vision truly surprising, considering his own youth and what we may
venture to call the youth of his subject. The reader will be able to
appreciate this, and to discern at the same time the arbitrary nature of
Montesquieu's method, if he will contrast, for example, the remarks of
this writer upon polygamy with the far wider and more sagacious
explanation of the circumstances of such an institution given by
Turgot.[54] Unfortunately, he has left us only short and fragmentary
pieces, but they suggest more than many large and complete works. That
they had a very powerful and direct influence upon Condorcet there is no
doubt, as well from the similarity of general conception between him and
Turgot, as from the nearly perfect identity of leading passages in their
writings. Let us add that in Turgot's fragments we have what is
unhappily not a characteristic of Condorcet, the peculiar satisfaction
and delight in scientific history of a style which states a fact in such
phrases as serve also to reveal its origin, bearings, significance, in
which every successive piece of description is so worded as to be
self-evidently a link in the chain of explanation, an ordered term in a
series of social conditions.
Before returning to Condorcet we ought to glance at the remarkable
piece, written in 1784, in which Kant propounded his idea of a
universal or cosmo-political history, which contemplating the agency of
the human will upon a large scale should unfold to our view a regular
stream of tendency in the great succession of events.[55] The will
metaphysically considered, Kant said, is free, but its manifestations,
that is to say, human actions, 'are as much under the control of
universal laws of nature as any other physical phenomena.'
The very same course of incidents, which taken separately and
individually would have seemed perplexed and incoherent, 'yet viewed in
their connection and as the action of the human _species_ and not of
independent beings, never fail to observe a steady and continuous,
though slow, development of certain great predispositions in our
nature.' As it is impossible to presume in the human race any _rational_
purpose of its own, we must seek to observe some _natural_ purpose in
the current of human actions. Thus a history of creatures with no plan
of their own, may yet admit a systematic form as a history of creatures
blindly pursuing a plan of nature. Now we know that all predispositions
are destined to develop themselves according to their final purpose.
Man's rational predispositions are destined to develop themselves in the
species and not in the individual. History then is the progress of the
development of all the tendencies laid in man by nature. The method of
development is the antagonism of these tendencies in the social state,
and its source the _unsocial sociality_ of man--a tendency to enter the
social state, combined with a perpetual resistance to that tendency,
which is ever threatening to dissolve it. The play of these two
tendencies unfolds talents of every kind, and by gradual increase of
light a preparation is made for such a mode of thinking as is capable of
'exalting a social concert that had been _pathologically_ extorted from
the mere necessities of situation, into a _moral_ union founded on the
reasonable choice.' Hence the highest problem for man is the
establishment of a universal civil society, founded on the empire of
political justice; and 'the history of the human species as a whole may
be regarded as the unravelling of a hidden plan of nature for
accomplishing a perfect state of civil constitution for society in its
internal relations (and, as the condition of that, in its external
relations also), as the sole state of society in which the tendencies of
human nature can be all and fully developed.' Nor is this all. We shall
not only be able to unravel the intricate web of past affairs, but shall
also find a clue for the guidance of future statesmen in the art of
political prediction. Nay more, this clue 'will open a consolatory
prospect into futurity, in which at a remote distance we shall observe
the human species seated upon an eminence won by infinite toil, where
all the germs are unfolded which nature has implanted within it, and
its destination on this earth accomplished.'
That this conception involves an assumption about tendencies and final
purposes which reverses the true method of history, and moreover reduces
what ought to be a scientific inquiry to be a foregone justification of
nature or providence, should not prevent us from appreciating its signal
merits in insisting on a systematic presentation of the collective
activity of the race, and in pointing out, however cursorily, the use of
such an elucidation of the past in furnishing the grounds of practical
guidance in dealing with the future and in preparing it. Considering the
brevity of this little tract, its pregnancy and suggestiveness have not
often been equalled. We have seen enough of it here to enable us to
realise the differences between this and the French school. We miss the
wholesome objectivity, resulting from the stage which had been reached
in France by the physical sciences. Condorcet's series of _éloges_ shows
unmistakably how deep an impression the history of physical discovery
had made upon him, and how clearly he understood the value of its
methods. The peculiar study which their composition had occasioned him
is of itself almost enough to account for the fact that a conception
which had long been preparing in the superior minds of the time, should
fully develop itself in him rather than in anybody else.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] Quesnay; _Droit Naturel_, ch. v. _Les Physiocrates_, i. 52.
[43] _Economistes Financiers du 18ième Siècle._ Vauban's _Projet d'une
Dime Royale_ (p. 33), and Boisguillebert's _Factum de la France_, etc.
(p. 248 _et seq._)
[44] De la Rivière, for instance, very notably. Cf. his _Ordre Naturel
des Sociétés Politiques_. _Physiocrates_, ii. 469, 636, etc. See also
Baudeau on the superiority of the Economic Monarchy _Ib._ pp. 783-791.
[45] _Ordre Nat. des Soc. Pol._ p. 526.
[46] Bk. i. 23.
[47] _Hist._ i. 4.
[48] Polyb. _Hist._ I. iii. 4; iv. 3, 7.
[49] The well-known words of Thucydides may contain the germ of the same
idea, when he speaks of the future as being likely to represent again,
after the fashion of human things, 'if not the very image, yet the near
resemblance of the past.' Bk. i. 22, 4.
[50] _Discours en Sorbonne._ _Oeuv. de Turgot_, ii. 597. (Ed. of 1844).
[51] Cf. Sir G. C. Lewis's _Methods of Observation in Politics_, ii.
439, note.
[52] _Oeuv. de Turgot_, ii. 599, 645, etc.
[53] _Ib._ ii. 601.
[54] _Esprit des Lois_, xvi. cc. 2-4. And _Discours sur l'Histoire
Universelle_, in Turgot's Works, ii. 640, 641. For a further account of
Turgot's speculations, see article "Turgot" in the present volume.
[55] _Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmo-Political Plan._ It was
translated by De Quincey, and is to be found in vol. xiii. of his
collected works, pp. 133-152.
V.
The Physiocrats, as we have seen, had introduced the idea of there being
a natural order in social circumstances, that order being natural which
is most advantageous to mankind. Turgot had declared that one age is
bound to another by a chain of causation. Condorcet fused these two
conceptions. He viewed the history of the ages as a whole, and found in
their succession a natural order; an order which, when uninterrupted and
undisturbed, tended to accumulate untold advantages upon the human race,
which was every day becoming more plain to the vision of men, and
therefore every day more and more assured from disturbance by ignorant
prejudice and sinister interests. There is an order at once among the
circumstances of a given generation, and among the successive sets of
circumstances of successive generations. 'If we consider the development
of human faculties in its results, so far as they relate to the
individuals who exist at the same time on a given space, and if we
follow that development from generation to generation, then we have
before us the picture of the progress of the human mind. This progress
is subject to the same general laws that are to be observed in the
development of the faculties of individuals, for it is the result of
that development, considered at the same time in a great number of
individuals united in society. But the result that presents itself at
any one instant depends upon that which was offered by the instants
preceding; in turn it influences the result in times still to follow.'
This picture will be of a historical character, inasmuch as being
subject to perpetual variations it is formed by the observation in due
order of different human societies in different epochs through which
they have passed. It will expose the order of the various changes, the
influence exercised by each period over the next, and thus will show in
the modifications impressed upon the race, ever renewing itself in the
immensity of the ages, the track that it has followed, and the exact
steps that it has taken towards truth and happiness. Such observation of
what man has been and of what he is, will then lead us to means proper
for assuring and accelerating the fresh progress that his nature allows
us to anticipate still further.[56]
'If a man is able to predict with nearly perfect confidence, phenomena
with whose laws he is acquainted; if, even when they are unknown to him,
he is able, in accordance with the experience of the past, to foresee
with a large degree of probability the events of the future, why should
we treat it as a chimerical enterprise, to trace with some
verisimilitude the picture of the future destinies of the human race in
accordance with the results of its history? The only foundation of
belief in the natural sciences is this idea, that the general laws,
known or unknown, which regulate the phenomena of the universe are
necessary and constant; and why should this principle be less true for
the development of the moral and intellectual faculties of man than for
other natural operations? In short, opinions grounded on past experience
in objects of the same order being the single rule of conduct for even
the wisest men, why should the philosopher be forbidden to rest his
conjectures on the same base, provided that he never attributes to them
a degree of certainty beyond what is warranted by the number, the
constancy, and the accuracy of his observations?'[57]
Thus Condorcet's purpose was not to justify nature, as it had been with
Kant, but to search in the past for rational grounds of a belief in the
unbounded splendour of men's future destinies. His view of the character
of the relations among the circumstances of the social union, either at
a given moment or in a succession of periods, was both accurate and
far-sighted. When he came actually to execute his own great idea, and to
specify the manner in which those relations arose and operated, he
instantly diverged from the right path. Progress in his mind is
exclusively produced by improvement in intelligence. It is the necessary
result of man's activity in the face of that disproportion ever existing
between what he knows and what he desires and feels the necessity to
know.[58] Hence the most fatal of the errors of Condorcet's sketch. He
measures only the contributions made by nations and eras to what we
know; leaving out of sight their failures and successes in the
elevation of moral standards and ideals, and in the purification of
human passions.
Now even if we hold the intellectual principle only to be progressive,
and the moral elements to be fixed, being coloured and shaped and
quickened by the surrounding intellectual conditions, still, inasmuch as
the manner of this shaping and colouring is continually changing and
leading to the most important transformations of human activity and
sentiment, it must obviously be a radical deficiency in any picture of
social progress to leave out the development of ethics, whether it be a
derivative or an independent and spontaneous development. One seeks in
vain in Condorcet's sketch for any account of the natural history of
western morals, or for any sign of consciousness on his part that the
difference in ethical discipline and feeling between the most ferocious
of primitive tribes and the most enlightened eighteenth-century
Frenchmen, was a result of evolution that needed historical explanation,
quite as much as the difference between the astrolatry of one age and
the astronomy of another. We find no recognition of the propriety of
recounting the various steps of that long process by which, to use
Kant's pregnant phrase, the relations born of pathological necessity
were metamorphosed into those of moral union. The grave and lofty
feeling, for example, which inspired the last words of the
_Tableau_--whence came it? Of what long-drawn chain of causes in the
past was it the last effect? It is not enough to refer us generally to
previous advances in knowledge and intellectual emancipation, because
even supposing the successive modifications of our moral sensibilities
to be fundamentally due to the progress of intellectual enlightenment,
we still want to know in the first place something about the influences
which harness one process to the other, and in the second place,
something about the particular directions which these modifications of
moral constitution have taken.
If this is one very radical omission in Condorcet's scheme, his angry
and vehement aversion for the various religions of the world (with
perhaps one exception) is a sin of commission still more damaging to its
completeness. That he should detest the corrupt and oppressive forms of
religion of his own century was neither surprising nor blamable. An
unfavourable view of the influences upon human development of the
Christian belief, even in its least corrupt forms, was not by any means
untenable. Nay, he was at liberty to go further than this, and to depict
religion as a natural infirmity of the human mind in its immature
stages, just as there are specific disorders incident in childhood to
the human body. Even on this theory, he was bound to handle it with the
same calmness which he would have expected to find in a pathological
treatise by a physician. Who would write of the sweating sickness with
indignation, or describe zymotic diseases with resentment? Condorcet's
pertinacious anger against theology is just as irrational as this would
be, from the scientific point of view which he pretends to have assumed.
Theology, in fact, was partly avenged of her assailants, for she had in
the struggle contrived to infect them with the bitter contagion of her
own traditional spirit.
From the earliest times to the latest it is all one story according to
Condorcet. He can speak with respect of philosophies even when, as in
the case of the Scotch school of the last century, he dislikes and
condemns them.[59] Of religion his contempt and hatred only vary
slightly in degree. Barbarous tribes have sorcerers, trading on the
gross superstitions of their dupes: so in other guise and with different
names have civilised nations to-day. As other arts progressed,
superstition, too, became less rude; priestly families kept all
knowledge in their own hands, and thus preserved their hypocritical and
tyrannical assumptions from detection. They disclosed nothing to the
people without some supernatural admixture, the better to maintain their
personal pretensions. They had two doctrines, one for themselves, and
the other for the people. Sometimes, as they were divided into several
orders, each of them reserved to itself certain mysteries. Thus all the
inferior orders were at once rogues and dupes, and the great system of
hypocrisy was only known in all its completeness to a few adepts.
Christianity belonged to the same class. Its priests, we must admit, 'in
spite of their knaveries and their vices, were enthusiasts ready to
perish for their doctrines.' In vain did Julian endeavour to deliver the
empire from the scourge. Its triumph was the signal for the incurable
decay of all art and knowledge. The Church may seem to have done some
good in things where her interests did not happen to clash with the
interests of Europe, as in helping to abolish slavery, for instance; but
after all 'circumstances and manners' would have produced the result
necessarily and of themselves. Morality, which was taught by the priests
only, contained those universal principles that have been unknown to no
sect; but it created a host of purely religious duties, and of imaginary
sins. These duties were more rigorously enjoined than those of nature,
and actions that were indifferent, legitimate, or even virtuous, were
more severely rebuked and punished than real crimes. Yet, on the other
hand, a moment of repentance, consecrated by the absolution of a priest,
opened the gates of heaven to the worst miscreants.[60]
In the opening of the last of these remarks there is much justice. So
there is in the striking suggestion made in another place, that we
should not bless erroneous systems for their utility, simply because
they help to repair some small part of the mischief of which they have
themselves been the principal cause.[61] But on the whole it is obvious
that Condorcet was unfitted by his temper, and that of the school to
which he most belonged, from accepting religion as a fact in the
history of the human mind that must have some positive explanation. To
look at it in this way as the creation of a handful of selfish impostors
in each community, was to show a radical incompetence to carry out the
scheme which had been so scientifically projected. The picture is ruined
by the angry caricature of what ought to have been one of the most
important figures in it. To this place the Christian Church is
undeniably entitled, however we may be disposed to strike the balance
between the undoubted injuries and the undoubted advantages which it has
been the means of dealing to the civilisation of the west. Never perhaps
was there so thorough an inversion of the true view of the comparative
elevation of different parts of human character, as is implied in
Condorcet's strange hint that Cromwell's satellites would have been much
better men if they had carried instead of the Bible at their saddle-bows
some merry book of the stamp of Voltaire's _Pucelle_.[62]
Apart from the misreading of history in explaining religion by the folly
of the many and the frauds of a few, Condorcet's interpretation involved
the profoundest infidelity to his own doctrine of the intrinsic purity
and exaltation of human nature. This doctrine ought in all reason to
have led him to look for the secret of the popular acceptance of beliefs
that to him seemed most outrageous, in some possibly finer side which
they might possess for others, appealing not to the lower but to the
higher qualities of a nature with instincts of perfection. Take his
account of Purgatory, for instance. The priests, he says, drew up so
minute and comprehensive a table of sins that nobody could hope to
escape from censure. Here you come upon one of the most lucrative
branches of the sacerdotal trafficking; people were taught to imagine a
hell of limited duration, which the priests only had the power to
abridge; and this grace they sold, first to the living, then to the
kinsmen and friends of the dead.[63] Now it was surely more worthy of a
belief in the natural depravity than in the natural perfectibility of
the sons of Adam, thus to assume without parley or proviso a base
mercenariness on the one hand, and grovelling terror on the other, as
the origin of a doctrine which was obviously susceptible of a kinder
explanation. Would it not have been more consistent with belief in human
goodness to refer the doctrine to a merciful and affectionate and truly
humanising anxiety to assuage the horrors of what is perhaps the most
frightful idea that has ever corroded human character, the idea of
eternal punishment? We could in part have pardoned Condorcet if he had
striven to invent ever so fanciful origins for opinions and belief in
his solicitude for the credit of humanity. As it is, he distorts the
history of religion only to humanity's discredit. How, if the people
were always predisposed to virtue, were priests, sprung of the same
people and bred in the same traditions, so invariably and incurably
devoted to baseness and hypocrisy? Was the nature of a priest absolutely
devoid of what physicians call recuperative force, restoring him to a
sound mind, in spite of professional perversion? In fine, if man had
been so grossly enslaved in moral nature from the beginning of the world
down to the year 1789 or thereabouts, how was it possible that
notwithstanding the admitted slowness of civilising processes, he should
suddenly spring forth the very perfectible and nearly perfected being
that Condorcet passionately imagined him to be?[64]
It has already been hinted that there was one partial exception to
Condorcet's otherwise all-embracing animosity against religion. This was
Mahometanism. Towards this his attitude is fully appreciative, though of
course he deplores the superstitions which mixed themselves up with the
Arabian prophet's efforts for the purification of the men of his nation.
After the seven vials of fiery wrath have been poured out upon the creed
of Palestine, it is refreshing to find the creed of Arabia almost
patronised and praised. The writer who could not have found in his heart
to think Gregory the Great or Hildebrand other than a mercenary
impostor, nor Cromwell other than an ambitious hypocrite, admits with
exquisite blandness of Mahomet that he had the art of employing all the
means of subjugating men _avec adresse, mais avec grandeur_.[65] Another
reason, no doubt, besides his hatred of the Church, lay at the bottom of
Condorcet's tolerance or more towards Mahometanism. The Arabian
superstition was not fatal to knowledge, Arabian activity in algebra,
chemistry, optics, and astronomy, atoned in Condorcet's eyes for the
Koran.
It is fair to add further, that Condorcet showed a more just
appreciation of the effects of Protestantism upon western development
than has been common among French thinkers. He recognises that men who
had learnt, however imperfectly, to submit their religious prejudices to
rational examination, would naturally be likely to extend the process to
political prejudices also. Moreover, if the reformed churches refused to
render to reason all its rights, still they agreed that its prison
should be less narrow; the chain was not broken, but it ceased to be
either so heavy or so short as it had been. And in countries where what
was by the dominant sect insolently styled tolerance succeeded in
establishing itself, it was possible to maintain the tolerated doctrines
with a more or less complete freedom. So there arose in Europe a sort
of freedom of thought, not for men, but for Christians; and, 'if we
except France, it is only for Christians that it exists anywhere else at
the present day,' a limitation which has now fortunately ceased to be
altogether exact.[66]