ATTEMPTED REMEDIES.
We have sought very conscientiously, and democrats themselves have
sought very conscientiously, to find remedies for this constitutional
disease of democracy. We have preserved certain bodies, relatively
aristocratic, as refuges, we would fain believe, of efficiency. We have
preserved for instance a Senate, elected by universal suffrage, not
directly, but in the second degree. We have preserved also a Parliament
(a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies), a floating aristocracy which is
continually being renewed. This is, however, in a sense an aristocracy
inasmuch as it stands between us and a direct and immediate government
of the people by the people.
These remedies are by no means to be despised, but we recognise that
they are very feeble, for the reason that democracy always eludes them.
By the care it takes to exclude efficiency, it has made the Chamber of
Deputies (with some few exceptions) a body resembling itself with
absolute fidelity both in respect of the superficial character of its
knowledge and the violence of its prejudices; with the result in my
opinion that the crowd might just as well govern directly and, without
the intervention of representatives, by means of the plebiscite.
The same thing applies to the Senate, though perhaps in a more direct
fashion. The Senate is chosen by the delegates of universal suffrage.
These delegates, however, are not chosen by a general universal suffrage
where each department would choose four or five hundred delegates, but
by the town councillors of each commune or parish. In these communes,
especially in the rural communes, the municipal councillors who are by
far the most numerous and, with regard to elections, the most
influential, are more or less completely dependent on the _prefets_. The
result is that the Senate is, practically, chosen by the _prefets_, that
is, by the Government, as used to be the case under the First and Second
Empire. The maker of the constitution made this arrangement for the
benefit of his own party, for he upheld authority; and he wanted the
Central Government to control the elections of the Senate. It has not
turned out as he intended. _Vos non vobis_, others have profited by his
device, as the following considerations will show.
It is well known that in France a deputy belonging to the opposition,
though sure of his constituents, and certain to be re-elected
indefinitely, who for private reasons wishes to be a senator, is obliged
to be civil to the Government in power, to abate his opposition, and to
make himself pleasant, if he wishes to avoid failure in his new
ambition. It is very inconvenient to have a strong and active opposition
in the Senate.
It comes back again to this, that we have a Senate not far removed from
one elected by universal suffrage.
Universal suffrage elects the Chamber of Deputies, the Chamber elects
the Government, and the Government elects the Senate. The Senate is
therefore an extremely feeble anti-democratic remedy, and if it were
intended as a check on democracy, it has not been a striking success.
If we really wish to have an upper chamber as competent as possible,
independent of the central authority, and relatively independent of
universal suffrage, we must establish a chamber elected by the great
constituent bodies of the nation, and also in my opinion, by universal
suffrage, but with modifications somewhat as follows. The whole nation,
divided for practical purposes into five or six large districts, should
elect five or six thousand delegates who in turn should elect three
hundred senators. There would then be no pressure from Government nor
any manufacture by the crowd of a representation fashioned in its own
image, and we should have a really select body composed of as much
competence as could be got in the country.
It is, however, exactly the opposite of this that is done, and the
French Senate is an extremely feeble, anti-democratic remedy.
It represents the rural democracy, arbitrarily guided and governed by
the democratic Government.
* * * * *
Another remedy which has been given an equally conscientious trial is
the system of competitive examination, which is supposed to be a
guarantee for the ability of those who seek admission into government
service. The object of these examinations, which are extremely detailed
and complicated, is to test the ability of the candidate in every
particular, to give employment to merit and to exclude favouritism.
--You call that an anti-democratic remedy! It is as democratic as well
can be!--
Nay, pardon! It would be anti-monarchical if we lived under a monarchy,
anti-aristocratic if we lived under an aristocracy, and it is
anti-democratic because our lot is cast in a democracy. Competition for
public offices is a sort of co-optation. In fact it is co-optation pure
and simple. When I suggested that the magistracy should be chosen by the
magistrates, that is, the _Cour de Cassation_ by the magistrates and the
magistrates in turn by the _Cour de Cassation_, I was of course accused
of being paradoxical, as is always the case, when one suggests
something contrary to the usual custom. I was, however, only carrying a
little further the principle which is already applied to officials. In a
certain sense and to a large extent officials recruit their numbers by
co-optation.
It is true, they do not actually choose the officials, but they
eliminate the candidates whom they do not wish to have. Examination is
ostracism of the inefficient. The Government, of course, has to decide
who may be candidates, but its selection for employment is limited to
those of whom other officials (the officials who conduct the
examination) can approve. It is in fact co-optation.
The committee of examiners which admits a candidate to St. Cyr appoints
an officer. The committee which admits a candidate to the _Ecole
Polytechnique_ appoints an officer or an engineer. A committee also
which refuses a candidate at either of these places is encroaching on
the National Sovereignty, because it is forbidding the National
Sovereignty to make of this young man an officer or an engineer. This is
co-optation. This is a guarantee of efficiency. Here a wall is raised
against incompetence, and against the jobbery under which incompetence
would profit.
It is hardly necessary for me to add that this co-optation is limited to
a very narrow field of operation. It is confined in fact to the
threshold of a man's career. Once the candidate has been consecrated
official, by a board of examining officials, he belongs, both as regards
advancement, promotion and the reverse, to the central authority alone,
except in certain cases. The co-optation of officials is merely a
co-optation by elimination. The elimination is made once and for all,
and the non-eliminated (_i.e._, the successful candidate) steps at once
into the toils of the Government, that is, into the toils of popular
electioneering and party politics, when all the abuses which I have
enumerated can and do arise. To be fair I had of course to point out
that we had tried to invent some slight barriers against the omnipotence
of incompetence, which prevent it being absolutely supreme.
Unfortunately these prophylactic measures are very badly organised, and,
far from being capable of amendment, ought to be completely
revolutionised.
The examination system in our country is founded on a misconception, I
mean on the confusion between knowledge and competence. We search
conscientiously for competence or efficiency, and we believe that we
have found it when we find knowledge, but that is an error. An
examination requires from a candidate that he shall know, and
competition demands that he shall know more than the others, but
that is almost all that examination and competition require of him.
Therefrom results one of the most painful open sores of our
civilisation,--preparation for examinations.
Preparation for examination is responsible for intellectual indigestion,
for minds overloaded with useless information, and for a system of
cramming, which at once takes the heart out of men, perhaps with good
ability, just at the age when their mental activity is most keen; which,
further, as the result of this surfeit, disgusts for the rest of his
life and renders impotent for all intellectual effort, the unfortunate
patient who has been condemned to undergo this treatment for five,
eight, and sometimes ten years of his youth.
I am satisfied, if I may be allowed to speak of myself in order to
support my argument by an instance well known to me, that, if I have
been able to work from the age of twenty-five to that of sixty-three, it
is because I have never succeeded except very moderately, and I am proud
of it, in competitive examinations. Being of a curious turn of mind I
have been interested in the subject set in the syllabus, but in other
matters also, and the syllabus has been neglected. I sometimes passed,
more often I failed, with the result that at twenty-six I was behind my
contemporaries, but I was not overworked, broken down, and utterly sick
of all intellectual effort. I admit that some of my contemporaries who
never failed in an examination, and who passed them all with great
brilliance, have worked as hard as I have up to sixty, but they are
extremely few.
The curious thing is that the results, not perhaps disastrous, but
obviously very unsatisfactory, of this examination system do not lead us
to abandon it (that perhaps would be an extreme measure), but make us
aggravate and complicate it. Legal and medical examinations are much
"stiffer" than they used to be, and they require a greater physical
effort, but without requiring or obtaining any greater intellectual
value. In truth, one might say, examination is nothing more than a test
of good health, and it is a very searching test, for it often succeeds
in destroying it.
Here is an example which I know well. It is necessary, if a man desire
to gain distinction as a professor of secondary education, that he
should be a bachelor, a licentiate, an _agrege_ or a doctor. This is a
qualification that counts, and it means ten examinations or
competitions, two for the first half of the bachelor's degree, two for
the second, two for the licentiate, two for _agrege_, two for the
doctor's degree. This, moreover, does not appear to be enough. Between
the second part of the bachelor's degree and the licentiate's degree
there is normally an interval of two years; between the licentiate and
the _agregation_ two years, and between the _agregation_ and the
doctor's degree there is generally three or four years. You perceive the
danger! Between the _licence_ and the _agregation_, to go no further at
present, the future professor has two whole years to himself. That is to
say, that during the first of these two years he will work alone. He can
work freely, he can study in what direction he pleases, without thinking
of an examination at the end of twelve months; he has escaped for the
moment from the servitude of the syllabus. The prospect makes us shudder
with apprehension. It is sadly to be feared that the young man may take
a rest and draw breath, or worse still he may be carried into some
extraneous study by his personal aptitudes or tastes. The personality of
the candidate has here an opening, a moment at which it has a
possibility of asserting itself. That must be stopped at all costs.
The authorities, therefore, have put in an intermediate examination
between the _licence_ and the _agregation_. The examination, it is true,
is on a subject chosen by the candidate himself; so much it is only fair
to admit. The subject chosen, however, must be submitted to the
professors. Their advice and indeed assistance must be invited. The
result, if not the object, of this examination is to prevent the
candidate, during this perilous year of liberty, from developing
original ideas of his own and acting on them.
_One examination every year for ten years_--that is the ideal of the
modern professor for the future professors who are in course of being
trained. Between the second part of the bachelor's degree and the
licentiate, as there is there an interval of two years, they will
presently perceive that there ought to be an examination at the end of
the first year, and we shall have certificates of study in
intermediate, secondary, higher subjects. Between the _agregation_ and
the _doctorat_, there are four years, and naturally we shall want three
examinations just to see how the future professor is getting on with his
theses, to encumber him with assistance and to prevent him doing them
alone; first examination called the _Bibliography of the Theses for the
Doctorat_, second examination called the _Methodology of the Doctorat_,
third examination called the _Preparation for the Sustaining of the
Thesis_, and then the examination for the doctor's degree itself.
In this way the desired object is attained. Between the ages of
seventeen and twenty-seven or thirty the examinee will have had to
undergo sixteen examinations. He will never have worked alone. He will
always have worked, for periods of twelve months, on a syllabus, for an
examination, with a view of pleasing such and such professors, modelling
himself on their views, their conceptions, their general ideas, their
eccentricities, aided by them, influenced by them, never knowing, and
feeling he ought not to know, not wishing to know, and running a great
risk if he did know, and forming habits for his whole life so that he
may never know what he thinks himself, what he imagines himself, what he
seeks and would like to seek of his own motion, or what he ought himself
to try to be. He will take up all this after he is thirty.
Not a vestige of personality or original thought till the moment when it
is too late for it to appear, that is the maxim!
Whence comes this frenzy, this _examino mania_? When one comes to think
of it, it seems to be a simple case of _Dandino-mania_. Dandin says with
great determination "I mean to go and judge." The professor of a certain
age means to go and examine. He no longer loves to profess, he loves to
be always examining. This is very natural. Professing, he is judged;
examining, he judges. The one is always much pleasanter than the other.
For a professor, to sweat in harness, to feel oneself being examined,
that is, criticised, discussed, held up to judgment, and chaffed by an
audience of students and amateurs, ceases at a certain age to be
altogether pleasant; on the other hand to examine, to sit on the throne
with all the majesty of a judge, to have only to criticise and not to
produce, to intervene only when the victim stumbles, and to let him
know that he has made a slip, to hold the student for the whole year
under the salutary terror of an approaching examination, to remind him
that he may need help and must by no means displease his professor--all
this is very agreeable and makes up for many of the worries of the
teaching profession. The examination mania proceeds partly from the
terror of being oneself examined, and partly from the pleasure of
examining others.
All this is true, but there is more than this. The precocious
development of early talent and originality is the thing which strangely
terrifies these examination-maniacs. They have a horror of the man who
teaches himself. They have a horror of any one who ventures to think for
himself and to enquire for himself at twenty-five years of age. They
want, like an old hen, to mother the young mind as long as possible.
They will not let it find its own feet, till very late, and till, as the
scoffer might well say, its limbs are absolutely atrophied. I do not say
that they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain,
conceited fellow who takes pleasure in thinking for himself, and has
an absolute delight in despising the thoughts of others. It is, however,
no less the fact, that it is among these self-taught men that we find
those vigorous spirits who venture boldly beyond the domain of human
science and extend its frontier. The question then is which is best, to
favour all these troublesome self-taught people in the hope of finding
some good ones among them, or by crossing and worrying them to run the
risk of destroying the good as well as the bad. I am myself strongly in
favour of the first of these alternatives. It is better to let all go
their own way, even though pretenders to originality come to grief, a
thing that matters very little. Minds that are truly original will
develop themselves and find room for the expansion of all their powers.
But here,--take note how the democratic spirit comes in everywhere--the
question of numbers is raised. Ten times more numerous, I am told, are
the pretenders to originality whom we save from themselves by discipline
than the true geniuses whose wings we clip.
I reply that, in matters intellectual, questions of figures do not
count. An original spirit strangled is a loss which is not compensated
by the rescue of ten fools from worse excesses of folly. An original
spirit left free to be himself is worth more than ten fools whose folly
is partially restrained.
Nietzsche has well said: "Modern education consists in smothering the
exceptional in favour of the normal. It consists in directing the mind
away from the exceptional into the channel of the average." This ought
not to be. I do not say that education should do the opposite of all
this. Oh no, far from that. It is not the business of education to look
for exceptional genius, or to help in its creation. Exceptional genius
is born of itself and it has no need of such assistance. But even less
is it the business of education to regard the exceptional with terror,
and to take every means possible, even the most barbarous and most
detailed, to prevent it as long as possible from coming to the light.
Education ought to draw all that it can out of mediocrity, and to
respect originality as much as it can. It ought never to attempt to turn
mediocrity into originality, nor to reduce originality to the level of
mediocrity.
And how can all this be done? By an intervention that is always
discreet, and sometimes by non-intervention.
At the present moment its policy is equally distant from
non-intervention and from an intervention that is discreet.
It is in this way that the very institution which we have invented to
safeguard efficiency contributes not a little to the triumph of its
opposite. These victims of examination are competent in respect of
knowledge, instruction and technical proficiency. They are incompetent
in respect of intellectual value, often, though perhaps not so often as
formerly, in respect of moral value.
As far as their intellectual value is concerned, they have very
frequently no mental initiative. It has been cramped, hidden away, and
trampled down. If it ever existed, it exists now no longer. They are all
their days merely instruments. They have been taught many things,
especially intellectual obedience. They continue to obey intellectually,
their brain acts like well made and well lubricated machinery. "The
difference between the novel and the play," said Brunetiere, "is that in
the play the characters act, in the novel they are acted." I do not
know if this be true, but of the functionary we might say as often as
not, he does not think, he is thought.
The official also is incompetent, though less and less often, in respect
of moral worth. By the exercise of intellectual obedience, he has been
trained to moral obedience also and he is little disposed to assert his
independence. Observe how everything tends to this end. This method of
co-opting officials by means of elimination, as I have said, operates
only, as I have also shown, at the outset of the official's career. From
this moment onwards the functionary must depend on the Government only,
his whole preparation during ten years of education has been calculated
to ensure his absolute dependence on his official directors. So far
good, perhaps a little too good. It would have been well if the
education of the functionary had left him, together with a little
originality of mind, a little originality of character as well.
* * * * *
We have sought, very conscientiously also, and, I may even say, with an
admirable enthusiasm, yet another remedy for the faults of democracy,
another remedy for its incompetence. It is said: "The crowd is
incompetent, so be it, it is necessary to enlighten it. Primary
education, spread broadcast, is the solution of every difficulty, and
provides an answer to every question."
From this argument aristocrats have derived some little amusement. "How
is this?" they exclaimed, "what is the meaning of this paradox? You are
democrats and that means that you attribute political excellence,
'political virtue,' as we used to say, to the crowd, that is to
ignorance. Why then do you wish to enlighten the crowd, that is to
destroy the very virtue which, on your own showing, is the cause of its
superiority?" The democrats reply that the crowd, even as it is, is
already very preferable to aristocracy, and that it will be still more
so when it has received instruction. They resolve the apparent
contradiction by the argument _a fortiori_.
At all events, the democrats set to work most vigorously on the
education of the people. The result is that the people is much better
educated than formerly, and I am one of those who regard this result as
excellent; but the further result is, that the people is saturated
with false ideas, and this is less comforting.
Ancient republics had their demagogues, their orators, who inflamed the
evil qualities of the people, by bestowing on them high-sounding names
and by flattery. The great democracy of modern times has its demagogues.
These are its elementary school teachers. They come of the people, are
proud to belong to it, for which of course no one can blame them, they
distrust everything that is not the people, they are all the more of the
people because among the people they are intellectually in the first
rank while elsewhere they are of secondary importance; and what men love
is not the group of which they form a part, but the group of which they
are the chief. They are, therefore, profoundly democratic.
So far nothing could be better. But it is a narrow form of democratic
sentiment which they hold, for they are only half-educated, or rather
(for who is completely educated or even well educated?), because they
have only received a rudimentary education. Rudimentary education may
perhaps make us capable of having one idea, it certainly renders us
incapable of having two. The man of rudimentary education is always the
man of one single idea and of one fixed idea. He has few doubts. Now the
wise man doubts often, the ignorant man seldom, the fool never. The man
of one idea is more or less impermeable to any process of reasoning that
is foreign to this idea. An Indian author has said: "You can convince
the wise; you can convince, with more difficulty, the ignorant; the
half-educated, never."
Now no one ever convinces the elementary schoolmaster. He is confirmed
in his convictions by defending, and still more by discussing them. He
is the slave of his opinion. He does not possess it always quite
clearly, but it possesses him. He loves it with all his soul, as a
priest his religion, because it is the truth, because it is beautiful,
because it has been persecuted, and because it means the salvation of
the world. He would enjoy its triumph but he yearns still more to be a
martyr in its cause.
He is a convinced democrat and a sentimental democrat. His conviction
forms a solid basis for his sentiment, and his sentiment kindles to a
white heat his conviction. His conviction makes him turn a deaf ear to
every objection, his sentiment inspires him with hatred for his
adversary. For him the man who is not a democrat is wrong, and further,
to him an object of hatred. In his eyes the distance between himself and
the aristocrat is as the distance between truth and error, nay between
good and evil, between honour and dishonour. The schoolmaster is the
fanatic vassal of democracy.
Then, as he is a man of one idea, he is single-minded, narrowly logical,
and logical to the utmost extreme. He goes straight forward where his
argument leads. An idea which admits neither qualification nor question
can go far in a very short space of time. And the schoolmaster drives
all his democratic principles to their natural and logical conclusion.
He develops these principles and all that they imply by the sheer force
of what he calls his "reasoning reason," and it appears to him to be not
only natural but salutary to seek their realisation. Everything of which
the principle is good is good itself, and no one but Montesquieu could
ever believe that an institution could be ruined by the excess of the
principle in which its merit consists.
The schoolmaster, therefore, deduces their logical consequences from the
two great democratic principles, the sovereignty of the nation, and
equality; he deduces them rigorously, and arrives at the following
conclusions.
The people alone is sovereign. Therefore, though there can be individual
liberty and liberty of association, there ought to be only such
individual liberty and liberty of association as the people permits.
Liberty cannot be and ought not to be anything more than a thing
tolerated by the sovereign people. The individual may think, speak,
write, and act as he pleases, but only so far as the people will allow
him; for if he can do these things with absolute freedom, or even with
limitations which are not imposed by the people, he becomes the
sovereign power, or the power which fixed the limits of his freedom
becomes the sovereign, and the sovereignty of the people disappears.
This brings us back to the simple definition that liberty is the right
to do what we please within the limits of the law. And who makes the
law? The people. Liberty is then the right to do everything which the
people permits us to do. Nothing more; if we attempt to go beyond this,
the sovereignty of the individual begins, and the sovereignty of the
people disappears.
--But to have liberty to do only what the people permits, this is to be
free as we were under Louis XIV.--and that is not to be free at all!
So be it. There will indeed be no liberty unless the law permit it.
Surely you do not wish to be free in opposition to the law?
--The law may be tyrannical. It is tyrannical if it is unjust.--
The law has the right to be unjust. Otherwise the sovereignty of the
people would be limited and this must not be.
--Fundamental and constitutional laws might be devised to limit this
sovereignty of the people in order to guarantee such and such of the
liberties for the individual.--
And the people would then be tied! The sovereignty of the people would
be suppressed! No, the people cannot be tied. The sovereignty of the
people is fundamental and must be left intact.
--Then there will be no individual liberty?--
Only such a measure as the people will tolerate.
--Then there will be no liberty of association?
Still less; for an association is in itself a limitation of the
sovereignty of the nation. It has its own laws, which from a democratic
point of view is an absurd and monstrous incongruity. The right of
association limits the national sovereignty, just as would a free town
or sanctuary of refuge. It limits the nation, and pulls it up short in
face of its closed doors. It is a State within a State; where there is
association, there arises at once a source of organisation other than
the great organism of the popular will. It is like an animal which lives
some sort of independent life within another animal larger than itself
and which, living on that other animal, is still independent of it. In
fact there can be only one association, the association of the nation,
otherwise the sovereignty of the nation is limited, that is, destroyed.
No liberty of association can then exist.
Associations of course will exist which the people will tolerate, but
their right of existence is always revocable and they are always liable
to be dissolved and destroyed. Otherwise the national sovereignty would
be held to abdicate and it can never abdicate.
--Ah! but there is one association, at least, which to some extent is
sacred, and which the sovereignty of the people is bound to respect. I
mean the family. The father is the head of the family, he educates his
children and brings them up as he thinks best, till they come to man's
estate.--
Nay, that will not pass! For here again we have a limitation of the
sovereignty of the nation. The child does not belong to his father. If
this were so, at the threshold of each home the sovereignty of the
people would be arrested, which means that it would cease to exist
anywhere. The child, like the man, belongs to the people. He belongs to
it, in the sense that he must not be a member of an association which
might dare to think differently from the people, or perhaps even harbour
ideas in contradiction to the thought of the people. It would indeed be
dangerous to leave our future citizens for twenty years outside the
national thought, which is the same thing as being outside the
community. Imagine five or six bees brought up apart, outside the laws,
regulations, and constitution of the hive; imagine further that of these
groups of bees there were several hundreds in the hive. The result would
be the destruction of the hive.
It is _above all things_ in the family that the sovereignty of the
people ought to prevail. It ought above all things to refuse to
recognise the association of the family, and to wage war against it
wherever it finds it. It should leave to parents the right of embracing
their children, but nothing more. The right to educate them in ideas
perhaps contrary to those of their parents belongs to the people, which,
here as well as elsewhere, perhaps even more than elsewhere for the
interests at stake are more important, must be absolutely sovereign.
This, then, is what the schoolmaster, with a relentless logic which
appears to me to be irresistible, deduces from the principle of the
national sovereignty.
From the principle of equality he deduces another point. "All men are
equal by nature and before the law." That is to say, if there were
justice, all men ought to have been equal by nature, and further, if
there is to be justice, all men ought to be equal before the law.
Very obviously, however, all men are not equal before the law, and they
are not equal by nature. Very well then, we must make them so.
They are not equal before the law. They appear to be so, but they are
not. The rich man, even supposing that the magistrates are perfectly and
strictly honest, by reason of the fact that he can remunerate the best
solicitors, advocates, and witnesses, by reason further of the fact that
he intimidates by his influence all those who could appear against him,
is not in every respect the equal of the poor man before the law.
Even less does this equality exist in the presence of that union of
constituted social forces which we call society. In this respect the
rich man will be the "influential man"; the "man well connected," the
man on whom no one depends, but whom no one likes to cross or to
contradict. There is, between the rich and the poor man, however equal
we may pretend them to be before the law, the difference between the man
who gives orders and the man who is obliged to obey. _Real_ equality,
in society, in presence of society and even in presence of the law,
only exists where there is neither rich nor poor.
But there will always be rich and poor, as long as the institution of
inheritance remains. Abolish inheritance therefore!
But, even with inheritance abolished, there will still be rich and poor.
The man who can make his fortune rapidly will be a strong man relatively
to the man who can not make a fortune, and, I would have you note it,
even when we have abolished inheritance, the son of the strong man,
during the life of his father, will be strong himself, so that even if
we abolish inheritance, a privilege, namely, the privilege of birth will
still exist and equality will not exist.
There is only one state of affairs under which equality is possible,
that is when no one possesses and no one can acquire anything. The only
social policy so devised that no one can possess and no one can acquire
anything is the policy of a community of goods, that is Communism or
Collectivism. Collectivism is nothing very wonderful. Collectivism is
equality; and equality is collectivism, otherwise our equality will be
nothing but a phantom and an hypocrisy. Every one who is a convinced and
sincere _egalitarian_, and who takes the trouble to think, is forced to
be a collectivist. Bonald asked very wittily: "Do you know what is a
deist? It is a man who has not lived long enough to be an atheist." We
in our turn ask: "Do you know what is an anti-collectivist democrat? It
is a man who has not lived long enough to be a collectivist, or who,
having lived long enough, has never taken the trouble to think, and to
perceive what are the necessary consequences of his own principles."
But surely collectivism is a chimaera, an utopia, a thing impossible.
Certainly it is impossible in the sense that in the country which adopts
it the source of all initiative will be destroyed. No man will make an
effort to improve his position, since it must never be improved. The
whole country will become one of those stagnant pools to which one of
our ministers lately referred. Everyone having become an official,
everyone will realise the ideal of the official which the Goncourts have
very neatly described. "The good official," they say, "is the man who
combines laziness with extreme accuracy." It is a definitive
definition. The country that reformed itself in this way would be
conquered at the end of ten years by some neighbouring people more or
less ambitious.
That admits of no question; but what does it prove? That collectivism is
only impossible because it is only possible if established in every
country at once. Very well, and in order to establish it in every
country at once, only one thing is needful, namely, that there shall no
longer be distinct and separate countries and no longer any
nationalities. It surely will not answer to establish collectivism
before the abolition of nationalities, since, once established, it will
serve no purpose except to bring into prominent relief the vast
superiority of countries which have not adopted collectivism. We must,
therefore, take our problems in order and abolish nationalities before
we can establish collectivism.
Now if nations organise themselves against nature (the nature that, the
schoolmaster assumes, makes all men equal), if instinctively they
organise themselves in a hierarchy which is aristocratic, if they have
their leaders and their subordinates, their stronger and their weaker
members, it is because this arrangement is necessary in a camp, and each
nation feels that it is a camp. If each feels that it is a camp, it is
simply because there are other nations round it, because it feels and
knows that there are others round it. When there are no longer other
nations, each nation will organise itself no longer against nature, but
naturally, that is to say on _egalitarian_ principles. Nature perhaps
strictly speaking is not _egalitarian_, but it tends towards equality in
the sense that it produces many more, indeed infinitely more,
mediocrities than superior intelligences.
Thus equality demands the abolition of inheritance, and the equality of
possessions. Equality of possessions necessitates collectivism, and
collectivism requires the abolition of nationalities. We are
_egalitarians_, then collectivists, and by logical consequence
anti-patriots.
So argue the great majority of school teachers, with an absolute logic,
in my opinion, irrefutable, with the logic which takes no account of
facts, and which only takes account of its own principle and of itself.
So they will all argue to-morrow, if they continue, as it is probable
they will continue, to be very excellent dialecticians.
Will they go back to the premises and say, that if the sovereignty of
the people and equality lead logically and imperatively to these
conclusions, it is perhaps because the sovereignty of the people and
equality are false ideas, and because these conclusions prove them to be
false? This is a course not likely to be taken, for the sovereignty of
the people and the principle of equality are something more than general
ideas, they are sentiments.
They are sentiments which have become ideas, as is the case doubtless
with all general ideas, and they are sentiments of great strength. The
sovereignty of the people is the truth for him who believes in it,
because it ought to be true, because it is a thing as full of majesty
for him as was Caesar in all his pomp for the ancient Roman, or Louis
XIV. in all his glory for the man of the seventeenth century.
Equality is truth for him who believes, because it ought to be true,
because it is justice, and because it would be infamous if justice and
truth were not one. For the democrat, the world has ever been rising
gradually, since its creation, towards the sovereignty of the people and
the doctrine of equality; the latter contains the former, the former is
destined to found the latter and has this mission for its purpose in
life; together they constitute civilisation, and if they are not
attained, there is a relapse into barbarism.
They are dogmas of faith. A dogma is an overmastering sentiment which
has found expression in a formula. From these two dogmas everything that
can be deduced without breach of logic is truth which it is our right
and duty to proclaim.
We must add that the schoolmaster is urged in this same direction by
sentiments of a less general character, which nevertheless have an
influence of their own. He is placed in his commune in direct opposition
to the priest, the only person very often who is, like himself, in that
place a man of some little education. Hence rivalry and a struggle for
influence. Now the priest, by a series of historical incidents, is a
more or less warm partisan sometimes of monarchy but almost always of
aristocracy. He is a member of a body that once was an estate of the
realm, and he is persuaded that his corporation is still an estate of
the realm, notwithstanding all that has happened. If the existing order
is regulated by the _concordat_, the existing order recognises his
corporation as a body legitimatised by the State, since it treats it on
the same terms as the magistracy and the army. If the existing order is
one based on the separation of State and Church, his corporation appears
to him still more to be an estate of the realm, because being forced
into an attitude of solid organisation, and recognising no limitations
of frontier, it becomes a collective personage which, not without peril,
but also not without a certain measure of success, has often ventured to
cross swords with the State itself.
As the priest then belongs to an order endowed with an historic
authority which is nevertheless distinct from, and in no wise a
delegation from, the authority of the people, the priest cannot fail
more or less definitely and consciously to adopt an attitude of mind
favourable to aristocracy.
The school teacher, his rival, is thrown then all the more inevitably
towards the adoption of democratic principles, and he embraces them with
a fervour into which enters jealousy quite as much as conviction. They
mean more to him than even to an eighteenth century philosopher, because
he has a much greater personal interest in believing them, the interest
of personal dislike and animosity; for it is his belief that everything
taught by the priest is the pure invention of ingenious oppressors who
wish to enslave the people in order to consolidate their own tyranny;
and that is his reason for professing philosophical ideas resuscitated
from the teaching of Diderot, and Holbach. For the school teacher it is
almost inconceivable that the priest should be anything but a rascal.
"Atheism is aristocratic," said Robespierre, thinking of Rousseau.
Atheism is democratic, say our present-day school teachers. Whence comes
this difference of opinion? First because it was fashionable among the
great lords of the eighteenth century to be libertines and
free-thinkers, but among the people the belief in God was unanimous.
Secondly, because the priests of our day, for the reasons which I have
given and from remembrance of the persecutions suffered by their Church
at the date of the first triumphs of democracy, have remained
aristocrats or have become so even more firmly than they ever were
before. Atheism then has become democratic as a weapon against the
deists who are generally aristocrats.
Besides, atheism fits in very well, whatever Robespierre may have
thought, with the general sentiments of the baser demagogy. To be
restrained by nothing, to be limited by nothing, that is the dominant
idea of the people, or rather it is the dominant idea of the democrat
for the people, that it should be restrained by nothing and limited by
nothing in its sovereign power. Now God is a limit, God is a restraint.
And just as the democrat will not admit of a secular constitution which
the people could not destroy and which would prevent him from making bad
laws; just as the democrat will not submit--if we may adopt the
terminology of Aristotle--to being governed by _laws_, to be governed
that is by an ancient body of law which would check the people and
obstruct it in its daily fabrication of _decrees_; so just in the same
spirit the democrat does not admit of a God Who has issued His
commandments, Who has issued His body of laws, anterior and superior to
all the laws and all the decrees of men, and Who sets His limit on the
legislative eccentricities of the people, on its capricious omnipotence,
in a word, on the sovereignty of the people.
After Sedan, Bismarck was asked: "Now that Napoleon has fallen, on whom
do you make war?" He replied: "On Louis XIV." So the democrat questioned
on his atheism could reply: "I am warring against Moses."
This is the origin of the atheism of democrats and schoolmasters. This
is the origin of the formula: "Neither God nor Master," which for the
anarchist requires no correction nor supplement, which for the democrat
has only to be modified: "Neither God nor Master, save the People."
At the end of one of his great political speeches in 1849 or 1850,
Victor Hugo said: "In the future there will only be two powers; the
People and God." The modern democrat has persuaded himself that if there
be a God, the sovereignty of the people is infringed, if he believe in
Him.
Lastly, the school teacher is confirmed in his democratic sentiments, in
all his democratic sentiments, by the political position which has been
made for him in France. It is a strange thing, a disconcerting anomaly,
that the Governments of the nineteenth century (especially, we must do
it this justice, the present Government), have very handsomely respected
the liberty of professors of higher education, and of secondary
education, and have not in the very slightest degree respected the
liberty of the teachers of elementary education. The professor of higher
education, especially since 1870, can teach exactly what he pleases,
except immorality and contempt of our country and its laws. He can even
discuss our laws, provided always that he maintains the principle that,
such as they are, they ought to be obeyed till they are repealed. His
liberty as to his opinions political, social and religious is complete.
It is only occasionally constrained by the disorderly demonstrations of
his students. The professor of secondary education enjoys a liberty
almost equally wide. He is subject, but only in an extremely liberal
fashion, to a programme or syllabus of studies. As to the spirit in
which he conducts his work he is practically never molested. He is
given a free hand.
Nor has it ever occurred to any Government to ask a professor of higher
and secondary education how he votes at political elections, still less
to require him to canvass in favour of the candidates agreeable to the
Government.
When, however, we pass to elementary education we see everything is
changed. The elementary teacher is not appointed by his natural chief,
the _recteur_ or Minister of Public Education, he is appointed by the
_prefet_, that is by the Minister of the Interior, the political head of
the Government. In other words, this is the same process as the
appointment of officials by the people, described a few pages back, but
with one intermediary the less. It is pre-eminently the Minister of the
Interior who represents the political will of the nation at any given
date. And it is the Minister of the Interior who through his _prefets_
appoints the elementary school teacher. It is then the political will of
the nation which chooses the school teachers. It would be impossible to
convey to them more clearly (which is only fair, for people should be
made to understand their duties) that they are chosen for
considerations of politics and that they ought to consider themselves as
political agents.
And indeed they are nothing else, or perhaps we should say they are
something else but above all they are politicians. The schoolteachers
depend on the _prefets_ and the _prefets_ depend much on the deputies,
yet it is not the deputies who appoint them, but it is they who can
remove them, who can get them promoted or disgraced, who by constant
removals can reduce them to destitution. Surely, every candid person
will exclaim, given the difficult and scandalous situation in which they
are put by the hand which appoints them, they ought at least to have the
guarantee and assurance, very relative and ineffectual though it be, of
irremovability. But they have not got it. The professors of higher
education who do not require it have got it, the professors of secondary
education have it to all intents and purposes. The elementary school
teacher has it not.
He is, therefore, delivered over to the politicians who make of him an
electioneering agent, who reckon him as such, and who would never pardon
him if he failed them.
The result is that the majority of school teachers are demagogues
because they like it, and with magnificent enthusiasm and passion. The
minority who have no turn for demagogy are demagogues though they do not
like it, and because they are forced by necessity.
Even those who have no disposition that way become demagogues in the
end, for that is the way of the world. "In the heat of the _melee_,"
said Augier, "there are no mercenaries." Our school teachers, thrown,
sometimes against their will, into the battle, forced at least to appear
to be fighting, receive knocks and when they have received them, they
become attached to the cause on whose behalf they have suffered. We
always end by having the opinions which are attributed to us, and being
taken for a demagogue the moment he arrives at his village, the young
school teacher, not daring to say anything to the contrary, and being
very ill received by all other parties, naturally becomes a demagogue
with some show of conviction the very next year.
* * * * *
So the democracy receives no instruction that does not confirm and
strengthen it in its errors.
For its good some one ought to teach it not to believe itself
omnipotent, to have scruples as to its omnipotence, and to believe that
this omnipotence should have defined limits; it is taught without
reserve the dogma of the unlimited sovereignty of the people.
For its good it should believe that equality is so contrary to nature
that we have no right to torture nature in order to establish real
equality among men, and that the people which has established such a
state of things, which is quite possible, must succumb to the fate of
those who try to live exactly in opposition to the laws of nature.
Instead, it is taught, and it is true enough, that equality is not
possible, if it is not complete, if it is not thorough, that it ought to
be applied to differences of fortune, social position, intelligence,
perhaps even to our stature and personal appearance, and that no effort
should be spared to bring all things to one absolute level.
For its good, since it is natural enough that it should dislike heavy
taxation, sentiments of patriotism should be reinforced; it is taught on
the contrary that military service is a painful legacy left by a hateful
and barbarous past, and that it ought to disappear very soon before the
warming rays of a peaceful civilisation.
In a word, to use again the language of Aristotle, the pure wine of
democracy is poured out to the people as it was by the demagogues to the
Athenians; and from the quarter whence a remedy might have been expected
there come only incitements to deeper intoxication.
Aristotle has made yet another wise and profound observation on the
question of equality: "_We must establish equality_," he said, "_in the
passions rather than in the fortunes of men._" And he adds: "And this
equality can only be the fruit of education derived from the influence
of good laws." That is indeed the point. Education should have but one
object; to reduce the passions to equality, or rather to _equanimity_,
and to a certain equilibrium of mind. The education given to modern
democracy does not lead to this, but leads in the opposite direction.