When steam shall be perfected, when, joined to the telegraph and railways, it shall have caused distances to disappear, we shall see not only merchandise travel, but also ideas, restored to the use of their wings. When fiscal and commercial barriers shall have been abolished between the various States, as they already are between the provinces of the same State; when different countries entertaining daily relations shall tend to promote the unity of the peoples: how will you resuscitate the old manner of separation?
Society, on the other hand, is no less threatened by the spread of intellect than it is by the development of brute nature: suppose labour to be condemned to idleness by reason of the multiplication and variety of machinery; admit that one only and general mercenary, matter, replaces the mercenaries of the farm and the household: what will you do with the unemployed human race? What will you do with passions that are idle at the same time as, the intellect? The vigour of the body is maintained by physical occupation; when labour ceases, strength disappears; we shall become like those nations of Asia which fall a prey to the first invader and which are unable to defend themselves against a hand that bears the sword. Thus liberty is preserved only by work, because work produces strength; withdraw the curse pronounced against the sons of Adam, "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread[430]," and they will die in servitude. The divine curse therefore enters into the mystery of our lot; man is less the slave of his sweat than of his thought: that is how, after making the circuit of society, after passing through the different civilizations, after supposing unknown perfections, we find ourselves once more at the starting-point, in the presence of the truths of Scripture.
The Monarchy.
At the time of our Monarchy of eight centuries, Europe had in France the centre of its intelligence, its perpetuity, its repose; when deprived of that Monarchy, Europe at once inclined towards democracy. The human race, for good or ill, has become its own master; the princes have enjoyed its property during its minority; now that the nations have come of age, they contend that they have no more need of guardians. From David to our time, the kings have been called: the vocation of the peoples is commencing. The brief and small exceptions of the Greek, Carthaginian, Roman Republics, with slaves, do not take away the fact that, in antiquity, the monarchic state was the normal state of the globe. The whole of modern society, since the banner of the French kings has ceased to exist, is laying aside the monarchy. God, to hasten the degradation of the royal power, has delivered the sceptres in different countries to infirm kings, to little girls in long-clothes[431] or in the white veils of their weddings[432]: those are the toothless lions, the clawless lionesses, the sucking babes, the marrying babes, whom grown men are to follow in this era of unbelief.
The boldest opinions are proclaimed in the face of the monarchs, who pretend to feel safe behind the three-fold hedge of a suspected guard. The flood of democracy is overtaking them; they climb from storey to storey, from the ground-floor to the attic roof of their palace, whence they will leap into the water through the dormer windows.
In the midst of this, observe a phenomenal contradiction: material conditions are improving, intellectual progress increases, and the nations, instead of profiting, are diminishing. Whence comes this contradiction?
It is because we have lost in the moral order of things. There have been crimes at all periods; but they were never committed in cold blood, as they are nowadays, because of the loss of the religious sentiment. At this hour, they no longer revolt us, they seem a consequence of the march of time; if formerly we judged them in a different manner, it was because we were not yet, as we dare to assert, sufficiently advanced in the knowledge of man; we analyze them at the present moment; we test them in the crucible, in order to see what useful thing we can obtain from them, even as chemistry finds ingredients in the sewers. The corruption of the mind, which is very much more destructive than that of the senses, is accepted as a necessary result; it no longer belongs to a few wayward individuals: it has become public property.
Many men would feel humiliated if it were proved to them that they have a soul, that beyond this life they will find another life; they would think that they were wanting in firmness and strength and genius, if they did not rise superior to the pusillanimity of our fathers; they admit annihilation, or, if you like, doubt, as a disagreeable fact perhaps, but as a truth which it is impossible to deny. Admire the stultification of our pride!
That is how the decline of society and the increase of the individual are explained. If the moral sense were developed in proportion to the development of the intellect, there would be a counterpoise, and humanity would grow up without danger; but the exact opposite is happening: our perception of good and evil becomes dimmer as our intellect becomes more enlightened; our conscience shrinks as our ideas expand. Yes, society will perish: liberty, which could save the world, will not make progress, for want of leaning on religion; order, which could maintain the observance of rules, will not be solidly established, because it is combated by the anarchy of men's ideas. The purple, which used formerly to confer power, will henceforth serve as a bed only for misfortune: none will be saved unless he be born on the straw, like Christ. When the monarchs were disinterred at Saint-Denis, at the moment when the trumpet sounded for the popular resurrection; when, taken from their crumbling tombs, they lay awaiting plebeian burial, the ragmen came to this Last Judgment of the centuries: they looked with their lanterns into the eternal night; they rummaged among the remains that had escaped the first pillage. Already the Kings were there no more, but the Royalty was there still: they snatched it from the womb of time and flung it into the rubbish-basket.
Old and young Europe.