“The system which I now publish to the world is not, as the usual acceptation of that word might seem to indicate, a collection of principles more or less probable, and of which it depends upon each one to admit or reject the consequences. It is a chain of principles, rigorously true and just, from which man cannot depart without incurring penalties proportionate to his deviation. But, in spite of these penalties which he has suffered, and which he still suffers, he is not aware of his lost condition [égarement]. His fate is that of the slave, born in servitude, who plays with his chains, sometimes insults the freemen, and carries his madness to the point of refusing freedom when it is offered to him, and of choosing slavery.
“It is not that all men have allowed themselves to be carried willingly down the fatal descent: a large number have struggled against the press, but their diverse and scattered efforts have resembled the eddies of the flood, which ends with forcing together all the diverging waters and hurrying away with them into the gulf of the ocean. Or, if some few have raised and kept themselves above the rapid current, no permanent advantage has resulted from it to the human race, which has been none the less abandoned to itself.”
We know that the greatest intellects amongst the Greeks[224] had taught the better way; but they failed, says Gleïzès, inasmuch as their doctrine was too exclusive and esoteric.
“The condition of the human race is a plain witness of its error. This condition, in fact, is so alarming that it might seem desperate, if it were certain that men had acquired all their knowledge. But, happily, there is one branch of it—the most essential of all, and without which the rest is scarcely of any account—which is yet entirely ignored. This knowledge is precisely that of which these great men had glimpses, and of which they reserved to themselves the sole enjoyment;[225] and it is this knowledge, or, rather, this wisdom (and we know that with the Greeks these two things were comprised under the same denomination) which I publish. I shall give it an extension which it was not possible for them to perceive or to give; because Nature refuses its life-giving spirit [esprit de vie] to solitary and isolated seeds, and makes those only to fructify which enter into the common heritage of mankind.
“With such support, the most feeble must have an advantage over the strongest without it. I have, besides, another advantage. Men feeling to-day, more than ever, the privation of what is wanting to them, invoke on all sides new principles, and demand a higher civilisation. It is not the first time, doubtless, that such a state of things has been manifested. It has been seen to supervene after all the moral revolutions that have left man greater than they have found him. But that of which we have been the witnesses [the revolution in France of 1789—the reforms of 1830] seems to have something more remarkable, more complete—one would almost be tempted to believe that it must be the last, and terminate that long sequence of vain disputes across which the human kind has painfully advanced, seeing it rise in the midst of the débris of all the old-world ideas which have expired or are expiring at one’s feet. What a moment for rebuilding! No more favourable one could exist; and it is urged on, so to speak, by the breeze of these happy circumstances that I offer to the meditation of men the following propositions....
“I shall add but a few words. The principles which I have laid down are absolute—they cannot bend [fléchir]. But there are steps on the route which conduct to the heights which they occupy; and were there but a single step made in that direction, that single step could not be regarded as indifferent and unimportant. Thus this work—guide of those whom it shall convince—will be useful also to the rest of the world as, at least, a moderator and a check; and, I shall avow it, my hopes do not extend beyond this latter object. I should feel myself even perfectly satisfied, if this book should inspire in my contemporaries enough of esteem and favour to prevent them from arresting and impeding it at its start, and to allow it to follow its course towards a generation, I will not say more worthy, but better prepared than the present to receive it.”
Gleïzès divides his great work into twelve Discourses, in two volumes, supplemented by a third volume which he entitles Moral Proofs. It is an almost exhaustive, as well as eloquent, résumé of the history and ethics of the subject. The only fault of this, perhaps, most heartfelt appeal to the reason and conscience of mankind ever published is its too great discursiveness. The manifest anxiety of the author to meet, or to anticipate, every possible objection or subterfuge on the part of the hostile or the indifferent, may well excuse this apparent blemish; and the slightest acquaintance with his New Existence can hardly fail to extort, even from the most prejudiced reader, a tribute of admiration to a spirit so noble and so pure, devoting all its energies to the furtherance of an exalted and refined morality.
In the earlier portion of his book he reviews the dietetic habits and practices of the various peoples of the younger world, and notices the various philosophic and other writers who have left any record of their opinions upon flesh-eating. He next treats of modern authorities, and, after quoting a large number of anti-kreophagistic testimonies, in his fifth Discourse he applies himself to answer the sophisms of the chief opponents, and particularly of its arch-enemy—his countryman, Buffon, in his well-known Histoire Naturelle—and he may be said effectually to have disposed of his astonishing fallacies.[226]
“What most strikes the observer when he throws an attentive glance over the earth, is the relative inferiority of man, considered as what he is, in regard to what he ought to be: it is the feebleness of the work compared with the aptitude of the workman. All his inspirations are good, and all his actions bad; and it is to this singular fact that must be attributed, without doubt, the universal contempt that man exhibits towards his fellows.... We must remount to the source, and see if there is not in man’s existence some essential act which, reflecting itself on all the rest, would communicate to them its fatal influence. Let us consider, above everything, the distinctive quality of man—that which raises him above all other beings. It is clear that it is Pity,[227] source of that intelligence which has placed him at the head of that fine moral order, invincible in the midst of the catastrophes of Nature. His utter failure to exhibit this feeling of pity towards his humble fellow-beings, as well as to his own kind, engages us to inquire what is the permanent cause of such failure; and we find it, at first, in that unhappy facility with which man receives his impressions of the beings by whom he is surrounded. These impressions, transmitted with life and cemented by habit, have formed a creation apart and separate from himself, which is consequently beyond the domain of his conscience, or, if you prefer it, of the ordinary jurisprudence of men. Thus men continue to accuse themselves of being unjust, violent, cruel, and treacherous to one another, but they do not accuse themselves of cutting the throats of other animals and of feeding upon their mangled limbs, which, nevertheless, is the single cause of that injustice, of that violence, of that cruelty, and of that treachery.
“Although all have not these vices to the same degree, and it is exactly this fact which aids the self-deception, I shall clearly prove that all have the germs of them; and that, if they are not equally developed, we must thank the circumstances only which have failed them.