The Ancient Regime Part 24

"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 cla.s.sic 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 subst.i.tute 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 a.s.sembly, 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 Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, "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 t.i.tles, 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 const.i.tutes the final result and complete triumph of the cla.s.sic 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 ent.i.tled.]

[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 cla.s.ses 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 inst.i.tutions 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 pa.s.sions 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, a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sembly, 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 n.o.body. And we think that we could ourselves have discovered the reasons which occur naturally to others, if only we had looked in the same direction.') (SR.)]

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

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

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

[Footnote 3419: De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien regime," book II. entire, and book III. ch. 3.]

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

[Footnote 3421: Ibidem I. 9. "The State in relation to its members is master of all their possessions according to the social compact. . .

possessors are considered as depositaries of the public wealth."]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BOOK FOURTH. THE PROPAGATION OF THE DOCTRINE.

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

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