_The ‘clerk’, by adopting political passions, brings them the
tremendous influence of his sensibility if he is an artist, of his
persuasive power if he is a thinker, and in either case his moral
prestige._
This prestige itself is something new in history, at least from my
point of view. The results produced in France by the intervention
of the ‘intellectuals’ in the Dreyfus affair, and those produced by
the manifesto of the German Intellectuals in 1914, not only in their
own country but throughout the world, are things to which I find no
equivalent in the past. One cannot imagine the Roman Republic feeling
that the moral support of Terence and Varro was of value to it during
the war with Carthage, or the government of Louis XIV finding that
the approbation of Racine and Fermat, gave it additional strength in
the war with Holland. This increase of strength which a cause to-day
receives from the approbation of the men of thought (or those who are
considered such) does great honour to the modern world. It is an homage
to the mind hitherto unexampled in humanity.
Naturally, this prestige has a double result. Though the modern ‘clerk’
fortifies a cause by giving it his approbation he can also seriously
harm it by refusing his approbation. If in 1915 men like Ostwald and
Mach had refused to approve the acts of their nation, they would have
seriously harmed it. The ‘clerk’ who to-day condemns the realism of
the State to which he belongs does really harm that State.[176] Hence
it follows that the State, in the name of its practical interests, to
defend which is its function, has a right--perhaps a duty--to punish
them. This appears to me to be the true order of things: The ‘clerk’,
faithful to his essential duty, denounces the realism of States;
whereupon, the States, no less faithful to their duty, made him drink
the hemlock. The serious disorganization in the modern world is that
the ‘clerks’ do not denounce the realism of States, but on the contrary
approve of it; they no longer drink the hemlock.[177]
Let me point to another disorganization. That is when the State does
not punish the ‘clerk’ for denouncing its realism. This occurred
in France during the Dreyfus affair. The order of things demanded
that the ‘clerks’ should demand abstract justice, as they did; but
perhaps it also demanded that the State, weakened in strength by their
idealism, should throw them into prison. When the ‘clerk’ performs the
layman’s task, the result is anarchy; but there is also anarchy when
the layman acts and speaks as a ‘clerk’, when those whose duty is to
defend the nation display their cult for the abolition of frontiers,
universal love, or other spiritual things.[178] When I see philosophers
concerning themselves with the safety of the State and Ministers
striving to bring about love among mankind, I think of what Dante says:
‘You turn to religion him who was born to wear the sword, you make a
King of one who was born to preach. Thus all your steps are out of the
true way.’ However, this second disorganization of orders has been
denounced by others, and it is not my function to combat it.