Meditations and Moral Sketches

by François Guizot

Living neither in peace nor at war, forced to admit vicinity without friendship, and distrust without violence, Catholicism, Protestantism, Philosophy, and in their train society in general, will descend, grow cold, and languish. The dignity and power which spring from truly moral communications will be equally wanting in all. A dry and barren spirit will prevail in relations which are purely official and matters of routine; and we should see spreading and strengthening itself, becoming permanent and in some sort legally consecrated, that spirit of indifference at the same time disdainful yet subordinate, cold yet insecure. This is the lot of societies which are kept together by the bond of administrative regulations alone, void of moral life, that is, of faith and devotion.

Was it then to arrive at this state of things, that for ages human genius displayed itself so gloriously in our country? Was it to end at last in this degradation that all the great creeds, all the moral forces, have contended with so much eagerness and glory for the empire of our society?

They must save it and themselves from this disgraceful peril. They must accept, respect, and loyally serve the new social state; they must learn to live amicably together in its bosom.

I say they must! It is an immense point in a great work to look upon success as indispensable and vital. The feeling of necessity gives to those whom that necessity pleases, much power; to the opposite party much resignation. A passionate desire supports even more than it deceives. And here there is indeed room for such a desire; for, during a long future, the honor and moral repose of society are at stake. It cannot remain in this state of apathy and uneasiness in which the mind languishes and exhausts itself. Man desires for his soul more activity and more security, a firmer ground, a higher flight. The true agreement of the great intellectual powers can alone grant him these.

How can this be accomplished?

I grapple at once with the more notorious and serious of the difficulties,—the nature of Catholicism and the conditions of its agreement with the new state of society which has attacked it, and been in its turn so roughly attacked.

I set aside, too, without hesitation, the questions of religion, properly so called; questions which concern the dealings of God with man, questions about the safety of the human soul.

Not that I look on them with indifference, or that their importance is not now as it has always been, overwhelming and immense. It ought, on the contrary, to be frequently repeated, for in our day it has been too much forgotten, and it is the real object, and substance, nay, the essence of religion. The moral quality, the rule of conduct for man in his relations with man, is important. The mental calm and resignation of men in the trials of life is important. The Christian religion teaches these, and thence its great position upon earth and in society. But it does more, it goes far beyond human society and this world. It binds man to God, it reveals to him the secret of this awful tie, it teaches him what he ought to believe and do in respect to his relation to God and his prospect of eternity. Imperishable things from which man may turn aside his gaze, but which do not disappear from his nature; sublime wants from which he cannot free himself, though he may mistake and deny them—the law of these things, the satisfying of these wants, that is to say, the dogma and its consequences, constitute the Christian religion, the first which has really understood and embraced its object.

But in these questions and in the dogmas which reply to them, nothing can now arouse between Catholicism and civil society either conflict or embarrassment. In this matter, the State proclaims not only the liberty but the right of the church, and declares itself absolutely incompetent to interfere. And here lies whatever truth exists in that deplorable and confused saying which has excited so much comment, "The law is atheistical." Surely not so. The law is not atheistical. How should it be so? Is the law a real living being, a being with a soul which approaches to or recedes from God, which may be lost or saved? "Human societies," says M. Royer Collard, "live and die on the earth, there they fulfil their destinies." But they do not comprehend man as an entire. After he has bound himself to society there still remains to him the noblest part of himself, the high faculties by which he raises himself to God, to a future life, to unknown good in an invisible world. We, as individuals, as beings endowed with immortality, have a different destiny from states.