“Distrust, in books on metaphysics, words which have not been able to
get currency in the world, and are only calculated to form a special
language.”
Nor would he suffer common words to be employed in a special sense by
the schools:—
“Which is the best, if one wants to be useful and to be really
understood, to get one’s words in the world, or to get them in the
schools. I maintain that the good plan is to employ words in their
popular sense rather than in their philosophical sense; and the better
plan still, to employ them in their natural sense rather than in their
popular sense. By their natural sense, I mean the popular and universal
acceptation of them brought to that which in this is essential and
invariable. To prove a thing by definition proves nothing, if the
definition is purely philosophical; for such definitions only bind him
who makes them. To prove a thing by definition, when the definition
expresses the necessary, inevitable, and clear idea which the world at
large attaches to the object, is, on the contrary, all in all; because
then what one does is simply to show people what they do really think,
in spite of themselves and without knowing it. The rule that one is free
to give to words what sense one will, and that the only thing needful is
to be agreed upon the sense one gives them, is very well for the mere
purposes of argumentation, and may be allowed in the schools where this
sort of fencing is to be practised; but in the sphere of the true-born
and noble science of metaphysics, and in the genuine world of
literature, it is good for nothing. One must never quit sight of
realities, and one must employ one’s expressions simply as media,—as
glasses, through which one’s thoughts can be best made evident. I know,
by my own experience, how hard this rule is to follow; but I judge of
its importance by the failure of every system of metaphysics. Not one of
them has succeeded; for the simple reason, that in every one ciphers
have been constantly used instead of values, artificial ideas instead of
native ideas, jargon instead of idiom.”
I do not know whether the metaphysician will ever adopt Joubert’s rules;
but I am sure that the man of letters, whenever he has to speak of
metaphysics, will do well to adopt them. He, at any rate, must
remember:—
“It is by means of familiar words that style takes hold of the reader
and gets possession of him. It is by means of these that great thoughts
get currency and pass for true metal, like gold and silver which have
had a recognized stamp put upon them. They beget confidence in the man
who, in order to make his thoughts more clearly perceived, uses them;
for people feel that such an employment of the language of common human
life betokens a man who knows that life and its concerns, and who keeps
himself in contact with them. Besides, these words make a style frank
and easy. They show that an author has long made the thought or the
feeling expressed his mental food; that he has so assimilated them and
familiarized them, that the most common expressions suffice him in order
to express ideas which have become every-day ideas to him by the length
of time they have been in his mind. And lastly, what one says in such
words looks more true; for, of all the words in use, none are so clear
as those which we call common words; and clearness is so eminently one
of the characteristics of truth, that often it even passes for truth
itself.”
These are not, in Joubert, mere counsels of rhetoric; they come from his
accurate sense of perfection, from his having clearly seized the fine
and just idea that beauty and light are properties of truth, and that
truth is incompletely exhibited if it is exhibited without beauty and
light:—
“Be profound with clear terms and not with obscure terms. What is
difficult will at last become easy; but as one goes deep into things,
one must still keep a charm, and one must carry into these dark depths
of thought, into which speculation has only recently penetrated, the
pure and antique clearness of centuries less learned than ours, but with
more light in them.”
And elsewhere he speaks of those “spirits, lovers of light, who, when
they have an idea to put forth, brood long over it first, and wait
patiently till it _shines_, as Buffon enjoined, when he defined genius
to be the aptitude for patience; spirits who know by experience that the
driest matter and the dullest words hide within them the germ and spark
of some brightness, like those fairy nuts in which were found diamonds
if one broke the shell and was the right person; spirits who maintain
that, to see and exhibit things in beauty, is to see and show things as
in their essence they really are, and not as they exist for the eye of
the careless, who do not look beyond the outside; spirits hard to
satisfy, because of a keen-sightedness in them, which makes them discern
but too clearly both the models to be followed and those to be shunned;
spirits active though meditative, who cannot rest except in solid
truths, and whom only beauty can make happy; spirits far less concerned
for glory than for perfection, who, because their art is long and life
is short, often die without leaving a monument, having had their own
inward sense of life and fruitfulness for their best reward.”
No doubt there is something a little too ethereal in all this, something
which reminds one of Joubert’s physical want of body and substance; no
doubt, if a man wishes to be a great author, it is to consider too
curiously, to consider as Joubert did; it is a mistake to spend so much
of one’s time in setting up one’s ideal standard of perfection, and in
contemplating it. Joubert himself knew this very well: “I cannot build a
house for my ideas,” said he; “I have tried to do without words, and
words take their revenge on me by their difficulty.” “If there is a man
upon earth tormented by the cursed desire to get a whole book into a
page, a whole page into a phrase, and this phrase into one word,—that
man is myself.” “I can sow, but I cannot build.” Joubert, however, makes
no claim to be a great author; by renouncing all ambition to be this, by
not trying to fit his ideas into a house, by making no compromise with
words in spite of their difficulty, by being quite single-minded in his
pursuit of perfection, perhaps he is enabled to get closer to the truth
of the objects of his study, and to be of more service to us by setting
before us ideals, than if he had composed a celebrated work. I doubt
whether, in an elaborate work on the philosophy of religion, he would
have got his ideas about religion to _shine_, to use his own expression,
as they shine when he utters them in perfect freedom. Penetration in
these matters is valueless without soul, and soul is valueless without
penetration; both of these are delicate qualities, and, even in those
who have them, easily lost; the charm of Joubert is, that he has and
keeps both. Let us try and show that he does.
“One should be fearful of being wrong in poetry when one thinks
differently from the poets, and in religion when one thinks differently
from the saints.
“There is a great difference between taking for idols Mahomet and
Luther, and bowing down before Rousseau and Voltaire. People at any rate
imagined they were obeying God when they followed Mahomet, and the
Scriptures when they hearkened to Luther. And perhaps one ought not too
much to disparage that inclination which leads mankind to put into the
hands of those whom it thinks the friends of God the direction and
government of its heart and mind. It is the subjection to irreligious
spirits which alone is fatal, and, in the fullest sense of the word,
depraving.
“May I say it? It is not hard to know God, provided one will not force
oneself to define him.
“Do not bring into the domain of reasoning that which belongs to our
innermost feeling. State truths of sentiment, and do not try to prove
them. There is a danger in such proofs; for in arguing it is necessary
to treat that which is in question as something problematic: now that
which we accustom ourselves to treat as problematic ends by appearing to
us as really doubtful. In things that are visible and palpable, never
prove what is believed already; in things that are certain and
mysterious,—mysterious by their greatness and by their nature,—make
people believe them, and do not prove them; in things that are matters
of practice and duty, command, and do not explain. ‘Fear God,’ has made
many men pious; the proofs of the existence of God have made many men
atheists. From the defense springs the attack; the advocate begets in
his hearer a wish to pick holes; and men are almost always led on, from
the desire to contradict the doctor, to the desire to contradict the
doctrine. Make truth lovely, and do not try to arm her; mankind will
then be far less inclined to contend with her.
“Why is even a bad preacher almost always heard by the pious with
pleasure? _Because he talks to them about what they love._ But you who
have to expound religion to children of this world, you who have to
speak to them of that which they once loved perhaps, or which they would
be glad to love,—remember that they do not love it yet, and to make them
love it take heed to speak with power.
“You may do what you like, mankind will believe no one but God; and he
only can persuade mankind who believes that God has spoken to him. No
one can give faith unless he has faith; the persuaded persuade, as the
indulgent disarm.
“The only happy people in the world are the good man, the sage, and the
saint; but the saint is happier than either of the others, so much is
man by his nature formed for sanctity.”
The same delicacy and penetration which he here shows in speaking of the
inward essence of religion. Joubert shows also in speaking of its
outward form, and of its manifestation in the world:—
“Piety is not a religion, though it is the soul of all religions. A man
has not a religion simply by having pious inclinations, any more than he
has a country simply by having philanthropy. A man has not a country
until he is a citizen in a state, until he undertakes to follow and
uphold certain laws, to obey certain magistrates, and to adopt certain
ways of living and acting.
“Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy; it is more than all
this; it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an indissoluble engagement.”
Who, again, has ever shown with more truth and beauty the good and
imposing side of the wealth and splendor of the Catholic Church, than
Joubert in the following passage?—
“The pomps and magnificence with which the Church is reproached are in
truth the result and the proof of her incomparable excellence. From
whence, let me ask, have come this power of hers and these excessive
riches, except from the enchantment into which she threw all the world?
Ravished with her beauty, millions of men from age to age kept loading
her with gifts, bequests, cessions. She had the talent of making herself
loved, and the talent of making men happy. It is that which wrought
prodigies for her; it is from thence that she drew her power.”
“She had the talent of making herself _feared_,”—one should add that
too, in order to be perfectly just; but Joubert, because he is a true
child of light, can see that the wonderful success of the Catholic
Church must have been due really to her good rather than to her bad
qualities; to her making herself loved rather than to her making herself
feared.
How striking and suggestive, again, is this remark on the Old and New
Testaments:—
“The Old Testament teaches the knowledge of good and evil; the Gospel,
on the other hand, seems written for the predestinated; it is the book
of innocence. The one is made for earth, the other seems made for
heaven. According as the one or the other of these books takes hold of a
nation, what may be called the _religious humors_ of nations differ.”
So the British and North American Puritans are the children of the Old
Testament, as Joachim of Flora and St. Francis are the children of the
New. And does not the following maxim exactly fit the Church of England,
of which Joubert certainly never thought when he was writing it?—“The
austere sects excite the most enthusiasm at first; but the temperate
sects have always been the most durable.”
And these remarks on the Jansenists and Jesuits, interesting in
themselves, are still more interesting because they touch matters we
cannot well know at first-hand, and which Joubert, an impartial
observer, had had the means of studying closely. We are apt to think of
the Jansenists as having failed by reason of their merits; Joubert shows
us how far their failure was due to their defects:—
“We ought to lay stress upon what is clear in Scripture, and to pass
quickly over what is obscure; to light up what in Scripture is troubled,
by what is serene in it; what puzzles and checks the reason, by what
satisfies the reason. The Jansenists have done just the reverse. They
lay stress upon what is uncertain, obscure, afflicting, and they pass
lightly over all the rest; they eclipse the luminous and consoling
truths of Scripture, by putting between us and them its opaque and
dismal truths. For example, ‘Many are called;’ there is a clear truth:
‘Few are chosen;’ there is an obscure truth. ‘We are children of wrath;’
there is a somber, cloudy, terrifying truth: ‘We are all the children of
God;’ ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance;’
there are truths which are full of clearness, mildness, serenity, light.
The Jansenists trouble our cheerfulness, and shed no cheering ray on our
trouble. They are not, however, to be condemned for what they say,
because what they say is true; but they are to be condemned for what
they fail to say, for that is true too,—truer, even, than the other;
that is, its truth is easier for us to seize, fuller, rounder, and more
complete. Theology, as the Jansenists exhibit her, has but the half of
her disk.”