The Ancient Regime Part 21

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 G.o.d;"[3313] let us tolerate in him this remnant of superst.i.tion 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 ma.s.s previous to the introduction of the germ. And what is it after the introduction of the germ? An insensible ma.s.s, 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, pa.s.sions 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 superst.i.tion, 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 s.p.a.ce, 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, appet.i.tes 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 s.p.a.ce; 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 s.e.xes 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 cla.s.sifies each according to its rank. He loves fine and pure tones, and is full of enthusiasm for n.o.ble harmonies; his heart is equal to his genius.[3320] And better still, on the question of primitive impulses arising, he a.s.signs, 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 a.s.sociated 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 appet.i.tes 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; embarra.s.s 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 inst.i.tution; 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 pa.s.sions 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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sion 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, a.n.a.logous 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 a.s.sembly 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 circ.u.mstances:

"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 const.i.tution, 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 fact.i.tious 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 n.o.ble 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 const.i.tute his full being.

"I am not merely a sensitive and pa.s.sive 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 a.s.sociations; 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 surpa.s.s brutes, but again the inclinations in common with animals, the instinct of self-preservation and of self-defense, the need of physical activity, s.e.xual appet.i.te, 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 inst.i.tutions 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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 n.o.bility inseparable from my happiness. It is my right; nature and Providence summon me to it; it is my heritage. One arbitrary inst.i.tution 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 fact.i.tious, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sions. "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 n.o.ble 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 cla.s.ses, 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 princ.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, 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 a.s.sert 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 mult.i.tude 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 att.i.tude, 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.saults, the murders and the a.s.sa.s.sinations 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 pa.s.s 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 ent.i.tlements 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 pa.s.sing by. In a word all a.s.sistance 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 t.i.tle 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 mult.i.tude 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 inst.i.tutions 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 inst.i.tutions have been undermined from below.

The governing ideology has withdrawn all authority from custom, from religion, from the State. Not only is it a.s.sumed 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 superst.i.tion 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 G.o.d, the proof of his existence, the veracity of our intelligence demonstrated the veracity of G.o.d, 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."]