OUT of the scientific acquisitions thus set forth, elaborated by the spirit we have just described, is born a doctrine, seemingly a revelation, and which, under this title, was to claim the government of human affairs. On the approach of 1789 it is generally admitted that man is living in "a century of light," in "the age of Reason;" that, previously, the human species was in its infancy and that now it has attained to its "majority." Truth, finally, is made manifest and, for the first time, its reign on earth is apparent. The right is supreme because it is truth itself. It must direct all things because through its nature it is universal. The philosophy of the eighteenth century, in these two articles of faith, resembles a religion, the Puritanism of the seventeenth century, and Islam in the seventh century. We see the same outburst of faith, hope and enthusiasm, the same spirit of propaganda and of dominion, the same rigidity and intolerance, the same ambition to recast man and to remodel human life according to a preconceived type. The new doctrine is also to have its scholars, its dogmas, its popular catechism, its fanatics, its inquisitors and its martyrs. It is to speak as loudly as those preceding it, as a legitimate authority to which dictatorship belongs by right of birth, and against which rebellion is criminal or insane. It differs, however, from the preceding religions in this respect, that instead of imposing itself in the name of God, it imposes itself in the name of Reason.
The authority, indeed, was a new one. Up to this time, in the control of human actions and opinions, Reason had played but a small and subordinate part. Both the motive and its direction were obtained elsewhere; faith and obedience were an inheritance; a man was a Christian and a subject because he was born Christian and subject.—Surrounding the nascent philosophy and the Reason which enters upon its great investigation, is a system of recognized laws, an established power, a reigning religion; all the stones of this structure hold together and each story is supported by a preceding story. But what does the common cement consist of, and where is the basic foundation?—Who sanctions all these civil regulations which control marriages, testaments, inheritances, contracts, property and persons, these fanciful and often contradictory regulations? In the first place immemorial custom, varying according to the province, according to the title to the soil, according to the quality and condition of the person; and next, the will of the king who caused the custom to be inscribed and who sanctioned it.—Who authorizes this will, this sovereignty of the prince, this first of public obligations? In the first place, eight centuries of possession, a hereditary right similar to that by which each one enjoys his own field and domain, a property established in a family and transmitted from one eldest son to another, from the first founder of the State to his last living successor; and, in addition to this, a religion directing men to submit to the constituted powers.—And who, finally, authorizes this religion? At first, eighteen centuries of tradition, the immense series of anterior and concordant proofs, the steady belief of sixty preceding generations; and after this, at the beginning of it, the presence and teachings of Christ, then, farther back, the creation of the world, the command and the voice of God.—Thus, throughout the moral and social order of things the past justifies the present; antiquity provides its title, and if beneath all these supports which age has consolidated, the deep primitive rock is sought for in subterranean depths, we find it in the divine will.—During the whole of the seventeenth century this theory still absorbs all souls in the shape of a fixed habit and of inward respect; it is not open to question. It is regarded in the same light as the heart of the living body; whoever would lay his hand upon it would instantly draw back, moved by a vague sentiment of its ceasing to beat in case it were touched. The most independent, with Descartes at the head, "would be grieved" at being confounded with those chimerical speculators who, instead of pursuing the beaten track of custom, dart blindly forward "in a direct line across mountains and over precipices." In subjecting their belief to systematic investigation not only do they leave out and set apart "the truths of faith,"[3301] but again the dogma they think they have thrown out remains in their mind latent and active, to guide them on unconsciously and to convert their philosophy into a preparation for, or a confirmation of, Christianity.[3302]—Summing it all up, faith, the performance of religious duties, with religious and political institutions, are at base of all thought of the seventeenth century. Reason, whether she admits it or is ignorant of it, is only a subaltern, an oratorical agency, a setter-in-motion, forced by religion and the monarchy to labor in their behalf. With the exception of La Fontaine, whom I regard as unique in this as in other matters, the greatest and most independent, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, La Bruyère, borrows from the established society their basic concepts of nature, man, society, law and government.[3303] So long as Reason is limited to this function its work is that of a councilor of State, an extra preacher dispatched by its superiors on a missionary tour in the departments of philosophy and of literature. Far from proving destructive it consolidates; in fact, even down to the Regency, its chief employment is to produce good Christians and loyal subjects.
But now the roles are reversed; tradition descends from the upper to the lower ranks, while Reason ascends from the latter to the former.—On the one hand religion and monarchy, through their excesses and misdeeds under Louis XIV, and their laxity and incompetence under Louis XV, demolish piece by piece the basis of hereditary reverence and filial obedience so long serving them as a foundation, and which maintained them aloft above all dispute and free of investigation; hence the authority of tradition insensibly declines and disappears. On the other hand science, through its imposing and multiplied discoveries, erects piece by piece a basis of universal trust and deference, raising itself up from an interesting subject of curiosity to the rank of a public power; hence the authority of Reason augments and occupies its place.—A time comes when, the latter authority having dispossessed the former, the fundamental ideas tradition had reserved to itself fall into the grasp of Reason. Investigation penetrates into the forbidden sanctuary. Instead of deference there is verification, and religion, the state, the law, custom, all the organs, in short, of moral and practical life, become subject to analysis, to be preserved, restored or replaced, according to the prescriptions of the new doctrine.
II. Ancestral Tradition And Culture.
Origin, nature and value of hereditary prejudice.—How far
custom, religion and government are legitimate.
Nothing could be better had the new doctrine been complete, and if Reason, instructed by history, had become critical, and therefore qualified to comprehend the rival she replaced. For then, instead of regarding her as an usurper to be repelled she would have recognized in her an elder sister whose part must be left to her. Hereditary prejudice is a sort of Reason operating unconsciously. It has claims as well as reason, but it is unable to present these; instead of advancing those that are authentic it puts forth the doubtful ones. Its archives are buried; to exhume these it is necessary to make researches of which it is incapable; nevertheless they exist, and history at the present day is bringing them to light.—Careful investigations shows that, like science, it issues from a long accumulation of experiences; a people, after a multitude of gropings and efforts, has discovered that a certain way of living and thinking is the only one adapted to its situation, the most practical and the most salutary, the system or dogma now seeming arbitrary to us being at first a confirmed expedient of public safety. Frequently it is so still; in any event, in its leading features it is indispensable; it may be stated with certainty that, if the leading prejudices of the community should suddenly disappear, Man, deprived of the precious legacy transmitted to him by the wisdom of ages, would at once fall back into a savage condition and again become what he was at first, namely, a restless, famished, wandering, hunted brute. There was a time when this heritage was lacking; there are populations to day with which it is still utterly lacking.[3304] To abstain from eating human flesh, from killing useless or burdensome aged people, from exposing, selling or killing children one does not know what to do with, to be the one husband of but one woman, to hold in horror incest and unnatural practices, to be the sole and recognized owner of a distinct field, to be mindful of the superior injunctions of modesty, humanity, honor and conscience, all these observances, formerly unknown and slowly established, compose the civilization of human beings. Because we accept them in full security they are not the less sacred, and they become only the more sacred when, submitted to investigation and traced through history, they are disclosed to us as the secret force which has converted a herd of brutes into a society of men. In general, the older and more universal a custom, the more it is based on profound motives, on physiological motives on those of hygiene, and on those instituted for social protection. At one time, as in the separation of castes, a heroic or thoughtful stock must be preserved by preventing the mixtures by which inferior blood introduces mental debility and low instincts.[3305] At another, as in the prohibition of spirituous liquors, and of animal food, it is necessary to conform to the climate prescribing a vegetable diet, or to the race-temperament for which strong drink is pernicious.[3306]At another, as in the institution of the right of first-born to inherit title and castle, it was important to prepare and designate beforehand the military commander who the tribe would obey, or the civil chieftain that would preserve the domain, superintend its cultivation, and support the family.[3307]—If there are valid reasons for legitimizing custom there are reasons of higher import for the consecration of religion Consider this point, not in general and according to a vague notion, but at the outset, at its birth, in the texts, taking for an example one of the faiths which now rule in society, Christianity, Hinduism, the law of Mohammed or of Buddha. At certain critical moments in history, a few men, emerging from their narrow and daily routine of life, are seized by some generalized conception of the infinite universe; the august face of nature is suddenly unveiled to them; in their sublime emotion they seem to have detected its first cause; they have at least detected some of its elements. Through a fortunate conjunction of circumstances these elements are just those which their century, their people, a group of peoples, a fragment of humanity is in a state to comprehend. Their point of view is the only one at which the graduated multitudes below them are able to accept. For millions of men, for hundreds of generations, only through them is any access to divine things to be obtained. Theirs is the unique utterance, heroic or affecting, enthusiastic or tranquilizing; the only one which the hearts and minds around them and after them will heed; the only one adapted to profound cravings, to accumulated aspirations, to hereditary faculties, to a complete intellectual and moral organism; Yonder that of Hindostan or of the Mongolian; here that of the Semite or the European; in our Europe that of the German, the Latin or the Slave; in such a way that its contradictions, instead of condemning it, justify it, its diversity producing its adaptation and its adaptation producing benefits.—This is no barren formula. A sentiment of such grandeur, of such comprehensive and penetrating insight, an idea by which Man, compassing the vastness and depth of things, so greatly oversteps the ordinary limits of his mortal condition, resembles an illumination; it is easily transformed into a vision; it is never remote from ecstasy; it can express itself only through symbols; it evokes divine figures.[3308]Religion in its nature is a metaphysical poem accompanied by faith. Under this title it is popular and efficacious; for, apart from an invisible select few, a pure abstract idea is only an empty term, and truth, to be apparent, must be clothed with a body. It requires a form of worship, a legend, and ceremonies in order to address the people, women, children, the credulous, every one absorbed by daily cares, any understanding in which ideas involuntarily translate themselves through imagery. Owing to this palpable form it is able to give its weighty support to the conscience, to counterbalance natural egoism, to curb the mad onset of brutal passions, to lead the will to abnegation and devotion, to tear Man away from himself and place him wholly in the service of truth, or of his kind, to form ascetics, martyrs, sisters of charity and missionaries. Thus, throughout society, religion becomes at once a natural and precious instrumentality. On the one hand men require it for the contemplation of infinity and to live properly; if it were suddenly to be taken away from them their souls would be a mournful void, and they would do greater injury to their neighbors. Besides, it would be vain to attempt to take it away from them; the hand raised against it would encounter only its envelope; it would be repelled after a sanguinary struggle, its germ lying too deep to be extirpated.
And when, at length, after religion and custom, we regard the State, that is to say, the armed power possessing both physical force and moral authority, we find for it an almost equally noble origin. It has, in Europe at least, from Russia to Portugal and from Norway to the two Sicilies, in its origin and essence, a military foundation in which heroism constitutes itself the champion of right. Here and there in the chaos of tribes and crumbling societies, some man has arisen who, through his ascendancy, rallies around him a loyal band, driving out intruders, overcoming brigands, re-establishing order, reviving agriculture, founding a patrimony, and transmitting as property to his descendants his office of hereditary justiciary and born general. Through this permanent delegation a great public office is removed from competition, fixed in one family, sequestered in safe hands; thenceforth the nation possesses a vital center and each right obtains a visible protector. If the sovereign confines himself to his traditional responsibilities, is restrained in despotic tendencies, and avoids falling into egoism, he provides the country with the best government of which the world has any knowledge. Not alone is it the most stable, capable of continuation, and the most suitable for maintaining together a body of 20 or 30 million people, but again one of the most noble because devotion dignifies both command and obedience and, through the prolongation of military tradition, fidelity and honor, from grade to grade, attaches the leader to his duty and the soldier to his commander.—Such are the strikingly valid claims of social traditions which we may, similar to an instinct, consider as being a blind form of reason. That which makes it fully legitimate is that reason herself, to become efficient, is obliged to borrow its form. A doctrine becomes inspiring only through a blind medium. To become of practical use, to take upon itself the government of souls, to be transformed into a spring of action, it must be deposited in minds given up to systematic belief, of fixed habits, of established tendencies, of domestic traditions and prejudice, and that it, from the agitated heights of the intellect, descends into and become amalgamated with the passive forces of the will; then only does it form a part of the character and become a social force. At the same time, however, it ceases to be critical and clairvoyant; it no longer tolerates doubt and contradiction, nor admits further restrictions or nice distinctions; it is either no longer cognizant of, or badly appreciates, its own evidences. We of the present day believe in infinite progress about the same as people once believed in original sin; we still receive ready-made opinions from above, the Academy of Sciences occupying in many respects the place of the ancient councils. Except with a few special savants, belief and obedience will always be unthinking, while Reason would wrongfully resent the leadership of prejudice in human affairs, since, to lead, it must itself become prejudiced.