Have I gone too far in this portraiture of our times? I do not
anticipate this stricture, but rather another--that I have proved
too much by it. You will tell me that the picture I have presented
resembles the humanity of our day, but it also bodies forth all
nations engaged in the same degree of culture, because all, without
exception, have fallen off from nature by the abuse of reason,
before they can return to it through reason.
But if we bestow some serious attention to the character of our
times, we shall be astonished at the contrast between the present
and the previous form of humanity, especially that of Greece. We are
justified in claiming the reputation of culture and refinement, when
contrasted with a purely natural state of society, but not so
comparing ourselves with the Grecian nature. For the latter was
combined with all the charms of art and with all the dignity of
wisdom, without, however, as with us, becoming a victim to these
influences. The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity,
which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals,
nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from
which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our
manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fulness of
form and fulness of substance, both philosophising and creating,
both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy; to the virility
of reason in a glorious humanity.
At the period of Greek culture, which was an awakening of the powers
of the mind, the senses and the spirit had no distinctly separated
property; no division had yet torn them asunder, leading them to
partition in a hostile attitude, and to mark off their limits with
precision. Poetry had not yet become the adversary of wit, nor had
speculation abused itself by passing into quibbling. In cases of
necessity both poetry and wit could exchange parts, because they
both honoured truth only in their special way. However high might be
the flight of reason, it drew matter in a loving spirit after it,
and, while sharply and stiffly defining it, never mutilated what it
touched. It is true the Greek mind displaced humanity, and recast it
on a magnified scale in the glorious circle of its gods; but it did
this not by dissecting human nature, but by giving it fresh
combinations, for the whole of human nature was represented in each
of the gods. How different is the course followed by us moderns! We
also displace and magnify individuals to form the image of the
specks, but we do this in a fragmentary way, not by altered
combinations, so that it is necessary to gather up from different
individuals the elements that form the species in its totality. It
would almost appear is if the powers of mind express themselves with
us in real life or empirically as separately as the psychologist
distinguishes them in the representation. For we see not only
individual subjects, but whole classes of men, uphold their
capacities only in part, while the rest of their faculties scarcely
show a germ of activity, as in the case of the stunted growth of
plants.
I do not overlook the advantages to which the present race, regarded
as a unity and in the balance of the understanding, may lay claim
over what is best in the ancient world; but it is obliged to engage
in the contest as a compact mass, and measure itself as a whole
against a whole. Who among the moderns could step forth, man against
man, and strive with an Athenian for the prize of higher humanity?
Whence comes this disadvantageous relation of individuals coupled
with great advantages of the race? Why could the individual Greek be
qualified as the type of his time? and why can no modern dare to
offer himself as such? Because all-uniting nature imparted its forms
to the Greek, and an all-dividing understanding gives our forms to
us.
It was culture itself that gave these wounds to modern humanity. The
inner union of human nature was broken, and a destructive contest
divided its harmonious forces directly; on the one hand, an enlarged
experience and a more distinct thinking necessitated a sharper
separation of the sciences, while on the other hand, the more
complicated machinery of states necessitated a stricter sundering of
ranks and occupations. Intuitive and speculative understanding took
up a hostile attitude in opposite fields, whose borders were guarded
with jealousy and distrust; and by limiting its operation to a
narrow sphere, men have made unto themselves a master who is wont
not unfrequently to end by subduing and oppressing all the other
faculties. Whilst on the one hand a luxuriant imagination creates
ravages in the plantations that have cost the intelligence so much
labour, on the other hand a spirit of abstraction suffocates the
fire that might have warmed the heart and inflamed the imagination.
This subversion, commenced by art and learning in the inner man, was
carried out to fulness and finished by the spirit of innovation in
government. It was, no doubt, reasonable to expect that the simple
organisation of the primitive republics should survive the
quaintness of primitive manners and of the relations of antiquity.
But, instead of rising to a higher and nobler degree of animal life,
this organisation degenerated into a common and coarse mechanism.
The zoophyte condition of the Grecian states, where each individual
enjoyed an independent life, and could, in cases of necessity,
become a separate whole and unit in himself, gave way to an
ingenious mechanism, when, from the splitting up into numberless
parts, there results a mechanical life in the combination. Then
there was a rupture between the state and the church, between laws
and customs; enjoyment was separated from labour, the means from the
end, the effort from the reward. Man himself eternally chained down
to a little fragment of the whole, only forms a kind of fragment;
having nothing in his ears but the monotonous sound of the
perpetually revolving wheel, he never develops the harmony of his
being; and instead of imprinting the seal of humanity on his being,
he ends by being nothing more than the living impress of the craft
to which he devotes himself, of the science that he cultivates. This
very partial and paltry relation, linking the isolated members to
the whole, does not depend on forms that are given spontaneously;
for how could a complicated machine, which shuns the light, confide
itself to the free will of man? This relation is rather dictated,
with a rigorous strictness, by a formulary in which the free
intelligence of man is chained down. The dead letter takes the place
of a living meaning, and a practised memory becomes a safer guide
than genius and feeling.
If the community or state measures man by his function, only asking
of its citizens memory, or the intelligence of a craftsman, or
mechanical skill, we cannot be surprised that the other faculties of
the mind are neglected, for the exclusive culture of the one that
brings in honour and profit. Such is the necessary result of an
organisation that is indifferent about character, only looking to
acquirements, whilst in other cases it tolerates the thickest
darkness, to favour a spirit of law and order; it must result if it
wishes that individuals in the exercise of special aptitudes 'should
gain in depth what they are permitted to lose in extension. We are
aware, no doubt, that a powerful genius does not shut up its
activity within the limits of its functions; but mediocre talents
consume in the craft fallen to their lot the whole of their feeble
energy; and if some of their energy is reserved for matters of
preference, without prejudice to its functions, such a state of
things at once bespeaks a spirit soaring above the vulgar. Moreover,
it is rarely a recommendation in the eye of a state to have a
capacity superior to your employment, or one of those noble
intellectual cravings of a man of talent which contend in rivalry
with the duties of office. The state is so jealous of the exclusive
possession of its servants that it would prefer--nor can it be
blamed in this--for functionaries to show their powers with the
Venus of Cytherea rather than the Uranian Venus.
It is thus that concrete individual life is extinguished, in order
that the abstract whole may continue its miserable life, and the
state remains for ever a stranger to its citizens, because feeling
does not discover it anywhere. The governing authorities find
themselves compelled to classify, and thereby simplify, the
multiplicity of citizens, and only to know humanity in a
representative form and at second hand. Accordingly they end by
entirely losing sight of humanity, and by confounding it with a
simple artificial creation of the understanding, whilst on their
part the subject classes cannot help receiving coldly laws that
address themselves so little to their personality. At length
society, weary of having a burden that the state takes so little
trouble to lighten, falls to pieces and is broken up--a destiny that
has long since attended most European states. They are dissolved in
what may be called a state of moral nature, in which public
authority is only one function more, hated and deceived by those who
think it necessary, respected only by those who can do without it.
Thus compressed between two forces, within and without, could
humanity follow any other course than that which it has taken? The
speculative mind, pursuing imprescriptible goods and rights in the
sphere of ideas, must needs have become a stranger to the world of
sense, and lose sight of matter for the sake of form. On its part,
the world of public affairs, shut up in a monotonous circle of
objects, and even there restricted by formulas, was led to lose
sight of the life and liberty of the whole, while becoming
impoverished at the same time in its own sphere. Just as the
speculative mind was tempted to model the real after the
intelligible, and to raise the subjective of its imagination into
laws constituting the existence of things, so the state spirit
rushed into the opposite extreme, wished to make a particular and
fragmentary experience the measure of all observation, and to apply
without exception to all affairs the rules of its own particular
craft. The speculative mind had necessarily to become the prey of a
vain subtlety, the state spirit of a narrow pedantry; for the former
was placed too high to see the individual, and the latter too low to
survey the whole. But the disadvantage of this direction of mind was
not confined to knowledge and mental production; it extended to
action and feeling. We know that the sensibility of the mind
depends, as to degree, on the liveliness, and for extent on the
richness of the imagination. Now the predominance of the faculty of
analysis must necessarily deprive the imagination of its warmth and
energy, and a restricted sphere of objects must diminish its wealth.
It is for this reason that the abstract thinker has very often a
cold heart, because he analyses impressions, which only move the
mind by their combination or totality; on the other hand, the man of
business, the statesman, has very often a narrow heart, because shut
up in the narrow circle of his employment his imagination can
neither expand nor adapt itself to another manner of viewing things.
My subject has led me naturally to place in relief the distressing
tendency of the character of our own times to show the sources of
the evil, without its being my province to point out the
compensations offered by nature. I will readily admit to you that,
although this splitting up of their being was unfavourable for
individuals, it was the only road open for the progress of the race.
The point at which we see humanity arrived among the Greeks was
undoubtedly a maximum; it could neither stop there nor rise higher.
It could not stop there, for the sum of notions acquired forced
infallibly the intelligence to break with feeling and intuition, and
to lead to clearness of knowledge. Nor could it rise any higher; for
it is only in a determinate measure that clearness can be reconciled
with a certain degree of abundance and of warmth. The Greeks had
attained this measure, and to continue their progress in culture,
they, as we, were obliged to renounce the totality of their being,
and to follow different and separate roads in order to seek after
truth.
There was no other way to develop the manifold aptitudes of man than
to bring them in opposition with one another. This antagonism of
forces is the great instrument of culture, but it is only an
instrument; for as long as this antagonism lasts, man is only on the
road to culture. It is only because these special forces are
isolated in man, and because they take on themselves to impose an
exclusive legislation, that they enter into strife with the truth of
things, and oblige common sense, which generally adheres
imperturbably to external phaenomena, to dive into the essence of
things. While pure understanding usurps authority in the world of
sense, and empiricism attempts to subject this intellect to the
conditions of experience, these two rival directions arrive at the
highest possible development, and exhaust the whole extent of their
sphere. While on the one hand imagination, by its tyranny, ventures
to destroy the order of the world, it forces reason, on the other
side, to rise up to the supreme sources of knowledge, and to invoke
against this predominance of fancy the help of the law of necessity.
By an exclusive spirit in the case of his faculties, the individual
is fatally led to error; but the species is led to truth. It is only
by gathering up all the energy of our mind in a single focus, and
concentrating a single force in our being, that we give in some sort
wings to this isolated force, and that we draw it on artificially
far beyond the limits that nature seems to have imposed upon it. If
it be certain that all human individuals taken together would never
have arrived, with the visual power given them by nature, to see a
satellite of Jupiter, discovered by the telescope of the astronomer,
it is just as well established that never would the human
understanding have produced the analysis of the infinite, or the
critique of pure reason, if in particular branches, destined for
this mission, reason had not applied itself to special researches,
and if, after having, as it were, freed itself from all matter, it
had not by the most powerful abstraction given to the spiritual eye
of man the force necessary, in order to look into the absolute. But
the question is, if a spirit thus absorbed in pure reason and
intuition will be able to emancipate itself from the rigorous
fetters of logic, to take the free action of poetry, and seize the
individuality of things with a faithful and chaste sense? Here
nature imposes even on the most universal genius a limit it cannot
pass, and truth will make martyrs as long as philosophy will be
reduced to make its principal occupation the search for arms against
errors.
But whatever may be the final profit for the totality of the world,
of this distinct and special perfecting of the human faculties, it
cannot be denied that this final aim of the universe, which devotes
them to this kind of culture, is a cause of suffering, and a kind of
malediction for individuals. I admit that the exercises of the
gymnasium form athletic bodies; but beauty is only developed by the
free and equal play of the limbs. In the same way the tension of the
isolated spiritual forces may make extraordinary men; but it is only
the well-tempered equilibrium of these forces that can produce happy
and accomplished men. And in what relation should we be placed with
past and future ages if the perfecting of human nature made sach a
sacrifice indispensable? In that case we should have been the slaves
of humanity, we should have consumed our forces in servile work for
it during some thousands of years, and we should have stamped on our
humiliated, mutilated nature the shameful brand of this slavery--all
this in order that future generations, in a happy leisure, might
consecrate themselves to the cure of their moral health, and develop
the whole of human nature by their free culture.
But can it be true that man has to neglect himself for any end
whatever? Can nature snatch from us; for any end whatever, the
perfection which is prescribed to us by the aim of reason? It must
be false that the perfecting of particular faculties renders the
sacrifice of their totality necessary; and even if the law of nature
had imperiously this tendency, we must have the power to reform by a
superior art this totality of our being, which art has destroyed.