The Ancient Regime Part 18

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 3106: Buffon, "Histoire Naturelle, II. 340: "All living beings contain a vast quant.i.ty of living and active molecules. Vegetal and animal life seem to be only the result of the actions of all the small lives peculiar to each of the active molecules whose life is primitive."

Cf. Diderot, "Revue d'Alembert."]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(SR.)]

[Footnote 3117: "Traite de Metaphysique," chap. I. "Having fallen on this little heap of mud, and with no more idea of man than man has of the inhabitants of Mars and Jupiter, I set foot on the sh.o.r.e of the ocean of the country of Caffraria and at once began to search for a man.

I encounter monkeys, elephants and Negroes, with gleams of imperfect intelligence, etc"--The new method is here clearly apparent.]

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

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

the seventh.]

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II. THE CLa.s.sIC SPIRIT, THE SECOND ELEMENT.

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

I. Through Colored Gla.s.ses.

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

This fixed intelligence consists of the cla.s.sic spirit, which applied to the scientific acquisitions of the period, produces the philosophy of the century and the doctrines of the Revolution. Various signs denote its presence, and notably its oratorical, regular and correct style, wholly consisting of ready-made phrases and contiguous ideas. It lasts two centuries, from Malherbe and Balzac to Delille and de Fontanes, and during this long period, no man of intellect, save two or three, and then only in private memoirs, as in the case of Saint-Simon, also in familiar letters like those of the marquis and bailly de Mirabeau, either dares or can withdraw himself from its empire. Far from disappearing with the ancient regime it forms the matrix out of which every discourse and doc.u.ment issues, even the phrases and vocabulary of the Revolution. Now, what is more effective than a ready-made mold, enforced, accepted, in which by virtue of natural tendency, of tradition and of education, everyone can enclose their thinking? This one, accordingly, is a historic force, and of the highest order; to understand it let us consider how it came into being.--It appeared together with the regular monarchy and polite conversation, and it accompanies these, not accidentally, but naturally and automatically.

For it is product of the new society, of the new regime and its customs: I mean of an aristocracy left idle due the encroaching monarchy, of people well born and well educated who, withdrawn from public activity, fall back on conversation and pa.s.s their leisure sampling the different serious or refined pleasures of the intellect.[3201] Eventually, they have no other role nor interest than to talk, to listen, to entertain themselves agreeably and with ease, on all subjects, grave or gay, which may interest men or even women of society, that's their great affair.

In the seventeenth century they are called "les honnetes gens"[3202] and from now on a writer, even the most abstract, addresses himself to them.

"A gentleman," says Descartes, "need not have read all books nor have studiously acquired all that is taught in the schools;" and he ent.i.tles his last treatise, "A search for Truth according to natural light, which alone, without aid of Religion or Philosophy, determines the truths a gentleman should possess on all matters forming the subjects of his thoughts."[3203] In short, from one end of his philosophy to the other, the only qualification he demands of his readers is "natural good sense"

added to the common stock of experience acquired by contact with the world.--As these make up the audience they are likewise the judges. "One must study the taste of the court," says Moliere,[3204] "for in no place are verdicts more just. . . With simple common sense and intercourse with people of refinement, a habit of mind is there obtained which, without comparison, forms a more accurate, judgment of things than the rusty attainments of the pedants." From this time forth, it may be said that the arbiter of truth and of taste is not, as before, an erudite Scaliger, but a man of the world, a La Rochefoucauld, or a Treville.[3205] The pedant and, after him, the savant, the specialist, is set aside. "True honest people," says Nicole after Pascal, "require no sign. They need not be divined; they join in the conversation going on as they enter the room. They are not styled either poets or surveyors, but they are the judges of all these."[3206] In the eighteenth century they const.i.tute the sovereign authority. In the great crowd of blockheads sprinkled with pedants, there is, says Voltaire, "a small group apart called good society, which, rich, educated and polished, forms, you might say, the flower of humanity; it is for this group that the greatest men have labored; it is this group which accords social recognition."[3207] Admiration, favor, importance, belong not to those who are worthy of it but to those who address themselves to this group. "In 1789," said the Abbe Maury, "the French Academy alone enjoyed any esteem in France, and it really bestowed a standing. That of the Sciences signified nothing in public opinion, any more than that of Inscriptions. . . The languages is considered a science for fools.

D'Alembert was ashamed of belonging to the Academy of Sciences. Only a handful of people listen to a mathematician, a chemist, etc. but the man of letters, the lecturer, has the world at his feet."[3208]--Under such a strong pressure the mind necessarily follows a literary and verbal route in conformity with the exigencies, the proprieties, the tastes, and the degree of attention and of instruction of its public.[3209]

Hence the cla.s.sic mold,--formed out of the habit of speaking, writing and thinking for a drawing room audience.[3210]

This is immediately evident in its style and language. Between Amyot, Rabelais and Montaigne on the one hand, and Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac on the other, cla.s.sic French comes into being and dies. From the very first it is described at the language of "honest people." It is fashioned not merely for them, but by them, and Vaugelas,[3211] their secretary, devotes himself for thirty years to the registry of decisions according to the usages only of good society.

Hence, throughout, both in vocabulary and in grammar, the language is refashioned over and over again, according to the cast of their intellects, which is the prevailing intellect.--

In the first place the vocabulary is diminished:

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

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

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

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

and, on the eve of the Revolution, an objectionable term denounced by Madame de Luxembourg still consigns a man to the rank of "especes," because correct expression is ever an element of good manners.--Language, through this constant scratching, is attenuated and becomes colorless: Vaugelas estimates that one-half of the phrases and terms employed by Amyot are set aside.[3213] With the exception of La Fontaine, an isolated and spontaneous genius, who reopens the old sources, and La Bruyere, a bold seeker, who opens a fresh source, and Voltaire an incarnate demon who, in his anonymous and pseudonymous writings, gives the rein to the violent, crude expressions of his inspiration,[3214] the terms which are most appropriate fall into desuetude. One day, Gresset, in a discourse at the Academy, dares utter four or five of these,[3215] relating, I believe, to carriages and head-dresses, whereupon murmurs at once burst forth. During his long retreat he had become provincial and lost the touch.--By degrees, discourses are composed of "general expressions" only. These are even employed, in accordance with Buffon's precept, to designate concrete objects. They are more in conformity with the polished courtesy which smoothes over, appeases, and avoids rough or familiar expressions, to which some views appear gross or rude unless partly hidden by a veil.

This makes it easier for the superficial listener; prevailing terms alone will immediately arouse current and common ideas; they are intelligible to every man from the single fact that he belongs to the drawing-room; special terms, on the contrary, demand an effort of the memory or of the imagination. Suppose that, in relation to Franks or to savages, I should mention "a battle-ax," which would be at once understood; should I mention a "tomahawk," or a "francisque,"[3216]

many would imagine that I was speaking Teuton or Iroquois.[3217] In this respect the more fashionable and refined the style, the more punctilious the effort. Every appropriate term is banished from poetry; if one happens to enter the mind it must be evaded or replaced by a paraphrase.

An eighteenth century poet can hardly permit himself to employ more than one-third of the dictionary, poetic language at last becomes so restricted as to compel a man with anything to say not to express himself in verse.[3218]

On the other hand the more you prune the more you thin out. Reduced to a select vocabulary the Frenchman deals with fewer subjects, but he describes them more agreeably and more clearly. "Courtesy, accuracy", (Urbanite, exact.i.tude!), these two words, born at the same time with the French Academy, describes in a nutsh.e.l.l the reform of which it is the tool, and which the drawing-room, by it, and alongside of it, imposes on the public. Grand seigniors in retirement, and unoccupied fine ladies, enjoy the examination of the subtleties of words for the purpose of composing maxims, definitions and characters. With admirable scrupulousness and infinitely delicate tact, writers and people society apply themselves to weighing each word and each phrase in order to fix its sense, to measure its force and bearing, to determine its affinities, use and connections This work of precision is carried on from the earliest academicians, Vaugelas, Chapelain and Conrart, to the end of the cla.s.sic epoch, in the Synonymes by Bauzee and by Girard, in the Remarque by Duclos, in the Commentaire by Voltaire on Corneille, in the Lycee by la Harpe,[3219] in the efforts, the example, the practice and the authority of the great and the inferior writers of which all are correct. Never did architects, obliged to use ordinary broken highway stones in building, better understand each piece, its dimensions, its shape, its resistance, its possible connections and suitable position.--Once this was learned, the task was to construct with the least trouble and with the utmost solidity; the grammar was consequently changed at the same time and in the same way as the dictionary. Hence no longer permitting the words to reflect the way impressions and emotions were felt; they now had to be regularly and rigorously a.s.signed according to the invariable hierarchy of concepts. The writer may no longer begin his text with the leading figure or the main purpose of his story; the setting is given and the places a.s.signed beforehand. Each part of the discourse has its own place; no omission or transposition is permitted, as was done in the sixteenth century[3220]. All parts must be included, each in its definite place: at first the subject of the sentence with its appendices, then the verb, then the object direct, and, finally, the indirect connections. In this way the sentence forms a graduated scaffolding, the substance coming foremost, then the quality, then the modes and varieties of the quality, just as a good architect in the first place poses his foundation, then the building, then the accessories, economically and prudently, with a view to adapt each section of the edifice to the support of the section following after it.

No sentence demands any less attention than another, nor is there any in which one may not at every step verify the connection or incoherence of the parts.[3221]--The procedure used in arranging a simple sentence also governs that of the period, the paragraph and the series of paragraphs; it forms the style as it forms the syntax. Each small edifice occupies a distinct position, and but one, in the great total edifice. As the discourse advances, each section must in turn file in, never before, never after, no parasitic member being allowed to intrude, and no regular member being allowed to encroach on its neighbor, while all these members bound together by their very positions must move onward, combining all their forces on one single point. Finally, we have for the first time in a writing, natural and distinct groups, complete and compact harmonies, none of which infringe on the others or allow others to infringe on them. It is no longer allowable to write haphazard, according to the caprice of one's inspiration, to discharge one's ideas in bulk, to let oneself be interrupted by parentheses, to string along interminable rows of citations and enumerations. An end is proposed; some truth is to be demonstrated, some definition to be ascertained, some conviction to be brought about; to do this we must march, and ever directly onward. Order, sequence, progress, proper transitions, constant development const.i.tute the characteristics of this style. To such an extent is this pushed, that from the very first, personal correspondence, romances, humorous pieces, and all ironical and gallant effusions, consist of morsels of systematic eloquence.[3222] At the Hotel Rambouillet, the explanatory period is displayed with as much fullness and as rigorously as with Descartes himself. One of the words most frequently occurring with Mme. de Scudery is the conjunction for (in French car). Pa.s.sion is worked out through close-knit arguments.

Drawing room compliments stretch along in sentences as finished as those of an academical dissertation. Scarcely completed, the instrument already discloses its apt.i.tudes. We are aware of its being made to explain, to demonstrate, to persuade and to popularize. Condillac, a century later, is justified in saying that it is in itself a systematic means of decomposition and of recomposition, a scientific method a.n.a.logous to arithmetic and algebra. At the very least it possesses the incontestable advantage of starting with a few ordinary terms, and of leading the reader along with facility and promptness, by a series of simple combinations, up to the loftiest.[3223] By virtue of this, in 1789, the French tongue ranks above every other. The Berlin Academy promises a prize to for anyone who best can explain its pre-eminence. It is spoken throughout Europe. No other language is used in diplomacy. As formerly with Latin, it is international, and appears that, from now on, it is to be the preferred tool whenever men are to reason.

It is the organ only of a certain kind of reasoning, la raison raisonnante, that requiring the least preparation for thought, giving itself as little trouble as possible, content with its acquisitions, taking no pains to increase or renew them, incapable of, or unwilling to embrace the plenitude and complexity of the facts of real life. In its purism, in its disdain of terms suited to the occasion, in its avoidance of lively sallies, in the extreme regularity of its developments, the cla.s.sic style is powerless to fully portray or to record the infinite and varied details of experience. It rejects any description of the outward appearance of reality, the immediate impressions of the eyewitness, the heights and depths of pa.s.sion, the physiognomy, at once so composite yet absolute personal, of the breathing individual, in short, that unique harmony of countless traits, blended together and animated, which compose not human character in general but one particular personality, and which a Saint-Simon, a Balzac, or a Shakespeare himself could not render if the rich language they used, and which was enhanced by their temerities, did not contribute its subtleties to the multiplied details of their observation.[3224]

Neither the Bible, nor Homer, nor Dante, nor Shakespeare[3225] could be translated with this style. Read Hamlet's monologue in Voltaire and see what remains of it, an abstract piece of declamation, with about as much of the original in it as there is of Oth.e.l.lo in his Orosmane. Look at Homer and then at Fenelon in the island of Calypso; the wild, rocky island, where "gulls and other sea-birds with long wings," build their nests, becomes in pure French prose an orderly park arranged "for the pleasure of the eye." In the eighteenth century, contemporary novelists, themselves belonging to the cla.s.sic epoch, Fielding, Swift, Defoe, Sterne and Richardson, are admitted into France only after excisions and much weakening; their expressions are too free and their scenes are to impressive; their freedom, their coa.r.s.eness, their peculiarities, would form blemishes; the translator abbreviates, softens, and sometimes, in his preface, apologizes for what he retains. Room is found, in this language, only for a partial lifelikeness, for some of the truth, a scanty portion, and which constant refining daily renders still more scanty. Considered in itself, the cla.s.sic style is always tempted to accept slight, insubstantial commonplaces for its subject materials.

It spins them out, mingles and weaves them together; only a fragile filigree, however, issues from its logical apparatus; we may admire the elegant workmanship; but in practice, the work is of little, none, or negative service.

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