_Long before the disciples of Taine and Auguste Comte._
When this book appeared in a periodical, certain persons declared
that the whole of my attack on the modern ‘clerk’ went astray because
I did not give more space to the author of _Origines de la France
Contemporaine_. He, they said, was the ‘great realist “clerk” of the
past fifty years, while those I attacked were only his small change.’
(This sudden contempt for the thought of Barrès and Maurras of the part
of certain people is certainly surprising.)
There is here a manifest abuse of the word _realism_. Taine threw
light on the true nature of the real, or rather the political real,
and reminded the universalist that this domain is not under his
jurisdiction. He never _exalted_ this real at the expense of the
universal, which is the realism I am denouncing here. He plainly
taught, on the contrary, that the universalist who stays in his own
domain (see his admiration for Spinoza and Goethe) is the great human
model. Compare this with Maurras for whom the universalist, even
when non-political (the infinitist, the pantheist) is profoundly
contemptible. It is also difficult for me to see Taine as the godfather
of those who glorify the soldier at the expense of the man of justice
and the man of study,[182] who exhort the nations to cultivate their
prejudices where they are ‘totally foreign to reason’ (Barrès) and who
declare that the intelligence which cares nothing about what is social
is the activity of a savage. I think Taine would cheerfully say of
those who claim to derive from him the same thing that M. Bergson is
reported to have said of some of his ‘disciples’: ‘These gentlemen are
most original.’
Nevertheless, Taine seems to me to be the initiator of the modern
realists in two points. The first is his condemnation of individualism,
more exactly, of the moral liberty of the citizen (for this, at
bottom, is the meaning of his regret for the old corporations, and,
more generally, of his exhortation to form groups, which shape the
individual’s soul, instead of allowing it to be autonomous as against
the State); and the second, which is far more novel than the first
among French teachers, is his condemnation of idealist education. The
peroration of the ‘_Régime moderne_’ obviously establishes the whole
educational argument of the _Déracines_ and _L’Étape_:--
‘Sometimes when he is with his intimates, as bitter and as overfatigued
as he is, the young man is tempted to say to us: “By your education
you induced us to believe that the world is made in a certain way.
You deceived us. It is much uglier, stupider, dirtier, gloomier and
harsher, at least to our sensibility and our imagination. You think
they are over-excited and out of gear; well, if they are, it is your
fault. That is why we curse and despise the whole of your world, and
reject your pretended truths, which for us are lies, including those
elementary and primary truths which you say are evident to common
sense, and upon which you build your laws, your institutions, your
society, your philosophy, your sciences and your arts.” That is what
contemporary youth have been telling us aloud for fifteen years by
their tastes, their opinions, their inclinations in literature, the
arts and life.’
Against this manifesto in favour of a practical education, let me set
this protest of a true descendant of Montaigne, Pascal and Montesquieu:
‘In his diatribe for the classical spirit and the primary truths of
reason and philosophy which direct literary education of all kinds,
Taine comes to use words similar to those of the adversaries of ancient
literature,[183] of the general ideas which are inseparable from them,
and of disinterested culture even. The only object would then be to
prepare persons for an empirical world,[184] people taught to know the
world as it is, and trained to make it continue as it now is. However,
the school laws are too recent for one to be able decently to blame
them for the evils of the age, and make them the cause of the hatred
and scorn poured on society by those who are bored, enervate and out of
their class. However, even if it were true that the comparison between
the general principles of reason, morality and beauty, and empirical
life engendered more disgust with the realities than it has done in
the past, it would be a sad paradox to ask that this danger should
be averted by banishing from education all elevated views and all
idealism.’ (Renouvier, _Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire_, tome iv,
p. 541.)