Can this effect of harmony be attained by the state? That is not
possible, for the state, as at present constituted, has given occasion
to evil, and the state as conceived in the idea, instead of being able
to establish this more perfect humanity, ought to be based upon it. Thus
the researches in which I have indulged would have brought me back to
the same point from which they had called me off for a time. The present
age, far from offering us this form of humanity, which we have
acknowledged as a necessary condition of an improvement of the state,
shows us rather the diametrically opposite form. If, therefore, the
principles I have laid down are correct, and if experience confirms the
picture I have traced of the present time, it would be necessary to
qualify as unseasonable every attempt to effect a similar change in the
state, and all hope as chimerical that would be based on such an
attempt, until the division of the inner man ceases, and nature has been
sufficiently developed to become herself the instrument of this great
change and secure the reality of the political creation of reason.
In the physical creation, nature shows us the road that we have to
follow in the moral creation. Only when the struggle of elementary
forces has ceased in inferior organizations, nature rises to the noble
form of the physical man. In like manner, the conflict of the elements
of the moral man and that of blind instincts must have ceased, and a
coarse antagonism in himself, before the attempt can be hazarded. On the
other hand, the independence of man’s character must be secured, and his
submission to despotic forms must have given place to a suitable
liberty, before the variety in his constitution can be made subordinate
to the unity of the ideal. When the man of nature still makes such an
anarchial abuse of his will, his liberty ought hardly to be disclosed to
him. And when the man fashioned by culture makes so little use of his
freedom, his free will ought not to be taken from him. The concession of
liberal principles becomes a treason to social order when it is
associated with a force still in fermentation, and increases the already
exuberant energy of its nature. Again, the law of conformity under one
level becomes tyranny to the individual when it is allied to a weakness
already holding sway and to natural obstacles, and when it comes to
extinguish the last spark of spontaneity and of originality.
The tone of the age must therefore rise from its profound moral
degradation; on the one hand it must emancipate itself from the blind
service of nature, and on the other it must revert to its simplicity,
its truth, and its fruitful sap; a sufficient task for more than a
century. However, I admit readily, more than one special effort may meet
with success, but no improvement of the whole will result from it, and
contradictions in action will be a continual protest against the unity
of maxims. It will be quite possible, then, that in remote corners of
the world humanity may be honored in the person of the negro, while in
Europe it may be degraded in the person of the thinker. The old
principles will remain, but they will adopt the dress of the age, and
philosophy will lend its name to an oppression that was formerly
authorized by the church. In one place, alarmed at the liberty which in
its opening efforts always shows itself an enemy, it will cast itself
into the arms of a convenient servitude. In another place, reduced to
despair by a pedantic tutelage, it will be driven into the savage
license of the state of nature. Usurpation will invoke the weakness of
human nature, and insurrection will invoke its dignity, till at length
the great sovereign of all human things, blind force, shall come in and
decide, like a vulgar pugilist, this pretended contest of principles.