Yet modern man does not seem to have any very distinct and sure consciousness of his actual greatness. He may be elated by an occasional fit of glowing pride, but as often as not he is discontented. He grumbles; he sincerely deplores the vices and imperfections of his day. A broad and deep current of pessimism flows through the fabulous wealth and the wonders of our times. Why? Because our civilisation is by the very nature of its constitution unable to thrive save on excesses; and it can thrive only on excesses because it has acquired so much power by overturning nearly all the limits within which previous civilisations had confined themselves.
How marvellous an epic, but how disquieting in its novelty and its grandeur, is this gradual awakening of human daring and pride, of which the history of the last four centuries is full! For its first appearance dates back to the great geographical discoveries of the fifteenth century, and to that which was the greatest of all those discoveries—America.
A few years later saw the astronomic revolution. Ancient thought, after long deliberation, had decided to enclose the universe in a confined system, with established limits. Copernicus took no notice of these limits, and launched out in thought into the infinite. The impression produced on the men of the sixteenth century by these two great events was profound. The bold spirits who had dared to cross the two limits considered insuperable on earth and in the sky had come back with a rich booty of land and stars.
Was the world then greater and man more powerful than the ancients had thought, and had the ancients been wrong in seeking to limit the efforts of human genius so strictly? Gradually, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the effort of the human spirit to free itself from the ancient limits continued, increased, and became bolder and more methodical. Subtle and ingenious philosophies delivered masked but clear attacks on the limits which marked the bounds of Good and Evil, Truth and Error; on tradition, on century-old institutions, on authority in all its forms. They pretended to wish to ascertain whether the limits were solidly planted in the right place; but in reality they undermined their foundations. Little by little an idea crept into men’s minds, an idea which was the negation of all the limits within which the world had lived until then; an idea which was bound to upset the conception of social and moral life; the idea of liberty, applied to religion, culture, and politics. At the same time, by means of science and fire, man sought very timidly, if not to free himself from, at least to enlarge, the limits which nature seemed to have set to his forces. The strata of coal began to be discovered and exploited. Men set themselves to invent machines more complicated and more rapid than those of which their fathers made use; the steam-engine, the fountainhead of all the formidable agitation which has invaded the world, made its appearance; the great era of iron and of fire began. And lo! finally a formidable cataclysm, of which man had never seen the like in a few years, upset traditions, and wrought havoc amongst states, institutions, and old-established laws. To the strains of the Marseillaise, on the ruins of the Bastile, on the fields of Marengo and Austerlitz, the work sketched out by Columbus and Copernicus, continued by Galileo, Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant, was completed. Man arose, tore up, and overturned all the ancient limits and planted the new ones with his own hands, at his own good pleasure, not only for himself but also for the authorities of Heaven and earth, who had until then imposed their limits upon him.
Then began the extraordinary drama of which we are the spectators. Rich, wise, and free, armed with fire and science, mistress of a large part of the earth and, in particular, of a continent so vast and rich as America, irked no longer by any limit, not by extent nor by weight nor by matter and its laws which it has conquered, thanks to discoveries and to machines, nor by God, whom it has banished to the infinite, itself usurping His earthly throne, our civilisation expanded in every direction, as it were, carried away by the intoxication of the unlimited. Man rose erect like a giant, to face nature and the past; and like a giant whom none can resist he swept on and conquered the world.
Like a giant, indeed, but like a giant who totters at every step. This civilisation of ours has become so powerful because it has overturned all the limits; but just because it has overturned nearly all the limits, it has become increasingly difficult for it to limit itself in the good as well as in the bad; I mean to say, that the bad tends to become worse, and the good to become bad. If the strength of the forces of creation and initiative is in our epoch greater than ever it was in any previous epoch, the same may be said of the weakness of the forces of equilibrium, whose function it is to check the most dangerous exaggerations and excesses. What an interesting comparison might be made between the present and the past from this point of view; and how many instances could be cited in proof of this assertion! I shall instance just one, a simple and homely, but clear, one. Once delivered from all the bonds which limited his efforts of yore, man has succeeded in the last century in creating an abundance of material goods such as the world had never thought possible even when it dreamed of the Terrestrial Paradise, the Golden Age, and the Garden of the Hesperides; all of them myths in which man had been pleased, during centuries of the life of struggle, to objectify his most ardent desires. It is all very well for men of the present day to complain that life is difficult and full of struggles. Those who know the difficulties which beset preceding centuries will feel a strong temptation to laugh at their complaints. The modern world has contrived abundance in everything; in the necessities of life, such as bread, and in things which become very dangerous when they are over-abundant, like alcoholic drinks, tobacco, and all stimulants. Many are the reproaches hurled against our epoch on the score of the increase in alcoholism; many are the remedies devised for this evil. But would not the only and the simplest remedy be that adopted by our ancestors, the limitation of the production of liquors? The masses would no longer be able to poison themselves when the quantity of these liquors was scarcely sufficient—as it used to be—for the requirements of a moderate consumption. The world, on the contrary, will continue to get gloriously drunk, so long as the production of wine, beer, and spirits increases. Now why is it that this, the only efficacious remedy, is just the one which our epoch cannot bring itself to apply? Why do we see everywhere governments taking measures of more or less efficacy against alcoholism and at the same time contributing, directly or indirectly, to the increase in the production of alcoholic drinks?
The reason is, that nothing is more difficult for our civilisation than to impose a limit on anything. Its impetus carries it too far in everything. It is almost a law of its constitution. We have, to a great extent, lost the sense of just measure, because we have weakened or destroyed nearly all the authorities and moral forces which used to make the limits respected. Our greatness and our power are partly due to disequilibrium; and often enough we are called on to pay the tragic penalty for this at the moment when we least expect the call.
This is, however, a long digression, and you may with reason ask me to return to the matter which interests us. I have not lost sight of it; for this digression has a very close connection with our subject.
This epoch which misuses everything, misuses and will misuse sport. It will make it—it has already begun to make it—one more of the elements of excitement, of competition, and of exhaustion, already alas! only too numerous. No illusions are possible on this score. It might even be said that sport is one of the things of which our epoch will probably make the greatest misuse. History justifies us in this fear, for it proves to us that even those civilisations, like the Greek and Roman, which succeeded in limiting themselves in everything else, misused games. Is it likely that our civilisation, which misuses toilsome activities like work, will easily preserve a just measure in amusements? Besides, you have only to look round you to see interests forming groups, coalitions, and organisations for the purpose of exploiting, in this field also, the morbid need for excitement which has taken hold of the masses; their desire for amusements and distractions and even their incorrigible weakness for games of chance. Those, then, who wish to purge sport of its elements of haste and crowd, to transform it—I borrow once more M. de Coubertin’s happy phrase—into the “Empire du Matin Calme,” will have a singularly difficult task before them. If, however, the task is difficult, it is for that all the nobler. The modern world has need, great and urgent need, of balance, measure, and harmony, if it is not to run the risk of being stifled by the excess of its energy. Do not let yourselves be deceived by its assurance, its pride, the blind confidence in its powers which it affects, the haughty challenge it so often throws to the humble wisdom of past generations. We are richer, wiser, more powerful than were our grandfathers. But because we have discovered America and invented railways we have not become demi-gods; we are still only men. All the weaknesses of human nature which the moralists of olden times discovered and analysed so subtly still subsist in us, and still distract us; we must pay nature, the great equaliser, the price for the advantages secured to us by the sum of the work of preceding generations; and many are the forms in which that payment is made. Nervous illnesses, insanity, and suicides are on the increase. Sterility is spreading, especially in the peoples and countries that have been most highly favoured by the development of modern civilisation.
A discontent as deep as it is unreasonable seems to pervade the world, with each improvement in the conditions of every class. One might say that man has become insatiable. The more blessings are heaped upon him, the more he complains. The more he possesses, the more he thinks himself poor and needy. The fewer are the causes for grief and the dangers around him, the more wretched he feels. These apparent paradoxes, these inexplicable contradictions are only the warnings life utters to remind men of the μηδὲν ἅγαν of ancient wisdom. The modern world suffers from the excesses to which it abandons itself, even if it will not acknowledge this fact. Those who try to recall the modern world to a more harmonious ideal of life do it a service whose usefulness is most strikingly proved by the attitude of resentment it assumes towards their efforts.