The Modern Regime Volume II Part 16

But this instruction can be healthy only through a series of preliminary and convergent judgments, insinuating into all minds the final approval and well-founded admiration of the existing regime. Accordingly, the historian must feel at each line" the defects of the ancient regime, "the influence of the court of Rome, of confessional tickets, of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, of the ridiculous marriage of Louis XIV. with Madame de Maintenon, the perpetual disorder in the finances, the pretensions of the parliament, the want of rules and leadership in the administration,.. in such a way that one breathes on reaching the epoch when one enjoys the benefits of that which is due to the unity of the laws, administration and territory." The constant feebleness of the government under Louis XIV, even, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI., "should inspire the need of sustaining the newly accomplished work and its acquired preponderance." On the 18th of Brumaire (19-11-1799), France came into port; the Revolution must be spoken of only as a final, fatal and inevitable tempest.[6250] "When that work, well done and written in a right direction, appears, n.o.body will have the will or the patience to write another, especially when, far from being encouraged by the police, one will be discouraged by it." In this way, the government which, in relation to the young, has awarded to itself the monopoly of teaching, awards to itself in relation to adults, the monopoly of history.

V. On Censorship under Napoleon.

Measures against writers so called and popularizers.

--Censorship, control of theaters, publications and printing.

--Extent and minuteness of the repression.--Persistency in direction and impulsion.--The logical completeness and beauty of the whole system his final object.--How he accomplishes his own destruction.

If Napoleon in this manner takes precautions against those who think, it is only because their thoughts, should they be written down, might reach the public,[6251] and only the sovereign alone has the right to talk in public. Between writer and readers, every communication is intercepted beforehand by a triple and quadruple line of defenses through which a long, tortuous and narrow wicket is the only pa.s.sage, and where the ma.n.u.script, like a bundle of suspicious goods, is overhauled and repeatedly verified after having obtained its free certificate and its permit of circulation. Napoleon declares "the printing-office[6252] to be an a.r.s.enal which must not be within the reach of everybody... It is very important for me that only those be allowed to print who have the confidence of the government. A man who addresses the public in print is like the man who speaks in public in an a.s.sembly, and certainly no one can dispute the sovereign's right to prevent the first comer from haranguing the public."--On the strength of this, he makes publishing a privileged, authorized and regulated office of the State. The writer, consequently, before reaching the public, must previously undergo the scrutiny of the printer and bookseller, who, both responsible, sworn and patented, will take good care not to risk their patent, the loss of their daily bread, ruin, and, besides this, a fine and imprisonment.--In the second place, the printer, the bookseller and the author are obliged to place the ma.n.u.script or, by way of toleration, the work as it goes through the press, in the hands of the official censors;[6253] the latter read it and make their weekly report to the general director of publications; they indicate the good or bad spirit of the work, the "unsuitable or forbidden pa.s.sages according to circ.u.mstances,"

the intended, involuntary or merely possible allusions; they exact the necessary suppressions, rectifications and additions. The publisher obeys, the printers furnish proofs, and the author has submitted; his proceedings and attendance in the bureaux are at end. He thinks himself safe in port, but he is not.

Through an express reservation, the director-general always has the right to suppress works, "even after they have been examined, printed and authorized to appear." In addition to this, the minister of the police,[6254] who, above the director-general, likewise has his censorship bureau, may, in his own right, place seals on the sheets already printed, destroy the plates and forms in the printing-office, send a thousand copies of the "Germany" by Madame de Stael to the paper-mill, "take measures to see that not a sheet remains," demand of the author his ma.n.u.script, recover from the author's friends the two copies he has lent to them, and take back from the director-general himself the two copies for his service locked up in a drawer in his cabinet.--Two years before this, Napoleon said to Auguste de Stael,[6255]

"Your mother is not bad. She has intelligence, a good deal of intelligence. But she is unaccustomed to any kind of discipline. She would not be six months in Paris before I should be obliged to put her in the Temple or at Bicetre. I should be sorry to do this, because it would make a noise and that would injure me in public Opinion."

It makes but little difference whether she abstains from talking politics: "people talk politics in talking about literature, the fine arts and morality, about everything in the world; women should busy themselves with their knitting," and men keep silent or, if they do talk, let it be on a given subject and in the sense prescribed.

Of course, the inspection of publications is still more rigorous and more repressive, more exacting and more persistent.--At the theatre, where the a.s.sembled spectators become enthusiastic through the quick contagion of their sensibilities, the police cut out of the "Heraclius"

of Corneille and the "Athalie" of Racine[6256] from twelve to twenty-five consecutive lines and patch up the broken pa.s.sages as carefully as possible with lines or parts of lines of their own.--On the periodical press, on the newspaper which has acquired a body of readers and which exercises an influence and groups its subscribers according to an opinion, if not political, at least philosophic and literary, there is a compression which goes even as far as utter ruin. From the beginning of the Consulate,[6257] sixty out of seventy-three political journals are suppressed; in 1811, the thirteen that still existed are reduced to four and the editors-in-chief are appointed by the minister of police. The property of these journals, on the other hand, is confiscated, while the Emperor, who had taken it, concedes it, one third to his police and the other two thirds to people of the court or litterateurs who are his functionaries or his creatures. Under this always aggravated system the newspapers, from year to year, become so barren that the police, to interest and amuse the public, contrive a pen warfare in their columns between one amateur of French music and one of Italian music.

Books, almost as rigorously kept within bounds, are mutilated or prevented from appearing.[6258] Chateaubriand is forbidden to reprint his "Essay on Revolutions," published in London under the Directory. In "L'Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem" he is compelled to cut out "a good deal of declamation on courts, courtiers and certain features calculated to excite misplaced allusions." The censorship interdicts the "Dernier des Abencerrages," where" it finds too warm an interest in the Spanish cause." One must read the entire register to see it at work and in detail, to feel the sinister and grotesque minutia with which it pursues and destroys, not alone among great or petty writers but, again, among compilers and insignificant abbreviators, in a translation, in a dictionary, in a manual, in an almanac, not only ideas but suggestions, echoes, semblances and oversights in thinking, the possibilities of awakening reflection and comparison:

* every souvenir of the ancient regime, this or that mention of Kleber or Moreau, or a particular conversation of Sully and Henry IV.;

* "a game of loto,[6259] which familiarizes youth with the history of their country," but which says too much about "the family of the grand-dauphin of Louis XVI. and his aunts";

* the general work of the reveries of Cagliostro and of M. Henri de Saint-Mesmin, very laudatory of the Emperor, excellent "for filling the soul of Frenchmen with his presence, but which must leave out three awkward comparisons that might be detected by the malevolent or the foolish;"

* the "translation into French verse of several of David's psalms,"

which are not dangerous in Latin but which, in French, have the defect of a possible application, through coincidence and prophecy, to the Church as suffering, and to religion as persecuted;

and quant.i.ties of other literary insects hatched in the depths of publication, nearly all ephemeral, crawling and imperceptible, but which the censor, through zeal and his trade, considers as fearsome dragons whose heads must be smashed or their teeth extracted.

After the next brood they prove inoffensive, and, better still, are useful, especially the almanacs,[6260] "in rectifying on various points the people's att.i.tudes. It will probably be possible after 1812 to control their composition, and they are filled with anecdotes, songs and stories adapted to the maintenance of patriotism and of devotion to the sacred person of His Majesty and to the Napoleonic dynasty."--To this end, the police likewise improves, orders and pays for dramatic or lyric productions of all kinds, cantatas, ballets, impromptus, vaudevilles, comedies, grand-operas, comic operas, a hundred and seventy-six works in one day, composed for the birth of the King of Rome and paid for in rewards to the sum of 88,400 francs. Let the administration look to this beforehand so as to raise up talent and have it bear good fruit.

"Complaints are made because we have no literature;[6261] it is the fault of the minister of the interior. Napoleon personally and in the height of a campaign interposes in theatrical matters. Whether far away in Prussia or at home in France, he leads tragic authors by the hand, Raynouard, Legouve, Luce de Lancival; he listens to the first reading of the "Mort d'Henri IV." and the "etats de Blois." He gives to Gardel, a ballet-composer, "a fine theme in the Return of Ulysses." He explains to authors how dramatic effect should, in their hands, become a political lesson; for lack of anything better, and waiting for these to comprehend it, he uses the theatre the same as a tribune for the reading to the spectators of his bulletins of the grand army.

On the other hand, in the daily newspapers, he is his own advocate, the most vehement, the haughtiest, the most powerful of polemics. For a long time, in the "Moniteur," he himself dictates articles which are known by his style. After Austerlitz, he has no time to do this, but he inspires them all and they are prepared under his orders. In the "Moniteur" and other gazettes, it is his voice which, directly or by his spokesmen, reaches the public; it alone prevails and one may divine what it utters!

The official acclaim of every group or authority in the State again swell the one great, constant, triumphant adulatory hymn which, with its insistence, unanimity and violent sonorities, tends to bewilder all minds, deaden consciences and pervert the judgment.

"Were it open to doubt," says a member of the tribunate,[6262] "whether heaven or chance gives sovereigns on earth, would it not be evident for us that we owe our Emperor to some divinity?"

Another of the choir then takes up the theme in a minor key and thus sings the victory of Austerlitz:

"Europe, threatened by a new invasion of the barbarians, owes its safety to the genius of another Charles Martel."

Similar cantatas follow, intoned in the senate and lower house by Lacepede, Perignon and Garat, and then, in each diocese, by the bishops, some of whom, in their pastoral letters, raise themselves up to the technical considerations of military art, and, the better to praise the Emperor, explain to their parishioners the admirable combinations of his strategic genius.

And truly, his strategy is admirable, lately against Catholic ideas and now against the secular mind. First of all, he has extended, selected and defined his field of operations, and here is his objective point, fixed by himself:

"On public affairs, which are my affairs in political, social and moral matters, on history, and especially on actual history, recent and modern, n.o.body of the present generation is to give any thought but myself and, in the next generation, everybody will follow my example."[6263]

The monopoly of education therefore belongs to him. He has introduced military uniforms, discipline and spirit into all the public and private secondary educational establishments. He has reduced and subjected the ecclesiastical superintendence of primary education to the minimum. He has removed the last vestige of regional, encyclopedic and autonomous universities and subst.i.tuted for these special and professional schools, He has rendered veritable superior instruction abortive and stifled all spontaneous and disinterested curiosity in youth.--Meanwhile ascending to the source of secular knowledge, he has brought the Inst.i.tute under his influence. On this government tool he has effected the necessary cuts, appropriated the credit to himself and imposed his favor or disfavor on the masters of science and literature. Then, descending from the source to the ca.n.a.ls, constructing dams, arranging channels, applying his constraints and impulsions, he has subjected science and literature to his police, to his censorship and to his control of publishing and printing. He has taken possession of all the media--theatres, newspapers, books, pulpits and tribunes. He has organized all these into one vast industry which he watches over and directs, a factory of public att.i.tudes which works unceasingly and in his hands to the glorification of his system, reign and person.[6264]

Again here, he is found equal and similar to himself, a stern conqueror making the most of his conquest to the last extreme, a shrewd operator as meticulous as he is shrewd, as resourceful as he is consequent, incomparable in adapting means to ends, unscrupulous in carrying them out,[6265] fully satisfied that, through the constant physical pressure of universal and crushing dread, all resistance would be overcome. He is maintaining and prolonging the struggle with colossal forces, but against a historic and natural force lying beyond his grasp, lately against belief founded on religious instinct and on tradition, and now against evidence engendered by realities and by the agency of the testing process. Consequently, obliged to forbid the testing process, to falsify things, to disfigure the reality, to deny the evidence, to lie daily and each day more outrageously,[6266] to acc.u.mulate glaring acts so as to impose silence, to arouse by this silence and by these lies[6267] the attention and perspicacity of the public, to transform almost mute whispers into sounding words and insufficient eulogies into open protestations. In short, weakened by his own success and condemned beforehand to succ.u.mb under his victories, to disappear after a short triumph, Napoleon will leave intact and erect the indestructible rival (science and knowledge) whom he would like to crush as an adversary but turn to account as an instrument.[6268]

[Footnote 6201: Lamennais, "Du Progres de la Revolution," p.163.]

[Footnote 6202: Any socialist or social-nationalist leader would undoubtedly have been impressed by Napoleon's ability to control and dominate his admiring people and do their best to copy his methods.

(SR.)]

[Footnote 6203: "The Modern Regime," I., 247.]

[Footnote 6204: Pelet de la Lozere, p. 159.]

[Footnote 6205: Maggiolo, "Les ecoles en Lorraine avant et apres 1789,"

3rd part, p.22 and following pages. (Details on the foundation or the revival of primary schools in four departments after 1802.) Sometimes, the master is the one who taught before 1789, and his salary is always the same as at that time; I estimate that, in a village of an average size, he might earn in all between 500 and 600 francs a year; his situation improves slowly and remains humble and wretched down to the law of 1833.--There are no normal schools for the education of primary instructors except one at Strasbourg established in 1811 by the prefect, and the promise of another after the return from Elba, April 27, 1815.

Hence the teaching staff is of poor quality, picked up here and there haphazard. But, as the small schools satisfy a felt want, they increase.

In 1815, there are more than 22,000, about as many as in 1789; in the four departments examined by M. Maggiolo there are almost as many as there are communes.--Nevertheless, elsewhere, "in certain departments, it is not rare to find twenty or thirty communes in one arrondiss.e.m.e.nt with only one schoolmaster.... One who can read and write is consulted by his neighbors the same as a doctor."--("Ambroise Rendu," by E.

Rendu, p.107, Report of 1817.)]

[Footnote 6206: Decree of May 1, 1802, articles 2, 4 and 5.--Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 5, 8 and 117.]

[Footnote 6207: E. Rendu, Ibid., pp.39 and 41]

[Footnote 6208: Id., ibid., 41. (Answers of approval of the bishops, letter of the archbishop of Bordeaux, May 29, 1808.) "There are only too many schools whose instructors neither give lessons nor set examples of Catholicism or even of Christianity. It is very desirable that these wicked men should not be allowed to teach."]

[Footnote 6209: Decree of Nov. 15, 1911, article 192.--Cf. the decree of March 17, 1808, article 6. "The small primary schools are those where one learns to read, write and cipher."--Ibid., -- 3, article 5, definition of boarding-schools and secondary communal schools. This definition is rendered still more precise in the decree of Nov.15, 1811, article 16.]

[Footnote 6210: Pelet de la Lozere, ibid. 175. (Words of Napoleon before the Council of State, May 21, 180.)]

[Footnote 6211: Alexis Chevalier, "Les Freres des ecoles chretiennes pendant la Revolution," 93. (Report by Portalis approved by the First Consul, Frimaire 10, year XII.)]

[Footnote 6212: Like in the socialist and national-socialist parties and trade unions which were to dominate the Western democracies throughout the 20th century. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6213: "Ambroise Rendu," by E. Rendu, P.42.]

[Footnote 6214: D'Haussonville, "L'eglise romaine et le premier Empire,"

II.,257, 266. (Report of Portalis to the Emperor, Feb. 13, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6215: Here Taine describes what today is often named as being the "state of the art." (SR.)]

[Footnote 6216: Cuvier, "Rapport sur l'instruction publique dans les nouveaux departements de la ba.s.se Allemagne, fait en execution du decret du 13 novembre 1810," pp. 4-8. "The principle and aim of each university is to have courses of lectures on every branch of human knowledge if there are any pupils who desire this... No professor can hinder his colleague from treating the same subjects as himself; most of their increase depends on the remuneration of the pupils which excites the greatest emulation in their work."--The university, generally, is in some small town; the student has no society but that of his comrades and his professors; again, the university has jurisdiction over him and itself exercises its rights of oversight and police. "Living in their families, with no public amus.e.m.e.nts, with no distractions, the middle-cla.s.s Germans, especially in North Germany, regard reading, study and meditation as their chief pleasures and main necessity; they study to learn rather than to prepare themselves for a lucrative profession.....The theologian scrutinizes even to their roots the truth of morality and of natural theology. As to positive religion he wishes to know its history and will study in the original tongue sacred writings and all the languages relating to it that may throw light on it; he desires to possess the details of Church history and become acquainted with the usages of one century after another and the motives of the changes which took place.--The law student is not content with a knowledge of the code of his country; in his studies everything must be related to the general principles of natural and political laws. He must know the history of rights at all epochs, and, consequently, he has need of the political history of nations; he must be familiar with the various European const.i.tutions, and be able to read the diplomas and charters of all ages; the complex German legislation obliges him, and will for a long time, to know the canon laws of both religious, of feudal and public law, as well as of civil and criminal law; and if the means of verifying at its sources all that is taught to him are not afforded to him, he regards instruction as cut short and insufficient."]

[Footnote 6217: Louis Liard, "L'Enseignement superieur en France,"