Of all the circumstances which contribute to impart to nations their distinctive character and aspect, and to form and modify their genius, their moral condition, their customs, and their laws, the one which exerts a far more powerful influence than all the rest, because it includes all the rest, is the manner in which they provide for their subsistence. For this observation we are indebted to Charles Comte, and we have reason to be surprised that it has not had a more prominent place given to it in the moral and political sciences.
This circumstance, in fact, acts upon the human race in two ways, and with equal power in both,—by its continuity, and by its universality. To subsist, to better one’s condition, to bring up a family, are not affairs of time, or place, or taste, or opinion, or choice; they are the daily, constant, and unavoidable concern of all men, at all times, and in all countries.
Everywhere, the greater part of their moral, intellectual, and physical force is devoted directly or indirectly to create and replace the means of subsistence. The hunter, the fisher, the shepherd, the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the merchant, the labourer, the artisan, the capitalist,—all think first of all how they are to live (prosaic as the avowal may seem), and then how to live better and better, if they can. The proof of it is that it is only for this end that they are hunters, fishers, manufacturers, agriculturists, etc. In the same way, the public functionary, the soldier, the magistrate, enter upon their careers in order to ensure the supply of their wants. We do not necessarily charge a man with want of devotion or disinterestedness when we quote the proverb, The priest lives by the altar, for before he belonged to the priesthood he belonged to humanity; and if at this moment he sits down to write a book against this vulgar view of human nature, the sale of his book will demolish his argument. [p455]
God forbid that I should seek to deny the existence of self-denial and disinterestedness. But it must be granted that they are exceptional, and it is because they are so that they merit and call forth our admiration. If we consider human nature in its entirety, without having made a previous covenant with the demon of sentimentalism, we must allow that disinterested efforts bear no comparison, as respects their number, with those which are called forth by the hard necessities of our condition. And it is because those efforts, which constitute the aggregate of our employments, engross so large a portion of each man’s life, that they cannot fail to exert a powerful influence on national character.
M. Saint-Marc Girardin says somewhere or other that he has been led to acknowledge the relative insignificance of political forms in comparison with those great general laws which their employments and their wants impose upon nations. “Do you desire to know the condition of a people?” says he, “ask not how they are governed, but how they are employed.”
As a general view, this is just; but the author hastens to falsify it by converting it into a system. The importance of political forms has been exaggerated; and what does he do? He denies their importance altogether, or acknowledges it only to laugh at it. Forms of government, he says, do not interest us but on the day of an election, or when we are reading the newspapers. Monarchy or Republic, Aristocracy or Democracy, what matters it? And what conclusion does he arrive at? In maintaining that infant nations resemble each other, whatever their political constitution happens to be, he assimilates the United States to ancient Egypt, because in both countries gigantic works have been executed. Americans clear lands, dig canals, construct railways, and they do all this for themselves, because they are a democracy, and their own masters. The Egyptians raised temples, pyramids, obelisks, and palaces for their kings and their priests, because they were slaves. And yet we are told that the difference is a mere affair of form, not worth regarding, or which we should regard merely to laugh at. Alas! how the contagion of classical lore corrupts and misleads its superstitious votaries!
M. Saint-Marc Girardin, still proceeding on his general proposition that the prevailing occupations of a nation determine its genius, soon after remarks that formerly we were occupied with war and religion, but nowadays with commerce and manufactures. This is the reason why former generations bore a warlike and religious impress. [p456]
Rousseau had long before remarked that the care for subsistence was the prevailing occupation only of some nations, and those the most prosaic; and that other nations, more worthy of the name, had devoted themselves to nobler exertions.
Now, in this have not both M. Saint-Marc Girardin and Rousseau been the dupes of an historical illusion? Have they not mistaken the amusements, the diversions, or the pretexts and instruments of despotism, which give employment to some of the people, for the occupations of all? And has the illusion not arisen from this, that historians are always telling us about the class which does not work, never about the class which does; and in this way we come to regard the first of these classes as the entire nation.
I cannot help thinking that among the Greeks, among the Romans, among the people of the Middle Ages, men just did what they do now, and were subject to wants so pressing and so constantly recurring, that they were obliged to provide for them under pain of death. Hence I cannot help concluding that such employments then, as at present, formed the principal and absorbing occupation of the great bulk of the human race.