The Morals of the Period
Examples of the precocious talents displayed by Mademoiselle de
l'Enclos are not uncommon in the twentieth century, but the
application she made of them was remarkable and uncommon. Accomplished
in music, learned and proficient in the languages, a philosopher of no
small degree, and of a personal beauty sometimes called "beauté de
diable," she appeared upon the social stage at a time when a new idol
was an imperative necessity for the salvation of moral sanity, and the
preservation of some remnants of personal decency in the sexual
relations.
Cardinal Richelieu had just succeeded in consolidating the usurpations
of the royal prerogatives on the rights of the nobility and the
people, which had been silently advancing during the preceding reigns,
and was followed by the long period of unexampled misgovernment, which
oppressed and impoverished as well as degraded every rank and every
order of men in the French kingdom, ceasing only with the Revolution.
The great Cardinal minister had built worse than he had intended, it
is to be hoped; for his clerico-political system had practically
destroyed French manhood, and left society without a guiding star to
cement the rope of sand he had spun. Unable to subject the master
minds among the nobility to its domination, ecclesiasticism had
succeeded in destroying them by augmenting royal prerogatives which it
could control with less difficulty. Public maxims of government,
connected as they were with private morals, had debauched the nation,
and plunged it into a depth of degradation out of which Richelieu and
his whole entourage of clerical reformers could not extricate a single
individual. It was a riot of theological morality.
The whole body of the French nobility and the middle class of citizens
were reduced to a servile attendance on the court, as the only means
of advancement and reward. Every species of industry and merit in
these classes was sedulously discouraged; and the motive of honorable
competition for honorable things, being withdrawn, no pursuit or
occupation was left them but the frivolous duties, or the degrading
pleasures of the palace.
Next to the king, the women naturally became the first objects of
their effeminate devotion; and it is difficult to say which were
soonest corrupted by courtiers consummate in the arts of adulation,
and unwearied in their exercise. The sovereign rapidly degenerated
into an accomplished despot, and the women into intriguers and
coquettes. Richelieu had indeed succeeded in subjecting the State to
the rule of the Church, but Ninon was destined to play an important
part in modifying the evils which afflicted society, and at least
elevate its tone. From the methods she employed to effect this
change, it may be suspected that the remedy was equivalent to the
Hanemannic maxim: "Similia similbus curantur," a strange application
of a curative agent in a case of moral decrepitude, however valuable
and effective it may be in physical ailments.
The world of the twentieth century, bound up as it is in material
progress, refuses to limit its objects and aims to the problematic
enjoyment of the pleasures of Paradise in the great hereafter, or of
suffering with stoicism the pains and misfortunes of this earth as a
means of avoiding the problematic pains of Hell. Future rewards and
punishments are no longer incentives to virtue or right living. The
only drag upon human acts of every kind is now that great political
maxim, the non-observance of which has often deluged the earth with
blood; "Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas," which is to say: So use
thine own as not to injure thy neighbor. It is a conventional
principle, one of contract in reality, but it has become a great
doctrine of equity and justice, and it is inculcated by our
educational systems to the exclusion of the purely religious idea, and
the elimination of religious dogma, which tends to oppressive
restraints, is carefully fostered.
There is another reason why men's minds are impelled away from the
purely sentimental moral doctrines insisted upon by sectarianism,
which is ecclesiasticism run riot, and the higher the education the
deeper we delve into the secret motives of that class of mankind, the
deceptive outward appearances of which dominate the pages of history,
which is, that the greatest and most glorious systems of government,
the wisest and most powerful of rulers, the greatest and most liberal
statesmen, heroes, and conspicuous conquerors, originated in
violations of the Decalogue, and those nations and kingdoms which have
been founded upon strictly ecclesiastical ideas, have all sunk beneath
the shifting sands of time, or have become so degenerate as to be
bywords and objects of derision.
From the same viewpoint, a strange phenomenon is observable in the
world of literature, arts, and sciences. The brightest, greatest
geniuses, whose works are pointed to with admiration; studied as
models and standards, made the basis of youthful education, imitated,
and even wept over by the sentimental, were, in their private lives,
persons of the most depraved morals. Why this should be the case, it
is impossible even to conjecture, the fact only remaining that it is
so. Perhaps there are so many different standards of morality, that
humanity, weary of the eternal bickering consequent upon the conflicts
entered into for their enforcement, have made for themselves a new
interpretation which they find less difficult to observe, and find
more peace and pleasure in following.
To take a further step in the same direction, it is curious that in
the lives of the Saints, those who spent their whole earthly existence
in abstinence, works of the severest penance, and mortifications of
the flesh, the tendency of demoniac influence was never in the
direction of Sabbath breaking, profanity, idolatry, robbery, murder
and covetousness, but always exerted itself to the fullest extent of
its power in attacks upon chastity. All other visions were absent in
the hair-shirted, and self-scourgings brought out nothing but sexual
idealities, sensual temptations. The reason for this peculiarity is
not far to seek. What is dominant in the minds always finds egress
when a favorable opportunity is presented, and the very thought of
unchastity as something to be avoided, leads to its contemplation, or
its creation in the form of temptation. The virtue of chastity was the
one law, and its observances and violations were studied from every
point of view, and its numberless permissible and forbidden
limitations expatiated upon to such a degree, that he who escaped them
altogether could well attribute the result to the interposition of
some supernatural power, the protection of some celestial guardian.
One is reminded of the expression of St. Paul: "I had not known lust
had the law not said: thou shalt not covet." Lord Beaconsfield's
opinion was, that excessive piety led to sexual disorders.
According to Ninon's philosophy, whatever tended to propagate
immoderation in the sexual relations was rigidly eliminated, and
chastity placed upon the same plane and in the same grade as other
moral precepts, to be wisely controlled, regulated, and managed. She
put all her morality upon the same plane, and thereby succeeded in
equalizing corporeal pleasure, so that the entire scale of human acts
produced a harmonious equality of temperament, whence goodness and
virtue necessarily followed, the pathway being unobstructed.
It is too much to be expected, or even to be hoped for, that there
will ever be any unanimity among moral reformers, or any uniformity in
their standards of moral excellence. The educated world of the present
day, reading between the lines of ancient history, and some that is
not so very ancient, see ambition for place and power as the moving
cause, the inspiration behind the great majority of revolutions, and
they have come to apply the same construction to the great majority of
moral agitations and movements for the reform of morals and the
betterment of humanity, with pecuniary reward or profit, however,
added as the sine qua non of maintaining them.
Cure the agitation by removing the occasion for it, and Othello's
occupation would be gone; hence, the agitation continues. As an
eminent theologian declared with a conviction that went home to a
multitude, at the Congress of Religions, when the Columbian Exposition
was in operation:
"If all the religions in the world are to be merged into one, who, or
what will support the clergy that will be deprived of their salaries
by the change in management?"
The Golden Calf and Aaron were there, but where was the angry Moses?