Utility of English Moral Pride.
This chapter has been occupied more with actions than with ideals, but it would not be complete without some reference to ideals. The English idea takes the form of moral pride, of belief in one’s own moral superiority. This is offensive to other nations because it expresses itself unpleasantly, not in words only but in manners. But however offensive it may be to Frenchmen (and it irritates them to the supreme degree), it is most valuable to the English themselves as a strength and a support. The intense soldierly pride of the military caste in Prussia was offensive, but it enabled the army to endure the discipline that led to all success. No amount of divorce-court evidence, no amount of medical evidence, no amount of ocular evidence, even in the public streets, will ever convince the English that they are not moral, and therefore their moral standard is maintained, at least ideally. It is well for them to have this opinion about themselves so long as they make the feeblest effort to justify it. To have national pride on the side of morality is to give morality a mighty ally.
Want of moral Pride in France.
Foreigners in Paris.
The Goddess of French Maidenhood.
The Virgin Mary and La Sainte Vierge.
La Sainte Vierge an Ideal.
The Queen of Heaven.
The French, unfortunately for them, have never associated national pride with morality. They have associated it with generosity, with courage, and with the externals of civilisation, but never with sexual purity. The French never think that they are purer than other people, they imagine that the weakness of humanity is the same everywhere, and as Paris is the pleasure city of Europe they have ample opportunities for observing how foreigners conduct themselves there, which only confirms them in their opinion. Still, it cannot be truly said that the entire French nation is without an ideal, even in this matter. The goddess of French maidenhood is not the goddess of Lubricity, but her precise opposite, the Holy Virgin. It has been written, with slight exaggeration, that every French girl is called Marie; it is not an exaggeration to say that every French girl brought up in the Catholic religion is taught to look to the Holy Virgin as her ideal. It may be answered that the Virgin Mary is not unknown in England either; certainly the Virgin Mary is known there, but La Sainte Vierge is not. The Virgin Mary is partly ideal, but there is much everyday reality about her, and Protestantism insists upon that reality which French Catholicism conceals. The Virgin Mary is also an ordinary mother; she had a family by Joseph, the carpenter. In La Sainte Vierge there is nothing to diminish the purity of the ideal; her marriage with Joseph was merely nominal, and Joseph himself was a great saint above the common lot of humanity. La Sainte Vierge had but one child, and that one by the mysterious operation of the Holy Spirit. The Virgin Mary is in heaven, La Sainte Vierge reigns for ever as the crowned Queen of Heaven and the royal patroness and special protectress of France. Her statue is on a hundred hills, it looks down benignantly from a thousand towers, she herself, the mystical Tower of Ivory, has preserved many a French city from invasion. Every French girl, at her première communion, is robed in white from head to foot in emulation of her purity; during her month, le mois de Marie, her hundred thousand altars are covered with flowers in memory of her sweetness, and all the terms of love and praise are exhausted in her litanies.
Want of a Masculine moral Ideal.