[Transcriber's note: This production is based on
https://archive.org/details/christianityview00guiz/page/n6]
{i}
Christianity Viewed In Relation To
The Present State Of Society And Opinion.
By M. Guizot.
Translated Under The Superintendence Of The Author.
London:
John Murray, Albemarle Street.
1871.
{ii}
By The Same Author.
The Essence Of Christianity.
Post 8vo, 9s. 6d.
"No one can open this book, and recollect the circumstances
which produced it, without feeling that it is a valuable
contribution to the literature of the present controversy."
--_Edinburgh Review_.
The Present State Of Christianity.
Post 8vo, 10s. 6d.
"A remarkable series of religious meditations. They form a
sequel to a similar volume on the Essence of Christianity,
published two years ago, and an introduction to a further
series, in which M. Guizot proposes to treat the great
questions of the history of Christianity, and the future
destiny of the Christian religion. The book is one of great
interest."--_Pall Mall Gazette_.
{iii}
{iv}
{v}
Preface.
In the First Series of these Meditations, I gave a summary of the
facts and dogmas which constitute, as I think, the foundation and
the essence of the Christian Religion. In the next series I
retraced the Reawakening of Faith and of Christian Life during
the nineteenth century in France, both amongst Romanists and
Protestants. With Christianity thus reanimated and resuscitated
amongst us, after having passed through one of its most violent
trials, I confronted the principal philosophical systems which in
these days reject and combat it: Rationalism, Positivism,
Pantheism, Materialism, Scepticism. I essayed to determine the
fundamental error which seems to me to characterize each of those
systems, and to have always rendered them inadequate to the
office either of satisfying or explaining man's nature and
destiny.
{vi}
That series of my Meditations I concluded with these words: "Why
is it that Christianity, in spite of all the attacks which it has
had to undergo, and all the ordeals through which it has been
made to pass, has for eighteen centuries satisfied infinitely
better the spontaneous instincts and invincible cravings of
humanity? Is it not because it is pure from the errors which
vitiate the different systems of philosophy just passed in
review? because it fills up the void that those systems either
create or leave in the human soul? because, in short, it conducts
man nigher to the fountain of light?" [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: Meditations on the Actual State of Christianity.
Eighth Meditation: Impiety, Recklessness, Perplexity, p. 336.]
Far from wishing to elude any of the difficulties of this
question, I would now set Christianity in contact with the ideas
and forces that seem most contrary to it, and with three of them
more especially: Liberty, Independent Morality, and Science.
{vii}
Assertions are running the tour of the world that Christianity
can accommodate itself neither to liberty nor science; that
morality is essentially distinct and separate from Religious
Faith. All this I hold to be false and highly prejudicial to the
very cause of Liberty, of Morality, and of Science, which those
who give utterance to such assertions affect to serve. I believe
Christianity and Liberty to be not only compatible with each
other, but necessary to each other. I regard Morality as
naturally and intimately united to Religion. I am convinced that
Christianity and Science need not make any mutual sacrifices,
that neither has anything to fear from the other. This I
establish in the first three Meditations of the present series. I
then enter into the peculiar domain of Christianity, and
determine what, in the presence of Liberty, of Philosophical
Morality, and of Human Science, is the principle and what the
bearing of "Christian Ignorance" and of Christian Faith.
{viii}
I finally apply to ideas their natural and inevitable law, the
law which obliges them to express themselves in facts; I
interrogate theory thus transformed into practice, and I show
that Christianity alone supports this test victoriously.
"Christian Life" becomes a forcible demonstration of the
Legitimacy of Christian Faith. With these three Meditations the
present series concludes.
But to complete my undertaking, a final and capital question, the
historical question, remains to be treated. Not that I think of
retracing the History of Christianity throughout the whole of its
course; such a design is far from my thoughts. I neither can nor
wish to do more than to demonstrate the grand historical facts
which, in my opinion, are in Christianity the stamp of a divine
origin, and of a divine influence upon the development and
destiny of the human race. Of these facts the following is a
summary:--
1. The authority of the sacred books.
2. The primitive foundation of Christianity.
3. The Christian Faith persistent from age to age.
{ix}
4. The Church of Christ persistent also from age to age.
5. Romanism and Protestantism.
6. The different Antichristian crises, their
character and their issue.
It is upon these grand facts, and the questions which they
suggest, that Historical Criticism has in our days exercised
itself with ardour, as it is continuing to do; science, severe
and daring, no invention of our epoch, but beyond all doubt one
of its glories! If, after concluding this final series of my
Meditations, I shall have succeeded in appreciating at their real
value the exigencies made and the results obtained by Historical
Criticism, where it has applied itself to the History of
Christianity, I shall have realised the object which I proposed
to myself on voluntarily entering upon this solemn and laborious
study, where I meet with so much that is obscure, and so many
quicksands.
{x}
But as I draw near the close, a scruple seizes me. What have I
been thinking of to persist obstinately in casting such a work
into the midst of the events and the practical problems which are
agitating the whole civilized world, and which are demanding
their instant solution? What good result can I expect from
studying the past history of the Christian Religion in my
country, or even speculating upon its future prospects, when the
actual condition of the present generation and the lot of that
which is to succeed it on the stage, are subject to so many
troubles and plunged in such darkness? The more narrowly I
scrutinize generations--the honour and the destiny of which I
have so much at heart, for my children form part of them--the
more am I struck and disquieted by two facts: on the one side the
general sentiment of fatigue and incertitude manifesting itself
in society and in individuals: on the other side not merely the
grandeur but the unusual complexity of the questions agitated.
{xi}
I fear that, in her lassitude and in her sceptical vacillations,
France may not render an exact account to herself of the problems
and perils scattered over her path, of their number, their
gravity, and their intimate connexion. I fear that, from not
having an accurate conception of what her burthen is, and from
not having the courage at once to weigh it well, the moment when
she will have to bear it will come upon her with the necessary
forces unmustered, and the necessary resolutions unformed.
Almost every great epoch in history has been devoted to some
question, if not an exclusive one, at least one dominant both in
events and opinions, and around which the varying opinions and
the efforts of men were concentrated. Not to go farther back than
the era of modern history--in the sixteenth century the question
of the unity of Religion and of its Reform; in the seventeenth
century the question of pure monarchy, with its conquests abroad
and administration at home; in the eighteenth century that of the
operation of civil and religious liberty: such have been in
France the different points on which ideas have culminated, the
different objects which each social movement had specially in
view.
{xii}
The systems of the day, although opposed, were clear; the
struggles ardent but well defined. Men walked in those days on
high roads; they did not wander about in the infinite
complications of a labyrinth.
And it is in a very labyrinth of questions and of ideas, of
essays and events, diverse in character, confused, incoherent,
contradictory, in which in these days the civilized world is
plunged. I do not pretend to seize the clue to the labyrinth; I
propose but to throw some light upon the chaos.
First I turn my eyes to the external situation and relations of
the States of Christendom, and consider the questions which
concern the boundaries of territories and the distribution of
populations between distinct and independent nations. Formerly
these questions were all reducible to one--the aggrandizement or
the weakening of these different States, and the maintenance or
the disturbance of that balance of forces which was called the
balance of power in Europe.
{xiii}
War and Diplomacy, Conquests and Treaties, discussed and settled
this supreme question, of which Grotius expounded the theory, and
Ancillon wrote the history. Now we are no longer in a situation
so simple. What a complication of ideas: what ideas, novel and
ill-defined, start up in these days to embarrass the course and
entangle the relations of States! The question of races, the
question of nationalities, the question of little states and of
great political unities, the question of popular sovereignty and
of its rights beyond the limits of nations as well as in their
midst,--all these problems arise and cast into the shade, as a
routine which has served its turn, the old public right and the
maxims of the equilibrium of Europe, in their place seeking
themselves to impose rules for regulating the territorial
organizations and the external relations of States.
{xiv}
Not that the old traditional policy of Europe does not mingle
itself with, and exercise a powerful influence upon, the new
ideas and questions which invade us; however intellectual
theories and ambitions may change, the passions and interests of
men are permanent. War and the right of conquest have made good
their old pretensions, and this before our very eyes, without any
respect for the principle of Nationalities and of Races, a
principle nevertheless inscribed upon the very standards which
the conquerors bore. Prussia has aggrandized herself in the name
of German Unity, and at the very moment excluded from
participating in the common affairs of Germany, the seven or
eight millions of Germans who form part of the Empire of Austria.
Prussia seized the petty German Republic of Frankfort, evidently
against the will of its sovereign people, and Danish Schleswick
does not yet form part of the political group, to the class of
which she belongs by similarity of national origin and of
language. Even while sheltering themselves under the Ægis of some
general idea, selfish interests and rude violence have not ceased
to play a great part in the events which are passing before us,
and if the ambition of Frederick the Second was not more
legitimate, it was at least more logical than that of his
successors.
{xv}
I am far from meaning to deny that the new ideas which men
follow, and the desires which they evince, contain a certain part
of truth, or to affirm that they have not a right to a certain
share of influence. The identity of origin and of race, the
possession in common of a single name and of one language, have a
moral value very capable of becoming itself a political force; of
this fair and prudent statesmanship is bound to hold account. But
policy becomes chimerical and dangerous when it attributes to
these new ideas and these aspirations a supreme authority and
right to dominion; and what shocks all experience and common
sense is to reject, as out of date, and no longer applicable,
maxims which were the foundation of the public law of nations,
and which, up to the present time, have presided over the
relations of States.
{xvi}
The equilibrium of Europe, the long duration of territorial
agglomerations, the right of small states to exist and be
independent, the ancient titles to government, and the respect
for ancient treaties,--all these elements of European order have
not succumbed, neither were they bound to succumb, to the theory
of nationalities, and the fashionable doctrine of great political
unities. What would not be said, and what would not be said with
justice, if France had proclaimed that, as Belgium and Western
Switzerland speak French, that, as their populations have, both
in origin and manners, great affinities with our fellow
countrymen in French Flanders and in Franche-Comté, the principal
of National Unity requires their incorporation with France?
Prince Metternich was wrong to say that Italy was a mere
Geographical expression; there are certainly between the nations
of Italy historical bonds, both intellectual and moral, which
draw them towards one another, and repel from their territories
all foreign domination.
{xvii}
But this relationship, which may, and ought to be, a principle of
union, did not impose upon Italy the form of political unity; and
the _régime_ of a confederation of States might have been
established in the peninsula and yet its liberation from the
foreigner might have been secured, and a satisfaction might have
been procured along our own frontier of the Alps, in the
interests of our own security, and of that of Europe, for the
preservation of the equilibrium of power. As soon as we look at
the question with serious attention, we are forced to admit that
any general application of the principle of nationalities, or of
that of the great political unities, would throw the civilized
world into such a confusion and fermentation as would be equally
compromising to the internal liberties of nations, and to the
preservation of peace between the different States.
{xviii}
What if I had to sound the consequences of another principle, the
sovereign authority which men also seek in these days to set up,
the right, I mean, of populations, or of some part of a
population, to dissolve the State with which they are connected,
and to range themselves under another State, or to constitute
themselves into new and independent States? What would become of
the existence, or even of the very name of country, if it also
were thus left to be dealt with according to the fluctuating
wills of men, and the special interests of such or such of its
members? There is in the destiny of men, whether of generations
or individuals, a great part which they have no share in deciding
or disposing of; a man does not choose his family, neither does
he select his country; it is the natural state of man to live in
the place where he is born, in the society where is his cradle.
The cases are infinitely rare which can permit of the bonds being
rent asunder by which man is attached to the soil, the citizen to
the state; which can justify his leaving the bosom of his
country, to order to separate himself from it absolutely, and to
strive to lay the foundation of a new country.
{xix}
We have just been spectators of such an attempt; we have seen
some of the States which form the nation of the United States of
America, abjure this union, and erect themselves into an
independent confederation. Wherefore? In order to maintain in
their bosom the institution of slavery. By what right? By the
right, it is said, of every people, or portion of a people, to
change its government at discretion. The States which remained
faithful to the ancient American Confederation denied the
principle and combatted the attempt. They succeeded in
maintaining the federal Union, and in abolishing slavery. I am
one of those who think that they had both right and reason on
their side. Many years before the struggle commenced, one of the
most eminent men in the United States, eminent by his character
as well as his talents, a faithful representative of the
interests of the States of the South, and an avowed apologist for
negro slavery, Mr. Calhoun, did me the honour of transmitting to
me all that he had written and said upon the subject.
{xx}
I was struck by the frank and earnest language with which he
expressed his convictions, but no less by the futility of the
efforts which he made to justify, upon general considerations and
by historical necessities, the fact of slavery in his country. He
would never have dared to paint it in its actual and living
reality, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe has done in her romances of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" and of "Dred," which have everywhere excited so much
sympathy and emotion. I became every day more and more convinced
that there was here a radical iniquity and a social wound, of
which it was at last time to efface the shame and to conjure the
danger. It was with the motive of maintaining the system of
slavery that the States of the South undertook to break up the
great American State which was their country. Motive detestable
for a deplorable act! Our epoch, so unfortunate in many respects,
has, in my opinion, been fortunate in this, that it produced a
Republic, the greatest of all Republics of ancient or of modern
times, which has afforded us the example of an uncompromising
resistance to an illegitimate popular desire, and of an
unflinching respect for the tutelary principles of the life of
States.
{xxi}
So far of the territorial questions, and those which concern the
external relations of nations. Let me now speculate upon what the
future has in store for those which involve domestic order and
the organization of government. I meet here with the same
confusion, the same complications, the same fluctuations between
ideas and essays incoherent or inconsistent. At the base as at
the summit of society, the monarchy and the republic are in
collision: the monarchy reigns in events; the republic ferments
in opinions.
The proposition is now universally received that society has the
right not only to see clearly and to intervene in its own
government, but to see so clearly and to intervene in such a
manner as to justify the expression that it governs itself.
{xxii}
The Constitutional Monarchy and the Republic profess each to
attain this object: the one by a national representation, by the
monarch's inviolability and his ministry's responsibility; the
other by universal suffrage and the periodical elections of the
great representatives of public power. But neither the
constitutional monarchy nor the republic has as yet succeeded
amongst us in obtaining firm possession of opinions and of
events, of public confidence and of durable power. After and in
spite of thirty-four years of prosperity, of peace, and of
liberty, the constitutional power fell. The republic, accepted on
its sudden appearance as the form of government which, as was
affirmed, divided us least, after a few months of turbulent and
sterile anarchy, fell also. In the place of the constitutional
monarchy and of the republic there arose another form of
government, a mixture of Dictatorship and of Republic, a sort of
personal government combined with, universal suffrage. Will the
essay have greater success? Events will decide.
{xxiii}
In the meantime let us be sincere with ourselves; the cause of so
many painful and abortive attempts resides rather in the
disposition of the people of France than in the acts of its
governments: our revolutionary existence since 1789, our
ambitious aspirings and disappointments, both equally immense,
have left us at once very excited and very fatigued, full of
impatience at the same time as of incertitude; we know not very
well what we think or what we would have; our ideas are perplexed
and confused; our wills vacillating and feeble; our minds have no
fixed points, our conduct no determined objects; we often yield
ourselves up readily against our better judgment, nay against our
very wish, to whatever power extends its hand to seize us; but
soon, very soon, we evince towards that power not a whit less
exigency or unfairness; as soon as we feel ourselves rid of our
most urgent cause for disquietude, our discontent is as
precipitate as was our submission in the hour of peril. We are
again disposed to be quarrelsome, and demand instant action in
the midst even of our doubts and hesitation. Our revolutions have
taught us the lesson neither of resistance nor of patience. Yet
these are virtues without which it is idle to propose to found
any free government.
{xxiv}
I pass from political questions to social questions, and from the
state of our political institutions to that of the relations
existent between the different parts of society. I say the
_different parts_ to avoid saying _different classes_,
for we cannot hear the word class pronounced without thinking
that we are threatened with the re-establishment of privileges
and exclusions, of that entire _régime_ with its narrow
compartments and inseparable barriers within which men were
formerly enclosed, and ranked according to their origin, their
name, their religion, or whatever other factitious or accidental
qualification they might possess. In effect, this _régime_
has fallen--fallen completely and definitively; all legal
barriers have disappeared; all careers are open; all labour free:
by individual merit and by labour every man may aspire to
everything, and examples abound in confirmation of the principle.
{xxv}
This was the great work, the great conquest of 1789; we celebrate
it unceasingly, and we have often the air of forgetting that it
ever occurred. The different ancient classes are still full of
jealousy, of distrust, and of restless irritation; because they
have to struggle for influence in the midst of liberty, they
persuade themselves that they are still risking life and limb in
defence of their situation and of their right. The Restoration
was attacked and undermined on account, it was said, of the evils
that the _bourgeoisie_ had to endure, and the risks which it
had to run at the hands of the nobles. Under the government of
July, the working classes were told incessantly that they were
the victims of the privileges and of the tyranny of the middle
classes. Facts and actual events gave singularly the lie to such
assertions. With what effect? In the hurry of passions and the
intoxication of thought, men appealed to theories which had been
already often produced on the stage of the world,--theories which
have only served to agitate, never to satisfy it.
{xxvi}
Landed property and capital, labour and wages, the artificial
distribution of the means of material happiness amongst men, have
served sometimes as the subjects of unjust recrimination,
sometimes of chimerical expectations. Attacks were made upon
things which the assailants had no right to take; and promises
were made to give things which the promisers had not the power to
give.
I have heard it remarked by clear-sighted men who are good
observers, that this malady of the mind is decreasing, and that
even amongst the labouring classes themselves, false notions as
to the conflict of capital and labour, as to the artificial
settlement of wages, and the intervention of the State in the
distribution of the material means of existence, are in
discredit, and that the ambitious aspirings of the people,
although continuing to be very democratic, have ceased to assume
the form of Socialism.
{xxvii}
I ardently wish it were so: the passionate feelings which find
their field in facts affecting the sphere of material
subsistence, are the rudest, the most rebellious, and the most
recalcitrant to the principles of the moral order: it is easier
to deal with the aspirings of political ambition than with the
ardent cravings for physical advantages. But I fear, I confess,
that errors such as those which presented themselves under the
names of Socialism and Communism, and which recently made so much
noise, are not so discarded as we might hope them to be; that
they are actually without a mouthpiece is not a sufficient proof
of their defeat; materialism, and the evil instincts to which it
leads or from which it springs, have penetrated very far amongst
us, and a long period of social and moral progress in the midst
of a society which has been well ordered will be necessary in
order to surmount this danger.
Several years ago I put to a great manufacturer of Manchester,
who had been Mayor of that immense centre of industry, the
following question: "What amongst you is the proportion between
the laborious and well-conducted workmen, who live respectably in
their homes, set aside money in the savings' bank, and apply for
books at the people's library, and the idle and disorderly
workmen who pass their time at taverns, and only work so much as
is necessary to furnish them with the means of subsistence?"
{xxviii}
After a moment's reflection, he replied: "The former are
two-thirds of the whole number." After congratulating him, I
added, "Allow me to put one more question. If you had amongst you
great disorders, seditious assemblages, and riots, what would be
the result?" "With us, sir," he said without hesitation, "the
honest men are braver than the ill-conditioned ones." I
congratulated him this time still more.
In these questions I had touched the root of the evil which
afflicts us. It is to their shortcomings in morality, to their
disorderly lives, that we must attribute the favour with which
the working classes receive the fallacious theories that menace
social order. The condition of these classes is hard and full of
distressing accidents; whoever regards it closely, and with a
little fairness and sympathy, cannot fail to be deeply moved by
all the sufferings which they have to support, the privations
from which they have no chance of escape, and the efforts which
they must make to ensure themselves a living at best monotonous
and full of hazard.
{xxix}
The happy ones of the earth feel sometimes alarm and irritation,
when they hear from the pulpit descriptions purer and more true
to the life than are to be met with in philanthropical novels, of
the precarious state and distresses of the lower orders. Beyond
doubt, from pictures of this nature should be scrupulously
excluded everything that would seem to excite sentiments of
hostility, or that would set one class against another; still as
the upper classes must resign themselves to the spectacle, it
devolves more especially upon Christian Painters to place it
before them.
{xxx}
Nothing but strong moral convictions, and the habits of well
living amongst the labouring classes, can furnish them with
efficacious means of struggling against the temptations and
resisting the ambitious yearnings, suggested to them by the
spectacle of the world which surrounds them,--a world now at
length transparent to all, a world of which the stir, the noise,
the accidents, the adventures, penetrate with rapidity even to
the workshops of our cities and the remotest recesses of our
villages. What influence shall protect the masses of the people
from the irritating and demoralizing effect of such a sight,
unless it be the influence of religious principles, the moral
discipline which religion maintains, and the moral serenity which
religion diffuses over the rudest existences and the lives
subjected to the greatest privations? And it is precisely
religious belief and religious discipline, Christian faith and
Christian law, which are now being attacked and undermined, and
this far more in the obscurer classes, than in the brilliant
regions of society!
{xxxi}
These attacks are of a general although of diverse nature, and of
unequal violence; they occur in the bosom of Roman Catholicism,
of Protestantism, and of scientific philosophy; some are direct,
open, impetuous; others indirect and full of reserves, and of a
tenderness sometimes affected, sometimes sincere. Christianity
counts amongst its enemies fanatics who persecute it in the name
of reason and of liberty, as well as adversaries who criticise it
with moderation and prudence; the latter admit its practical
deservings, are distressed by the wounds which they inflict, and,
in the very act of dealing their blows, seek to lessen their
force. This diversity of attack is a proof of the trouble, of the
incertitude, and of the incoherence which reign in men's
opinions, both upon religious questions and upon questions which
are only simply political and social; many they are who would be
inclined to save such or such a portion of the edifice which they
are battering and seeking to destroy. But the upshot is, that all
these blows are telling upon the same point, and are concurring
to produce the same effect; it is the Christian Religion which
receives them all; it is the right and the empire of Christ
which, in the world learned and unlearned, is subjected to doubt
and exposed to peril.
{xxxii}
I have touched upon all the great questions which are agitating
the human mind and human societies: questions of public right,
questions of political organization, questions of social
institutions, questions of religious belief. Everywhere I
encounter two facts, facts everywhere the same: a great
complication and a great incertitude in man's opinions and in his
efforts. Nothing is simple, no one decided. Problems of every
kind--doubts of every kind weigh upon the thoughts of men, and
oppress their wills; their ambitious aspirings are varied,
immense, but everywhere they hesitate. They may be likened to
travellers already exhausted with fatigue, yet feebly driving to
feel their way through a labyrinth.
Are we then to infer that we are living in an era of decay and
impotence? that we have nothing ourselves to do, nothing to hope
for, in this situation so complicated and so obscure? that we
have only to wait until our lot is decided by that sovereign
power called by some Providence, by others Fate?
{xxxiii}
I am far from thinking so.
Of the men distinguished by singleness of views and strength of
convictions whom I have known, I consider the Marshal Gouvion
Saint-Cyr in these respects the most remarkable. He was one day
detailing his reasons for disapproving of the system of a royal
or imperial guard, or of privileged corps, in an army: "Few,"
said he, "are really brave: the best thing to be done is to
disseminate them in the ranks, where each singly, by his presence
and example, will make eight or ten more brave men around him." I
am no judge as to the value of the Marshal's maxim in a military
sense; I do not believe it to be invariably true, or always
applicable in the political sense; there are epochs at which, in
order to further the progress of which a nation stands in need,
to withdraw it from its embarrassments or to rouse it from its
apathy, the most urgent thing to be done, and the plan the most
efficacious, is to form in its bosom picked bodies of men (the
number is immaterial), and then to incorporate with them others
possessing distinguished qualities, and animated by the same
spirit, decided in their opinions, and resolute in their action,
single of purpose, and full of confidence: these would soon
attract to themselves as associates many others who would never,
without such impulse, begin to move in the same path.
{xxxiv}
We are, I believe, at an era which calls for such a mode of
influencing society, and which authorises us to expect success if
we adopt it.
I can never be accused of ignoring or extenuating the evil which
torments us upon all the points which I have just indicated, the
rights of nations, the civil organization of society and its
economy, moral and religious belief. In all these directions an
evil wind is blowing, an evil current is hurrying away a part of
French society, and it is my constant design so to arouse the
moral sense of the people, and its good sense, as to make them
attentive to the existence of the ill, and solicitous for its
removal.
{xxxv}
But at the side of this fact, so deplorable and so full of peril,
a fact of contrary and salutary nature is occurring and
developing itself: a good wind there also is which is blowing, a
good current which is impelling us forwards;--at the same time
that violent and revolutionary theories are being diffused, the
principles of legal order, and of liberties, serving mutually to
control and check one another, are proclaimed and maintained; the
maxims and the sentiments of the spirit of peace are heard at
least as loudly pronounced, as the souvenirs and the traditions
of the spirit of adventure and conquest; the sound principles of
political economy have defenders no less zealous than the
presumptuous and dreamy theories of Socialism; Spiritualism
raises its voice high at the side of Materialism; Christianity is
advancing at the same time as Incredulity, and with a progress
also distinguished by its scientific method and its practical
applications.
{xxxvi}
Following respectively their different objects, there are on both
sides groups of men of strong convictions, activity, and
influence, who hope for and pursue the triumph of their several
causes. Like the ardent huntsman of Bürgers ballad, France is
solicited by two Genii, ever at her side, ever present, urgent,
contrary. Since the commencement of the nineteenth century, our
history is made up of this great struggle and of its
vicissitudes, of the series of victories gained and defeats
sustained by these two forces, which are disputing the future of
our country.
They find a field of action in a people of quick, various, and
keen feelings, prone to generous impulses, full of human
sympathies and mobility, at this moment chilled and intimidated
by the checks imposed upon their ambitious yearnings, by the
disappointments which have befallen their hopes, and so brought
back by actual experience to confine their aspirations within the
modest limits of good sense; more occupied with the perils of
their situation than with the rights of thought, but always
remarkable for intelligence and sagacity; friendly to liberty
even when they dread its abuse, and to order although they only
defend it at the last extremity; more touched by virtue than
shocked by vice; honest in their instincts and moral judgments in
spite of the weakness of their moral belief and their complacent
indulgence of men whom they do not esteem; and always ready, in
spite of their doubts and their alarms, to recur to the noble
desires which they have the air of no longer entertaining.
{xxxvii}
We have in all this evidently matter to encourage the good genius
of France. The life of nations is neither easier nor less mixed
with good and evil, with successes and reverses, than the life of
individuals; but assuredly, in spite of what is wanting to it,
and in spite of its sorrows, the actual state of our country, as
well as its long history, open a wide field to the efforts and
the hopes of the men of elevated, resolute, and honest minds, who
are occupying themselves in earnest with its destiny.
{xxxviii}
What, in order to attain their object, can be, ought to be, the
conduct of the men engaged in this patriotic design, men who have
it at heart to second the good current and to stem the evil
current, which have both set in amongst us? Upon what conditions
and by what means can we hope to pass through the sieve of good
sense and of moral sense the confused ideas which plague us, and
to find an issue for the public out of the doubts and hesitation
which are a source of languor and enervation to the soul?
Political Liberty and Belief in Religion, the movement of society
in advance and the impulse of the soul towards eternity, Free
Government and Christianity, these are the two forces to which we
should recur, and the only ones capable of remedying this disease
of trouble and doubt which afflict both our thoughts and our
conduct, and which at one time impairs, at another paralyses, our
understanding.
{xxxix}
I have no intention here to speak of political liberties in the
abstract, and of their necessity either to a country in order to
guarantee to it a good administration at home and abroad, or to
individuals in order to secure their interests, moral and
material. The right of France to these liberties, and their
opportuneness to her at this moment, have recently been set in
their clearest light, and established in all their force on their
highest stage, in the bosom of the legislative body. [Footnote 2]
It is solely because of its influence upon that ill of our epoch,
the complication of questions and the hesitations of opinion,
that I speak here of political liberty; I regard it as one of the
two great remedies against this ill.
[Footnote 2: Discourse of M. Thiers, _Sur les libertés
nécessaires et sur la liberté de la presse_, in the séances of
the 11th January, 1864, 13th February, 1866, 30th January,
7th, 8th, 15th, 21st, and 22nd February, 1868.]
{xl}
When all questions are agitated pell mell, and all minds are
perplexed, the first salutary result consequent upon liberty is
that it sets all opinions and all intentions in contact and in
conflict. At first, and for a time, this simultaneous invasion of
so many complex facts, and of so many diverse and contrary ideas,
does but add to the perplexity of the questions and to the
confusion of minds; but little by little, and quickly too,
provided liberty endures, the winnowing process produces its
effect upon the questions, and light penetrates into the
understandings: the different facts, and problems which these
facts suggest, are set in turn in their place, and valued only
for as much as they are worth; actors and spectators grow
accustomed to them all, and begin to form more precise
conceptions of them.
Little by little order takes the place of confusion; opinions
define and classify themselves; and instead of the fermentation
of opinions in a chaotic confusion, we have a contest in regular
form, and upon intelligible issues, I repeat that a result so
salutary cannot be obtained unless upon the condition of a
liberty universal, real, and durable; partial or transitory, it
would serve only to aggravate the perturbation, and to unsettle
opinions still more.
{xli}
Political liberty has a second effect, one, perhaps, still more
important: it forces all questions to submit to the test of
practical experiment. As long as the liberty is only in the
thought, it is vain and intemperate; everything seems permitted,
and everything possible to those who are not responsible for the
effects of an act: man's thought, intoxicated with itself, runs
riot in the vagueness of infinite space and time. But when to
liberty of thought is superadded political liberty,--when,
instead of treating questions speculatively, they have to be
virtually solved,--when men are charged as real actors to
transform into facts their own opinions or those of the
spectators who are looking on,--then it is that the human mind,
making its own strength the object of its reflection and
examination, is driven to the admission that it does not dispose
at its own will of the world, and that even in order to satisfy
itself, it must confine itself to the limits imposed by good
sense, by justice, and by possibility,--then it is that it learns
to govern itself, and to hold itself responsible for its acts.
Responsibility engenders discretion, but is itself engendered by
liberty alone.
{xlii}
Our own times have furnished us with three great examples of the
salutary empire exercised by political liberty in furnishing an
escape from the embarrassment of situations, and in solving
questions the most different--I might say the most contrary--in
their nature. We have only to cast our eyes over the contemporary
histories of England, of the United States of America, and of
France herself, to discover their examples and their authority as
precedents.
From 1792 to 1818, England was engaged in struggles first against
the spirit of Revolution, and then against that termed by M.
Benjamin Constant the spirit of usurpation and of conquest. With
what forces and with what arms did England support these two
formidable struggles? With the forces and the arms of political
liberty.
{xliii}
It was by the elections, by publicity, by discussions continued
in the midst of the energetic manifestations of all the parties,
--it was by appeals to public sentiments and opinions,--it was by
setting in action all the springs of a free and representative
government, that England succeeded in her resistance to the most
potent revolutionary and military movement which ever agitated
Europe. That struggle over, after the lapse of a few years,
during which the presiding policy prolonged its tenure of office
by pursuing a pacific course, England entered upon quite a
different path; sometimes under the Government of Liberals,
sometimes of Conservatives, the policy of Reform took the place
of the policy of resistance; and since 1828, it is in this path
that England is progressing; it is in favour of innovations,
sometimes prudent, sometimes daring, and sometimes, perhaps,
improvident, that she is exerting to the utmost all the forces of
the country, all the strength of its government. Political
Liberty has in turn, and with similar efficacy, served the cause
and assured the success, at one time of a policy of resistance,
at another of that of progress.
{xliv}
The United States of America have been subjected to a still ruder
trial. Their government has had to struggle against the
insurrection of a notable portion of their people, and against a
civil war entered upon in the name of a principle, popular
independence. The central power of the Confederation has resisted
an insurrection radically illegitimate, which was entered upon to
maintain the slavery of a part of the human race; it defended the
national existence of the State against the attempts which were
made to dislocate it, and which were founded upon the same
motive; and after a civil war which endured four years, in the
course of which each side was prodigal of efforts and sacrifices,
and displayed an equal energy, the policy of resistance triumphed
by the medium of a republican power, and the liberal idea of the
abolition of slavery vanquished the revolutionary idea of the
right of insurrection.
{xlv}
It is to political liberty, and to the potent force of the
institutions and manners founded under her influence, that this
victory of the great right of humanity was due; and, the war once
over, the civil _régime_ of American society resumed its
action, still stormy and perilous, but free from every anarchical
usurpation or military tyranny.
Newer to France, its principles less understood by it, and not so
well applied, Political Liberty has not on these accounts
remained without producing there some fruits. In 1830 and in 1848
France passed through two revolutions, one of which had been
preceded by sixteen the other by eighteen years of civil liberty.
Neither of the _régimes_ in operation immediately previous
to each revolution sufficed to prevent it, but they greatly
changed its character and weakened its effects. In 1830, thanks
to the instantaneous intervention of the public authorities which
owed their existence to the previous _régime_, a regular
government was promptly established, and a new constitutional
monarchy succeeded to that which had just fallen.
{xlvi}
On the instant it set itself in opposition to the revolutionary
movement which had given it birth; but the principle of respect
for the Law and for Liberty exercised, as yet, so incomplete and
feeble an empire upon men's minds, that the anarchical
fermentation of opinions prolonged themselves even after the
victory. The doctrine of Religious Liberty, in particular, was
more than once lost sight of and violated: in February, 1831, the
funeral ceremonies in the church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois,
celebrated in commemoration of the Duke de Berri, who had been
assassinated eleven years previously, was not allowed to be
tranquilly celebrated; a violent and riotous mob sacked the
archiepiscopal palace of Paris, and was the cause of the church,
which had furnished them with a pretext for violence, being
closed for many months.
{xlvii}
In 1848, on the contrary, during a revolutionary crisis which set
men's passions far more furiously in movement, and which was more
profound than that of 1830, neither the liberty of Religion nor
the peace of the churches was disturbed; the ruling authorities
were exposed to anarchy for a longer period, but the rights of
the individual were respected, and he might affirm himself free
even in the midst of the public troubles and perils. Thirty-four
years of civil Liberty have not disappeared with the governments
which were then in force without leaving their traces; their
traditions and their examples have evidently exercised a salutary
influence both upon the last Revolution, and upon the Reaction
which put an end to it.
That this influence may still surmount the great trials through
which governments and people may have both to pass, two things
are necessary: the one is, that civil liberty should form real
citizens, that nations as well as governments should learn to
make use of their rights, and to submit to the limits imposed by
their laws; the other is, that each country and ruling power, at
the same time that they are culling the fruits of civil liberty,
should accept its inconveniences and its perils.
{xlviii}
A free government is not exempt from either vices or dangers; it
does not dispense men from the necessity of contemplating with
resignation the imperfection of every work of man as well as of
every human situation.
Free institutions are not of themselves enough: they leave room
to nations for--what do I say? they demand from them--great
activity and much responsibility. If nations strive to elude
their part of responsibility and omit to exercise their share of
action, free institutions become idle words; they are no longer
anything but a picture-frame without the picture--a drama
written, not represented--in which the actors fail to assume
their parts or to co-operate to produce the _dénouement_.