Can this effect of harmony be attained by the state? That is not
possible, for the state, as at present constituted, has given
occasion to evil, and the state as conceived in the idea, instead of
being able to establish this more perfect humanity, ought to be
based upon it. Thus the researches in which I have indulged would
have brought me back to the same point from which they had called me
off for a time. The present age, far from offering us this form of
humanity, which we have acknowledged as a necessary condition of an
improvement of the state, shows us rather the diametrically opposite
form. If therefore the principles I have laid down are correct, and
if experience confirms the picture I have traced of the present
time, it would be necessary to qualify as unseasonable every attempt
to effect a similar change in the state, and all hope as chimerical
that would be based on such an attempt, until the division of the
inner man ceases, and nature has been sufficiently developed to
become herself the instrument of this great change and secure the
reality of the political creation of reason.
In the physical creation, nature shows us the road that we have to
follow in the moral creation. Only when the Struggle of elementary
forces has ceased in inferior organisations, nature rises to the
noble form of the physical man. In like manner, the conflict of the
elements of the moral man and that of blind instincts must have
ceased, and a coarse antagonism in himself, beiore the attempt can
be hazarded. On the other hand, the independence of man's character
must be secured, and his submission to despotic forms must have
given place to a suitable liberty, before the variety in his
constitution can be made subordinate to the unity of the ideal. When
the man of nature still makes such an anarchical abuse of his will,
his liberty ought hardly to be disclosed to him. And when the man
fashioned by culture makes so little use of his freedom, his free
will ought not to be taken from him. The concession of liberal
principles becomes a treason to social order when it is associated
with a force still in fermentation, and increases the already
exuberant energy of its nature. Again, the law of conformity under
one level becomes tyranny to the individual when it is allied to a
weakness already holding sway and to natural obstacles, and when it
comes to extinguish the last spark of spontaneity and of
originality.
The tone of the age must therefore rise from its profound moral
degradation; on the one hand it must emancipate itself from the
blind service of nature, and on the other it must revert to its
simplicity, its truth, and its fruitful sap; a sufficient task for
more than a century. However, I admit readily, more than one special
effort may meet with success, but no improvement of the whole will
result from it, and contradictions in action will be a continual
protest against the unity of maxims. It will be quite possible,
then, that in remote corners of the world humanity may be honoured
in the person of the negro, while in Europe it may be degraded in
the person of the thinker. The old principles will remain, but they
will adopt the dress of the age, and philosophy will lend its name
to an oppression that was formerly authorised by the Church. In one
place, alarmed at the liberty which in its opening efforts always
shows itself an enemy, it will cast itself into the arms of a
convenient servitude. In another place, reduced to despair by a
pedantic tutelage, it will be driven into the savage license of the
state of nature. Usurpation will invoke the weakness of human
nature, and insurrection will invoke its dignity, till at length the
great sovereign of all human things, blind force, shall come in and
decide, like a vulgar pugilist, this pretended contest of
principles.