"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 Helvetius, 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 Helvetius, "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 regime. 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, Rene 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 Moliere, 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 Marechal, 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 Marechal, 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, "Pensees" (on the origin of property and rank). The "Provinciales" (on homicide and the right to kill).—Nicole, "Deuxieme traite de la charite, et de l'amour-propre" (on the natural man and the object of society). Bossuet, "Politique tiree de l'Ecriture sainte." La Bruyere, "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: "Resume 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 reve 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 Marechale 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. "Catechisme Universel," by Saint-Lambert, and the "Loi naturelle ou Catechisme du citoyen francais," by Volney.]

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

[Footnote 3318: Cf. "Memoires 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 reve de d'Alembert." "Entretien entre Mlls. de Lespinasse et Bordeu."—"Memoires de Diderot," a letter to Mlle. Volant, III. 66.]

[Footnote 3320: Cf. his admirable tales, "Entretiens d'un pere 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: Helvetius, "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, "Systeme de la nature," I. 347.]

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

[Footnote 3327: Diderot, "Les Eleutheromanes."

Et ses mains, ourdissant les entrailles du pretre, 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 "Bibliotheque du Legislateur," 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, troisieme 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 Leonard Simonde de) Geneve, 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'economie 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 Heloise," 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 societe) 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'Inegalite," passim.]

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

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

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

[Footnote 3342: Condorcet, "Tableau des progres 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 Pyrenees,[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 Bitaube, 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 Bouille 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 (corveables) 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 regime 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 Gregoire 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: Barrere, "Point du jour," No. 1, (June 15, 1789). "You are summoned to give history a fresh start."]

[Footnote 3402: Condorcet, ibid., "Tableau des progres 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, "Catechisme 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 Felicie," 371-391.]

[Footnote 3409: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien regime," 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: "Memoires de M. Bouille," p.70.—Cf. Barante, "Tableau de la litt. francaise au dixhuitieme siecle," 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 a 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.)]