FENELON—Reared in the study and admiration of antiquity and a witness of the power of Louis XIV, Fenelon naturally adopted the idea that mankind should be passive, and that its misfortunes and its prosperities, its virtues and its vices, are caused by the external influence that is exercised upon it by the law, or by the makers of the law. Thus, in his Utopia of Salentum, he brings the men, with their interests, their faculties, their desires, and their possessions, under the absolute direction of the legislator. Whatever the subject may be, they themselves have no voice in it—the prince judges for them. The nation is just a shapeless mass, of which the prince is the soul. In him resides the thought, the foresight, the principle of all organization, of all progress; on him, therefore, rests all the responsibility.
In proof of this assertion, I might transcribe the whole of the tenth book of Telemachus. I refer the reader to it, and shall content myself with quoting some passages taken at random from this celebrated work, to which, in every other respect, I am the first to render justice.
With the astonishing credulity that characterizes the classics, Fénelon, against the authority of reason and of facts, admits the general felicity of the Egyptians, and attributes it, not to their own wisdom, but to that of their kings:
We could not turn our eyes to the two shores, without
perceiving rich towns and country seats, agreeably situated;
fields that were covered every year,
without intermission, with golden crops; meadows full of
flocks; laborers bending under the weight of fruits that the
earth lavished on its cultivators; and shepherds who made
the echoes around repeat the soft sounds of their pipes and
flutes. "Happy," said Mentor, "is that people who is
governed by a wise king."... Mentor afterwards desired me to
remark the happiness and abundance that was spread over all
the country of Egypt, where twenty-two thousand cities might
be counted. He admired the excellent police regulations of
the cities; the justice administered in favor of the poor
against the rich; the good education of the children, who
were accustomed to obedience, labor, and the love of arts
and letters; the exactness with which all the ceremonies of
religion were performed; the disinterestedness, the desire
of honor, the fidelity to men, and the fear of the gods,
with which every father inspired his children. He could not
sufficiently admire the prosperous state of the country.
"Happy" said he, "is the people whom a wise king rules in
such a manner."
Fénelon's idyll on Crete is still more fascinating. Mentor is made to say:
All that you will see in this wonderful island is the
result of the laws of Minos. The education that the children
receive renders the body healthy and robust. They are
accustomed, from the first, to a frugal and laborious life;
it is supposed that all the pleasures of sense enervate the
body and the mind; no other pleasure is presented to them
but that of being invincible by virtue, that of acquiring
much glory... there they punish three vices that go
unpunished amongst other people—ingratitude, dissimulation,
and avarice. As to pomp and dissipation, there is no need to
punish these, for they are unknown in Crete.... No costly
furniture, no magnificent clothing, no delicious feasts, no
gilded palaces are allowed.
It is thus that Mentor prepares his scholar to mould and manipulate, doubtless with the most philanthropic intentions, the people of Ithaca, and, to confirm him in these ideas, he gives him the example of Salentum.
So we receive our first political notions. We are taught to treat men very much as Oliver de Serres teaches farmers to manage and to mix the soil.