Does the present age, do passing events, present this character? I
direct my attention at once to the most prominent object in this
vast structure.
It is true that the consideration of opinion is fallen, caprice is
unnerved, and, although still armed with power, receives no longer
any respect. Man has awaked from his long lethargy and self-
deception, and he demands with impressive unanimity to be restored
to his imperishable rights. But he does not only demand them; he
rises on all sides to seize by force what, in his opinion, has been
unjustly wrested from him. The edifice of the natural state is
tottering, its foundations shake, and a physical possibility seems
at length granted to place law on the throne, to honour man at
length as an end, and to make true freedom the basis of political
union. Vain hope! The moral possibility is wanting, and the generous
occasion finds an unsusceptible rule.
Man paints himself in his actions, and what is the form depicted in
the drama of the present time? On the one hand, he is seen running
wild, on the other in a state of lethargy; the two extremest stages
of human degeneracy, and both seen in one and the same period.
In the lower larger masses, coarse, lawless impulses come to view,
breaking loose when the bonds of civil order are burst asunder, and
hastening with unbridled fury to satisfy their savage instinct.
Objective humanity may have had cause to complain of the state; yet
subjective man must honour its institutions. Ought he to be blamed
because he lost sight of the dignity of human nature, so long as he
was concerned in preserving his existence? Can we blame him that he
proceeded to separate by the force of gravity, to fasten by the
force of cohesion, at a time when there could be no thought of
building or raising up? The extinction of the state contains its
justification. Society set free, instead of hastening upward into
organic life, collapses into its elements.
On the other hand, the civilized classes give us the still more
repulsive sight of lethargy, and of a depravity of character which
is the more revolting because it roots in culture. I forget who of
the older or more recent philosophers makes the remark, that what is
more noble is the more revolting in its destruction. The remark
applies with truth to the world of morals. The child of nature, when
he breaks loose, becomes a madman; but the art scholar, when he
breaks loose, becomes a debased character. The enlightenment of the
understanding, on which the more refined classes pride themselves
with some ground, shows on the whole so little of an ennobling
influence on the mind that it seems rather to confirm corruption by
its maxims. We deny nature in her legitimate field and feel her
tyranny in the moral sphere, and while resisting her impressions, we
receive our principles from her. While the affected decency of our
manners does not even grant to nature a pardonable influence in the
initial stage, our materialistic system of morals allows her the
casting vote in the last and essential stage. Egotism has founded
its system in the very bosom of a refined society, and without
developing even a sociable character, we feel all the contagions and
miseries of society. We subject our free judgment to its despotic
opinions, our feelings to its bizarre customs, and our will to its
seductions. We only maintain our caprice against her holy rights.
The man of the world has his heart contracted by a proud self-
complacency, while that of the man of nature often beats in
sympathy; and every man seeks for nothing more than to save his
wretched property from the general destruction, as it were from some
great conflagration. It is conceived that the only way to find a
shelter against the aberrations of sentiment is by completely
foregoing its indulgence, and mockery, which is often a useful
chastener of mysticism, slanders in the same breath the noblest
aspirations. Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as
it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more
tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent
impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are
held to be the highest wisdom of life. Thus the spirit of the time
is seen to waver between perversions and savagism, between what is
unnatural and mere nature, between superstition and moral unbelief,
and it is often nothing but the equilibrium of evils that sets
bounds to it.