ENGLAND WORKS FOR HERSELF. THE WORLD OWES HER NOTHING.
"If," as M. Renan says,[6] "those nations which have an exceptional fact
in their history expiate this fact by long sufferings and pay for it
with their national existence--if the nations that have created unique
things by which the world profits often die victims of their
achievements," England may hope to live a considerable time yet, for
everything that she undertakes is national, never universal. She works
for herself and herself alone. Whenever she is asked to co-operate in
the execution of a great project of universal interest, she refuses
pointblank, unless it appears quite clear to her that she alone will
reap the profits and honors of the undertaking. An Englishman's sphere
of action is always England and her colonies; his only aim, British
interests--two magic words to his ears.
If the Channel Tunnel could be made so that it could only be used by the
English, it would be commenced to-morrow.
Lord Beaconsfield pronounced patriotism to be the most rational form of
egotism. Would to Heaven it might be so interpreted in France!
When shall we, in France, cease to strive after the extraordinary and
the universal? When shall we cease to concern ourselves about the
happiness of the whole human race and, minding our own business,
undertake only the possible and the practical? When shall we cease to
become inventors and be men of business?
There is not much discovered in England nowadays, except new ways of
dodging the arch-enemy.
* * * * *
Yet it was Newton who discovered the infinitesimal calculus and the laws
of universal gravitation. Yet it was England that produced Shakespeare,
the sublimest example of the Creator's handiwork. Yet it was Harvey who
discovered the circulation of the blood. But now England is entirely
given over to business; she has no time to throw away upon inventions.
For that matter, why should England go in for inventing? She has money
and a genius for commerce, and, possessing these, can do without
inventors, who, as a rule, die in the workhouse, with the satisfaction
of knowing that shrewd men of business have made fortunes out of their
discoveries.
This has always been so. Even the sublime and Divine Thinker expiated
with an ignominious death the invention of a theory which, but for the
meddling of speculators, would have insured the happiness of the world.
To-day He can contemplate from His celestial throne, the bishops coming
out of their palaces in luxurious carriages to go to the House of Lords
and vote against the opening of museums on Sundays, or on their way to
the Mansion House to feast with the Lord Mayor, who gives better dinners
than were to be had in Galilee, I assure you.
* * * * *
The world is made up of fools and knaves, such was the judgment passed
upon mankind by Thomas Carlyle, the great English historian, a rough and
dyspeptic philosopher, who himself, however, was neither a knave nor a
fool.
This writer, who passed his life in insulting his countrymen one after
another, who could make love to his wife by correspondence when she was
far away, but who never found an amiable word to say to her when she was
near, this same Thomas Carlyle has calumniated the world. Where should
we be without the few disinterested heroes who have devoted themselves
to the amelioration of their fellow-creatures, and who, in return, have
received but poverty and prison, torture and death? The men who have
suffered for country, religion, science, liberty; are these Carlyle's
fools?