The Ancient Regime Part 20

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 Coriola.n.u.s, Hotspur, Falstaff, Oth.e.l.lo, Cleopatra, etc.]

[Footnote 3234: Balzac pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sions, the same habits, none having obtained a national form through any specific inst.i.tution."

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 Verite," 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 ill.u.s.trations excepting one citation from Hippocrates.]

[Footnote 3240: These are Sieyes own words.--He adds elsewhere, "There is no more reality in a.s.sumed historical truths than in a.s.sumed religious truths." ("Papiers de Sieyes," 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 Inst.i.tute by Chenier in 1808, showing by its statements that the cla.s.sic spirit still prevails in all branches of literature.--Cabanis died in 1818, Volney in 1820, de Tracy and Sieyes in 1836, Daunou in 1840. In May, 1845, Saphary and Valette are still professors of Condillac's philosophy in the two lycees in Paris.]

[Footnote 3244: The world did not heed Taine's warnings. The leaders and the ma.s.ses 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 t.i.tle, 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 dictators.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d, 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 t.i.tle 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 const.i.tuted 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 G.o.d.--Thus, throughout the moral and social order of things the past justifies the present; antiquity provides its t.i.tle, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 Bruyere, 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 acc.u.mulation of experiences; a people, after a mult.i.tude 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 inst.i.tuted 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 inst.i.tution of the right of first-born to inherit t.i.tle 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 circ.u.mstances 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 mult.i.tudes 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 acc.u.mulated 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, compa.s.sing 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 t.i.tle 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sions, 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 n.o.ble 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 const.i.tutes 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-establis.h.i.+ng 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 compet.i.tion, 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sive 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 leaders.h.i.+p of prejudice in human affairs, since, to lead, it must itself become prejudiced.

III. Reason At War With Illusion.

The cla.s.sic 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 cla.s.sic; not only the apt.i.tude but the doc.u.ments 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 Abbe Barthelemy 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 a.s.sume 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 n.o.bility; 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 pa.s.sing, the same as of their post-horses, or of the cattle on their farms, showing compa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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 demolis.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.sic 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 s.p.a.ce.--Through this natural and complete state of blindness it no longer heeds the old and living roots of contemporary inst.i.tutions; no longer seeing them makes it deny their existence. Custom now appears as pure prejudice; the t.i.tles 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 pa.s.sion 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 wors.h.i.+ppers of Brahma, of the Chinese and of pure idolaters. In relation to established laws and customs, expositions are made, with evident intentions, of other const.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions 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 t.i.tle 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 abbe 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-Comte, alienates through this act alone the owners.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 Helvetius, and later Condorcet, Lalande and Volney, all different and independent of each other, but unanimous in regarding tradition as the common enemy.