THE SPIRIT OF DESTRUCTION AND THE SPIRIT OF CONSERVATISM.
How is it that the French are such vandals with regard to their country
and their institutions, seeing that the love for their family, respect
for their parents, and veneration for souvenirs, are such marked
features in their character? The fact is that France is towed
unresistingly by Paris, and that we often have to say "the French," when
in reality we only mean "the Parisians."
We are accused of no longer having much respect for anything. Alas! that
it should be impossible to deny such an accusation!
A country, just like a family, lives by its traditions, its souvenirs,
even by its prejudices. Destroy these souvenirs, some of which serve as
examples and others as warnings, destroy these traditions, and you
break the chain that binds the family together, and the past, though
never so glorious, has been lived in vain. Is a country less dear to her
sons because of her prejudices? Do we not love to find them in a dear
old mother?
Do not the very prejudices and weaknesses, the thousand little failings
of our friends, often endear them to us?
Then why are we not content with France as she is? Why be always wanting
to change her? Is it possible that we Frenchmen, the most home-abiding
men in the world, can be attacked by this ridiculous mania for change?
* * * * *
The study of the French language furnishes of itself plain proof of our
spirit of destruction, and the _Dictionnaire des Significations_, which,
is shortly to be published, and is awaited with impatience by the
learned world, will show, by the history of the changes of meaning that
our words have undergone, that the character of the French people can
be recognized to this very day by the descriptions that were given of it
two thousand years ago.
The French word _benit_ formerly meant "blessed."
Thanks to the jokes of the old Gauls, our ancestors, it now means
"silly." Our forefathers heard in church: "Benedicti stulti quia
habebunt regnum coelorum."[7] Benis seront les pauvres d'esprit, car
ils auront le royaume des cieux. Now, in French, _pauvre d'esprit_ means
"silly," and, on their way home, the old jokers would indulge in merry
remarks at one another's expense. When anyone gave proof of want of wit,
he was congratulated on having his entry into the kingdom of heaven
secured:
"You are _stultus_ enough to be _benedictus_"; and the first adjective
soon came to have the meaning of the second.
It will soon be impossible to pronounce the word _fille_ in good
society, except to express relationship.
Why are we obliged to make use of this word to designate a child of the
feminine sex? Simply because the feminine of _garcon_ began to be used
in a bad sense in the seventeenth century. Before the feminine of
_garcon_--which the French had to give up, as they will soon have to
give up the word _fille_--they had a word which is, in the present day,
a horribly coarse expression.
Such is the march of the spirit of destruction.
The Gauls have always been rich in wit, but wit often of a bantering and
sarcastic kind, which disparages and covers with ridicule, and of which
Voltaire was the personification.
People who eat sausages on a Friday,[8] in France, think they are doing
a smart thing, and rebelling against a form of tyranny, forgetting that
Lenten fasts had originally a sanitary reason. To give rest to the
stomach, such was the aim; and a French physician said to me one day:
"If there were no Lent in the spring, I should order my patients to fast
two or three times a week, through that season of the year."
The Talmud forbids the Jews to eat pork, because that meat is heavy and
indigestible; the Koran forbids the use of wine among the Mussulmans,
because of its intoxicating properties; in fact, have not all these
religious edicts a foundation of common sense, and do we not give proof
of common sense in conforming to them? Truly, he is but a pitiful
hero--not to use a stronger term--who boasts of not following a salutary
counsel, that he does not know how to appreciate, because he does not
understand.
* * * * *
The English, unlike us, cling to their past, and because a custom is
old, that is a sufficient reason, in their eyes, for holding it sacred.
I feel sure that there is not an Englishman, who does not religiously
eat his slice of plum pudding on Christmas Day, let him be in the Bush,
at the Antipodes, on land or on water, and no matter in what latitude.
It is a veritable communion.
The English observance of the Sunday is tyrannical, I admit, but it is
an ancient institution, and, if kept in an intelligent way, should
command respect.
If the people of Great Britain do not build anything in a day, they
have, at any rate, the good habit of not demolishing anything in a day.
The Englishman has an innate love of old walls that recall to him a
historical fact, a departed grandeur, a memory of his childhood.
I have been present at many a touching scene, that has proved to me how
deeply the _religio loci_ is rooted in the heart of every true-born
Englishman.
Here is one.
An old City School, dating from the fifteenth century, had just been
transplanted into one of the suburbs of London.
The new building is a palace compared with the old.
Yet it was with profound sadness that old scholars learnt of the removal
of the school from its time-honored home. If they could have had a voice
in the matter, the change would not have taken place. The splendor of
the new school was nothing to them; the name was the same, but it was
their old school no more. On the day of the farewell ceremony in the
City, I saw gray-headed men, who had come from distant parts of the
country, on purpose to bid farewell to the venerable walls, to have one
more look at them.
* * * * *
If England, who only dates from the eleventh century, lives on her
souvenirs and turns to them for inspiration, with what souvenirs might
we inspire ourselves--we who have been a nation for twenty-three
centuries?
There was no England when we were the terror of Rome. There was no
England when our brave and generous ancestors went to battle to deliver
or avenge an oppressed nation, or welcomed a poor stranger as a friend
sent by the gods. There was no England when Vercingetorix made Caesar
tremble, nor was there yet an England when, eight hundred years later,
the exploits of Roland were inspiring the poets of the whole of old
Europe.
Ah! let us cling to our past, we who have such a glorious one! Where is
the nation that can boast such another?