Bonaparte, intending as he did to deal the Republic a death-blow,
struck at its heart. He recognised that it would never be possible
thoroughly to suppress civil liberty unless he first suppressed the
endeavour after spiritual liberty which had become ever more strenuous
during the course of the Revolution. The Concordat prepared the way for
the recovery by ecclesiasticism of all its old power.
It appeared to contemporaries as if all the tremendous exertions which
had been made might now be regarded as made in vain. When we call to
mind what had been done we cannot but be filled with astonishment.
The movement towards emancipation which had begun in the days of the
Renaissance with warm enthusiasm for Greek and Roman antiquity, which
next, in England, through the genius of Newton, had acquired as its
mainstay a new conception of the universe, and, gradually taking
possession of natural science, had brought forth a new philosophy
as its offspring and freemasonry as its witness--this same movement
had, like a flying spark, been carried, through Voltaire's mind, to
France. And here a marvellous thing happened. Only a few decades after
Corneille had written _Polyeucte_ and Racine _Athalie_, a few years
after Bossuet had preached absolute obedience and Pascal written in
letters of fire his creed of absolute paradox, a handful of men, most
of them exiled or in disgrace, succeeded, under perfectly autocratic
rule, in winning over to their opinions first the ablest men of the
day, then the upper classes, then princes and princesses who were soon
to be kings and empresses, and finally the middle classes. Thus the
new truth, which was born in low estate, but was revered even in its
cradle by mighty kings--by Frederick of Prussia, Joseph of Austria,
and Catherine of Russia--became the great power among the rising
generation, numbering among its adherents even abbés and priests.
Human reason had risen and freed itself with athletic strength.
Everything that existed had to justify its existence. Where men
heretofore had prayed for a miracle they now investigated into
causes. Where they had believed in a miracle they discovered a law.
Never before in the history of the world had there been such doubt,
such labour, such inquiry, such illumination. The new philosophers
had not the weapons of authority at their command, but only those
of satire, and it was with satire and mockery that they at first
attacked. They annihilated with laughter. On Voltaire's refined scorn
followed Rousseau's virulent wrath. Never before had there been such
undermining or such declaiming. Human reason, which in every domain
had for centuries been compelled to drudge like a serf, which had
been intoxicated with legends and lulled to sleep with psalms and set
phrases, had been roused as if by the crow of a cock and had leaped
up wide awake. Was all that the heroes of reason had thought out, and
its martyrs suffered for, now to be swept aside as useless? Were the
enthusiasms that had made so many of the noblest hearts beat high, and
inspired them with courage on the battlefield and the scaffold, now all
to be squeezed together like the genius in the fairy tale, and shut up
for good in an iron strong-box sealed with the seal of an Emperor and a
Pope?
For the time being the emancipatory movement was checked. It began
once more to be inexpedient not to profess faith in revealed religion,
and after the fall of Napoleon it was even dangerous. In religious
matters those in power never carry on the controversy by opposing
reasons with reasons. The proofs of the gainsayers were not answered
by proofs, but by the stopping of commons. The majority of the men
without private means who had prepared themselves for government
appointments, and could not overcome their irresistible desire to have
a three-course dinner every day, were entirely reliable supporters of
the re-establishment of the church. No one over twenty-five years of
age will be surprised by the number of supporters orthodoxy gained from
the moment when it advanced from being an absurdity to being a means of
subsistence.
To such converts add the great party of the timorous, all those who
lived in fear of the Red Republic, and in whose eyes religion was,
first and foremost, a safeguard against it. It was among these that
the army of the principle of authority obtained most recruits. From a
religious body the church suddenly turned into a political party.
A change in outward conditions is always prepared for by a change
in opinions, and the outward change even more certainly produces
opinions which correspond to the new conditions. The feelings and
thoughts which prepared for the Concordat were, after its conclusion,
at perfect liberty to express themselves; they called forth others
of the same nature; and with the expression of these feelings and
thoughts in literature began an intellectual movement which has its
point of departure in the Concordat and translates that document into
the language of literature. It is the course of this intellectual
movement which we are to follow. If we omitted to do so, there would be
a sensible hiatus in that psychology of the first half of our century
which it is the object of these studies to elaborate. Granted that the
subject is not a paying one, that it is neither rich nor attractive, it
is nevertheless, from our point of view, a very important one.
From which class of society did the literary movement emanate? If
it could by any possibility have emanated from the peasantry, there
might have been something simple-hearted and touching about it; if
from the ranks of the hardly tried, suffering priesthood, it would
perhaps have attracted attention by its fervour; if it had been the
production of the party who, following the example of their ruler,
attached themselves to the church from worldly motives, it would have
been marked by the absence of any inspiring idea. But none of these
supposed cases is the actual one. These three groups formed the public
for the new literature, were its sounding-board and echo; not one of
them was intellectually fertile. The new Catholic school of literature
was destitute of the qualities of simplicity and fervour. But it was
not without an inspiring idea. With conviction and determination it
vindicates the idea which the Revolution had utterly repudiated and
discredited, namely, the principle of authority. Its tendency is rather
political than religious. Its leaders do not desire so much to rescue
souls as to rescue tradition; they crave for religion as a panacea for
lawlessness; the persistency of their appeal to authority is due to
their bankruptcy in everything except outward authority.
The movement begins at widely separated, disconnected points; none of
its originators are at first acquainted with each other. During the
Revolution Chateaubriand, for instance, is wandering about in America,
De Maistre in Switzerland; Bonald plans his first work at Heidelberg.
As soon as the intellectual reaction begins, most of the emigrants
return home, and the principle of authority is championed in literature
both by foreign, independent writers like De Maistre, and by men
like Chateaubriand and Bonald, whom Bonaparte's assumption of power
recalls to France. These latter attach themselves for the time being to
Bonaparte, in his capacity of restorer of the church; but soon, either
during his reign or after his fall, they espouse, with far greater
warmth, far more strength of conviction, the cause of the Bourbons, to
which their own fundamental principle draws them with all the force of
consistency. Napoleon's plan of gaining the support of the church and
depriving the Bourbons of the sympathy of the clergy by means of the
Concordat failed, as it was naturally predestined to do. Soon there was
open war between him and the Pope; and soon the literary movement, the
origin of which is contemporaneous with the Concordat, declares itself
openly on the side of royalty with its supposed rightful claims.
The originators of the movement naturally feel drawn to each other;
they make one another's acquaintance, and soon found a kind of school.
They have several important characteristics in common, characteristics
which are also to be found even in the latest disciples of the school,
men like Lamennais, De Vigny, Lamartine, and Hugo. They are all without
exception of noble birth and bound by personal ties to the old royal
families. De Maistre was the King of Sardinia's ambassador in Russia.
Bonald served in his youth in Louis XV.'s regiment of Musketeers, and
during that King's last days went regularly to his bedside to get the
parole for the day--he had had smallpox, and consequently ran no risk
of infection. The first time his duty brought him into the apartment of
the new King, Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette honoured the young Musketeer
with a friendly look and a few gracious words. That last glance of a
dying King, who bequeathed to his successor a ruined monarchy, and that
first look of a young, beautiful, and hopeful Queen were never effaced
from Bonald's memory. They became the guiding stars of his life. As to
Chateaubriand, directly he heard of the judicial murder of the Duke
of Enghien he sent in his resignation as Secretary of Legation under
Napoleon's government, and from that moment until 1824 acted the part
of a faithful servant of the Bourbons. It was a rôle which he entered
into so seriously, and which circumstances rendered so compulsory,
that he played it to perfection. As regards the next generation,
Lamartine has told us, in the preface to his _Meditations_ and in his
_Reminiscences_ how, as a young officer in the Guards, he galloped
by the side of Louis XVIII.'s carriage when that monarch moved from
Paris to St. Germain. De Vigny was from his childhood an enthusiastic
Royalist; in the days of the Empire his father gave him the Cross of
St. Louis to kiss; his ideas of feudal fealty made him an officer of
the King; his pride led him to stand to his colours even when all the
hopes he had conceived of the Legitimist monarchy were disappointed
and superseded by an unexpressed feeling of contempt; after the
Revolution of 1830 he became the unprejudiced, but reserved and laconic
Conservative whose acquaintance we make in his later works.[1] Victor
Hugo has himself sufficiently explained to his readers how powerful was
the influence exercised upon him as a young author by the recollection
of the Royalist surroundings of his childhood, and especially by the
teaching of his mother, the enthusiastically loyal Breton bourgeois.
The theoretic leaders of this school are not great geniuses. They
are strong, despotic characters, who love power because they require
obedience, and authority because they desire submission; or they are
proud and vain members of the aristocracy of intellect, who would
rather bow the knee to a paradox than follow with the crowd of writers
who have done homage to reason; or (but this only seldom) they are
romanticists, who are moved to tears by the thought of the faith
which they no longer possess, but which they make desperate efforts
to acquire. They are fighters like De Maistre and Lamennais--men
made of the stuff of pontiffs and inquisitors, or they are obstinacy
personified, like Bonald and Chateaubriand, who speak as they do
more from obstinacy than persuasion. "Moi, catholique entêté," says
Chateaubriand of himself. That is the correct word--obstinate, not
fervent.
Their power over their contemporaries lay in their talent. For talent
is such a magician that it can sustain any cause for a considerable
time. Chateaubriand was the colourist of the school; De Maistre, with
his strength of character, his wit, and his astounding theories, its
leader; Bonald, with his rules for everything, its schoolmaster. The
best of the young, aspiring poets of the day began their career under
its influence, and though it did not retain its hold on them long,
it gained by their means a popularity which, added to the authority
possessed by its thinkers, was sufficient to make its cause seem for
a short time victorious, more especially as the restoration of the
Bourbons realised its political ideals.
In the course of a few years, however, all its best men, with music
playing and colours flying, went over to the enemy's camp. The school
was dissolved by its own essential unnaturalness. The principle which
held it together, that principle of tradition and authority which
had presented the appearance of an impregnable fortress, turned out
to be undermined, hollow, concealing under its very foundations an
unsuspected explosive. Men discovered that they had taken up their
position on the top of a powder magazine, and hastened to leave it
before it blew up.
Sylvain Maréchal writes in a book published in 1800 (_Pour et contre la
Bible_): "A very decided religious reaction distinguishes this first
year of the nineteenth century." It distinguishes the first twenty, and
in countries of slow development and those inclined to be stationary,
at least seventy.
The literary reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century does
not begin as a definitely religious reaction. We have seen that in
the group of works which I have designated the "Emigrant Literature"
it "has not yet become submission to authority, but is the natural
and justifiable defence of feeling, soul, passion, and poetry against
frigid intellectuality, exact calculation, and a literature stifled
by rules and dead traditions." Of the first step in this reactionary
movement I wrote: "The first move is only to take Rousseau's weapons
and direct them against his antagonist, Voltaire."[2] Men are no longer
contented with Voltaire's cold deism; they oppose to it Rousseau's
copious and vague sentimentality. They follow in Rousseau's footsteps,
build on the foundation of his emotionalism and imagination. A glance
at the successive phases of the Revolution has shown us that this
movement is, as it were, presaged in the midst of the great upheaval
by Robespierre's attempt to place Rousseau as an obstacle in the way
of the annihilation of all the sentiment which had been so closely
associated with the tradition and authority of the church, and which
threatened to disappear with the church. In its origin the great
religious reaction was, as we have seen, only the revulsion, the
revolt, of feeling against reason; what begot it was the perfectly
vague craving to feel and to give expression to feeling. The history
of the movement is the history of the lamentable manner in which this
craving was gradually misdirected.
The first step in the reaction was the election of Rousseau to lead the
revolt, the second was a revolt against Rousseau. Let us open almost
any work by Bonald, De Maistre, or Lamennais, and we find that its
point of departure is an eager attempt to refute Rousseau, or, rather,
to satirise and crush him. During the first stage of the reaction _the
principle of sentiment_ was opposed to the dominion of reason; during
the second, _the principle of authority_ is championed against all
former principles, that of sentiment included. The transition from the
one stage to the other is marked by the endeavour to vindicate and
reinstate authority by means of an appeal to sentiment. This is aimed
at in Ballanche's _Du Sentiment considéré dans la Littérature et dans
les Arts_ (1801), and is also the main aim of Chateaubriand's _Génie du
Christianisme_ (1802).
Rousseau is now regarded as the most dangerous advocate of the ideas of
the eighteenth century. A short account of the charges brought against
him will show what there was of truth in them, what of falsehood.
First, the political attack. A fact which the nineteenth century has
repeatedly insisted on, and which must not be forgotten, is that
the eighteenth century was devoid of any proper understanding and
appreciation of history. One of its most famous representatives,
D'Alembert, went so far as to wish that the remembrance of all past
times could be blotted out. The naïve belief of Rousseau and his
century that isolated thought, unconnected with history or reality,
is capable of changing the whole existing order of things, was now
universally contested. The preceding generation had believed that all
would be well when they had a written constitution which abolished what
they considered abuses and established what they regarded as right.
They had looked upon this piece of paper, or, to use their phraseology,
these tables of the law, as the real constitution. In confutation of
this idea, Joseph de Maistre propounds his theory: "Man cannot make a
constitution, and a lawful constitution cannot be written." He is both
unmistakably right and extraordinarily wrong.
He has a prescience of the great truth, which may be regarded as
acknowledged in the politics of to-day, that the true constitution of
a country is the actual existing distribution of power, a distribution
which is not changed although dilettante politicians alter it upon a
sheet of paper. In De Maistre's judgment the powers that be have right
on their side. Any rebellion seems to him a crime; but, keenly alive to
realities, he has no faith in a written constitution as a preventive.
Writing on the subject of a preventive of lawlessness, he says: "It
may be custom, or conscience, or a papal tiara, or a dagger, but it is
always a something." The written constitution alone is to him nothing
real.
His great mistake is to be found in the reason on which he bases his
aversion to this written constitution. He is of opinion that what is
written, what is foreseen and determined by human wisdom, is to be
regarded as an infringement on the province of divine providence. "It
is impertinence towards God not to have confidence in the unforeseen
future; every government which is founded upon settled laws is founded
upon a usurpation of the prerogative of the divine law-giver." The real
working constitution he regards, on the contrary, as being of a divine
nature, for, from his orthodox standpoint, he maintains that it is God
who makes the nations what they are. To the sovereignty of the people
he, like Bonald and Lamennais, opposes the sovereignty of God, thus
finally anchoring in theocracy.
Rousseau's political theories were undoubtedly most imperfect, and
it was easy to perceive the dangers that lay concealed in them.
His principle, that no one is bound to obey laws to which he has
not given his consent, not only strikes at the authority which is
power, but also at the authority which is simply a form of reason,
and thus makes all government impossible. His second principle, that
sovereignty is an attribute of the people, may, if the word "people"
be unwisely apprehended, lead to tyranny of the majority and make
all liberty impossible. His third great principle, that all men are
equal, may lead to universal levelling instead of to justice. Here are
enough points of attack for a criticism undertaken from the modern
standpoint. Hegel in his day attempted such a criticism. He propounded
a new interpretation of the sovereignty of the people, defining it as
really meaning the sovereignty of the state. Heiberg, who was given to
carrying the Hegelian theories to extremes, presents us (in his essay
"On Authority") with Hegel's idea in the astounding and reactionary
proposition that "it is a matter of no consequence whether or not the
interests of the citizens are furthered by the development of the
state, since it is not the state which exists for the sake of the
citizens, but the citizens who exist for the sake of the state."[3]
Though we of the present day have a distinct antipathy to such
propositions, we nevertheless give to these protests against Rousseau's
theories the attention which we consider due to any development of
modern thought. But the protests of De Maistre's day were neither based
on thought nor on reason, but purely and simply on belief in authority;
and the opposition is, moreover, dishonourable in its methods; the
attack is always directed against some isolated proposition, which, if
we read it with the desire to understand it, is comprehensible, but
which it is easy to reduce to an absurdity, because of the audacious
manner in which it is expressed.
Bonald, for instance, scoffs at Rousseau for saying: "A people has
always the right to change its laws, even the best of them; for if
it chooses to do itself an injury, who has the right to prevent it?"
The proposition is a rash one, but it does not in reality justify the
retrogressive step; it only denies the right of outsiders to make it an
excuse for interfering; and the reader is unpleasantly affected when he
discovers that the reason why Bonald is so exasperated by these words
is that he considers the law-giving power to be the prerogative of God,
not of the people.
Rousseau's social theories were also violently attacked. It is not
difficult to understand how Rousseau, with the society of his own
day before his eyes, should arrive at the conclusion that it would
be quite possible to do without a society at all; but this mistaken
idea, in combination with the fanciful one of a lost, happy, natural
condition, led him to formulate such a proposition as: "Man is born
good, and society corrupts him," and to give utterance to the comic
paradox, which reappears in all the polemical works of the Restoration
period, pierced with refutations as a pin-cushion is with pins: "The
man who thinks is a degenerate animal." Such utterances lent themselves
to attack. In the ardour of his impeachment of society, Rousseau
permits himself to say: "Society is not a consequence of the nature
of man. Everything that has not its origin in the nature of things
has disadvantages, and civil society has most of all." "Society!"
cries Bonald, not without eloquence; "as if society consisted of the
walls of our houses or the ramparts of our towns! as if there were
not, wherever a human being is born, a father, a mother, a child, a
language, heaven, earth, God, and society!" The doctrine he instils
into his contemporaries is that the earliest society was a family,
and that in the family authority is not elective, but a result of
the nature of things. To the doctrine that society is the result of
a voluntary agreement, of a contract, he opposes his doctrine that
society is enforced (_obligée_), is the production of a power--whether
it be the power of persuasion or of arms. To the theory that power,
that authority, originally received the law from the people he opposes
his theory that there can be no people before there is a power. To
the revolutionary principle that society is _fraternity and equality_
he opposes the principle of patriarchal absolutism, that society is
_paternity and dependence_. Power belongs to God, and is communicated
by Him. Here again the argument of historical actuality proves
extraordinarily convincing, and the author seizes the opportunity to
deduce, as it were surreptitiously, the doctrine of the one and only
lawful sovereignty, sovereignty by the grace of God, from our respect
for history and reality.
In order to strike as deadly a blow as possible at Rousseau's
conception of the state as a contract, this conception was represented
as not only foolish, but actually criminal. And yet it is but
the natural, the inevitable outcome of the eighteenth century's
over-estimation of the conscious side of human life and want of
understanding of the unconscious, the instinctive. How much more
justly does Hegel judge Rousseau! He gives him the credit of having
laid down a principle, "the constituent of which is thought"--in other
words, will--as the principle of the state, observing that he was only
mistaken in understanding by will merely the individual, conscious,
and arbitrary will, a misunderstanding which leads to "other, merely
reasonable conclusions, subversive of the absolutely divine, and its
authority and majesty."[4] In the _Contrat Social_ Jean-Jacques had
attempted to find the basis of governments and laws in the nature of
man and society, taken purely in the abstract. But before Rousseau's
day Montesquieu had written: "I have never heard law discussed without
a careful investigation being made into the origin of societies, a
proceeding which to me seems perfectly absurd. If human beings did not
form a society, if they avoided or fled from one another, one would ask
the reason and try to find out why they kept separate; but, as it is,
they are all born bound to each other. A son is born in his father's
home and remains connected with him--this is society and its cause."
If, for the relation of the child to the father, we substitute the
relation to the mother, as being even a closer one, the reasoning is
perfectly correct. But Rousseau, leaving this solution out of the
question, desired to show what ideas had led men to hold together,
what aim they proposed to themselves in so doing, and by what means
they could best attain this aim. Now, it admits of no dispute that
it is only by the mutual consent of its members that society exists.
This consent or contract is most undoubtedly the spiritual basis on
which society rests; but the contract is entered into tacitly, is an
understood thing, has always existed, has consequently no external
actuality. In exactly the same manner we accept the geometric
definition of the origin of a ball: A ball, or sphere, is generated by
the revolution of a semicircle about its diameter. The definition is
perfectly correct, but has no connection whatever with the material
conditions requisite to the existence of any given ball. Never yet has
a ball been made by causing a semicircle to revolve round its axis.
This same figure may be retained as giving an exact idea of the style
of reasoning on social subjects characteristic of the eighteenth
century, nay, of the whole intellectual tendency of the century. It is
a dissolving, isolating tendency; it is in the direction of geometry
and algebra; men endeavour to comprehend the most difficult and most
complicated real situations by the aid of abstract ideas. This is a
weakness which enables Bonald to gain an easy victory by an appeal to
the principle of power. He opposes Rousseau's disintegrating theories
with the doctrines of the days of the old absolute monarchy: "God is
the sovereign _power_ that rules all beings; the God-man is the _power_
that rules mankind, the head of the state is the power that rules all
his subjects, the head of the family is the _power_ in his house. As
all power is created in the image of God and originates with God, all
power is absolute."[5]
Rousseau is, thirdly, attacked in the domain of morality. He had
endeavoured to make "the inward, unwritten law," of which Antigone
speaks, the source of every outward moral law. He had said: "What God
desires man to do, He does not let him know through another man; He
tells him it Himself, writes it on the table of his heart." If this
be the case, what becomes of tradition and authority and revelations
at second hand? Bonald consequently replies: "If man were obliged to
obey this inward law, he would be as devoid of will as the stone, which
must submit to the law of gravitation; if, on the contrary, he is at
liberty not to obey it, an _authority_ is required, which shall direct
his attention to these laws and teach him to obey them." Thus in morals
too the guiding power is transferred from man's own inward feeling to
outward authority.
The antagonism to Rousseau is so strong that Bonald, for instance,
writes page upon page of declamation against the philosopher's appeal
to mothers to nurse their children themselves. One would imagine that,
in this instance at least, Rousseau's theories would meet with the
approval of the stern inculcators of duty. Not at all--the appeal in
question shows that Jean-Jacques looked upon human beings as simply
animals. "J. J. Rousseau declared in the name of nature that it was
the duty of women to suckle their children, exactly as she-animals
do, and for the same reason.... Fathers and mothers, regarded by the
philosophers as simply males and females, in turn regarded their
children simply as their young."[6] And why is Bonald so wrathful?
Evidently because he fears that Rousseau may deprive religion of some
of its credit by issuing a reasonable commandment not inscribed on the
tables of its laws. "Rousseau," he goes on to say, "probably imagined
that he had surprised religion in the neglect of a duty; but possibly
religion, more far-sighted than he, feared anything which might serve
young married people as a reason or excuse for living separated from
each other, even momentarily." The motherly solicitude of the Catholic
church for the happiness of spouses and the multiplication of the human
race--this also is to be placed in the clearest light by means of an
attack on Rousseau.
We have seen to what misunderstanding of the idea of society the
unhistoric, mathematical line of thought of the eighteenth century led.
A kindred line of thought produced a very similar misunderstanding
of poetry. In their admiration for mathematical reasonableness, and
for the certainty with which general truths had been arrived at by
mathematical inferences, men were eager to communicate to language,
as far as possible, the quality of mathematically exact expression.
Condillac defined science as _une langue bien faite, i.e._ a perfectly
clear and perfectly exact language. The fact was not sufficiently
appreciated that, when it is desired to reproduce impressions which
are different in different persons, and which even in the same person
may change from one moment to another, a flexible, impressionable
language is required, a language which accepts its spirit and whole
stamp from the person using it. Scientific men began to deride what
they called poetry and style, and maintained that in writing thought
was everything, form nothing. Barante, who, in a critical work
published at the beginning of the new century, was the first to protest
against these ideas of his age, argues cleverly: "When Chimène says to
Rodrigue: 'Go! I do not hate thee,' it is plain, if we submit these
words to calm investigation, that they mean the same as if she had
said: 'Go! I love thee'; and yet, if she used the latter expression,
she would be quite a different being; her consideration for her father
would be gone, and so would her modesty and her charm."
The poets, who were in reality influenced by the same ideas as the
scientists, and were as far as they from conceiving of style as the
direct outcome of the personality, set themselves to work to fabricate
style, and spoke of it as we speak of the music composed for any given
libretto. They looked upon the art of writing as a perfectly external
art, and the descriptive school, with Delille at their head, took
unpoetic themes--physics, botany, astronomy, sea-voyages--and out of
them manufactured style. (See poetical works of Boisjolin, Gudin, Aimé
Martin, and Esménard.) Cournand actually wrote a poem in four cantos
on style itself and its various species. Poetry was regarded as an
artificial form communicated to the matured thought. This was the idea
which Buffon had contradicted in his notable proposition: _Le style
c'est l'homme même_, a proposition which was presently to become the
most hackneyed of quotations, inevitable whenever the subject of style
was broached, and employed by none so frequently as by those who were
neither men nor possessors of style.[7] The poets of the eighteenth
century derived their conception of the nature of poetry from their own
practice. As their own poetry, their own language, was not a natural
product, but the result of labour and the observance of certain rules
respecting elegance of expression, choice of similes, and employment of
mythology, they naturally believed that language and thought originated
independently of each other.
When Bonald, in opposition to their theory, propounds his, namely, that
language and thought cannot be separated--the theory upon which (in
his principal work, _La législation primitive_) he founds his whole
system--he is unquestionably in the right. But this doctrine meets with
the same fate as other doctrines propounded by the restorers of the
past; the disease of orthodoxy from which the author suffers causes him
to twist and turn every true thought until he makes a perfect monster
out of it. "The answer to the vital question regarding the intellectual
life of man may," says Bonald, "be given in the following form: Man
must think his words before he speaks his thought. In other words,
man must know the word before he speaks it, which self-evident fact
excludes all possibility of his having himself invented language."
Thus Bonald arrives at the favourite theory of the nineteenth-century
reactionaries, namely, that language was originally given to man by
God. Kierkegaard expresses the same idea when he declares that it
cannot possibly be conceded that man himself invented language (_On the
Idea of Fear_). Why? Because it was revealed to him by God, ready made.
It is Locke's and Condillac's reasonable theory of the slow evolution
of language and ideas which Bonald contradicts with his principle
of the necessity of an original revelation of language and ideas.
Upon this belief of his he bases nothing less than the dogma of the
existence of God, which entails all the others. To it we always come
back, turn where we will. As none of the reactionaries have any
idea of science--they are men of good parts with such an education
as is given in the Jesuit schools--there is nothing in the way of
scientific nonsense which they do not talk and write. The science of
language is sacrificed along with political and social science on
the altar of theocracy. It may be mentioned as a remarkable instance
of the manner in which these reactionaries held together that in
1814 Bonald published a new edition of De Maistre's work, _Sur le
principe générateur des constitutions politiques_, that is to say,
he circulated a book in which written constitutions were strongly
condemned, although he himself, arguing from the standpoint of his
theory of the direct revelation of language, had come to the conclusion
that every commandment, from the ten commandments downwards, must have
been noted down, must exist in black and white. But to him, as to De
Maistre, the real matter of importance was that the constitution should
make no concession to the spirit of the times, that authority should
stand secure, unimperilled by the gales of liberty; therefore he did
not hesitate to profit by the aid of a co-religionary, even though he
differed from him on an important point.
It was not enough for the reactionaries that they themselves had been
brought up in the Jesuit schools; they were fain to have the whole
youth of the nation sent there. De Maistre was all his life the patron
and ardent champion of the Jesuits. At the court of St. Petersburg he
exposed himself to much unpleasantness rather than throw them over.
The third part of Bonald's _Législation primitive_, which treats
chiefly of education, is directed against Rousseau's _Émile_; he
cannot forgive this book for teaching that religion ought not to form
a part of children's education. In all seriousness he mentions, as an
example of the fatal results of Rousseau's principles of education,
that during the last five months seventy-five children have been
sentenced to punishment for various crimes. He then proceeds to
expound his own principles. Their aim, as was to be expected, is the
suppression of all individuality. "We require a continuous, universal,
uniform (_perpétuel, universel, uniforme_) course of instruction,
and consequently continuity, universality, and uniformity in our
teachers; therefore we must have a corps of teachers, for without
a corps we can ensure neither continuity nor universality nor
uniformity." He maintains that married teachers cannot be expected to
sacrifice themselves to their calling, and unmarried ones are equally
unserviceable unless they are under the restraint of religious vows;
"for secular teachers, even though they be unmarried, are incapable
of forming a real corps, because they enter it and leave it according
to their own inclination and caprice; moreover, no father of a family
would dare to entrust his children to an unmarried man whose morals
were not certified by his religious vows and discipline." By force of
these arguments he arrives at the conclusion that the whole education
of the nation should be entrusted to the clergy, should be distinctly
religious, and should early accustom children to reverence that
authority to which they are to submit throughout their lives.
Obstinate insistence on the principle of authority is, then, the
distinctive, the ruling feature of this literary group. The French
rebuilders of society champion the principle with much more ardour
than those of Germany, partly because of their racial peculiarities,
partly because of their different religion. The reactionary movement in
German literature has its origin, as we have seen, in the law-defying
self-assertion and self-will of the individual.[8] In spite of its
Catholic tendencies and its apery of Catholicism, German Romanticism
never became so entirely Catholic, so deferential to authority, as the
French reaction. Teutonic and Protestant self-will always militated
against this. The French mind yielded easily. And it must be allowed
that there is something attractive in the complete, unmitigated
reaction which is lacking in the undecided, incomplete reaction.
Even when the revulsion is at hand, and the dissolution of the
school fast approaching, we find Lamennais maintaining in his book
on indifference in the matter of religion that it is not sentiment,
and still less the spirit of investigation, which is the mark of true
religion, but that "the true religion is incontestably the religion
which is founded upon the strongest possible _visible authority_."
And from the very beginning of the movement the utterances of all
its adherents breathe the same spirit. To Bonald religion is a kind
of police for maintaining order. In proof of this let me quote a few
sentences which I have collected from his works:--
"Religion, which is the _bond_ in every society, more especially
tightens the knot of political society; the very word religion
(_religare_) sufficiently indicates that it is the natural and
necessary _bond_ of human society in general, of the family, and of the
state.--Religion introduces _order_ into society, because it teaches
men whence _power_ and duties proceed.--The principles _of order_ are
an essential part of religion.--Religion will triumph because, as
Malebranche says, _order_ is the inviolable law of minds." Rejoicing at
the spread of the reaction, he exclaims: "We already see all European
authors who have any real title to fame acknowledging or defending the
necessity of the Christian religion, and stamping their works with
the seal of its immortality; for--let authors mark this well--all
works in which the fundamental principles of _order_ are denied or
controverted will disappear; only those in which they are acknowledged
and reverently upheld will descend with honour to posterity." We
observe that there is no question here of piety, of fervent faith,
of sentiment. Religion is the bond, is order, is the principle
of authority. How far we are from Germany, where even moonlight
sentimentality turned into religion!
Curiously enough, this enthusiastic vindication of religion as order
gives Bonald a certain resemblance (which he himself would have angrily
refused to acknowledge) to the man he detested almost more than any
other, namely, Robespierre. Robespierre, too, had a passionate love of
order, and for its sake desired a state religion. The difference is
that Robespierre only wished such order as would preserve the gains of
the Revolution, whilst to Bonald the word meant the sum and substance
of all old tradition.
He and De Maistre are at one on this point. De Maistre says: "Without
a Pope no sovereignty, without sovereignty no unity, without unity no
_authority_, without authority no faith." He places monarchy beyond
the reach of all criticism and investigation by pronouncing it to
be a _miracle_. He eulogises brute force as such. In his books he
submits military society to the discipline of the corporal's cane,
civil society to that of the executioner's axe.[9] This last was the
measure which Robespierre took in grim reality, though not until he
saw no salvation for the Revolution except in a dictatorship. Thus De
Maistre, too, has his points of resemblance to Robespierre. He puts the
finishing touch to his work in a eulogy of the Inquisition.
What these writers vindicate is, then, authority and power. In the
state authority is overthrown by popular institutions which entail
compulsory changes of ministry; in religion it is endangered when the
clergy attain to comparative independence of Rome (hence De Maistre's
book against Gallicanism), or are made completely independent ("by
Presbyterianism," as Bonald has it); in the family it is done away
with from the moment that divorce is permitted under any circumstances
whatsoever. King, minister, and subject; Pope, priest, and flock;
husband, wife, and child--these are to Bonald inseparable triads,
formed after the image of the Trinity. And in their inseparability they
safeguard the great fundamental principles of authority and order.
By sounding here and sounding there, and everywhere coming upon the
same fundamental thought, we have discovered what was the ruling idea
of the new period. It may be called by many names. It is the great
principle of _externality_, as opposed to that of inward, personal
feeling and private investigation; it is the great principle of
_theocracy_, of the sovereignty of God, as opposed to the sovereignty
of the people; it is the principle of _authority and power_, as
opposed to the principles of liberty, of human rights, and of human
interdependence. And when we examine the life of the day in all its
various developments, we everywhere find the same watchword and the
same white flag. The fundamental idea sets its mark upon everything.
In the state it leads to the principle of right being superseded by
the principle of might--which goes by the name of divine power, and
becomes monarchy by the grace of God. In society it banishes the
idea of fraternity, substituting a half-patriarchal, half-tyrannical
paternal relation--the idea of equality being simultaneously superseded
by that of dependence. In the domain of morality it effaces the inward
law and substitutes papal bulls and the decrees of church councils. It
does not look upon religion as faith, but as a bond, as the "political
fetter" which the Revolutionists had so lately upbraided it with being.
It champions indissolubility in marriage and in the state. It teaches
that language was a direct gift to man from God, thereby stifling
the science of language at its birth in order to erect a theological
pyramid above its corpse. It makes real scientific progress impossible
by keeping all inquiry and research in the leading-strings of powerful
outward authority. It dulls the understanding of the rising generation
by entrusting its education to a corps of cultivated, well-bred
half-men, sworn to blind obedience to the General of the Jesuit order.
And as this same idea, not long after its first vigorous appearance,
attains to the possession of a literature, it soon sets its mark upon
fiction, upon lyric poetry, from ballad and song to ode and hymn, nay,
even upon the drama. In literature, too, the lily reigns. The new
school becomes known as the seraphic school. Its heroes, its typical
characters, are martyrs, as in Chateaubriand's writings, or prophets,
as in Hugo's and De Vigny's. Its poets seek their inspiration and their
points of departure in the Bible and Milton. Authoresses like Madame de
Krüdener play the rôle of prophetesses, and as such exercise a distinct
influence on the social development of the period. The consecration
of the King and the birth of the Crown Prince call forth high-flown
and deeply reflective poems from such authors as Hugo and Lamartine.
The birth of the Count de Chambord is little less than a miracle, and
is celebrated in song throughout the country. Chateaubriand, with
the cross in his hands, drives heathen mythology out of fiction; and
with the cross in their hands, Lamartine and Hugo expel it from lyric
poetry. On the stage the Knights Templar and the Maccabees (whose
acquaintance we made in Zacharias Werner's _Sons of the Vale_ and _The
Mother of the Maccabees_) make their appearance, the former introduced
by Raynouard, the latter by Guiraud. There is not a feeling in the
human heart, not a corner of the human mind, and not a branch of
literature, upon which this restoration of the spirit of the past does
not set its stamp during its day of power.[10]
[1] See John Stuart Mill's essay on De Vigny in _Dissertations and
Discussions_, i.
[2] _Emigrant Literature_, p. 199.
[3] Hegel, _Werke_, viii., "Philosophie des Rechts," 367; Heiberg,
_Pros. Skrifter_, 10 B, 335.
[4] Hegel, _Werke_, viii. 314.
[5] Haller, in his famous _Restauration der Staatswissenschaft_,
chooses exactly the same point of departure as Bonald, namely, an
attack on _Le Contrat Social_.
[6] Bonald, _Du Divorce, considéré au 19me siècle relativement à l'état
domestique et à l'état publique de la société_ (edition of 1817, pp. 29
and 31).
[7] We owe to Madame Girardin the one witty thing that has been said
on the subject of Buffon's dictum. When trying to prove that in
each of George Sand's novels the influence of some real personage
enthusiastically admired by the authoress is to be distinctly traced,
she quotes the saying of a wit: "It is when we are criticising the
works of women writers that we are most often obliged to exclaim with
Buffon: _Le style c'est l'homme_." (Le Vicomte de Launay, _Lettres
parisiennes_, i. 89).
[8] Cf. _The Romantic School in Germany_, p. 42.
[9] Cf. _The Romantic School in Germany_, pp. 12, 326.
[10] Bonald, _Théorie du pouvoir_, i-iii.; _La législation primitive;
Essai analytique sur les lois naturelles; Du divorce_; Barante,
_Tableau de la littérature française au 18me siècle_; Lamennais, _Essai
sur l'indifférence en matière de religion_; Laurent, _Histoire du droit
des gens_, xvi.
[Illustration: CHATEAUBRIAND]