* for the birth, equilibrium and dissolution of organic bodies.
They exist for the birth, maintenance, and development of human societies, for the formation, conflict, and direction of ideas, passions and determinations of human individuals.[3114] In all this, Man is bound up with nature; hence, if we would comprehend him, we must observe him in her, after her, and like her, with the same independence, the same precautions, and in the same spirit. Through this remark alone the method of the moral sciences is fixed. In history, in psychology, in morals, in politics, the thinkers of the preceding century, Pascal, Bossuet, Descartes, Fenelon, Malebrance, and La Bruyère, all based their thoughts on dogma; It is plain to every one qualified to read them that their base is predetermined. Religion provided them with a complete theory of the moral order of things; according to this theory, latent or exposed, they described Man and accommodated their observations to the preconceived model. The writers of the eighteenth century rejected this method: they dwell on Man, on the observable Man, and on his surroundings; in their eyes, conclusions about the soul, its origin, and its destiny, must come afterwards and depend wholly, not on that which the Revelation provided, but on that which observation does and will provide. The moral sciences are now divorced from theology and attach themselves, as if a prolongation of them, to the physical sciences.
III. The Transformation Of History.
Voltaire.—Criticism and conceptions of unity.—
Montesquieu.—An outline of social laws.
Through the separation from theology and the attachment to natural science the humanities become science. In history, every foundation on which we now build, is laid. Compare Bossuet's "Discours sur l'histoire universelle," with Voltaire's "Essai sur les moeurs," and we at once see how new and profound these foundations were.—The critics of religious dogma here establish their fundamental principle: in view of the fact that the laws of nature are universal and permanent it follows that, in the moral world, as in the physical world, there can be no exception from them, and that no arbitrary or foreign force intervenes to disturb the regular scientific procedures, which will provide a sure means of discerning myth from truth.[3115] Biblical exegesis is born out of this maxim, and not alone that of Voltaire, but also the critical explanatory methods of the future. [3116] Meanwhile they skeptically examine the annals of all people, carelessly cutting away and suppressing; too hastily, extravagantly, especially where the ancients are concerned, because their historical expedition is simply a scouting trip; but nevertheless with such an overall insight that we may still approve almost all the outlines of their summary chart. The (newly discovered) primitive Man was not a superior being, enlightened from above, but a coarse savage, naked and miserable, slow of growth, sluggish in progress, the most destitute and most needy of all animals, and, on this account, sociable, endowed like the bee and the beaver with an instinct for living in groups, and moreover an imitator like the monkey, but more intelligent, capable of passing by degrees from the language of gesticulation to that of articulation, beginning with a monosyllabic idiom which gradually increases in richness, precision and subtlety.[3117] How many centuries are requisite to attain to this primitive language! How many centuries more to the discovery of the most necessary arts, the use of fire, the fabrication of "hatches of silex and jade", the melting and refining of metals, the domestication of animals, the production and modification of edible plants, the formation of early civilized and durable communities, the discovery of writing, figures and astronomical periods.[3118] Only after a dawn of vast and infinite length do we see in Chaldea and in China the commencement of an accurate chronological history. There are five or six of these great independent centers of spontaneous civilization, China, Babylon, ancient Persia, India, Egypt, Phoenicia, and the two American empires. On collecting these fragments together, on reading such of their books as have been preserved, and which travelers bring to us, the five Kings of the Chinese, the Vedas of the Hindus, the Zoroastrians of the ancient Persians, we find that all contain religions, moral theories, philosophies and institutions, as worthy of study as our own. Three of these codes, those of India, China and the Muslims, still at the present time govern countries as vast as our Europe, and nations of equal importance. We must not, like Bossuet, "overlook the universe in a universal history," and subordinate humanity to a small population confined to a desolate region around the Dead Sea.[3119] Human history is a thing of natural growth like the rest; its direction is due to its own elements; no external force guides it, but the inward forces that create it; it is not tending to any prescribed end but developing a result. And the chief result is the progress of the human mind. "Amidst so many ravages and so much destruction, we see a love of order secretly animating the human species, and forestalling its utter ruin. It is one of the springs of nature ever recovering its energy; it is the source of the formation of the codes of nations; it causes the law and the ministers of the law to be respected in Tinquin and in the islands of Formosa as well as in Rome." Man thus possesses, said Voltaire, a "principle of Reason," namely, a "an instinct for engineering" suggesting to him useful implements;[3120] also an instinct of right suggesting to him his moral conceptions. These two instincts form a part of his makeup; he has them from his birth, "as birds have their feathers, and bears their hair. Hence he is perfectible through nature, and merely conforms to nature in improving his mind and in bettering his condition. Extend the idea farther along with Turgot and Condorcet,[3121] and, with all its exaggerations, we see arising, before the end of the century, our modern theory of progress, that which founds all our aspirations on the boundless advance of the sciences, on the increase of comforts which their applied discoveries constantly bring to the human condition, and on the increase of good sense which their discoveries, popularized, slowly deposit in the human brain.
A second principle has to be established to complete the foundations of history. Discovered by Montesquieu it still to-day serves as a constructive support, and, if we resume the work, as if on the substructure of the master's edifice, it is simply owing to accumulated erudition placing at our disposal more substantial and more abundant materials. In human society all parts are interdependent; no modification of one can take place without effecting proportionate changes in the others. Institutions, laws and customs are not mingled together, as in a heap, through chance or caprice, but connected one with the other through convenience or necessity, as in a harmony.[3122] According as authority is in all, in several or in one hand, according as the sovereign admits or rejects laws superior to himself, with intermediary powers below him, everything changes or tends to differ in meaning and in importance:
* public intelligence,
* education,
* the form of judgments,