Meditations and Moral Sketches

by François Guizot

How great, too, the knowledge displayed of the true conditions of moral authority! It is not acquaintance with the nature of man, but power over him, that the Gospel seeks. Yet to influence men morally, it is needful both to love and reform them; to win their confidence by love and their respect by severity. Severity and love are the two engines wherewith to control the heart of man, for men know by instinct their moral wants—those which press them down as well as those which please them. They are deeply troubled by the sense of their imperfections; they wish to be raised. Love felt and inspired is at once their noblest and their most lively joy; they desire to love and be beloved. Complete control over them, I mean moral control, involves these two conditions,—that much be required from them of virtue, much be bestowed on them of love.

The last century had thus much good; it loved mankind and men. It bore a really deep affection to them, and wished them well. But as it was a critical and reasoning age, the sentiment of love often disguised itself in the dress and shape of controversy and analysis. Nevertheless, the feeling was there, sincere and powerful. That spirit of universal justice and humanity which characterized the epoch, whence did it spring if not from a lively sympathy with man, and a tender interest in his welfare?

But, together with this virtue, the last century certainly exhibited one great defect; it did not feel for evil the aversion it deserves. Not only as regarded certain rules of conduct and certain duties, but as concerned a rule in general and the very principle of duty, the spirits of the day were victims to doubt, that great corrupter of the human heart. In the moral system, stability and elevation go together; to waver is to descend; uncertainty is the sign and the cause of abasement. Not knowing where the evil existed, or even if it did exist, the eighteenth century denied or excused it when met with, instead of execrating and opposing it to the utmost.

And with the fixed points the long perspectives disappeared. By an admirable law of his nature, in order that man may hope he must believe, and believe in good. Virtue alone demands an eternity. Doubting about duty, they doubted their own future. Moral faith tottered; God veiled his countenance.

In such a state of mind, in an age which loved man and interested itself about him, man must have been an object of pity. What a destiny was that of a creature thus powerful yet faltering; always in motion, yet not knowing where to fix his foot firmly in this world, or where to fix his gaze beyond it! To aspire so high, in order to fall low and pass away so quickly! Such ambition without a worthy object! Such labour without any sure results! What father, if he thought his child were reserved for such a lot, but would feel overwhelmed by compassion and grief?

But no! at the same time that the last century loved men it admired them; and I can understand this. God and duty being abandoned, what remains of great and good if it be not man? Imperfect as is human nature, a mixture of good and evil, good is found there; the power of good makes itself felt. All that it possesses of what is elevated, rich, tender, or attractive, does not necessarily vanish because the mind misunderstands its source and government. And if it should happen, as it then did, that these great mental errors should occur in the midst of a period of great intellectual developement, of a great outflowing of sympathetic and noble sentiments, of a great march in the condition of mankind; if, at the moment when man rises highest and shines with most brilliancy, he loses sight of his compass, his God, how can he do otherwise than admire himself? how avoid a feeling of pride? He has no longer faith or hope on high, yet he advances, prospers, becomes rich, triumphs. He must believe; he must hope in himself; he must worship himself. Does religion fall? Then idolatry must arise, the idolatry of man for man. Man was the god of the eighteenth century, the object of worship as well as of love. Thence a great and deplorable leaning to human nature, to its weaknesses and inclinations. It was loved, but with a blind and weak love, which could only approve, caress, and promise, having nothing to advise, nothing to require.

Thence an immoderate thirst, in the name of and for man, of immediate worldly and palpable happiness. Loving man truly, and having nothing to offer him in this world superior to this world's happiness, nothing better or eternal beyond, it was necessary that men should be happy, that all should be happy here below; as here below their destiny and their treasure were contained. To accept the imperfect condition of humanity may be the part of selfishness which cares for nothing, and of faith which hopes for everything; but he who loves men, and yet can only dispose in their favour the blessings of this life and this world, cannot resign himself to a lot for the most part so rude, to progress so slow and always so incomplete. He is compelled to find much more to bestow on men, to distribute something, and at once, to all. And as spirits imbued with so noble a longing do not dream of the impossibility of satisfying it, they are compelled to assign to the sufferings and hardships of the human state an accidental and factitious cause, one which human wisdom and power can overcome. Hence the other maxim of the last century, that, left to themselves and their natural equilibrium, men and things go on well; that evil proceeds not from our innate nature and state, but merely from the ill regulated state of society, where the few have substituted their will and interest for the wills and interests of the many; that it is society and not men that need reformation, as the latter would not need it had not society corrupted him.

A maxim which has given rise, and naturally, to the sorest and most plausible of modern grievances, that incurable impatience of whatever is, that boundless disquiet, that insatiable thirst for change in the pursuit of a social condition which shall give at last to man, to every man, all the happiness to which he aspires.