This oration of Victor Hugo brings out in
clear contrast a strange contradiction. Our
progress is but an evolution from and at the
same time it is a revolt against the past.
“The thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.”
“Yet the mighty dead still rule us from their urns.”
This apparent contradiction exists because the peoples are not as yet
familiar with the law of evolution in social progress. The picture of
a child imprisoned within the ribs of a skeleton is the picture of the
world that many have for want of this conception of time and growth.
They revolt against the order of time, because time is not solid, and
is only visible to the eye of the intellect.
Therefore such revolts have been necessary. They are the great
revolutions and social volcanoes of which Paris has been the favorite
crater in Europe. Hugo’s great soul has seized the lights and shadows
of the great catastrophes of the 18th century, and, their meaning
visible to mankind forever in his wonderful oration.
It is a warning, a consecration, and a hope. It tells that progress is
the only condition of human safety. It consecrates the noble Voltaire
who made its conditions possible. It is a prophecy of hope and peace in
evolution under the light of knowledge and love. It is the inspiration
of every liberated soul to realize this aspiration for “peace on
earth and good will to men,” which rises immeasurably higher than any
Christian myth ever dreamed.
The magnificent word painting of this oration and its inspiration is
one of the highest points humanity has ever reached. We are at a loss
to find anything superior to it. Compare with it the great orations of
Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, Chatham, Mirabeau, Henry, Webster, or
the consecration of the dead at Gettysburg of Abraham Lincoln, and you
will feel that those mighty voices were limited by local and temporary
interests and feelings.
Hugo has spoken for all the races of earth and for all time. He has
realized to the heart and eye humanity’s heaven of progress sustained
by all of the powers of the good in the human soul. To those who
can but catch a glimpse of its mighty meaning it will be a treasure
forever. No one can read and understand it and be the same person he
was before.
Hugo, the greatest French poet of his century, perhaps the greatest
French poet of all time, was a fervent Theist, reverencing the prophet
of Nazareth as a man, and holding that “the divine tear” of Jesus and
“the human smile” of Voltaire “compose the sweetness of the present
civilization.” But he was perfectly free from the trammels of creeds,
and he hated priestcraft, like despotism, with a perfect hatred. In
one of his striking later poems, _Religien et les Religions_, he
derides and denounces the tenets and pretensions of Christianity. The
Devil, he says to the clergy, is only the monkey of superstition; your
Hell is an outrage on Humanity and a blasphemy against God; and when
you tell me that your deity made you in his own image, I reply that he
must be very ugly.
As a man, as well as a writer, there was something magnificently
grandiose about him. Subtract him from the nineteenth century, and you
rob it of much of its glory. For nineteen years on a lonely channel
island, an exile from the land of his birth and his love, he nursed
the conscience of humanity within his mighty heart, brandishing the
lightnings and thunders of chastisement over the heads of the political
brigands who were stifling a nation, and prophesying their certain
doom. When it came, after Sedan, he returned to Paris, and for fifteen
years he was idolised by its people. There was great mourning at his
death, and “all Paris” attended his funeral. But true to the simplicity
of his life he ordered that his body should lie in a common coffin,
which contrasted vividly with the splendid procession. France buried
him, as she did Gambetta; he was laid to rest in the Church of St.
Genevieve, re-secularized as the pantheon for the occasion; and the
interment took place without any religious rites.
Hugo’s great oration on Voltaire, in 1878, roused the ire of the Bishop
of Orleans, who reprimanded him in a public letter. The free-thinking
poet sent a crushing reply:
“France had to pass an ordeal. France was free. A man traitorously
seized her in the night, threw her down and garrotted her. If a
people could be killed, that man had slain France. He made her dead
enough for him to reign over her. He began his reign, since it was
a reign, with perjury, lying in wait, and massacre. He continued
it by oppression, by tyranny, by despotism, by an unspeakable
parody of religion and justice. He was monstrous and little. The
Deum Magnificat, Salvum fac, Gloria tibi, were sung for him. Who
sang them? Ask yourself. The law delivered the people up to him.
The church delivered God up to him. Under that man sank down right,
honor, country; he had beneath his feet oath, equity, probity, the
glory of the flag, the dignity of men, the liberty of citizens. That
man’s prosperity disconcerted the human conscience. It lasted nineteen
years. During that time you were in a palace. I was in exile. I pity
you, sir.”
Despite this terrible rebuff to Bishop Dupanloup, another priest,
Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris, had the temerity and bad taste
to obtrude himself when Victor Hugo lay dying in 1885. Being born on
February 25, 1802, the poet was in his eighty-fourth year, and expiring
naturally of old age. Had the rites of the Church been performed on him
in such circumstances, it would have been an insufferable farce. Yet
the Archbishop wrote to Madame Lockroy, offering to bring personally
“the succor and consolation so much needed in these cruel ordeals.”
Monsieur Lockroy at once replied as follows:
“Madame Lockroy, who cannot leave the bedside of her father-in-law,
begs me to thank you for the sentiments which you have expressed with
so much eloquence and kindness. As regards M. Victor Hugo, he has
again said within the last few days, that he had no wish during his
illness to be attended by a priest of any persuasion. We should be
wanting in our duty if we did not respect his resolution.”