Now all this is perfectly correct, and Taine proves it by a mass of authentic testimony: nevertheless it may be observed that it is only a part of the truth, and by this one-sidedness the author has been led into error.
I am now alluding to the first part of this exposition, that which treats of the centralization of the government in the hands of royal officials as the deepest root of all this mischief. The worst side of this centralization had been incontrovertibly exposed by De Tocqueville, but none the less his representation was unfair and unjust, because it made no mention of the brighter side. No one can contest that the political inactivity of men of all positions in a system that referred the general interests of France to a bureaucracy, demoralized the higher classes and left the lower ignorant and inexperienced. Still the historian should not forget the actual achievements of this great bureaucracy. Under Colbert's guidance it created the civic order and economical beginnings of modern France. It, for the first time in France, rendered throughout a century a burghers' war an impossible thing, and it stimulated internal traffic by roads and canals, which gave rise to countless industrial and commercial undertakings. Later, under Turgot and Necker, it waged, on behalf of the people, war against the pressure of privileges, thought primarily of reform and progress, and saw with bitter regret the defeat of its popular efforts by the opposition of the nobles. Tocqueville himself tells how the Liberal parties before the Revolution thought more of reforms than liberties—that is to say, they expected the improvement of their condition from a further strengthening of the Monarchy. It came to a Revolution first, however. The Monarchy, wielded by the feeble hand of Louis XVI., was unequal to the task; then privileges fell for ever, but after ten years monarchical centralization arose anew in order a second time to satisfy the needs and inclinations of the French people throughout three generations. It seems therefore a mistake to paint this institution so out and out black. We may lament that it has not merely done nothing to educate the French in political liberty, but has as much as possible stifled liberty and the very sense of it among them. But how without it, under the circumstances that succeeded to the religious wars and the Fronde, anything like a positive constitution ever could have arisen in France, De Tocqueville does not say. We are indeed amazed when Taine, in his enumeration of the privileged classes as those luxurious idlers, those once political servants who had now renounced all political influence, numbers, as third with the clergy and nobility, the King—the head of that Government, which was only too zealous in working, and thereby drew all the power of the State to itself and excluded all others from care for the common weal. Here there is an evident contradiction, nor is it any way cleared up by the circumstance that personally Louis XV. vied in indolence and debauchery with the worst of his courtiers, or that his unfortunate successor spent much of his time and energy in Court etiquette and the chase. For the reign of Louis XVI. was from first to last spent in efforts, by the setting aside of feudal privileges, alike to strengthen the Crown and promote the good of the people, and in no case can it be more incorrect to look upon the Crown as a devouring parasitical growth upon the body of the State. This brings me back to my former remark: had Taine instead of or by the side of his picture of society under the Ancien Régime written the history of its last monarch, most assuredly he would have avoided this misconception.
But he admirably describes how the brilliant and empty position of the higher class led step by step to ruin. These distinguished personages had no earnest and strenuous activity; to be civil officials appeared to the majority of them below their dignity. They adopted the army as a mere sphere of chivalrous adventure, for even there, there was no question for them of rigid discipline; they left the drilling and care of their troops to subalterns and sergeants. Bishops and abbots drew immense revenues, and gallantly offered their devotion to fair dames, but as to divine services and cure of souls, they were the affair of needy priests and hungry vicars. The only field for their ambition and interest was the Court, the salon, good society. To shine there was the object of their distinguished lives. And as the French people have ever been largely endowed with grace and esprit, these efforts resulted in a perfection of personal appearance, a virtuoso-ship of social intercourse, a fixed and yet highly elastic code of bon ton, such as the world never saw before or since. Until then the first class of a great nation had never been known to make the formation of an exquisite society its highest, nay, its only life-purpose, to subordinate and sacrifice mental activity, moral strength, and individuality of character to the promotion and claims of this cultus. Here the final end of existence was enjoyment in all imaginable degrees, and thought and action were rigidly directed to it. That the greatest part of life should be spent in society was the most pressing requirement of politeness, the reciprocal recognition without which all society becomes unendurable. The conventional forms in which this recognition clothed itself became the law of this great world, and the consequences were felt on all sides. Any appearance of individual peculiarity or opinion came to be held unfitting; to be other or better than the rest was an offence against manners. Equally forbidden was the manifestation of any strong passion, a thing by its very nature opposed to the sway of conventionality. Vice therefore was excused if it presented itself gracefully, and almost honoured if it brought a startling and exciting variety into the monotony of daily life. Mental enjoyments were as welcome as sensual, provided they could be had without trouble or labour, for the aim was not to be informed, but amused, and so any kind of knowledge was good, with the exception of the tedious. Hence it followed that all mental acquirement was estimated not by the worth of its content but the excellence of its form: abstract intelligence in the service of enjoyment, such was the motto of this society. Genial originality, unconscious creative power, native vigour, were thoroughly antipathetic there, or only tolerated in so far as they made themselves subservient to the ruling mood.
A further consideration of how essentially these characteristics of good society tended to strengthen and sharpen the revolutionary theories of its deadly foes, here becomes instructive. The development of this process may indeed be looked upon as the salient point in Taine's work, for often as the French literature and philosophy of the eighteenth century have been treated of, I know of no earlier author who with such extensive material and penetrating insight has clearly brought out the continuous reciprocal action of circumstances and theories, and thus gained an unalterable scale for the measurement of both by history. Taine begins, as is just, with the mighty impetus given to natural science since the middle of the seventeenth century throughout Europe, by which a way was opened for an utterly new view of the world and of men, in opposition to the speculative and theological conceptions of the Middle Ages.
Next comes under consideration the prevalence of the inductive method, the rejection of all dogmatic assumption, the repugnance to all intuitive ideas, the proclamation of observation and experiment as the only sources of verifiable knowledge. These principles having been at once unconditionally acknowledged in the sphere of natural science, the next step was to apply the tone of thought they had engendered to the phenomena of spiritual and social life, and here also to demand thorough investigation by the one true authority—criticism. Whatever the consequence of this investigation might in particular cases be, the very fact that it had been demanded, that the right of the existing, as such, was denied, that the authority of tradition was subjected to that of critical reason—this betokened a new epoch in the world's history, and opened out possibilities of hitherto undreamed-of progress in politics and religion, State and Church, material and spiritual culture. It is now plain that if the inductive method can lead to such positive results, its application should be thorough and universal. No naturalist delivers a general law as to the life of an organism before he has considered its origin, existence, and decay in all their stages, compared it with its like, separated it from its unlike; for it is just through the discovery and recognition of the eminently special that analysis leads him to the comprehension of universal truth. And according to this same rule, in order to arrive at a just and practicable idea of reform for any State, a great mass of special observations by technically practised and prepared eyes would have been required; legal, economical, and historical inquiries made; the peculiarities of individuals and peoples, of the epoch and stage of culture, must have been known; the not merely personal but collective functions of human nature in their bases and action investigated: for only when all this had been accomplished could it be asserted that the organism of the State and its laws had been dealt with after the manner of a genuine naturalist, and that we were now in a condition to judge of single actualities according to these laws.
How came it that in the France of the eighteenth century the very opposite occurred—that politicians, stimulated by young natural science, should from the very first turn their backs upon the inductive method, and evolve the future State rationalistically, according to a few abstract principles?
Taine convincingly shows the reason of this: it was chiefly the influence of fashionable society upon literature which led to this fatal tendency.
The highest circles in Paris and Versailles, in their brilliant but idle existence, were, as we have seen, as intent upon mental as sensual excitement, and therefore prepared to open their doors to every littérateur who could satisfy this demand. Now, owing to the actual structure of society in France, the writer who did not choose merely to devote himself to a few professional subjects had no other public than this distinguished class. They and they alone were in a position to secure him praise, honours, and a certain income, therefore it was most natural that the writer should conform to requirements upon the satisfaction of which his literary career was so absolutely dependent. We have now to inquire what were the characteristics of the prevalent tone of thought among the highest class. First a horror of all thoroughness, all enduring and laborious perseverance, all deep earnestness and spiritual recollection. For all this was the very opposite of enjoyment and diversion, it was a falling into the deadly sin of tediousness. It was desirable, indeed, to have much and varied knowledge, but rapidly and lightly, by vivid and pungent discussion, to reach the quintessence of the most interesting points and conclusions. Consequently the author's productions became restless, many-sided, and superficial. The mass of information in every department of knowledge which Voltaire, for instance, had at his disposal was immense; but the working out and application of it were strongly hasty, aphoristic, and frivolous. To this was added the dislike the public of the time had to any individual peculiarity, its tendency to force all personalities into one conventional form—an effort equally fatal to poetic creation and to the historical sense. For such men as these the world was comprehended in what they called the great world; they had lost the power of imagining that there was or ever had been an existence outside of it and absolutely unlike it; or if in any particular case the astounding fact could not be entirely concealed, it was understood that among cultivated persons it could never be given any importance. Even on the stage it was no longer considered becoming that peasants or labourers, a Peruvian or Iroquois, should speak in their own natural manner; they were all alike rendered polite, sententious, and fluent as their distinguished audience. Each local and individual tone was rubbed away, every person of the drama was but a mouthpiece for the eighteenth-century eloquence of the author. As with the drama, so with other literature. Taine correctly observes that if we read an English romance of the period, we have before our eyes a section of the English people; but a French one, though widely varying in garb, contains invariably a picture of a French salon, and that only. In presence of so universal a mood as this, how could any one come to the study of the State by means of difficult and distant researches on historical ground? Montesquieu did it, but he remained solitary among his contemporaries, won much celebrity, but exercised very little influence. The other reformers used quickly to turn over the pages of histories in order to find piquant quotations for some ready-made theory; as, for instance, the ambition of priests, the falsehood of diplomatists, the insatiability of princely greed. As to the complicated task of judging any individual State and its constitution according to its climatic and geographic conditions and its historical antecedents, with the exception of Montesquieu, no man dreamt of that. The public, with whom the decision lay, did not require anything of the kind, nay, would have repaid the severe toil with disapproval. It placed, as we have before said, far more stress on a pleasant form than an instructive purpose, cared but little for any subject in itself, but only as affording material for the most intelligent, yet at the same time most comprehensible and exciting conversation. In debate no trace of previous knowledge won by personal effort was pre-supposed; all that was needed was never to be commonplace, and in every case to bring forward new and amazing truths. Accordingly speech and style strove neither for fulness nor depth, but so much the more for clearness and conclusiveness. In exposition, the progress was regular from syllogism to syllogism, great care being taken never to skip over a middle term. In order to be impressive the speaker became rhetorical, in order to convince he endeavoured to reduce every subject to one universal and easily inculcated proposition. Good society was delighted to be thus agreeably put in possession of the most advanced views of the world; but literature thus allowed itself to deviate from real knowledge into the way of empty abstraction.
That the literature thus fostered and guided should from the beginning of the eighteenth century have been in opposition, that since the middle of it it should have undermined with savage impetuosity all the foundations of existing conditions, this gave not the least shock to distinguished society. Disgust at their own impotence and the omnipotence of royal officials, dislike to an intolerant orthodoxy, vexation at some personal neglect at Court,—altogether there was cause enough for malicious satisfaction when philosophers, by biting criticisms, made clear the standpoint of burdensome potentates. And when an ever-growing and strengthening Materialism taught the doctrine of physical enjoyment and judicious selfishness as the guiding principle of human conduct, it only spoke out what had half-unconsciously been the sum of all the motives and activities of high society. But above all, theories were but theories, merely conversation, excitement, pastime. The nobles declaimed against obsolete abuses, but naturally each meant to keep his own rightful possessions, and among these were privileges and feudal rights. They felt conscious of a fresh superiority to the ignorant masses, because they professed humanitarianism and liberalism, and spoke against superstition and subordination. That these much-admired theories might by-and-by become common to the whole community, and then bring about horrible explosions—of this they had not the remotest suspicion. Any one who had in 1780 prophesied such a thing to the ladies of Versailles, would have been looked upon as we should look upon a prophet nowadays, who told us that in the next century cats and dogs, instead of men, were to be lords of creation.
This, then, was the public in whose atmosphere and with whose co-operation the philosophy of revolutionary enlightenment sprung up. It was here that it learned its rapid and superficial mode of study, its rejection of an historical spirit in favour of multitudinous present actualities, its taste for rhetorically adorned formulæ and commonplaces. When the construction of the best State was to be set about, common characteristics were collected from the natural history of mankind, such as the dislike to pain, the impulse towards pleasure, the capacity of forming, from sensations, representations and conclusions. These characteristics were merely put together as the concept man, and from this abstract man were deduced, as in a mathematical formula, the laws of politics, morals, and rights. Since all men had the same natural impulse towards happiness, the State must render it possible for them all to reach that aim. Since all had a natural capacity to form concepts and conclusions, they would be sure to employ the right means to that end so soon as their hands were left free, or in case of a momentary mistake these right means logically pointed out to them. That passion is, in point of fact, in the great majority of men, stronger than reason, and desire more impetuous than thought, was disregarded by these admirers of abstract reason; the fact that each man had the faculty of drawing a logical conclusion appeared to them to insure his conforming his conduct to the requirements of that conclusion. If a logically formulated proof of the excellence of one of the Constitutions they had sketched could be arrived at, they fancied that the security and durability of its construction was perfectly guaranteed. On the other hand, that the preservation of constitutional order required other forces besides logical discussions, this was altogether outside their range of thought.