Meditations and Moral Sketches

by François Guizot

This is the state in which the eighteenth century has placed men's souls. And I here speak of upright, honest, and sincere minds, not carried away by selfishness, not domineered over by evil passions, which think of others, and only wish for themselves as well as for those others what they consider legitimate.

The great mistakes and ills of any epoch are those of the good. These must be looked to and provided against, for there lies the hidden danger. Who can struggle against ill if the good are themselves infected with it?

I have seen the last of the master spirits of the eighteenth century—those who had remained faithful to it. I have seen them emerging from our revolution after their fearful experience of it. The condition of their minds was a touching and instructive spectacle. They were sorrowful, but not discouraged; full of esteem and affection for mankind; full of confidence and hope despite so many mistakes and reverses. The same fertility of wit, the same generosity of heart, the same spirit of justice and progress animated them. They accounted for their momentary failure by the violence of passion, the force of old habits, the want of public intelligence, the too hasty application of good principles carried to too great a length. And while their explanation bore witness to their sincerity and perseverance, still there was visible and perceptible in them at every step a persistance in the same mistakes; the same absence of moral dogma and religious faith; the same idolatry of man, the same tenderness towards him, the same pretensions for him. They had lost nothing of their noble ambition or tender sympathy for human nature, but they had learned nothing of its inward laws nor of the true methods for its government.

Thus a secret feeling of disquiet was apparent through the constancy of their ideas and of their hope; and they remained melancholy after their explanation, as if hardly satisfied with it themselves.

We are far in advance of our fathers. "I was carried here by a cannon shot," said Danton to M. de Talleyrand, who saw him at the Ministere de la Justice. The same shot has carried us all a hundred leagues from our cradle. We have learnt much. We have seen novel appearances under a new light. The intelligence and power of man; his reason, his morality, his power of action, and resistance to direction and restraint in the affairs of the world; all has been put to the proof, gauged, and measured. We know how deeply seated and closely hidden is the evil in our nature, yet how readily and terribly it occasionally breaks out. We know the bounds both of our spirit and of our will. We have been powerful, immensely powerful; and yet we have been unable to accomplish our will because it was in opposition to the laws of eternal wisdom, and our power was shivered against them like glass. At this price, we have acquired a more accurate and profound knowledge of ourselves and our condition. We no longer put ourselves off with desires or arguments, appearances or hopes. We see that which is. We live more than our fathers did in the truth. We are wiser and more modest.

But our wisdom has one grave defect. It is still, if I may so speak, but an outward good, which influences our life and conduct, but has not yet penetrated our soul and become for us a moral property, a moral wealth. It redounds to the honour and greatness of man that he is not content with what is, merely because it is. The mere fact does not suffice; he wishes to see more. For the fact he would discover an end, a reason. He wishes to attach it to the laws of his own inward nature, his own destiny; to feel it in relation to and harmony with his soul. Then only in man's eyes does a fact assume a moral aspect and acquire a moral power; then only does man accept it and obey it with respect as truth, instead of yielding and submitting to it with pain as a necessity. Moreover, we do not yet understand all the lessons of experience which we have received and recognized. They have not yet assumed in our moral being the rank which belongs to them. They are for us unimpeachable facts rather than great and good laws; and mistakes rather than progress. They direct more than they have enlightened us, and if we conform our actions and thoughts to them, it is because we are subdued rather than convinced.

Were it not so, why this dejection, this secret disgust, this indifference, this bluntness, this chill which now so often accompany wisdom and sound sense? You say you are discouraged, you do not hope, you do not dare any more to attempt aught that is difficult and great. What then has happened? What has this experience, at the same time so much vaunted and so mournful, taught you? That duty, not interest or passion, is the principle of morality; that God has not ceased to watch over the world; that he resists the proud and punishes the guilty; that order has her natural and inviolable laws, and avenges herself on those who mistake them; that evil, always present, always at our door, in us and about us, needs to be incessantly resisted. Of what do you complain? These are advances, not mistakes; truths reconquered, power recovered, not hopes thrown away. It is true, man was carried away by an ambition beyond his strength and right; it must be brought down, his reason and his will must agree to restore what they attempted to usurp. Instead of setting up and adoring himself as a monarch, man here must acknowledge his primitive imperfection, his definite insufficiency, and yield submission in thought and life on the bosom of liberty. But is it nothing that this liberty is now more firmly established than man has ever known it? Is the general progress of justice and happiness in the world nothing? Is there not therein a fitting reward for the toils and sufferings of our age? Is there not, after so many mistakes, enough to satisfy the most exacting, to refresh the most exhausted?

Let us look higher. In return for the sacrifices required from our pride, in compensation for the demonstrated weakness of our nature and the marked bounds of our power, has nothing been given to us? Do we not regain more than we lose? Do we not ascend more than we have been forced to descend? The eighteenth century had inflated us with pride, yet had in reality only lowered us. In making us monarchs of this world, it had at the same time confined and reduced us to it alone. No more immensity, no more eternity for the soul; no longer a bond of kindred between God and man. We came and passed over the earth like all that springs from and returns to it. Our noblest ambition, our purest desires, our most sublime flights, all that there is in us of noble and truly divine, was no more than a delusion and a burden. Not only in respect of our worldly goods and joys, but of ourselves and for ever, we had to exclaim, "vanity of vanities, all is vanity." We have escaped; we are leaving this confined and low condition; we are rising; we are again about to attain our dignity, our hope, our futurity, our soul. We can no more parade ourselves in our pride, but we are no longer plunged into and abandoned in misery; we find again a Master here below, and also "our Father which is in heaven."