And theorists step in, and form a system of this antagonism. “It is the inevitable result, they say, of the nature of things, that is to say, of Liberty. Man is endued with self-love, and hence comes all the evil; for since he is endued with self-love, he seeks to better his own condition, and he can only do so by entailing misery on his brethren. Let us hinder him, then, from following his inclinations; let us stifle his liberty, change the human heart, substitute other motives for those which God has placed there: let us invent and constitute an artificial society!”
When they have got this length, an unlimited career opens itself to their reason or imagination. If they are possessed of a disputatious turn and a peevish temper, they enter with eagerness into an analysis of Evil. They dissect it, they put it in the crucible, they interrogate it, they remount to its causes, they pursue it to its consequences; and, as by reason of our native imperfection there is nothing in which Evil is not present, they asperse and disparage everything. They exhibit to us Property, Family, Capital, Labour, Competition, Liberty, Personal Interest, only in one of their aspects, and always on the dark side, the side which injures or [p064] destroys. Their lectures on the natural history of man are, if I may use the expression, clinical lectures—the subject is always on his deathbed. They impiously defy God to reconcile what is said of His infinite goodness with the existence of evil. They stain and sully everything; they disgust us with everything; they dispute everything; and yet they obtain only a melancholy and dangerous success with those classes whom suffering disposes but too much to despair.
If, on the other hand, such theorists have a heart open to benevolence, a mind which is pleased with illusions, they rush to the region of chimeras. They dream of an Oceania, an Atlantis, a Salente, a Spensonie, an Icarie, a Utopia, a Phalanstère,[20] and they people these imaginary regions with a docile, loving, devoted race who always avoid setting themselves up against the fancies of the dreamer. He installs himself complacently in the seat of Providence. He arranges, he disposes, he moulds men after his own fancy. Nothing stops him. He never encounters deceit. He resembles the Roman preacher, who, after having transformed his square cap into Rousseau, refuted warmly the Contrat Social, and triumphantly reduced his adversary to silence. It is thus that our Reformers dazzle those who suffer by means of seductive pictures of ideal felicity, well fitted to disgust them with the hard necessities of real life.
The theorist, however, rarely confines himself to such innocent chimeras. The moment he aims at leading mankind, he finds the people impatient of attempted transformations. Men resist, they get angry. In order to gain them over, he harangues them not only on the happiness they reject, but more especially on the evils from which he professes to deliver them. He finds it impossible to make too striking a picture. He is continually charging his palette and deepening his colours. He hunts out the evils of existing society with as much zeal as another employs in discovering the good. He sees nothing but sufferings, rags, leanness, starvation, pain, oppression. He is enraged that society has not a deeper sense of its misery. He neglects no means of making it throw off its insensibility, and, having begun with benevolence, he ends with misanthropy.[21]
God forbid that I should call in question the sincerity of any one. But, in truth, I cannot explain to myself how these writers, [p065] who see a radical antagonism in the natural order of things, can ever taste a moment’s calm or repose. Discouragement and despair would seem to be their unhappy portion. For, to sum up all, if nature is mistaken in making personal interest the mainspring of human society (and the mistake is manifest if it be admitted that the interests of society are fatally antagonistic), how do they not perceive that the evil is without remedy? Being men ourselves, and being able to have recourse only to men, where can be our point d’appui for changing the tendencies of human nature? Shall we invoke the Police, the Magistracy, the State, the Legislature? That would only be to invoke men, that is to say, beings subject to the common infirmity. Shall we address ourselves to Universal Suffrage? That would be to give the freest course to the universal tendency.
Only one expedient remains to these gentlemen. It is to hold themselves out as discoverers, as prophets, made of different clay from their fellow-men, and deriving their inspiration from a different source. This is the reason, no doubt, why we find them so frequently enveloping their systems and their councils in a mystic phraseology. But if they are ambassadors of God, let them exhibit their credentials. In effect, what they demand is sovereign power, despotism the most absolute that ever existed. They not only wish to govern our acts, but to revolutionize our thoughts. Do they hope that mankind will believe them on their word, when they are not able to agree among themselves?
But before even examining their projects of artificial societies, is there not one point upon which it is necessary to assure ourselves, namely, whether they are not mistaken in the very foundation of their argument? Is it quite certain that MEN’S INTERESTS ARE NATURALLY ANTAGONISTIC; that an irremediable cause of inequality is fatally developed in the natural order of human society under the influence of personal interest, and that Providence is manifestly in error in ordaining that the progress of man should be towards ease and competency?
This is what I propose to inquire into.
Taking man as it has pleased God to constitute him, capable of foresight and experience, perfectible, endued with self-love, it is true,—but self-love qualified by the sympathetic principle, and at all events restrained and balanced by encountering an analogous sentiment universally prevailing in the medium in which it acts,—I proceed to inquire what social order must necessarily result from the combination and free play of such elements.
If we find that this result is nothing else than a progressive [p066] march towards prosperity, improvement, and equality,—a sustained approximation of all classes towards the same physical, intellectual, and moral level, accompanied by a constant elevation of that level, the ways of God to man will be vindicated. We shall learn with delight that there is no gap, no blank, in creation, and that the social order, like everything else, attests the existence of those harmonic laws before which Newton bowed his head, and which elicited from the Psalmist the exclamation, “The heavens declare the glory of God.”