So much for old Europe: it will never revive. Does young Europe offer better prospects? The present world, the world without consecrated authority, seems placed between two impossibilities, the impossibility of the past and the impossibility of the future. And do not go to think, as some imagine, that, if we are badly off at present, good will come out of evil: human nature, when disordered at its source, does not proceed with such correctness. For instance, the excesses of liberty lead to despotism; but the excesses of tyranny lead only to tyranny; the latter, in degrading us, makes us incapable of independence: Tiberius did not cause Rome to go back to the Republic; he left only Caligula to follow him.
To avoid explanations, we are satisfied to declare that the times may have hidden in their womb a political constitution which we do not perceive. Did the whole of antiquity, did the finest geniuses of that antiquity conceive a society without slaves? Yet we see it existing. We assert that, in this civilization as yet unborn, the human race will grow greater; I have advanced this theory myself: is it not to be feared, however, that the individual will grow less? We may become industrious bees occupied in common with the manufacture of our honey. In the material world, men unite for purposes of labour; a multitude attains sooner and by different roads the thing after which it strives; masses of individuals will raise pyramids; by dint of study, each on his own side, those individuals will light upon scientific discoveries and explore every corner of physical creation. But are things the same in the moral world? It will be vain for a thousand brains to combine: never will they compose the master-piece that issues from the head of a Homer.
It has been said that a city whose members enjoy an equal division of goods and education will present to the gaze of the Divinity a spectacle surpassing the spectacle of the city of our fathers. The madness of the moment tends to achieve the unity of peoples and to make but one man of the whole race: well and good; but, in acquiring general faculties, will not a whole series of private sentiments perish? Good-bye to the delights of the home; good-bye to the charms of the family: among all those beings, white, yellow and black, reputed as your fellow-countrymen, you would not be able to throw yourself on a brother's neck! Was there nothing in the life of old, nothing in that limited space upon which you looked out from your ivy-framed casement? Beyond your horizon, you suspected the existence of unknown lands of which the bird of passage, the only traveller that you had seen in autumn, scarce spoke to you. It was happiness to think that the hills which surrounded you would not disappear from before your eyes; that they contained your friendships and your loves; that the moaning of the night around your dwelling would be the only sound to which you would fall asleep; that never would your soul's solitude be disturbed; that you would always meet there the thoughts that await you to resume their familiar intercourse with you. You knew where you were born, you knew where your tomb lay; as you entered the forest, you were able to say:
Beaux arbres qui m'avez vu naître,
Bientôt vous me verrez mourir[433]!
Man does not need to travel in order to grow greater: he carries immensity with him. The accents that escape from your bosom are not measured, they find an echo in thousands of souls: he who has not that melody within himself will ask it in vain of the universe. Sit down on the trunk of the tree felled in the depths of the wood: if in your profound forgetfulness of self, in your immobility, in your silence you do not find the infinite, it is useless for you to wander on the banks of the Ganges.
What would an universal society be that should have no particular country, that should not be French, nor English, nor German, nor Spanish, nor Portuguese, nor Italian, nor Russian, nor Tartar, nor Turkish, nor Persian, nor Indian, nor Chinese, nor American, or rather that should be all these societies at once? What would be the outcome for its manners, its science, its arts, its poetry? How would passions be expressed felt at the same time in the manner of different peoples in different climates? How would the language entertain that confusion of needs and images produced by the various suns that should have cast their light upon a common youth, manhood and old age? And what would that language be? Would an universal idiom result from this fusion of societies, or would there be a dialect of compromise, employed for daily use, while each nation would talk its own language, or else would the different languages be understood by all? Under what like rule, under what one law would this society have its being? How would one find one's place on an earth enlarged by the power of ubiquitousness and narrowed by the petty proportions of a globe tainted on every hand? There would be nothing for it but to apply to science for means to change one's planet.
Are you weary of private ownership and do you wish to turn the government into a sole proprietor, distributing to what will have become a mendicant community a share commensurate with the merit of each individual? Who shall judge of the merits? Who will have the strength and the authority to compel the execution of your decrees? Who will keep and make the most of that bank of living real estate?
Socialism.
Will you seek to bring about the association of labour? What will the weak, the sick, the unintelligent bring to the community left burdened with their unfitness?
Here is another contrivance: one might form, in place of wages, a sort of limited company or partnership between manufacturers and workmen, between mind and matter, to which the one would bring his capital and his idea, the others their industry and their labour; the eventual profits to be shared in common. That would be very good, admitting complete perfection among men; very good, if you meet with no quarrelling, avarice, nor envy: but, if a single partner protests, the whole crumbles to the ground; divisions and law-suits begin. This method, which seems a little more possible in theory, is quite as impossible in practice.