The Cult of Incompetence Part 10

--The law may be tyrannical. It is tyrannical if it is unjust.--

The law has the right to be unjust. Otherwise the sovereignty of the people would be limited and this must not be.

--Fundamental and const.i.tutional laws might be devised to limit this sovereignty of the people in order to guarantee such and such of the liberties for the individual.--

And the people would then be tied! The sovereignty of the people would be suppressed! No, the people cannot be tied. The sovereignty of the people is fundamental and must be left intact.

--Then there will be no individual liberty?--

Only such a measure as the people will tolerate.

--Then there will be no liberty of a.s.sociation?

Still less; for an a.s.sociation is in itself a limitation of the sovereignty of the nation. It has its own laws, which from a democratic point of view is an absurd and monstrous incongruity. The right of a.s.sociation limits the national sovereignty, just as would a free town or sanctuary of refuge. It limits the nation, and pulls it up short in face of its closed doors. It is a State within a State; where there is a.s.sociation, there arises at once a source of organisation other than the great organism of the popular will. It is like an animal which lives some sort of independent life within another animal larger than itself and which, living on that other animal, is still independent of it. In fact there can be only one a.s.sociation, the a.s.sociation of the nation, otherwise the sovereignty of the nation is limited, that is, destroyed.

No liberty of a.s.sociation can then exist.

a.s.sociations of course will exist which the people will tolerate, but their right of existence is always revocable and they are always liable to be dissolved and destroyed. Otherwise the national sovereignty would be held to abdicate and it can never abdicate.

--Ah! but there is one a.s.sociation, at least, which to some extent is sacred, and which the sovereignty of the people is bound to respect. I mean the family. The father is the head of the family, he educates his children and brings them up as he thinks best, till they come to man's estate.--

Nay, that will not pa.s.s! For here again we have a limitation of the sovereignty of the nation. The child does not belong to his father. If this were so, at the threshold of each home the sovereignty of the people would be arrested, which means that it would cease to exist anywhere. The child, like the man, belongs to the people. He belongs to it, in the sense that he must not be a member of an a.s.sociation which might dare to think differently from the people, or perhaps even harbour ideas in contradiction to the thought of the people. It would indeed be dangerous to leave our future citizens for twenty years outside the national thought, which is the same thing as being outside the community. Imagine five or six bees brought up apart, outside the laws, regulations, and const.i.tution of the hive; imagine further that of these groups of bees there were several hundreds in the hive. The result would be the destruction of the hive.

It is _above all things_ in the family that the sovereignty of the people ought to prevail. It ought above all things to refuse to recognise the a.s.sociation of the family, and to wage war against it wherever it finds it. It should leave to parents the right of embracing their children, but nothing more. The right to educate them in ideas perhaps contrary to those of their parents belongs to the people, which, here as well as elsewhere, perhaps even more than elsewhere for the interests at stake are more important, must be absolutely sovereign.

This, then, is what the schoolmaster, with a relentless logic which appears to me to be irresistible, deduces from the principle of the national sovereignty.

From the principle of equality he deduces another point. "All men are equal by nature and before the law." That is to say, if there were justice, all men ought to have been equal by nature, and further, if there is to be justice, all men ought to be equal before the law.

Very obviously, however, all men are not equal before the law, and they are not equal by nature. Very well then, we must make them so.

They are not equal before the law. They appear to be so, but they are not. The rich man, even supposing that the magistrates are perfectly and strictly honest, by reason of the fact that he can remunerate the best solicitors, advocates, and witnesses, by reason further of the fact that he intimidates by his influence all those who could appear against him, is not in every respect the equal of the poor man before the law.

Even less does this equality exist in the presence of that union of const.i.tuted social forces which we call society. In this respect the rich man will be the "influential man"; the "man well connected," the man on whom no one depends, but whom no one likes to cross or to contradict. There is, between the rich and the poor man, however equal we may pretend them to be before the law, the difference between the man who gives orders and the man who is obliged to obey. _Real_ equality, in society, in presence of society and even in presence of the law, only exists where there is neither rich nor poor.

But there will always be rich and poor, as long as the inst.i.tution of inheritance remains. Abolish inheritance therefore!

But, even with inheritance abolished, there will still be rich and poor.

The man who can make his fortune rapidly will be a strong man relatively to the man who can not make a fortune, and, I would have you note it, even when we have abolished inheritance, the son of the strong man, during the life of his father, will be strong himself, so that even if we abolish inheritance, a privilege, namely, the privilege of birth will still exist and equality will not exist.

There is only one state of affairs under which equality is possible, that is when no one possesses and no one can acquire anything. The only social policy so devised that no one can possess and no one can acquire anything is the policy of a community of goods, that is Communism or Collectivism. Collectivism is nothing very wonderful. Collectivism is equality; and equality is collectivism, otherwise our equality will be nothing but a phantom and an hypocrisy. Every one who is a convinced and sincere _egalitarian_, and who takes the trouble to think, is forced to be a collectivist. Bonald asked very wittily: "Do you know what is a deist? It is a man who has not lived long enough to be an atheist." We in our turn ask: "Do you know what is an anti-collectivist democrat? It is a man who has not lived long enough to be a collectivist, or who, having lived long enough, has never taken the trouble to think, and to perceive what are the necessary consequences of his own principles."

But surely collectivism is a chimaera, an utopia, a thing impossible.

Certainly it is impossible in the sense that in the country which adopts it the source of all initiative will be destroyed. No man will make an effort to improve his position, since it must never be improved. The whole country will become one of those stagnant pools to which one of our ministers lately referred. Everyone having become an official, everyone will realise the ideal of the official which the Goncourts have very neatly described. "The good official," they say, "is the man who combines laziness with extreme accuracy." It is a definitive definition. The country that reformed itself in this way would be conquered at the end of ten years by some neighbouring people more or less ambitious.

That admits of no question; but what does it prove? That collectivism is only impossible because it is only possible if established in every country at once. Very well, and in order to establish it in every country at once, only one thing is needful, namely, that there shall no longer be distinct and separate countries and no longer any nationalities. It surely will not answer to establish collectivism before the abolition of nationalities, since, once established, it will serve no purpose except to bring into prominent relief the vast superiority of countries which have not adopted collectivism. We must, therefore, take our problems in order and abolish nationalities before we can establish collectivism.

Now if nations organise themselves against nature (the nature that, the schoolmaster a.s.sumes, makes all men equal), if instinctively they organise themselves in a hierarchy which is aristocratic, if they have their leaders and their subordinates, their stronger and their weaker members, it is because this arrangement is necessary in a camp, and each nation feels that it is a camp. If each feels that it is a camp, it is simply because there are other nations round it, because it feels and knows that there are others round it. When there are no longer other nations, each nation will organise itself no longer against nature, but naturally, that is to say on _egalitarian_ principles. Nature perhaps strictly speaking is not _egalitarian_, but it tends towards equality in the sense that it produces many more, indeed infinitely more, mediocrities than superior intelligences.

Thus equality demands the abolition of inheritance, and the equality of possessions. Equality of possessions necessitates collectivism, and collectivism requires the abolition of nationalities. We are _egalitarians_, then collectivists, and by logical consequence anti-patriots.

So argue the great majority of school teachers, with an absolute logic, in my opinion, irrefutable, with the logic which takes no account of facts, and which only takes account of its own principle and of itself.

So they will all argue to-morrow, if they continue, as it is probable they will continue, to be very excellent dialecticians.

Will they go back to the premises and say, that if the sovereignty of the people and equality lead logically and imperatively to these conclusions, it is perhaps because the sovereignty of the people and equality are false ideas, and because these conclusions prove them to be false? This is a course not likely to be taken, for the sovereignty of the people and the principle of equality are something more than general ideas, they are sentiments.

They are sentiments which have become ideas, as is the case doubtless with all general ideas, and they are sentiments of great strength. The sovereignty of the people is the truth for him who believes in it, because it ought to be true, because it is a thing as full of majesty for him as was Caesar in all his pomp for the ancient Roman, or Louis XIV. in all his glory for the man of the seventeenth century.

Equality is truth for him who believes, because it ought to be true, because it is justice, and because it would be infamous if justice and truth were not one. For the democrat, the world has ever been rising gradually, since its creation, towards the sovereignty of the people and the doctrine of equality; the latter contains the former, the former is destined to found the latter and has this mission for its purpose in life; together they const.i.tute civilisation, and if they are not attained, there is a relapse into barbarism.

They are dogmas of faith. A dogma is an overmastering sentiment which has found expression in a formula. From these two dogmas everything that can be deduced without breach of logic is truth which it is our right and duty to proclaim.

We must add that the schoolmaster is urged in this same direction by sentiments of a less general character, which nevertheless have an influence of their own. He is placed in his commune in direct opposition to the priest, the only person very often who is, like himself, in that place a man of some little education. Hence rivalry and a struggle for influence. Now the priest, by a series of historical incidents, is a more or less warm partisan sometimes of monarchy but almost always of aristocracy. He is a member of a body that once was an estate of the realm, and he is persuaded that his corporation is still an estate of the realm, notwithstanding all that has happened. If the existing order is regulated by the _concordat_, the existing order recognises his corporation as a body legitimatised by the State, since it treats it on the same terms as the magistracy and the army. If the existing order is one based on the separation of State and Church, his corporation appears to him still more to be an estate of the realm, because being forced into an att.i.tude of solid organisation, and recognising no limitations of frontier, it becomes a collective personage which, not without peril, but also not without a certain measure of success, has often ventured to cross swords with the State itself.

As the priest then belongs to an order endowed with an historic authority which is nevertheless distinct from, and in no wise a delegation from, the authority of the people, the priest cannot fail more or less definitely and consciously to adopt an att.i.tude of mind favourable to aristocracy.

The school teacher, his rival, is thrown then all the more inevitably towards the adoption of democratic principles, and he embraces them with a fervour into which enters jealousy quite as much as conviction. They mean more to him than even to an eighteenth century philosopher, because he has a much greater personal interest in believing them, the interest of personal dislike and animosity; for it is his belief that everything taught by the priest is the pure invention of ingenious oppressors who wish to enslave the people in order to consolidate their own tyranny; and that is his reason for professing philosophical ideas resuscitated from the teaching of Diderot, and Holbach. For the school teacher it is almost inconceivable that the priest should be anything but a rascal.

"Atheism is aristocratic," said Robespierre, thinking of Rousseau.

Atheism is democratic, say our present-day school teachers. Whence comes this difference of opinion? First because it was fashionable among the great lords of the eighteenth century to be libertines and free-thinkers, but among the people the belief in G.o.d was unanimous.

Secondly, because the priests of our day, for the reasons which I have given and from remembrance of the persecutions suffered by their Church at the date of the first triumphs of democracy, have remained aristocrats or have become so even more firmly than they ever were before. Atheism then has become democratic as a weapon against the deists who are generally aristocrats.

Besides, atheism fits in very well, whatever Robespierre may have thought, with the general sentiments of the baser demagogy. To be restrained by nothing, to be limited by nothing, that is the dominant idea of the people, or rather it is the dominant idea of the democrat for the people, that it should be restrained by nothing and limited by nothing in its sovereign power. Now G.o.d is a limit, G.o.d is a restraint.

And just as the democrat will not admit of a secular const.i.tution which the people could not destroy and which would prevent him from making bad laws; just as the democrat will not submit--if we may adopt the terminology of Aristotle--to being governed by _laws_, to be governed that is by an ancient body of law which would check the people and obstruct it in its daily fabrication of _decrees_; so just in the same spirit the democrat does not admit of a G.o.d Who has issued His commandments, Who has issued His body of laws, anterior and superior to all the laws and all the decrees of men, and Who sets His limit on the legislative eccentricities of the people, on its capricious omnipotence, in a word, on the sovereignty of the people.

After Sedan, Bismarck was asked: "Now that Napoleon has fallen, on whom do you make war?" He replied: "On Louis XIV." So the democrat questioned on his atheism could reply: "I am warring against Moses."

This is the origin of the atheism of democrats and schoolmasters. This is the origin of the formula: "Neither G.o.d nor Master," which for the anarchist requires no correction nor supplement, which for the democrat has only to be modified: "Neither G.o.d nor Master, save the People."

At the end of one of his great political speeches in 1849 or 1850, Victor Hugo said: "In the future there will only be two powers; the People and G.o.d." The modern democrat has persuaded himself that if there be a G.o.d, the sovereignty of the people is infringed, if he believe in Him.

Lastly, the school teacher is confirmed in his democratic sentiments, in all his democratic sentiments, by the political position which has been made for him in France. It is a strange thing, a disconcerting anomaly, that the Governments of the nineteenth century (especially, we must do it this justice, the present Government), have very handsomely respected the liberty of professors of higher education, and of secondary education, and have not in the very slightest degree respected the liberty of the teachers of elementary education. The professor of higher education, especially since 1870, can teach exactly what he pleases, except immorality and contempt of our country and its laws. He can even discuss our laws, provided always that he maintains the principle that, such as they are, they ought to be obeyed till they are repealed. His liberty as to his opinions political, social and religious is complete.

It is only occasionally constrained by the disorderly demonstrations of his students. The professor of secondary education enjoys a liberty almost equally wide. He is subject, but only in an extremely liberal fashion, to a programme or syllabus of studies. As to the spirit in which he conducts his work he is practically never molested. He is given a free hand.

Nor has it ever occurred to any Government to ask a professor of higher and secondary education how he votes at political elections, still less to require him to canva.s.s in favour of the candidates agreeable to the Government.

When, however, we pa.s.s to elementary education we see everything is changed. The elementary teacher is not appointed by his natural chief, the _recteur_ or Minister of Public Education, he is appointed by the _prefet_, that is by the Minister of the Interior, the political head of the Government. In other words, this is the same process as the appointment of officials by the people, described a few pages back, but with one intermediary the less. It is pre-eminently the Minister of the Interior who represents the political will of the nation at any given date. And it is the Minister of the Interior who through his _prefets_ appoints the elementary school teacher. It is then the political will of the nation which chooses the school teachers. It would be impossible to convey to them more clearly (which is only fair, for people should be made to understand their duties) that they are chosen for considerations of politics and that they ought to consider themselves as political agents.

And indeed they are nothing else, or perhaps we should say they are something else but above all they are politicians. The schoolteachers depend on the _prefets_ and the _prefets_ depend much on the deputies, yet it is not the deputies who appoint them, but it is they who can remove them, who can get them promoted or disgraced, who by constant removals can reduce them to dest.i.tution. Surely, every candid person will exclaim, given the difficult and scandalous situation in which they are put by the hand which appoints them, they ought at least to have the guarantee and a.s.surance, very relative and ineffectual though it be, of irremovability. But they have not got it. The professors of higher education who do not require it have got it, the professors of secondary education have it to all intents and purposes. The elementary school teacher has it not.

He is, therefore, delivered over to the politicians who make of him an electioneering agent, who reckon him as such, and who would never pardon him if he failed them.

The result is that the majority of school teachers are demagogues because they like it, and with magnificent enthusiasm and pa.s.sion. The minority who have no turn for demagogy are demagogues though they do not like it, and because they are forced by necessity.

Even those who have no disposition that way become demagogues in the end, for that is the way of the world. "In the heat of the _melee_,"

said Augier, "there are no mercenaries." Our school teachers, thrown, sometimes against their will, into the battle, forced at least to appear to be fighting, receive knocks and when they have received them, they become attached to the cause on whose behalf they have suffered. We always end by having the opinions which are attributed to us, and being taken for a demagogue the moment he arrives at his village, the young school teacher, not daring to say anything to the contrary, and being very ill received by all other parties, naturally becomes a demagogue with some show of conviction the very next year.