which he cannot set aside."--There is no sacred and inviolable charter "binding a people to the forms of an established constitution. The right to change these is the first guarantee of all rights. There is not, and never can be, any fundamental, obligatory law for the entire body of a people, not even the social contract."--It is through usurpation and deception that a prince, an assembly, and a body of magistrates declare themselves representatives of the people. "Sovereignty is not to be represented for the same reason that it is not to be ceded. . . . The moment a people gives itself representatives it is no longer free, it exists no more. . . The English people think themselves free but they deceive themselves; they are free only during an election of members of parliament; on the election of these they become slaves and are null. . . the deputies of the people are not, nor can they be, its representatives; they are simply its commissioners and can sign no binding final agreement. Every law not ratified by the people themselves is null and is no law."[3417]--"A body of laws sanctioned by an assembly of the people through a fixed constitution of the State does not suffice; other fixed and periodical assemblies are necessary which cannot be abolished or extended, so arranged that on a given day the people may be legitimately convoked by the law, no other formal conviction being requisite. . . The moment the people are thus assembled the jurisdiction of the government is to cease, and the executive power is to be suspended," society commencing anew, while citizens, restored to their primitive independence, may reconstitute at will, for any period they determine, the provisional contract to which they have assented only for a determined time. "The opening of these assemblies, whose sole object is to maintain the social compact, should always take place with two propositions, never suppressed, and which are to be voted on separately; the first one, whether the sovereign( people) is willing to maintain the actual form of the government; the second, whether the people are willing to leave its administration in the hands of those actually performing its duties."--Thus, "the act by which a people is subject to its chiefs is absolutely only a commission, a service in which, as simple officers of their sovereign, they exercise in his name the power of which he has made them depositories, and which he may modify, limit and resume at pleasure."[3418] Not only does it always reserve to itself "the legislative power which belongs to it and which can belong only to it," but again, it delegates and withdraws the executive power according to its fancy. Those who exercise it are its employees. "It may establish and depose them when it pleases." In relation to it they have no rights. "It is not a matter of contract with them but one of obedience;" they have "no conditions" to prescribe; they cannot demand of it the fulfillment of any engagement.--It is useless to raise the objection that, according to this, every man of spirit or of culture will decline our offices, and that our chiefs will bear the character of lackeys. We will not leave them the freedom of accepting or declining office; we impose it on them authoritatively. "In every true democracy the magistrature is not an advantage but an onerous burden, not to be assigned to one more than to another." We can lay hands on our magistrates, take them by the collar and set them on their benches in spite of themselves. By fair means or foul they are the working subjects (corvéables) of the State, in a lower condition than a valet or a mechanic, since the mechanic does his work according to acceptable conditions, and the discharged valet can claim his eight days' notice to quit. As soon as the government throws off this humble attitude it usurps, while constitutions are to proclaim that, in such an event, insurrection is not only the most sacred right but the most imperative duty.--The new theory is now put into practice, and the dogma of the sovereignty of the people, interpreted by the crowd, is to result in a complete anarchy, up to the moment when, interpreted by its leaders, it produces perfect despotism.

IV. Birth Of Socialist Theory, Its Two Sides.

The second result.--The new theory leads to despotism.-- Precedents for this theory.--Administrative centralization.-- The Utopia of the Economists.--Invalidity of preceding rights.--Collateral associations not tolerated.--Complete alienation of the individual from the community.--Rights of the State in relation to property, education and religion.-- The State a Spartan convent.

For this theory has two aspects; whereas one side leads towards the perpetual demolition of government, the other results in the unlimited dictatorship of the State. The new social contract is not a historic pact, like the English Declaration of Rights in 1688, or the Dutch federation in 1579, entered into by actual and living individuals, admitting acquired situations, groups already formed, established positions, and drawn up to recognize, define, guarantee and complete anterior rights. Antecedent to the social contract no veritable right exist; for veritable rights are born solely out of the social contract, the only valid one, since it is the only one agreed upon between beings perfectly equal and perfectly free, so many abstract creatures, so many species of mathematical units, all of the same value, all playing the same part and whose inequality or constraint never disturbs the common understanding. Hence at the moment of its completion, all other facts are nullified. Property, family, church, no ancient institution may invoke any right against the new State. The area on which it is built up must be considered vacant; if old structures are partly allowed to remain it is only in its name and for its benefit, to be enclosed within its barriers and appropriated to its use; the entire soil of humanity is its property. On the other hand it is not, according to the American doctrine, an association for mutual protection, a society like other societies, circumscribed in its purpose, restricted to its office, limited in its powers, and by which individuals reserving to themselves the better portion of their property and persons, assess each other for the maintenance of an army, a police, tribunals, highways, schools, in short, the major instruments of public safety and utility, at the same time withholding the remainder of local, general, spiritual and material services in favor of private initiative and of spontaneous associations that may arise as occasion or necessity calls for them. Our State is not to be a simple utilitarian machine, a convenient, handy implement, of which the workman avails himself without abandoning the free use of his hand, or the simultaneous use of other implements. Being elder born, the only son and sole representative of Reason it must, to ensure its sway, leave nothing beyond its grasp.--In this respect the old régime paves the way for the new one, while the established system inclines minds beforehand to the budding theory. Through administrative centralization the State already, for a long time, has its hands everywhere.[3419]

"You must know," says Law to the Marquis d'Argenson, "that the kingdom of France is governed by thirty intendants. You have neither parliaments, assemblies or governors, simply thirty masters of requests, provincial clerks, on whom depends the happiness or misery, the fruitfulness or sterility of these provinces."

The king, in fact, sovereign, father, and universal guardian, manages local affairs through his delegates, and intervenes in private affairs through his favors or lettres-de-cachet (royal orders of imprisonment). Such an example and such a course followed for fifty years excites the imagination. No other instrument is more useful for carrying large reforms out at one time. Hence, far from restricting the central power the economists are desirous of extending its action. Instead of setting up new dikes against it they interest themselves only in destroying what is left of the old dikes still interfering with it. "The system of counter-forces in a government," says Quesnay and his disciples, "is a fatal idea. . . The speculations on which the system of counter-balance is founded are chimerical. . . . Let the government have a full comprehension of its duties and be left free. . . The State must govern according to the essential laws of order, and in this case unlimited power is requisite." On the approach of the Revolution the same doctrine reappears, except in the substitution of one term for another term. In the place of the sovereignty of the king the "Contrat social" substitutes the sovereignty of the people. The latter, however, is much more absolute than the former, and, in the democratic convent which Rousseau constructs, on Spartan and Roman model, the individual is nothing and the State everything.

In effect, "the clauses of the social contract reduce themselves to one, namely, the total transfer of each associate with all his rights to the community."[3420] Every one surrenders himself entirely, "just as he stands, he and all his forces, of which his property forms a portion." There is no exception nor reservation; whatever he may have been previously and whatever may have belonged to him is no longer his own. Henceforth whatever he becomes or whatever he may possess devolves on him only through the delegation of the social body, the universal proprietor and absolute master. All rights must be vested in the State and none in the individual; otherwise there would be litigation between them, and, "as there is no common superior to decide between them" their litigation would never end. One the contrary, through the complete donation which each one makes of himself, "the unity is as perfect as possible;" having renounced himself "he has no further claim to make."

This being admitted let us trace the consequences.--

In the first place, I enjoy my property only through tolerance and at second-hand; for, according to the social contract, I have surrendered it;[3421] "it now forms a portion of the national estate;" If I retain the use of its for the time being it is through a concession of the State which makes me a "depositary" of it. And this favor must not be considered as restitution. "Far from accepting the property of individuals society despoils them of it, simply converting the usurpation into a veritable right, the enjoyment of it into proprietorship." Previous to the social contract I was possessor not by right but in fact and even unjustly if I had large possessions; for, "every man has naturally a right to whatever he needs," and I have robbed other men of all that I possessed beyond my subsistence. Hence, so far from the State being under obligation to me, I am under obligation to it, the property which it returns to me not being mine but that with which the State favors me. It follows, accordingly, that the State may impose conditions on its gift, limit the use I may make of it, according to its fancy, restrict and regulate my disposition of it, my right to bequeath it. "According to nature,[3422] the right of property does not extend beyond the life of its owner; the moment he dies his possessions are no longer his own. Thus, to prescribe the conditions on which he may dispose of it is really less to change his right in appearance than to extend it in effect." In any event as my title is an effect of the social contract it is precarious like the contract itself; a new stipulation suffices to limit it or to destroy it. "The sovereign[3423] may legitimately appropriate to himself all property, as was done in Sparta in the time of Lycurgus." In our lay convent whatever each monk possesses is only a revocable gift by the convent.

In the second place, this convent is a seminary. I have no right to bring up my children in my own house and in my own way.

"As the reason of each man[3424] must not be the sole arbiter of his rights, so much less should the education of children, which is of more consequence to the State than to fathers, be left to the intelligence and prejudice of their fathers." "If public authority, by taking the place of fathers, by assuming this important function, then acquires their rights through fulfilling their duties, they have so much the less reason to complain inasmuch as they merely undergo a change of name, and, under the title of citizens, exercise in common the same authority over their children that they have separately exercised under the title of fathers."

In other words you cease to be a father, but, in exchange, become a school inspector; one is as good as the other, and what complaint have you to make? Such was the case in that perpetual army called Sparta; there, the children, genuine regimental children, equally obeyed all properly formed men.

"Thus public education, within laws prescribed by the government and under magistrates appointed by sovereign will, is one of the fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government."

Through this the citizen is formed in Advance.

"The government gives the national form to souls.[3425] Nations, in the long run, are what the government makes them--soldiers, citizens, men when so disposed, a populace, canaille if it pleases," being fashioned by their education. "Would you obtain an idea of public education? Read Plato's 'Republic.'[3426].... The best social institutions are those the best qualified to change man's nature, to destroy his absolute being, to give him a relative being, and to convert self into the common unity, so that each individual may not regard himself as one by himself, but a part of the unity, and no longer sensitive but through the whole. An infant, on opening its eyes, must behold the common patrimony and, to the day of its death, behold that only.... He should be disciplined so as never to contemplate the individual except in his relations with the body of the State."

Such was the practice of Sparta, and the sole aim of the "great Lycurgus." "All being equal through the law, they must be brought up together and in the same manner." "The law must regulate the subjects, the order and the form of their studies." They must, at the very least, take part in public exercises, in horse-races, in the games of strength and of agility instituted "to accustom them to law, equality, fraternity, and competition;" to teach them how "to live under the eyes of their fellow-citizens and to crave public applause."

Through these games they become democrats from their early youth, since, the prizes being awarded, not through the arbitrariness of masters, but through the cheers of spectators, they accustom themselves to recognizing as sovereign the legitimate sovereignty, consisting of the verdict of the assembled people. The foremost interest of the State is, always, to form the wills of those by which it lasts, to prepare the votes that are to maintain it, to uproot passions in the soul that might be opposed to it, to implant passions that will prove favorable to it, to fix firmly with the breasts of its future citizens the sentiments and prejudices it will at some time need.[3427] If it does not secure the children it will not possess the adults, Novices in a convent must be as monks, otherwise, when they grow up, the convent will no longer exist.

Finally, our lay convent has its own religion, a lay religion. If I possess any other it is through its condescension and under restrictions. It is, by nature, hostile to other associations than its own; they are rivals, they annoy it, they absorb the will and pervert the votes of its members.

"To ensure a full declaration of the general will it is an important matter not to allow any special society in the State, and that each citizen should pronounce according to it alone."[3428] "Whatever breaks up social unity is worthless," and it would be better for the State if there were no Church.--

Not only is every church suspicious but, if I am a Christian, my belief is regarded unfavorably. According to this new legislator "nothing is more opposed to the social spirits than Christianity. . . . A society of true Christians would no longer form a society of men." For, "the Christian patrimony is not of this world." It cannot zealously serve the State, being bound by its conscience to support tyrants. Its law "preaches only servitude and dependence. . . it is made for a slave," and never will a citizen be made out of a slave. "Christian Republic, each of these two words excludes the other." Therefore, if the future Republic assents to my profession of Christianity, it is on the understood condition that my doctrine shall be shut up in my mind, without even affecting my heart. If I am a Catholic, (and twenty-five out of twenty-six million Frenchmen are like me), my condition is worse. For the social pact does not tolerate an intolerant religion; any sect that condemns other sects is a public enemy; "whoever presumes to say that there is no salvation outside the church, must be driven out of the State."

Should I be, finally, a free-thinker, a positivist or skeptic, my situation is little better.

"There is a civil religion," a catechism, "a profession of faith, of which the sovereign has the right to dictate the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas but as sentiments of social import without which we cannot be a good citizen or a loyal subject." These articles embrace "the existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent, foreseeing and provident divinity, the future life, the happiness of the righteous, the punishment of the wicked, the sacredness of the social contract and of the laws.[3429] Without forcing anyone to believe in this creed, whoever does not believe in it must be expelled from the State; it is necessary to banish such persons not on account of impiety, but as unsociable beings, incapable of sincerely loving law and justice and, if need be, of giving up life for duty."

Take heed that this profession of faith be not a vain one, for a new inquisition is to test its sincerity.

"Should any person, after having publicly recognized these dogmas, act as an unbeliever, let him be punished with death. He has committed the greatest of crimes: he has lied before the law."

Truly, as I said above, we are in a convent

V. Social Contract, Summary.

Complete triumph and last excesses of classic reason.--How it becomes monomania.--Why its work is not enduring.

These articles are all inevitable consequences of the social contract. The moment I enter the corporation I abandon my own personality; I abandon, by this act, my possessions, my children, my church, and my opinions. I cease to be proprietor, father, Christian and philosopher. The state is my substitute in all these functions. In place of my will, there is henceforth the public will, that is to say, in theory, the mutable absolutism of a majority counted by heads, while in fact, it is the rigid absolutism of the assembly, the faction, the individual who is custodian of the public authority.--On this principle an outburst of boundless conceit takes place. The very first year Grégoire states in the tribune of the Constituent Assembly, "we might change religion if we pleased, but we have no such desire." A little later the desire comes, and it is to be carried out; that of Holbach is proposed, then that of Rousseau, and they dare go much farther. In the name of Reason, of which the State alone is the representative and interpreter, they undertake to unmake and make over, in conformity with Reason and with Reason only, all customs, festivals, ceremonies, and costumes, the era, the calendar, weights and measures, the names of the seasons, months, weeks and days, of places and monuments, family and baptismal names, complimentary titles, the tone of discourse, the mode of salutation, of greeting, of speaking and of writing, in such a fashion, that the Frenchman, as formerly with the puritan or the Quaker, remodeled even in his inward substance, exposes, through the smallest details of his conduct and exterior, the dominance of the all-powerful principle which refashions his being and the inflexible logic which controls his thoughts. This constitutes the final result and complete triumph of the classic spirit. Installed in narrow brains, incapable of entertaining two related ideas, it is to become a cold or furious monomania, fiercely and unrelentingly destroying a past it curses, and attempting to establish a millennium, and all in the name of an illusory contract, at once anarchical and despotic, which unfetters insurrection and justifies dictatorship; all to end in a conflicting social order resembling sometimes a drunken orgy of demons, and sometimes a Spartan convent; all aimed at replacing the real human being, slowly formed by his past with an improvised robot, who, through its own debility, will collapse when the external and mechanical force that keeps it up will no longer sustain it.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 3401: Barrère, "Point du jour," No. 1, (June 15, 1789). "You are summoned to give history a fresh start."]

[Footnote 3402: Condorcet, ibid., "Tableau des progrès de l'esprit humain," the tenth epoch. "The methods of the mathematical sciences, applied to new objects, have opened new roads to the moral and political sciences."--Cf. Rousseau, in the "Contrat Social," the mathematical calculation of the fraction of sovereignty to which each individual is entitled.]

[Footnote 3403: Saint-Lambert, "Catéchisme universel," the first dialogue, p. 17.]

[Footnote 3404: Condorcet, ibid., ninth epoch. "From this single truth the publicists have been able to derive the rights of man."]

[Footnote 3405: Rousseau still entertained admiration for Montesquieu but, at the same time, with some reservation; afterwards, however, the theory developed itself, every historical right being rejected. "Then," says Condorcet, (ibid., ninth epoch), "they found themselves obliged abandon a false and crafty policy which, forgetful of men deriving equal rights through their nature, attempted at one time to estimate those allowed to them according to extent of territory, the temperature of the climate, the national character, the wealth of the population, the degree of perfection of their commerce and industries, and again to apportion the same rights unequally among diverse classes of men, bestowing them on birth, riches and professions, and thus creating opposing interests and opposing powers, for the purpose of subsequently establishing an equilibrium alone rendered necessary by these institutions themselves and which the danger of their tendencies by no means corrects."]

[Footnote 3406: Condillac, "Logique."]

[Footnote 3407: "Histoire de France par Estampes," 1789. (In the collection of engravings, Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris.)]

[Footnote 3408: Mme. de Genlis, "Souvenirs de Félicie," 371-391.]

[Footnote 3409: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien régime," 237.--Cf. "L'an 2440," by Mercier, III. vols. One of these lovely daydreams in all its detail may be found here. The work was first published in 1770. "The Revolution," says one of the characters, "was brought about without an effort, through the heroism of a great man, a royal philosopher worthy of power, because he despised it," etc. (Tome II. 109.)]

[Footnote 3410: "Mémoires de M. Bouillé," p.70.--Cf. Barante, "Tableau de la litt. française au dixhuitième siècle," p. 318. "Civilization and enlightenment were supposed to have allayed all passions and softened all characters. It seemed as if morality had become easy of practice and that the balance of social order was so well adjusted that nothing could disturb it."]

[Footnote 3411: See in Rousseau, in the "Lettre à M. de Beaumont," a scene of this description, the establishment of deism and toleration, associated with a similar discourse.]

[Footnote 3412: Roux et Buchez, "Histoire parlementaire," IV. 322, the address made on the 11th Feb., 1790. "What an affecting and sublime address," says a deputy. It was greeted by the Assembly, with "unparalleled applause." The whole address ought to have been quoted entire.]

[Footnote 3413: The number of cerebral cells is estimated (the cortical layer) at twelve hundred millions (in 1880)and the fibers binding them together at four thousand millions. (Today in 1990 it is thought that the brain contains one million million neurons and many times more fibers. SR.)]

[Footnote 3414: In his best-selling book "The Blind Watchmaker",(Published 1986) the biologist Richard Dawkins writes: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. it does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker." (SR.)]

[Footnote 3415: Already Michel Montaigne (1533-1592) had noted man's tendency to over-estimate his own powers of judgment: 'So, to return to myself, the sole feature for which I hold myself in some esteem is that in which no man has ever thought himself defective. My self-approbation is common, and shared by all. For who has ever considered himself lacking in common sense? This would be a self-contradictory proposition. Lack of sense is a disease that never exists when it is seen; it is most tenacious and strong, yet the first glance from the patient's eye pierces it through and disperses it, as a dense mist is dispersed by the sun's beams. To accuse oneself would amount to self-absolution. There never was a street-porter or a silly woman who was not sure of having as much sense as was necessary. We readily recognize in others a superiority in courage, physical strength, experience, agility, or beauty. But a superior judgment we concede to nobody. And we think that we could ourselves have discovered the reasons which occur naturally to others, if only we had looked in the same direction.') (SR.)]

[Footnote 3416: My father's cousin, a black-smith issue from a long line of country black-smiths, born in 1896, used to say that the basic principle elevating children was to ensure "that the child never should be able to exclude the possibility of good thrashing." (SR).]

[Footnote 3417: Rousseau, "Contrat social," I, ch. 7; III. ch. 13, 14, 15, 18; IV. ch. 1.--Cf. Condorcet, ninth epoch.]

[Footnote 3418: Rousseau, "Contrat social," III, 1, 18; IV, 3.]

[Footnote 3419: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien régime," book II. entire, and

## book III. ch. 3.]

[Footnote 3420: Rousseau, "Contrat social." I.6.]

[Footnote 3421: Ibidem I. 9. "The State in relation to its members is master of all their possessions according to the social compact. . . possessors are considered as depositaries of the public wealth."]

[Footnote 3422: Rousseau, "Discours sur l'Economie politique," 308.]

[Footnote 3423: Ibid. "Emile," book V. 175.]

[Footnote 3424: Rousseau, "Discours sur l'Economie politique," 302]

[Footnote 3425: Rousseau, on the "Government de Pologne," 277, 283, 287.]

[Footnote 3426: Ibid. "Emile," book I.]

[Footnote 3427: Morelly, "Code de la nature." "At the age of five all children should be removed their families and brought up in common, at the charge of the State, in a uniform manner." A similar project, perfectly Spartan, was found among the papers of St.-Just.]

[Footnote 3428: Rousseau, "Contrat social," II. 3; IV.8.]

[Footnote 3429: Cf. Mercier, "L'an 2240," I. ch. 17 and 18. From 1770 on, he traces the programme of a system of worship similar to that of the Théophilanthropists, the chapter being entitled: "Pas si éloigné qu'on pense."]

BOOK FOURTH. THE PROPAGATION OF THE DOCTRINE.

## CHAPTER I.--SUCCESS OF THIS PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE.--FAILURE OF THE SAME

PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND.

Several similar theories have in the past traversed the imagination of men, and similar theories are likely do so again. In all ages and in all countries, it sufficed that man's concept of his own nature changed for, as an indirect consequence, new utopias and discoveries would sprout in the fields of politics and religion.[4101]--But this does not suffice for the propagation of the new doctrine nor, more important, for theory to be put into practice. Although born in England, the philosophy of the eighteenth century could not develop itself in England; the fever for demolition and reconstruction remained but briefly and superficial there. Deism, atheism, materialism, skepticism, ideology, the theory of the return to nature, the proclamations of the rights of man, all the temerities of Bolingbroke, Collins, Toland, Tindal and Mandeville, the bold ideas of Hume, Hartley, James Mill and Bentham, all the revolutionary doctrines, were so many hotbed plants produced here and there, in the isolated studies of a few thinkers: out in the open, after blooming for a while, subject to a vigorous competition with the old vegetation to which the soil belonged, they failed[4102].--On the contrary, in France, the seed imported from England, takes root and spreads with extraordinary vigor. After the Regency it is in full bloom[4103]. Like any species favored by soil and climate, it invades all the fields, appropriating light and air to itself, scarcely allowing in its shade a few puny specimens of a hostile species, a survivor of an antique flora like Rollin, or a specimen of an eccentric flora like Saint-Martin. With large trees and dense thickets, through masses of brushwood and low plants, such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert and Buffon, or Duclos, Mably, Condillac, Turgot, Beaumarchais, Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, Barthélemy and Thomas, such as a crowd of journalists, compilers and conversationalists, or the elite of the philosophical, scientific and literary multitude, it occupies the Academy, the stage, the drawing room and the debate. All the important persons of the century are its offshoots, and among these are some of the grandest ever produced by humanity.--This was possible because the seed had fallen on suitable ground, that is to say, on the soil in the homeland of the classic spirit. In this land of the raison raisonnante[4104] it no longer encounters the antagonists who impeded its growth on the other side of the Channel, and it not only immediately acquires vigor of sap but the propagating organ which it required as well.

I. The Propagating Organ, Eloquence.

Causes of this difference.--This art of writing in France.-- Its superiority at this epoch.--It serves as the vehicle of new ideas.--Books are written for people of the world.-- This accounts for philosophy descending to the drawing room.

This organ is the "talent of speech, eloquence applied to the gravest subjects, the talent for making things clear." [4105]"The great writers of this nation," says their adversary, "express themselves better than those of any other nation. Their books give but little information to true savants," but "through the art of expression they influence men" and "the mass of men, constantly repelled from the sanctuary of the sciences by the dry style and bad taste of (other) scientific writers, cannot resist the seductions of the French style and method." Thus the classic spirit that furnishes the ideas likewise furnishes the means of conveying them, the theories of the eighteenth century being like those seeds provided with wings which float and distribute themselves on all soils. There is no book of that day not written for people of the high society, and even for women of this class. In Fontenelle's dialogues on the Plurality of worlds the principal person age is a marchioness. Voltaire composes his "Métaphysique" and his "Essai sur les Moeurs" for Madame du Chatelet, and Rousseau his "Emile" for Madame d'Epinay. Condillac wrote the "Traité des Sensations" from suggestions of Mademoiselle Ferrand, and he sets forth instructions to young ladies how to read his "Logique." Baudeau dedicates and explains to a lady his "Tableau Economique." Diderot's most profound work is a conversation between Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse and d'Alembert and Bordeu[4106]. Montesquieu had placed an invocation to the muses in the middle of the "Esprit des Lois." Almost every work is a product of the drawing-room, and it is always one that, before the public, has been presented with its beginnings. In this respect the habit is so strong as to last up to the end of 1789; the harangues about to be made in the National Assembly are also passages of bravura previously rehearsed before ladies at an evening entertainment. The American Ambassador, a practical man, explains to Washington with sober irony the fine academic and literary parade preceding the political tournament in public[4107].

"The speeches are made beforehand in a small society of young men and women, among them generally the fair friend of the speaker is one, or else the fair whom he means to make his friend,; and the society very politely give their approbation, unless the lady who gives the tone to that circle chances to reprehend something, which is of course altered, if not amended."

It is not surprising, with customs of this kind, that professional philosophers should become men of society. At no time or in any place have they been so to the same extent, nor so habitually. The great delight of a man of genius or of learning here, says an English traveler, is to reign over a brilliant assembly of people of fashion[4108]. Whilst in England they bury themselves morosely in their books, living amongst themselves and appearing in society only on condition of "doing some political drudgery," that of journalist or pamphleteer in the service of a party, in France they dine out every evening, and constitute the ornaments and amusement of the drawing-rooms to which they resort to converse[4109]. There is not a house in which dinners are given that has not its titular philosopher, and, later on, its economist and man of science. In the various memoirs, and in the collections of correspondence, we track them from one drawing room to another, from one chateau to another, Voltaire to Cirey at Madame du Chatelet's, and then home, at Ferney where he has a theater and entertains all Europe; Rousseau to Madame d'Epinay's, and M. de Luxembourg's; the Abbé Barthelemy to the Duchesse de Choiseul's; Thomas, Marmontel and Gibbon to Madame Necker's; the encyclopedists to d'Holbach's ample dinners, to the plain and discreet table of Madame Geoffrin, and to the little drawing room of Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse, all belonging to the great central state drawing-room, that is to say, to the French Academy, where each newly elected member appears to parade his style and obtain from a polished body his commission of master in the art of discourse. Such a public imposes on an author the obligation of being more a writer than a philosopher. The thinker is expected to concern himself with his sentences as much as with his ideas. He is not allowed to be a mere scholar in his closet, a simple erudite, diving into folios in German fashion, a metaphysician absorbed with his own meditations, having an audience of pupils who take notes, and, as readers, men devoted to study and willing to give themselves trouble, a Kant, who forms for himself a special language, who waits for a public to comprehend him and who leaves the room in which he labors only for the lecture-room in which he delivers his lectures. Here, on the contrary, in the matter of expression, all are experts and even professional. The mathematician d'Alembert publishes a small treatise on elocution; Buffon, the naturalist pronounces a discourse on Style; the legist Montesquieu composes an essay on Taste; the psychologist Condillac writes a volume on the art of writing. In this consists their greatest glory; philosophy owes its entry into society to them. They withdrew it from the study, the closed-society and the school, to introduce it into company and into conversation.

II. Its Method.

Owing to this method it becomes popular.

"Madame la Maréchale," says one of Diderot's personages,[4110]. "I must consider things from a somewhat higher point of view."--"As high as you please so long as I understand you."--"If you do not understand me it will be my fault."--"You are very polite, but you must know that I have studied nothing but my prayer book."--That makes no difference; the pretty woman, ably led on, begins to philosophize without knowing it, arriving without effort at the distinction between good and evil, comprehending and deciding on the highest doctrines of morality and religion.--Such is the art of the eighteenth century, and the art of writing. People are addressed who are perfectly familiar with life, but who are commonly ignorant of orthography, who are curious in all directions, but ill prepared for any; the object is to bring truth down to their level[4111]. Scientific or too abstract terms are inadmissible; they tolerate only those used to ordinary conversation. And this is no obstacle; it is easier to talk philosophy in this language than to use it for discussing precedence and clothes. For, in every abstract question there is some leading and simple conception on which the rest depends, those of unity, proportion, mass and motion in mathematics; those of organ, function and being in physiology; those of sensation, pain, pleasure and desire in psychology; those of utility, contract and law in politics and morality; those of capital, production, value, exchange in political economy, and the same in the other sciences, all of these being conceptions derived from passing experience; from which it follows that, in appealing to common experience by means of a few familiar circumstances, such as short stories, anecdotes, agreeable tales, and the like, these conceptions are fashioned anew and rendered precise. This being accomplished, almost everything is accomplished; for nothing then remains but to lead the listener along step by step, flight by flight, to the remotest consequences.

"Will Madame la Maréchale have the kindness to recall my definition?"--"I remember it well-do you call that a definition?"--"Yes."--"That, then, is philosophy!"--"Admirable!"--"And I have been philosophical?"--"As you read prose, without being aware of it."

The rest is simply a matter of reasoning, that is to say, of leading on, of putting questions in the right order, and of analysis. With the conception thus renewed and rectified the truth nearest at hand is brought out, then out of this, a second truth related to the first one, and so on to the end, no other obligation being involved in this method but that of carefully advancing step by step, and of omitting no intermediary step.--With this method one is able to explain all, to make everything understood, even by women, and even by women of society. In the eighteenth century it forms the substance of all talents, the warp of all masterpieces, the lucidity, popularity and authority of philosophy. The "Eloges" of Fontenelle, the "Philosophe ignorant et le principe d'action" by Voltaire, the "Lettre à M. de Beaumont," and the "Vicaire Savoyard" by Rousseau, the "Traité de l'homme" and the "Époques de la Nature" by Buffon, the "Dialogues sur les blés" by Galiani, the "Considérations" by d'Alembert, on mathematics, the "Langue des Calculs" and the "Logique" by Condillac, and, a little later, the "Exposition du système du Monde" by Laplace, and "Discours généraux" by Bichat and Cuvier; all are based on this method[4112]. Finally, this is the method which Condillac erects into a theory under the name of ideology, soon acquiring the ascendancy of a dogma, and which then seems to sum up all methods. At the very least it sums up the process by which the philosophers of the century obtained their audience, propagated their doctrine and achieved their success.

III. Its Popularity.

Owing to style it becomes pleasing.--Two stimulants peculiar to the 18th century, coarse humor and irony.

Thanks to this method one can be understood; but, to be read, something more is necessary. I compare the eighteenth century to a company of people around a table; it is not sufficient that the food before them be well prepared, well served, within reach and easy to digest, but it is important that it should be some choice dish or, better still, some dainty. The intellect is Epicurean; let us supply it with savory, delicate viands adapted to its taste; it will eat so much the more owing to its appetite being sharpened by sensuality. Two special condiments enter into the cuisine of this century, and, according to the hand that makes use of them, they furnish all literary dishes with a coarse or delicate seasoning. In an Epicurean society, to which a return to nature and the rights of instinct are preached, voluptuous images and ideas present themselves involuntarily; this is the appetizing, exciting spice-box. Each guest at the table uses or abuses it; many empty its entire contents on their plate. And I do not allude merely to the literature read in secret, to the extraordinary books Madame d'Audlan, governess to the French royal children, peruses, and which stray off into the hands of the daughters of Louis XV,[4113] nor to other books, still more extraordinary,[4114] in which philosophical arguments appear as an interlude between filth and the illustrations, and which are kept by the ladies of the court on their toilet-tables, under the title of "Heures de Paris." I refer here to the great men, to the masters of the public intellect. With the exception of Buffon, all put pimento into their sauces, that is to say, loose talk or coarseness of expression. We find this even in the" Esprit des Lois;" there is an enormous amount of it, open and covered up, in the "Lettres Persanes." Diderot, in his two great novels, puts it in by handfuls, as if during an orgy. The teeth crunch on it like so many grains of pepper, on every page of Voltaire. We find it, not only piquant, but strong and of burning intensity, in the "Nouvelle Héloïse," scores of times in "Emile," and, in the "Confessions," from one end to the other. It was the taste of the day. M. de Malesherbes, so upright and so grave, committed "La Pucelle" to memory and recited it. We have from the pen of Saint-Just, the gloomiest of the "Mountain," a poem as lascivious as that of Voltaire, while Madame Roland, the noblest of the Girondins, has left us confessions as venturesome and specific as those of Rousseau[4115].--On the other hand there is a second box, that containing the old Gallic salt, that is to say, humor and raillery. Its mouth is wide open in the hands of a philosophy proclaiming the sovereignty of reason. Whatever is contrary to Reason is to it absurd and therefore open to ridicule. The moment the solemn hereditary mask covering up an abuse is brusquely and adroitly torn aside, we feel a curious spasm, the corners of our mouth stretching apart and our breast heaving violently, as at a kind of sudden relief, an unexpected deliverance, experiencing a sense of our recovered superiority, of our revenge being gratified and of an act of justice having been performed. But it depends on the mode in which the mask is struck off whether the laugh shall be in turn light or loud, suppressed or unbridled, now amiable and cheerful, or now bitter and sardonic. Humor (la plaisanterie) comports with all aspects, from buffoonery to indignation; no literary seasoning affords such a variety, or so many mixtures, nor one that so well enters into combination with that above-mentioned. The two together, from the middle ages down, form the principal ingredients employed by the French cuisine in the composition of its most agreeable dainties,--fables, tales, witticisms, jovial songs and waggeries, the eternal heritage of a good-humored, mocking people, preserved by La Fontaine athwart the pomp and sobriety of the seventeenth century, and, in the eighteenth, reappearing everywhere at the philosophic banquet. Its charm is great to the brilliant company at this table, so amply provided, whose principal occupation is pleasure and amusement. It is all the greater because, on this occasion, the passing disposition is in harmony with hereditary instinct, and because the taste of the epoch is fortified by the national taste. Add to all this the exquisite art of the cooks, their talent in commingling, in apportioning and in concealing the condiments, in varying and arranging the dishes, the certainty of their hand, the finesse of their palate, their experience in processes, in the traditions and practices which, already for a hundred years, form of French prose the most delicate nourishment of the intellect. It is not strange to find them skilled in regulating human speech, in extracting from it its quintessence and in distilling its full delight.

IV. The Masters.

The art and processes of the masters.--Montesquieu.-- Voltaire.--Diderot.--Rousseau.--"The Marriage of Figaro."

In this respect four among them are superior, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. It seems sufficient to mention their names. Modern Europe has no greater writers. And yet their talent must be closely examined to properly comprehend their power.--In tone and style Montesquieu is the first. No writer is more master of himself, more outwardly calm, more sure of his meaning. His voice is never boisterous; he expresses the most powerful thoughts with moderation. There is no gesticulation; exclamations, the abandonment of impulse, all that is irreconcilable with decorum is repugnant to his tact, his reserve, his dignity. He seems to be always addressing a select circle of people with acute minds, and in such a way as to render them at every moment conscious of their acuteness. No flattery could be more delicate; we feel grateful to him for making us satisfied with our intelligence. We must possess some intelligence to be able to read him, for he deliberately curtails developments and omits transitions; we are required to supply these and to comprehend his hidden meanings. He is rigorously systematic but the system is concealed, his concise completed sentences succeeding each other separately, like so many precious coffers or caskets, now simple and plain in aspect, now superbly chased and decorated, but always full. Open them and each contains a treasure; here is placed in narrow compass a rich store of reflections, of emotions, of discoveries, our enjoyment being the more intense because we can easily retain all this for a moment in the palm of our hand. "That which usually forms a grand conception," he himself says, "is a thought so expressed as to reveal a number of other thoughts, and suddenly disclosing what we could not anticipate without patient study." This, indeed, is his manner; he thinks with summaries; he concentrates the essence of despotism in a chapter of three lines. The summary itself often bears the air of an enigma, of which the charm is twofold; we have the pleasure of comprehension accompanying the satisfaction of divining. In all subjects he maintains this supreme discretion, this art of indicating without enforcing, these reticences, the smile that never becomes a laugh.

"In my defense of the 'Esprit des Lois,"' he says, "that which gratifies me is not to see venerable theologians crushed to the ground but to see them glide down gently."

He excels in tranquil irony, in polished disdain,[4116] in disguised sarcasm. His Persians judge France as Persians, and we smile at their errors; unfortunately the laugh is not against them but against ourselves, for their error is found to be a verity[4117]. This or that letter, in a sober vein, seems a comedy at their expense without reflecting upon us, full of Muslim prejudices and of oriental conceit;[4118] reflect a moment, and our conceit, in this relation, appears no less. Blows of extraordinary force and reach are given in passing, as if thoughtlessly, against existing institutions, against the transformed Catholicism which "in the present state of Europe, cannot last five hundred years," against the degenerate monarchy which causes useful citizens to starve to fatten parasite courtiers[4119]. The entire new philosophy blooms out in his hands with an air of innocence, in a pastoral romance, in a simple prayer, in an artless letter[4120]. None of the gifts which serve to arrest and fix the attention are wanting in this style, neither grandeur of imagination nor profound sentiment, vivid characterization, delicate gradations, vigorous precision, a sportive grace, unlooked-for burlesque, nor variety of representation. But, amidst so many ingenious tricks, apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when masquerading, his deportment throughout is irreproachable and his tone is perfect. If; as an author, he develops a paradox it is with almost English gravity. If he fully exposes indecency it is with decent terms. In the full tide of buffoonery, as well as in the full blast of license, he is ever the well-bred man, born and brought up in the aristocratic circle in which full liberty is allowed but where good-breeding is supreme, where every idea is permitted but where words are weighed, where one has the privilege of saying what he pleases, but on condition that he never forgets himself.

A circle of this kind is a small one, comprising only a select few; to be understood by the multitude requires another tone of voice. Philosophy demands a writer whose principal occupation is a diffusion of it, who is unable to keep it to himself; who pours it out like a gushing fountain, who offers it to everybody, daily and in every form, in broad streams and in small drops, without exhaustion or weariness, through every crevice and by every channel, in prose, in verse, in imposing and in trifling poems, in the drama, in history, in novels, in pamphlets, in pleadings, in treatises, in essays, in dictionaries, in correspondence, openly and in secret, in order that it may penetrate to all depths and in every soil; such was Voltaire.--"I have accomplished more in my day," he says somewhere, "than either Luther or Calvin," in which he is mistaken. The truth is, however, he has something of their spirit. Like them he is desirous of changing the prevailing religion, he takes the attitude of the founder of a sect, he recruits and binds together proselytes, he writes letters of exhortation, of direction and of predication, he puts watchwords in circulation, he furnishes "the brethren" with a device; his passion resembles the zeal of an apostle or of a prophet. Such a spirit is incapable of reserve; it is militant and fiery by nature; it apostrophizes, reviles and improvises; it writes under the dictation of impressions; it allows itself every species of utterance and, if need be, the coarsest. It thinks by explosions; its emotions are sudden starts, and its images so many sparks; it lets the rein go entirely; it gives itself up to the reader and hence it takes possession of him. Resistance is impossible; the contagion is too overpowering. A creature of air and flame, the most excitable that ever lived, composed of more ethereal and more throbbing atoms than those of other men; none is there whose mental machinery is more delicate, nor whose equilibrium is at the same time more shifting and more exact. He may be compared to those accurate scales that are affected by a breath, but alongside of which every other measuring apparatus is incorrect and clumsy.--But, in this delicate balance only the lightest weights, the finest specimen must be placed; on this condition only it rigorously weighs all substances; such is Voltaire, involuntarily, through the demands of his intellect, and in his own behalf as much as in that of his readers. An entire philosophy, ten volumes of theology, an abstract science, a special library, an important branch of erudition, of human experience and invention, is thus reduced in his hands to a phrase or to a stanza. From the enormous mass of riven or compact scorioe he extracts whatever is essential, a grain of gold or of copper as a specimen of the rest, presenting this to us in its most convenient and most manageable form, in a simile, in a metaphor, in an epigram that becomes a proverb. In this no ancient or modern writer approaches him; in simplification and in popularization he has not his equal in the world. Without departing from the usual conversational tone, and as if in sport, he puts into little portable phrases the greatest discoveries and hypotheses of the human mind, the theories of Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Locke and Newton, the diverse religions of antiquity and of modern times, every known system of physics, physiology, geology, morality, natural law, and political economy,[4121] in short, all the generalized conceptions in every order of knowledge to which humanity had attained in the eighteenth century.--Voltaire's inclination is so strong that it carries him too far; he belittles great things by rendering them accessible. Religion, legend, ancient popular poesy, the spontaneous creations of instinct, the vague visions of primitive tunes are not thus to be converted into small current coin; they are not subjects of amusing and lively conversation. A piquant witticism is not an expression of all this, but simply a travesty. But how charming to Frenchmen, and to people of the world! And what reader can abstain from a book containing all human knowledge summed up in piquant witticisms? For it is really a summary of human knowledge, no important idea, as far as I can see, being wanting to a man whose breviary consisted of the "Dialogues," the "Dictionary," and the "Novels." Read them over and over five or six times, and we then form some idea of their vast contents. Not only do views of the world and of man abound in them, but again they swarm with positive and even technical details, thousands of little facts scattered throughout, multiplied and precise details on astronomy, physics, geography, physiology, statistics, and on the history of all nations, the innumerable and personal experiences of a man who has himself read the texts, handled the instruments, visited the countries, taken part in the industries, and associated with the persons, and who, in the precision of his marvelous memory, in the liveliness of his ever-blazing imagination, revives or sees, as with the eye itself, everything that he states and as he states it. It is a unique talent, the rarest in a classic era, the most precious of all, since it consists in the display of actual beings, not through the gray veil of abstractions, but in themselves, as they are in nature and in history, with their visible color and forms, with their accessories and surroundings in time and space, a peasant at his cart, a Quaker in his meeting-house, a German baron in his castle, Dutchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen, in their homes,[4122] a great lady, a designing woman, provincials, soldiers, prostitutes,[4123] and the rest of the human medley, on every step of the social ladder, each an abridgment of his kind and in the passing light of a sudden flash.

For, the most striking feature of this style is the prodigious rapidity, the dazzling and bewildering stream of novelties, ideas, images, events, landscapes, narratives, dialogues, brief little pictures, following each other rapidly as if in a magic-lantern, withdrawn almost as soon as presented by the impatient magician who, in the twinkling of an eye, girdles the world and, constantly accumulating one on top of the other, history, fable, truth and fancy, the present time and times past, frames his work now with a parade as absurd as that of a country fair, and now with a fairy scene more magnificent than all those of the opera. To amuse and be amused, "to diffuse his spirit in every imaginable mode, like a glowing furnace into which all substances are thrown by turns to evolve every species of flame, sparkle and odor," is his first instinct. "Life," he says again, "is an infant to be rocked until it goes to sleep." Never was a mortal more excited and more exciting, more incapable of silence and more hostile to ennui,[4124] better endowed for conversation, more evidently destined to become the king of a sociable century in which, with six pretty stories, thirty witticisms and some confidence in himself, a man could obtain a social passport and the certainty of being everywhere welcome. Never was there a writer possessing to so high a degree and in such abundance every qualification of the conversationalist, the art of animating and of enlivening discourse, the talent for giving pleasure to people of society. Perfectly refined when he chose to be, confining himself without inconvenience to strict decorum, of finished politeness, of exquisite gallantry, deferential without being servile, fond without being mawkish,[4125] and always at his ease, it suffices that he should be before the public, to fall naturally into the proper tone, the discreet ways, the winning half-smile of the well-bred man who, introducing his readers into his mind, does them the honors of the place. Are you on familiar terms with him, and of the small private circle in which he freely unbends himself, with closed doors? You never tire of laughing. With a sure hand and without seeming to touch it, he abruptly tears aside the veil hiding a wrong, a prejudice, a folly, in short, any human idolatry. The real figure, misshapen, odious or dull, suddenly appears in this instantaneous flash; we shrug our shoulders. This is the risibility of an agile, triumphant reason. We have another in that of the gay temperament, of the droll improvisator, of the man keeping youthful, a child, a boy even to the day of his death, and who "gambols on his own tombstone." He is fond of caricature, exaggerating the features of faces, bringing grotesques on the stage,[4126] walking them about in all lights like marionettes, never weary of taking them up and of making them dance in new costumes; in the very midst of his philosophy, of his propaganda and polemics, he sets up his portable theater in full blast, exhibiting oddities, the scholar, the monk, the inquisitor, Maupertuis, Pompignan, Nonotte, Fréron, King David, and countless others who appear before us, capering and gesticulating in their harlequin attire.--When a farcical talent is thus moved to tell the truth, humor becomes all-powerful; for it gratifies the profound and universal instincts of human nature: to the malicious curiosity, to the desire to mock and belitte, to the aversion to being in need or under constraint, those sources of bad moods which task convention, etiquette and social obligation with wearing the burdensome cloak of respect and of decency; moments occur in life when the wisest is not sorry to throw this half aside and even cast it off entirely.--On each page, now with the bold stroke of a hardy naturalist, now with the quick turn of a mischievous monkey, Voltaire lets the solemn or serious drapery fall, disclosing man, the poor biped, and in which attitudes![4127] Swift alone dared to present similar pictures. What physiological crudities relating to the origin and end of our most exalted sentiments! What disproportion between such feeble reason and such powerful instincts! What recesses in the wardrobes of politics and religion concealing their foul linen! We laugh at all this so as not to weep, and yet behind this laughter there are tears; he ends sneeringly, subsiding into a tone of profound sadness, of mournful pity. In this degree, and with such subjects, it is only an effect of habit, or as an expedient, a mania of inspiration, a fixed condition of the nervous machinery rushing headlong over everything, without a break and in full speed. Gaiety, let it not be forgotten, is still a incentive of action, the last that keeps man erect in France, the best in maintaining the tone of his spirit, his strength and his powers of resistance, the most intact in an age when men, and women too, believed it incumbent on them to die people of good society, with a smile and a jest on their lips[4128].

When the talent of a writer thus accords with public inclinations it is a matter of little import whether he deviates or fails since he is following the universal tendency. He may wander off or besmirch himself in vain, for his audience is only the more pleased, his defects serving him as advantageously as his good qualities. After the first generation of healthy minds the second one comes on, the intellectual balance here being equally inexact. "Diderot," says Voltaire, "is too hot an oven, everything that is baked in it getting burnt." Or rather, he is an eruptive volcano which, for forty years, discharges ideas of every order and species, boiling and fused together, precious metals, coarse scorioe and fetid mud; the steady stream overflows at will according to the roughness of the ground, but always displaying the ruddy light and acrid fumes of glowing lava. He is not master of his ideas, but his ideas master him; he is under submission to them; he has not that firm foundation of common practical sense which controls their impetuosity and ravages, that inner dyke of social caution which, with Montesquieu and Voltaire, bars the way to outbursts. Everything with him rushes out of the surcharged crater, never picking its way, through the first fissure or crevice it finds, according to his haphazard reading, a letter, a conversation, an improvisation, and not in frequent small jets as with Voltaire, but in broad currents tumbling blindly down the most precipitous declivities of the century. Not only does he descend thus to the very depths of anti-religious and anti-social doctrines, with logical and paradoxical rigidity, more impetuously and more obstreperously than d'Holbach himself; but again he falls into and sports himself in the slime of the age, consisting of obscenity, and into the beaten track of declamation. In his leading novels he dwells a long time on salacious equivocation, or on a scene of lewdness. Crudity with him is not extenuated by malice or glossed over by elegance. He is neither refined nor pungent; is quite incapable, like the younger Crébillon, of depicting the scapegrace of ability. He is a new-comer, a parvenu in standard society; you see in him a commoner, a powerful reasoner, an indefatigable workman and great artist, introduced, through the customs of the day, at a supper of fashionable livers. He engrosses the conversation, directs the orgy, or in the contagion or on a wager, says more filthy things, more "gueulées," than all the guests put together[4129]. In like manner, in his dramas, in his "Essays on Claudius and Nero," in his "Commentary on Seneca," in his additions to the "Philosophical History" of Raynal, he forces the tone of things. This tone, which then prevails by virtue of the classic spirit and of the new fashion, is that of sentimental rhetoric. Diderot carries it to extremes in the exaggeration of tears or of rage, in exclamations, in apostrophes, in tenderness of feeling, in violences, indignation, in enthusiasms, in full-orchestra tirades, in which the fire of his brains finds employment and an outlet.--On the other hand, among so many superior writers, he is the only genuine artist, the creator of souls, within his mind objects, events and personages are born and become organized of themselves, through their own forces, by virtue of natural affinities, involuntarily, without foreign intervention, in such a way as to live for and in themselves, safe from the author's intentions, and outside of his combinations. The composer of the "Salons," the "Petits Romans," the "Entretien," the "Paradoxe du Comédien," and especially the "Rêve de d'Alembert" and the "Neveu de Rameau "is a man of an unique species in his time. However alert and brilliant Voltaire's personages may be, they are always puppets; their action is derivative; always behind them you catch a glimpse of the author pulling the strings. With Diderot, the strings are severed; he is not speaking through the lips of his characters; they are not his comical loud-speakers or puppets, but independent and detached persons, with an action of their own, a personal accent, with their own temperament, passions, ideas, philosophy, style and spirit, and occasionally, as in the "Neveu de Rameau," a spirit so original, complex and complete, so alive and so deformed that, in the natural history of man, it becomes an incomparable monster and an immortal document. He has expressed everything concerning nature,[4130] art morality and life[4131] in two small treatises of which twenty successive readings exhaust neither the charm nor the sense. Find elsewhere, if you can, a similar stroke of power and a greater masterpiece, "anything more absurd and more profound!"[4132]--Such is the advantage of men of genius possessing no control over themselves. They lack discernment but they have inspiration. Among twenty works, either soiled, rough or nasty, they produce a creation, and still better, an animated being, able to live by itself, before which others, fabricated by merely intellectual people, resemble simply well-dressed puppets.--Hence it is that Diderot is so great a narrator, a master of dialogue, the equal in this respect of Voltaire, and, through a quite opposite talent, believing all he says at the moment of saying it; forgetful of his very self, carried away by his own recital, listening to inward voices, surprised with the responses which come to him unexpectedly, borne along, as if on an unknown river, by the current of action, by the sinuosities of the conversation inwardly and unconsciously developed, aroused by the flow of ideas and the leap of the moment to the most unexpected imagery, extreme in burlesque or extreme in magnificence, now lyrical even to providing Musset with an entire stanza,[4133] now comic and droll with outbursts unheard of since the days of Rabelais, always in good faith, always at the mercy of his subject, of his inventions, of his emotions; the most natural of writers in an age of artificial literature, resembling a foreign tree which, transplanted to a parterre of the epoch, swells out and decays on one side of its stem, but of which five or six branches, thrust out into full light, surpass the neighboring underwood in the freshness of their sap and in the vigor of their growth.

Rousseau also is an artisan, a man of the people, ill-adapted to elegant and refined society, out of his element in a drawing room and, moreover, of low birth, badly brought up, sullied by a vile and precocious experience, highly and offensively sensual, morbid in mind and in body, fretted by superior and discordant faculties, possessing no tact, and carrying the contamination of his imagination, temperament and past life into his austere morality and into his purest idylls;[4134] besides this he has no fervor, and in this he is the opposite of Diderot, avowing himself" that his ideas arrange themselves in his head with the utmost difficulty, that certain sentences are turned over and over again in his brain for five or six nights before putting them on paper, and that a letter on the most trifling subject costs him hours of fatigue," that he cannot fall into an easy and agreeable tone, nor succeed otherwise than "in works which demand application."[4135] As an offset to this, style, in this ardent brain, under the influence of intense, prolonged meditation, incessantly hammered and rehammered, becomes more concise and of higher temper than is elsewhere found. Since La Bruyère we have seen no more ample, virile phrases, in which anger, admiration, indignation, studied and concentrated passion, appear with more rigorous precision and more powerful relief. He is almost the equal of La Bruyère in the arrangement of skillful effects, in the aptness and ingenuity of developments, in the terseness of impressive summaries, in the overpowering directness of unexpected arguments, in the multiplicity of literary achievements, in the execution of those passages of bravura, portraits, descriptions, comparisons, creations, wherein, as in a musical crescendo, the same idea, varied by a series of yet more animated expressions, attains to or surpasses, at the last note, all that is possible of energy and of brilliancy. Finally, he has that which is wanting in La Bruyère; his passages are linked together; he is not a writer of pages but of books; no logician is more condensed. His demonstration is knitted together, mesh by mesh, for one, two and three volumes like a great net without an opening in which, willingly or not, we remain caught. He is a systematizer who, absorbed with himself; and with his eyes stubbornly fixed on his own reverie or his own principle, buries himself deeper in it every day, weaving its consequences off one by one, and always holding fast to the various ends. Do not go near him. Like a solitary, enraged spider he weaves this out of his own substance, out of the most cherished convictions of his brain and the deepest emotions of his heart. He trembles at the slightest touch; ever on the defensive, he is terrible,[4136] beside himself;[4137] even venomous through suppressed exasperation and wounded sensibility, furious against an adversary, whom he stifles with the multiplied and tenacious threads of his web, but still more redoubtable to himself than to his enemies, soon caught in his own meshes,[4138] believing that France and the universe conspire against him, deducing with wonderful subtlety the proofs of this chimerical conspiracy, made desperate, at last, by his over-plausible romance, and strangling in the cunning toils which, by dint of his own logic and imagination, he has fashioned for himself.

With such weapons one might accidentally kill oneself, but one is strongly armed. Rousseau was well equipped, at least as powerful as Voltaire; it may be said that the last half of the eighteenth century belongs to him. A foreigner, a Protestant, original in temperament, in education, in heart, in mind and in habits, at once misanthropic and philanthropic, living in an ideal world constructed by himself, entirely opposed to the world as it is, he finds himself standing in a new position. No one is so sensitive to the evils and vices of actual society. No one is so affected by the virtues and happiness of the society of the future. This accounts for his having two holds on the public mind, one through satire and the other through the idyll.--These two holds are undoubtedly slighter at the present day; the substance of their grasp has disappeared; we are not the auditors to which it appealed. The famous discourse on the influence of literature and on the origin of inequality seems to us a collegiate exaggeration; an effort of the will is required to read the "Nouvelle Héloïse." The author is repulsive in the persistency of his spitefulness or in the exaggeration of his enthusiasm. He is always in extremes, now moody and with knit brows, and now streaming with tears and with arms outstretched to Heaven. Hyperbole, prosopopaeia, and other literary machinery are too often and too deliberately used by him. We are tempted to regard him now as a sophist making the best use of his arts, now as a rhetorician cudgeling his brains for a purpose, now as a preacher becoming excited, that is to say, an actor ever maintaining a thesis, striking an attitude and aiming at effects. Finally, with the exception of the "Confessions" his style soon wearies us; it is too studied, and too constantly overstrained. The author is always the author, and he communicates the defect to his personages. His Julie argues and descants for twenty successive pages on dueling, on love, on duty, with a logical completeness, a talent and phrases that would do honor to an academical moralist. Commonplace exists everywhere, general themes, a raking fire of abstractions and arguments, that is to say, truths more or less empty and paradoxes more or less hollow. The smallest detail of fact, an anecdote, a trait of habit, would suit us much better, and hence we of to day prefer the precise eloquence of objects to the lax eloquence of words. In the eighteenth century it was otherwise; to every writer this oratorical style was the prescribed ceremonial costume, the dress-coat he had to put on for admission into the company of select people. That which seems to us affectation was then only proper; in a classic epoch the perfect period and the sustained development constitute decorum, and are therefore to be observed.--It must be noted, moreover, that this literary drapery which, with us of the present day, conceals truth did not conceal it to his contemporaries; they saw under it the exact feature, the perceptible detail no longer detected by us. Every abuse, every vice, every excess of refinement and of culture, all that social and moral disease which Rousseau scourged with an author's emphasis, existed before them under their own eyes, in their own breasts, visible and daily manifested in thousands of domestic incidents. In applying satire they had only to observe or to remember. Their experience completed the book, and, through the co-operation of his readers, the author possessed power which he is now deprived of. If we were to put ourselves in their place we should recover their impressions. His denunciations and sarcasms, the harsh things of all sorts he says of the great, of fashionable people and of women, his rude and cutting tone, provoke and irritate, but are not displeasing. On the contrary, after so many compliments, insipidities and petty versification all this quickens the blunted taste; it is the sensation of strong common wine after long indulgence in orgeat and preserved citron. Accordingly, his first discourse against art and literature "lifts one at once above the clouds." But his idyllic writings touch the heart more powerfully than his satires. If men listen to the moralist that scolds them they throng in the footsteps of the magician that charms them; especially do women and the young adhere to one who shows them the promised land. All accumulated dissatisfactions, weariness of the world, ennui, vague disgust, a multitude of suppressed desires gush forth, like subterranean waters, under the sounding line that for the first time brings them to light. Rousseau with his soundings struck deep and true through his own trials and through genius. In a wholly artificial society where people are drawing room puppets, and where life consists in a graceful parade according to a recognized model, he preaches a return to nature, independence, earnestness, passion, and effusion, a manly, active, ardent and happy existence in the open air and in sunshine. What an opening for restrained faculties, for the broad and luxurious fountain ever bubbling in man's breast, and for which their nice society provides no issue!--woman of the court is familiar with love as then practiced, simply a preference, often only a pastime, mere gallantry of which the exquisite polish poorly conceals the shallowness, coldness and, occasionally, wickedness; in short, adventures, amusements and personages as described by Crébillion jr. One evening, about to go out to the opera ball, she finds the "Nouvelle Heloïse" on her toilet-table; it is not surprising that she keeps her horses and footmen waiting from hour to hour, and that at four o'clock in the morning she orders the horses to be unharnessed, and then passes the rest of the night in reading, and that she is stifled with her tears; for the first time in her life she finds a man that loves[4139]. In like manner if you would comprehend the success of "Emile," call to mind the children we have described, the embroidered, gilded, dressed-up, powdered little gentlemen, decked with sword and sash, carrying the chapeau under the arm, bowing, presenting the hand, rehearsing fine attitudes before a mirror, repeating prepared compliments, pretty little puppets in which everything is the work of the tailor, the hairdresser, the preceptor and the dancing-master; alongside of these, little ladies of six years, still more artificial, bound up in whalebone, harnessed in a heavy skirt composed of hair and a girdle of iron, supporting a head-dress two feet in height, so many veritable dolls to which rouge is applied, and with which a mother amuses herself each morning for an hour and then consigns them to her maids for the rest of the day[4140]. This mother reads "Emile." It is not surprising that she immediately strips the poor little thing, and determines to nurse her next child herself.--It is through these contrasts that Rousseau is strong. He revealed the dawn to people who never got up until noon, the landscape to eyes that had thus far rested only on palaces and drawing-rooms, a natural garden to men who had never promenaded outside of clipped shrubs and rectilinear borders, the country, the family, the people, simple and endearing pleasures, to townsmen made weary by social avidity, by the excesses and complications of luxury, by the uniform comedy which, in the glare of hundreds of lighted candles, they played night after night in their own and in the homes of others[4141]. An audience thus disposed makes no clear distinction between pomp and sincerity, between sentiment and sentimentality. They follow their author as one who makes a revelation, as a prophet, even to the end of his ideal world, much more through his exaggerations than through his discoveries, as far on the road to error as on the pathway of truth.

These are the great literary powers of the century. With inferior successes, and through various combinations, the elements which contributed to the formation of the leading talents also form the secondary talents, like those below Rousseau,--Bernardin de St. Pierre, Raynal, Thomas, Marmontel, Mably, Florian, Dupaty, Mercier, Madame de Staël; and below Voltaire,--the lively and piquant intellects of Duclos, Piron, Galiani, President Des Brosses, Rivarol, Champfort, and to speak with precision, all other talents. Whenever a vein of talent, however meager, peers forth above the ground it is for the propagation and carrying forward of the new doctrine; scarcely can we find two or three little streams that run in a contrary direction, like the journal of Freron, a comedy by Palissot, or a satire by Gilbert. Philosophy winds through and overflows all channels public and private, through manuals of impiety, like the "Théologies portatives," and in the lascivious novels circulated secretly, through epigrams and songs, through daily novelties, through the amusements of fairs,[4142] and the harangues of the Academy, through tragedy and the opera, from the beginning to the end of the century, from the "OEdipe" of Voltaire, to the "Tarare" of Beaumarchais. It seems as if there was nothing else in the world. At least it is found everywhere and it floods all literary efforts; nobody cares whether it deforms them, content in making them serve as a conduit. In 1763, in the tragedy of Manco-Capac[4143] the "principal part," writes a contemporary, "is that of a savage who utters in verse all that we have read, scattered through 'Emile' and the 'Contrat Social,' concerning kings, liberty, the rights of man and the inequality of conditions." This virtuous savage saves a king's son over whom a high-priest raises a poniard, and then, designating the high-priest and himself by turns, he cries,

"Behold the civilized man; here is the savage man!"

At this line the applause breaks forth, and the success of the piece is such that it is demanded at Versailles and played before the court.

The same ideas have to be expressed with skill, brilliancy, gaiety, energy and scandal, and this is accomplished in "The Marriage of Figaro." Never were the ideals of the age displayed under a more transparent disguise, nor in an attire that rendered them more attractive. Its title is the "Folle journee," and indeed it is an evening of folly, an after-supper like those occurring in the fashionable world, a masquerade of Frenchmen in Spanish costumes, with a parade of dresses, changing scenes, couplets, a ballet, a singing and dancing village, a medley of odd characters, gentlemen, servants, duennas, judges, notaries, lawyers, music-masters, gardeners, pastoureaux; in short, a spectacle for the eyes and the ears, for all the senses, the very opposite of the prevailing drama in which three pasteboard characters, seated on classic chairs, exchange didactic arguments in an abstract saloon. And still better, it is an imbroglio displaying a superabundance of action, amidst intrigues that cross, interrupt and renew each other, through a pêle-mêle of travesties, exposures, surprises, mistakes, leaps from windows, quarrels and slaps, and all in sparkling style, each phrase flashing on all sides, where responses seem to be cut out by a lapidary, where the eyes would forget themselves in contemplating the multiplied brilliants of the dialogue if the mind were not carried along by its rapidity and the excitement of the action. But here is another charm, the most welcome of all in a society passionately fond of Parny; according to an expression of the Comte d'Artois, which I dare not quote, this appeals to the senses, the arousing of which constitutes the spiciness and savor of the piece. The fruit that hangs ripening and savory on the branch never falls but always seems on the point of falling; all hands are extended to catch it, its voluptuousness somewhat veiled but so much the more provoking, declaring itself from scene to scene, in the Count's gallantry, in the Countess's agitation, in the simplicity of Fanchette, in the jestings of Figaro, in the liberties of Susanne, and reaching its climax in the precocity of Cherubino. Add to this a continual double sense, the author hidden behind his characters, truth put into the mouth of a clown, malice enveloped in simple utterances, the master duped but saved from being ridiculous by his deportment, the valet rebellious but preserved from acrimony by his gaiety, and you can comprehend how Beaumarchais could have the ancient regime played before its head, put political and social satire on the stage, publicly attach an expression to each wrong so as to become a by-word, and ever making a loud report,[4144] gather up into a few traits the entire polemics of the philosophers against the prisons of the State, against the censorship of literature, against the venality of office, against the privileges of birth, against the arbitrary power of ministers, against the incapacity of people in office, and still better, to sum up in one character every public demand, give the leading part to a commoner, bastard, bohemian and valet, who, by dint of dexterity, courage and good-humor, keeps himself up, swims with the tide, and shoots ahead in his little skiff, avoiding contact with larger craft and even supplanting his master, accompanying each pull on the oar with a shower of wit cast broadside at all his rivals.

After all, in France at least, the chief power is intellect. Literature in the service of philosophy is all-sufficient. The public opposes but a feeble resistance to their complicity, the mistress finding no trouble in convincing those who have already been won over by the servant

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 4101: How right Taine was. The 20th century should see a rebirth of violent Jacobinism in Russia, China, Cambodia, Korea, Cuba, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia and Albania and of soft and creeping Jacobinism in the entire Western world. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4102: "Who, born within the last forty years, ever read a word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, or of that whole race who called themselves freethinkers?" (Burke, "Reflexions on the French Revolutions," 1790).]

[Footnote 4103: The "Oedipe," by Voltaire, belongs to the year 1718, and his "Lettres sur les Anglais," to the year 1728. The "Lettres Persanes," by Montesquieu, published in 1721, contain the germs of all the leading ideas of the century.]

[Footnote 4104: "Raison" (cult of). Cult proposed by the Hébertists and aimed at replacing Christianity under the French Revolution. The Cult of Reason was celebrated in the church of Notre Dame de Paris on the 10th of November 1793. The cult disappeared with the Hébertists (March 1794) and Robespierre replaced it with the cult of the Superior Being. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4105: Joseph de Maistre, Oeuvres inédites," pp. 8, 11.]

[Footnote 4106: Diderot's letters on the Blind and on the Deaf and Dumb are addressed in whole or in part to women.]

[Footnote 4107: "Correspondence of Gouverneur Morris," (in English), II, 89. (Letter of January 24, 1790)]

[Footnote 4108: John Andrews in "A comparative view," etc. (1785).--Arthur Young, I. 123. "I should pity the man who expected, without other advantages of a very different nature, to be well received in a brilliant circle in London, because he was a fellow of the Royal Society. But this would not be the case with a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, he is sure of a good reception everywhere."]

[Footnote 4109: "I met in Paris the d'Alemberts, the Marmontels, the Baillys at the houses of duchesses, which was an immense advantage to all concerned. . . . When a man with us devotes himself to writing books he is considered as renouncing the society equally of those who govern as of those who laugh. . . Taking literary vanity into account the lives of your d'Alemberts and Baillys are as pleasant as those of your seigniors." (Stendhal, "Rome, Naples et Florence," 377, in a narrative by Col. Forsyth).]

[Footnote 4110: "Entretien d'un philosophe avec la Maréchale--."]

[Footnote 4111: The television audience today cannot threaten never again to invite the boring "philosopher" to dinner, but will zap away, a move that the system accurately senses. The rules that Taine describes are, alas, therefore once more valid. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4112: The same process is observable in our day in the "Sophismes économiques" of Bastiat, the "Eloges historiques" of Flourens, and in "Le Progrès," by Edmond About.]

[Footnote 4113: The "Portier de Chartreux." (An infamous pornographic book. (SR.))]

[Footnote 4114: "Thérese Philosophe." There is a complete literature of this species.]

[Footnote 4115: See the edition of M. Dauban in which the suppressed passages are restored.]

[Footnote 4116: "Esprit des Lois," ch. XV. book V. (Reasons in favor of slavery). The "Defence of the Esprit des Lois," I. Reply to the second objection. II. Reply to the fourth objection.]

[Footnote 4117: Letter 24 (on Louis XIV.)]

[Footnote 4118: Letter 18 (on the purity and impurity of things). Letter 39 (proofs of the mission of Mohammed).]

[Footnote 4119: Letters 75 and 118.]

[Footnote 4120: Letters 98 (on the modern sciences), 46 (on a true system of worship), 11 and 14 (on the nature of justice).]

[Footnote 4121: Cf "Micromégas," "L'homme aux quarantes écus," "Dialogues entre A, B, C," Dic. Philosophique," passim.--In verse, "Les systèmes," "La loi naturelle," "Le pour et le countre,", "Discours sur l'homme," etc.]

[Footnote 4122: "Traité de métaphysique," chap. I. p.1 (on the peasantry).--"Lettres sur les Anglais," passim.--"Candide," passim.--"La Princesse de Babylone," ch. VII. VIII. IX. and XI.]

[Footnote 4123: "Dict. Phil." articles, "Maladie," (Replies to the princess).--"Candide," at Madame de Parolignac. The sailor in the wreck. Narrative of Paquette.--The "Ingénu," the first chapters.]

[Footnote 4124: "Candide," the last chapter. When there was no dispute going on, it was so wearisome that the old woman one day boldly said to him: "I should like to know which is worse to be ravished a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have one's rump gashed, or be switched by the Bulgarians, to be scourged or hung in an auto-da-fé, to be cut to pieces, to row in the galleys, to suffer any misery through which we have passed, or sit still and do nothing?"--"That is the great question," said Candide.]

[Footnote 4125: For example, in the lines addressed to the Princess Ulrique in the preface to "Alzire," dedicated to Madame du Chatelet:

"Souvent un peu de verité," etc.]

[Footnote 4126: The scholar in the dialogue of "Le Mais," (Jenny).--The canonization of Saint Cucufin.--Advice to brother Pediculuso.--The diatribe of Doctor Akakia.--Conversation of the emperor of China with brother Rigolo, etc.]

[Footnote 4127: "Dict. Philosophique," the article "Ignorance."--"Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfied."--"L'homme au quarante écus," chap. VII. and XI.]

[Footnote 4128: Bachaumont, III, 194. (The death of the Comte de Maugiron).]

[Footnote 4129: "The novels of the younger Crébillon were in fashion. My father spoke with Madame de Puisieux on the ease with which licentious works were composed; he contended that it was only necessary to find an arousing idea as a peg to hang others on in which intellectual libertinism should be a substitute for taste. She challenged him to produce on of this kind. At the end of a fortnight he brought her 'Les bijoux indiscrets' and fifty louis." (Mémoires of Diderot, by his daughter).--"La Religieuse," has a similar origin, its object being to mystify M. de Croismart.]

[Footnote 4130: "Le Rêve de d'Alembert."]

[Footnote 4131: "Le neveau de Rameau."]

[Footnote 4132: The words of Diderot himself in relation to the "Rêve de d'Alembert."]

[Footnote 4133: One of the finest stanzas in "Souvenir" is almost literally transcribed (involuntarily, I suppose), from the dialogue on Otaheite (Tahiti).]

[Footnote 4134: "Nouvelle Héloise," passim., and notably Julie's extraordinary letter, second part, number 15.--"Émile," the preceptor's discourse to Émile and Sophie the morning after their marriage.--Letter of the comtesse de Boufflers to Gustavus III., published by Geffroy, ("Gustave III. et la cour de France"). "I entrust to Baron de Lederheim, though with reluctance, a book for you which has just been published, the infamous memoirs of Rousseau entitled 'Confessions.' They seem to me those of a common scullion and even lower than that, being dull throughout, whimsical and vicious in the most offensive manner. I do not recur to my worship of him (for such it was) I shall never console myself for its having caused the death of that eminent man David Hume, who, to gratify me, undertook to entertain that filthy animal in England."]

[Footnote 4135: "Confessions," part I, book III.]

[Footnote 4136: Letter to M, de Beaumont.]

[Footnote 4137: "Émile," letter IV. 193. "People of the world must necessarily put on disguise; let them show themselves as they are and they would horrify us," etc.]

[Footnote 4138: See, especially, his book entitled "Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques," his connection with Hume and the last books of the "confessions."]

[Footnote 4139: "Confessions," part 2. book XI. "The women were intoxicated with the book and with the author to such an extent that there were few of them, even of high rank, whose conquest I could not have made if I had undertaken it. I possess evidence of this which I do not care, to publish, and which, without having been obliged to prove it by experience, warrant, my statement." Cf. G. Sand, "Histoire de ma vie," I.73.]

[Footnote 4140: See an engraving by Moreau called "Les Petits Parrains."--Berquin, passim., and among others "L'épée."--Remark the ready-made phrases, the style of an author common to children, in Berquin and Madame de Genlis.]

[Footnote 4141: See the description of sunrise in "Émile," of the Élysée (a natural garden), in "Héloise." And especially in "Emile," at the end of the fourth book, the pleasures which Rousseau would enjoy if he were rich.]

[Footnote 4142: See in Marivaux, ("La double inconstance,") a satire on the court, courtiers and the corruptions of high life, opposed to the common people in the country.]

[Footnote 4143: Bachmaumont, I. 254.]

[Footnote 4144: "A calculator was required for the place but a dancer got it."--"The sale of offices is a great abuse."--"Yes, it would he better to give them for nothing."--"Only small men fear small literature."--"Chance makes the interval, the mind only can alter that!"--"A courtier?--they say it is a very difficult profession."--"To receive, to take, and to ask, is the secret in three words," etc,--Also the entire monologue by Figaro, and all the scenes with Bridoisin.]

## CHAPTER II. THE FRENCH PUBLIC.

I. The Nobility.

The Aristocracy.--Novelty commonly repugnant to it.-- Conditions of this repugnance.--Example in England.

This public has yet to be made willing to be convinced and to be won over; belief occurs only when there is a disposition to believe, and, in the success of books, its share is often greater than that of their authors. On addressing men about politics or religion their opinions are, in general already formed; their prejudices, their interests, their situation have confirmed them beforehand; they listen to you only after you have uttered aloud what they inwardly think. Propose to them to demolish the great social edifice and to rebuild it anew on a quite an opposite plan: ordinarily you auditors will consist only of those who are poorly lodged or shelterless, who live in garrets or cellars, or who sleep under the stars, on the bare ground in the vicinity of houses. The common run of people, whose lodgings are small but tolerable, dread moving and adhere to their accustomed ways. The difficulty becomes much greater on appealing to the upper classes who occupy superior habitations; their acceptance of your proposal depends either on their great delusions or on their great disinterestedness. In England they quickly foresee the danger.

In vain is philosophy there indigenous and precocious; it does not become acclimatized. In 1729, Montesquieu writes in his memorandum-book: "No religion in England; four or five members of the House of Commons attend mass or preaching in the House. . . . When religion is mentioned everybody begins to laugh. A man having said: I believe that as an article of faith, everybody laughed. A committee is appointed to consider the state of religion, but it is regarded as absurd." Fifty years later the public mind undergoes a reaction; all with a good roof over their heads and a good coat on their backs[4201] see the consequence of the new doctrines. In any event they feel that closet speculations are not to become street preaching. Impiety seems to them an indiscretion; they consider religion as the cement of public order. This is owing to the fact that they are themselves public men, engaged in active life, taking a part in the government, and instructed through their daily and personal experience. Practical life fortifies them against the chimeras of theorists; they have proved to themselves how difficult it is to lead and to control men. Having had their hand on the machine they know how it works, its value, its cost, and they are not tempted to cast it aside as rubbish to try another, said to be superior, but which, as yet, exists only on paper. The baronet, or squire, a justice on his own domain, has no trouble in discerning in the clergyman of his parish an indispensable co-worker and a natural ally. The duke or marquis, sitting in the upper house by the side of bishops, requires their votes to pass bills, and their assistance to rally to his party the fifteen hundred curates who influence the rural conscience. Thus all have a hand on some social wheel, large or small, principal or accessory, and this endows them with earnestness, foresight and good sense. On coming in contact with realities there is no temptation to soar away into the imaginary world; the fact of one being at work on solid ground of itself makes one dislike aerial excursions in empty space. The more occupied one is the less one dreams, and, to men of business, the geometry of the 'Contrat Social' is merely intellectual gymnastics.

II. Conditions In France.

The opposite conditions found in France.--Indolence of the upper class.--Philosophy seems an intellectual drill.-- Besides this, a subject for conversation.--Philosophic conversation in the 18th century.--Its superiority and its charm.--The influence it exercises.

It is quite the reverse in France. "I arrived there in 1774,"[4202] says an English gentleman, "having just left the house of my father, who never came home from Parliament until three o'clock in the morning, and who was busy the whole morning correcting the proofs of his speech for the newspapers, and who, after hastily kissing us, with an absorbed air, went out to a political dinner. . . . In France I found men of the highest rank enjoying perfect leisure. They had interviews with the ministers but only to exchange compliments; in other respects they knew as little about the public affairs of France as they did about those of Japan; and less of local affairs than of general affairs, having no knowledge of their peasantry other than that derived from the accounts of their stewards. If one of them, bearing the title of governor, visited a province, it was, as we have seen, for outward parade; whilst the intendant carried on the administration, he exhibited himself with grace and magnificence by giving receptions and dinners. To receive, to give dinners, to entertain guests agreeably is the sole occupation of a grand seignior; hence it is that religion and government only serve him as subjects of conversation. The conversation, moreover, occurs between him and his equals, and a man may say what he pleases in good company. Moreover the social system turns on its own axis, like the sun, from time immemorial, through its own energy, and shall it be deranged by what is said in the drawing-room? In any event he does not control its motion and he is not responsible. Accordingly there is no uneasy undercurrent, no morose preoccupation in his mind. Carelessly and boldly he follows in the track of his philosophers; detached from affairs he can give himself up to ideas, just as a young man of family, on leaving college, lays hold of some principle, deduces its consequences, and forms a system for himself without concerning himself about its application[4203].

Nothing is more enjoyable than this speculative inspiration. The mind soars among the summits as if it had wings; it embraces vast horizons in a glance, taking in all of human life, the economy of the world, the origin of the universe, of religions and of societies. Where, accordingly, would conversation be if people abstained from philosophy? What circle is that in which serious political problems and profound criticism are not admitted? And what motive brings intellectual people together if not the desire to debate questions of the highest importance?--For two centuries in France the conversation has been related to all that, and hence its great charm. Strangers find it irresistible; nothing like it is found at home; Lord Chesterfield sets it forth as an example:

"It always turns, he says, on some point in history, on criticism or even philosophy which is much better suited to rational beings than our English discussions about the weather and whist."

Rousseau, so querulous, admits "that a moral subject could not be better discussed in a society of philosophers than in that of a pretty woman in Paris." Undoubtedly there is a good deal of idle talk, but with all the chattering "let a man of any authority make a serious remark or start a grave subject and the attention is immediately fixed on this point; men and women, the old and the young, all give themselves up to its consideration on all its sides, and it is surprising what an amount of reason and good sense issues, as if in emulation, from these frolicsome brains." The truth is that, in this constant holiday which this brilliant society gives itself philosophy is the principal amusement. Without philosophy the ordinary ironical chit-chat would be vapid. It is a sort of superior opera in which every grand conception that can interest a reflecting mind passes before it, now in comic and now in sober attire, and each in conflict with the other. The tragedy of the day scarcely differs from it except in this respect, that it always bears a solemn aspect and is performed only in the theaters; the other assumes all sorts of physiognomies and is found everywhere because conversation is everywhere carried on. Not a dinner nor a supper is given at which it does not find place. One sits at a table amidst refined luxury, among agreeable and well-dressed women and pleasant and well-informed men, a select company, in which comprehension is prompt and the company trustworthy. After the second course the inspiration breaks out in the liveliest sallies, all minds flashing and scintillating. When the dessert comes on what is to prevent the gravest of subjects from being put into witticisms? On the appearance of the coffee questions on the immortality of the soul and on the existence of God come up.

To form any idea of this attractive and bold conversation we must consult the correspondence of the day, the short treatises and dialogues of Diderot and Voltaire, whatever is most animated, most delicate, most piquant and most profound in the literature of the century; and yet this is only a residuum, a lifeless fragment. The whole of this written philosophy was uttered in words, with the accent, the impetuosity, the inimitable naturalness of improvisation, with the versatility of malice and of enthusiasm. Even to day, chilled and on paper, it still excites and seduces us. What must it have been then when it gushed forth alive and vibrant from the lips of Voltaire and Diderot? Daily, in Paris, suppers took place like those described by Voltaire,[4204].at which "two philosophers, three clever intellectual ladies, M. Pinto the famous Jew, the chaplain of the Batavian ambassador of the reformed church, the secretary of the Prince de Galitzin of the Greek church, and a Swiss Calvinist captain," seated around the same table, for four hours interchanged their anecdotes, their flashes of wit, their remarks and their decisions "on all subjects of interest relating to science and taste." The most learned and distinguished foreigners daily visited, in turn, the house of the Baron d'Holbach,--Hume, Wilkes, Sterne, Beccaria, Veri, the Abbé Galiani, Garrick, Franklin, Priestley, Lord Shelburne, the Comte de Creutz, the Prince of Brunswick and the future Elector of Mayence. With respect to society in general the Baron entertained Diderot, Rousseau, Helvétius, Duclos, Saurin, Raynal, Suard, Marmontel, Boulanger, the Chevalier de Chastellux, the traveler La Condamine, the physician Barthèz, and Rouelle, the chemist. Twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, "without prejudice to other days," they dine at his house, according to custom, at two o'clock; a significant custom which thus leaves to conversation and gaiety a man's best powers and the best hours of the day. Conversation, in those days, was not relegated to night and late hours; a man was not forced, as at the present day, to subordinate it to the exigencies of work and money, of the Assembly and the Exchange. Talking is the main business. "Entering at two o'clock," says Morellet,[4205] "we almost all remained until seven or eight o'clock in the evening. . . . Here could be heard the most liberal, the most animated, the most instructive conversation that ever took place. . . . There was no political or religious temerity which was not brought forward and discussed pro and con. . . . Frequently some one of the company would begin to speak and state his theory in full, without interruption. At other times it would be a combat of one against one, of which the rest remained silent spectators. Here I heard Roux and Darcet expose their theory of the earth, Marmontel the admirable principles he collected together in his 'Elements de La Littérature,' Raynal, telling us in livres, sous and deniers, the commerce of the Spaniards with Vera-Crux and of the English with their colonies." Diderot improvises on the arts and on moral and metaphysical subjects, with that incomparable fervor and wealth of expression, that flood of logic and of illustration, those happy hits of style and that mimetic power which belonged to him alone, and of which but two or three of his works preserve even the feeblest image. In their midst Galiani, secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy, a clever dwarf; a genius, "a sort of Plato or Machiavelli with the spirit and action of a harlequin," inexhaustible in stories, an admirable buffoon, and an accomplished skeptic, "having no faith in anything, on anything or about anything,"[4206] not even in the new philosophy, braves the atheists of the drawing-room, beats down their dithyrambs with puns, and, with his perruque in his hand, sitting cross-legged on the chair on which he is perched, proves to them in a comic apologia that they raisonnent (reason) or résonnent (resound or echo) if not as cruches (blockheads) at least as cloches (bells);" in any event almost as poorly as theologians. One of those present says, "It was the most diverting thing possible and worth the best of plays."

How can the nobles, who pass their lives in talking, refrain from the society of people who talk so well? They might as well expect their wives, who frequent the theater every night, and who perform at home, not to attract famous actors and singers to their receptions, Jelyotte, Sainval, Préville, and young Molé who, quite ill and needing restoratives, "receives in one day more than 2,000 bottles of wine of different sorts from the ladies of the court," Mlle. Clairon, who, consigned to prison in Fort l'Eveque, attracts to it "an immense crowd of carriages," presiding over the most select company in the best apartment of the prison[4207]. With life thus regarded, a philosopher with his ideas is as necessary in a drawing room as a chandelier with its lights. He forms a part of the new system of luxury. He is an article of export. Sovereigns, amidst their splendor, and at the height of their success, invite them to their courts to enjoy for once in their life the pleasure of perfect and free discourse. When Voltaire arrives in Prussia Frederic II. is willing to kiss his hand, fawning on him as on a mistress, and, at a later period, after such mutual fondling, he cannot dispense with carrying on conversations with him by letter. Catherine II. sends for Diderot, and, for two or three hours every day, she plays with him the great game of the intellect. Gustavus III., in France, is intimate with Marmontel, and considers a visit from Rousseau as the highest honor[4208]. It is said with truth of Voltaire that "he holds the four kings in his hand," those of Prussia, Sweden, Denmark and Russia, without mentioning lower cards, the princes, princesses, grand dukes and markgraves. The principal rôle in this society evidently belongs to authors; their ways and doings form the subject of gossip; people never weary of paying them homage. Here, writes Hume to Robertson,[4209] "I feed on ambrosia, drink nothing but nectar, breathe incense only and walk on flowers. Every man I meet, and especially every woman, would consider themselves as failing in the most indispensable duty if they did not favor me with a lengthy and ingenious discourse on my celebrity." Presented at court, the future Louis XVI, aged ten years, the future Louis XVIII, aged eight years, and the future Charles X, aged four years, each recites a compliment to him on his works. I need not narrate the return of Voltaire, his triumphant entry, [4210] the Academy in a body coming to welcome him, his carriage stopped by the crowd, the thronged streets, the windows, steps and balconies filled with admirers, an intoxicated audience in the theater incessantly applauding, outside an entire population carrying him off with huzzahs, in the drawing-rooms a continual concourse equal to that of the king, grand seigniors pressed against the door with outstretched ears to catch a word, and great ladies standing on tiptoe to observe the slightest gesture. "To form any conception of what I experienced," says one of those present, "one should breathe the atmosphere of enthusiasm I lived in. I spoke with him." This expression at that time converted any new-comer into an important character. He had, in fact, seen the wonderful orchestra-leader who, for more than fifty years, conducted the tumultuous concert of serious or court-vêtues ideas, and who, always on the stage, always chief, the recognized leader of universal conversation, supplied the motives, gave the pitch, marked the measure, stamped the inspiration, and drew the first note on the violin.

III. French Indolence.

Further effects of indolence.--The skeptical, licentious and seditious spirit.--Previous resentment and fresh discontent at the established order of things.--Sympathy for the theories against it.--How far accepted.

Listen to the shouts that greet him: Hurrah for the author of the Henriade! the defender of Calas, the author of La Pucelle! Nobody of the present day would utter the first, nor especially the last hurrah. This indicates the tendency of the century; not only were writers called upon for ideas, but again for antagonistic ideas. To render an aristocracy inactive is to render it rebellious; people are more willing to submit to rules they have themselves helped to enforce. Would you rally them to the support of the government? Then let them take part in it. If not they stand by as an onlooker and see nothing but the mistakes it commits, feeling only its irritations, and disposed only to criticize and to hoot at it. In fact, in this case, they are as if in the theater, where they go to be amused, and, especially, not to be put to any inconvenience. What inconveniences in the established order of things, and indeed in any established order!--In the first place, religion. To the amiable "idlers" whom Voltaire describes,[4211] to "the 100,000 persons with nothing to do but to play and to amuse themselves," religion is the most disagreeable of pedagogues, always scolding, hostile to sensible amusement and free discussion, burning books which one wants to read, and imposing dogmas that are no longer comprehensible. In plain terms religion is an eyesore, and whoever wishes to throw stones at her is welcome.--There is another bond, the moral law of the sexes. It seems onerous to men of pleasure, to the companions of Richelieu, Lauzun and Tilly, to the heroes of Crebillon the younger, and all others belonging to that libertine and gallant society for whom license has become the rule. Our fine gentlemen are quite ready to adopt a theory which justifies their practices.[4212] They are very glad to be told that marriage is conventional and a thing of prejudice. Saint--Lambert obtains their applause at supper when, raising a glass of champagne, he proposes as a toast a return to nature and the customs of Tahiti[4213]. The last fetter of all is the government, the most galling, for it enforces the rest and keeps man down with its weight, along with the added weight of the others. It is absolute, it is centralized, it works through favorites, it is backward, it makes mistakes, it has reverses: how many causes of discontent embraced in a few words! It is opposed by the vague and suppressed resentment of the former powers which it has dispossessed, the provincial assemblies, the parliaments, the grandees of the provinces, the old stock of nobles, who, like the Mirabeau, retain the old feudal spirit, and like Châteaubriand's father, call the Abbé Raynal a "master-man." Against it is the spite of all those who imagine themselves frustrated in the distribution of offices and of favors, not only the provincial nobility who remain outside[4214] while the court nobility are feasting at the royal banquet, but again the majority of the courtiers who are obliged to be content with crumbs, while the little circle of intimate favorites swallow down the large morsels. It has against it the ill-humor of those under its direction who, seeing it play the part of Providence and providing for all, accuses it of everything, the high price of bread as well as of the decay of a highway. It has against it the new humanity which, in the most elegant drawing-rooms, lays to its charge the maintenance of the antiquated remains of a barbarous epoch, ill-imposed, ill-apportioned and ill-collected taxes, sanguinary laws, blind prosecutions, atrocious punishments, the persecution of the Protestants, lettres-de-cachet, and prisons of State. And I do not include its excesses, its scandals, its disasters and its disgraces,--Rosbach, the treaty of Paris, Madame du Barry, and bankruptcy.--Disgust intervenes, for everything is decidedly bad. The spectators of the play say to each other that not only is the piece itself poor, but the theater is badly built, uncomfortable, stifling and contracted, to such a degree that, to be at one's ease, the whole thing must be torn down and rebuilt from cellar to garret.

Just at this moment the new architects appear, with their specious arguments and their ready-made plans, proving that every great public structure, religious and moral, and all communities, cannot be otherwise than barbarous and unhealthy, since, thus far, they are built up out of bits and pieces, by degrees, and generally by fools and savages, in any event by common masons, who built aimlessly, feeling their way and devoid of principles. As far as they are concerned, they are genuine architects, and they have principles, that is to say, Reason, Nature, and the Rights of Man, straightforward and fruitful principles which everybody can understand, all that has to be done is to draw their consequences making it possible to replace the imperfect tenements of the past with the admirable edifice of the future.--To irreverent, Epicurean and philanthropic malcontents the temptation is a great one. They readily adopt maxims which seem in conformity with their secret wishes; at least they adopt them in theory and in words. The imposing terms of liberty, justice, public good, man's dignity, are so admirable, and besides so vague! What heart can refuse to cherish them, and what intelligence can foretell their innumerable applications? And all the more because, up to the last, the theory does not descend from the heights, being confined to abstractions, resembling an academic oration, constantly dealing with Natural Man (homme en soi) of the social contract, with an imaginary and perfect society. Is there a courtier at Versailles who would refuse to proclaim equality in the lands of the Franks!--Between the two stories of the human intellect, the upper where abstract reasoning is spun and the lower where an active faith reposes, communication is neither complete nor immediate. A number of principles never leave the upper stories; they remain there as curiosities, so many fragile, clever mechanisms, freely to be seen but rarely employed. If the proprietor sometimes transfers them to the lower story he makes but a partial use of them; established customs, anterior and more powerful interests and instincts restrict their employment. In this respect he is not acting in bad faith, but as a man; each of us professing truths which he does not put in practice. One evening Target, a dull lawyer, having taken a pinch from the snuff-box of the Maréchale de Beauvau, the latter, whose drawing room is a small democratic club, is amazed at such monstrous familiarity. Later, Mirabeau, on returning home just after having voted for the abolition of the titles of nobility, takes his servant by the ear, laughingly proclaiming in his thunderous voice, "Look here, you rascal, I trust that to you I shall always be Monsieur le Comte!"--This shows to what extent new theories are admitted into an aristocratic brain. They occupy the whole of the upper story, and there, with a pleasing murmur, they weave the web of interminable conversation; their buzzing lasts throughout the century; never have the drawing-rooms seen such an outpouring of fine sentences and of fine words. Something of all this drops from the upper to the lower story, if only as dust, I mean to say, hope, faith in the future, belief in Reason, a love of truth, the generous and youthful good intentions, the enthusiasm that quickly passes but which may, for a while, become self-abnegation and devotion.

IV. Unbelief.

The diffusion among the upper class.--Progress of incredulity in religion.--Its causes.--It breaks out under the Regency.--Increasing irritation against the clergy.-- Materialism in the drawing-room.--Estimate of the sciences.-- Final opinion on religion.--Skepticism of the higher clergy.

Let us follow the progress of philosophy in the upper class. Religion is the first to receive the severest attacks. The small group of skeptics, which is hardly perceptible under Louis XIV, has obtained its recruits in the dark; in 1698 the Palatine, the mother of the Regent, writes that "we scarcely meet a young man now who is not ambitious of being an atheist."[4215] Under the Regency, unbelief comes out into open daylight. "I doubt," says this lady again, in 1722, "if; in all Paris, a hundred individuals can be found, either ecclesiastics or laymen, who have any true faith, or even believe in our Lord. It makes one tremble. . . ." The position of an ecclesiastic in society is already difficult. He is looked upon, apparently, as either a puppet or a dickey (a false shirt front)[4216]. "The moment we appear," says one of them, "we are forced into discussion; we are called upon to prove, for example, the utility of prayer to an unbeliever in God, and the necessity of fasting to a man who has all his life denied the immortality of the soul; the effort is very irksome, while those who laugh are not on our side." It is not long before the continued scandal of confession tickets and the stubbornness of the bishops in not allowing ecclesiastical property to be taxed, excites opinion against the clergy, and, as a matter of course, against religion itself. "There is danger," says Barbier in 1751, "that this may end seriously; we may some day see a revolution in this country in favor of Protestantism."[4217] "The hatred against the priests," writes d'Argenson in 1753, "is carried to extremes. They scarcely show themselves in the streets without being hooted at. . . .As our nation and our century are quite otherwise enlightened (than in the time of Luther), it will be carried far enough; they will expel the priests, abolish the priesthood and get rid of all revelation and all mystery. . . . One dare not speak in behalf of the clergy in social circles; one is scoffed at and regarded as a familiar of the inquisition. The priests remark that, this year, there is a diminution of more than one-third in the number of communicants. The College of the Jesuits is being deserted; one hundred and twenty boarders have been withdrawn from these so greatly defamed monks. It has been observed also that, during the carnival in Paris, the number of masks counterfeiting ecclesiastical dress, bishops, abbés, monks and nuns, was never so great."--So deep is this antipathy, the most mediocre books become the rage so long as they are anti-Christian and condemned as such. In 1748 a work by Toussaint called "Les Moeurs," in favor of natural religion, suddenly becomes so famous, "that there is no one among a certain class of people," writes Barbier, "man or woman, pretending to be intellectual, who is not eager to read it." People accost each other on their promenades, Have you read "Les Moeurs"?--Ten years later they are beyond deism. "Materialism," Barbier further said, "is the great grievance. . . . " "Almost all people of erudition and taste, writes d'Argenson, "inveigh against our holy religion. . . . It is attacked on all sides, and what animates unbelievers still more is the efforts made by the devout to compel belief. They publish books which are but little read; debates no longer take place, everything being laughed at, while people persist in materialism." Horace Walpole, who returns to France in 1765,[4218] and whose good sense anticipates the danger, is astonished at such imprudence: "I dined to day with a dozen scholars and scientists, and although all the servants were around us and listening, the conversation was much more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament, than I would allow at my own table in England even if a single footman was present." People dogmatize everywhere. "Joking is as much out of fashion as jumping jacks and tumblers. Our good folks have no time to laugh! There is God and the king to be hauled down first; and men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. They think me quite profane for having any belief left. . . . Do you know who the philosophers are, or what the term means here? In the first place it comprehends almost everybody; and in the next, means men, who, avowing war against popery, take aim, many of them, at a subversion of all religion. . . . These savants,--I beg their pardons, these philosophers--are insupportable, superficial, overbearing and fanatic: they preach incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is atheism; you would not believe how openly. Voltaire himself does not satisfy them. One of their lady devotees said of him, 'He is a bigot, a deist!'"

This is very strong, and yet we have not come to the end of it; for, thus far, impiety is less a conviction than the fashion. Walpole, a careful observer, is not deluded by it. "By what I have said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions, you must not conclude their people of quality atheists--at least not the men. Happily for them, poor souls! they are not capable of going so far into thinking. They assent to a great deal because it is the fashion, and because they don't know how to contradict." Now that "dandies are outmoded" and everybody is "a philosopher," "they are philosophers." It is essential to be like all the rest of the world. But that which they best appreciate in the new materialism is the pungency of paradox and the freedom given to pleasure. They are like the boys of good families, fond of playing tricks on their ecclesiastical preceptor. They take out of learned theories just what is wanted to make a dunce-cap, and derive the more amusement from the fun if it is seasoned with impiety. A seignior of the court having seen Doyen's picture of "St. Genevieve and the plague-stricken," sends to a painter the following day to come to him at his mistress's domicile: "I would like," he says to him, "to have Madame painted in a swing put in motion by a bishop; you may place me in such a way that I may see the ankles of that handsome woman, and even more, if you want to enliven your picture."[4219] The licentious song "Marotte" "spreads like wildfire;" "a fortnight after its publication," says Collé, "I met no one without a copy; and it is the vaudeville, or rather, the clerical assembly, which gives it its popularity." The more irreligious a licentious book is the more it is prized; when it cannot be printed it is copied in manuscript. Collé counts "perhaps two thousand manuscript copies of' La Pucelle 'by Voltaire, scattered about Paris in one month." The magistrates themselves burn it only for form's sake. "It must not be supposed that the hangman is allowed to burn the books whose titles figure in the decree of the Court. Messieurs would be loath to deprive their libraries of the copy of those works which fall to them by right, and make the registrar supply its place with a few poor records of chicanery of which there is no scanty provision."[4220]

But, as the century advances, unbelief, less noisy, becomes more solid. It invigorates itself at the fountain-head; the women themselves begin to be infatuated with the sciences. In 1782,[4221] one of Mme. de Genlis's characters writes,

Five years ago I left them thinking only of their attire and the preparation of their suppers; I now find them all scientific and witty." We find in the study of a fashionable woman, alongside of a small altar dedicated to Benevolence or Friendship, a dictionary of natural history and treatises on physics and chemistry. A woman no longer has herself painted as a goddess on a cloud but in a laboratory, seated amidst squares and telescopes[4222]. The Marquise de Nesle, the Comtesse de Brancas, the Comtesse de Pons, the Marquise de Polignac, are with Rouelle when he undertakes to melt and volatilize the diamond. Associations of twenty or twenty-five persons are formed in the drawing-rooms to attend lectures either on physics, applied chemistry, mineralogy or on botany. Fashionable women at the public meetings of the Academy of Inscriptions applaud dissertations on the bull Apis, and reports on the Egyptian, Phoenician and Greek languages. Finally, in 1786, they succeed in opening the doors of the College de France. Nothing deters them. Many of them use the lancet and even the scalpel; the Marquise de Voyer attends at dissections, and the young Comtesse de Coigny dissects with her own hands. The current infidelity finds fresh support on this foundation, which is that of the prevailing philosophy. Towards the end of the century[4223] "we see young persons who have been in society six or seven years openly pluming themselves on their irreligion, thinking that impiety makes up for wit, and that to be an atheist is to be a philosopher." There are, undoubtedly, a good many deists, especially after Rousseau appeared, but I question whether, out of a hundred persons, there were in Paris at this time ten Christian men or women. "The fashionable world for ten years past," says Mercier[4224] in 1783, "has not attended mass. People go only on Sundays so as not to scandalize their lackeys, while the lackeys well know that it is on their account." The Duc de Coigny,[4225] on his estate near Amiens, refuses to be prayed for and threatens his curate if he takes that liberty to have him cast out of his pulpit; his son becomes ill and he prohibits the administering of the sacraments; the son dies and he opposes the usual obsequies, burying the body in his garden; becoming ill himself he closes his door against the bishop of Amiens, who comes to see him twelve times, and dies as he had lived. A scandal of this kind is doubtless notorious and, therefore, rare. Almost everybody, male and female, "ally with freedom of ideas a proper observance of forms."[4226] When a maid appears and says to her mistress, "Madame la Duchesse, the Host (le bon Dieu) is outside, will you allow him to enter? He desires to have the honor of administering to you," appearances are kept up. The troublesome individual is admitted and he is politely received. If they slip away from him it is under a decent pretext; but if he is humored it is only out of a sense of decorum. "At Sura when a man dies, he holds a cow's tail in his hand." Society was never more detached from Christianity. In its eyes a positive religion is only a popular superstition, good enough for children and innocents but not for "sensible people" and the great. It is your duty to raise your hat to the Host as it passes, but your duty is only to raise your hat.

The last and gravest sign of all! If the curates who work and who are of the people hold the people's ideas, the prelates who talk, and who are of society hold the opinions of society. And I do not allude merely to the abbés of the drawing-room, the domestic courtiers, bearers of news, and writers of light verse, those who fawn in boudoirs, and who, when in company, answer like an echo, and who, between one drawing room and another, serve as megaphone; an echo, a megaphone only repeats the phrase, whether skeptical or not, with which it is charged. I refer to the dignitaries, and, on this point, the witnesses all concur. In the month of August, 1767, the Abbé Bassinet, grand vicar of Cahors, on pronouncing the panegyric of St. Louis in the Louvre chapel,[4227] "suppressed the sign of the cross, making no quotation from Scripture and never uttering a word about Christ and the Saints. He considered Louis IX merely on the side of his political, moral and military virtues. He animadverted on the Crusades, setting forth their absurdity, cruelty and even injustice. He struck openly and without caution at the see of Rome." Others "avoid the name of Christ in the pulpit and merely allude to him as a Christian legislator."[4228] In the code which the prevailing opinions and social decency impose on the clergy a delicate observer[4229] thus specifies distinctions in rank with their proper shades of behavior: "A plain priest, a curate, must have a little faith, otherwise he would be found a hypocrite; at the same time, he must not be too well satisfied, for he would be found intolerant. On the contrary, the grand vicar may smile at an expression against religion, the bishop may laugh outright, and the cardinal may add something of his own to it." "A little while ago," a chronicle narrates, "some one put this question to one of the most respectable curates in Paris: Do you think that the bishops who insist so strenuously on religion have much of it themselves? The worthy pastor replied, after a moment's hesitation: There may be four or five among them who still believe." To one who is familiar with their birth, their social relations, their habits and their tastes, this does not appear at all improbable. "Dom Collignon, a representative of the abbey of Mettach, seignior high-justiciary and curate of Valmunster," a fine-looking man, fine talker, and an agreeable housekeeper, avoids scandal by having his two mistresses at his table only with a select few; he is in other respects as little devout as possible, and much less so than the Savoyard vicar, "finding evil only in injustice and in a lack of charity," and considering religion merely as a political institution and for moral ends. I might cite many others, like M. de Grimaldi, the young and gallant bishop of Le Mans, who selects young and gallant comrades of his own station for his grand vicars, and who has a rendezvous for pretty women at his country seat at Coulans[4230]. Judge of their faith by their habits. In other cases we have no difficulty in determining. Scepticism is notorious with the Cardinal de Rohan, with M. de Brienne, archbishop of Sens, with M. de Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, and with the Abbé Maury, defender of the clergy. Rivarol,[4231] himself a skeptic, declares that at the approach of the Revolution, "the enlightenment of the clergy equaled that of the philosophers." "Who would believe it, but body with the fewest prejudices," says Mercier,[4232] "is the clergy." And the Archbishop of Narbonne, explaining the resistance of the upper class of the clergy in 1791 [4233] attributes it, not to faith but to a point of honor. "We conducted ourselves at that time like true gentlemen, for, with most of us, it could not be said that it was through religious feeling."

V. Political Opposition.

Progress of political opposition.--Its origin.--The economists and the parliamentarians.--They prepare the way for the philosophers.--Political fault-finding in the drawing-rooms.--Female liberalism.

The distance between the altar and the throne is a short one, and yet it requires thirty years for opinion to overcome it. No political or social attacks are yet made during the first half of the century. The irony of the "Lettres Persanes"is as cautious as it is delicate, and the "Esprit des Lois" is conservative. As to the Abbé de Saint-Pierre his reveries provoke a smile, and when he undertakes to censure Louis XIV the Academy strikes him off its list. At last, the economists on one side and the parliamentarians on the other, give the signal.--Voltaire says[4234] that "about 1750 the nation, satiated with verse, tragedies, comedies, novels, operas, romantic histories, and still more romantic moralizings, and with disputes about grace and convulsions, began to discuss the question of corn." What makes bread dear? Why is the laborer so miserable? What constitutes the material and limits of taxation? Ought not all land to pay taxes, and should one piece pay more than its net product? These are the questions that find their way into drawing-rooms under the king's auspices, by means of Quesnay, his physician, "his thinker," the founder of a system which aggrandizes the sovereign to relieve the people, and which multiplies the number of tax-payers to lighten the burden of taxation.--At the same time, through the opposite door, other questions enter, not less novel. "Is France[4235] a mild and representative monarchy or a government of the Turkish stamp? Are we subject to the will of an absolute master, or are we governed by a limited and regulated power?. . . The exiled parliaments are studying public rights at their sources and conferring together on these as in the academies. Through their researches, the opinion is gaining ground in the public mind that the nation is above the king, as the universal church is above the pope."--The change is striking and almost immediate. "Fifty years ago," says d'Argenson, again, "the public showed no curiosity concerning matters of the State. Today everybody reads his Gazette de Paris, even in the provinces. People reason at random on political subjects, but nevertheless they occupy themselves with them."--Conversation having once provided itself with this diet holds fast to it, the drawing-rooms, accordingly, opening their doors to political philosophy, and, consequently, to the Social Contract, to the Encyclopedia, to the preachings of Rousseau, Mably, d'Holbach, Raynal, and Diderot. In 1759, d'Argenson, who becomes excited, already thinks the last hour has come. "We feel the breath of a philosophical anti-monarchical, free government wind; the idea is current, and possibly this form of government, already in some minds, is to be carried out the first favorable opportunity. Perhaps the revolution might take place with less opposition than one supposes, occurring by acclamation.[4236]

The time is not yet come, but the seed is coming up. Bachaumont, in 1762, notices a deluge of pamphlets, tracts and political discussions, "a rage for arguing on financial and government matters." In 1765, Walpole states that the atheists, who then monopolize conversation, inveigh against kings as well as against priests. A formidable word, that of citizen, imported by Rousseau, has entered into common speech, and the matter is settled on the women adopting it as they would a cockade. "As a friend and a citoyenne could any news be more agreeable to me than that of peace and the health of my dear little one?"[4237] Another word, not less significant, that of energy, formerly ridiculous, becomes fashionable, and is used on every occasion[4238]. Along with language there is a change of sentiment, ladies of high rank passing over to the opposition. In 1771, says the scoffer Bezenval, after the exile of the Parliament "social meetings for pleasure or other purposes had become petty States-Generals in which the women, transformed into legislators, established the premises and confidently propounded maxims of public right." The Comtesse d'Egmont, a correspondent of the King of Sweden, sends him a paper on the fundamental law of France, favoring the Parliament, the last defender of national liberty, against the encroachments of Chancellor Maupeou. "The Chancellor," she says,[4239] "within the last six months has brought people to know the history of France who would have died without any knowledge of it. . . . I have no doubt, sire," she adds, "that you never will abuse the power an enraptured people have entrusted to you without limitation. . . . May your reign prove the epoch of the re-establishment of a free and independent government, but never the source of absolute authority." Numbers of women of the first rank, Mesdames de la Marck, de Boufflers, de Brienne, de Mesmes, de Luxembourg, de Croy, think and write in the same style. "Absolute power," says one of these, "is a mortal malady which, insensibly corrupting moral qualities, ends in the destruction of states. . . . The actions of sovereigns are subject to the censure of their subjects as to that of the universe. . . . France is undone if the present administration lasts."[4240]--When, under Louis XVI, a new administration proposes and withdraws feeble measures of reform, their criticism shows the same firmness: "Childishness, weakness, constant inconsistency," writes another,[4241] "incessant change; and always worse off than we were before. Monsieur and M. le Comte d'Artois have just made a journey through the provinces, but only as people of that kind travel, with a frightful expenditure and devastation along the whole road, coming back extraordinarily fat; Monsieur is as big as a hogshead; as to M. le Comte d'Artois he is bringing about order by the life he leads."--An inspiration of humanity animates these feminine breasts along with that of liberty. They interest themselves in the poor, in children, in the people; Madame d'Egmont recommends Gustavus III to plant Dalecarlia with potatoes. On the appearance of the engraving published for the benefit of Calas[4242] "all France and even all Europe, hastens to subscribe for it, the Empress of Russia giving 5,000 livres[4243]. "Agriculture, economy, reform, philosophy," writes Walpole, "are bon ton, even at the court."--President Dupaty having drawn up a memorandum in behalf of three innocent persons, sentenced "to be broken on the wheel, everybody in society is talking about it;" "idle conversation no longer prevails in society," says a correspondent of Gustavus III[4244] "since it is that which forms public opinion. Words have become actions. Every sensitive heart praises with joy a publication inspired by humanity and which appears full of talent because it is full of feeling." When Latude is released from the prison of Bicêtre Mme. de Luxembourg, Mme. de Boufflers, and Mme. de Staël dine with the grocer-woman who "for three years and a half moved heaven and earth" to set the prisoner free. It is owing to the women, to their sensibility and zeal, to a conspiracy of their sympathies, that M. de Lally succeeds in the rehabilitation of his father. When they take a fancy to a person they become infatuated with him; Madame de Lauzun, very timid, goes so far as to publicly insult a man who speaks ill of M. Necker.--It must be borne in mind that, in this century, the women were queens, setting the fashion, giving the tone, leading in conversation and naturally shaping ideas and opinions[4245]. When they take the lead on the political field we may be sure that the men will follow them: each one carries her drawing room circle with her.

VI. Well-Meaning Government.

Infinite, vague aspirations.--Generosity of sentiments and of conduct.--The mildness and good intentions of the government.--Its blindness and optimism.

An aristocracy imbued with humanitarian and radical maxims, courtiers hostile to the court, privileged persons aiding in undermining privileges, presents to us a strange spectacle in the testimony of the time. A contemporary states that it is an accepted principle "to change and upset everything."[4246] High and low, in assemblages, in public places, only reformers and opposing parties are encountered among the privileged classes.

"In 1787, almost every prominent man of the peerage in the Parliament declared himself in favor of resistance. . . . I have seen at the dinners we then attended almost every idea put forward, which, soon afterwards, produced such startling effects."[4247] Already in 1774, M. de Vaublanc, on his way to Metz, finds a diligence containing an ecclesiastic and a count, a colonel in the hussars, talking political economy constantly[4248]. "It was the fashion of the day. Everybody was an economist. People conversed together only about philosophy, political economy and especially humanity, and the means for relieving the people, (le bon peuple), which two words were in everybody's mouth." To this must be added equality; Thomas, in a eulogy of Marshal Saxe says, "I cannot conceal it, he was of royal blood," and this phrase was admired. A few of the heads of old parliamentary or seigniorial families maintain the old patrician and monarchical standard, the new generation succumbing to novelty. "For ourselves," says one of them belonging to the youthful class of the nobility,[4249] "with no regret for the past or anxiety for the future, we marched gaily along over a carpet of flowers concealing an abyss. Mocking censors of antiquated ways, of the feudal pride of our fathers and of their sober etiquette, everything antique seemed to us annoying and ridiculous. The gravity of old doctrines oppressed us. The cheerful philosophy of Voltaire amused and took possession of us. Without fathoming that of graver writers we admired it for its stamp of fearlessness and resistance to arbitrary power. . . . Liberty, what-ever its language, delighted us with its spirit, and equality on account of its convenience. It is a pleasant thing to descend so long as one thinks one can ascend when one pleases; we were at once enjoying, without forethought, the advantages of the patriciate and the sweets of a commoner philosophy. Thus, although our privileges were at stake, and the remnants of our former supremacy were undermined under our feet, this little warfare gratified us. Inexperienced in the attack, we simply admired the spectacle. Combats with the pen and with words did not appear to us capable of damaging our existing superiority, which several centuries of possession had made us regard as impregnable. The forms of the edifice remaining intact, we could not see how it could be mined from within. We laughed at the serious alarm of the old court and of the clergy which thundered against the spirit of innovation. We applauded republican scenes in the theater,[4250] philosophic discourses in our Academies, the bold publications of the literary class."--If inequality still subsists in the distribution of offices and of places, "equality begins to reign in society. On many occasions literary titles obtain precedence over titles of nobility. Courtiers and servants of the passing fashion, paid their court to Marmontel, d'Alembert and Raynal. We frequently saw in company literary men of the second and third rank greeted and receiving attentions not extended to the nobles of the provinces. . . . Institutions remained monarchical, but manners and customs became republican. A word of praise from d'Alembert or Diderot was more esteemed than the most marked favor from a prince. . . It was impossible to pass an evening with d'Alembert, or at the Hôtel de Larochefoucauld among the friends of Turgot, to attend a breakfast at the Abbé Raynal's, to be admitted into the society and family of M. de Malesherbes, and lastly, to approach a most amiable queen and a most upright king, without believing ourselves about to enter upon a kind of golden era of which preceding centuries afforded no idea. . . . We were bewildered by the prismatic hues of fresh ideas and doctrines, radiant with hopes, ardently aglow for every sort of reputation, enthusiastic for all talents and beguiled by every seductive dream of a philosophy that was about to secure the happiness of the human species. Far from foreseeing misfortune, excess, crime, the overthrow of thrones and of principles, the future disclosed to us only the benefits which humanity was to derive from the sovereignty of Reason. Freedom of the press and circulation was given to every reformative writing, to every project of innovation, to the most liberal ideas and to the boldest of systems. Everybody thought himself on the road to perfection without being under any embarrassment or fearing any kind of obstacle. We were proud of being Frenchmen and, yet again, Frenchmen of the eighteenth century . . . . Never was a more terrible awakening preceded by a sweeter slumber or by more seductive dreams."

They do not content themselves with dreams, with pure desires, with passive aspirations. They are active, and truly generous; a worthy cause suffices to secure their devotion. On the news of the American rebellion, the Marquis de Lafayette, leaving his young wife pregnant, escapes, braves the orders of the court, purchases a frigate, crosses the ocean and fights by the side of Washington. "The moment the quarrel was made known to me," he says, "my heart was enlisted in it, and my only thought was to rejoin my regiment." Numbers of gentlemen follow in his footsteps. They undoubtedly love danger; "the chance of being shot is too precious to be neglected."[4251] But the main thing is to emancipate the oppressed; "we showed ourselves philosophers by becoming paladins,"[4252] the chivalric sentiment enlisting in the service of liberty. Other services besides these, more sedentary and less brilliant, find no fewer zealots. The chief personages of the provinces in the provincial assemblies,[4253] the bishops, archbishops, abbés, dukes, counts, and marquises, with the wealthiest and best informed of the notables in the Third-Estate, in all about a thousand persons, in short the social elect, the entire upper class convoked by the king, organize the budget, defend the tax-payer against the fiscal authorities, arrange the land-registry, equalize the taille, provide a substitute for the corvée, provide public roads, multiply charitable asylums, educate agriculturists, proposing, encouraging and directing every species of reformatory movement. I have read through the twenty volumes of their procès-verbaux: no better citizens, no more conscientious men, no more devoted administrators can be found, none gratuitously taking so much trouble on themselves with no object but the public welfare. Never was an aristocracy so deserving of power at the moment of losing it; the privileged class, aroused from their indolence, were again becoming public men, and, restored to their functions, were returning to their duties. In 1778, in the first assembly of Berry, the Abbé de Seguiran, the reporter, has the courage to state that "the distribution of the taxes should be a fraternal partition of public obligations."[4254] In 1780 the abbés, priors and chapters of the same province contribute 60,000 livres of their funds, and a few gentlemen, in less than twenty-four hours, contribute 17,000 livres. In 1787, in the assembly of Alençon the nobility and the clergy tax themselves 30,000 livres to relieve the indigent in each parish subject to taxation[4255]. in the month of April, 1787, the king, in an assembly of the notables, speaks of "the eagerness with which archbishops and bishops come forward claiming no exemption in their contributions to the public revenue." In the month of March, 1789, on the opening of the bailiwick assemblies, the entire clergy, nearly all the nobility, in short, the whole body of the privileged class voluntarily renounce their privileges in relation to taxation. The sacrifice is voted unanimously; they themselves offer it to the Third-Estate, and it is worth while to see their generous and sympathetic tone in the manuscript procès-verbaux.

"The nobility of the bailiwick of Tours," says the Marquis de Lusignan,[4256] "considering that they are men and citizens before being nobles, can make amends in no way more in conformity with the spirit of justice and patriotism that animates the body, for the long silence to which it has been condemned by the abuse of ministerial power, than in declaring to their fellow-citizens that, in future, they will claim none of the pecuniary advantages secured to them by custom, and that they unanimously and solemnly bind themselves to bear equally, each in proportion to his fortune, all taxes and general contributions which the nation shall prescribe."

"I repeat," says the Comte de Buzançois at the meeting of the Third-Estate of Berry, "that we are all brothers, and that we are anxious to share your burdens. . . . We desire to have but one single voice go up to the assembly and thus manifest the union and harmony which should prevail there. I am directed to make the proposal to you to unite with you in one memorandum."

"These qualities are essential in a deputy," says the Marquis de Barbancon speaking for the nobles of Chateauroux, "integrity, firmness and knowledge; the first two are equally found among the deputies of the three orders; but knowledge will be more generally found in the Third-Estate, which is more accustomed to public affairs."

"A new order of things is unfolding before us," says the Abbé Legrand in the name of the clergy of Chateauroux; "the veil of prejudice is being torn away and giving place to Reason. She is possessing herself of all French hearts, attacking at the root whatever is based on former opinion and deriving her power only from herself."

Not only do the privileged classes make advances but it is no effort to them; they use the same language as the people of the Third-Estate; they are disciples of the same philosophers and seem to start from the same principles. The nobility of Clermont in Beauvoisis[4257] orders its deputies "to demand, first of all, an explicit declaration of the rights belonging to all men." The nobles of Mantes and Meulan affirm "that political principles are as absolute as moral principles, since both have reason for a common basis." The nobles of Rheims demand "that the king be entreated to order the demolition of the Bastille." Frequently, after such expressions and with such a yielding disposition, the delegates of the nobles and clergy are greeted in the assemblies of the 'Third-Estate with the clapping of hands, "tears" and enthusiasm. On witnessing such effusions how can one avoid believing in concord? And how can one foresee strife at the first turn of the road on which they have just fraternally entered hand in hand?

Wisdom of this melancholy stamp is not theirs. They set out with the principle that man, and especially the man of the people, is good; why conjecture that he may desire evil for those who wish him well? They are conscientious in their benevolence and sympathy for him. Not only do they utter these sentiments but they give them proof. "At this moment," says a contemporary,[4258] "the most active pity animates all breasts; the great dread of the opulent is to appear insensible." The archbishop of Paris, subsequently followed and stoned, is the donator of 100,000 crowns to the hospital of the Hôtel-Dieu. The intendant Berthier, who is to be massacred, draws up the new assessment-roll of the Ile-de-France, equalizing the taille, which act allows him to abate the rate, at first, an eighth, and next, a quarter[4259]. The financier Beaujon constructs a hospital. Necker refuses the salary of his place and lends the treasury two millions to re-establish public credit. The Duc de Charost, from 1770[4260] down, abolishes seigniorial corvées on his domain and founds a hospital in his seigniory of Meillant. The Prince de Beaufremont, the presidents de Vezet, de Chamolles, de Chaillot, with many seigniors beside in Franche-Comté, follow the example of the king in emancipating their serfs[4261]. The bishop of Saint-Claude demands, in spite of his chapter, the enfranchisement of his mainmorts. The Marquis de Mirabeau establishes on his domain in Limousin a gratuitous bureau for the settlement of lawsuits, while daily, at Fleury, he causes nine hundred pounds of cheap bread to be made for the use of "the poor people, who fight to see who shall have it."[4262] M. de Barral, bishop of Castres, directs his curates to preach and to diffuse the cultivation of potatoes. The Marquis de Guerchy himself mounts on the top of a pile of hay with Arthur Young to learn how to construct a hay-stack. The Marquis de Lasteyrie imports lithography into France. A number of grand seigniors and prelates figure in the agricultural societies, compose or translate useful books, familiarize themselves with the applications of science, study political economy, inform themselves about industries, and interest themselves, either as amateurs or promoters, in every public amelioration. "Never," says Lacretelle again, "were the French so combined together to combat the evils to which nature makes us pay tribute, and those which in a thousand ways creep into all social institutions." Can it be admitted that so many good intentions thus operating together are to end in destruction?--All take courage, government as well as the higher class, in the thought of the good accomplished, or which they desire to accomplish. The king remembers that he has restored civil rights to the Protestants, abolished preliminary torture, suppressed the corvée in kind, established the free circulation of grains, instituted provincial assemblies, built up the marine, assisted the Americans, emancipated his own serfs, diminished the expenses of his household, employed Malesherbes, Turgot and Necker, given full play to the press, and listened to public opinion[4263]. No government displayed greater mildness; on the 14th of July, 1789, only seven prisoners were confined in the Bastille, of whom one was an idiot, another kept there by his family, and four under the charge of counterfeiting[4264]. No sovereign was more humane, more charitable, more preoccupied with the unfortunate. In 1784, the year of inundations and epidemics, he renders assistance to the amount of three millions. Appeals are made to him direct, even for personal accidents. On the 8th of June, 1785, he sends two hundred livres to the wife of a Breton laboring-man who, already having two children, brings three at once into the world[4265]. During a severe winter he allows the poor daily to invade his kitchen. It is quite probable that, next to Turgot, he is the man of his day who loved the people most.--His delegates under him conform to his views; I have read countless letters by intendants who try to appear as little Turgots. "One builds a hospital, another admits artisans at his table;"[4266] a certain individual undertakes the draining of a marsh. M. de la Tour, in Provence, is so beneficent during a period of forty years that the Tiers-Etat vote him a gold medal in spite of himself[4267]. A governor delivers a course of lectures on economical bread-making.--What possible danger is there for shepherds of this kind amidst their flocks? On the king convoking the States-General nobody had "any suspicion," nor fear of the future. "A new State constitution is spoken of as an easy performance, and as a matter of course."[4268]--"The best and most virtuous men see in this the beginning of a new era of happiness for France and for the whole civilized world. The ambitious rejoice in the broad field open to their desires. But it would have been impossible to find the most morose, the most timid, the most enthusiastic of men anticipating any one of the extraordinary events towards which the assembled states were drifting."

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 4201: Macaulay.]

[Footnote 4202: Stendhal, "Rome, Naples et Florence," 371.]

[Footnote 4203: Morellet, "Mémoires," I. 139 (on the writings and conversations of Diderot, d,Holbach and the atheists). "At that time, in this philosophy, all seemed innocent enough, it being confined to the limits of speculation, and never seeking, even in its boldest flights, anything beyond a calm intellectual exercise."]

[Footnote 4204: "L'Homme aux quarante écus." Cf. Voltaire, "Mémoires," the suppers given by Frederick II. "Never in any place in the world was there greater freedom of conversation concerning the superstitions of mankind."]

[Footnote 4205: Morellet, "Mémoires," I. 133.]

[Footnote 4206: Galiani, "Correspondance, passim."]

[Footnote 4207: Bachaumont, III. 93 (1766), II. 202 (1765).]

[Footnote 4208: Geffroy, "Gustave III.," I. 114.]

[Footnote 4209: Villemain, "Tableau de la Litterature au dix-huitième siècle," IV. 409.]

[Footnote 4210: Grimm, "corresp. littéraire," IV. 176. De Ségur, "Mémoires," I. 113.]

[Footnote 4211: "Princesse de Babylone."--Cf. "le Mondain."]

[Footnote 4212: Here we may have an important motive for the socialist attitudes towards sexual morality as it was during the activie nineteen seventies until the unexpected appearance of AIDS put an abrupt end to the proceedings. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4213: Mme. d'Epinay, ed. Boiteau, I. 216: at a supper given by Mlle. Quinault, the comedian, at which are present Saint-Lambert, the Prince de. . . . , Duclos and Mme. d'Epinay.]

[Footnote 4214: For example, the father of Marmant, a military gentleman, who, having won the cross of St. Louis at twenty-eight, abandons the service because he finds that promotion is only for people of the court. In retirement on his estates he is a liberal, teaching his son to read the reports made by Necker. (Marshal Marmont, "Mémoires," I. 9).]

[Footnote 4215: Aubertin, "L'Esprit public," in the 18th century, p. 7.]

[Footnote 4216: Montesquieu, "Lettres Persanes," (Letter 61).--Cf. Voltaire, ("Dîner du Comte de Boulainvilliers").]

[Footnote 4217: Aubertin, pp. 281, 282, 285, 289.]

[Footnote 4218: Horace Walpole, "Letters and Correspondence," Sept. 27th, 1765, October 18th, 28th, and November 19th, 1766.]

[Footnote 4219: "Journal et Mémoires de Collé," published by H. Bonhomme, II. 24 (October, 1755), and III.165 (October 1767).]

[Footnote 4220: "Corresp. littéraire," by Grimm (September, October, 1770).]

[Footnote 4221: Mme. De Genlis, "Adèle et Théodore," I, 312.]

[Footnote 4222: De Goncourt, "La femme au dix-huitième siècle," 371-373.--Bachaumont, I. 224 (April 13, 1763).]

[Footnote 4223: Mme. de Genlis, "Adèle et Théodore," II. 326.]

[Footnote 4224: "Tableau de Paris," III.44.]

[Footnote 4225: Métra. "Correspondance secrète," XVII. 387 (March 7, 1785).]

[Footnote 4226: De Goncourt, ibid. 456.--Vicomtesse de Noailles, "Vie de la Princesse de Poix," formerly de Beauvau.]

[Footnote 4227: The Abbé de Latteignaut, canon of Rheims, the author of some light poetry and convivial songs, "has just composed for Nicolet's theater a parade in which the intrigue is supported by a good many broad jests, very much in the fashion at this time. The courtiers who give the tone to this theater think the canon of Rheims superb." (Bachaumont, IV. 174, November, 1768).]

[Footnote 4228: Bachaumont, III. 253.--Châteaubriand, "Mémoires," I. 246.]

[Footnote 4229: Champfort, 279.]

[Footnote 4230: Merlin de Thionville, "Vie et correspondance," by Jean Raynaud. ("La Chartreuse du Val Saint-Pierre." Read the entire passage).--"Souvenirs Manuscrits," by M--..]

[Footnote 4231: Rivarol, "Mémoires," I. 344.]

[Footnote 4232: Mercier, IV. 142. "In Auvergne, says M. de Montlosier, I formed for myself a society of priests, men of wit, some of whom were deists and others open atheists, with whom I carried on a contest with my brother." ("Mémoires," I.37).]

[Footnote 4233: Lafayette. "Mémoires," III. 58.]

[Footnote 4234: "Dict. Phil." article "Wheat."--The most important work of Quesnay is of the year 1758, "Tableau économique."]

[Footnote 4235: D'Argenson, "Mémoires," IV. 141; VI. 320, 465; VII. 23; VIII. 153, (1752, 1753, 1754).--Rousseau's discourse on Inequality belongs also to 1753. On this steady march of opinion consult the excellent work of d'Aubertin, "L'Esprit public au dix-huitième siècle."]

[Footnote 4236: This seems to be prophetic of the night of August 4, 1789.]

[Footnote 4237: "Corresp. de Laurette de Malboissière," published by the Marquise de la Grange. (Sept. 4, 1762, November 8, 1762).]

[Footnote 4238: Madame du Deffant in a letter to Madame de Choiseul, (quoted by Geffroy), "Gustave et la cour de France," I. 279.]

[Footnote 4239: Geffroy, ibid. I. 232, 241, 245.]

[Footnote 4240: Geffroy, ibid. I.267, 281. See letters by Madame de Boufflers (October, 1772, July 1774).]

[Footnote 4241: Ibid.. I. 285. The letters of Mme. de la March (1776, 1777, 1779).]

[Footnote 4242: A victim of religious rancor against the protestants, whose cause, taken op by Voltaire, excited great indignation.--TR.]

[Footnote 4243: Bachaumont, III. 14 (March 28, 1766. Walpole, Oct. 6, 1775).]

[Footnote 4244: Geffloy, ibid. (A letter by Mme Staël, 5776).]

[Footnote 4245: Collé, "Journal," III. 437 (1770): "Women have got the upper hand with the French to such an extent, they have so subjugated them, that they neither feel nor think except as they do."]

[Footnote 4246: "Correspondance," by Métra, III. 200; IV. 131.]

[Footnote 4247: "Mémoires du Chancelier Pasquier," _Ed. Plon Paris_ 1893, Vol. I. page 26.]

[Footnote 4248: De Vaublanc, "Souvenirs," I. 117, 377.]

[Footnote 4249: De Ségur, "Mémoires," I. 17.]

[Footnote 4250: Ibid. I. 151. "I saw the entire Court at the theater in the château at Versailles enthusiastically applaud Voltaire's tragedy of 'Brutus,' and especially these lines:

Je suis fils de Brutus, et je porte en mon coeur La liberté gravée et les rois en horreur."]

[Footnote 4251: De Lauzun, 80 (in relation to his expedition into Corsica).]

[Footnote 4252: De Ségur, I. 87.]

[Footnote 4253: The assemblies of Berry and Haute-Guyenne began in 1778 and 1779; those of other generalships in 1787. All functioned until 1789. (Cf. Léonce de Lavergne, "Les Assemblées provinciales").]

[Footnote 4254: Léonce de Lavergne, ibid. 26, 55, 183. The tax department of the provincial assembly of Tours likewise makes its demands on the privileged class in the matter of taxation.]

[Footnote 4255: Procés-verbaux of the prov. ass. of Normandy, the generalship of Alençon, 252.--Cf. Archives nationales, II, 1149: in 1778 in the generalship of Moulins, thirty-nine persons, mostly nobles, supply from their own funds 18,950 livres to the 60,000 livres allowed by the king for roads and asylums.]

[Footnote 4256: Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and registers of the States-General, vol. XLIX. p.712, 714 (the nobles and clergy of Dijon); vol. XVI. p. 183 (the nobles of Auxerre) vol. XXIX. pp.352, 455, 458 (the clergy and nobles of Berry); vol. CL. p.266 (the clergy and nobles of Tours); vol. XXIX; the clergy and nobles of Chateauroux, (January 29, 1789); pp. 572, 582. vol. XIII. 765 (the nobles of Autun).--See as a summary of the whole, the "Résumé des Cahiers" by Prud'homme, 3 vols.]

[Footnote 4257: Prud'homme, ibid.. II. 39, 51, 59. De Lavergne, 384. In 1788, two hundred gentlemen of the first families of Dauphiny sign, conjointly with the clergy and the Third-Estate of the province, an address to the king in which occurs the following passage: "Neither time nor obligation legitimizes despotism; the rights of men derive from nature alone and are independent of their engagements."]

[Footnote 4258: Lacretelle, "Hist. de France au dix-huitième siècle," V.2.]

[Footnote 4259: Procès-verbeaux of the prov. ass. of the Ile-de-France (1787), p.127.]

[Footnote 4260: De Lavergne, ibid.. 52, 369.]

[Footnote 4261: "Le cri de la raison," by Clerget, curé d'Onans (1789), p.258.]

[Footnote 4262: Lucas de Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau," I. 290, 368.--Théron de Montaugé, "L'agriculture et les classes rurales dans le pays Toulousain," p. 14.]

[Footnote 4263: "Foreigners generally could scarcely form an idea of the power of public opinion at this time in France; they can with difficulty comprehend the nature of that invisible power which commands even in the king's palace." (Necker, 1784, quoted by De Tocqueville).]

[Footnote 4264: Granier de Cassagnac, II. 236.--M. de Malesherbes, according to custom, inspected the different state prisons, at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI. "He told me himself that he had only released two." (Senac de Meilhan, "Du gouvemement, des moeurs, et des conditions en France.").]

[Footnote 4265: Archives nationales, II. 1418, 1149, F. 14, 2073. (Assistance rendered to various suffering provinces and places.)]

[Footnote 4266: Aubertin, p.484 (according to Bachaumont).]

[Footnote 4267: De Lavergne, 472.]

[Footnote 4268: Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," I.426.--Sir Samuel Romilly, "Mémoires," I. 99.--"Confidence increased even to extravagance," (Mme. de Genlis).--On the 29th June, 1789, Necker said at the council of the king at Marly, "What is more frivolous than the fears now entertained concerning the organization of the assembly of the States-General? No law can be passed without obtaining the king's assent" (De Barentin, "Mémoires," p. 187).--Address of the National Assembly to its constituents, October 2, 1789. "A great revolution of which the idea should have appeared chimerical a few months since has been effected amongst us."]

## CHAPTER III. THE MIDDLE CLASS.

I. The Past.

The former spirit of the Third-Estate.--Public matters concern the king only.--Limits of the Jansenist and parliamentarian opposition.

The new philosophy, confined to a select circle, had long served as a mere luxury for refined society. Merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, lawyers, attorneys, physicians, actors, professors, curates, every description of functionary, employee and clerk, the entire middle class, had been absorbed with its own cares. The horizon of each was limited, being that of the profession or occupation which each exercised, that of the corporation in which each one was comprised, of the town in which each one was born, and, at the utmost, that of the province which each one inhabited[4301]. A dearth of ideas coupled with conscious diffidence restrained the bourgeois within his hereditary barriers. His eyes seldom chanced to wander outside of them into the forbidden and dangerous territory of state affairs; hardly was a furtive and rare glance bestowed on any of the public acts, on the matters which "belonged to the king." There was no critical irritability then, except with the bar, the compulsory satellite of the Parliament, and borne along in its orbit. In 1718, after a session of the royal court (lit de justice), the lawyers of Paris being on a strike the Regent exclaims angrily and with astonishment, "What! those fellows meddling too!"[4302] It must be stated furthermore that many kept themselves in the background. "My father and myself," afterwards writes the advocate Barbier, "took no

## part in the uproars, among those caustic and turbulent spirits." and

he adds this significant article of faith: "I believe that one has to fulfill his duties honorably, without concerning oneself with state affairs, in which one has no mission and exercises no power." During the first half of the eighteenth century I am able to discover but one center of opposition in the Third-Estate, the Parliament; and around it, feeding the flame, the ancient Gallican or Jansenist spirit. "The good city of Paris," writes Barbier in 1733, "is Jansenist from top to bottom," and not alone the magistrates, the lawyers, the professors, the best among the bourgeoisie, "but again the mass of the Parisians, men, women and children, all upholding that doctrine, without comprehending it, or understanding any of its distinctions and interpretations, out of hatred to Rome and the Jesuits. Women, the silliest, and even chambermaids, would be hacked to pieces for it. . ." This party is increased by the honest folks of the kingdom who detest persecutions and injustice. Accordingly, when the various chambers of magistrates, in conjunction with the lawyers, tender their resignations and file out of the palace "amidst a countless multitude, the crowd exclaims: Behold the true Romans, the fathers of the country! and as the two counselors Pucelle and Menguy pass along they fling them crowns." The quarrel between the Parliament and the Court, constantly revived, is one of the sparks which provokes the grand final explosion, while the Jansenist embers, smoldering in the ashes, are to be of use in 1791 when the ecclesiastical edifice comes to be attacked. But, within this old chimney-corner only warm embers are now found, firebrands covered up, sometimes scattering sparks and flames, but in themselves and by themselves, not incendiary; the flame is kept within bounds by its nature, and its supplies limit its heat. The Jansenist is too good a Christian not to respect powers inaugurated from above. The parliamentarian, conservative through his profession, would be horrified at overthrowing the established order of things. Both combat for tradition and against innovation; hence, after having defended the past against arbitrary power they are to defend it against revolutionary violence, and to fall, the one into impotency and the other into oblivion.

II. CHANGE IN THE CONDITION OF THE BOURGEOIS.

Change in the condition of the bourgeois.--He becomes wealthy.--He makes loans to the State.--The danger of his creditorship.--He interests himself in public matters.

The uprising is, however, late to catch on among the middle class, and, before it can take hold, the resistant material must gradually be made inflammable.--In the eighteenth century a great change takes place in the condition of the Third-Estate. The bourgeois has worked, manufactured, traded, earned and saved money, and has daily become richer and richer.[4303] This great expansion of enterprises, of trade, of speculation and of fortunes dates from Law;[4304] arrested by war it reappears with more vigor and more animation at each interval of peace after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, and that of Paris in 1763, and especially after the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI. The exports of France which amounted to

106 millions in 1720

124 millions in 1735

192 millions in 1748

257 millions in 1755

309 millions in 1776

354 millions in 1788.

In 1786 Saint Domingo alone ships back to France for 131 millions of its products, and in return receives 44 millions in merchandise. As a result of these exchanges we see, at Nantes, and at Bordeaux, the creation of colossal commercial houses. "I consider Bordeaux, says Arthur Young, as richer and doing more business than any city in England except London; . . . of late years the progress of maritime commerce has been more rapid in France than even in England."[4305] According to an administrator of the day, if the taxes on the consumption of products daily increase the revenue, this is because the industry since 1774 has developed a number of new products[4306]. And this progress is regular and constant. "We may calculate," says Necker in 1781, "on an increase of two millions a year on all the duties on consumption."--In this great exertion of innovation, labor and engineering, Paris, constantly growing, is the central workshop. It enjoys, to a much greater extent than today, the monopoly of all works of intelligence and taste, books, pictures, engravings, statues, jewelry, toilet details, carriages, furniture, articles of fashion and rarity, whatever affords pleasure and ornamentation for an elegant worldly society; all Europe is supplied by it. In 1774 its trade in books is estimated at 45 millions, and that of London at only one-quarter of that sum[4307]. Upon the profits many immense and even more numerous moderate fortunes were built up, and these now became available for investment.--In fact, we see the noblest hands stretching out to receive them, princes of the blood, provincial assemblies, assemblies of the clergy, and, at the head of all, the king, who, the most needy, borrows at ten percent and is always in search of additional lenders. Already under Fleury, the debt has augmented to 18 millions in interests, and during the Seven years' War, to 34 millions. Under Louis XVI., M. Necker borrows a capital of 530 millions; M. Joly de Fleury, 300 millions; M. de Calonne, 800 millions; in all 1630 millions over a period of ten years. The interest of the public debt, only 45 millions in 1755, reaches 106 millions in 1776 and amounts to 206 millions in 1789[4308]. What creditors which these few figures tell us about! As the Third-Estate, it must be noted, is the sole class making and saving money, nearly all these creditors belong it. Thousands of others must be added to these. In the first place, the financiers who make advances to the government, advances that are indispensable, because, from time immemorial, it has eaten its corn on the blade, so the present year is always gnawing into the product of coming years; there are 80 millions of advances in 1759, and 170 millions in 1783. In the second place there are so many suppliers, large and small, who, on all parts of the territory, keep accounts with the government for their supplies and for public works, a veritable army and increasing daily, since the government, impelled by centralization, takes sole responsibility for all ventures, and, requested by public opinion, it increases the number of undertakings useful to the public. Under Louis XV. the State builds six thousand leagues of roads, and under Louis XVI. in 1788, to guard against famine, it purchases grain to the amount of forty millions.

Through this increase of activity and its demands for capital the State becomes the universal debtor; henceforth public affairs are no longer exclusively the king's business. His creditors become uneasy at his expenditures; for it is their money he wastes, and, if he proves a bad administrator, they will be ruined. They want to know something of his budget, to examine his books: a lender always has the right to look after his securities. We accordingly see the bourgeois raising his head and beginning to pay close attention to the great machine whose performances, hitherto concealed from vulgar eyes, have, up to the present time, been kept a state secret. He becomes a politician, and, at the same time, discontented. For it cannot be denied that these matters, in which he is interested, are badly conducted. Any young man of good family managing affairs in the same way would be checked. The expenses of the administration of the State are always in excess of the revenue[4309]. According to official admissions[4310] the annual deficit amounted to 70 in 1770, and 80 millions in 1783; when one has attempted to reduce this it has been through bankruptcies; one to the tune of two milliards at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, and another almost equal to it in the time of Law, and another on from a third to a half of all the interests in the time of Terray, without mentioning suppressions in detail, reductions, indefinite delays in payment, and other violent and fraudulent means which a powerful debtor employs with impunity against a feeble creditor. "Fifty-six violations of public faith have occurred from Henry IV down to the ministry of M. de Loménie inclusive,"[4311] while a last bankruptcy, more frightful than the others, loom up on the horizon. Several persons, Bezenval and Linguet for instance, earnestly recommend it as a necessary and salutary amputation. Not only are there precedents for this, and in this respect the government will do no more than follow its own example, but such is its daily practice, since it lives only from day to day, by dint of expedients and delays, digging one hole to stop up another, and escaping failure only through the forced patience which it imposes on its creditors. With it, says a contemporary, people were never sure of anything, being always obliged to wait[4312]. "Were their capital invested in its loans, they could never rely on a fixed date for the payment of interest. Did they build ships, repair highways, or the soldiers clothed, they had no guarantees for their advances, no certificates of repayment, being reduced to calculate the chances involved in a ministerial contract as they would the risks of a bold speculation." It pays if it can and only when it can, even the members of the household, the purveyors of the table and the personal attendants of the king. In 1753 the domestics of Louis XV had received nothing for three years. We have seen how his grooms went out to beg during the night in the streets of Versailles; how his purveyors "hid themselves;" how, under Louis XVI in 1778, there were 792,620 francs due to the wine-merchant, and 3,467,980 francs to the purveyor of fish and meat[4313]. In 1788, so great is the distress, the Minister de Loménie appropriates and expends the funds of a private subscription raised for a hospital, and, at the time of his resignation, the treasury is empty, save 450,000 francs, half of which he puts in his pocket. What an administration!--In the presence of this debtor, evidently becoming insolvent, all people, far and near, interested in his business, consult together with alarm, and debtors are innumerable, consisting of bankers, merchants, manufacturers, employees, lenders of every kind and degree, and, in the front rank, the capitalists, who have put all their means for life into his hands, and who are to beg should he not pay them annually the 44 millions he owes them; the industrialists and traders who have entrusted their commercial integrity to him and who would shrink with horror from failure as its issue; and after these come their creditors, their clerks, their relations, in short, the largest portion of the laboring and peaceable class which, thus far, had obeyed without a murmur and never dreamed of bringing the established order of things under its control. Henceforth this class will exercise control attentively, distrustfully and angrily. Woe to those who are at fault, for they well know that the ruin of the State is their ruin.

III. Social Promotion.

He rises on the social ladder.--The noble draws near to him. --He becomes cultivated.--He enters into society.--He regards himself as the equal of the noble.--Privileges an annoyance.

Meanwhile this class has climbed up the social ladder, and, through its élite, rejoined those in the highest position. Formerly between Dorante and M. Jourdain, between Don Juan and M. Dimanche,[4314] between M. Sotenville himself and Georges Dandin, the distance was vast; everything was different--dress, house, habits, characters, points of honor, ideas and language. On the one hand the nobles are drawn nearer to the Third-Estate and, on the other, the Third-Estate is drawn nearer to the nobles, actual equality having preceded equality as a right.--On the approach of the year 1789 it was difficult to distinguish one from the other in the street. The sword is no longer worn by gentlemen in the city; they have abandoned embroideries and laces, and walk about in plain frock-coats, or drive themselves in their cabriolets[4315]. "The simplicity of English customs," and the customs of the Third-Estate seem to them better adapted to ordinary life. Their prominence proves irksome to them and they grow weary of being always on parade. Henceforth they accept familiarity that they may enjoy freedom of action, and are content "to mingle with their fellow-citizens without obstacle or ostentation.----"It is certainly a grave sign, and the old feudal spirits have reason to tremble. The Marquis de Mirabeau, on learning that his son wishes to act as his own lawyer, consoles himself by seeing others, of still higher rank, do much worse[4316].

"As it was difficult to accept the idea that the grandson of my father, whom we just had seen pass by on the promenade, everybody, young and old, raising their hats to him from afar, would soon be seen at the bar of a lower tribunal, there to contest minor legal matters with pettifoggers; but I said to myself, however, that Louis XIV would be still more astonished had he seen the wife of his grand-successor dressed in a peasant's frock and apron, with no attendants, not a page or any one else, running about the palace and the terraces, requesting the first scamp in a frock-coat she encountered to give her his hand, which he simply does, all the way down to the foot of the steps."

But the leveling of manners and appearances of life reflected, indeed, only an equalization of minds and tempers. The antique scenery being torn away indicates the disappearance of the sentiments to which it belonged. It indicated gravity, dignity, custom of self-control and of exposed, in authority and command. It was the rigid and sumptuous parade of a social corps of staff-officers. At this time the parade is discontinued because the corps has been dissolved. If the nobles dress like the bourgeoisie it is owing to their having become bourgeois, that is to say, idlers retired from business, with nothing to do but to talk and amuse themselves.--Undoubtedly they amuse themselves and converse like people of refinement; but it is not very difficult to equal them in this respect. Now that the Third-Estate has acquired its wealth a good many commoners have become people of society. The successors of Samuel Bernard are no longer so many Turcarets, but Paris-Duverneys, Saint-Jameses, Labordes, refined men, people of culture and of feeling, possessing tact, literary and philosophical attainments, benevolent, giving parties and knowing how to entertain[4317]. With them, slightly different, we find the same company as with a grand lord, the same ideas and the same tone. Their sons, messieurs de Villemer, de Francueil, d'Epinay, throw money out of the window with as much elegance as the young dukes with whom they sup. A parvenu with money and intellect soon learns the ropes, and his son, if not himself, is initiated: a few years' exercises in an academy, a dancing-master, and one of the four thousand public offices which confer nobility, supply him with the deficient appearances. Now, in these times, as soon as one knows how to conform to the laws of good-breeding, how to bow and how to converse, one possesses a patent for admission everywhere. An Englishman[4318] remarks that one of the first expressions employed in praise of a man is, "he has a very graceful address." The Maréchale de Luxembourg, so high-spirited, always selects Laharpe as her cavalier, because "he offers his arm so well."--The commoner not only enters the drawing-room, if he is fitted for it, but he stands foremost in it if he has any talent. The first place in conversation, and even in public consideration, is for Voltaire, the son of a notary, for Diderot, the son of a cutler, for Rousseau, the son of a watchmaker, for d'Alembert, a foundling brought up by a glazier; and, after the great men have disappeared, and no writers of the second grade are left, the leading duchesses are still content to have the seats at their tables occupied by Champfort, another foundling, Beaumarchais, the son of another watchmaker, Laharpe, supported and raised on charity, Marmontel, the son of a village tailor, and may others of less note, in short, every parvenu possessing wit.

The nobility, to perfect their own accomplishments, borrow their pens and aspire to their successes. "We have recovered from those old Gothic and absurd prejudices against literary culture," says the Prince de Hénin;[4319] "as for myself I would compose a comedy to-morrow if I had the talent, and if I happened to be made a little angry, I would perform in it." And, in fact, "the Vicomte de Ségur, son of the minister of war, plays the part of the lover in 'Nina' on Mlle. de Guimard's stage with the actors of the Italian Comedy."[4320] One of Mme. de Genlis's personages, returning to Paris after five years' absence, says that "he left men wholly devoted to play, hunting, and their small houses, and he finds them all turned authors."[4321] They hawk about their tragedies, comedies, novels, eclogues, dissertations and treatises of all kinds from one drawing room to another. They strive to get their pieces played; they previously submit them to the judgment of actors; they solicit a word of praise from the Mercure; they read fables at the sittings of the Academy. They become involved in the bickering, in the vainglory, in the pettiness of literary life, and still worse, of the life of the stage, inasmuch as they are themselves performers and play in company with real actors in hundreds of private theaters. Add to this, if you please, other petty amateur talents such as sketching in water-colors, writing songs, and playing the flute.--After this amalgamation of classes and this transfer of parts what remains of the superiority of the nobles? By what special merit, through what recognized capacity are they to secure respect of a member of the Third-Estate? Outside of fashionable elegance and a few points of breeding, in what respect they differ from him? What superior education, what familiarity with affairs, what experience with government, what political instruction, what local ascendancy, what moral authority can be alleged to sanction their pretensions to the highest places?--In the way of practice, the Third-Estate already does the work, providing the qualified men, the intendants, the ministerial head-clerks, the lay and ecclesiastical administrators, the competent laborers of all kinds and degrees. Call to mind the Marquis of whom we have just spoken, a former captain in the French guards, a man of feeling and of loyalty, admitting at the elections of 1789 that "the knowledge essential to a deputy would most generally be found in the Third-Estate, the mind there being accustomed to business."--In the way of theory: the commoner is as well-informed as the noble, and he thinks he is still better informed, because, having read the same books and arrived at the same principles, he does not, like him, stop half-way on the road to their consequences, but plunges headlong to the very depths of the doctrine, convinced that his logic is clairvoyance and that he is more enlightened because he is the least prejudiced.--Consider the young men who, about twenty years of age in 1780, born in industrious families, accustomed to effort and able to work twelve hours a day, a Barnave, a Carnot, a Roederer, a Merlin de Thionville, a Robespierre, an energetic stock, feeling their strength, criticizing their rivals, aware of their weakness, comparing their own application and education to their levity and incompetence, and, at the moment when youthful ambition stirs within them, seeing themselves excluded in advance from any superior position, consigned for life to subaltern employment, and subjected in every career to the precedence of superiors who they hardly recognize as their equals. At the artillery examinations where Chérin, the genealogist, refuses commoners, and where the Abbé Bosen, a mathematician, rejects the ignorant, it is discovered that capacity is wanting among the noble pupils and nobility among the capable pupils,[4322] the two qualities of gentility and intelligence seeming to exclude each other, as there are but four or five out of a hundred pupils who combine the two conditions. Now, as society at this time is mixed, such tests are frequent and easy. Whether lawyer, physician, or man of letters, a member of the Third-Estate with whom a duke converses familiarly, who sits in a diligence alongside of a count-colonel of hussars,[4323] can appreciate his companion or his interlocutor, weigh his ideas, test his merit and esteem him at his correct value, and I am sure that he does not overrate him.--Now that the nobles have lost their special capacities and the Third-Estate have acquired general competence, and as they are on the same level in education and competence, the inequality which separates them has become offensive because it has become useless. Nobility being instituted by custom is no longer sanctified by conscience; the Third-Estate being justly excited against privileges that have no justification, whether in the capacity of the noble or in the incapacity of the bourgeois.

IV. Rousseau's Philosophy Spreads And Takes HOLD.

Philosophy in the minds thus fitted for it.--That of Rousseau prominent.--This philosophy in harmony with new necessities.--It is adopted by the Third-Estate.

Distrust and anger against a government putting all fortunes at risk, rancor and hostility against a nobility barring all roads to popular advancement, are, then, the sentiments developing themselves among the middle class solely due to their advance in wealth and culture.--We can imagine the effect of the new philosophy upon people with such attitudes. At first, confined to the aristocratic reservoir, the doctrine filters out through numerous cracks like so many trickling streams, to scatter imperceptibly among the lower class. Already, in 1727, Barbier, a bourgeois of the old school and having little knowledge of philosophy and philosophers except the name, writes in his journal:

"A hundred poor families are deprived of the annuities on which they supported themselves, acquired with bonds for which the capital is obliterated; 56,000 livres are given in pensions to people who have held the best offices, where they have amassed considerable property, always at the expense of the people, and all this merely that they may rest themselves and do nothing."[4324]

One by one, reformative ideas penetrate to his office of consulting advocate; conversation has sufficed to propagate them, homely common sense needing no philosophy to secure their recognition.

"The tax on property," said he, in 1750, "should be proportioned and equally distributed among all the king's subjects and the members of the government, in proportion to the property each really possesses in the kingdom; in England, the lands of the nobility, the clergy and the Third-Estate pay alike without distinction, and nothing is more just."

In the six years which follow the flood increases. People denounce the government in the cafés, on their promenades, while the police dare not arrest malcontents "because they would have to arrest everybody." The disaffection goes on increasing up to the end of the reign. In 1744, says the bookseller Hardy, during the king's illness at Metz, private individuals cause six thousand masses to be said for his recovery and pay for them at the sacristy of Notre Dame; in 1757, after Damiens's attempt on the king's life, the number of masses demanded is only six hundred; in 1774, during the malady which carries him off, the number falls down to three. The complete discredit of the government, the immense success of Rousseau, these two events, occurring simultaneously, afford a date for the conversion of the Third-Estate to philosophy[4325]. A traveler, at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI, who returns home after some years' absence, on being asked what change he noticed in the nation, replied, "Nothing, except that what used to be talked about in the drawing-rooms is repeated in the streets."[4326] And that which is repeated in the streets is Rousseau's doctrine, the Discourse on Inequality, the Social Contract amplified, popularized and repeated by adherents in every possible way and in all their forms. What could be more fascinating for the man of the Third-Estate? Not only is this theory in vogue, and encountered by him at the decisive moment when, for the first time, he turns his attention to general principles, but again it provides him with arms against social inequality and political absolutism, and much sharper than he needs. To people disposed to put restraints on power and to abolish privileges, what guide is more sympathetic than the writer of genius, the powerful logician, the impassioned orator, who establishes natural law, who repudiates historic law, who proclaims the equality of men, who contends for the sovereignty of the people, who denounces on every page the usurpation, the vices, the worthlessness, the malefactions of the great and of kings! And I omit the points by which he makes acceptable to a rigid and laborious bourgeoisie, to the new men that are working and advancing themselves, his steady earnestness, his harsh and bitter tone, his eulogy of simple habits, of domestic virtues, of personal merit, of virile energy, the commoner addressing commoners. It is not surprising that they should accept him as a guide and welcome his doctrines with that fervor of faith called enthusiasm, and which invariably accompanies the newborn idea as well as the first love.

A competent judge, and an eye-witness, Mallet du Pan,[4327] writes in 1799:

"Rousseau had a hundred times more readers among the middle and lower classes than Voltaire. He alone inoculated the French with the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and with its extremist consequences. It would be difficult to cite a single revolutionary who was not transported over these anarchical theories, and who did not burn with ardor to realize them. That Contrat Social, the disintegrator of societies, was the Koran of the pretentious talkers of 1789, of the Jacobins of 1790, of the republicans of 1791, and of the most atrocious of the madmen. . . . I heard Marat in 1788 read and comment on the Contrat Social in the public streets to the applause of an enthusiastic auditory."

The same year, in an immense throng filling the great hall of the Palais de Justice, Lacretelle hears that same book quoted, its dogmas put forward by the clerks of la Bazoche, "by members of the bar,[4328] by young lawyers, by the ordinary lettered classes swarming with new-fledged specialist in public law." Hundreds of details show us that it is in every hand like a catechism. In 1784[4329] certain magistrates' sons, on taking their first lesson in jurisprudence of an assistant professor, M. Saveste, have the "Contrat Social" placed in their hands as a manual. Those who find this new political geometry too difficult learn at least its axioms, and if these repel them they discover at least their palpable consequences, so many handy comparisons, the trifling common practice in the literature in vogue, whether drama, history, or romance[4330]. Through the "Eloges" by Thomas, the pastorals of Bernadin de Saint-Pierre, the compilation of Raynal, the comedies of Beaumarchais and even the "Young Anarcharsis" and the literature of the resuscitated Greek and Roman antiquity, the dogmas of equality and liberty infiltrate and penetrate the class able to read[4331]. "A few days ago," says Métra,[4332] "a dinner of forty ecclesiastics from the country took place at the house of curate of Orangis, five leagues from Paris. At the dessert, and in the truth which came out over their wine, they all admitted that they came to Paris to see the 'Marriage of Figaro.'. . Up to the present time it seems as if comic authors intended to make sport for the great at the expense of the little, but here, on the contrary, it is the little who laugh at the expense of the great." Hence the success of the piece.--Hence a steward of a chateau has found a Raynal in the library, the furious declamation of which so delights him that he can repeat it thirty years later without stumbling, or a sergeant in the French guards embroiders waistcoats during the night to earn the money with which to purchase the latest books.--After the gallant picture of the boudoir comes the austere and patriotic picture; "Belisarious" and the "Horatii" of David reflect the new attitude both of the public and of the studios[4333] The spirit is that of Rousseau, "the republican spirit;"[4334] the entire middle class, artists, employees, curates, physicians, attorneys, advocates, the lettered and the journalists, all are won over to it; and it is fed by the worst as well as the best passions, ambition, envy, desire for freedom, zeal for the public welfare and the consciousness of right.

V. Revolutionary Passions.

Its effects therein.--The formation of revolutionary passions.--Leveling instincts.--The craving for dominion.-- The Third-Estate decides and constitutes the nation.-- Chimeras, ignorance, exaltation.

All these passions intensify each other. There is nothing like a wrong to quicken the sentiment of justice. There is nothing like the sentiment of justice to quicken the injury proceeding from a wrong[4335]. The Third-Estate, considering itself deprived of the place to which it is entitled, finds itself uncomfortable in the place it occupies and, accordingly, suffers through a thousand petty grievances it would not, formerly, have noticed. On discovering that he is a citizen a man is irritated at being treated as a subject, no one accepting an inferior position alongside of one of whom he believes himself the equal. Hence, during a period of twenty years, the ancient régime while attempting to grow easier, appear to be still more burdensome, and its pinpricks exasperate as if they were so many wounds. Countless instances might be quoted instead of one.--At the theater in Grenoble, Barnave,[4336] a child, is with his mother in a box which the Duc de Tonnerre, governor of the province, had assigned to one of his satellites. The manager of the theater, and next an officer of the guard, request Madame Barnave to withdraw. She refuses, whereupon the governor orders four fusiliers to force her out. The audience in the stalls had already taken the matter up, and violence was feared, when M. Barnave, advised of the affront, entered and led his wife away, exclaiming aloud, "I leave by order of the governor." The indignant public, all the bourgeoisie, agreed among themselves not to enter the theater again without an apology being made; the theater, in fact, remaining empty several months, until Madame Barnave consented to reappear there. This outrage afterwards recurred to the future deputy, and he then swore "to elevate the caste to which he belonged out of the humiliation to which it seemed condemned." In like manner Lacroix, the future member of the Convention,[4337] on leaving a theater, and jostled by a gentleman who was giving his arm to a lady, utters a loud complaint. "Who are you?" says the person. Still the provincial, he is simple enough to give his name, surname, and qualifications in full. "Very well," says the other man, "good for you--I am the Comte de Chabannes, and I am in a hurry," saying which, "laughing heartily," he jumps into his vehicle. "Ah, sir, exclaimed Lacroix, still much excited by his misadventure, "pride and prejudice establish an awful gulf between man and man!" We may rest assured that, with Marat, a veterinary surgeon in the Comte d'Artois's stables, with Robespierre, a protégé of the bishop of Arras, with Danton, an insignificant lawyer in Mery-sur-Seine, and with many others beside, self-esteem, in frequent encounters, bled in the same fashion. The concentrated bitterness with which Madame Roland's memoirs are imbued has no other cause. "She could not forgive society[4338] for the inferior position she had so long occupied in it."[4339] Thanks to Rousseau, vanity, so natural to man, and especially sensitive with a Frenchman, becomes still more sensitive. The slightest discrimination, a tone of the voice, seems a mark of disdain. "One day,[4340] on alluding, before the minister of war, to a general officer who had obtained his rank through his merit, he exclaimed, 'Oh, yes, an officer of luck.' This expression, being repeated and commented on, does much mischief." In vain do the grandees show their condescending spirit, "welcoming with equal kindness and gentleness all who are presented to them." In the mansion of the Due de Penthièvre the nobles eat at the table of the master of the house, the commoners dine with his first gentleman and only enter the drawing room when coffee is served. There they find "in full force and with a superior tone" the others who had the honor of dining with His Highness, and "who do not fail to salute the new arrivals with an obliging civility indicating patronage."[4341] No more is required; in vain does the Duke "carry his attentions to an extreme," Beugnot, so pliable, has no desire to return. They bear them ill-will, not only on account of their slight bows but again on account of their over-politeness. Champfort acrimoniously relates that d'Alembert, at the height of his reputation, being in Madame du Deffant's drawing room with President Hénault and M. de Pont-de-Veyle, a physician enters named Fournier, and he, addressing Madame du Deffant, says, "Madame, I have the honor of presenting you with my very humble respects;'' turning to President Hénault, "I have the honor to be your obedient servant," and then to M. de Pont-de-Veyle, "Sir, your most obedient," and to d'Alembert, "Good day, sir."[4342] To a rebellious heart everything is an object of resentment. The Third-Estate, following Rousseau's example, cherishes ill-feeling against the nobles for what they do, and yet again, for what they are, for their luxury, their elegance, their insincerity, their refined and brilliant behavior. Champfort is embittered against them on account of the polite attentions with which they overwhelm him. Sieyès bears them a grudge on account of a promised abbey which he did not obtain. Each individual, besides the general grievances, has his personal grievance. Their coolness, like their familiarity, attentions and inattentions, is an offense, and, under these millions of needle-thrusts, real or imaginary, the mind gets to be full of gall. In 1789, it is full to overflowing.

"The most honorable title of the French nobility," writes Champfort, "is a direct descent from some 30,000 armed, helmeted, armletted and armored men who, on heavy horses sheathed in armor, trod under foot 8 or 10 millions of naked men, the ancestors of the actual nation. Behold these well-established claims to the respect and affection of their descendants! And, to complete the respectability of this nobility, it is recruited and regenerated by the adoption of those who have acquired fortune by plundering the cabins of the poor who are unable to pay its impositions."[4343]--

"Why should not the Third-Estate send back," says Sieyès, "into the forests of Franconia every family that maintains its absurd pretension of having sprung from the loins of a race of conquerors, and of having succeeded to the rights of conquest? [4344] I can well imagine, were there no police, every Cartouche[4345] firmly establishing himself on the high-road--would that give him a right to levy toll? Suppose him to sell a monopoly of this kind, once common enough, to an honest successor, would the right become any more respectable in the hands of the purchaser?. . . Every privilege, in its nature, is unjust, odious, and against the social compact. The blood boils at the thought of its ever having been possible to legally consecrate down to the eighteenth century the abominable fruits of an abominable feudal system. . . . The caste of nobles is really a population apart, a fraudulent population, however, which, for lack of serviceable faculties, and unable to exist alone, fastens itself upon a living nation, like the vegetable tumors that support themselves on the sap of the plants to which they are a burden, and which wither beneath the load."--They suck all, everything being for them. "Every branch of the executive power has fallen into the hands of this caste, which staffed (already) the church, the robe and the sword. A sort of confraternity or joint paternity leads the nobles each to prefer the other and all to the rest of the nation. . . . The Court reigns, and not the monarch. The Court creates and distributes offices. And what is the Court but the head of this vast aristocracy that covers all parts of France, and which, through its members, attains to and exercises everywhere whatever is requisite in all branches of the public administration?"--Let us put an end to "this social crime, this long parricide which one class does itself the honor to commit daily against the others. . . . Ask no longer what place the privileged shall occupy in the social order; it is simply asking what place in a sick man's body must be assigned to a malignant ulcer that is undermining and tormenting it. . . to the loathsome disease that is consuming the living flesh."--The solution is self-evident: let us eradicate the ulcer, or at least sweep away the vermin. The Third-Estate, in itself and by itself, is "a complete nation," requiring no organ, needing no aid to subsist or to govern itself, and which will recover its health on ridding itself of the parasites infesting its skin.

"What is the Third-Estate?" says Sieyès, "everything. What, thus far, is it in the political body?[4346] Nothing. What does it demand? To become something."

Not something but actually everything. Its political ambition is as great as its social ambition, and it aspires to authority as well as to equality. If privileges are an evil that of the king is the worst for it is the greatest, and human dignity, wounded by the prerogative of the noble, perishes under the absolutism of the king. Of little consequence is it that he scarcely uses it, and that his government, deferential to public opinion, is that of a hesitating and indulgent parent. Emancipated from real despotism, the Third-Estate becomes excited against possible despotism, imagining itself in slavery in consenting to remain subject. A proud spirit has recovered itself, become erect, and, the better to secure its rights, is going to claim all rights. To the people who since antiquity has been subject to masters, it is so sweet, so intoxicating to put themselves in their places, to put the former masters in their place, to say to himself, they are my representatives, to regard himself a member of the sovereign power, king of France in his individual sphere, the sole legitimate author of all rights and of all functions!--In conformity with the doctrines of Rousseau the registers of the Third-Estate unanimously insist on a constitution for France; none exists, or at least the one she possesses is of no value. Thus far "the conditions of the social compact have been ignored;"[4347] now that they have been discovered they must be written out. To say, with the nobles according to Montesquieu, that the constitution exists, that its great features need not be changed, that it is necessary only to reform abuses, that the States-General exercise only limited power, that they are incompetent to substitute another regime for the monarchy, is not true. Tacitly or expressly, the Third-Estate refuses to restrict its mandate and allows no barriers to be interposed against it. It requires its deputies accordingly to vote "not by orders but each by himself and conjointly."--"In case the deputies of the clergy or of the nobility should refuse to deliberate in common and individually, the deputies of the Third-Estate, representing twenty-four millions of men, able and obliged to declare itself the National Assembly not-withstanding the scission of the representation of 400,000 persons, will propose to the King in concert with those among the Clergy and the Nobility disposed to join them, their assistance in providing for the necessities of the State, and the taxes thus assented to shall be apportioned among all the subjects of the king without distinction."[4348]--Do not object that a people thus mutilated becomes a mere crowd, that leaders cannot be improvised, that it is difficult to dispense with natural guides, that, considering all things, this Clergy and this Nobility still form a select group, that two-fifths of the soil is in their hands, that one-half of the intelligent and cultivated class of men are in their ranks, that they are exceedingly well-disposed and that old historic bodies have always afforded to liberal constitutions their best supports. According to the principle enunciated by Rousseau we are not to value men but to count them. In politics numbers only are respectable; neither birth, nor property, nor function, nor capacity, is a title to be considered; high or low, ignorant or learned, a general, a soldier, or a hod-carrier, each individual of the social army is a unit provided with a vote; wherever a majority is found there is the right. Hence, the Third-Estate puts forth its right as incontestable, and, in its turn, it proclaims with Louis XIV, "I am the State."

This principle once admitted or enforced, they thought, all will go well.

"It seemed," says an eye-witness,[4349] "as if we were about to be governed by men of the golden age. This free, just and wise people, always in harmony with itself, always clear-sighted in choosing its ministers, moderate in the use of its strength and power, never could be led away, never deceived, never under the dominion of; or enslaved by, the authority which it confided. Its will would fashion the laws and the law would constitute its happiness."

The nation is to be regenerated, a phrase found in all writings and in every mouth. At Nangis, Arthur Young finds this the sub-stance of political conversation[4350]. The chaplain of a regiment, a curate in the vicinity, keeps fast hold of it; as to knowing what it means that is another matter. It is impossible to find anything out through explanations of it otherwise than "a theoretic perfection of government, questionable in its origin, hazardous in its progress, and visionary in its end." On the Englishman proposing to them the British constitution as a model they "hold it cheap in respect of liberty" and greet it with a smile; it is, especially, not in conformity with "the principles." And observe that we are at the residence of a grand seignior, in a circle of enlightened men. At Riom, at the election assemblies,[4351] Malouet finds "persons of an ordinary stamp, practitioners, petty lawyers, with no experience of public business, quoting the 'Contrat Social,' vehemently declaiming against tyranny, and each proposing his own constitution." Most of them are without any knowledge whatever, mere traffickers in chicane; the best instructed entertain mere schoolboy ideas of politics. In the colleges of the University no history is taught[4352]. "The name of Henry IV., says Lavalette, was not once uttered during my eight years of study, and, at seventeen years of age, I was still ignorant of the epoch and the mode of the establishment of the Bourbons on the throne." The stock they carry away with them consists wholly, as with Camille Desmoulins, of scraps of Latin, entering the world with brains stuffed with "republican maxims," excited by souvenirs of Rome and Sparta, and "penetrated with profound contempt for monarchical governments." Subsequently, at the law school, they learn something about legal abstractions, or else learn nothing. In the lecture-courses at Paris there are no students; the professor delivers his lecture to copyists who sell their copy-books. If a pupil should attend himself and take notes he would be regarded with suspicion; he would be charged with trying to deprive the copyists of the means of earning their living. A diploma, consequently, is worthless. At Bourges one is obtainable in six months; if the young man succeeds in comprehending the law it is through later practice and familiarity with it.--Of foreign laws and institutions there is not the least knowledge, scarcely even a vague or false notion of them. Malouet himself entertains a meager idea of the English Parliament, while many, with respect to ceremonial, imagine it a copy of the Parliament of France.--The mechanism of free constitutions, or the conditions of effective liberty, that is too complicated a question. Montesquieu, save in the great magisterial families, is antiquated for twenty years past. Of what avail are studies of ancient France? "What is the result of so much and such profound research? Laborious conjecture and reasons for doubting."[4353] It is much more convenient to start with the rights of man and to deduce the consequences. Schoolboy logic suffices for that to which collegiate rhetoric supplies the tirades.--In this great void of enlightenment the vague terms of liberty, equality and the sovereignty of the people, the glowing expressions of Rousseau and his successors, all these new axioms, blaze up like burning coals, discharging clouds of smoke and intoxicating vapor. High-sounding and vague language is interposed between the mind and objects around it; all outlines are confused and the vertigo begins. Never to the same extent have men lost the purport of outward things. Never have they been at once more blind and more chimerical. Never has their disturbed reason rendered them more tranquil concerning real danger and created more alarm at imaginary danger. Strangers with cool blood and who witness the spectacle, Mallet du Pan, Dumont of Geneva, Arthur Young, Jefferson, Gouverneur Morris, write that the French are insane. Morris, in this universal delirium, can mention to Washington but one sane mind, that of Marmontel, and Marmontel speaks in the same style as Morris. At the preliminary meetings of the clubs, and at the assemblies of electors, he is the only one who opposes unreasonable propositions. Surrounding him are none but the excited, the exalted about nothing, even to grotesqueness[4354]. In every act of the established régime, in every administrative measure, "in all police regulations, in all financial decrees, in all the graduated authorities on which public order and tranquility depend, there was naught in which they did not find an aspect of tyranny. . . On the walls and barriers of Paris being referred to, these were denounced as enclosures for deer and derogatory to man."--

"I saw," says one of these orators, "at the barrier Saint-Victor, sculptured on one of the pillars--would you believe it?----an enormous lion's head, with open jaws vomiting forth chains as a menace to those who passed it. Could a more horrible emblem of slavery and of despotism be imagined!"--"The orator himself imitates the roar of the lion. The listeners were all excited by it and I, who passed the barrier Saint-Victor so often, was surprised that this horrible image had not struck me. That very day I examined it closely and, on the pilaster, I found only a small buckler suspended as an ornament by a little chain attached by the sculptor to a little lion's mouth, like those we see serving as door-knockers or as water-cocks."--Perverted sensations and delirious conceptions of this kind would be regarded by physicians as the symptoms of mental derangement, and we are only in the early months of the year 1789!--In such excitable and over-excited brains the powerful fascination of words is about to create phantoms, some of them hideous, the aristocrat and the tyrant, and others adorable, the friend of the people and the incorruptible patriot, so many disproportionate, imaginary figures, but which will replace actual living persons, and which the maniac is to overwhelm with his praise or pursue with his fury.

VI. Summary

Thus does the philosophy of the eighteenth century descend among the people and propagate itself. Ideas, on the first story of the house, in handsome gilded rooms, serve only as an evening illumination, as drawing room explosives and pleasing Bengal lights, with which people amuse themselves, and then laughingly throw from the windows into the street. Collected together in the story below and on the ground floor, transported to shops, to warehouses and into business cabinets, they find combustible material, piles of wood a long time accumulated, and here do the flames enkindle. The conflagration seems to have already begun, for the chimneys roar and a ruddy light gleams through the windows; but "No," say the people above, "those below would take care not to set the house on fire, for they live in it as we do. It is only a straw bonfire and a burning chimney, and a little water will extinguish it; and, besides, these little accidents clear the chimney and burn out the soot."

Take care! Under the vast deep arches supporting it, in the cellars of the house, there is a magazine of powder.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 4301: I have verified these sentiments myself, in the narration of aged people deceased twenty years ago. Cf. manuscript memoirs of Hardy the bookseller (analyzed by Aubertin), and the "Travels of Arthur Young."]

[Footnote 4302: Aubertin, ibid., 180, 362.]

[Footnote 4303: Voltaire, "Siècle de Louis XV," ch. XXXI; "Siècle de Louis XIV," ch. XXX. "Industry increases every day. To see the private display, the prodigious number of pleasant dwellings erected in Paris and in the provinces, the numerous equipages, the conveniences, the acquisitions comprehended in the term luxe, one might suppose that opulence was twenty times greater than it formerly was. All this is the result of ingenuity, much more than of wealth. . . The middle class has become wealthy by industry. . . . Commercial gains have augmented. The opulence of the great is less than it was formerly and much larger among the middle class, the distance between men even being lessened by it. Formerly the inferior class had no resource but to serve their superiors; nowadays industry has opened up a thousand roads unknown a hundred years ago."]

[Footnote 4304: John Law (Edinbourgh 1672--dead in Venice 1729) Scotch financier, who founded a bank in Paris issuing paper money whose value depended upon confidence and credit. He had to flee France when his system collapsed and died in misery. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4305: Arthur Young, II. 360, 373.]

[Footnote 4306: De Tocqueville, 255.]

[Footnote 4307: Aubertin, 482.]

[Footnote 4308: Roux and Buchez, "Histoire parlementaire." Extracted from the accounts made up by the comptrollers-general, I. 175, 205.--The report by Necker, I. 376. To the 206,000,000 must be added 15,800,000 for expenses and interest on advances.]

[Footnote 4309: Compare this to the situation in year 1999 where irresponsible democratic governments sell enormous fortunes in the form of bonds to the popular pension funds, fortunes which they expect that the next generation shall repay. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4310: Roux and Buchez, I. 190. "Rapport," M. de Calonne.]

[Footnote 4311: Champfort, p. 105.]

[Footnote 4312: De Tocqueville, 261.]

[Footnote 4313: D'Argenson, April 12, 1752, February 11, 1752, July 24, 1753, December 7, 1753.--Archives nationales, O1, 738.]

[Footnote 4314: Characters in Molière's comedies.--TR.]

[Footnote 4315: De Ségur. I. 17.]

[Footnote 4316: Lucas de Montigny, Letter of the Marquis de Mirabeau, March 23, 1783.]

[Footnote 4317: Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, I. 269, 231. (The domestic establishment of two farmers-general, M. de Verdun, at Colombes, and M. de St. James, at Neuilly).--A superior type of the bourgeois and of the merchant has already been put on the stage by Sedaine in "Le Philosophe sans le Savoir."]

[Footnote 4318: John Andrews, "A comparative view," etc. p. 58.]

[Footnote 4319: De Tilly, "Mémoires," I. 31.]

[Footnote 4320: Goffroy, "Gustave III," letter of Mme. Staël (August, 1786).]

[Footnote 4321: Mme. de Genlis, "Adele et Théodore" (1782), I. 312.--Already in 1762, Bachaumont mentions several pieces written by grand seigniors, such as "Clytemnestre," by the Comte de Lauraguais; "Alexandre," by the Chevalier de Fénélon; "Don Carlos," by the Marquis de Ximènès.]

[Footnote 4322: Champfort, 119.]

[Footnote 4323: De Vaublanc, I. 117.--Beugnot, "Mémoires," (the first and second passages relating to society at the domiciles of M. de Brienne, and the Duc de Penthièvre.)]

[Footnote 4324: Barbier, II, 16; III. 255 (May, 1751). "The king is robbed by all the seigniors around him, especially on his journeys to his different châteaux, which are frequent."--And September, 1750.----Cf. Aubertin, 291, 415 ("Mémoires," manuscript by Hardy).]

[Footnote 4325: Treaties of Paris and Hubersbourg, 1763.--The trial of La Chalotais, 1765.--Bankruptcy of Terray, 1770.--Destruction of the Parliament, 1771.--The first partition of Poland, 1772.--Rousseau, "Discours sur l'inégalité," 1753.--"Héloise," 1759.--"Emile" and "Contrat Social," 1762.]

[Footnote 4326: De Barante, "Tableau de la littérature française au dix-huitième siècle," 312.]

[Footnote 4327: "Mercure britannique," vol. II, 360.]

[Footnote 4328: Lacretelle, "Dix ans d'épreuves," p. 21.]

[Footnote 4329: "Memoires," by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.]

[Footnote 4330: "Le Compère Mathieu," by Dulaurens (1766). "Our sufferings are due to the way in which we are brought up, namely, the state of society in which we are born. Now that state being the source of all our ills its dissolution must become that of all our good."]

[Footnote 4331: The "Tableau de Paris," by Mercier (12 vols.), is the completest and most exact portrayal of the ideas and aspirations of the middle class from 1781 to 1788.]

[Footnote 4332: "Correspondence," by Métra, XVII, 87 (August 20, 1784).]

[Footnote 4333: "Belisarious," is from 1780, and the "Oath of the Horatii," from 1783.]

[Footnote 4334: Geffroy, "Gustave II et la cour de France." "Paris, with its republican spirit, generally applauds whatever fails at Fontainebleau." (A letter by Madame de Staël, Sept. 17, 1786).]

[Footnote 4335: Taine uses the French term "passe-droit", meaning both passing over, slight, unjust promotion over the heads of others, a special favour, or privilege. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4336: Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi," II. 24, in the article on Barnave.]

[Footnote 4337: Dr Tilly, "Mémoires," I. 243.]

[Footnote 4338: The words of Fontanes, who knew her and admired her. (Sainte-Beuve, "Nouveaux Lundis," VIII. 221).]

[Footnote 4339: "Mémoires de Madame Roland," passim. At fourteen years of age, on being introduced to Mme. de Boismorel, she is hurt at hearing her grandmother addressed "Mademoiselle."--Shortly after this, she says: "I could not concoal from myself that I was of more consequence than Mlle. d'Hannaches, whose sixty years and her genealogy did not enable her to write a common-sense letter or one that was legible."--About the same epoch she passes a week at Versailles with a servant of the Dauphine, and tells her mother, "A few days more and I shall so detest these people that I shall not know how to suppress my hatred of them."--"What injury have they done you?" she inquired. "It is the feeling of injustice and the constant contemplation of absurdity!"--At the château of Fontenay where she is invited to dine, she and her mother are made to dine in the servants' room, etc.--In 1818, in a small town in the north, the Comte de--dining with a bourgeois sub-prefect and placed by the side of the mistress of the house, says to her, on accepting the soup, 'Thanks, sweetheart,' But the Revolution has given the lower class bourgeoisie the courage to defend themselves tooth and nail so that, a moment later, she addresses him, with one of her sweetest smiles, 'Will you take some chicken, my love?' (The French expression 'mon coeur' means both sweetheart and my love. SR.)]

[Footnote 4340: De Vaublanc, I. 153.]

[Footnote 4341: Beugnot, "Mémoires," I. 77.]

[Footnote 4342: Champfort, 16.--"Who would believe it! Not taxation, nor lettres-de-cachet, nor the abuses of power, nor the vexations of intendants, and the ruinous delays of justice have provoked the ire of the nation, but their prejudices against the nobility towards which it has shown the greatest hatred. This evidently proves that the bourgeoisie, the men of letters, the financial class, in short all who envy the nobles have excited against these the inferior class in the towns and among the rural peasantry." (Rivarol, "Mémoires.")]

[Footnote 4343: Champfort, 335.]

[Footnote 4344: Sieyès, "Qu'est ce que le Tiers?" 17, 41, 139, 166.]

[Footnote 4345: Cartouche (Luis Dominique) (Paris, 1693--id. 1721). Notorious French bandit, leader of a gang of thieves. He died broken alive on the wheel. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4346: "The nobility, say the nobles, is an intermediary between the king and the people. Yes, as the hound is an intermediary between the hunter and the hare." (Champfort).]

[Footnote 4347: Prud'homme, III. 2. ("The Third-Estate of Nivernais," passim.) Cf, on the other hand, the registers of the nobility of Bugey and of Alençon.]

[Footnote 4348: Prud'homme, ibid.., Cahiers of the Third-Estates of Dijon, Dax, Bayonne, Saint-Sévère, Rennes, etc.]

[Footnote 4349: Marmontel, "Mémoires," II. 247.]

[Footnote 4350: Arthur Young, I. 222.]

[Footnote 4351: Malouet, "Mémoires," I. 279.]

[Footnote 4352: De Lavalette, I. 7.--"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.--. Cf. Brissot, Mémoires, I.]

[Footnote 4353: Prudhomme, "Résumé des cahiers," the "preface," by J. J. Rousseau.]

[Footnote 4354: Marmontel, II. 245.]

BOOK FIFTH. THE PEOPLE

## CHAPTER I. HARDSHIPS.

I. Privations.

Under Louis XIV.--Under Louis XV.--Under Louis XVI.

La Bruyère wrote, just a century before 1789,[5101]:

"Certain savage-looking animals, male and female, are seen in the country, black, livid and sunburned, and attached to the soil which they dig and grub with invincible stubbornness. They seem capable of speech, and, when they stand erect, they display a human face. They are, in fact, men. They retire at night into their dens where they live on black bread, water and roots. They spare other human beings the trouble of sowing, plowing and harvesting, and thus should not be in want of the bread they have planted."

They are, however, in want during the twenty-five years after this, and die in droves. I estimate that in 1715 more than one-third of the population,[5102] six millions, perish with hunger and of destitution. This description is, in respect of the first quarter of the century preceding the Revolution, far from being too vivid, it is rather too weak; we shall see that it, during more than half a century, up to the death of Louis XV. is exact; so that instead of weakening any of its details, they should be strengthened.

"In 1725," says Saint-Simon, "with the profusion of Strasbourg and Chantilly, the people, in Normandy, live on the grass of the fields. The first king in Europe could not be a great king if it was not for all the beggars and the poor-houses full of dying from whom all had been taken even though it was peace-time.[5103]

In the most prosperous days of Fleury and in the finest region in France, the peasant hides "his wine on account of the excise and his bread on account of the taille," convinced "that he is a lost man if any doubt exists of his dying of starvation."[5104] In 1739 d'Argenson writes in his journal[5105]:

"The famine has just caused three insurrections in the provinces, at Ruffec, at Caen, and at Chinon. Women carrying their bread with them have been assassinated on the highways. . . M. le Duc d'Orléans brought to the Council the other day a piece of bread, and placed it on the table before the king 'Sire,' said he, 'there is the bread on which your subjects now feed themselves.'" "In my own canton of Touraine men have been eating herbage more than a year." Misery finds company on all sides. "It is talked about at Versailles more than ever. The king interrogated the bishop of Chartres on the condition of his people; he replied that 'the famine and the morality were such that men ate grass like sheep and died like so many flies.'"

In 1740,[5106] Massillon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, writes to Fleury:

"The people of the rural districts are living in frightful destitution, without beds, without furniture; the majority, for half the year, even lack barley and oat bread which is their sole food, and which they are compelled to take out of their own and their children's mouths to pay the taxes. It pains me to see this sad spectacle every year on my visits. The Negroes of our colonies are, in this respect, infinitely better off; for, while working, they are fed and clothed along with their wives and children, while our peasantry, the most laborious in the kingdom, cannot, with the hardest and most devoted labor, earn bread for themselves and their families, and at the same time pay their charges." In 1740[5107] at Lille, the people rebel against the export of grain. "An intendant informs me that the misery increases from hour to hour, the slightest danger to the crops resulting in this for three years past. . . .Flanders, especially, is greatly embarrassed; there is nothing to live on until the harvesting, which will not take place for two months. The provinces the best off are not able to help the others. Each bourgeois in each town is obliged to feed one or two poor persons and provide them with fourteen pounds of bread per week. In the little town of Chatellerault, (of 4,000 inhabitants), 1800 poor, this winter, are in that situation. . . . The poor outnumber those able to live without begging. . . while prosecutions for unpaid dues are carried on with unexampled rigor. The clothes of the poor, their last measure of flour and the latches on their doors are seized, etc. .. . The abbess of Jouarre told me yesterday that, in her canton, in Brie, most of the land had not been planted." It is not surprising that the famine spreads even to Paris. "Fears are entertained of next Wednesday. There is no more bread in Paris, except that of the damaged flour which is brought in and which burns (when baking). The mills are working day and night at Belleville, regrinding old damaged flour. The people are ready to rebel; bread goes up a sol a day; no merchant dares, or is disposed, to bring in his wheat. The market on Wednesday was almost in a state of revolt, there being no bread in it after seven o'clock in the morning. . . . The poor creatures at Bicêtre prison were put on short rations, three quarterons (twelve ounces), being reduced to only half a pound. A rebellion broke out and they forced the guards. Numbers escaped and they have inundated Paris. The watch, with the police of the neighborhood, were called out, and an attack was made on these poor wretches with bayonet and sword. About fifty of them were left on the ground; the revolt was not suppressed yesterday morning."

Ten years later the evil is greater.[5108]

"In the country around me, ten leagues from Paris, I find increased privation and constant complaints. What must it be in our wretched provinces in the interior of the kingdom?. . . My curate tells me that eight families, supporting themselves on their labor when I left, are now begging their bread. There is no work to be had. The wealthy are economizing like the poor. And with all this the taille is exacted with military severity. The collectors, with their officers, accompanied by locksmiths, force open the doors and carry off and sell furniture for one-quarter of its value, the expenses exceeding the amount of the tax. . . "--"I am at this moment on my estates in Touraine. I encounter nothing but frightful privations; the melancholy sentiment of suffering no longer prevails with the poor inhabitants, but rather one of utter despair; they desire death only, and avoid increase. . . . It is estimated that one-quarter of the working-days of the year go to the corvées, the laborers feeding themselves, and with what?. . . I see poor people dying of destitution. They are paid fifteen sous a day, equal to a crown, for their load. Whole villages are either ruined or broken up, and none of the households recover. . . . Judging by what my neighbors tell me the inhabitants have diminished one-third. . . . The daily laborers are all leaving and taking refuge in the small towns. In many villages everybody leaves. I have several parishes in which the taille for three years is due, the proceedings for its collection always going on. . . . The receivers of the taille and of the taxes add one-half each year in expenses above the tax. . . . An assessor, on coming to the village where I have my country-house, states that the taille this year will be much increased; he noticed that the peasants here were fatter than elsewhere; that they had chicken feathers before their doors, and that the living here must be good, everybody doing well, etc.--This is the cause of the peasant's discouragement, and likewise the cause of misfortune throughout the kingdom."--"In the country where I am staying I hear that marriage is declining and that the population is decreasing on all sides. In my parish, with a few fire-sides, there are more than thirty single persons, male and female, old enough to marry and none of them considering it. On being urged to marry they all reply alike that it is not worth while to bring unfortunate beings like themselves into the world. I have myself tried to induce some of the women to marry by offering them assistance, but they all reason in this way as if they had consulted together."[5109]--"One of my curates sends me word that, although he is the oldest in the province of Touraine, and has seen many things, including excessively high prices for wheat, he remembers no misery so great as that of this year, even in 1709. . . . Some of the seigniors of Touraine inform me that, being desirous of setting the inhabitants to work by the day, they found very few of them, and these so weak that they were unable to use their hands."

Those who are able to leave, go.

"A person from Languedoc tells me of vast numbers of peasants deserting that province and taking refuge in Piedmont, Savoy, and Spain, tormented and frightened by the measures resorted to in collecting tithes. . . . The extortioners sell everything and imprison everybody as if prisoners of war, and even with more avidity and malice, in order to gain something themselves."--"I met an intendant of one of the finest provinces in the kingdom, who told me that no more farmers could be found there; that parents preferred to send their children to the towns; that living in the surrounding country was daily becoming more horrible to the inhabitants. . . . A man, well-informed in financial matters, told me that over two hundred families in Normandy had left this year, fearing the collections in their villages."--At Paris, "the streets swarm with beggars. One cannot stop before a door without a dozen mendicants besetting him with their importunities. They are said to be people from the country who, unable to endure the persecutions they have to undergo, take refuge in the cities. . . preferring begging to labor."--And yet the people of the cities are not much better off. "An officer of a company in garrison at Mezieres tells me that the poverty of that place is so great that, after the officers had dined in the inns, the people rush in and pillage the remnants."--"There are more than 12,000 begging workmen in Rouen, quite as many in Tours, etc. More than 20,000 of these workmen are estimated as having left the kingdom in three months for Spain, Germany, etc. At Lyons 20,000 workers in silk are watched and kept in sight for fear of their going abroad." At Rouen,[5110] and in Normandy, "those in easy circumstances find it difficult to get bread, the bulk of the people being entirely without it, and, to ward off starvation, providing themselves with food otherwise repulsive to human beings."--"Even at Paris," writes d'Argenson,[5111] "I learn that on the day M. le Dauphin and Mme. la Dauphine went to Notre Dame, on passing the bridge of the Tournelle, more than 2,000 women assembled in that quarter crying out, 'Give us bread, or we shall die of hunger.'. . . A vicar of the parish of Saint-Marguerite affirms that over eight hundred persons died in the Faubourg St. Antoine between January 20th and February 20th; that the poor expire with cold and hunger in their garrets, and that the priests, arriving too late, see them expire without any possible relief."

Were I to enumerate the riots, the sedition of the famished, and the pillaging of storehouses, I should never end; these are the convulsive twitching of exhaustion; the people have fasted as long as possible, and instinct, at last, rebels. In 1747,[5112] "extensive bread-riots occur in Toulouse, and in Guyenne they take place on every market-day." In 1750, from 6 to 7,000 men gather in Bearn behind a river to resist the clerks; two companies of the Artois regiment fire on the rebels and kill a dozen of them. In 1752, a sedition at Rouen and in its neighborhood lasts three days; in Dauphiny and in Auvergne riotous villagers force open the grain warehouses and take away wheat at their own price; the same year, at Arles, 2,000 armed peasants demand bread at the town-hall and are dispersed by the soldiers. In one province alone, that of Normandy, I find insurrections in 1725, in 1737, in 1739, in 1752, in 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767 and 1768,[5113] and always on account of bread.

"Entire hamlets," writes the Parliament, "being without the necessities of life, hunger compels them to resort to the food of brutes. . . . Two days more and Rouen will be without provisions, without grain, without bread."

Accordingly, the last riot is terrible; on this occasion, the populace, again masters of the town for three days, pillage the public granaries and the stores of all the communities.--Up to the last and even later, in 1770 at Rheims, in 1775 at Dijon, at Versailles, at St. Germain, at Pontoise and at Paris, in 1772 at Poitiers, in 1785 at Aix in Provence, in 1788 and 1789 in Paris and throughout France, similar eruptions are visible.[5114]--Undoubtedly the government under Louis XVI is milder; the intendants are more humane, the administration is less rigid, the taille becomes less unequal, and the corvée is less onerous through its transformation, in short, misery has diminished, and yet this is greater than human nature can bear.

Examine administrative correspondence for the last thirty years preceding the Revolution. Countless statements reveal excessive suffering, even when not terminating in fury. Life to a man of the lower class, to an artisan, or workman, subsisting on the labor of his own hands, is evidently precarious; he obtains simply enough to keep him from starvation and he does not always get that[5115]. Here, in four districts, "the inhabitants live only on buckwheat," and for five years, the apple crop having failed, they drink only water. There, in a country of vine-yards,[5116] "the wine-growers each year are reduced, for the most part, to begging their bread during the dull season." Elsewhere, several of the day-laborers and mechanics, obliged to sell their effects and household goods, die of the cold; insufficient and unhealthy food generates sickness, while, in two districts, 35,000 persons are stated to be living on alms[5117]. In a remote canton the peasants cut the grain still green and dry it in the oven, because they are too hungry to wait. The intendant of Poitiers writes that "as soon as the workhouses open, a prodigious number of the poor rush to them, in spite of the reduction of wages and of the restrictions imposed on them in behalf of the most needy." The intendant of Bourges notices that a great many tenant farmers have sold off their furniture, and that "entire families pass two days without eating," and that in many parishes the famished stay in bed most of the day because they suffer less. The intendant of Orleans reports that "in Sologne, poor widows have burned up their wooden bedsteads and others have consumed their fruit trees," to preserve themselves from the cold, and he adds, "nothing is exaggerated in this statement; the cries of want cannot be expressed; the misery of the rural districts must be seen with one's own eyes to obtain an idea of it." From Rioni, from La Rochelle, from Limoges, from Lyons, from Montauban, from Caen, from Alençon, from Flanders, from Moulins come similar statements by other intendants. One might call it the interruptions and repetitions of a funeral knell; even in years not disastrous it is heard on all sides. In Burgundy, near Chatillon-sur-Seine,

"taxes, seigniorial dues, the tithes, and the expenses of cultivation, split up the productions of the soil into thirds, leaving nothing for the unfortunate cultivators, who would have abandoned their fields, had not two Swiss manufacturers of calicoes settled there and distributed about the country 40,000 francs a year in cash."[5118]

In Auvergne, the country is depopulated daily; many of the villages have lost, since the beginning of the century, more than one-third of their inhabitants[5119].

"Had not steps been promptly taken to lighten the burden of a down-trodden people," says the provincial assembly in 1787, "Auvergne would have forever lost its population and its cultivation."

In Comminges, at the outbreak of the Revolution, certain communities threaten to abandon their possessions, should they obtain no relief[5120].

"It is a well-known fact," says the assembly of Haute-Guyenne, in 1784," that the lot of the most severely taxed communities is so rigorous as to have led their proprietors frequently to abandon their property[5121]. Who is not aware of the inhabitants of Saint-Servin having abandoned their property ten times, and of their threats to resort again to this painful proceeding in their recourse to the administration? Only a few years ago an abandonment of the community of Boisse took place through the combined action of the inhabitants, the seignior and the décimateur of that community;" and the desertion would be still greater if the law did not forbid persons liable to the taille abandoning over-taxed property, except by renouncing whatever they possessed in the community. In the Soissonais, according to the report of the provincial assembly,[5122] "misery is excessive." In Gascony the spectacle is "heartrending." In the environs of Toul, the cultivator, after paying his taxes, tithes and other dues, remains empty-handed.

"Agriculture is an occupation of steady anxiety and privation, in which thousands of men are obliged to painfully vegetate."[5123] In a village in Normandy, "nearly all the inhabitants, not excepting the farmers and proprietors, eat barley bread and drink water, living like the most wretched of men, so as to provide for the payment of the taxes with which they are overburdened." In the same province, at Forges, "many poor creatures eat oat bread, and others bread of soaked bran, this nourishment causing many deaths among infants."[5124] People evidently live from day to day; whenever the crop proves poor they lack bread. Let a frost come, a hailstorm, an inundation, and an entire province is incapable of supporting itself until the coming year; in many places even an ordinary winter suffices to bring on distress. On all sides hands are seen outstretched to the king, who is the universal almoner. The people may be said to resemble a man attempting to wade through a pool with the water up to his chin, and who, losing his footing at the slightest depression, sinks down and drowns. Existent charity and the fresh spirit of humanity vainly strive to rescue them; the water has risen too high. It must subside to a lower level, and the pool be drawn off through some adequate outlet. Thus far the poor man catches breath only at intervals, running the risk of drowning at every moment.

II. The Peasants.

The condition of the peasant during the last thirty years of the Ancient Regime.--His precarious subsistence.--State of agriculture.--Uncultivated farms.--Poor cultivation.-- Inadequate wages.--Lack of comforts.

Between 1750 and 1760,[5125] the idlers who eat suppers begin to regard with compassion and alarm the laborers who go without dinners. Why are the latter so impoverished; and by what misfortune, on a soil as rich as that of France, do those lack bread who grow the grain? In the first place many farms remain uncultivated, and, what is worse, many are deserted. According to the best observers "one-quarter of the soil is absolutely lying waste. . . . Hundreds and hundreds of arpents of heath and moor form extensive deserts."[5126] Let a person traverse Anjou, Maine, Brittany, Poitou, Limousin, la Marche, Berry, Nivernais, Bourbonnais and Auvergne, and he finds one-half of these provinces in heaths, forming immense plains, all of which might be cultivated." In Touraine, in Poitou and in Berry they form solitary expanses of 30,000 arpents. In one canton alone, near Preuilly, 40,000 arpents of good soil consist of heath. The agricultural society of Rennes declares that two-thirds of Brittany is lying waste. This is not sterility but decadence. The régime invented by Louis XIV has produced its effect; the soil for a century past has been reverting to a wild state.

"We see only abandoned and ruinous chateaux; the principal towns of the fiefs, in which the nobility formerly lived at their ease, are all now occupied by poor tenant herdsmen whose scanty labor hardly suffices for their subsistence, and a remnant of tax ready to disappear through the ruin of the proprietors and the desertion of the settlers."

In the election district of Confolens a piece of property rented for 2,956 livres in 1665, brings in only 900 livres in 1747. On the confines of la Marche and of Berry a domain which, in 1660, honorably supported two seigniorial families is now simply a small unproductive tenant-farm; "the traces of the furrows once made by the plow-iron being still visible on the surrounding heaths." Sologne, once flourishing,[5127] becomes a marsh and a forest; a hundred years earlier it produced three times the quantity of grain; two-thirds of its mills are gone; not a vestige of its vineyards remains; "grapes have given way to the heath." Thus abandoned by the spade and the plow, a vast portion of the soil ceases to feed man, while the rest, poorly cultivated, scarcely provides the simplest necessities[5128].

In the first place, on the failure of a crop, this portion remains untilled; its occupant is too poor to purchase seed; the intendant is often obliged to distribute seed, without which the disaster of the current year would be followed by sterility the following year[5129]. Every calamity, accordingly, in these days affects the future as well as the present; during the two years of 1784 and 1785, around Toulouse, the drought having caused the loss of all draft animals, many of the cultivators are obliged to let their fields lie fallow. In the second place, cultivation, when it does take place, is carried on according to medieval modes. Arthur Young, in 1789, considers that French agriculture has not progressed beyond that of the tenth century[5130]. Except in Flanders and on the plains of Alsace, the fields lie fallow one year out of three, and oftentimes one year out of two. The implements are poor; there are no plows made of iron; in many places the plow of Virgil's time is still in use. Cart-axles and wheel-tires are made of wood, while a harrow often consists of the trestle of a cart. There are few animals and but little manure; the capital bestowed on cultivation is three times less than that of the present day. The yield is slight: "our ordinary farms," says a good observer, "taking one with another return about six times the seed sown."[5131] In 1778, on the rich soil around Toulouse, wheat returns about five for one, while at the present day it yields eight to one and more. Arthur Young estimates that, in his day, the English acre produces twenty-eight bushels of grain, and the French acre eighteen bushels, and that the value of the total product of the same area for a given length of time is thirty-six pounds sterling in England and only twenty-five in France. As the parish roads are frightful, and transportation often impracticable, it is clear that, in remote cantons, where poor soil yields scarcely three times the seed sown, food is not always obtainable. How do they manage to live until the next crop? This is the question always under consideration previous to, and during, the Revolution. I find, in manuscript correspondence, the syndics and mayors of villages estimating the quantities for local subsistence at so many bushels in the granaries, so many sheaves in the barns, so many mouths to be filled, so many days to wait until the August wheat comes in, and concluding on short supplies for two, three and four months. Such a state of inter-communication and of agriculture condemns a country to periodical famines, and I venture to state that, alongside of the small-pox which out of eight deaths causes one, another endemic disease exists, as prevalent and as destructive, and this disease is starvation.

We can easily imagine that it is the common people, and especially the peasants who suffers. An increase of the price of bread prevents him from getting any, and even without that increase, he obtains it with difficulty. Wheat bread cost, as today, three sous per pound,[5132] but as the average day's work brought only nineteen sous instead of forty, the day-laborer, working the same time, could buy only the half of a loaf instead of a full loaf[5133]. Taking everything into account, and wages being estimated according to the price of grain, we find that the husbandman's manual labor then procured him 959 litres of wheat, while nowadays it gives him 1,851 litres; his well-being, accordingly, has advanced ninety-three per cent., which suffices to show to what extent his predecessors suffered privations. And these privations are peculiar to France. Through analogous observations and estimates Arthur Young shows that in France those who lived on field labor, and they constituted the great majority, are seventy-six per cent. less comfortable than the same laborers in England, while they are seventy-six per cent. less well fed and well clothed, besides being worse treated in sickness and in health. The result is that in seven-eighths of the kingdom, there are no farmers, but simply métayers (a kind of poor tenants)[5134]. The peasant is too poor to undertake cultivation on his own account, possessing no agricultural capital[5135]. "The proprietor, desirous of improving his land, finds no one to cultivate it but miserable creatures possessing only a pair of hands; he is obliged to advance everything for its cultivation at his own expense, animals, implements and seed, and even to advance the wherewithal to this tenant to feed him until the first crop comes in."--"At Vatan, for example, in Berry, the tenants, almost every year, borrow bread of the proprietor in order to await the harvesting."--"Very rarely is one found who is not indebted to his master at least one hundred livres a year."

Frequently the latter proposes to abandon the entire crop to them on condition that they demand nothing of him during the year; "these miserable creatures" have refused; left to themselves, they would not be sure of keeping themselves alive.--In Limousin and in Angoumois their poverty is so great[5136] "that, deducting the taxes to which they are subject, they have no more than from twenty-five to thirty livres each person per annum to spend; and not in money, it must be stated, but counting whatever they consume in kind out of the crops they produce. Frequently they have less, and when they cannot possibly make a living the master is obliged to support them. . . . The métayer is always reduced to just what is absolutely necessary to keep him from starving." As to the small proprietor, the villager who plows his land himself, his condition is but little better. "Agriculture,[5137] as our peasants practice it, is a veritable drudgery; they die by thousands in childhood, and in maturity they seek places everywhere but where they should be."

In 1783, throughout the plain of the Toulousain they eat only maize, a mixture of flour, common seeds and very little wheat; those on the mountains feed, a part of the year, on chestnuts; the potato is hardly known, and, according to Arthur Young, ninety-nine out of a hundred peasants would refuse to eat it. According to the reports of intendants, the basis of food, in Normandy, is oats; in the election-district of Troyes, buck-wheat; in the Marche and in Limousin, buckwheat with chestnuts and radishes; in Auvergne, buckwheat, chestnuts, milk-curds and a little salted goat's meat; in Beauce, a mixture of barley and rye; in Berry, a mixture of barley and oats. There is no wheat bread; the peasant consumes inferior flour only because he is unable to pay two sous a pound for his bread. There is no butcher's meat; at best he kills one pig a year. His dwelling is built of clay (pise), roofed with thatch, without windows, and the floor is the beaten ground. Even when the soil furnishes good building materials, stone, slate and tile, the windows have no sashes. In a parish in Normandy,[5138] in 1789, "most of the dwellings consist of four posts." They are often mere stables or barns "to which a chimney has been added made of four poles and some mud." Their clothes are rags, and often in winter these are muslin rags. In Quercy and elsewhere, they have no stockings, or wooden shoes. "It is not in the power of an English imagination," says Arthur Young, "to imagine the animals that waited on us here at the Chapeau Rouge,--creatures that were called by courtesy Souillac women, but in reality walking dung-hills. But a neatly dressed, clean waiting-girl at an inn, will be looked for in vain in France." On reading descriptions made on the spot we see in France a similar aspect of country and of peasantry as in Ireland, at least in its broad outlines.

III. The Countryside.

Aspects of the country and of the peasantry.

In the most fertile regions, for instance, in Limagne, both cottages and faces denote "misery and privation."[5139] "The peasants are generally feeble, emaciated and of slight stature." Nearly all derive wheat and wine from their homesteads, but they are forced to sell this to pay their rents and taxes; they eat black bread, made of rye and barley, and their sole beverage is water poured on the lees and the husks. "An Englishman[5140] who has not traveled can not imagine the figure made by infinitely the greater part of the countrywomen in France." Arthur Young, who stops to talk with one of these in Champagne, says that "this woman, at no great distance, might have been taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent and her face so hardened and furrowed by labor,--but she said she was only twenty-eight." This woman, her husband and her household, afford a sufficiently accurate example of the condition of the small proprietary husbandmen. Their property consists simply of a patch of ground, with a cow and a poor little horse; their seven children consume the whole of the cow's milk. They owe to one seignior a franchard (forty-two pounds) of flour, and three chickens; to another three franchards of oats, one chicken and one sou, to which must be added the taille and other taxes. "God keep us!" she said, "for the tailles and the dues crush us."--What must it be in districts where the soil is poor!--

"From Ormes, (near Chatellerault), as far as Poitiers," writes a lady,[5141] "there is a good deal of ground which brings in nothing, and from Poitiers to my residence (in Limousin) 25,000 arpents of ground consist wholly of heath and sea-grass. The peasantry live on rye, of which they do not remove the bran, and which is as black and heavy as lead.--In Poitou, and here, they plow up only the skin of the ground with a miserable little plow without wheels. . . . From Poitiers to Montmorillon it is nine leagues, equal to sixteen of Paris, and I assure you that I have seen but four men on the road, and, between Montmorillon and my own house, which is four leagues, but three; and then only at a distance, not having met one on the road. You need not be surprised at this in such a country. . . Marriage takes place as early as with the grand seigniors," doubtless for fear of the militia. "But the population of the country is no greater because almost every infant dies. Mothers having scarcely any milk, their infants eat the bread of which I spoke, the stomach of a girl of four years being as big as that of a pregnant woman. . . . The rye crop this year was ruined by the frost on Easter day; flour is scarce; of the twelve métairies owned by my mother, four of them may, perhaps, have some on hand. There has been no rain since Easter; no hay, no pasture, no vegetables, no fruit. You see the lot of the poor peasant. There is no manure, and there are no cattle. . . . My mother, whose granaries used to be always full, has not a grain of wheat in them, because, for two years past, she has fed all her métayers and the poor."

"The peasant is assisted," says a seignior of the same province,[5142] "protected, and rarely maltreated, but he is looked upon with disdain. If kindly and pliable he is made subservient, but if ill-disposed he becomes soured and irritable. . . . He is kept in misery, in an abject state, by men who are not at all inhuman but whose prejudices, especially among the nobles, lead them to regard him as of a different species of being. . . . The proprietor gets all he can out of him; in any event, looking upon him and his oxen as domestic animals, he puts them into harness and employs them in all weathers for every kind of journey, and for every species of carting and transport. On the other hand, this métayer thinks of living with as little labor as possible, converting as much ground as he can into pasturage, for the reason that the product arising from the increase of stock costs him no labor. The little plowing he does is for the purpose of raising low-priced provisions suitable for his own nourishment, such as buckwheat, radishes, etc. His enjoyment consists only of his own idleness and sluggishness, hoping for a good chestnut year and doing nothing voluntarily but procreate;" unable to hire farming hands he begets children.--

The rest, ordinary laborers, have a few savings, "living on the herbage, and on a few goats which devour everything." Often again, these, by order of Parliament, are killed by the game-keepers. A woman, with two children in swaddling clothes, having no milk, "and without an inch of ground," whose two goats, her sole resource, had thus been slain, and another, with one goat slain in the same way, and who begs along with her boy, present themselves at the gate of the chateau; one receives twelve livres, while the other is admitted as a domestic, and henceforth, '' this village is all bows and smiling faces.''--In short, they are not accustomed to kindness; the lot of all these poor people is to endure. "As with rain and hail, they regard as inevitable the necessity of being oppressed by the strongest, the richest, the most skillful, the most in repute," and this stamps on them, "if one may be allowed to say so, an air of painful suffering."

In Auvergne, a feudal country, covered with extensive ecclesiastic and seigniorial domains, the misery is the same. At Clermont-Ferrand,[5143] "there are many streets that can for blackness, dirt and scents only be represented by narrow channels cut in a dunghill." In the inns of the largest bourgs, "closeness, misery, dirtiness and darkness." That of Pradelles is "one of the worst in France." That of Aubenas, says Young, "would be a purgatory for one of my pigs." The senses, in short, are paralyzed. The primitive man is content so long as he can sleep and get something to eat. He gets something to eat, but what kind of food? To put up with the indigestible mess a peasant here requires a still tougher stomach than in Limousin; in certain villages where, ten years later, every year twenty or twenty-five hogs are to be slaughtered, they now slaughter but three[5144].--On contemplating this temperament, rude and intact since Vercingetorix, and, moreover, rendered more savage by suffering, one cannot avoid being somewhat alarmed. The Marquis de Mirabeau describes

"the votive festival of Mont-Dore: savages descending from the mountain in torrents,[5145] the curate with stole and surplice, the justice in his wig, the police corps with sabers drawn, all guarding the open square before letting the bagpipers play; the dance interrupted in a quarter of an hour by a fight; the hooting and cries of children, of the feeble and other spectators, urging them on as the rabble urge on so many fighting dogs; frightful looking men, or rather wild beasts covered with coats of coarse wool, wearing wide leather belts pierced with copper nails, gigantic in stature, which is increased by high wooden shoes, and making themselves still taller by standing on tiptoe to see the battle, stamping with their feet as it progresses and rubbing each other's flanks with their elbows, their faces haggard and covered with long matted hair, the upper portion pallid, and the lower distended, indicative of cruel delight and a sort of ferocious impatience. And these folks pay the taille! And now they want to take away their salt! And they know nothing of those they despoil, of those whom they think they govern, believing that, by a few strokes of a cowardly and careless pen, they may starve them with impunity up to the final catastrophe! Poor Jean-Jacques, I said to myself, had any one dispatched you, with your system, to copy music amongst these folks, he would have had some sharp replies to make to your discourses!"

Prophetic warning and admirable foresight in one whom an excess of evil does not blind to the evil of the remedy! Enlightened by his feudal and rural instincts, the old man at once judges both the government and the philosophers, the Ancient Regime and the Revolution.

IV. The Peasant Becomes Landowner.

How the peasant becomes a proprietor.--He is no better off. --Increase of taxes.--He is the "mule" of the Ancient Regime.

Misery begets bitterness in a man; but ownership coupled with misery renders him still more bitter. He may have submitted to indigence but not to spoliation--which is the situation of the peasant in 1789, for, during the eighteenth century, he had become the possessor of land. But how could he maintain himself in such destitution? The fact is almost incredible, but it is nevertheless true. We can only explain it by the character of the French peasant, by his sobriety, his tenacity, his rigor with himself, his dissimulation, his hereditary passion for property and especially for that of the soil. He had lived on privations, and economized sou after sou. Every year a few pieces of silver are added to his little store of crowns buried in the most secret recess of his cellar; Rousseau's peasant, concealing his wine and bread in a pit, assuredly had a yet more secret hiding-place; a little money in a woollen stocking or in a jug escapes, more readily than elsewhere, the search of the clerks. Dressed in rags, going barefoot, eating nothing but coarse black bread, but cherishing the little treasure in his breast on which he builds so many hopes, he watches for the opportunity which never fails to come. "In spite of privileges," writes a gentleman in 1755,[5146] "the nobles are daily being ruined and reduced, the Third-Estate making all the fortunes." A number of domains, through forced or voluntary sales, thus pass into the hands of financiers, of men of the quill, of merchants, and of the well-to-do bourgeois. Before undergoing this total dispossession, however, the seignior, involved in debt, is evidently resigned to partial alienation of his property. The peasant who has bribed the steward is at hand with his hoard. "It is poor property, my lord, and it costs you more than you get from it." This may refer to an isolated patch, one end of a field or meadow, sometimes a farm whose farmer pays nothing, and generally worked by a métayer whose wants and indolence make him an annual expense to his master. The latter may say to himself that the alienated parcel is not lost, since, some day or other, through his right of repurchase, he may take it back, while, in the meantime, he enjoys a cens, drawbacks, and the lord's dues. Moreover, there is on his domain and around him, extensive open spaces which the decline of cultivation and depopulation have left a desert. To restore the value of this he must surrender its proprietorship. There is no other way by which to attach man permanently to the soil. And the government helps him along in this matter. Obtaining no revenue from the abandoned soil, it assents to a provisional withdrawal of its too weighty hand. By the edict of 1766, a piece of cleared waste land remains free of the taille for fifteen years, and, thereupon, in twenty-eight provinces 400,000 arpents are cleared in three years[5147].

This is the mode by which the seigniorial domain gradually crumbles away and decreases. Towards the last, in many places, with the exception of the chateau and the small adjoining farm which brings in 2 or 3000 francs a year, nothing is left to the seignior but his feudal dues;[5148] the rest of the soil belongs to the peasantry. Forbonnais already remarks, towards 1750, that many of the nobles and of the ennobled "reduced to extreme poverty but with titles to immense possessions," have sold off portions to small cultivators at low prices, and often for the amount of the taille. Towards 1760, one-quarter of the soil is said to have already passed into the hands of farmers. In 1772, in relation to the vingtième, which is levied on the net revenue of real property, the intendant of Caen, having completed the statement of his quota, estimates that out of 150,000 "there are perhaps 50,000 whose liabilities did not exceed five sous, and perhaps still as many more not exceeding twenty sous."[5149] Contemporary observers authenticate this passion of the peasant for land. "The savings of the lower classes, which elsewhere are invested with individuals and in the public funds, are wholly destined in France to the purchase of land." "Accordingly the number of small rural holdings is always on the increase. Necker says that there is an immensity of them." Arthur Young, in 1789, is astonished at their great number and "inclines to think that they form a third of the kingdom." This already would be our actual estimate, and we still find, approximately, the actual figures, on estimating the number of proprietors in comparison with the number of inhabitants.

The small cultivator, however, in becoming a possessor of the soil assumed its charges. Simply as day-laborer, and with his arms alone, he was only partially affected by the taxes; "where there is nothing the king loses his dues." But now, vainly is he poor and declaring himself still poorer; the fisc has a hold on him and on every portion of his new possessions. The collectors, peasants like himself, and jealous, by virtue of being his neighbors, know how much his property, exposed to view, brings in; hence they take all they can lay their hands on. Vainly has he labored with renewed energy; his hands remain as empty, and, at the end of the year, he discovers that his field has produced him nothing. The more he acquires and produces the more burdensome do the taxes become. In 1715, the taille and the poll-tax, which he alone pays, or nearly alone, amounts to sixty-six millions of livres; the amount is ninety-three millions in 1759 and one hundred and ten millions in 1789.[5150] In 1757, the charges amount to 283,156,000 livres; in 1789 to 476,294,000 livres.

Theoretically, through humanity and through good sense, there is, doubtless, a desire to relieve the peasant, and pity is felt for him. But, in practice, through necessity and routine, he is treated according to Cardinal Richelieu's precept, as a beast of burden to which oats is sparingly rationed out for fear that he may become too strong and kick, "a mule which, accustomed to his load, is spoiled more by long repose than by work."....

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 5101: Labruyère, edition of Destailleurs, II, 97. Addition to the fourth ed. (1689)]

[Footnote 5102: Oppression and misery begin about 1672.--At the end of the seventeenth century (1698), the reports made up by the intendants for the Duc de Bourgogne, state that many of the districts and provinces have lost one-sixth, one-fifth, one-quarter, the third and even the half of their population. (See details in the "correspondance des contrôleurs-généraux from 1683 to 1698," published by M. de Boislisle). According to the reports of intendants, (Vauban, "Dime Royale," ch. VII. § 2.), the population of France in 1698 amounted to 19,994,146 inhabitants. From 1698 to 1715 it decreases. According to Forbonnais, there were but 16 or 17 millions under the Regency. After this epoch the population no longer diminishes but, for forty years, it hardly increases. In 1753 (Voltaire, "Dict Phil.," article Population), there are 3,550,499 hearths, besides 700,000 souls in Paris, which makes from 16 to 17 millions of inhabitants if we count four and one-half persons to each fireside, and from 18 to 19 millions if we count five persons.]

[Footnote 5103: Floquet, "Histoire du Parlement de Normandie," VII. 402.]

[Footnote 5104: Rousseau, "Confessions," 1st part, ch. IV. (1732).]

[Footnote 5105: D'Argenson, 19th and 24th May, July 4, and Aug. 1, 1739]

[Footnote 5106: "Résumé d'histoire d'Auvergne par un Auvergnat" (M. Tallandier), p. 313.]

[Footnote 5107: D'Argenson, 1740, Aug. 7 and 21, September 19 and 24, May 28 and November 7.]

[Footnote 5108: D'Argenson, October 4, 1749; May 20, Sept. 12, Oct. 28, Dec. 28, 1750.]

[Footnote 5109: D'Argenson, June 21, 1749; May 22, 1750; March 19, 1751; February 14, April 15, 1752, etc.]

[Footnote 5110: Floquet, ibid.. VII. 410 (April, 1752, an address to the Parliament of Normandy)]

[Footnote 5111: D'Argenson, November 26, 1751: March 15, 1753.]

[Footnote 5112: D'Argenson, IV. 124; VI. 165: VII. 194, etc.]

[Footnote 5113: Floquet, ibid. VI. 400-430]

[Footnote 5114: "Correspondance," by Métra, I. 338, 341.--Hippeau, "Le Gouvernement de Normandie," IV. 62, 199, 358.]

[Footnote 5115: "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Basse Normandie" (1787), p.151.]

[Footnote 5116: Archives nationales, G, 319. Condition of the directory of Issoudun, and H, 1149, 612, 1418.]

[Footnote 5117: Ibid.. The letters of M. de Crosne, intendant of Rouen (February 17, 1784); of M. de Blossac, intendant of Poitiers (May 9, 1784); of M. de Villeneuve, intendant of Bourges (March 28, 1784); of M. de Cypierre, intendant of Orleans (May 28, 1784); of M. de Maziron, intendant of Moulins (June 28, 1786); of M. Dupont, intendant of Moulins (Nov. 16, 1779), etc.]

[Footnote 5118: Archives nationales, H, 200 (A memorandum by M. Amelot, intendant at Dijon, 1786).]

[Footnote 5119: Gautier de Bianzat, "Doléances sur les surcharges que portent les gens du Tiers-Etat," etc. (1789), p. 188.--"Procès-verbaux de I'assemblée provinciale d'Auvergne" (1787), p. 175.]

[Footnote 5120: Théron de Montaugé, "L'Agriculture et les chores rurales dans le Toulousain," 112.]

[Footnote 5121: "Procès-verbaux de assemblée provinciale de la Haute-Guyenne," I. 47, 79.]

[Footnote 5122: "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale du Soissonais" (1787), p. 457; "de l'assemblée provinciale d'Auch," p. 24.]

[Footnote 5123: "Résumé des cahiers," by Prudhomme, III. 271.]

[Footnote 5124: Hippeau, ibid. VI. 74, 243 (grievances drawn up by the Chevalier de Bertin).]

[Footnote 5125: See the article "Fermiers et Grains," in the Encyclopedia, by Quesnay, 1756.]

[Footnote 5126: Théron de Montaugé, p.25.--"Ephémérides du citoyen," III. 190 (1766); IX. 15 (an article by M. de Butré, 1767).]

[Footnote 5127: "Procés-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de l'Orléanais" (1787), in a memoir by M. d'Autroche.]

[Footnote 5128: One is surprised to see such a numerous people fed even though one-half, or one-quarter of the arable land is sterile wastes. (Arthur Young, II, 137.)]

[Footnote 5129: Archives nationales, H, 1149. A letter of the Comtesse de Saint-Georges (1772) on the effects of frost. "The ground this year will remain uncultivated, there being already much land in this condition, and especially in our parish." Théron de Montaugé, ibid.. 45, 80.]

[Footnote 5130: Arthur Young, II. 112, 115.--Théron de Montaugé, 52, 61.]

[Footnote 5131: The Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traité de la population," p.29.]

[Footnote 5132: Cf Galiani, "Dialogues sur le commerce des blés." (1770), p. 193. Wheat bread at this time cost four sous per pound.]

[Footnote 5133: Arthur Young, II. 200, 201, 260-265.--Théron de Montaugé, 59, 68, 75, 79, 81, 84.]

[Footnote 5134: "The poor people who cultivate the soil here are métayers, that is men who hire the land without ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide cattle and seed and he and his tenants divide the produce."--ARTHUR YOUNG.(TR.)]

[Footnote 5135: "Ephémérides du citoyen," VI. 81-94 (1767), and IX. 99 (1767).]

[Footnote 5136: Turgot, "Collections des économistes," I. 544, 549.]

[Footnote 5137: Marquis de Mirabeau, "Traité de la population," 83..]

[Footnote 5138: Hippeau, VI, 91.]

[Footnote 5139: Dulaure, "Description de l'Auvergne," 1789.]

[Footnote 5140: Arthur Young, I. 235.]

[Footnote 5141: "Ephémérides du citoyen," XX. 146, a letter of the Marquis de--August 17, 1767.]

[Footnote 5142: Lucas de Montigny, "Memoires de Mirabeau," I, 394.]

[Footnote 5143: Arthur Young, I. 280, 289, 294.]

[Footnote 5144: Lafayette "Mémoires," V. 533.]

[Footnote 5145: Lucas de Montigny, ibid. (a letter of August 18, 1777).]

[Footnote 5146: De Tocqueville, 117.]

[Footnote 5147: "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Basse Normandie" (1787), p.205.]

[Footnote 5148: Léonce de Lavergne, p. 26 (according to the tables of indemnity granted to the émigrés in 1825). In the estate of Blet (see note 2 at the end of the volume), twenty-two parcels are alienated in 1760.--Arthur Young, I. 308 (the domain of Tour-d'Aigues, in Provence), and II. 198, 214.--Doniol, "Histoire des classes rurales," p.450.--De Tocqueville, p.36.]

[Footnote 5149: Archives nationales, H, 1463 (a letter by M. de Fontette, November 16, 1772).--Cf. Cochut, "Revue des Deux Mondes," September, 1848. The sale of the national property seems not to have sensibly increased small properties nor sensibly diminished the number of the large ones. The Revolution developed moderate sized properties. In 1848, the large estates numbered 183,000 (23,000 families paying 300 francs taxes, and more, and possessing on the average 260 hectares of land, and 160,000 families paying from 230 to 500 francs taxes and possessing on the average 75 hectares.) These 183,000 families possessed 18,000,000 hectares.--There are besides 700,000 medium sized estates (paying from 50 to 250 francs tax), and comprising 15,000,000 hectares.--And finally 3,900,000 small properties comprising 15,000,000 hectares (900,000 paying from 25 to 50 francs tax, averaging five and one-half hectares each, and 3,000,000 paying less than 25 francs, averaging three and one ninth hectares each).--According to the partial statement of de Tocqueville the number of holders of real property had increased, on the average, to five-twelfths; the population, at the same time, having increased five-thirteenths (from 26 to 36 millions).]

[Footnote 5150: "Compte-général des revenus et dépenses fixes au 1er Mai, 1789 (Imprimerie Royale, 1789).--De Luynes, XVI. 49.--Roux and Buchez, I. 206, 374. (This relates only to the countries of election; in the provinces, with assemblies, the increase is no less great). Archives nationales, H2, 1610 (the parish of Bourget, in Anjou). Extracts from the taille rolls of three métayer--farms belonging to M. de Ruillé. The taxes in 1762 are 334 livres, 3 sous; in 1783, 372 livres, 15 sous.]

## CHAPTER II. TAXATION THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF MISERY.

I. Extortion.

Direct taxes.--State of different domains at the end of the reign of Louis XV.--Levies of the tithe and the owner.--What remains to the proprietor.

Let us closely examine the extortions he has to endure, which are very great, much beyond any that we can imagine. Economists had long prepared the budget of a farm and shown by statistics the excess of charges with which the cultivator is overwhelmed. If he continues to cultivate, they say, he must have his share in the crops, an inviolable portion, equal to one-half of the entire production, and from which nothing can be deducted without ruining him. This portion, in short, accurately represents, and not a sou too much, in the first place, the interest of the capital first expended on the farm in cattle, furniture, and implements of husbandry; in the second place, the maintenance of this capital, every year depreciated by wear and tear; in the third place, the advances made during the current year for seed, wages, and food for men and animals; and, in the last place, the compensation due him for the risks he takes and his losses. Here is a first lien which must be satisfied beforehand, taking precedence of all others, superior to that of the seignior, to that of the tithe-owner (décimateur), to even that of the king, for it is an indebtedness due to the soil.[5201] After this is paid back, then, and only then, that which remains, the net product, can be touched. Now, in the then state of agriculture, the tithe-owner and the king appropriate one-half of this net product, when the estate is large, and the whole, if the estate is a small one[5202]. A certain large farm in Picardy, worth to its owner 3,600 livres, pays 1,800 livres to the king, and 1,311 livres to the tithe owner; another, in the Soissonnais, rented for 4,500 livres, pays 2,200 livres taxes and more than 1,000 livres to the tithes. An ordinary métayer-farm near Nevers pays into the treasury 138 livres, 121 livres to the church, and 114 livres to the proprietor. On another, in Poitou, the fisc (tax authorities) absorbs 348 livres, and the proprietor receives only 238. In general, in the regions of large farms, the proprietor obtains ten livres the arpent if the cultivation is very good, and three livres when ordinary. In the regions of small farms, and of the métayer system, he gets fifteen sous the arpent, eight sous and even six sous. The entire net profit may be said to go to the church and into the State treasury.

Hired labor, meantime, is no less costly. On this métayer-farm in Poitou, which brings in eight sous the arpent, thirty-six laborers consume each twenty-six francs per annum in rye, two francs respectively in vegetables, oil and milk preparations, and two francs ten sous in pork, amounting to a sum total, each year, for each person, of sixteen pounds of meat at an expense of thirty-six francs. In fact they drink water only, use rape-seed oil for soup and for light, never taste butter, and dress themselves in materials made of the wool and hair of the sheep and goats they raise. They purchase nothing save the tools necessary to make the fabrics of which these provide the material. On another metayer-farm, on the confines of la Marche and Berry, forty-six laborers cost a smaller sum, each one consuming only the value of twenty-five francs per annum. We can judge by this of the exorbitant share appropriated to themselves by the Church and State, since, at so small a cost of cultivation, the proprietor finds in his pocket, at the end of the year, six or eight sous per arpent out of which, if plebeian, he must still pay the dues to his seignior, contribute to the common purse for the militia, buy his taxed salt and work out his corvée and the rest. Towards the end of the reign of Louis XV in Limousin, says Turgot,[5203] the king derives for himself alone "about as much from the soil as the proprietor." In a certain election-district, that of Tulle, where he abstracts fifty-six and one-half per cent. of the product, there remains to the latter forty-three and one-half per cent. thus accounting for "a multitude of domains being abandoned."

It must not be supposed that time renders the tax less onerous or that, in other provinces, the cultivator is better treated. In this respect the documents are authentic and almost up to the latest hour. We have only to take up the official statements of the provincial assemblies held in 1787, to learn by official figures to what extent the fisc may abuse the men who labor, and take bread out of the mouths of those who have earned it by the sweat of their brows.

II. Local Conditions.

State of certain provinces on the outbreak of the Revolution.--The taille, and other taxes.--The proportion of these taxes in relation to income.--The sum total immense.

Direct taxation alone is here concerned, the tailles, collateral taxes, poll-tax, vingtièmes, and the pecuniary tax substituted for the corvée[5204] In Champagne, the tax-payer pays on 100 livres income fifty-four livres fifteen sous, on the average, and in many parishes,[5205] seventy-one livres thirteen sous. In the Ile-de-France, "if a taxable inhabitant of a village, the proprietor of twenty arpents of land which he himself works, and the income of which is estimated at ten livres per arpent it is supposed that he is likewise the owner of the house he occupies, the site being valued at forty livres."[5206] This tax-payer pays for his real taille, personal and industrial, thirty-five livres fourteen sous, for collateral taxes seventeen livres seventeen sous, for the poll-tax twenty-one livres eight sous, for the vingtièmes twenty-four livres four sous, in all ninety-nine livres three sous, to which must be added about five livres as the substitution for the corvée, in all 104 livres on a piece of property which he rents for 240 livres, a tax amounting to five-twelfths of his income.

It is much worse on making the same calculation for the poorer generalities. In Haute-Guyenne,[5207] "all property in land is taxed for the taille, the collateral taxes, and the vingtièmes, more than one-quarter of its revenue, the only deduction being the expenses of cultivation; also dwellings, one-third of their revenue, deducting only the cost of repairs and of maintenance; to which must be added the poll-tax, which takes about one-tenth of the revenue; the tithe, which absorbs one-seventh; the seigniorial rents which take another seventh; the tax substituted for the corvée; the costs of compulsory collections, seizures, sequestration and constraints, and all ordinary and extraordinary local charges. This being subtracted, it is evident that, in communities moderately taxed, the proprietor does not enjoy a third of his income, and that, in the communities wronged by the assessments, the proprietors are reduced to the status of simple farmers scarcely able to get enough to restore the expenses of cultivation." In Auvergne,[5208] the taille amounts to four sous on the livre net profit; the collateral taxes and the poll-tax take off four sous three deniers more; the vingtièmes, two sous and three deniers; the contribution to the royal roads, to the free gift, to local charges and the cost of levying, take again one sou one denier, the total being eleven sous and seven deniers on the livre income, without counting seigniorial dues and the tithe. "The bureau, moreover, recognizes with regret, that several of the collections pay at the rate of seventeen sous, sixteen sous, and the most moderate at the rate of fourteen sous the livre. The evidence of this is in the bureau; it is on file in the registry of the court of excise, and of the election-districts. It is still more apparent in parishes where an infinite number of assessments are found, laid on property that has been abandoned, which the collectors lease, and the product of which is often inadequate to pay the tax." Statistics of this kind are terribly eloquent. They may be summed up in one word. Putting together Normandy, the Orleans region, that of Soissons, Champagne, Ile-de-France, Berry, Poitou, Auvergne, the Lyons region, Gascony, and Haute-Guyenne, in brief the principal election sections, we find that out of every hundred francs of revenue the direct tax on the tax-payer is fifty-three francs, or more than one-half[5209]. This is about five times as much as at the present day.

III. The Common Laborer.

Four direct taxes on the common laborer.

The taxation authorities, however, in thus bearing down on taxable property has not released the taxable person without property. In the absence of land it seizes on men. In default of an income it taxes a man's wages. With the exception of the vingtièmes, the preceding taxes not only bore on those who possessed something but, again, on those who possessed nothing. In the Toulousain[5210] at St. Pierre de Barjouville, the poorest day-laborer, with nothing but his hands by which to earn his support, and getting ten sous a day, pays eight, nine and ten livres poll-tax. "In Burgundy[5211] it is common to see a poor mechanic, without any property, taxed eighteen and twenty livres for his poll-tax and the taille." In Limousin,[5212] all the money brought back by the masons in winter serves "to pay the taxes charged to their families." As to the rural day-laborers and the settlers (colons) the proprietor, even when privileged, who employs them, is obliged to take upon himself a part of their quota, otherwise, being without anything to eat, they cannot work,[5213] even in the interest of the master; man must have his ration of bread the same as an ox his ration of hay. "In Brittany,[5214] it is notorious that nine-tenths of the artisans, though poorly fed and poorly clothed, have not a crown free of debt at the end of the year," the poll-tax and others carrying off this only and last crown. At Paris[5215] "the dealer in ashes, the buyer of old bottles, the gleaner of the gutters, the peddlers of old iron and old hats," the moment they obtain a shelter pay the poll-tax of three livres and ten sous each. To ensure its payment the occupant of a house who sub-lets to them is made responsible. Moreover, in case of delay, a "blue man," a bailiff's subordinate, is sent who installs himself on the spot and whose time they have to pay for. Mercier cites a mechanic, named Quatremain, who, with four small children, lodged in the sixth story, where he had arranged a chimney as a sort of alcove in which he and his family slept. "One day I opened his door, fastened with a latch only, the room presenting to view nothing but the walls and a vice; the man, coming out from under his chimney, half sick, says to me, 'I thought it was the blue man for the poll-tax."' Thus, whatever the condition of the person subject to taxation, however stripped and destitute, the dexterous hands of the fisc take hold of him. Mistakes cannot possibly occur: it puts on no disguise, it comes on the appointed day and rudely lays its hand on his shoulder. The garret and the hut, as well as the farm and the farmhouse know the collector, the constable and the bailiff; no hovel escapes the detestable brood. The people sow, harvest their crops, work and undergo privation for their benefit; and, should the pennies so painfully saved each week amount, at the end of the year to a piece of silver, the mouth of their pouch closes over it.

IV. Collections And Seizures.--Observe the system actually at work. It is a sort of shearing machine, clumsy and badly put together, of which the action is about as mischievous as it is serviceable. The worst feature is that, with its creaking gear, the taxable, those employed as its final instruments, are equally shorn and flayed. Each parish contains two, three, five, or seven individuals who, under the title of collectors, and under the authority of the election tribunal, apportion and assess the taxes. "No duty is more onerous;"[5216] everybody, through patronage or favor, tries to get rid of it. The communities are constantly pleading against the refractory, and, that nobody may escape under the pretext of ignorance, the table of future collectors is made up for ten and fifteen years in advance. In parishes of the second class these consist of "small proprietors, each of whom becomes a collector about every six years." In many of the villages the artisans, day-laborers, and métayer-farmers perform the service, although requiring all their time to earn their own living. In Auvergne, where the able-bodied men expatriate themselves in winter to find work, the women are taken;[5217] in the election-district of Saint-Flour, a certain village has four collectors in petticoats.--They are responsible for all claims entrusted to them, their property, their furniture and their persons; and, up to the time of Turgot, each is bound for the others. We can judge of their risks and sufferings. In 1785,[5218] in one single district in Champagne, eighty-five are imprisoned and two hundred of them are on the road every year. "The collector, says the provincial assembly of Berry,[5219] usually passes one-half of the day for two years running from door to door to see delinquent tax-payers." "This service," writes Turgot,[5220] "is the despair and almost always the ruin of those obliged to perform it; all families in easy circumstances in a village are thus successively reduced to want." In short, there is no collector who is not forced to act and who has not each year "eight or ten writs" served on him[5221]. Sometimes he is imprisoned at the expense of the parish. Sometimes proceedings are instituted against him and the tax-contributors by the installation of "'blue men' and seizures, seizures under arrest, seizures in execution and sales of furniture." "In the single district of Villefranche," says the provincial Assembly of Haute-Guyenne, "a hundred and six warrant officers and other agents of the bailiff are counted always on the road."

The thing becomes customary and the parish suffers in vain, for it would suffer yet more were it to do otherwise. "Near Aurillac," says the Marquis de Mirabeau,[5222] "there is industry, application and economy without which there would be only misery and want. This produces a people equally divided into being, on the one hand, insolvent and poor and on the other hand shameful and rich, the latter who, for fear of being fined, create the impoverished. The taille once assessed, everybody groans and complains and nobody pays it. The term having expired, at the hour and minute, constraint begins, the collectors, although able, taking no trouble to arrest this by making a settlement, notwithstanding the installation of the bailiff's men is costly. But this kind of expense is habitual and people expect it instead of fearing it, for, if it were less rigorous, they would be sure to be additionally burdened the following year." The receiver, indeed, who pays the bailiff's officers a franc a day, makes them pay two francs and appropriates the difference. Hence "if certain parishes venture to pay promptly, without awaiting constraint, the receiver, who sees himself deprived of the best portion of his gains, becomes ill-humored, and, at the next department (meeting), an arrangement is made between himself, messieurs the elected, the sub-delegate and other shavers of this species, for the parish to bear a double load, to teach it how to behave itself."

A population of administrative blood-suckers thus lives on the peasant. "Lately," says an intendant, "in the district of Romorantin,[5223] the collectors received nothing from a sale of furniture amounting to six hundred livres, because the proceeds were absorbed by the expenses. In the district of Chateaudun the same thing occurred at a sale amounting to nine hundred livres and there are other transactions of the same kind of which we have no information, however flagrant." Besides this, the fisc itself is pitiless. The same intendant writes, in 1784, a year of famine:[5224] "People have seen, with horror, the collector, in the country, disputing with heads of families over the costs of a sale of furniture which had been appropriated to stopping their children's cry of want." Were the collectors not to make seizures they would themselves be seized. Urged on by the receiver we see them, in the documents, soliciting, prosecuting and persecuting the tax-payers. Every Sunday and every fête-day they are posted at the church door to warn delinquents; and then, during the week they go from door to door to obtain their dues. "Commonly they cannot write, and take a scribe with them." Out of six hundred and six traversing the district of Saint-Flour not ten of them are able to read the official summons and sign a receipt; hence innumerable mistakes and frauds. Besides a scribe they take along the bailiff's subordinates, persons of the lowest class, laborers without work, conscious of being hated and who act accordingly. "Whatever orders may be given them not to take anything, not to make the inhabitants feed them, or to enter taverns with collectors," habit is too strong "and the abuse continues."[5225] But, burdensome as the bailiff's men may be, care is taken not to evade them. In this respect, writes an intendant, "their obduracy is strange." "No person," a receiver reports,[5226] "pays the collector until he sees the bailiff's man in his house." The peasant resembles his ass, refusing to go without being beaten, and, although in this he may appear stupid, he is clever. For the collector, being responsible, "naturally inclines to an increase of the assessment on prompt payers to the advantage of the negligent. Hence the prompt payer becomes, in his turn, negligent and, although with money in his chest, he allows the process to go on."[5227] Summing all up, he calculates that the process, even if expensive, costs less than extra taxation, and of the two evils he chooses the least. He has but one resource against the collector and receiver, his simulated or actual poverty, voluntary or involuntary. "Every one subject to the taille," says, again, the provincial assembly of Berry, "dreads to expose his resources; he avoids any display of these in his furniture, in his dress, in his food, and in everything open to another's observation."--"M. de Choiseul-Gouffier,[5228] willing to roof his peasants' houses, liable to take fire, with tiles, they thanked him for his kindness but begged him to leave them as they were, telling him that if these were covered with tiles, instead of with thatch, the subdelegates would increase their taxation."--"People work, but merely to satisfy their prime necessities. . . . The fear of paying an extra crown makes an average man neglect a profit of four times the amount."[5229]--". . . Accordingly, lean cattle, poor implements, and bad manure-heaps even among those who might have been better off."[5230]--"If I earned any more," says a peasant, "it would be for the collector." Annual and illimitable spoliation "takes away even the desire for comforts." The majority, pusillanimous, distrustful, stupefied, "debased," "differing little from the old serfs,[5231]" resemble Egyptian fellahs and Hindoo pariahs. The fisc, indeed, through the absolutism and enormity of its claims, renders property of all kinds precarious, every acquisition vain, every accumulation delusive; in fact, proprietors are owners only of that which they can hide.

V. Indirect Taxes.

The salt-tax and the excise.

The tax-man, in every country, has two hands, one which visibly and directly searches the coffers of tax-payers, and the other which covertly employs the hand of an intermediary so as not to incur the odium of fresh extortions. Here, no precaution of this kind is taken, the claws of the latter being as visible as those of the former; according to its structure and the complaints made of it, I am tempted to believe it more offensive than the other.--In the first place, the salt-tax, the excises and the customs are annually estimated and sold to adjudicators who, purely as a business matter, make as much profit as they can by their bargain. In relation to the tax-payer they are not administrators but speculators; they have bought him up. He belongs to them by the terms of their contract; they will squeeze out of him, not merely their advances and the interest on their advances, but, again, every possible benefit. This suffices to indicate the mode of levying indirect taxes.--In the second place, by means of the salt-tax and the excises, the inquisition enters each household. In the provinces where these are levied, in Ile-de-France, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Orleanais, Berry, Bourbonnais, Bourgogne, Champagne, Perche, Normandy and Picardy, salt costs thirteen sous a pound, four times as much as at the present day, and, considering the standard of money, eight times as much[5232]. And, furthermore, by virtue of the ordinance of 1680, each person over seven years of age is expected to purchase seven pounds per annum, which, with four persons to a family, makes eighteen francs a year, and equal to nineteen days' work: a new direct tax, which, like the taille, is a fiscal hand in the pockets of the tax-payers, and compelling them, like the taille, to torment each other. Many of them, in fact, are officially appointed to assess this obligatory use of salt and, like the collectors of the taille, these are "jointly responsible for the price of the salt." Others below them, ever following the same course as in collecting the taille, are likewise responsible. "After the former have been seized in their persons and property, the speculator fermier is authorized to commence action, under the principle of mutual responsibility, against the principal inhabitants of the parish." The effects of this system have just been described. Accordingly, "in Normandy," says the Rouen parliament,[5233] "unfortunates without bread are daily objects of seizure, sale and execution."

But if the rigor is as great as in the matter of the taille, the vexations are ten times greater, for these are domestic, minute and of daily occurrence.--It is forbidden to divert an ounce of the seven obligatory pounds to any use but that of the "pot and the salt-cellar." If a villager should economize the salt of his soup to make brine for a piece of pork, with a view to winter consumption, let him look out for the collecting-clerks! His pork is confiscated and the fine is three hundred livres. The man must come to the warehouse and purchase other salt, make a declaration, carry off a certificate and show this at every visit of inspection. So much the worse for him if he has not the wherewithal to pay for this supplementary salt; he has only to sell his pig and abstain from meat at Christmas. This is the more frequent case, and I dare say that, for the métayers who pay twenty-five francs per annum, it is the usual case.--It is forbidden to make use of any other salt for the pot and salt-cellar than that of the seven pounds. "I am able to cite," says Letrosne, "two sisters residing one league from a town in which the warehouse is open only on Saturday. Their supply was exhausted. To pass three or four days until Saturday comes they boil a remnant of brine from which they extract a few ounces of salt. A visit from the clerk ensues and a procès-verbal. Having friends and protectors this costs them only forty-eight livres."--It is forbidden to take water from the ocean and from other saline sources, under a penalty of from twenty to forty livres fine. It is forbidden to water cattle in marshes and other places containing salt, under penalty of confiscation and a fine of three hundred livres. It is forbidden to put salt into the bellies of mackerel on returning from fishing, or between their superposed layers. An order prescribes one pound and a half to a barrel. Another order prescribes the destruction annually of the natural salt formed in certain cantons in Provence. Judges are prohibited from moderating or reducing the penalties imposed in salt cases, under penalty of accountability and of deposition.--I pass over quantities of orders and prohibitions, existing by hundreds. This legislation encompasses tax-payers like a net with a thousand meshes, while the official who casts it is interested in finding them at fault. We see the fisherman, accordingly, unpacking his barrel, the housewife seeking a certificate for her hams, the exciseman inspecting the buffet, testing the brine, peering into the salt-box and, if it is of good quality, declaring it contraband because that of the ferme, the only legitimate salt, is usually adulterated and mixed with plaster.

Meanwhile, other officials, those of the excise, descend into the cellar. None are more formidable, nor who more eagerly seize on pretexts for delinquency[5234]. "Let a citizen charitably bestow a bottle of wine on a poor feeble creature and he is liable to prosecution and to excessive penalties. . . . The poor invalid that may interest his curate in the begging of a bottle of wine for him will undergo a trial, ruining not alone the unfortunate man that obtains it, but again the benefactor who gave it to him. This is not a fancied story." By virtue of the right of deficient revenue the clerks may, at any hour, take an inventory of wine on hand, even the stores of a vineyard proprietor, indicate what he may consume, tax him for the rest and for the surplus quantity already drunk, the ferme thus associating itself with the wine-producer and claiming its portion of his production.--In a vine-yard at Epernay[5235] on four casks of wine, the average product of one arpent, and worth six hundred francs, it levies, at first, thirty francs, and then, after the sale of the four casks, seventy five francs additionally. Naturally, "the inhabitants resort to the shrewdest and best planned artifices to escape" such potent rights. But the clerks are alert, watchful, and well-informed, and they pounce down unexpectedly on every suspected domicile; their instructions prescribe frequent inspections and exact registries "enabling them to see at a glance the condition of the cellar of each inhabitant."[5236]--The manufacturer having paid up, the merchant now has his turn. The latter, on sending the four casks to the consumer--again pays seventy-five francs to the ferme. The wine is dispatched and the ferme prescribes the roads by which it must go; should others be taken it is confiscated, and at every step on the way some payment must be made. "A boat laden with wine from Languedoc,[5237] Dauphiny or Roussillon, ascending the Rhone and descending the Loire to reach Paris, through the Briare canal, pays on the way, leaving out charges on the Rhone, from thirty-five to forty kinds of duty, not comprising the charges on entering Paris." It pays these "at fifteen or sixteen places, the multiplied payments obliging the carriers to devote twelve or fifteen days more to the passage than they otherwise would if their duties could be paid at one bureau."--The charges on the routes by water are particularly heavy. "From Pontarlier to Lyons there are twenty-five or thirty tolls; from Lyons to Aigues-Mortes there are others, so that whatever costs ten sous in Burgundy, amounts to fifteen and eighteen sous at Lyons, and to over twenty-five sous at Aigues-Mortes."--The wine at last reaches the barriers of the city where it is to be drunk. Here it pays an octroi[5238] of forty-seven francs per hogshead.--Entering Paris it goes into the tapster's or innkeeper's cellar where it again pays from thirty to forty francs for the duty on selling it at retail; at Rethel the duty is from fifty to sixty francs per puncheon, Rheims gauge.--The total is exorbitant. "At Rennes,[5239] the dues and duties on a hogshead (or barrel) of Bordeaux wine, together with a fifth over and above the tax, local charges, eight sous per pound and the octroi, amount to more than seventy-two livres exclusive of the purchase money; to which must be added the expenses and duties advanced by the Rennes merchant and which he recovers from the purchaser, Bordeaux drayage, freight, insurance, tolls of the flood-gate, entrance duty into the town, hospital dues, fees of gaugers, brokers and inspectors. The total outlay for the tapster who sells a barrel of wine amounts to two hundred livres." We may imagine whether, at this price, the people of Rennes drink it, while these charges fall on the wine-grower, since, if consumers do not purchase, he is unable to sell.

Accordingly, among the small growers, he is the most to be pitied; according to the testimony of Arthur Young, wine-grower and misery are two synonymous terms. The crop often fails, "every doubtful crop ruining the man without capital." In Burgundy, in Berry, in Soisonnais, in the Trois-Evêche's, in Champagne,[5240] I find in every report that he lacks bread and lives on alms. In Champagne, the syndics of Bar-sur-Aube write[5241] that the inhabitants, to escape duties, have more than once emptied their wine into the river, the provincial assembly declaring that "in the greater portion of the province the slightest augmentation of duties would cause the cultivators to desert the soil."--Such is the history of wine under the ancient regime. From the producer who grows to the tapster who sells, what extortions and what vexations! As to the salt-tax, according to the comptroller-general,[5242] this annually produces 4,000 domiciliary seizures, 3,400 imprisonments, 500 sentences to flogging, exile and the galleys.--

If ever two taxes were well combined, not only to despoil, but also to irritate the peasantry, the poor and the people, here they were.

VI. Burdens And Exemptions.

Why taxation is so burdensome.--Exemptions and privileges.

Evidently the burden of taxation forms the chief cause of misery; hence an accumulated, deep-seated hatred against the fisc and its agents, receivers, store-house keepers, excise officials, customs officers and clerks.--But why is taxation so burdensome? As far as the communes which annually plead in detail against certain gentlemen to subject them to the taille are concerned, there is no doubt. What renders the charge oppressive is the fact that the strongest and those best able to bear taxation succeed in evading it, the prime cause of misery being the vastness of the exemptions[5243].

Let us look at each of these exemptions, one tax after another.--In the first place, not only are nobles and ecclesiastics exempt from the personal taille but again, as we have already seen, they are exempt from the cultivator's taille, through cultivating their domains themselves or by a steward. In Auvergne,[5244] in the single election-district of Clermont, fifty parishes are enumerated in which, owing to this arrangement, every estate of a privileged person is exempt, the taille falling wholly on those subject to it. Furthermore, it suffices for a privileged person to maintain that his farmer is only a steward, which is the case in Poitou in several parishes, the subdelegate and the élu not daring to look into the matter too closely. In this way the privileged classes escape the taille, they and their property, including their farms.--Now, the taille, ever augmenting, is that which provides, through its special delegations, such a vast number of new offices. A man of the Third-Estate has merely to run through the history of its periodical increase to see how it alone, or almost alone, paid and is paying[5245] for the construction of bridges, roads, canals and courts of justice, for the purchase of offices, for the establishment and support of houses of refuge, insane asylums, nurseries, post-houses for horses, fencing and riding schools, for paving and sweeping Paris, for salaries of lieutenants-general, governors, and provincial commanders, for the fees of bailiffs, seneschals and vice-bailiffs, for the salaries of financial and election officials and of commissioners dispatched to the provinces, for those of the police of the watch and I know not how many other purposes.--In the provinces which hold assemblies, where the taille would seem to be more justly apportioned, the like inequality is found. In Burgundy[5246] the expenses of the police, of public festivities, of keeping horses, all sums appropriated to the courses of lectures on chemistry, botany, anatomy and parturition, to the encouragement of the arts, to subscriptions to the chancellorship, to franking letters, to presents given to the chiefs and subalterns of commands, to salaries of officials of the provincial assemblies, to the ministerial secretaryship, to expenses of levying taxes and even alms, in short, 1,800,000 livres are spent in the public service at the charge of the Third-Estate, the two higher orders not paying a cent.

In the second place, with respect to the poll-tax, originally distributed among twenty-two classes and intended to bear equally on all according to fortunes, we know that, from the first, the clergy buy themselves off; and, as to the nobles, they manage so well as to have their tax reduced proportionately with its increase at the expense of the Third-Estate. A count or a marquis, an intendant or a master of requests, with 40,000 livres income, who, according to the tariff of 1695,[5247] should pay from 1,700 to 2,500 livres, pays only 400 livres, while a bourgeois with 6,000 livres income, and who, according to the same tariff; should pay 70 livres, pays 720. The poll-tax of the privileged individual is thus diminished three-quarters or five-sixths, while that of the taille-payer has increased tenfold. In the Ile-de-France,[5248] on an income of 240 livres, the taille-payer pays twenty-one livres eight sous, and the nobles three livres, and the intendant himself states that he taxes the nobles only an eightieth of their revenue; that of Orléanais taxes them only a hundredth, while, on the other hand, those subject to the taille are assessed one-eleventh.--If other privileged parties are added to the nobles, such as officers of justice, employee's of the fermes, and exempted townsmen, a group is formed embracing nearly everybody rich or well-off and whose revenue certainly greatly surpasses that of those who are subject to the taille. Now, the budgets of the provincial assemblies inform us how much each province levies on each of the two groups: in the Lyonnais district those subject to the taille pay 898,000 livres, the privileged, 190,000; in the Ile-de-France, the former pay 2,689,000 livres and the latter 232,000; in the generalship of Alençon, the former pay 1,067,000 livres and the latter 122,000; in Champagne, the former pay 1,377,000 livres, and the latter 199,000; in Haute-Guyenne, the former pay 1,268,000 livres, and the latter 61,000; in the generalship of Auch, the former pay 797,000 livres, the privileged 21,000; in Auvergne the former pay 1,753,000 livres and the latter 86,000; in short, summing up the total of ten provinces, 11,636,000 livres paid by the poor group and 1,450,000 livres by the rich group, the latter paying eight times less than it ought to pay.

With respect to the vingtièmes, the disproportion is less, the precise amounts not being attainable; we may nevertheless assume that the assessment of the privileged class is about one-half of what it should be. "In 1772," says[5249] M. de Calonne, "it was admitted that the vingtièmes were not carried to their full value. False declarations, counterfeit leases, too favorable conditions granted to almost all the wealthy proprietors gave rise to inequalities and countless errors. A verification of 4,902 parishes shows that the product of the two vingtièmes amounting to 54,000,000 should have amounted to 81,000,000." A seigniorial domain which, according to its own return of income, should pay 2,400 livres, pays only 1,216. The case is much worse with the princes of the blood; we have seen that their domains are exempt and pay only 188,000 livres instead of 2,400,000. Under this system, which crushes the weak to relieve the strong, the more capable one is of contributing, the less one contributes.--The same story characterizes the fourth and last direct taxation, namely, the tax substituted for the corvée. This tax, attached, at first, to the vingtièmes and consequently extending to all proprietors, through an act of the Council is attached to the taille and, consequently, bears on those the most burdened[5250]. Now this tax amounts to an extra of one-quarter added to the principal of the taille, of which one example may be cited, that of Champagne, where, on every 100 livres income the sum of six livres five sous devolves on the taille-payer. "Thus," says the provincial assembly, "every road used by active commerce, by the multiplied coursing of the rich, is repaired wholly by the contributions of the poor."--As these figures spread out before the eye we involuntarily recur to the two animals in the fable, the horse and the mule traveling together on the same road; the horse, by right, may prance along as he pleases; hence his load is gradually transferred to the mule, the beast of burden, which finally sinks beneath the extra load.

Not only, in the corps of tax-payers, are the privileged disburdened to the detriment of the taxable, but again, in the corps of the taxable, the rich are relieved to the injury of the poor, to such an extent that the heaviest portion of the load finally falls on the most indigent and most laborious class, on the small proprietor cultivating his own field, on the simple artisan with nothing but his tools and his hands, and, in general, on the inhabitants of villages. In the first place, in the matter of taxes, a number of the towns are "abonnées," or free. Compiègne, for the taille and its accessories, with 1,671 firesides, pays only 8,000 francs, whilst one of the villages in its neighborhood, Canly, with 148 firesides, pays 4,475 francs[5251]. In the poll-tax, Versailles, Saint-Germain, Beauvais, Etampes, Pontoise, Saint-Denis, Compiegne, Fontainebleau, taxed in the aggregate at 169,000 livres, are two-thirds exempt, contributing but little more than one franc, instead of three francs ten sous, per head of the population; at Versailles it is still less, since for 70,000 inhabitants the poll-tax amounts to only 51,600 francs[5252]. Besides, in any event, on the apportionment of a tax, the bourgeois of the town is favored above his rural neighbors. Accordingly, "the inhabitants of the country, who depend on the town and are comprehended in its functions, are treated with a rigor of which it would be difficult to form an idea. . . . Town influence is constantly throwing the burden on those who are trying to be relieved of it, the richest of citizens paying less taille than the most miserable of the peasant farmers[5253]." Hence, "the horror of the taille depopulates the rural districts, concentrating in the towns all the talents and all the capital[5254]." Outside of the towns there is the same differences. Each year, the élus and their collectors, exercising arbitrary power, fix the taille of the parish and of each inhabitant. In these ignorant and

## partial hands the scales are not held by equity but by self-interest,

local hatreds, the desire for revenge, the necessity of favoring some friend, relative, neighbor, protector, or patron, some powerful or some dangerous person. The intendant of Moulins, on visiting his generalship, finds "people of influence paying nothing, while the poor are over-charged." That of Dijon writes that "the basis of apportionment is arbitrary, to such an extent that the people of the province must not be allowed to suffer any longer."[5255] In the generalship of Rouen "some parishes pay over four sous the livre and others scarcely one sou."[5256] "For three years past that I have lived in the country," writes a lady of the same district, "I have remarked that most of the wealthy proprietors are the least pressed; they are selected to make the apportionment, and the people are always abused."[5257]--"I live on an estate ten leagues from Paris," wrote d'Argenson, "where it was desired to assess the taille proportionately, but only injustice has been the outcome since the seigniors made use of their influence to relieve their own tenants." [5258] Besides, in addition to those who, through favor, diminish their taille, there are others who buy themselves off entirely. An intendant, visiting the subdelegation of Bar-sur-Seine, observes" that the rich cultivators succeed in obtaining petty commissions in connection with the king's household and enjoy the privileges attached to these, which throws the burden of taxation on the others."[5259] "One of the leading causes of our prodigious taxation," says the provincial assembly of Auvergne, "is the inconceivable number of the privileged, which daily increases through traffic in and the assignment of offices; cases occur in which these have ennobled six families in less than twenty years." Should this abuse continue, "in a hundred years every tax-payer the most capable of supporting taxation will be ennobled."[5260] Observe, moreover, that an infinity of offices and functions, without conferring nobility, exempt their titularies from the personal taille and reduce their poll-tax to the fortieth of their income; at first, all public functionaries, administrative or judicial, and next all employments in the salt-department, in the customs, in the post-office, in the royal domains, and in the excise.[5261] "There are few parishes," writes an intendant, "in which these employees are not found, while several contain as many as two or three."[5262] A postmaster is exempt from the taille, in all his possessions and offices, and even on his farms to the extent of a hundred arpents. The notaries of Angoulême are exempt from the corvée, from collections, and the lodging of soldiers, while neither their sons or chief clerks can be drafted in the militia. On closely examining the great fiscal net in administrative correspondence, we detect at every step some meshes through which, with a bit of effort and cunning, all the big and average-sized fish escape; the small fry alone remain at the bottom of the scoop. A surgeon not an apothecary, a man of good family forty-five years old, in commerce, but living with his parent and in a province with a written code, escapes the collector. The same immunity is extended to the begging agents of the monks of "la Merci" and "L'Etroite Observance." Throughout the South and the East individuals in easy circumstances purchase this commission of beggar for a "louis," or for ten crowns, and, putting three livres in a cup, go about presenting it in this or that parish:[5263] ten of the inhabitants of a small mountain village and five inhabitants in the little village of Treignac obtain their discharge in this fashion. Consequently, "the collections fall on the poor, always powerless and often insolvent," the privileged who effect the ruin of the tax-payer causing the deficiencies of the treasury.

VII. Municipal Taxation.

The octrois of towns.--The poor the greatest sufferers.

One word more to complete the picture. People seek shelter in the towns and, indeed, compared with the country, the towns are a refuge. But misery accompanies the poor, for, on the one hand, they are involved in debt, and, on the other, the closed circles administering municipal affairs impose taxation on the poor. The towns being oppressed by the fisc, they in their turn oppress the people by passing to them the load which the king had imposed. Seven times in twenty-eight years[5264] he withdraws and re-sells the right of appointing their municipal officers, and, to get rid of "this enormous financial burden," the towns double their octrois. At present, although liberated, they still make payment; the annual charge has become a perpetual charge; never does the fisc release its hold; once beginning to suck it continues to suck. "Hence, in Brittany," says an intendant, "not a town is there whose expenses are not greater than its revenue."[5265] They are unable to mend their pavements, and repair their streets, "the approaches to them being almost impracticable." What could they do for self-support, obliged, as they are, to pay over again after having already paid? Their augmented octrois, in 1748, ought to furnish during a period of eleven years a total of 606,000 livres; but, the eleven years having lapsed, the tax authorities, in spite of having been paid, still maintains its exigencies, and to such an extent that, in 1774, they have contributed 2,071,052 livres, the provisional octroi being still maintained.--Now, this exorbitant octroi bears heavily everywhere on the most indispensable necessities, the artisan being more heavily burdened than the bourgeois. In Paris, as we have seen above, wine pays forty-seven livres a hogshead entrance duty which, at the present standard of value, must be doubled. "A turbot, taken on the coast at Harfleur and brought by post, pays an entrance duty of eleven times its value, the people of the capital therefore being condemned to dispense with fish from the sea."[5266] At the gates of Paris, in the little parish of Aubervilliers, I find "excessive duties on hay, straw, seeds, tallow, candles, eggs, sugar, fish, faggots and firewood."[5267] Compiegne pays the whole amount of its taille by means of a tax on beverages and cattle[5268]. "In Toul and in Verdun the taxes are so onerous that but few consent to remain in the town, except those kept there by their offices and by old habits."[5269] At Coulommiers, "the merchants and the people are so severely taxed they dread undertaking any enterprise." Popular hatred everywhere is profound against octroi, barrier and clerk. The bourgeois oligarchy everywhere first cares for itself before caring for those it governs. At Nevers and at Moulins,[5270] "all rich persons find means to escape their turn to collect taxes by belonging to different commissions or through their influence with the élus, to such an extent that the collectors of Nevers, of the present and preceding year, might be mistaken for real beggars; there is hardly any small village whose tax collectors are solvent, since the tenant farmers (métayers) have had to be appointed." At Angers, "independent of presents and candles, which annually consume 2,172 livres, the public pence are employed and wasted in clandestine outlays according to the fancy of the municipal officers." In Provence, where the communities are free to tax themselves and where they might be expected to show some consideration for the poor, "most of the towns, and notably Aix, Marseilles and Toulon,[5271] pay their impositions," local and general, "exclusively by the tax called the "piquet." This is a tax "on all species of flour belonging to and consumed on the territory;" for example, of 254,897 livres, which Toulon expends, the piquet furnishes 233,405. Thus the taxation falls wholly on the people, while the bishop, the marquis, the president, the merchant of importance pay less on their dinner of delicate fish and becaficos than the caulker or porter on his two pounds of bread rubbed with a piece of garlic! Bread in this country is already too dear! And the quality is so poor that Malouet, the intendant of the marine, refuses to let his workmen eat it!

"Sire," said M. de la Fare, bishop of Nancy, from his pulpit, May 4th, 1789, "Sire, the people over which you reign has given unmistakable proofs of its patience. . . . They are martyrs in whom life seems to have been allowed to remain to enable them to suffer the longer."

VIII. Complaints In The Registers [5272].

"I am miserable because too much is taken from me. Too much is taken from me because not enough is taken from the privileged. Not only do the privileged force me to pay in their place, but, again, they previously deduct from my earnings their ecclesiastic and feudal dues. When, out of my income of 100 francs, I have parted with fifty-three francs, and more, to the collector, I am obliged again to give fourteen francs to the seignior, also more than fourteen for tithes,[5273] and, out of the remaining eighteen or nineteen francs, I have additionally to satisfy the excise men. I alone, a poor man, pay two governments, one the old government, local and now absent, useless, inconvenient and humiliating, and active only through annoyances, exemptions and taxes; and the other, recent, centralized, everywhere present, which, taking upon itself all functions, has vast needs, and makes my meager shoulders support its enormous weight."

These, in precise terms, are the vague ideas beginning to ferment in the popular brain and encountered on every page of the records of the States-General.

"Would to God," says a Normandy village,[5274] "the monarch might take into his own hands the defense of the miserable citizen pelted and oppressed by clerks, seigniors, justiciary and clergy!"

"Sire," writes a village in Champagne,[5275] "the only message to us on your part is a demand for money. We were led to believe that this might cease, but every year the demand comes for more. We do not hold you responsible for this because we love you, but those whom you employ, who better know how to manage their own affairs than yours. We believed that you were deceived by them and we, in our chagrin, said to ourselves, If our good king only knew of this!. . . We are crushed down with every species of taxation; thus far we have given you a part of our bread, and, should this continue, we shall be in want. . . . Could you see the miserable tenements in which we live, the poor food we eat, you would feel for us; this would prove to you better than words that we can support this no longer and that it must be lessened. . . . That which grieves us is that those who possess the most, pay the least. We pay the tailles and for our implements, while the ecclesiastics and nobles who own the best land pay nothing. Why do the rich pay the least and the poor the most? Should not each pay according to his ability? Sire, we entreat that things may be so arranged, for that is just. . . . Did we dare, we should undertake to plant the slopes with vines; but we are so persecuted by the clerks of the excise we would rather pull up those already planted; the wine that we could make would all go to them, scarcely any of it remaining for ourselves. These exactions are a great scourge and, to escape them, we would rather let the ground lie waste. . . . Relieve us of all these extortions and of the excisemen; we are great sufferers through all these devices; now is the time to change them; never shall we be happy as long as these last. We entreat all this of you, Sire, along with others of your subjects as wearied as ourselves. . . . We would entreat yet more but you cannot do all at one time."

Imposts and privileges, in the really popular registers, are the two enemies against which complaints everywhere arise[5276].

"We are overwhelmed by demands for subsidies,. . . we are burdened with taxes beyond our strength,. . . we do not feel able to support any more, we perish, overpowered by the sacrifices demanded of us. Labor is taxed while indolence is exempt. . . . Feudalism is the most disastrous of abuses, the evils it causes surpassing those of hail and lightning. . . . Subsistence is impossible if three-quarters of the crops are to be taken for field-rents, terrage, etc. . . . The proprietor has a fourth part, the décimateur a twelfth, the harvester a twelfth, taxation a tenth, not counting the depredations of vast quantities of game which devour the growing crops: nothing is left for the poor cultivator but pain and sorrow."

Why should the Third-Estate alone pay for roads on which the nobles and the clergy drive in their carriages? Why are the poor alone subject to militia draft? Why does "the subdelegate cause only the defenseless and the unprotected to be drafted?" Why does it suffice to be the servant of a privileged person to escape this service? Destroy those dove-cotes, formerly only small pigeon-pens and which now contain as many as 5,000 pairs. Abolish the barbarous rights of "motte, quevaise and domaine congéable[5277] under which more than 500,000 persons still suffer in Lower Brittany." "You have in your armies, Sire, more than 30,000 Franche-Comté serfs;" should one of these become an officer and be pensioned out of the service he would be obliged to return to and live in the hut in which he was born, otherwise; at his death, the seignior will take his pittance. Let there be no more absentee prelates, nor abbés-commendatory. "The present deficit is not to be paid by us but by the bishops and beneficiaries; deprive the princes of the church of two-thirds of their revenues." "Let feudalism be abolished. Man, the peasant especially, is tyrannically bowed down to the impoverished ground on which he lies exhausted. . . . There is no freedom, no prosperity, no happiness where the soil is enthralled. . . . Let the lord's dues, and other odious taxes not feudal, be abolished, a thousand times returned to the privileged. Let feudalism content itself with its iron scepter without adding the poniard of the revenue speculator."[5278]

Here, and for some time before this, it is not the Countryman who speaks but the procureur, the lawyer, who places professional metaphors and theories at his service. But the lawyer has simply translated the countryman's sentiments into literary dialect.

*****

NOTES:

[Footnote 5201: "Collection des économistes," II. 832. See a tabular statement by Beaudan.]

[Footnote 5202: "Ephémérides du citoyen," IX. 15; an article by M. de Butré, 1767.]

[Footnote 5203: "Collection des économistes," I. 551, 562.]

[Footnote 5204: "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Champagne" (1787), p. 240.]

[Footnote 5205: Cf., "Notice historique sur la Révolution dans le département de l'Eure," by Boivin-Champeaux, p. 37.--A register of grievances of the parish of Epreville; on 100 francs income the Treasury takes 22 for the taille, 16 for collaterals, 15 for the poll-tax, 11 for the vingtièmes, total 67 livres.]

[Footnote 5206: "Procès-verbaux de l'assemblée provinciale de Ile-de-France" (1787), p. 131.]

[Footnote 5207: "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass. prov de la Haute-Guyenne" (1784), II. 17, 40, 47.]

[Footnote 5208: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. d'Auvergne" (1787), p. 253.--Doléances, by Gautier de Biauzat, member of the council elected by the provincial assembly of Auvergne. (1788), p.3.]

[Footnote 5209: See note 5 at the end of the volume.]

[Footnote 5210: "Théron de Montaugé," p. 109 (1763). Wages at this time are from 7 to 12 sous a day during the summer.]

[Footnote 5211: Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and registers of the States-General, V. 59, p. 6. Memorandum to M. Necker from M. d'Orgeux, honorary councilor to the Parliament of Bourgogne, 25 Oct. 1788..]

[Footnote 5212: Ibid. H, 1418. A letter of the intendant of Limoges, Feb. 26, 1784.]

[Footnote 5213: Turgot, II. 259.]

[Footnote 5214: Archives nationales, H, 426 (remonstrances of the Parliament of Brittany, Feb. 1783).]

[Footnote 5215: Mercier; XI. 59; X. 262.]

[Footnote 5216: Archives nationales, H, 1422, a letter by M d'Aine, intendant of Limoges (February 17, 1782) one by the intendant of Moulins (April, 1779); the trial of the community of Mollon (Bordelais), and the tables of its collectors.]

[Footnote 5217: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. d'Auvergne," p. 266.]

[Footnote 5218: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," I. 72]

[Footnote 5219: "Procés-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Berry" (1778), I. pp.72, 80.]

[Footnote 5220: De Tocqueville, 187.]

[Footnote 5221: Archives nationales, H, 1417. (A letter of M. de Cypièrre, intendant at Orleans, April 17, 1765).]

[Footnote 5222: "Traité de Population," 2d part, p.26.]

[Footnote 5223: Archives nationales, H, 1417. (A letter of M. de Cypièrre, intendant at Orleans, April 17, 1765).]

[Footnote 5224: Ibid. H, 1418. (Letter of May 28, 1784).]

[Footnote 5225: Ibid. (Letter of the intendant of Tours, June 15, 1765.)]

[Footnote 5226: Archives Nationales, H, 1417. A report by Raudon, receiver of tailles in the election of Laon, January, 1764.]

[Footnote 5227: "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Berry" (1778), I. p.72.]

[Footnote 5228: Champfort, 93.]

[Footnote 5229: "Procèx-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Berry," I. 77.]

[Footnote 5230: Arthur Young, II. 205.]

[Footnote 5231: "Procès-verbaux of the ass. prov. of the generalship of Rouen" (1787), p.271.]

[Footnote 5232: Letrosne (1779). "De l'administration provinciale et de Ia reforme de l'impôt," pp. 39 to 262 and 138.--Archives nationales, H. 138 (1782). Cahier de Bugey, "Salt costs a person living in the countryside purchasing it from the retailers from 15 to 17 sous a pound, according to the way of measuring it."]

[Footnote 5233: Floquet, VI. 367 (May 10, 1760).]

[Footnote 5234: Boivin-Champeaux, p.44. (Cahiers of Bray and of Gamaches).]

[Footnote 5235: Arthur Young, II. 175-178.]

[Footnote 5236: Archives nationales, G, 300; G, 319. (Registers and instructions of various local directors of the Excise to their successors).]

[Footnote 5237: Letrosne, ibid. 523.]

[Footnote 5238: Octroi: a toll or tax levied at the gates of a city on articles brought in. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5239: Archives Nationales, H, 426 (Papers of the Parliament of Brittany, February, 1783).]

[Footnote 5240: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Soissonnais" (1787), p.45.--Archives nationales, H, 1515 (Remonstrances of the Parliament of Metz, 1768). "The class of indigents form more than twelve-thirteenths of the whole number of villages of laborers and generally those of the wine-growers." Ibid. G, 319 (Tableau des directions of Chateaudon and Issoudun).]

[Footnote 5241: Albert Babeau, I. 89. p. 21.]

[Footnote 5242: "Mémoires," presented to the Assembly of Notables, by M. de Calonne (1787), p.67.]

[Footnote 5243: Here we are at the root of the reason why democratically elected politicians and their administrative staffs are today taxed even though such taxation is only a paper-exercise adding costs to the cost of government administration. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5244: Gautier de Bianzat, "Doléances," 193, 225. "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Poitou" (1787), p.99.]

[Footnote 5245: Gautier de Bianzat, ibid..]

[Footnote 5246: Archives nationales, the procès-verbaux and cahiers of the States-General, V. 59. P. 6. (Letter of M. Orgeux to M. Necker), V. 27. p. 560-573. (Cahiers of the Third-Estate of Arnay-le-Duc)]

[Footnote 5247: In these figures the rise of the money standard has been kept in mind, the silver "marc," worth 59 francs in 1965, being worth 49 francs during the last half of the eighteenth century.]

[Footnote 5248: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Ile-de-France," 132, 158; de l'Orléanais, 96, 387.]

[Footnote 5249: "Mémoire," presented to the Assembly of Notables (1787), p. 1.--See note 2 at the end of the volume, on the estate of Blet.]

[Footnote 5250: "Procès-verbeaux de l'ass. prov. d'Alsace" (1787), p. 116;"--of Champagne," 192. (According to a declaration of June 2, 1787, the tax substituted for the corvée may be extended to one-sixth of the taille, with accessory taxes and the poll-tax combined). "De la généralité d'Alençcon," 179; "--du Berry," I. 218.]

[Footnote 5251: Archives nationales, G, 322 (Memorandum on the excise dues of Compiègne and its neighborhood, 1786)]

[Footnote 5252: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de l'Ile-de-France," p. 104.]

[Footnote 5253: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Berry, I. 85, II. 91. --de l'Orléanais, p. 225." "Arbitrariness, injustice, inequality, are inseparable from the taille when any change of collector takes place."]

[Footnote 5254: "Archives Nationales," H. 615. Letter of M. de Lagourda, a noble from Bretagne, to M. Necker, dated December 4, 1780: "You are always taxing the useful and necessary people who decrease in numbers all the time: these are the workers of the land. The countryside has become deserted and no one will any longer plow the land. I testify to God and to you, Sir, that we have lost more than a third of our budding wheat of the last harvest because we did not have the necessary man-power do to the work."]

[Footnote 5255: Ibid. 1149. (letter of M. de Reverseau, March 16, 1781); H, 200 (letter of M. Amelot, Nov. 2, 1784).]

[Footnote 5256: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de la généralite de Rouen," p.91.]

[Footnote 5257: Hippeau, VI. 22 (1788).]

[Footnote 5258: D'Argenson. VI. 37.]

[Footnote 5259: Archives nationales, H. 200 (Memoir of M. Amelot, 1785).]

[Footnote 5260: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. d'Auvergne," 253.]

[Footnote 5261: Boivin-Champeaux, "Doléances de la parvisse de Tilleul-Lambert" (Eure). "Numbers of privileged characters, Messieurs of the elections, Messieurs the post-masters, Messieurs the presidents and other attachés of the salt-warehouse, every individual possessing extensive property pays but a third or a half of the taxes they ought to pay."]

[Footnote 5262: De Tocqueville, 385.--"Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. de Lyonnais," p. 56]

[Footnote 5263: Archives nationales, H, 1422. (Letters of M. d'Aine, intendant, also of the receiver for the election of Tulle, February 23, 1783).]

[Footnote 5264: De Tocqueville, 64, 363.]

[Footnote 5265: Archives nationales, H, 612, 614. (Letters of M. de la Bove, September 11, and Dec. 2, 1774; June 28, 1777).]

[Footnote 5266: Mercier, II. 62.]

[Footnote 5267: "Grievances" of the parish of Aubervilliers.]

[Footnote 5268: Archives nationales, G, 300; G, 322 ("Mémoires" on the excise duties).]

[Footnote 5269: "Procès-verbaux de l'ass. prov. des Trois-Evêchés p. 442.]

[Footnote 5270: Archives nationales, H, 1422 (Letter of the intendant of Moulins, April 1779).]

[Footnote 5271: Archives nationales, H. 1312 (Letters of M. D'Antheman procureur-général of the excise court (May 19, 1783), and of the Archbishop of Aix (June 15, 1783).)--Provence produced wheat only sufficient for seven and a half months' consumption.]

[Footnote 5272: Abbreviation for the "cahier des doléances", in English 'register of grieviances', brought with them by the representatives of the people to the great gathering in Paris of the "States-Généraux" in 1789. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5273: The feudal dues may be estimated at a seventh of the net income and the dime also at a seventh. These are the figures given by the ass. prov. of Haute-Guyenne (Procès-verbaux, p. 47).--Isolated instances, in other provinces, indicate similar results. The dime ranges from a tenth to the thirteenth of the gross product, and commonly the tenth. I regard the average as about the fourteenth, and as one-half of the gross product must be deducted for expenses of cultivation, it amounts to one-seventh. Letrosne says a fifth and even a quarter.]

[Footnote 5274: Boivin-Champeaux, 72.]

[Footnote 5275: Grievances of the community of Culmon (Election de Langres.)]

[Footnote 5276: Boivin-Champeaux, 34, 36, 41, 48.--Périn ("Doléances des paroisses rurales de l'Artuis," 301, 308).--Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and cahiers of the States-Géneraux, vol. XVII. P. 12 (Letter of the inhabitants of Dracy-le Viteux).]

[Footnote 5277: Motte: a mound indicative of Seigniorial dominion; quevaise; the right of forcing a resident to remain on his property under penalty of forfeiture; domaine congéable; property held subject to capricious ejection. (TR)]

[Footnote 5278: Prud'homme, "Résumé des cahiers," III. passim, and especially from 317 to 340.]

## CHAPTER III. INTELLECTUAL STATE OF THE PEOPLE.