SHOWING HOW IRRELIGION HAD BECOME A GENERAL AND DOMINANT PASSION
AMONGST THE FRENCH OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND WHAT INFLUENCE
THIS FACT HAD ON THE CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION.
From the time of the great Revolution of the sixteenth century, when
the spirit of free inquiry undertook to decide which were false and
which were true among the different traditions of Christianity, it had
never ceased to engender certain minds of a more curious or a bolder
stamp, who contested or rejected them all. The same spirit that, in
the days of Luther, had at once driven several millions of Catholics
out of the pale of Catholicism, continued to drive in individual cases
some few Christians out of the pale of Christianity itself. Heresy was
followed by unbelief.
It may be said generally that in the eighteenth century Christianity
had lost over the whole of the continent of Europe a great part of its
power; but in most countries it was rather neglected than violently
contested, and even those who forsook it did so with regret. Irreligion
was disseminated among the Courts and wits of the age; but it had not
yet penetrated into the hearts of the middle and lower classes. It was
still the caprice of some leading intellects, not the opinion of the
vulgar. ‘It is a prejudice commonly diffused throughout Germany,’ said
Mirabeau, in 1787, ‘that the Prussian provinces are full of atheists;
when, in truth, although some freethinkers are to be met with there,
the people of those parts are as much attached to religion as in the
most superstitious countries, and even a great number of fanatics are
to be found there.’ To this he added, that it was much to be regretted
that Frederick II. had not sanctioned the marriage of the Catholic
clergy, and, above all, had refused to leave those priests who married
in possession of the income of their ecclesiastical preferment; ‘a
measure,’ he continued, ‘which we should have ventured to consider
worthy of the great man.’ Nowhere but in France had irreligion become a
general passion, fervid, intolerant, and oppressive.
There the state of things was such as had never occurred before. In
other times, established religions had been attacked with violence;
but the ardour evinced against them had always taken rise in the zeal
inspired by a new faith. Even the false and detestable religions of
antiquity had not had either numerous or passionate adversaries until
Christianity arose to supplant them; till then they were quietly and
noiselessly dying out in doubt and indifference--dying, in fact, the
death of religions, by old age. But in France the Christian religion
was attacked with a sort of rage, without any attempt to substitute any
other belief. Continuous and vehement efforts having been made to expel
from the soul of man the faith that had filled it, the soul was left
empty. A mighty multitude wrought with ardour at this thankless task.
That absolute incredulity in matters of religion which is so contrary
to the natural instincts of man, and places his soul in so painful a
condition, appeared attractive to the masses. That which until then
had only produced the effect of a sickly languor, began to generate
fanaticism and a spirit of propagandism.
The occurrence of several great writers, all disposed to deny the
truths of the Christian religion, can hardly be accepted as a
sufficient explanation of so extraordinary an event. For how, it may
be asked, came all these writers, every one of them, to turn their
talents in this direction rather than any other? Why, among them all,
cannot one be found who took it into his head to support the other
side? and, finally, how was it that they found the ears of the masses
far more open to listen to them than any of their predecessors had
done, and men’s minds so inclined to believe them? The efforts of all
these writers, and above all their success, can only be explained by
causes altogether peculiar to their time and their country. The spirit
of Voltaire had already been long in the world: but Voltaire himself,
in truth, could never have attained his supremacy, except in the
eighteenth century and in France.
It must first be acknowledged that the Church was not more open to
attack in France than elsewhere. The corruptions and abuses which had
been allowed to creep into it were less, on the contrary, there than in
most other Catholic countries. The Church of France was infinitely more
tolerant than it had ever been previously and than the Church still was
in other nations. Consequently, the peculiar causes of this phenomenon
must be looked for less in the condition of religion itself than in
that of society.
For the thorough comprehension of this fact, what was said in the
preceding chapter must not be lost sight of--namely, that the whole
spirit of political opposition excited by the corruption of the
Government, not being able to find a vent in public affairs, had taken
refuge in literature, and that the writers of the day had become the
real leaders of the great party which tended to overthrow the social
and political institutions of the country.
This being well understood, the question is altered. We no longer ask
in what the Church of that day erred as a religious institution, but
how far it stood opposed to the political revolution which was at hand,
and how it was more especially irksome to the writers who were the
principal promoters of this revolution.
The Church, by the first principles of her ecclesiastical government,
was adverse to the principles which they were desirous of establishing
in civil government. The Church rested principally upon tradition; they
professed great contempt for all institutions based upon respect for
the past. The Church recognised an authority superior to individual
reason; they appealed to nothing but that reason. The Church was
founded upon a hierarchy: they aimed at an entire subversion of ranks.
To have come to a common understanding it would have been necessary
for both sides to have recognised the fact, that political society and
religious society, being by nature essentially different, cannot be
regulated by analogous laws. But at that time they were far enough from
any such conclusion; and it was fancied that, in order to attack the
institutions of the State, those of the Church must be destroyed which
served as their foundation and their model.
Moreover, the Church was itself the first of the political powers of
the time; and, although not the most oppressive, the most hated; for
she had contrived to mix herself up with those powers, without having
any claim to that position either by her nature or her vocation; she
often sanctioned in them the very defects she blamed elsewhere; she
covered them with her own sacred inviolability, and seemed desirous of
rendering them as immortal as herself. An attack upon the Church was
sure at once to chime in with the strong feeling of the public.
But, besides these general reasons, the literary men of France had more
special, and, so to say, personal reasons for attacking the Church
in the first instance. The Church represented precisely that portion
of the Government which stood nearest and most directly opposed to
themselves. The other powers of the State were only felt by them from
time to time; but the ecclesiastical authority being specially employed
in keeping watch over the progress of thought, and the censorship of
books, was a daily annoyance to them. By defending the common liberties
of the human mind against the Church, they were combating in their own
cause, and they began by bursting the shackles which pressed most
closely upon themselves.
Moreover, the Church appeared to them to be, and was, in fact, the most
open and the worst defended side of all the vast edifice which they
were assailing. Her strength had declined at the same time that the
temporal power of the Crown had increased. After having been first the
superior of the temporal powers, then their equal, she had come down
to be their client; and a sort of reciprocity had been established
between them. The temporal powers lent the Church their material force,
whilst the Church lent them her moral authority; they caused the Church
to be obeyed, the Church caused them to be respected--a dangerous
interchange of obligations in times of approaching revolution, and
always disadvantageous to a power founded not upon constraint but upon
faith.
Although the Kings of France still called themselves the eldest sons
of the Church, they fulfilled their obligations towards her most
negligently: they evinced far less ardour in her protection than in the
defence of their own government. They did not, it is true, permit any
direct attack upon her, but they suffered her to be transfixed from a
distance by a thousand shafts.
The sort of semi-constraint which was at that time imposed upon the
enemies of the Church, instead of diminishing their power, augmented
it. There are times when the restraint imposed on literature succeeds
in arresting the progress of opinions; there are others when it
accelerates their course: but a species of control similar to that
then exercised over the press, has invariably augmented its power a
hundredfold.
Authors were persecuted enough to excite compassion--not enough to
inspire them with terror. They suffered from that kind of annoyance
which irritates to opposition, not from the heavy yoke which crushes.
The prosecutions directed against them, which were almost always
dilatory, noisy, and vain, appeared less calculated to prevent their
writing than to excite them to the task. A complete liberty of the
press would have been less prejudicial to the Church.
‘You consider our intolerance more favourable to the progress of the
mind than your unlimited liberty,’ wrote Diderot to David Hume in 1768.
‘D’Holbach, Helvetius, Morelet, and Suard, are not of your opinion.’
Yet it was the Scotchman who was right; he possessed the experience of
the free country in which he lived. Diderot looked upon the matter as a
literary man--Hume, as a politician.
If the first American who might be met by chance, either in his own
country or abroad, were to be stopped and asked whether he considered
religion useful to the stability of the laws and the good order of
society, he would answer, without hesitation, that no civilised
society, but more especially none in a state of freedom, can exist
without religion. Respect for religion is, in his eyes, the greatest
guarantee of the stability of the State and of the safety of the
community. Those who are ignorant of the science of government know
that fact at least. Yet there is not a country in the world where
the boldest doctrines of the philosophers of the eighteenth century,
on political subjects, have been more adopted than in America: their
anti-religious doctrines alone have never been able to make way there,
even with the advantage of an unlimited liberty of the press.
As much may be said of the English.[71] French irreligious philosophy
had been preached to them even before the greater part of the French
philosophers were born. It was Bolingbroke who set up Voltaire.
Throughout the eighteenth century infidelity had celebrated champions
in England. Able writers and profound thinkers espoused that cause, but
they were never able to render it triumphant as in France; inasmuch as
all those who had anything to fear from revolutions eagerly came to the
rescue of the established faith. Even those who were the most mixed
up with the French society of the day, and who did not look upon the
doctrines of French philosophy as false, rejected them as dangerous.
Great political parties, as is always the case in free countries,
were interested in attaching their cause to that of the Church; and
Bolingbroke himself became the ally of the bishops. The clergy,
animated by these examples, and never finding itself deserted, combated
manfully in its own cause. The Church of England, in spite of the
defects of its constitution, and the abuses of every kind that swarmed
within it, supported the shock victoriously. Authors and orators
rose within it, and applied themselves with ardour to the defence of
Christianity. The theories hostile to that religion, after having been
discussed and refuted, were finally rejected by the action of society
itself, and without any interference on the part of the Government.
It is not necessary, however, to seek examples beyond France itself.
What Frenchman would ever think in our times of writing such books as
those of Diderot or Helvetius? Who would read them now? and, it may
almost be said, who even knows their titles? The imperfect experience
of public life which France has acquired during the last sixty
years has been sufficient to disgust the French with this dangerous
literature. It is only necessary to see how much the respect for
religion has gradually resumed its sway among the different classes
of the nation, according as each of them acquired that experience in
the rude school of Revolution. The old nobility, which was the most
irreligious class before 1789, became the most fervent after 1793: it
was the first infected, and the first cured. When the _bourgeoisie_
felt itself struck down in its triumph, it began also, in its turn,
gradually to revert to religious faith. Little by little, respect for
religion penetrated to all the classes in which men had anything to
lose by popular disturbances; and infidelity disappeared, or at least
hid its head more and more, as the fear of revolutions arose.
But this was by no means the case at the time immediately preceding the
Revolution of 1789. The French had so completely lost all practical
experience in the great affairs of mankind, and were so thoroughly
ignorant of the part held by religion in the government of empires,
that infidelity first established itself in the minds of the very men
who had the greatest and most pressing personal interest in keeping
the State in order and the people in obedience. Not only did they
themselves embrace it, but in their blindness they disseminated it
below them. They made impiety the pastime of their vacant existence.
The Church of France, so prolific down to that period in great orators,
when she found herself deserted by all those who ought to have rallied
by a common interest to her cause, became mute. It seemed at one time
that, provided she retained her wealth and her rank, she was ready to
renounce her faith.
As those who denied the truths of Christianity spoke aloud, and those
who still believed held their peace, a state of things was the result
which has since frequently occurred again in France, not only on the
question of religion, but in very different matters. Those who still
preserved their ancient belief, fearing to be the only men who still
remained faithful to it, and more afraid of isolation than of error,
followed the crowd without partaking its opinions. Thus, that which was
still only the feeling of a portion of the nation, appeared to be the
opinion of all, and, from that very fact, seemed irresistible even to
those who had themselves given it this false appearance.
The universal discredit into which every form of religious belief had
fallen, at the end of the last century, exercised without any doubt the
greatest influence upon the whole of the French Revolution: it stamped
its character. Nothing contributed more to give its features that
terrible expression which they wore.
In seeking to distinguish between the different effects which
irreligion at that time produced in France, it may be seen that it was
rather by disturbing men’s minds than by degrading their hearts, or
even corrupting their morals, that it disposed the men of that day to
go to such strange excesses.
When religion thus deserted the souls of men, it did not leave them, as
is frequently the case, empty and debilitated. They were filled for the
time with sentiments and ideas that occupied its place, and did not, at
first, allow them to be utterly prostrate.
If the French who effected the Revolution were more incredulous than
those of the present day in matters of religion, at least they had one
admirable faith which the present generation has not. They had faith
in themselves. They never doubted of the perfectibility and power of
man: they were burning with enthusiasm for his glory: they believed
in his worth. They placed that proud confidence in their own strength
which so often leads to error, but without which a people is only
capable of servitude: they never doubted of their call to transform
the face of society and regenerate the human race. These sentiments
and passions became like a sort of new religion to them, which, as it
produced some of those great effects which religions produce, kept them
from individual selfishness, urged them on even to self-sacrifice and
heroism, and frequently rendered them insensible to all those petty
objects which possess the men of the present day.
After a profound study of history we may still venture to affirm that
there never was a revolution, in which, at the commencement, more
sincere patriotism, more disinterestedness, more true greatness, were
displayed by so great a number of men. The nation then exhibited the
principal defect, but, at the same time, the principal ornament, which
youth possesses, or rather did possess, namely, inexperience and
generosity.
Yet irreligion had produced an enormous public evil. In most of the
great political revolutions, which, up to that period, had appeared in
the world, those who had attacked the established laws had respected
the creeds of the country; and, in the greater part of the religious
revolutions, those who attacked religion made no attempt to change, at
one blow, the nature and order of all the established authorities, and
to raze to the ground the ancient constitution of the government. In
the greatest convulsions of society one point, at least, had remained
unshaken.
But in the French Revolution, the religious laws having been abolished
at the same time that the civil laws were overthrown, the minds
of men were entirely upset: they no longer knew either to what to
cling, or where to stop; and thus arose a hitherto unknown species of
revolutionists, who carried their boldness to a pitch of madness, who
were surprised by no novelty and arrested by no scruple, and who never
hesitated to put any design whatever into execution. Nor must it be
supposed that these new beings have been the isolated and ephemeral
creation of a moment, and destined to pass away as that moment passed.
They have since formed a race of beings which has perpetuated itself,
and spread into all the civilised parts of the world, everywhere
preserving the same physiognomy, the same passions, the same character.
The present generation found it in the world at its birth: it still
remains before our eyes.
FOOTNOTE:
[71] See Note LXV., Infidelity in England.