Bonald

Side by side with Joseph de Maistre stands Bonald, the famous medieval

schoolmaster of the European reaction, a man with the same bent of

mind and the same practical aims, but as monotonous as De Maistre is

versatile, as conventional as De Maistre is wittily fantastic.

Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald, was born in 1754 (the same

year as De Maistre) at Monna, in the south of France. He began life

as an officer in Louis XV.'s musketeers. During the first stage of

the Revolution he favoured liberal ideas, but only for a short time.

He married early, and was made chief magistrate of the Department of

Aveyron, an appointment which he resigned when Louis XVI. found himself

obliged to consent to the subjection of the clergy to the secular laws.

In 1791 he emigrated, and joined the army of the Prince of Condé.

He wrote his _Théorie du Pouvoir_ at Heidelberg. The police of the

Directory destroyed almost the whole first edition of this book, but a

copy which had been sent to Bonaparte luckily reached its destination

and made such a favourable impression on the great man that he removed

its author's name from the list of exiles. Not unprofitably had Bonald

taught that every revolution is begun by the subject but ended by

the ruler, that it begins because the authorities have been weak and

have yielded, and ends because they have recovered strength. He had

shown that all disturbance only serves to strengthen authority, and

prophesied that the Revolution, which had begun with the declaration

of the rights of man, would end with the declaration of the rights of

God. These latter being the very rights which Bonaparte, by means of

his Concordat, was now proclaiming, Bonald's position was assured. He

remained devotedly attached to the Bourbons, but was content to dream

of them in an appointment conferred on him by the Emperor. He was made

_conseiller tutélaire_ of the University, with a salary of 12,000

francs a year for doing nothing. Chateaubriand reviewed his books with

reverent admiration. De Maistre wrote to him after the publication

of his _Recherches Philosophiques_; "Is it conceivable that nature

has amused herself by tuning two strings until they are in as perfect

harmony with each other as your mind and mine? If certain manuscripts

of mine are ever printed, you will find in them almost the same

expressions you yourself have used, and yet I certainly have altered

nothing." In another letter he expresses himself even more strongly: "I

have thought nothing which you have not written, and written nothing

which you have not thought." Bonald felt himself flattered by these

assertions, though he doubted their truth--and this with good reason,

for, similar as are the results arrived at by these comrades-in-arms,

there is little resemblance between their mental processes.

A proof of the high estimation in which Bonald was held is to be found

in the touching letter in which Napoleon's brother, Louis, King of

Holland, entreats him to undertake the education of his eldest son.

Louis begins by telling what a complete invalid he himself is, how

dearly he loves his son, how imperative it is that this son should be

educated by a man, in the fullest acceptation of that word, in order

that he too may become one. Then he says: "Although I do not know you

personally, my investigations have led me to the conclusion that you

are one of the men whom I esteem most highly. Therefore you will pardon

me that now, when I have to choose the person to whom I must entrust

what is more to me than life, I apply to you. If the happiness which

you doubtless enjoy in a peaceful home has not made you indifferent to

the service you are capable of rendering--I do not say to me, a single

individual, but to a whole nation which is even more deserving than it

is unfortunate (and that is saying much)--you will consent to become my

son's tutor." And he concludes in the same strain, defending himself

against slanders which he imagines may have reached Bonald's ears. With

such humility did a king appeal to this man--and in vain; he refused

the request.

[Illustration: BONALD]

A still more remarkable instance may be adduced of the importance

at that time attributed to the influence of a determined upholder

of authority of Bonald's calibre. One day Bonald received a note

requesting him to call upon Cardinal Maury, an ecclesiastic whose

position under the Empire was a very different one from that of the

days when he argued in the National Assembly against the civic rights

of the Jews. When they were alone, the Cardinal asked Bonald what his

answer would be if the Emperor requested him to undertake the education

of the King of Rome. For a moment Bonald was silent, astonished by the

honour shown him. He then gave, it is said, the discouraging answer: "I

confess that, if I ever taught him to rule, it would be in any place

but Rome." After the restoration of the monarchy no one did more than

Bonald to ensure that Rome and its spirit, the principle of authority,

should rule in place of being ruled. All his life long he had opposed

the liberty of the press. He attained to the position of its censor.

In 1815 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, where he sat on the

extreme Right. Under Louis XVIII, he was made a member of the Academy

and a peer of France, in which latter capacity he obstinately opposed

liberty of religion and liberty of the press. In 1830 he retired from

public life because it was against his conscience to swear allegiance

to the monarchy of July.

Any one taking up Bonald's works directly after De Maistre's will have

difficulty in wading through them. For nearly all of them are deadly

dull. There are no human beings in his books, nothing but doctrines,

and Bonald's doctrines consist of theologico-political propositions,

which we are required to accept without proof. One cannot imagine a

mind with a more implicit belief in dogmas, that is to say, a mind

which more entirely ignores realities and scientific thought. He seems

never to have doubted. Never once during his long career as an author

does it appear to have entered his mind to question any one of the few

simple fundamental principles on which he bases his theories. These

principles are to be found in his works in a petrified form--speaking

exactly, in the form of triads. Like the scholastics of the Middle Ages

before him, like Hegel after him, Bonald thinks in triads, only he

thinks without any perception of the two-sidedness of ideas, without

flexibility, without inspiration. All relations are by him reduced

to the great triad of cause, means, and effect. In the state we have

power as the cause, ministers as the means, and subjects as the effect.

In the religious world we have the triad--God, Jesus the Mediator,

and man. In another acceptation Jesus is himself power, minister,

and subject--power by his thought, minister by his word, subject as

sacrifice. In the political sense, too, he is power, minister, and

subject--power as King of the Jews, minister as priest, subject as the

submissive martyr.

In the family, in society, in the state, in the universe, the same

tri-unity is demonstrated; and all this is done with the aim of proving

the necessity and the truth of monarchy. Monarchy is a true thing

because it is founded on the principle by which the world is ordered.

The universe is monarchic. Hence revolutionists and republicans, who

have dared for the moment to abolish monarchy, have actually been

making the bold attempt to overturn the order of the universe. It is

not a constitution which they have abolished, but _the_ constitution,

for there is only one.

Bonald jeers at the witness of experience, scorns that of history--the

lessons of experience are without significance to him who is in

possession of the eternal, fundamental principles. Even natural history

he will have nothing to do with, because in it he perceives the idea of

evolution, which is of the evil one.

There is no such thing as historical evolution; there is historical

tradition, and it is to this we must cling. For by means of tradition

we reach God. In the chain of blind men which we call humanity only the

first blind man requires a staff, and this staff is the commandment of

God, which is transmitted by tradition.

The eighteenth century had placed more faith than any of its precursors

in man's conscious capacity of invention and production. Rousseau

maintained that it was man who invented and founded society. Bonald

contests this theory. Man, he says, has invented nothing; he no more

invented the family or society than he invented speech or writing.

He was in the beginning the blank page, the _tabula rasa_, of which

Condillac and the Sensationalists romanced--this blank page has not

been filled with the impressions of the senses, but with the direct

instructions of God.

For God was not merely the creator "in the beginning"; he continues to

create to this very day. He founded society, and founded it that it

might preserve his words and his thoughts. But this it can only do by

preserving tradition unbroken.

The intention, the mission of tradition, then, is to keep God in the

world. Hence every attempt to break with tradition is an attempt at

spiritual suicide. And the endeavour to preserve tradition is simply

aspiration after the full pulsation of life. A tenacious clinging to

the purest spiritual inheritance produces the purest, fullest life.

Therefore Bonald clings to the dogmas and to the supremacy of the Roman

Catholic church.

In order to vindicate the doctrine of creation and continued creative

acts in every domain of nature, he is obliged to prove the same

immutability in the universe of which he is the advocate in politics;

hence from the year 1800 onwards he is perpetually attacking what was a

comparatively new thing in those days, the doctrine of evolution. Like

Voltaire before him and Disraeli after him, he makes merry over the

idea of man being descended from a fish.

With love and understanding, but with a persistently flattering pen,

Bonald describes the government of France under kings like Henry IV.

and regents like Richelieu. In his turn attacking the revolutionary

assailants of the old monarchy and its nobles, he skilfully argues that

the monarchy was not the despotism nor the aristocracy the exclusive

caste which their detractors made them out to have been. He shrewdly

points out the defects of the succeeding system, with its much boasted

liberty for every one, which meant no more than that every one had a

right to vote, and warmly defends the advantages of the old order of

things, which permitted the rich man to become a nobleman, but set

limits to plutocracy by prohibiting the nobleman's working to become

rich. He wilfully overlooks the fact that the original advantages of

the old monarchy existed at last only on paper, and that under its

auspices the most shameful injustice and the basest cupidity grew up

and prospered.

In his aversion to the independence of parliaments and courts of

justice, to liberty of conscience and liberty of the press, Bonald

is doubtless sincere enough, but in his eulogies of the old form of

government there is a want of common honesty. As a historian he is

ignorant, but not so ignorant as not to know what that government

really was.

His writings are now not only antiquated but decayed. Open his long

treatises where we will, a faint odour of dust and musty leaves and

corruption meets us. The most important chapters in the once famous

_Recherches Philosophiques_ (such as those on the origin of speech and

writing) read like fragments of some old theological text-book.

As a general rule the shorter treatises and occasional articles of

philosophers of Bonald's type retain most freshness. But one can read

through the two thick volumes which Bonald published under the title

of _Mélanges littéraires et politiques_ without coming upon a single

page to which the word "fresh" can be applied. Even such essays as

those on the writings of Voltaire, on the Jews, and on tolerance,

topics which might have been expected to tempt him to say something

strong or bitter--at any rate something which would imprint itself

on the memory--are terribly monotonous and colourless. Whether he is

disapproving of Voltaire's morality, or maintaining that the Jews ought

to be deprived of civic rights, or proving that tolerance is a vice and

an impossibility, we have always the same solemn and empty ceremonial,

the same application of the formula of cause, means, and effect, the

same grave, monotonous tempo--one, two, three; one, two, three. Bonald

is unreadable because of the very passionlessness on which he prided

himself.

The only one among his books which still attracts readers, and that

simply because of its occasional flashes of passionate enthusiasm, is

the famous _Du Divorce_, undoubtedly the most entertaining of them all.

It begins with a long jeremiad on the sad condition of the world

since authority was overthrown. Modern philosophy, which originated

in Greece, among that people who remained children to the end, and

who ever sought wisdom by other paths than those of reason (_sic!_),

began by atheistically or deistically (!) denying God. Now, Hume and

Condillac, with their doctrine that all our knowledge is derived from

the impressions of the senses, have turned man, who is "a reasonable

being, served by his organs," into an animal pure and simple, an

ordinary product of nature. The universal dissolving tendency has

penetrated into family life, and instead of the old relation between

parents and children--authority and submission--we have the spirit of

revolt in the young hearts and ideas of equality in the young brains;

the children regard themselves as the equals of their parents, actually

permitting themselves to address them as "thou"; the parents, conscious

of their own weakness, no longer dare to assert their authority, but

try to become their children's "friends" or "confidants"--only too

frequently their accomplices.

The enervated conception of life is imaged in an equally enervated

conception of death. It has been proposed to preserve the ashes of the

departed in glass or porcelain urns, and, horrible to relate! a mother

has actually been permitted by the authorities to burn the corpse of

her daughter in heathen fashion. There has been universal agitation for

the abolition of capital punishment, that precious institution, _ce

premier moyen de conservation de la société_, and in some countries

it is already abolished. Governments have had attacks of "the sudden

madness which goes by the name of philanthropy." The so-called natural

sciences ("so-called" is amusing), which ought really to be styled the

material sciences, because they treat of the material world alone, have

ousted the higher, the intellectual sciences, beginning with that of

metaphysics, so renowned in days of old. In poetry noble tragedy has

had to make way for the light and humorous style. In fiction, which so

clearly mirrors the spirit of an age, love used always to be sacrificed

to duty. Now the reverse is the case; and it is Rousseau who has

written the novel "which more than any other has misled the imagination

and corrupted the hearts of women," namely, _La nouvelle Héloïse_.

The principle of authority has been overthrown even in the art of

gardening: "The rural uncultivatedness of the English garden has taken

the place of the symmetrical splendour of the art of Le Nôtre."

In view of all this endeavour to dissolve society, Bonald makes his

attempt to save it. It is a special institution which he aims at

rescuing. Society is founded upon marriage, stands or falls with that.

The Revolution has made divorce lawful. But where divorce is possible,

marriage no longer exists. Therefore every possible effort must be made

to procure the repeal of the law of divorce. The effort was made, and

was only too successful.

Let us hear what Bonald's theory is.

He maintains (as usual) that a properly developed reasoning faculty

reduces all relations to the triad of ideas--cause, means, and

effect--the most universally applicable which reason can evolve. These

ideas lie at the foundation of every judgment, and form the basis of

all social order. Every society consists of three distinct personages,

who may be termed the social personages. Reason perceives in God, who

wills, the first _cause_; in the man who executes God's will, the

_means_, or minister, or mediator; and in the order of things which

goes by the name of society, the _effect_ which is produced by the will

of God and the action of man. But the reason which argues thus exists,

in Bonald's opinion, only in conjunction with the Catholic religion. He

says: "Religion, which places God at the head of society, gives man an

exalted idea of his own dignity and a strong feeling of independence,

whilst philosophy, which assigns the highest place to man himself,

is always grovelling at the feet of some idol or other--in Asia at

Mahomet's, in Europe at Luther's, Rousseau's, or Voltaire's." (_Du

Divorce_, 42.)

We observe that Bonald calmly classes Luther with anti-Christians like

Mahomet and Voltaire. All the Catholic authors of the period do this,

and also insist on the affinity between Protestantism and immorality.

When De Maistre is discoursing on the Reformation he asserts with

the utmost gravity that one half of Europe changed its religion in

order that a dissolute monk might be enabled to marry a nun. In his

_Théorie du Pouvoir_ (ii. 305) Bonald writes: "A choleric, sensual monk

reformed religion in Germany; a voluptuous, cruel king reformed it in

England.... It is significant that the Reformation was supported in

Germany by the Landgrave of Hesse, who was desirous to marry Margarethe

von Saale whilst his first wife still lived; in England by Henry VIII,

who wished to divorce Katharine of Arragon in order to marry Anne

Boleyn; and in France by Margaret of Navarre, a princess of more than

doubtful morals. Divorce was the ruin of the West as polygamy had been

of the East." In his Essay on English Literature (_Œuvres_, vi.

75) Chateaubriand, touching on Luther's marriage, writes: "He married

for two reasons--to show a good example, and to deliver himself from

temptation. The man who has transgressed laws always tries to draw his

weak brethren after him, that he may shield himself behind numbers; he

flatters himself that the acquiescence of many will lead men to believe

in the propriety and rectitude of acts which were often only the result

of accident or passion. Sacred vows were doubly violated--Luther

married a nun."

These violent outbursts against Luther and Lutheranism are explained by

the fact that the French reactionaries, like the German Romanticists,

clearly perceived that the modern intellectual tendency of which

they were so much afraid was the inevitable result of Protestantism.

Lamennais, for example, writes (_Essai sur l'indifférence_): "It is

now acknowledged that the church and its dogmas rest upon authority,

as upon an impregnable rock. Hence it is that the adherents of all the

different sects, who disagree upon every other point, unite in the

attempt to undermine this main pillar of all truth. Lutheran, Socinian,

Deist, Atheist, are the names which mark the gradual development of the

one doctrine; one and all with unflagging perseverance pursue their

particular plan of attack on authority."

Reason, then, Catholic reason, the alone genuine, sees everywhere

(according to Bonald) the three social personages--power, minister, and

subject. In the different domains of society they receive different

names. In the religious world they are called God, priest, and flock;

in the political, king, aristocracy or official class, subjects or

people; in domestic life, father, mother, and child.

The reader who is not yet familiar with Bonald's mode of thought is

likely to be taken aback by this last idea; but Bonald is so perfectly

serious in his identification of the father with power, the mother

with the minister, and the child with the subject, that he actually,

as a rule, employs the designations father, mother, and child in

place of the others; because, he says, they apply to animals as well

as to man, whereas power, minister, and subject apply exclusively to

thinking beings. Besides, he elsewhere says, we must do our utmost to

spiritualise man and his relations in view of the attempts that are

made to degrade them.

He introduces his theory with his customary formulæ. Man and woman, he

says, both exist; but their manner of existence is not the same. They

are like each other, but not equals. The union of the sexes is the

object of the difference between them. The production of a human being

is the object of their union. The father is strong, the child weak;

the father active, the child inactive. The mother forms the connecting

link. How so? The father, says Bonald, is a conscious being, and cannot

become a father except with his own will; the mother, on the contrary,

may, even with full consciousness, become a mother _against her will_

(hence inactively). The child neither wills to be born nor is conscious

of being born.

It is, thus, upon that revolting and tragic arrangement of nature which

permits a woman to become a mother against her will that Bonald bases

the difference in rank of the sexes. He says, moreover (_Du Divorce_,

fifth edition, p. 71): "In this gradation of their relationship is to

be found the solution of the question of divorce," namely, that it

ought not to be allowed.

If Bonald's mad theory, like many another equally mad, had simply

remained a theory, which no one dreamt of putting into practice, there

would be nothing to resent. But it was upon the principles proclaimed

in his work that the laws of marriage and divorce which held good in

France for the next seventy years were based![1] Immediately after

the restoration of the Bourbons (twelve years after the publication

of _Du Divorce_) Bonald's influence was so irresistible that the

lethargic, religiously disposed National Assembly abolished divorce by

an overwhelming majority--236 to 11 votes.

It may be said, proceeds Bonald, writing of education, that the father

is the power which, through the mother as minister or means, performs

the reproductive and maintaining acts, which have the child as object

or "subject."

The relation of man and woman in marriage is simply this: Man is power

(_le pouvoir_), woman is duty (_le devoir_). Does not Holy Scripture

itself call man woman's head (or reason), woman man's helpmeet (or

minister), and signify that the child is the subject by perpetually

inculcating obedience as its duty?

Woman resembles man as man resembles God. Man is created in the image

of God, but is not because of this his equal. Woman is made of the

flesh and blood of man, but is his inferior. Bonald's theory chimes

in with Milton's: "He for God only, she for God in him." (_Paradise

Lost_, Book IV.) He says: "The society of the family is a society to

which the man contributes the protecting power of strength, the woman

the necessities of weakness; he _le pouvoir_, she _le devoir_." Thus

does the French philosopher caricature the doctrine of St. Paul, which,

in its day, was a great and noble advance in the direction of the

emancipation of woman.

What, then, is Bonald's definition of marriage? Marriage is the

engagement entered into by two persons of opposite sexes to found a

society--the society which is called a family. It is this engagement

which distinguishes marriage from every other species of cohabitation

of man and woman. Bonald refers with the utmost indignation to

Condorcet's witty saying, that if men have any duty towards the

beings who do not yet exist, it cannot be that of endowing them with

existence. "Indeed it is!" he exclaims. "Marriage exists for the

express purpose of continuing the race." But we are not therefore to

conclude, maintains Bonald, that a childless marriage, that is to say,

a marriage which appears to have failed in accomplishing its purpose,

may be dissolved; for, by annulling the first marriage in order to

legalise a second, the production of children in the first is made

impossible, without their production in the second being positively

ensured. Though a husband and wife have no children, there is always

a possibility that children may come; and since marriage is only

instituted for the sake of the possible children, the fact that they

as yet have none is no reason for annulling it. To Bonald marriage

is the possible society, to which the family, as the real society,

corresponds. "_The object of marriage_" he teaches, "_is not the

happiness of the wedded pair._" What, then, is its object? "_Marriage_"

he answers, "_exists for the sake of society._" In marriage religion

and the state see only the duties which it imposes.

But if marriage exists only for the sake of society, what, we eagerly

ask, is the aim of society? True to his theological dogma, that society

by preserving its tradition, _i.e._ itself, preserves nothing less than

God, Bonald answers (as indeed he must) with the empty formula: _The

aim of society is its own preservation_.[2]

Not a word does he waste upon the vain supposition that institutions

exist for man's sake; not a thought does he bestow on human happiness,

on the development of the race, or the evolution of human greatness.

The one and only vital consideration being the production and welfare

of children, polygamy, the putting away of a wife, and divorce seem

to Bonald all equally reprehensible. He remarks that the introduction

of divorce and the introduction of polygamy seem to follow naturally

one on the other, seeing that Luther (this story appears in every

single book of our period), who permitted divorce, also, though in all

secrecy, countenanced the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse. Bonald

declares that he sees no difference between the polygamy which consists

in having several wives at the same time and that which consists in

having them one after the other; he forgets that he hereby pronounces a

second marriage, after the death of husband or wife, to be as culpable

as marriage after divorce. Everywhere, he declares, where divorce is

legal, and where, consequently, a woman is entitled to see in every man

a possible husband, the women are devoid of chastity, or at any rate

of modesty. He instances England as an example--England. He compares

the state of matters in that country, where in given cases divorce is

permitted, with the conditions prevailing among certain savage races,

where the husband obliges his wife's lover, when he catches him _in

flagranti delicto_, to pay for a pig, which the three roast and eat

in company. England, with its comparatively liberal institutions, is

Bonald's and Lamennais' scapegoat. Lamennais says of England that

nowhere else is there to be found a population as blunted, as destitute

of the sense of morality, of higher ideas, of everything that elevates

the mind and ennobles human life.[3]

All this is exaggeration, and of a most untruthful and illogical kind.

But there is both logic and truth in what gives these details their

significance, namely, Bonald's conception of the close connection

between the question of divorce and the whole political question. He

sees that a republic or _democracy_ (the Republic is so obnoxious

to him that he will not even use the word) inevitably leads to the

loosening of the marriage tie.

He writes: "In 1792 divorce was legalised. No one was surprised, for

this was one of the inevitable and long-foreseen consequences of

the process of demolition carried on at that time with such ardour;

but now, when our desire is to re-build, now, divorce entering as a

principle into the edifice of society, shakes that edifice to its very

foundations. Divorce was in harmony with the democracy which has too

long ruled in France under different names and forms. In domestic as

well as in public affairs power was delivered over to the passions of

_the subjects_; there was disorder in the family and disorder in the

state; there was similarity and harmony between the two disorders.

But it is plain to every one that divorce is directly at variance

with the spirit of the hereditary and indissoluble monarchy. If

we retain divorce, we have order in the state and disorder in the

family--indissolubility here, dissolubility there, hence no harmony.

On that side to which man is inclined to bend, the law must prop him

up; in our days it must forbid disorganised natures disorganisation,

as in olden days it forbade half-savage barbarians cruel and bloody

vengeance."

Thus Bonald succeeds in resting his theory of marriage upon his

fundamental principle of sovereignty by the grace of God. The

conclusion he arrives at is that divorce ought to be unconditionally

prohibited, and that simple separation without permission to marry

again is a sufficient remedy for the ills arising from unfortunate

marriages. When his theories became laws, the marriage laws of France,

they produced a state of matters in that country which excited the

ridicule of the whole world--a state of matters which, for example,

made it impossible for a young girl whose bridegroom ran off with her

dowry on the wedding day ever to marry again or have lawful offspring.

In the case of incendiaries and murderers the law permitted the plea of

extenuating circumstances; they might be set at liberty after behaving

well for a certain number of years; but, according to Bonald's doctrine

and the laws of France, the deserted, victimised young girl had not the

same hope of liberty that was extended to the girl who had burned a

whole family in their beds or murdered her own father.

The scheme for a code of civil law prepared by the Convention contained

the following clauses:--

In the matter of marriage men are free to act as they please, that is

to say, marriage comes under the category of matters of conscience.

It is the formation of an alliance in which man and woman stand on an

equal footing.

The contracting parties are free to determine the conditions of their

union.

Husband and wife have or exercise equal rights as regards the disposal

of their property.

Divorce is permissible if desired by both or by one of the spouses.

The law forbids any limitation of the right of divorce.

It appears that the great liberty in the matter of divorce thus

suddenly bestowed was, like all suddenly acquired liberty, abused at

first. Both men and women, without bestowing much thought on their

children, recklessly gave way to ephemeral passions which had neither

the justification nor the dignity of true love. Corresponding phenomena

are to be found throughout all history, wherever fetters have been

broken. But for those who, like Bonald, had no faith in liberty and

believed in no disciplining power except that of restraint, what

occurred sufficiently proved the necessity of returning to the old

order of things.

The ideal marriage (an ideal which will never be lost sight of and

which is sometimes realised) is, of course, that in which the two

united human beings love each other till death, nay, with a love that

lasts beyond death. But this ideal marriage is the result of a rare,

fortunate choice, not of compulsory laws.

For such laws the children formed the natural pretext. Bonald propounds

his doctrine of the rights of the child in the following effective,

admirably expressed proposition: "As the contract of marriage concerns

three persons, the father, the mother, and the child, it cannot be

annulled because two agree in desiring that it should be. Since the

child is under age, society defends its cause against its parents,

and as the child's advocate protests against the dissolubility of

marriage." This argument premises, in the first place, that the

continuance of the marriage at all costs is what is undoubtedly best

for the child, a premise which is distinctly open to doubt. In the

second place, it presupposes the welfare of the child to be the one

vital and all-important matter, a presupposition which only adherents

of the principle of authority can be expected to accept without proof.

And lastly, it takes account only of the children born in wedlock,

regarding the others as non-existent, though it is well known that

one of the saddest results of the traditional order of things is

that not all children are born with equal claims upon their parents,

nor, consequently, upon society. Bonald's social order, in which the

welfare of the child is declared to be of supreme importance, has in

our day led to more than 2,800,000 French men and women being born as

illegitimate children, in an undeserved inferiority to their parents

which is more strongly insisted on in France than in other countries.

But, absurd in many of its details as Bonald's theory is, it is

valuable, nay, precious, as being in all its main features a consistent

application of the principle of authority in the domain of the

family. Bonald has, what semi-liberals never have, a keen perception

of the connection between the political and the social principles

of the Revolution. He is not able, like those whose very essence is

foolish inconsistency, to separate the former from the latter, and to

overlook the fact that the traditional theory of marriage, which is

still in part the accepted one, is most intimately connected with the

traditional theory of the state, which is now generally rejected.

The connection becomes obvious whenever the matter is discussed. The

American slave-owners defended themselves against the accusations of

the abolitionists by declaring that the relations existing between

slaves and their masters were in no respect vitally different from

those existing in the family and in marriage. We see, too, that quite

as much has been said and written against the permissibility of divorce

in any case whatever as would be said and written to-day against a

proposal to increase the facility of divorce, or, indeed, against any

change in the received conception of what makes the union of man and

woman desirable.

In this province, as in every other, the principle of authority has

as its opponent the principle of free thought--in various forms. If

we leave the socialistic theories (which we shall consider later in

connection with the Saint-Simonists) altogether out of the question,

we find authority confronted in the matter under discussion by free

thought in the shape of the principle of individualism, as developed

by English, French, and American thinkers. The code of laws drafted by

the Convention, from which extracts have been given above, is based on

this principle, the fundamental idea of which is that it is not, as is

generally maintained, the family, but the individual human being who

is the main pillar of society, and that this individual is sovereign.

The doctrine of the sovereignty of God, as proclaimed by the devotees

of hereditary autocracy, and the ambiguous doctrine of the sovereignty

of the people, as proclaimed by the revolutionary worshippers of the

majority, are superseded by the doctrine of _the sovereignty of the

individual_ (an expression first employed by the American writer Samuel

Warren, from whom it was borrowed by John Stuart Mill).[4] Sovereignty

of the individual ensures, as the phrase implies, the absolute liberty

of every human being--prohibits any man's usurping any authority or

control whatever over other men. The adherents of this doctrine say:

_Either_ tutelage for every one, _i.e._ censorship of the press, a

regular police-spy system, passports, tariffs, prohibition of divorce,

laws regulating the intercourse of the sexes--the whole system of

arbitrary restriction of the freedom of the individual, _or_ the

sovereignty of the individual, _i.e._ liberty of the press, liberty of

speech, liberty to travel, free-trade, liberty of research, and liberty

in the relations of the sexes. From their standpoint the only possible

vindication of a law which restricts the liberty of the individual is

that the provisional compulsory order of things is merely the speediest

means of arriving at a more perfect order of things with more complete

liberty--for liberty is the ideal of individualism. The thinkers of

this school regard the interference of the state in matters of the

affections as unwarranted; they maintain that the legal tie which keeps

two beings of opposite sexes united is _either superfluous_--when it

is their own wish to remain united, _or revolting_--when it is not

their wish. They hold that society acts most criminally towards a

married couple, one of whom detests the other, if it obliges them to

remain together and bring children into being, the fruit of the desire

of the one and the loathing of the other. They consider it revolting

that society should compel a woman against her will to bear a child

to a drunkard, a child which from its birth possesses its father's

depraved instincts and lusts. And they consider it equally terrible

that a man's whole life should be sacrificed to a connection which

reduces him to despair. They take as much thought of the children yet

unborn as Bonald does of those already in existence. They do not,

like him, see in the fact that it is possible for a woman to become a

mother against her will a proof of the imperfection of woman, but a

proof of the uncivilised condition of society. Clearly perceiving the

interdependence of all the different provinces of human life, they

maintain it to be most improbable that one alone of these provinces

should be, by means of tradition, absolutely rightly ordered, seeing

that the ordering of all the others has been found to be altogether

wrong and has consequently been completely changed in the course of

the last hundred years. Such is the line of argument most frequently

employed by writers of this school.[5] In this case, as in many others,

it is doubtful if pure liberalism points out the right way of arriving

at the desired end. The principle is stated here simply as being the

direct opposite of that of authority. What is undoubtedly desirable,

in this as in every other case, is absolute liberty of investigation.

If a thinker in a Catholic country expresses his opinion freely on

the subject of the mass, or any other of the prescribed rites and

practices of the church, he is, as a rule, dubbed a scorner of religion

in general, if not an atheist. For the orthodox Catholic believes that

"religion" consists in, or at least can only exist in combination

with, certain ecclesiastical traditions and customs with which in his

consciousness it has always been associated. It never occurs to him

that the assailant of these customs may have a far nobler and purer

conception of religion than himself. He has observed that those whom he

has hitherto found wanting in respect for the ordinances of religion

have been disorderly, immoral men, capable of all kinds of foolish

actions. From this he too quickly draws a general conclusion; his

intellect is not sufficiently developed to enable him to distinguish

between the different types of assailants; he confuses the earnest

thinker and champion of a higher truth with the common rabble of

graceless scoffers--confuses his superior with his inferiors.

The very same thing happens in the matter of the traditional conception

of the proper relation of the sexes. The rules and regulations of this

relation in a given country at a given time are no more marriage than

Catholicism in Spain in the eighteenth century is religion. Some men

are below the standard presupposed by the institution of marriage as it

exists, some are above it, whilst the majority in civilised countries

exactly come up to it, bring public opinion into harmony with their

views, and, confounding the two groups of those who think otherwise,

hold them up together to public scorn.

The same idea which leads to the assertion of the principle of

authority in religion and in the state leads to its assertion in the

matter of the relation of the sexes.

The mistake as regards religion consists in the supposition that

the church, because its mission for centuries has been to ennoble,

is of essential importance in the production of nobler feelings and

thoughts--the supposition that love of truth is not natural to man,

increasing with his general development, but must be communicated to

him and kept up in him by the perpetual agency of bishops, priests,

churches, church councils, &c.

The corresponding mistake in the matter of the mutual relations of man

and woman lies in the belief that human beings do not by nature love

order and refinement in this relation, and love it the more the more

highly developed and consequently refined they are, that men do not

instinctively love their children and protect their children's mother,

but that all these qualities and virtues must be first manufactured,

then preserved in the human soul by the aid of legislation--although

the requisite laws are, strangely enough, only produced by the combined

action of all those persons who, taken separately, are supposed to

be devoid of the qualities and virtues in question. Entirely the

opposite of this is the real truth; it is only their love of these same

virtues and blessings which induces men patiently to submit to all the

artificial arrangements and compulsory rules under which they groan.

They submit because it has been impressed on them from their childhood

that such institutions as the existing ones are the only guarantee for

the maintenance of the virtues and benefits they so highly prize.

One result of this state of matters is the repression or complete

prevention of all unprejudiced inquiry into the nature and working of

the human soul; men are trained to accept unquestioningly as truth

everything that bears the warrant of tradition or authority, and the

opponents of the principle of authority are accused of desiring and

favouring immorality.

If a man set himself seriously to ascertain what in our day is the most

degrading and stultifying of all the principles that exist upon this

earth, he could not avoid arriving at the conclusion that the principle

of authority is the one most deserving of this unenviable distinction.

The principle of authority consistently applied produces such axioms

as: Marriage exists for the sake of society, and the object of society

is to preserve itself, or--the same thing differently put: Marriage

in its traditional form is sacred, because it is indispensable to the

preservation of pure morality. And in what does pure morality consist?

In the preservation of marriage in its traditional form.

There is no progress possible on these lines. We go round in a ring

without moving from the spot.

But if, on the contrary, the opponents of the principle of authority

insist: The object of society is the greatest happiness of its

members, and the object of marriage the welfare of the family, we are

left free to find out what this welfare and this greatest happiness

are. And if they further say: "Moral purity consists in that species

of relation between beings of opposite sexes which conduces most

to their development and mutual happiness, taking the farthest off

as well as the immediate results of the union into consideration,"

this definition, supposing it to be accepted or put to the test

of experiment, leaves such freedom for thorough and scientific

investigation into all that concerns the health of the body, of the

soul, and of society as has never before been known.

Order and refinement! These were the watchwords of the champions

of the principle of authority. By all means let us have order and

refinement--but what men have had to learn, and what they will learn

even though it should take them centuries, is that order and refinement

are the work of science or natural development, and never are or can

be the work of arbitrary legislation, or of a criminal code and a

public opinion founded upon tradition and authority. There is no real

ordering, no real order of society but that which is the result of

scientific insight into the nature of man. All societies--the society

called the family as well as that called the state--exist, not for

their own sake, but for the sake of men, for the purpose of enabling

each individual composing them to attain certain great aims and great

benefits. Such aims and benefits are personal development, moral

purity, the education of the young, the protection of women.

If these objects can only be attained in the manner indicated by the

principle of authority, then of course liberty, in so many other

domains regarded as a blessing, is in these domains to be regarded

as a curse, and is to be attacked and exterminated. But if they can

_possibly_ be attained in other ways, possibly be attained _better_

in other ways (and such a possibility is difficult to disprove), if,

finally, the measure of attainment arrived at in the traditional

manner is hardly worth taking into account, then absolutely free

inquiry, without regard to human or superhuman authority, is man's

bounden duty. In a century such as that in which we live the principle

of authority, as the principle which prevents all free inquiry,

is the worst, the most stupid, and the most degrading that can be

imagined, and stands self-condemned. The man who, by deriding or

forbidding free investigation into any social question whatsoever,

prevents, as he undoubtedly does, the suggestion of hypotheses and

the trying of practical experiments which might prove to be of value

to his fellow-men, is a criminal, for whom, if there were equity and

justice upon earth, no punishment would be considered too severe. It

unfortunately happens that the majority of educated men are criminals

of this class, so that the prospect of having them punished is very

slight.

Bonald was such a criminal; but in his outward circumstances we can

find no trace of the pursuit of an avenging Nemesis. He lived to the

age of eighty-six, and was all his life one of the most influential

and respected men of his period. He died in 1840, full of days and of

honour.

[1] Louis de Viel-Castel, _Histoire de la Restauration_, iv. 487.

[2] "La société a pour parvenir à sa fin, _qui est sa conservation, des

lois_". _Du Divorce_, 107.

[3] _Progrès de la révolution et de la guerre contre l'église_, p. 35.

[4] John Stuart Mill, _Autobiography_, p. 256.

[5] See, for example, Stephen Pearl Andrews, _Love, Marriage, and

Divorce_ (New York); also Émile de Girardin, _L'homme et la femme_.