Let us first open at the memoranda relating to his daily occupations:
“Plan in the morning the work of the day, and reflect in the evening on
what has been done.”
“Carry when walking a book, and a note-book to preserve the ideas, and a
piece of bread in order to prolong the walk if need be.”
“Vary the mental and bodily exercises with dancing, horsemanship,
swimming, fencing with sword and with sabre, shooting with gun and
pistol, skating, the sling, stilts, tennis, bowls; hop on one foot,
cross the arms, jump high and far, turn on one foot propped against the
wall, exercise in shirt in the evening to get up a perspiration before
going to bed; turning, joinery, gardening, reading while walking,
declamation, singing, violin, versification, musical composition; eight
hours of sleep; a walk on awakening, before and after eating; great
sobriety; eat slowly, little, and often; avoid idleness and useless
meditation.”
Then come more general precepts:
“Adopt good habits when I change my method of life.”
“Never turn to the past unless to enlighten the future. Regrets are
useless.”
“Form resolutions in advance in order not to reflect during action. Then
obey thyself blindly.”
“The promptitude of resolutions most frequently accords with their
justice.”
“Yield frequently to the first inspiration. Too much meditation on the
same subject ends by suggesting the worst part, or at least causes loss
of precious time.”
“Suffer slight disagreeables without seeming to perceive them, but
repulse decisively any one who evidently intends to injure or humiliate
you.”
“One should never feign a character that he has not, or affect a
character that he cannot sustain.”
“Self-possession without self-sufficiency. Courage without effrontery.”
“Make intimate acquaintances only with much circumspection; perfect
confidence in those who have been thoroughly tested. Nothing to do with
others.”
“Question thyself to learn what will please others.”
“No useless discourse. All conversation which does not serve to
enlighten ourselves or others, to interest the heart or amuse the mind,
is hurtful.”
“Speak little of what you know, and not at all of what you do not know.”
“Why not say more frequently, ‘I do not know’?”
“Speak to every one of that which he knows best. This will put him at
his ease, and be profitable to you.”
“Abstain from all pleasantry which could wound.”
“Employ only expressions of the most perfect propriety.”
“Listen attentively to your interlocutor, and so prepare him to listen
in the same way to your reply, and predispose him in favor of your
arguments.”
“Show neither passion nor weariness in discussion.
“Never direct an argument against any one. If you know some particulars
against your adversary, you have a right to make him aware of it to keep
him under control, but proceed with discretion, and do not wound him
before others.”
“When discussion degenerates into dispute, be silent; this is not to
declare yourself beaten.”
“How much modesty adds to merit! A man of talent who conceals his
knowledge is like a branch bending under a weight of fruit.”
“Why try to be witty? I would rather be thought stupid and modest than
witty and pretentious.”
“Men desire nothing so much as to make themselves envied.”
“Egotism is the most common and most hated of all vices. Properly
speaking, it is the only one which should be hated.”
“The pleasures of self-love are the only ones that can really be turned
into ridicule.”
“I do not know why these two expressions, good sense and common sense,
are confounded. There is nothing less common than good sense.”
“The strain of suffering causes the mind to decay.”
We will quote one of those misanthropic sallies the rarity of which we
are glad to remark:
“It must be that all honest people are in the galleys; only knaves are
to be met with elsewhere.”
But serenity of mind returns immediately after the above:
“I rejoice for all the misfortunes which might have happened to me, and
which I have escaped.”
“Life is a short enough passage. I am half the journey. I will complete
the remainder as I can.”
“Hope being the greatest of all blessings, it is necessary, in order to
be happy, to sacrifice the present to the future.”
“Let us not be exacting; perfection is so rare.”
“Indulgence! Indulgence!”
“The more nearly an object approaches perfection, the more we notice its
slightest defects.”
“To neglect the opportunity of an innocent pleasure is a loss to
ourselves. It is to act like a spendthrift.”
“_Recherché_ pleasures cause simple pleasures to lose all their
attractions.”
“It may sometimes be necessary to yield the right, but how is one to
recover it when wanted?”
“Love is almost the only passion that the good man may avow. It is the
only one which accords with delicacy.”
“Do nothing that all the world may not know.”
“The truly wise man is he who loves virtue for its own sake.”
“We say that man is an egotist, and nevertheless his sweetest pleasures
come to him through others. He only tastes them on condition of sharing
them.”
“If one could continually satisfy his desires, he would never have time
to desire. Happiness then is necessarily composed of alternatives. It
could not exist at a constant level.”
On the subject of nations and conquerors:
“To each conqueror can be said, when he has ceased tormenting our poor
globe, ‘Would you not have been able to tilt equally well against a
little globe of pasteboard?’”
“The laws of war, do they say? As if war were not the destruction of all
laws.”
“War has been represented as necessary to prevent the too rapid increase
of the population, but war mows down the flower of the young men, while
it spares the men disgraced by nature. Hence it tends to the
degeneration of the species.”
Then the writer turns his shafts against medicine:
“In some respects medicine is directly opposed to the will of nature,
which tends to perpetuate the strongest and best of the species, and to
abandon the delicate to a thousand forms of destruction. This is what
occurs among animals and savage men. Only the most robust attain the
adult age, and these only reproduce the species. Medicine and the aids
of the social state prolong the lives of feeble creatures whose
posterity is usually equally feeble. Among the Spartans, barbarous
regulations put an end to the existence of malformed infants, that the
strength and beauty of the race might be preserved. Such regulations are
antipathetic to our customs; nevertheless it might be desirable that we
should devote ourselves to the preservation of the human race from the
causes of weakness and degeneracy.”
“The decadence of the Greeks and Romans without change of race proves
the influence of institutions upon customs.”
We will give here a fragment on political economy, to show the variety
contained in the pages on which we draw:
“According to the system of modern economists, it would be desirable
that the government should interfere as little as possible in the
commerce and industry of the country. Nevertheless we cannot deny that
in certain circumstances this intervention is very useful.”
“Taxes are regarded by economists as an evil, but as a necessary evil,
since they provide for public expenses. Consequently, economists think
that if the government possessed sufficient revenues, in domains for
example, the suppression of all taxes would be a desirable measure.”
“Taxes are a means of influencing production and commerce to give to
them a direction which they would not naturally have taken. Such an
influence may undoubtedly have disagreeable consequences if the taxes
are imposed without discrimination or exclusively for a fiscal purpose,
but it is entirely otherwise if wisdom and tact preside at their
institution.”
“A tax on the rent of a farm would be much better than a tax on the land
itself. Proprietors then could only avoid taxes by themselves improving
their property. As it is, they merely collect the rents, and usually
employ their surplus in unproductive expenditure, while the proprietary
farmers voluntarily devote theirs to the improvement of the land.”
“A tax on the farms would then result in the proprietors themselves
working the lands, and this would mean better cultivation, and
improvements which would yield returns indeed, but at too remote a
period for the tenant. It would tend to a division of landed property,
men of small fortune uniting in the purchase with capitalists who seek
only the rent or payment for the land.”
“Great capitalists could not themselves cultivate vast extents of land,
and not wanting to diminish their revenues by renting them, would be
induced to sell portions suitable for cultivation by their new owners,
and would then carry their money into new industrial and commercial
enterprises.”
“The competition of the sellers would cause a momentary fall in the
price of the lands, and would enable small farmers to become
land-owners. The number of vast estates often badly managed would then
be diminished, and considerable fortunes, changing hands more easily,
would naturally pass into those which would be most likely to increase
their value.”
“Proprietors, becoming cultivators to escape the taxes, would settle in
the country, where their presence would disseminate intelligence and
comfort; their revenues, before spent unprofitably, would then pay
expenses and improvements on their property.”
“The establishment of such a tax would certainly find many opponents
among proprietors, landed non-cultivators who form in fact the
influential _personnel_ in the state, for it is they who usually make
the laws.”
“Perhaps it would be necessary to weaken their opposition by not
subjecting the actual proprietors to the new tax, which might take
effect only with the next change either by sale or by inheritance. A
restriction of the right of transfer would also facilitate the passage
from one situation to the other. All changes in taxes should, as a
general thing, be made gradually, in order to avoid sudden changes of
fortune.”
“We may consider the renting of a property for several years as a sale
of the usufruct during the time of the lease. Now nine years’
possession, for example, is equal to more than a third of the value of
the property, supposing the annual product to be one twentieth of the
capital. It would then be reasonable to apply to this sort of sale the
laws which govern that of landed property, and consequently the mutation
tax. The person who cannot or will not cultivate his soil, instead of
alienating the property itself, binds himself to alienate the usufruct
for a time, and the price is paid at stated intervals instead of all at
once. There is farm rent.”
“Now it is by a fiction that the purchaser pays the mutation tax. In
fact, it is always the seller who pays it. The buyer compares the money
that he spends with the advantage that he gains, and this comparison
determines it. If he did not make money out of it he would not buy it.
When the registration tax did not exist, the purchaser had to pay the
same sum for the same purpose, and this sum went into the pocket of the
seller.”
“Proprietors of lands, then, after all, have to bear the mutation taxes.
All increase of these taxes is a loss for them, and these taxes are
heavier on the small proprietors than on the large, because their
changes are more frequent. The tax on the farms, on the contrary, would
bear more heavily on large estates.”
“The tax on farms not affecting the owners of timber, would be made up
by a tax on the felling, a very justifiable tax, for standing timber is
landed property. Standing timber is often worth much more than the land
on which it stands.”
Finally, we will give some thoughts which reveal the religious
sentiments of Sadi Carnot:
“Men attribute to chance those events of the causes of which they are
ignorant. If they succeed in divining these causes, chance disappears.
To say that a thing has happened by chance, is to say that we have not
been able to foresee it. I do not myself believe that any other
acceptation can be given to this word. What to an ignorant man is
chance, cannot be chance to one better instructed.”
“If human reason is incapable of discovering the mysteries of Divinity,
why has not Divinity made human reason more clear-sighted?”
“God cannot punish man for not believing when he could so easily have
enlightened and convinced him.”
“If God is absolutely good, why should He punish the sinner for all
eternity, since He does not lead him to good, or give him an example?”
“According to the doctrine of the church, God resembles a sphinx
proposing enigmas, and devouring those who cannot guess them.”
“The church attributes to God all human passions—anger, desire for
vengeance, curiosity, tyranny, partiality, idleness.”
“If Christianity were pruned of all which is not Christ, this religion
would be the simplest in the world.”
“What motives have influenced the writers who have rejected all
religious systems? Is it the conviction that the ideas which they oppose
are all injurious to society? Have they not rather included in the same
proscription religion and the abuse of it?”
“The belief in an _all-powerful_ Being, who loves us and watches over
us, gives to the mind great strength to endure misfortune.”
“A religion suited to the soul and preached by men worthy of respect
would exercise the most salutary influence upon society and customs.”