_Histoire de l'Ancien Regime_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.
_Histoire de la Revolution francaise_, par HENRI TAINE. Paris.
When De Tocqueville,in his celebrated work upon the Ancien Regime and
the Revolution, had described the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy, he
ended with these words:--"I have now reached the threshold of the great
Revolution; on this occasion I shall not cross it, but perhaps I may
soon be in a position to do so, and then I shall no longer consider its
causes, but its nature, and shall finally venture to pass judgment on
the society that has proceeded from it."
Death prevented this admirable inquirer from accomplishing his purpose,
a loss to the historical literature of Europe for ever to be regretted,
and certainly not least by the author who has now undertaken to fill up
the blank, and complete De Tocqueville's projected task--the
description, namely, of modern France as the outcome of the immense
transformation which the Revolution brought upon the Old French State.
The fundamental principles which appear so clearly and sharply in
Tocqueville's development are prominent in Taine's; the activity of the
earlier author prepared the ground for the later to build on. But we
must admit that Taine's work is pre-eminently independent, and his
descriptions more striking, broad, and richly coloured than those of his
precursor, while the material contents of his work are often different.
But what, in spite of this, constitutes the resemblance between the two
men is, their having for basis a common conception both of the State and
what it presupposes, and of the historian and his task. It is the very
opposite of the manner of thinking entertained in the eighteenth century
which, without any heed to the peculiar character of the necessities of
a given people, was bent on constructing, according to simple rules of
reason and natural law, the best State for all time. Taine, in a very
striking manner, declares himself free from such an error. "In 1849," he
observes, "I was an elector, and had to take part in the naming of a
large number of Deputies. Therefore it was necessary not only to decide
as to persons, but as to theories as well; I was required to be Royalist
or Republican, Democrat or Conservative, Socialist or Bonapartist, and I
was nothing of the kind--nay, I was nothing at all, and envied those who
had the luck to be something. These worthy men built a constitution as
they would a house, on the most ornamental, most new, or most simple
plan; a row of models stood ready for choice, a baronial castle, a
burgher's house, a workshop, a barrack, a phalanstery, a cottage, and
each said of his favourite model: 'That is the only proper dwelling, the
only one a rational man would inhabit.' To me this seemed an utter
mistake. A people, as I thought, may indeed be able to say what house
they admire, but some experience is needed to teach them what house they
need, whether it be commodious and lasting, stands the weather well, and
harmonizes with the customs, occupations, and fancy of its occupant. We
here in France have never been content with our political erections; in
the course of eighty years we have pulled them down and rebuilt them
thirteen times. Other nations have acted differently, and found their
advantage in so doing. They have preserved an old, substantial building,
enlarged, built around, and beautified it according to their needs, but
never attempted to build an ideal house at one stroke, according to the
rules of pure reason. It would therefore appear that the sudden
invention of an entirely new, and at the same time suitable and durable
constitution is an undertaking that transcends human capacity. The
political and social form which a people permanently assumes is no
matter of choice, but fixed by its character and its past. It must be
suited to its idiosyncrasy, even in the minutest points, or it will
crack and fall. Therefore we must know ourselves before we can discover
what the proper constitution for us is. We must invert the accustomed
method, and first form to ourselves a picture of the nation before we
sketch a constitution. At the same time this is a far harder and wider
task than the one hitherto in favour. What inquiries into past and
present, what labour in all domains of thought and action, are needed to
understand with precision and completeness the nature and growth of a
great people through centuries! But it is the only way to avoid putting
out first empty discussions and then incoherent constructions; and, as
regards myself, I shall not think of a political opinion until I have
learnt to know France."
From this rejection of the rationalistic State theory, it follows, of
course, that the author declines the style of historical writing that
corresponds with it. We all know how parties who contended in the course
of the Revolution have gone on attempting to justify their historical
representation of it--Emigrants and Feuillans, Girondists and
Montagnards, Bonapartists and Communists. They all knew exactly at the
beginning of their historical labours what the conclusions arrived at
would be. Their own party had the ideal of the only healthy State cut
and dry, and hence the sentence upon companions, allies, and enemies was
pronounced beforehand. The desirable aspects of the Revolution were
owing to the activity of that party, the undesirable to the
worthlessness of its adversaries. The study of isolated facts only awoke
real interest in so far as it sharpened the perception of the main
point--our party is right, all others are wrong. To this disposition of
mind more than to any other hindrances we may attribute the small
advance made, up to the middle of our century, in the knowledge of
facts, in the history of the Revolution; this is what explains the else
inexplicable phenomenon that, spite of the large interest felt in the
period, no history of Louis XVI. drawn from authentic documents has as
yet been written. For that even the books of De Tocqueville and Taine,
spite of the strength of their authors' intellect and the wealth of
their material, have not afforded us this, we shall soon convincingly
see.
Both these works, however, are invaluable preparations for the writing
of such a history. With firm and decided political principles of their
own, both authors have determined to serve no party, but knowledge only.
Both desire to know men and circumstances before they judge of the
political experiments made. Both are full of the spirit of the old
saying: "Human affairs are neither to be wept over nor laughed at, but
to be understood." It is only when we know the soil and the seed from
which the Revolution sprang that we can understand its nature and
working, and only from the understanding of the whole can we pronounce
upon the details with which factions have hitherto concerned themselves
in endless and unprofitable debate. We will illustrate our meaning by a
contrary procedure. I have not unfrequently heard the question: "How can
Taine, whose first volume reveals more fully than any previous work the
utter corruption of the Ancien Regime, place the Revolution in his
second in an equally unfavourable light? If the old state were so
completely good for nothing, the French were perfectly right in utterly
destroying it." Accordingly, there has been no want of critics who,
after the appearance of the first volume, declared the author to be a
thorough Liberal, and, after the second, in deep disappointment,
proclaimed him a thoroughly reactionary politician. There are, indeed,
certain passages that might lead to such a conclusion, certain
inconsistencies do appear, but on the whole it is self-evident, from an
historical standpoint, that out of so evil a condition as the first
volume paints the dark pictures of the second must needs grow. Rather
should we have had cause to wonder if from a diseased root there had
sprung a healthy tree. The men of the Revolution had grown up on no
other soil and in no other atmosphere than that of the Ancien Regime; it
was under it that their notions had arisen, their passions been
fostered, and their ideal formed; it was there that their nature had
received its stamp and their strivings their direction; and if all
relations were dislocated, political feeling perverted, all portions of
the people filled with bitter hatred against the State and each other,
how should pupils in such a school amidst the final shock of
catastrophes show themselves men of ripe experience, practical wisdom,
and determined energy? He who has once taken in this simple truth will
be much inclined to a mild judgment of individual men and parties; at
all events, he will not be able abruptly to take sides either for or
against the Ancien Regime or the Revolution. For one thing will have
grown clear to him, that the Revolution was not the destroyer alone, but
the undeniable offspring, of the old condition of things.
That a work of Henri Taine's displays literary ability of the first
order there is no need to say. His representation of events is grounded
on most industrious study; unpublished documents of all kinds are cited,
as well as printed works, and among the latter we have not only French,
but foreign authorities--English more especially--while German are
hardly so much as noticed. At all events, the mass of thoroughly
explored material is enormous, and our historical knowledge is
frequently extended, rectified, and cleared thereby. We shall attempt to
follow the general line of thought running through the book, and now and
then to controvert it on certain points.
It will be remembered to what pregnant results Tocqueville's inquiries
led. The centralized government of France is by no means a creation of
our century, but a production of the Ancien Regime. Since the days of
Richelieu, ministers of finance and their intendants and delegates had
taken the exclusive charge of police of every kind, public works and
plans, the economic and spiritual welfare of the people. The elementary
principles of political liberty and parliamentary constitution, of
independent local administration and commercial freedom, were destroyed
thereby. Spiritual and temporal magnates had been almost sovereigns in
the districts in which they fulfilled the duties of government,
preserved internal and external peace, protected local interests, and
consequently imposed taxes and corvees upon their dependents, while
often successfully resisting royal aggression--all these magnates were
now as unconditionally as the mass of the people subjected to the royal
bureaucracy and forced out of all political activity--thenceforth, as
hated parasites, they had to live at the cost of the working people. The
King, therefore, assembled them at his Court, where, in compensation for
their loss of liberty and honour, pensions and presents--always at the
cost of the people--were heaped upon them. Thus the popular hatred went
on intensifying with every generation, and was at length the source and
essential element of the great Revolution.
It is on this thesis that Taine bases his representation of the subject.
Privileges were once the reward of political service done by the heads
and leaders of the people in their own territories. Then, the landlord
lived in the midst of his dependents--his own interest was identical
with their welfare, he was linked with them by natural and traditional
ties, and appeared as their powerful advocate whenever the State
attempted any arbitrary and oppressive measure. Now bureaucratic
government divided the landowners from the people, and by the
unjustified continuance of their privileges set the two henceforth in
opposition. For because the nobleman paid no taxes, the burgher and
farmer had to make up the deficit. Because he retained the right of
chase, his game had to be fed on the crops of his tenants. If a not
inconsiderable number of the higher middle classes gained the special
privileges of nobility, the burthens of the rest of the people were only
increased thereby. The author has rendered us praiseworthy service by
exposing the extent of privileges and feudal rights on one hand, and of
the increase of taxes and duties on the other, more fully and precisely
than any other writer has done. Thorough investigation has brought out a
still more appalling condition than had been imagined. After the State,
the Church, and the landlord had received their rates, the share of the
farmer in the proceeds of his land never amounted to more than a half,
and often his taxes rose to eighty per cent. of his income. On the other
hand, the privileged classes paid at least a fifth less than the just
proportion, and knew how to obtain on a yearly average at least a
hundred millions in the shape of presents, pensions, &c. With
increasingly few exceptions, there was no more thought of any care to be
taken of the lower classes by the higher. Prelates and magnates streamed
towards Versailles; all that the peasants knew of them was from their
unmerciful agents coming for rent and taxes. Thus France fell asunder
into two worlds without, unfortunately, any reciprocal knowledge or
common interest, divided by contempt and hatred--worlds that lived on
side by side, the smaller in wealth, enjoyment, elegance, and luxury,
and, above all, brilliant idleness; the larger in poverty, wretchedness,
ignorance, savagery, and, above all, in ever-growing and devouring
bitterness of heart--a condition such as no other nation of Christian
Europe had ever before come to.
Now all this is perfectly correct, and Taine proves it by a mass of
authentic testimony: nevertheless it may be observed that it is only a
part of the truth, and by this one-sidedness the author has been led
into error.
I am now alluding to the first part of this exposition, that which
treats of the centralization of the government in the hands of royal
officials as the deepest root of all this mischief. The worst side of
this centralization had been incontrovertibly exposed by De Tocqueville,
but none the less his representation was unfair and unjust, because it
made no mention of the brighter side. No one can contest that the
political inactivity of men of all positions in a system that referred
the general interests of France to a bureaucracy, demoralized the higher
classes and left the lower ignorant and inexperienced. Still the
historian should not forget the actual achievements of this great
bureaucracy. Under Colbert's guidance it created the civic order and
economical beginnings of modern France. It, for the first time in
France, rendered throughout a century a burghers' war an impossible
thing, and it stimulated internal traffic by roads and canals, which
gave rise to countless industrial and commercial undertakings. Later,
under Turgot and Necker, it waged, on behalf of the people, war against
the pressure of privileges, thought primarily of reform and progress,
and saw with bitter regret the defeat of its popular efforts by the
opposition of the nobles. Tocqueville himself tells how the Liberal
parties before the Revolution thought more of reforms than
liberties--that is to say, they expected the improvement of their
condition from a further strengthening of the Monarchy. It came to a
Revolution first, however. The Monarchy, wielded by the feeble hand of
Louis XVI., was unequal to the task; then privileges fell for ever, but
after ten years monarchical centralization arose anew in order a second
time to satisfy the needs and inclinations of the French people
throughout three generations. It seems therefore a mistake to paint this
institution so out and out black. We may lament that it has not merely
done nothing to educate the French in political liberty, but has as much
as possible stifled liberty and the very sense of it among them. But how
without it, under the circumstances that succeeded to the religious wars
and the Fronde, anything like a positive constitution ever could have
arisen in France, De Tocqueville does not say. We are indeed amazed when
Taine, in his enumeration of the privileged classes as those luxurious
idlers, those once political servants who had now renounced all
political influence, numbers, as third with the clergy and nobility, the
King--the head of that Government, which was only too zealous in
working, and thereby drew all the power of the State to itself and
excluded all others from care for the common weal. Here there is an
evident contradiction, nor is it any way cleared up by the circumstance
that personally Louis XV. vied in indolence and debauchery with the
worst of his courtiers, or that his unfortunate successor spent much of
his time and energy in Court etiquette and the chase. For the reign of
Louis XVI. was from first to last spent in efforts, by the setting aside
of feudal privileges, alike to strengthen the Crown and promote the good
of the people, and in no case can it be more incorrect to look upon the
Crown as a devouring parasitical growth upon the body of the State. This
brings me back to my former remark: had Taine instead of or by the side
of his picture of society under the Ancien Regime written the history of
its last monarch, most assuredly he would have avoided this
misconception.
But he admirably describes how the brilliant and empty position of the
higher class led step by step to ruin. These distinguished personages
had no earnest and strenuous activity; to be civil officials appeared to
the majority of them below their dignity. They adopted the army as a
mere sphere of chivalrous adventure, for even there, there was no
question for them of rigid discipline; they left the drilling and care
of their troops to subalterns and sergeants. Bishops and abbots drew
immense revenues, and gallantly offered their devotion to fair dames,
but as to divine services and cure of souls, they were the affair of
needy priests and hungry vicars. The only field for their ambition and
interest was the Court, the salon, good society. To shine there was the
object of their distinguished lives. And as the French people have ever
been largely endowed with grace and _esprit_, these efforts resulted in
a perfection of personal appearance, a virtuoso-ship of social
intercourse, a fixed and yet highly elastic code of _bon ton_, such as
the world never saw before or since. Until then the first class of a
great nation had never been known to make the formation of an exquisite
society its highest, nay, its only life-purpose, to subordinate and
sacrifice mental activity, moral strength, and individuality of
character to the promotion and claims of this cultus. Here the final end
of existence was enjoyment in all imaginable degrees, and thought and
action were rigidly directed to it. That the greatest part of life
should be spent in society was the most pressing requirement of
politeness, the reciprocal recognition without which all society becomes
unendurable. The conventional forms in which this recognition clothed
itself became the law of this great world, and the consequences were
felt on all sides. Any appearance of individual peculiarity or opinion
came to be held unfitting; to be other or better than the rest was an
offence against manners. Equally forbidden was the manifestation of any
strong passion, a thing by its very nature opposed to the sway of
conventionality. Vice therefore was excused if it presented itself
gracefully, and almost honoured if it brought a startling and exciting
variety into the monotony of daily life. Mental enjoyments were as
welcome as sensual, provided they could be had without trouble or
labour, for the aim was not to be informed, but amused, and so any kind
of knowledge was good, with the exception of the tedious. Hence it
followed that all mental acquirement was estimated not by the worth of
its content but the excellence of its form: abstract intelligence in the
service of enjoyment, such was the motto of this society. Genial
originality, unconscious creative power, native vigour, were thoroughly
antipathetic there, or only tolerated in so far as they made themselves
subservient to the ruling mood.
A further consideration of how essentially these characteristics of good
society tended to strengthen and sharpen the revolutionary theories of
its deadly foes, here becomes instructive. The development of this
process may indeed be looked upon as the salient point in Taine's work,
for often as the French literature and philosophy of the eighteenth
century have been treated of, I know of no earlier author who with such
extensive material and penetrating insight has clearly brought out the
continuous reciprocal action of circumstances and theories, and thus
gained an unalterable scale for the measurement of both by history.
Taine begins, as is just, with the mighty impetus given to natural
science since the middle of the seventeenth century throughout Europe,
by which a way was opened for an utterly new view of the world and of
men, in opposition to the speculative and theological conceptions of the
Middle Ages.
Next comes under consideration the prevalence of the inductive method,
the rejection of all dogmatic assumption, the repugnance to all
intuitive ideas, the proclamation of observation and experiment as the
only sources of verifiable knowledge. These principles having been at
once unconditionally acknowledged in the sphere of natural science, the
next step was to apply the tone of thought they had engendered to the
phenomena of spiritual and social life, and here also to demand thorough
investigation by the one true authority--criticism. Whatever the
consequence of this investigation might in particular cases be, the very
fact that it had been demanded, that the right of the existing, _as
such_, was denied, that the authority of tradition was subjected to that
of critical reason--this betokened a new epoch in the world's history,
and opened out possibilities of hitherto undreamed-of progress in
politics and religion, State and Church, material and spiritual culture.
It is now plain that if the inductive method can lead to such positive
results, its application should be thorough and universal. No naturalist
delivers a general law as to the life of an organism before he has
considered its origin, existence, and decay in all their stages,
compared it with its like, separated it from its unlike; for it is just
through the discovery and recognition of the eminently special that
analysis leads him to the comprehension of universal truth. And
according to this same rule, in order to arrive at a just and
practicable idea of reform for any State, a great mass of special
observations by technically practised and prepared eyes would have been
required; legal, economical, and historical inquiries made; the
peculiarities of individuals and peoples, of the epoch and stage of
culture, must have been known; the not merely personal but collective
functions of human nature in their bases and action investigated: for
only when all this had been accomplished could it be asserted that the
organism of the State and its laws had been dealt with after the manner
of a genuine naturalist, and that we were now in a condition to judge of
single actualities according to these laws.
How came it that in the France of the eighteenth century the very
opposite occurred--that politicians, stimulated by young natural
science, should from the very first turn their backs upon the inductive
method, and evolve the future State rationalistically, according to a
few abstract principles?
Taine convincingly shows the reason of this: it was chiefly the
influence of fashionable society upon literature which led to this fatal
tendency.
The highest circles in Paris and Versailles, in their brilliant but idle
existence, were, as we have seen, as intent upon mental as sensual
excitement, and therefore prepared to open their doors to every
litterateur who could satisfy this demand. Now, owing to the actual
structure of society in France, the writer who did not choose merely to
devote himself to a few professional subjects had no other public than
this distinguished class. They and they alone were in a position to
secure him praise, honours, and a certain income, therefore it was most
natural that the writer should conform to requirements upon the
satisfaction of which his literary career was so absolutely dependent.
We have now to inquire what were the characteristics of the prevalent
tone of thought among the highest class. First a horror of all
thoroughness, all enduring and laborious perseverance, all deep
earnestness and spiritual recollection. For all this was the very
opposite of enjoyment and diversion, it was a falling into the deadly
sin of tediousness. It was desirable, indeed, to have much and varied
knowledge, but rapidly and lightly, by vivid and pungent discussion, to
reach the quintessence of the most interesting points and conclusions.
Consequently the author's productions became restless, many-sided, and
superficial. The mass of information in every department of knowledge
which Voltaire, for instance, had at his disposal was immense; but the
working out and application of it were strongly hasty, aphoristic, and
frivolous. To this was added the dislike the public of the time had to
any individual peculiarity, its tendency to force all personalities into
one conventional form--an effort equally fatal to poetic creation and to
the historical sense. For such men as these the world was comprehended
in what they called the great world; they had lost the power of
imagining that there was or ever had been an existence outside of it and
absolutely unlike it; or if in any particular case the astounding fact
could not be entirely concealed, it was understood that among cultivated
persons it could never be given any importance. Even on the stage it was
no longer considered becoming that peasants or labourers, a Peruvian or
Iroquois, should speak in their own natural manner; they were all alike
rendered polite, sententious, and fluent as their distinguished
audience. Each local and individual tone was rubbed away, every person
of the drama was but a mouthpiece for the eighteenth-century eloquence
of the author. As with the drama, so with other literature. Taine
correctly observes that if we read an English romance of the period, we
have before our eyes a section of the English people; but a French one,
though widely varying in garb, contains invariably a picture of a French
salon, and that only. In presence of so universal a mood as this, how
could any one come to the study of the State by means of difficult and
distant researches on historical ground? Montesquieu did it, but he
remained solitary among his contemporaries, won much celebrity, but
exercised very little influence. The other reformers used quickly to
turn over the pages of histories in order to find piquant quotations for
some ready-made theory; as, for instance, the ambition of priests, the
falsehood of diplomatists, the insatiability of princely greed. As to
the complicated task of judging any individual State and its
constitution according to its climatic and geographic conditions and its
historical antecedents, with the exception of Montesquieu, no man dreamt
of that. The public, with whom the decision lay, did not require
anything of the kind, nay, would have repaid the severe toil with
disapproval. It placed, as we have before said, far more stress on a
pleasant form than an instructive purpose, cared but little for any
subject in itself, but only as affording material for the most
intelligent, yet at the same time most comprehensible and exciting
conversation. In debate no trace of previous knowledge won by personal
effort was pre-supposed; all that was needed was never to be
commonplace, and in every case to bring forward new and amazing truths.
Accordingly speech and style strove neither for fulness nor depth, but
so much the more for clearness and conclusiveness. In exposition, the
progress was regular from syllogism to syllogism, great care being taken
never to skip over a middle term. In order to be impressive the speaker
became rhetorical, in order to convince he endeavoured to reduce every
subject to one universal and easily inculcated proposition. Good society
was delighted to be thus agreeably put in possession of the most
advanced views of the world; but literature thus allowed itself to
deviate from real knowledge into the way of empty abstraction.
That the literature thus fostered and guided should from the beginning
of the eighteenth century have been in opposition, that since the middle
of it it should have undermined with savage impetuosity all the
foundations of existing conditions, this gave not the least shock to
distinguished society. Disgust at their own impotence and the
omnipotence of royal officials, dislike to an intolerant orthodoxy,
vexation at some personal neglect at Court,--altogether there was cause
enough for malicious satisfaction when philosophers, by biting
criticisms, made clear the standpoint of burdensome potentates. And when
an ever-growing and strengthening Materialism taught the doctrine of
physical enjoyment and judicious selfishness as the guiding principle of
human conduct, it only spoke out what had half-unconsciously been the
sum of all the motives and activities of high society. But above all,
theories were but theories, merely conversation, excitement, pastime.
The nobles declaimed against obsolete abuses, but naturally each meant
to keep his own rightful possessions, and among these were privileges
and feudal rights. They felt conscious of a fresh superiority to the
ignorant masses, because they professed humanitarianism and liberalism,
and spoke against superstition and subordination. That these
much-admired theories might by-and-by become common to the whole
community, and then bring about horrible explosions--of this they had
not the remotest suspicion. Any one who had in 1780 prophesied such a
thing to the ladies of Versailles, would have been looked upon as we
should look upon a prophet nowadays, who told us that in the next
century cats and dogs, instead of men, were to be lords of creation.
This, then, was the public in whose atmosphere and with whose
co-operation the philosophy of revolutionary enlightenment sprung up. It
was here that it learned its rapid and superficial mode of study, its
rejection of an historical spirit in favour of multitudinous present
actualities, its taste for rhetorically adorned formulae and
commonplaces. When the construction of the best State was to be set
about, common characteristics were collected from the natural history
of mankind, such as the dislike to pain, the impulse towards pleasure,
the capacity of forming, from sensations, representations and
conclusions. These characteristics were merely put together as the
concept man, and from this abstract man were deduced, as in a
mathematical formula, the laws of politics, morals, and rights. Since
all men had the same natural impulse towards happiness, the State must
render it possible for them all to reach that aim. Since all had a
natural capacity to form concepts and conclusions, they would be sure to
employ the right means to that end so soon as their hands were left
free, or in case of a momentary mistake these right means logically
pointed out to them. That passion is, in point of fact, in the great
majority of men, stronger than reason, and desire more impetuous than
thought, was disregarded by these admirers of abstract reason; the fact
that each man had the faculty of drawing a logical conclusion appeared
to them to insure his conforming his conduct to the requirements of that
conclusion. If a logically formulated proof of the excellence of one of
the Constitutions they had sketched could be arrived at, they fancied
that the security and durability of its construction was perfectly
guaranteed. On the other hand, that the preservation of constitutional
order required other forces besides logical discussions, this was
altogether outside their range of thought.
But logic knows no limits beyond the evolution of its own conceptions.
The existing condition of things lent itself to being ground to powder.
Before the critical assault of the new teaching no defence of the hoary
unrighteousness of the Old Regime could make a stand; the pity was that,
according to its own principles, the former found it impossible to
attain to a firm and enduring constitution of any sort or colour.
But, if possible, the theories afloat set in against the existing
ecclesiastical system even more strongly than against the political
constitution. The natural science of the day afforded far more material
for battle on that ground than the other. Astronomy, physiology, and
anthropology joined with the efforts of philosophy to demonstrate that
miracle was a delusion, revelation unthinkable, and an extra-mundane God
unverifiable. Soon numerous voices exalted negation into the positive
statement that every idea of God should be rejected, and that the
so-called soul in man was only the highest function of organized matter.
True, Voltaire remained through life a Deist, and Rousseau declared his
faith in God and in the immortality of the soul; but the one all the
more resolutely contended against the divine institution of the Church,
and the other against the fundamental Christian doctrines of Sin and
Justification. However different each may have been from the other, they
waged in common a war for life and death against the Church, the war of
utterly opposed principles. Tocqueville was wrong in saying that the
Revolution was only inimical to the Church as a feudal and aristocratic
institution; that after it had lost its wealth and privileges,
democratic society recognized how strong a democratic momentum the
Church itself contained, and accordingly gave itself up with increased
warmth to religious feelings. Here there is no doubt Taine's record is
the more correct one. The Revolution knew well that it desired not the
wealth only, but the fall of the Church; and not the partisans of the
Revolution, but its adversaries, whose numbers were largely swelled by
the cruelties of the Terror, have brought about the elevation of the
Church in our own century.
If we now contemplate somewhat more narrowly the Constitutional theory
of the illumination, we shall discern two characteristic and prominent
features, which, on the one hand, show its descent from the innermost
core of the Ancien Regime, and, on the other, very energetically
determined the whole course of the Revolution. The ideal state deduced
from the universal characteristics of mankind was as cosmopolitan as
levelling. Just as on the stage of the period, Frenchman and savage,
ancient Greek and modern Parisian, spoke the same language,--that of the
salons of Versailles,--so political theories recognized neither
Frenchman nor Englishman, Catholic nor Protestant, educated nor
uneducated, only Man in general. They never considered what institutions
would be adequate, in France, to the needs and capacities of the
educated ranks and uneducated masses, or how far the habits and opinions
of their nation would render the adoption of a foreign institution
practicable or injurious; rather they formulated the rights of men, of
abstract instead of actually existing men, and were convinced that a
constitution based thereupon was for all men, and consequently for all
peoples, the only good, and therefore the only lawful one. And just as
clear as the equality of nations under the new political law, appeared
the equality of all men in the new State, by which was meant not merely
a claim to equal protection by law, or equal facility in obtaining one's
rights, but a demand for the realization of an inborn and material
equality of rights. This, as is well known, was the point on which
Rousseau took his stand, and gave the last and decisive direction to the
impending democratic revolution. Taine justly observes how frequently,
in spite of their common principles, Rousseau's character and way of
life led him to take different views from those of Voltaire and the
Encyclopaedists. The deepest and most unqualified indignation of these
last was inspired by what they called superstition, stupidity, and
priestcraft, the transformation of the old State being with them more an
affair of the intellect than the feelings, a conclusion drawn from their
universal theory and an ideal requirement of philanthropy. It was
generosity that led them to appear as the advocates of the poor and
their woes, while they themselves were high in the approval and favour
of the best society. Rousseau, on the other hand, had himself led the
life of the proletaire; in the nervous excitability and measureless
vanity which made him almost prouder of his weaknesses and vices than of
the greatness and strength of his talents he--poor, often hungry, not
seldom degraded and reviled--had filled himself with burning wrath
against the favoured of earthly fortune, the noble and the rich, the
revellers in idleness and luxury. This growing hatred he transferred to
the State and the laws which had produced so unrighteous a contrast
between man and man. Men, he maintained, were in their original
condition good, because equal. It was the State, culture, society, that
first introduced inequality, and vice and crime thereby. The existing
order was not merely incompetent, as the Encyclopaedists asserted, but
hurtful, poisonous, deadly. And, in contrast to it, he sketches a
picture of the true human State.
Equal and good men assemble in their natural condition to think on the
basis of their future State. Each endows the new community with all
liberty and property, in order to receive back an equal share of the
management and the possessions of the whole. But this whole is
omnipotent. No laws bind its will, for its will is the source of all
law. No king, no official, no superior rules over it; each individual is
only empowered to act, so far and so long as he upholds the plenipotence
of the sovereign mass. It is not the upper classes who command the
people, but the people which require obedience from its officers and
throws them away when they no longer please it. For individual liberty
there is here no place; but owing to the equality of all, the free will
of the masses joyously and harmoniously prevails.
For a season these doctrines only served to afford a welcome mental
stimulant to the minds, if not of the nobility, of the cultivated and
property-possessing classes. The higher, and soon the lower, bourgeoisie
inflated themselves with these views. At this period they shared certain
of the privileges of the nobles, filled numerous and prominent offices
in the State, gave to the nation its largest number of famous thinkers
and poets, promoted industry and commerce, and daily increased in
wealth, while the nobles, by their extravagance, ruined themselves
financially. The former were, therefore, full of the consciousness of
their own dignity, and found the continued precedence claimed by the
nobles to be unendurable. They believed with inward satisfaction in this
doctrine of the equality of all men and the sovereignty of the whole.
For, instead of the privileged, it seemed to them self-evident that
owing to their culture they, the hitherto unprivileged, ought to stand
out prominently among the people as leaders of that governing whole.
Thus the state of freedom and equality would be the state of pure reason
as well, and, therefore, the leading position could not fail to fall to
them, the masters of reasonable discussion. Meanwhile the mass of the
poor, wholly cut off from the sources of culture and the mental
movements of their country, for long years knew nothing of this absolute
governing power which, according to the new discoveries, inalienably
belonged to it, and was so surprisingly soon to fall into its lap. The
only change in their condition, and thus the only preparation for their
future sovereignty, was an increase of outward distress and of inward
confusion and embitterment; and then came the time when the small circle
to which education and enjoyment were limited, and the State power they
wielded, fell into internal demoralization, strife of factions, and
financial embarrassments, till the very Crown itself was obliged to
summon popular forces to war against the privileged. All the springs of
State machinery refused to work, coffers were empty, authorities and
classes at bitter internecine strife, the army unreliable and
undisciplined. It was under circumstances like these that the mass of
the people in towns and villages heard from their candidates, advocates,
and demagogues, what in truth their rights were. In their ignorance and
want, their rudeness and embitterment, they suddenly learnt that for
them--as sovereign--limits, obligations, authority no longer existed,
that the old corruption and slavish condition was to be thoroughly got
rid of, and that then everything would belong to them. They listened
with greedy ears, and rushed forward to trample under foot whatever
sought to contest these rights of theirs.
The highest and noblest aims lured the century on, and animated the
hearts of countless worthy men: liberty, well-being, and culture for
all, no difference between man and man but that of talent and virtue,
fraternity among all citizens in the State and all nations on the earth;
these were the ideals that 1780 proclaimed to the world and the future,
and therefore the French still love to speak of the deathless principles
and fair days of this first epoch of the Revolution. All this, Thiers
tells us, would have been admirably realized had not evil-hearted
emigrants and foreign Powers by their malignant attacks, driven the most
humane of all Revolutions into desperation, a fight for existence, and
bloodshed. All would have gone well, says Louis Blanc, had not the
wicked Thermidorians, on the occasion of Robespierre's fall, brought in
a policy of vice and self-seeking instead of one of virtue and brotherly
love. Probably, on the other side the Vosges, eighty men out of every
hundred adopt one or other of these views, and so it is easily
intelligible that the merciless facts by which Taine shatters these fair
pictures should be received with repugnance and surprise by his
countrymen. The contrast between such a reality and such an ideal is
indeed enormous; fair days, or so much even as one fair day in the
course of the Revolution, can no longer be spoken of; in the very hour
when absolute monarchy collapsed, a wild, rude, and cruel anarchy
covered the land, filling France with violence and crime of every kind
for a decade, and lastly causing an unparalleled despotism to appear to
the French people salvation and deliverance. The conclusion is
unavoidable, either the ideal was good for nothing, and the Coblentz
emigrants had right on their side against the nation, or the French
people had set about their high task in a quite impracticable way, and
their historical fame has this time to be limited to the motto, _In
magnis voluisse sat est_. Neither of these alternatives will have a
pleasing sound in the ears of a Liberal Frenchman.
But, pleasing or not, the facts are indisputable, and up to the present
time each new investigation of authentic documents has only served to
give them a wider range and a more assured basis. We have seen the end
of the Ancien Regime. The nobles of the former State were unnerved by
idleness, debilitated by enjoyment, degraded by immorality; never had
the aristocracy of a great nation fallen and been brushed away from the
soil of their country, making so feeble a resistance. The leaders of the
movement followed a political teaching based on a most one-sided and
therefore radically false conception of human nature, and had no idea of
the real nature of their fellow-citizens, or of the principles and needs
of genuine political life. Finally the masses were unmoved by any
political thought whatever, but were darkly conscious of their own
wretched state up to the present time, and their hatred of those who
had, or were supposed to have, occasioned it, were credulous and
impressionable, and penetrated with the rightfulness of their wildest
passions and desires. With such materials as these it is possible indeed
to blow up an old and half-useless house, but not to construct on its
ruins a well-planned and lasting new one.
Thus Taine shows by details from documents contemporaneous with the
events, how, even before the opening of the National Assembly, the
condition of things was out of joint at a hundred points. Tumults and
plunder, disobedience to authorities, and maltreatment of obnoxious
persons, were the order of the day; public officials were spiritless,
and dared not command the already murmuring troops to restore order. The
first weeks of the Assembly brought hot discussions as to the union of
the three orders, attempts at reactionary State measures, and the taking
of the Bastille. Excitement grew from day to day; the suspense
throughout the country was tremendous. With the Parisian catastrophes
the whole Ancien Regime rocked and gave way from side to side; and not
merely privileges and feudal rights, but all State authorities vanished
at one blow, or at the first threat from an armed mob resigned their
functions. The French nation had positively no government, no laws, no
police, no taxation. In place of these they had journals, clubs,
societies, popular songs, and Lynch law; security for person and
property no longer existed; every one did according to his heart's
desire till a stronger than he preferred the opposite and knocked him
down. This state of anarchy actually went on thus till the culmination
of the Reign of Terror; every now and then it quieted down here or
there, to burst out the following day at some other point with redoubled
fury. In the midst of the omnipresent turmoil and confusion, the King, a
powerless prisoner, sat in the Tuileries. The only quarter which
afforded a possibility of the restoration of the State was the National
Assembly, which was sufficiently respected and popular both with the
people and the National Guard, to have enforced obedience had it set
about it the right way. But there were two reasons which forbade the
adoption of that way. One was that the Assembly was deprived of free
action by the ruling theory of the Rights of Man, Liberty and Equality.
This included the rights of resistance against oppression, and
accordingly every citizen might at any moment consider himself oppressed
and authorized in resisting. It had been borne in upon these sovereign
citizens that the will of the sovereign people stood higher than that of
its representatives, and that the people was at any time capable of
re-entering upon the direct exercise of its sovereignty. It is plain
that under the influence of theories such as these any control over
street-riots and local deeds of violence was a difficult, if not
hopeless task. And, on the same ground, it was impracticable to attempt
any control or regulation of press or clubs, which looked upon their
boundless activity as the highest expression and most precious jewel of
revolutionary liberty. As, according to theory, State officials were to
be, not the lords, but the servants of the sovereign people, it became
expedient that they should not be named by the Central Government, but
chosen, and that only for a short time, by the citizens. In the same
spirit the affairs of Government were entrusted not to individual
officials, but to deliberating colleagues; while, as to the passing of
laws, the principle of equality rendered impossible the formation of an
Upper House, or any finally decisive action on the part of the King.
Thus the Government remained powerless, legislation was hasty and
uncertain, the lower classes unmanageable, and on very many occasions it
was plain that club orators and journalists who knew how to flatter the
demands of the masses bent both Government and National Assembly beneath
their sway. More than once there arose indignation in the Assembly at so
unworthy and dangerous a condition; but at each attempt to grapple with
and remove it, the fear of a monarchical or aristocratic reaction fell
upon it and paralyzed its action.
In order to control the anarchical wilfulness of demagogues and
proletaires there was but one thing to be done, to strengthen the
authority of the executive. This meant restoration of discipline in the
army, and energetic organization of Government, extensive powers
conferred on the police officials, sharp punishments, and swift justice.
But how then? If power were thus conferred upon the Government to
restrain proletaires and rioters, who could guarantee liberty and the
National Assembly against the head of the reinforced Government, against
the King, who had hitherto been by these chronic riots kept in
defenceless subjection? This dilemma led to the revolutionary spirit
invariably triumphing at the National Assembly. The present fear of the
violence of the crowd attendant at the sittings combined with the
apprehension of a future monarchical reaction. When, some years later,
at the organization of the Republican Government, the weakness of
authority was again felt, more than one orator freely declared the
existing arrangements to be undoubtedly bad throughout, and to be
amended as soon as possible; owned that this had, indeed, been perfectly
known at the time of their creation in 1790, but that they were
intentionally framed thus, in the interests of liberty, to prevent the
King from exercising any power. Enough--the Constitutional Assembly did
nothing to surround personal safety and political order with any
inviolable defence; on the contrary, they did much to open the door wide
to the passionate and arbitrary action of the masses. We may say that
they thoughtlessly sowed the seeds of all the horrors of the Terror, and
had the sad beginnings of that development before their eyes, without
even an attempt to avert them. This is true, most especially in the
economical department: the colossal transformation of the laws of
property in France, which brought half the soil into new hands, and
irresistibly threw the population at large into communistic paths, was
out and out the work of the Constituent Assembly.
For more than twenty years I have, in my "History of the Revolution
Period," established these circumstances from authentic documents, and
thus given repeated offence to the French public. I may therefore be
permitted to feel all the greater satisfaction at such a distinguished
investigator as Taine, after drawing forth numberless documents from
Parisian archives, coming to absolutely the same conclusion. All I have
heard in the way of objection to his statements is utterly unimportant.
As it is not possible to drive the facts he has proved from original
documents out of existence, the observation is made that though his
information may be true, it is one-sided; that while he never wearies of
describing revolts and misdeeds, he does not sufficiently point out in
how many places the Civil Guard bravely and loyally upheld civil order.
Taine would be the last to dispute this fact; had it not been so there
would have been no longer any France left in the nineteenth century. But
he would venture to inquire whether praise be deserved by an Assembly
which, as ruler of a great State, surrendered without resistance now the
third of it, now the half, during three years, to a bloody anarchy;
whether we can speak of "fair days" or "humane Revolution," when in this
short period six horrible Jacqueries laid the land waste, when countless
political murders remained unpunished, and military _emeutes_ and
ecclesiastical brawls thrust the weapons of civil war into the hands of
the masses. We are told of a pure and ideal inspiration then filling
millions of liberty-loving and patriotic spirits; and well may we call
that a fair time in which noble aims and infinite hopes set all pulses
beating higher, and stimulate a whole people to youthful efforts, and
fill it with fresh and energetic life. Yes, there were moments of golden
dreams and illusions like these. Only they should have lasted longer. It
is not through their feelings, speeches, wishes, but their deeds, that
nations assume their historical position and receive their historical
sentence. Taine writes the last, indeed, with an incisive pen, and often
with glaring colours, but essentially he gives nothing but what follows
by indissoluble sequence from the facts of the Revolution.
On certain points, indeed, one may notice a few omissions in his work,
or raise a few objections, though they do not affect it as a whole.
Space does not permit me to dwell on all particular instances; I must be
satisfied with pointing out a few. While during the first months of the
Revolution the agitation of the lower classes was identical in town and
country, and the lawless violence of artisans and peasants pursued the
same ends by the same means, one of the most prominent features of the
later phase, the Terror, was the gradual introduction of a war of
interest between the people of the capital and the villages. The more
the power of the Mountain and the Parisian Commune increased, the more
absolutely the booty of the Revolution fell to the share of the town
proletaires, at the cost not only of the great landed proprietors, but
the small farmers as well. Our first impression at the aspect of this
rivalry is the selfishness and greed of the Parisian demagogues; but we
may easily convince ourselves that these could never have attained to so
extended an activity if existing circumstances had not offered the
possibility of a class war. But for any disquisition on this subject, or
allusion to the causes that, in the first years of the Revolution,
prepared its way, we look through Taine's pages in vain. Again, in the
representation of the Ancien Regime, his attention is pre-eminently
turned to social relations connected with the land. Had he with an
equally comprehensive and minute care studied the different strata, the
interests and wants of the town population, the problem alluded to would
have solved itself.
It is with admirable insight and incontrovertible reasoning that Taine
shows the logical untenableness and practical mischief of the theory of
equality, both in the writings of Rousseau and the action of the
Constituent Assembly. He proves the contradiction between this equality
and the very nature of man, and how, consequently, pure democracy
rendered the development of political liberty unattainable. In perfect
agreement with Tocqueville, he points to the absolute necessity, under
the circumstances of the time, of aristocratic institutions, for the
creation and preservation of a free State, and explains how deeply
seated these are in the needs and claims of human nature. This portion
of his work is indeed masterly; and the more widely extended the
equalitarian superstition among the Liberal parties of our day, the more
one could desire Taine's views to exercise a strong and wide-spread
influence. But, on the other hand, it appears to me that by this very
conception of political institutions, our author has been led to show
himself something more than just in the sentence he passes on the
representatives of this period, the nobles and prelates of 1789. This is
one of the few incongruities already alluded to between the first and
second volume. After reading of the luxury, artificiality, and idleness
of aristocratic society in the former, and coming with the author to the
conviction that terrible consequences must attend such a condition, one
is surprised to find in the latter that these privileged ones were the
best, the most discerning and patriotic portion of the nation, whose
annihilation or exile brought about the same injurious results that the
expulsion of the Huguenots had done. This contradiction is not cleared
up by the fact that in the years immediately preceding the Revolution,
and chiefly through the influence of Rousseau, a sentimental humanity
had prevailed in high circles, that here, too, it was the fashion to
speak of a return to an idyllic life of nature, of universal brotherly
love, and of the relief of every form of distress. For these
transformations remained, in point of fact, only fanciful phrases of the
salons. When Louis XVI., Turgot, and Calonne, really desired to set
about such philanthropic reforms in good earnest, it was, as we have
already seen, these sentimental nobles themselves who hindered their
effort, and by nullifying reform brought about the Revolution. When the
catastrophe came, many of them had sufficient insight into the new
position of affairs to make haste and repudiate those privileges which
throughout the land had been already trampled under foot by an unchained
people. The horrible persecution to which they were subjected, in utter
disregard of all existing rights and all human feeling, with
bloodthirsty cruelty and shameless greed, must ever insure for the
victims the compassion and sympathy of every right-minded observer; and
in order fully to justify revolutionary laws against emigrants, one
would be driven to advance sophisms only, not arguments. But all this
does not affect the question, whether, as Taine assumes, these
persecuted ones did hold a distinguished place in the nation for
political virtue, intellectual culture, and capacity for action.
Neighbouring nations, so far as I know, without exception took at the
time an entirely different view. Doubtless, there were among the
emigrants many who won respect and regard in the regions whither their
flight had led them. But the great majority, by their thoughtless
arrogance, mutual bickerings, and shameless frivolity, left behind them
a bad reputation; whereas a hundred years before the exiled Huguenots,
by their unity, earnestness, and industry, won, wherever they went, the
respect and gratitude of their new countrymen.