IV

_Summary--Predictions_

To sum up: If I look at contemporary humanity from the point of

view of its moral state as revealed by its political life, I see

(_a_) A mass in whom realist passions in its two chief forms--class

passion, national passion--has attained a degree of consciousness and

organization hitherto unknown; (_b_) A body of men who used to be in

opposition to the realism of the masses, but who now, not only do not

oppose it, but adopt it, proclaim its grandeur and morality; in short,

a humanity which has abandoned itself to realism with a unanimity,

an absence of reserve, a sanctification of its passion unexampled in

history.

This remark may be put in another form. Imagine an observer of the

twelfth century taking a bird’s-eye view of the Europe of his time. He

would see men groping in the obscurity of their minds and striving to

form themselves into nations (to mention only the most striking aspect

of the realist will); he would see them beginning to succeed; he would

see groups of men attaining consistency, determined to seize a portion

of the earth and tending to feel conscious of themselves as distinct

from the groups surrounding them. But at the same time he would see a

whole class of men, regarded with the greatest reverence, labouring

to thwart this movement. He would see men of learning, artists and

philosophers, displaying to the world a spirit which cared nothing for

nations, using a universal language among themselves. He would see

those who gave Europe its moral values preaching the cult of the human,

or at least of the Christian, and not of the national, he would see

them striving to found, in opposition to the nations, a great universal

empire on spiritual foundations. And so he might say to himself:

‘Which of these two currents will triumph? Will humanity be national

or spiritual? Will it depend on the will of the laymen or of the

“clerks”?’ And for long ages the realist cause will not be completely

victorious; the spiritual body will remain faithful to itself long

enough to our observer to be uncertain of the result. To-day the game

is over. Humanity is national. The layman has won. But his triumph

has gone beyond anything he could have expected. The ‘clerk’ is not

only conquered, he is assimilated. The man of science, the artist, the

philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-labourer

and the merchant. Those who make the world’s values, make them for

a nation; the Ministers of Jesus defend the national. All humanity

including the ‘clerks’, have become laymen. All Europe, including

Erasmus, has followed Luther.

I said above that the humanity of the past, more precisely the humanity

of Europe in the Middle Ages, with the values imposed upon it by the

‘clerks’, acted ill but honoured the good. It may be said that modern

Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are

beautiful, acts ill and honours what is ill. Modern Europe is like

the brigand in one of Tolstoi’s stories, who made his confession to a

hermit, and the hermit said in amazement: ‘Others were at least ashamed

of being brigands; but what is to be done with this man, who is proud

of it?’

Indeed, if we ask ourselves what will happen to a humanity where

every group is striving more eagerly than ever to feel conscious of

its own particular interests, and makes its moralists tell it that it

is sublime to the extent that it knows no law but this interest--a

child can give the answer. This humanity is heading for the greatest

and most perfect war ever seen in the world, whether it is a war of

nations, or a war of classes. A race of which one group exalts one of

its masters (Barrès) to the skies because he teaches: ‘We must defend

the essential part of ourselves as sectarians,’ while a neighbouring

group acclaims a leader because, when he attacks a defenceless small

nation, he says, ‘Necessity knows no law’--such a race is ripe for the

zoological wars Renan talks about, which, he said, would be like the

life and death wars which occur among rodents and among the carnivora.

As regards the nation, think of Italy; as regards class, think of

Russia; and you will see the hitherto unknown point of perfection

attained by the spirit of hatred against what is ‘different’ among

a group of men, consciously realist and at last liberated from all

non-practical morality. And my predictions are not rendered less

probable by the fact that these two nations are hailed as models

throughout the world by those who desire either the grandeur of their

nation or the triumph of their class.

These dark predictions do not seem to me to need as much modification

as some people think, on account of certain actions resolutely directed

against war, such as the setting up of a supernational institution

and the agreements recently made by the rival nations. Imposed upon

the nations by their Ministers rather than desired by them, dictated

solely by interest (the fear of war and its ravages) and not at all

by a change in public morality, these new institutions may perhaps

be opposed to war but leave intact the _spirit of war_, and nothing

leads us to suppose that a nation which only respects a contract for

practical reasons, will not break it as soon as breaking it appears

more profitable. Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the

fear of war but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining

from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.[164] In this sense

the most insignificant writer can serve peace where the most powerful

tribunals can do nothing. And moreover these tribunals leave untouched

the economic war between the nations and the class wars.

Peace, it must be repeated after so many others have said this, is

only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession

of things ‘which cannot be shared’, and if they raise themselves to

a point where they adopt an abstract principle superior to their

egotisms. In other words, it can only be obtained by a betterment of

human morality. But, as I have pointed out above, not only do men

to-day steel themselves entirely against this, but the very first

condition of peace, which is to recognize the necessity for this

progress of the soul, is seriously menaced. A school arose in the

nineteenth century which told men to expect peace from enlightened

self-interest, from the belief that a war, even when victorious, is

disastrous, especially to economic transformations, to ‘the evolution

of production’, in a phrase, to factors totally foreign to their moral

improvement, from which, these thinkers say, it would be frivolous to

expect anything. So that humanity, even if it had any desire for peace,

is exhorted to neglect the one effort which might procure it, an effort

it is delighted not to make. The cause of peace, which is always

surrounded with adverse factors, in our days has one more against

it--the pacifism which pretends to be scientific.[165]

I can point to other sorts of pacifism, whose chief result I dare to

say is to weaken the cause of peace, at least among serious-minded

persons:--

(_a_) First, there is the pacifism I shall call ‘vulgar’, meaning

thereby the pacifism which does nothing but denounce ‘the man who

kills’, and sneer at the prejudices of patriotism. When I see certain

teachers, even if they are Montaigne, Voltaire, and Anatole France,

whose whole case against war consists in saying that highwaymen are no

more criminal than leaders of armies, and in laughing at people who

kill each other because one party is dressed in yellow and the other in

blue, I feel inclined to desert a cause whose champions over-simplify

things to this extent, and I begin to feel some sympathy for the

impulses of profound humanity which created the nations and which are

thereby so grossly insulted.[166]

(_b_) _Mystic pacifism_, by which I mean the pacifism which is solely

animated by a blind hatred of war and refuses to inquire whether

a war is just or not, whether those fighting are the attackers or

the defenders, whether they wanted war or only submit to it. This

pacifism is essentially the pacifism of the people (and that of all the

so-called pacifist newspapers) and was strikingly embodied in 1914 by

a French writer who, having to judge between two fighting nations one

of which had attacked the other contrary to all its pledges while the

other was only defending itself, could do nothing but intone ‘I have

a horror of war’ and condemned them both equally. It is impossible to

exaggerate the consequences of this behaviour, which showed mankind

that mystic pacifism, just like mystic militarism, may entirely

obliterate the feeling of justice in those who are smitten with it.

I think I see another motive in the French writers who in 1914 adopted

the attitude of M. Romain Rolland--the fear that they would fall into

national partiality if they admitted that their nation was in the

right. It may be asserted that these writers would have warmly taken up

the cause of France, if France had not been their own country. Whereas

Barrès said, ‘I always maintain my country is right even if it is in

the wrong,’ these strange friends of justice are not unwilling to say:

‘I always maintain my country is in the wrong, even if it is right.’

There again we see that the frenzy of impartiality, like any other

frenzy, leads to injustice.

I have also a word to say about the severities of these ‘justiciaries’

towards France’s attitude immediately after her victory, towards her

desire to force the enemy to make good the damage done to her, and to

seize on pledges if he refused. The motive which here animated these

moralists without their perceiving it, seems to me very remarkable;

it was the thought that the just person must inevitably be weak and

suffer, that he must be a victim. If the just man becomes strong and

comes to possess the means of enforcing justice towards himself, then

he ceases to be just to these thinkers. If Socrates and Jesus make

their persecutors disgorge, then they cease to embody justice; one step

more and the persecutors, having become victims, would embody right.

In this the cult of justice is replaced by the cult of misfortune,

a Christian Romanticism which is somewhat unexpected in a man like

Anatole France. No doubt the events of 1918 upset all the habits of the

advocates of right. Outraged right became the stronger, the assailed

toga triumphed over the sword, the Curiatii were victorious. Perhaps

some coolness of mind was needed to recognize that right remained

right, even when thus invested with force. The French pacifists failed

to remain cool. In short, their attitude in the past ten years has been

inspired by sentiment alone, and nothing could show better the degree

of weakness to which intellectual discipline has now fallen among our

‘princes of the mind’.[167]

(_c_) _Pacifism claiming to be patriotic_, by which I mean the pacifism

which claims to exalt humanitarianism, to preach the abatement of the

militarist spirit and of national passion, and yet not to harm the

interests of the nation nor to compromise its power of resistance to

foreign nations. This attitude--which is that of all Parliamentary

pacifists--is the more antipathetic to upright minds in that it is

inevitably accompanied by the assertion (which is also nearly always

contrary to the truth) that the nation is not in the least threatened

and that the malevolence of neighbouring nations is a pure invention

of people who want war. But that is merely an aspect of a very general

fact, which is of supreme importance to the matter under discussion.

By this I mean the ‘clerk’s’ determination to put forth his principles

as valid in the practical order of things, as reconcilable with the

safeguarding of the sword’s conquests. This determination, which has

affected the Church for twenty centuries and almost all the idealists

(give me the names of those since Jesus who have declared themselves

incompetent in the practical order of things), is the source of all the

‘clerk’s failures’. It may be said that the ‘clerk’s’ defeat begins

from the very moment when he claims to be practical. As soon as the

‘clerk’ claims that he does not disregard the interests of the nation

or of the established classes, he is inevitably beaten, for the very

good reason that it is impossible to preach the spiritual and the

universal without undermining the institutions whose foundations are

the possession of the material and the desire to feel distinct from

others. A true ‘clerk’ (Renan) says excellently: ‘The mother-country

is a worldly thing; the man who wants to play the angel will always

be a bad patriot.’ Thus we see that the ‘clerk’ who claims to secure

the works of the world has a choice between two consequences. Either

he secures them and transgresses all his principles, which is the case

with the Church supporting the nation and property; or he maintains

his principles and causes the ruin of the institutions he claimed he

was supporting, which is the case with the humanitarian who claims to

safeguard what is national. In the first case the ‘clerk’ is despised

by the just man, who denounces him as cunning and strikes him out of

the rank of ‘clerk’; and in the second case he collapses under the

hooting of the nations who call him inefficient, while he provokes a

violent and loudly acclaimed reaction on the part of the realist, which

is what is now happening in Italy. From all this it follows that the

‘clerk’ is only strong if he is clearly conscious of his essential

qualities and his true function, and shows mankind that he is clearly

conscious of them. In other words he declares to them that his kingdom

is not of this world, that _the grandeur of his teaching lies precisely

in this absence of practical value, and that the right morality for

the prosperity of the kingdoms which are of this world, is not his, but

Caesar’s_. When he takes up this position, the ‘clerk’ is crucified,

but he is respected, and his words haunt the memory of mankind.[168]

The need to remind the modern ‘clerks’ of these truths (for everyone of

them is angry at being called Utopian) is one of the most suggestive

observations in connection with our subject. It shows that the desire

to be practical has become general, that the claim to be so has now

become necessary in order to obtain an audience, and that the very

notion of ‘clerkdom’ has become obscured even in those who still tend

to exercise that function.

It will be seen that I entirely dissociate myself from those who want

the ‘clerk’ to govern the world, and who wish with Renan for the ‘reign

of the philosophers’; for it seems to me that human affairs can only

adopt the religions of the true ‘clerk’ under penalty of becoming

divine, i.e. of perishing as human. This has been clearly seen by all

lovers of the divine who did not desire the destruction of what is

human. This is marvellously expressed by one of them when he makes

Jesus say so profoundly to His disciple: ‘My son, I must not give you a

clear idea of your substance ... for if you saw clearly what you are,

you could no longer remain so closely united to your body. You would

no longer watch over the preservation of your life.’[169] But though

I think it a bad thing that the ‘clerk’s’ religion should possess the

lay world, I think it still more to be dreaded that it should not be

preached to the layman at all, and that he should thus be allowed to

yield to his practical passions without the least shame or the least,

even hypocritical, desire to raise himself however slightly above them.

‘There are a few just men who prevent me from sleeping’--that was what

the realist said of the teachers of old. Nietzsche, Barrès, and Sorel

do not prevent any realist from sleeping; on the contrary. This is the

novelty I want to point out, which to me seems so serious. It seems to

me serious that a humanity, which is more than ever obsessed by the

passions of the world, should receive from its spiritual leaders the

command: ‘remain faithful to the earth.’

Is this adoption of ‘integral realism’ by the human species permanent,

or merely temporary? Are we, as some people think, witnessing the

beginning of a new Middle Ages (and one far more barbarous than the

former, for though it practised realism, it did not extol realism),

from which, however, will arise a new Renaissance, a new return to

the religion of disinterestedness? The elements we have discovered

as forming the new realism scarcely allow us to hope so. It is hard

to imagine the nations sincerely striving not to feel conscious of

themselves as distinct from others, or, if they do so, having any

other motive than that of concentrating inter-human hatred into that

of class. It is hard to imagine the clergy regaining a real moral sway

over the faithful and being able (supposing they desired to do so) to

tell them with impunity unpleasant truths. It is hard to imagine a

body of men of letters (for corporative action becomes more and more

important) attempting to withstand the bourgeois classes instead of

flattering them. It is still harder to imagine them turning against the

tide of their intellectual decadence and ceasing to think that they

display a lofty culture when they sneer at rational morality and fall

on their knees before history. Nevertheless one thinks of a humanity

of the future, weary of its ‘sacred egotisms’ and the slaughterings to

which they inevitably lead, coming as humanity came two thousand years

ago, to the acceptance of a good situated beyond itself, accepting it

even more ardently than before, with the knowledge of all the tears and

blood that have been shed through departing from that doctrine. Once

more Vauvenargues’ admirable saying would be verified. ‘The passions

have taught men reason.’ But such a thing only seems to me possible

after a long lapse of time, when war has caused far more woes than

have yet been endured. Men will not revise their values for wars which

only last fifty months and only kill a couple of million men in each

nation. One may even doubt whether war will ever become so terrible as

to discourage those who love it, the more so since they are not always

the men who have to fight.

When I set this limit to my pessimistic outlook and admit that such

a Renaissance is possible, I mean no more than that it is just

possible. I cannot agree with those who say it is certain, either

because it happened once before, or because ‘civilization is due to

the human race’. Civilization as I understand it here--moral supremacy

conferred on the cult of the spiritual and on the feeling of the

universal--appears to me as a lucky accident in man’s development. It

blossomed three thousand years ago under a set of circumstances whose

contingent character was perfectly perceived by the historian who

called it ‘the Greek miracle’. It does not appear to me in the least to

be a thing due to the human race by virtue of the data of its nature.

It seems to me so little such a thing that I observe large portions

of the species (the Asiatic world in antiquity, the Germanic world in

modern times) who showed themselves incapable of it and quite likely

to remain so. And this means that if humanity loses this jewel, there

is not much chance of finding it again. On the contrary there is every

chance that humanity will not find it again, just as a man who should

find a precious stone in the sea and then drop it back in the water

would have little chance of ever seeing it again. Nothing seems to me

more doubtful than Aristotle’s remark that it is probable the arts

and philosophy have several times been discovered and several times

lost. The other position which maintains that civilization, despite

partial eclipses, is something which humanity cannot lose, seems to

me quite worthless except as an act of faith--though it is valuable

as a means of preserving the good we wish to keep. I should not think

it a serious objection to what I have said if someone should point

out that civilization, lost once with the fall of the ancient world,

nevertheless had its Renaissance. Everyone knows that the Graeco-Roman

form of mind was far from being wholly extinguished during the Middle

Ages and that the sixteenth century only brought to life what was not

dead; to which I add that even if that form of mind had been ‘reborn’

_ex nihilo_, the fact that this is the only instance would make it

insufficient to reassure me, although the fact that it had occurred

would disturb me.

Let me point out in this respect that insufficient attention is perhaps

paid to the fact that there are always only a very tiny number of

instances in history on which are built up a ‘law’, which claims to be

valid for the whole past and future evolution of humanity. Vico says

that history is a series of alternations between periods of progress

and periods of retrogression; and he gives _two_ examples. Saint-Simon

says history is a series of oscillations between organic epochs and

critical epochs; and he gives _two_ examples. Marx says history is a

series of economic systems, each of which casts out its predecessor by

means of violence; and he gives _one_ example! I shall be told that

these examples could not be more numerous, owing to the fact that

history, at least known history, is so short. The truth, implied by

this very reply, is that history has lasted too short a time for us

to be able to deduce laws from it to enable us to infer the future

from the past. Those who do so are like a mathematician who should

decide the nature of a curve from the form he finds it has at its

very beginning. True, a somewhat uncommon turn of mind is required to

confess that human history, after several thousands of years, is only

beginning. I cannot sufficiently admire the rare mental value displayed

by La Bruyère (in my opinion) when he wrote the following lines in a

century which was strongly inclined to think it was the topmost summit

of human development: ‘If the world lasts only a hundred million years,

it will still be in all its freshness and only beginning; we ourselves

are almost contemporary with the first men and the patriarchs, and who,

in those far-off ages, will be able to avoid confusing us with them?

But if we judge of the future from the past, what new things are we

ignorant of in the arts, in the sciences, in Nature, and, I dare say,

in history? What discoveries will be made! What different revolutions

will occur in our Empires all over the world! How ignorant we are! And

how slight is an experience of six or seven thousand years!’

I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past

could lead to any valid prediction concerning man’s future, that

prediction would be the contrary of reassuring. People forget that

Hellenic rationalism only really enlightened the world during seven

hundred years, that it was then hidden (this _a minima_ verdict will

be granted me) for twelve centuries, and has begun to shine again for

barely four centuries; so that _the longest period of consecutive time

in human history on which we can found inductions is, upon the whole,

a period of intellectual and moral darkness_. Looking at history, we

may say in a more synthetic manner that, with the exception of two or

three very short, luminous epochs whose light, like that of certain

stars, lightens the world long after they are extinct, humanity lives

generally in darkness; while literatures live generally in a state of

decadence and the organism in disorder. And the disturbing thing is

that humanity does not seem to mind these long periods of cave-dwelling.

To come back to the realism of my contemporaries and their contempt

for a disinterested existence, I must add that my mind is sometimes

haunted by a dreadful question. I wonder whether humanity, by adopting

this system to-day, has not discovered its true law of existence and

adopted the true scale of values demanded by its essence? The religion

of the spiritual, I said just now, seems to me a lucky accident in

man’s history. I shall go further, and say it seems to me a paradox.

The obvious law of human substance is the conquest of things and the

exaltation of the impulses which secure this conquest. Only through an

amazing abuse were a handful of men at desks able to succeed in making

humanity believe that the supreme values are the good things of the

spirit. To-day humanity has awakened from this dream, knows its true

nature and its real desires, and utters its war-cry against those who

for centuries have robbed it of itself. Instead of waxing indignant at

the ruin of their domination, would it not be more reasonable for these

usurpers (if there are any left) to wonder that it lasted so long?

Orpheus could not aspire to charm the wild beasts with his music until

the end of time. However, one could have hoped that Orpheus himself

would not become a wild beast.

It is scarcely necessary to say my remarks on realist desires and

their violent perfecting do not blind me to the immense growth of

gentleness, justice, and love written to-day in our customs and laws,

which would certainly have amazed our most optimistic ancestors.

There is an immense improvement in the relations between man and man

within the groups which fight each other--especially within the nation

where security is the rule and injustice is a scandal. But to keep

more closely to our subject, perhaps we do not sufficiently realize

the incredible degree of civilization implied by the good treatment

of prisoners, and the care of enemy wounded in wars between nations,

and by the institution of public and private charity in the relations

between the classes. The denial of progress, the assertion that

barbarity of heart has never been worse, are natural themes for poets

and those who are discontented, and perhaps they are even necessary

to progress. But the historian, whether he looks at national or class

warfare, is amazed at the transformation of a species which only four

centuries ago roasted prisoners of war in baker’s ovens, and, only two

centuries ago forbade the workers to establish a pension fund for their

aged members. Nevertheless I must point out that these improvements

cannot be credited to the present age. They are the results of the

teaching of the eighteenth century, against which the ‘masters of

modern thought’ are in complete revolt. The establishment of war

ambulances, the wide development of State charities are the work of the

Second Empire, are connected with the ‘humanitarian clichés’ of Victor

Hugo and Michelet, which are immeasureably despised by the moralists

of the past half century. They exist to some extent _despite of_ these

moralists, not one of whom has conducted a truly humane campaign, while

the chief of them--Nietzsche, Barrès, Sorel--would blush to be able

to say like Voltaire: ‘I have done a little good, ’tis my best work.’

I must add that these good works are now merely customs, i.e. actions

performed from habit, without the will taking any part in them, without

the mind reflecting on their meaning. And if the mind of our realists

ever came to think of them, I think there is every possibility that

it might prohibit them. I can well imagine a future war when a nation

would decide not to look after the enemy wounded, a strike where the

bourgeoisie would make up its mind not to support hospitals for the

benefit of a class which was ruining it and anxious to destroy it. I

can imagine both priding themselves on getting free from a ‘stupid

humanitarianism’, and finding disciples of Nietzsche and Sorel to

praise them for it. The attitude of the Italian Fascists and the

Russian Bolshevists towards their enemies is not calculated to give me

the lie here. The modern world still displays certain failures in pure

practicality, a few stains of idealism from which it might well cleanse

itself.

I said above that the logical end of the ‘integral realism’ professed

by humanity to-day is the organized slaughter of nations or classes.

It is possible to conceive of a third, which would be their

reconciliation. The thing to possess would be the whole earth, and they

would finally come to realize that the only way to exploit it properly

is by union, while the desire to set themselves up as distinct from

others would be transferred from the nation to the species, arrogantly

drawn up against everything which is not itself. And, as a matter of

fact, such a movement does exist. Above classes and nations there

does exist a desire of the species to become the master of things,

and, when a human being flies from one end of the world to the other

in a few hours, the whole human race quivers with pride and adores

itself as distinct from all the rest of creation. At bottom, this

imperialism of the species is preached by all the great directors of

the modern conscience. It is Man, and not the nation or the class,

whom Nietzsche, Sorel, Bergson extoll in his genius for making himself

master of the world. It is humanity, and not any one section of it,

whom Auguste Comte exhorts to plunge into consciousness of itself

and to make itself the object of its adoration. Sometimes one may

feel that such an impulse will grow ever stronger, and that in this

way inter-human wars will come to an end. In this way humanity would

attain ‘universal fraternity’. But, far from being the abolition of the

national spirit with its appetites and its arrogance, this would simply

be its supreme form, the nation being called Man and the enemy God.

Thereafter, humanity would be unified in one immense army, one immense

factory, would be aware only of heroisms, disciplines, inventions,

would denounce all free and disinterested activity, would long cease

to situate the good outside the real world, would have no God but

itself and its desires, and would achieve great things; by which I mean

that it would attain to a really grandiose control over the matter

surrounding it, to a really joyous consciousness of its power and its

grandeur. And History will smile to think that this is the species for

which Socrates and Jesus Christ died.

1924-1927.

_Notes_