Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885

by Various

Charity has been overthrown by the same blow. It has shared the unpopularity of her preachers, and it also, without being directly attacked, has been subjected, under different pretexts, to the destruction and conversion of a very large number of institutions founded under its banner, and discredit has been thrown on its practices and provisions, while the struggle for existence has been brutally substituted for charity. So much the worse for the man who cannot help himself out of a difficulty. The motto of our time is a species of sauve qui peut, which begins in the transactions of the money market and leads some to the temple of fortune and others to the river or to the lunatic asylum.

We do not, however, assert that the inexhaustible source of human kindness with which God has mercifully endowed our nature does not still find means of doing good, and great good. Institutions, which are for the most part beneficent, abound on every side, and supply the place of the ancient foundations which have disappeared. But the conception and its mode of execution are different and do not correspond with the old usage. Everything is done according to rule in modern philanthropy. There are free municipal schools in which instruction is given to those who do or do not desire it. There are hospitals in which a definite number of patients afflicted by certain diseases are collected, and if the number is exceeded or the symptoms are not the same, they are left to die until a hospital is founded which is intended for such cases. If a man is in want of bread he receives a garment, because the institution which might help him only provides clothes; and if a whole family is dying of hunger they will receive a mattress if directed to an institution which only supplies beds. The liberal charity which is personal and intelligent, and which corresponds to the infinite variety and combinations of human necessities, lingers, thank God! in the hearts of the beneficent, but its form is discredited and its means are abridged. The great mass of the funds which were devoted to charity is now diverted into the official and semi-official channels of modern philanthropy. In my opinion, the relief which is now given does good without remedying the evil, since a dinner for to-day is always welcome, but it will not prevent a man from dying of hunger next week, or of cold if he has not wherewithal to cover himself; while a loaf or a cloak given at a propitious moment may save the life of a man or of a whole family. So it may be said that the place of charity has been taken by the struggle for existence, only modified by administrative philanthropy.

This second revolution was produced by the growing discredit which resulted from the evils and inconveniences which had their source in the ancient conception of property, and from those which were attributed to the free and sentimental charity. Property, when in the hands of a few privileged classes, made few happy while the many were unhappy. Charity created miseries by encouraging idleness. Such were the principal arguments which overthrew the old system.

Thus political power of an exclusive and egotistic character, which was founded on divine right, was destroyed in order to constitute governments on a popular basis; labor was substituted for charity. It appeared to the philosophers who carried out this great revolution that nothing more was needed to inaugurate a new golden age in which the rivers would flow with milk, and ripe fruits would fall on every man’s table. It is needless to add that peace and general satisfaction were to be the results of this profound and laborious revolution.

II.

The old order of things was, however, hardly demolished before two distinct and menacing questions were raised upon its ruins—Nationality and Socialism. Let us begin with the first.

Since the country (patria), in the limited sense of the word, had disappeared—that is, the political unity which was represented by the dynasty or flag or even simply a steeple, the early symbol of the old societies—the sentiment of association took its concrete form in a fresh combination, more in harmony with the democratic tendencies of our times. It assumed the widest possible basis—to constitute a society which should unite all common interests, and should be governed in conformity with these. It is, indeed, not surprising that men who speak the same language, inhabit the same zone, who are alike in their customs and dispositions, who are, in short, what is now called a nation, should present all these characteristics, and should therefore become the new political unit both of the present and the future, thus replacing the earlier units formed by heredity or conquests without respect to the interests of all the component elements.

Nothing in nature is produced at one stroke; and some races had already advanced towards nationality, and especially France, which had laboriously constituted herself into a nation, before the word was used in its political meaning. But the country to which it was allotted to assert loudly and explicitly this new form of political life was Italy in 1859. The formula of nationality as the basis of right was first proposed by her and obtained acceptance by international jurisprudence, and this basis had scarcely been established before it led to the overthrow of six thrones which boasted of different origins, among which was the most ancient and most venerable of all—the temporal power of the Popes. The experiment was favorably received, and Germany lost no time in adopting it, since the old system had produced in that country the same conditions of divisions and of relative weakness which had occurred in Italy. The campaigns of 1866 and of 1870 served to contribute to the new theory the force which was necessary to convince European diplomacy.

Even those who most reluctantly accept modern ideas do not now speak of anything but nationality. It might be supposed that there had never been any other basis for politics, since this has in a very short time been so completely and universally accepted.

The production of these nationalities has, however, been accompanied by all the defects of the system which preceded them. They have brought with them all the rancours of ancient Europe. The rancours of Francis I. and of Charles V. have been transmuted into the deadly enmity which exists between French and Germans. The testament of Frederic II. has led to the programme of the German people, and the ambitious projects of Catherine II. have issued in the aspirations of the Slave race. So though the new era which began with nationality indicates a real progress in the internal constitution of the different States, and in the fundamental reasons for their several governments; still with respect to their international relations to universal justice and to general peace, in a word, with respect to the progress of the human race in morals, we find ourselves—to make use of the metaphor we employed at first—in a fresh spiral, equally limited in space, in which there is a relative progress, but it has only a slight influence on the general progress of humanity. And, to turn from abstract principles to the concrete limits of politics, the present state of things is not promising nor hopeful for the peace of Europe.