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by blindpig » Fri Feb 14, 2020 12:29 pm
VII
Throughout the latter half of the 18th century the attention of French society was concentrated almost exclusively on literature and mainly on its more serious branches. Writers were the heroes of the day and the masters of thoughts. During that period the French had neither great generals, bold transformers nor even wise rulers. The France of Louis XV had only its books to be proud of. Indeed, it had many many books: they appeared quickly and uninterruptedly one after another; they were snatched up and devoured; they discussed the most important and interesting questions from the most varying aspects; they spoke of religion and morality, of nature and of man, of state and society, of rights and obligations, of the soul and intellectual abilities, of the English constitution and of republican benefactors, of agriculture and industry, of property and the distribution of wealth. In all these questions those books amazed their readers with the boldness and unprecedentedness of their judgements, which, in spite of their diversity, seemed without exception to be irreconcilable with the generally obligatory code of traditional doctrines and the established forms of state and social life. Blow followed blow, shattering one after another the rooted illusions in the most diversified fields of knowledge on which cherished habits, conventional ideals, trifling joys and cheap disappointments of the reading public had been bred and fostered. Each blow provoked a storm of various passions, some in society, some in the ruling spheres; and there was hardly a year which did not witness some blow, so that the minds of the readers were in constant tension and breathless alarm.
In order to form some idea of the abundance of vigorous intellectual impressions experienced by the public of the time, and of the rapidity with which the most varied impressions succeeded and superseded one another, one must examine the chronological order in which the most famous works of negative philosophy appeared. I will name only those works which have gone down in the history of literature, and that not so ouch by virtue of their absolute worth as by reason of their historical significance. Here we will therefore deal only with books which at the time made a strong and profound impression on their readers.
In 1718, Montesquieu published his L'esprit des lois (The Spirit of Laws), in which he extols the English constitution which was absolutely unlike the institutions of the old French monarchy and represented for France the most inaccessible of all possible utopias, In a year and a half the book had twenty two editions.
In the same year Diderot published his Pensees philosophiques (Philosophical Thoughts). Parliament had the book burnt. It was immediately republished and spread in secret.
Inspired by Diderot's Pensees, La Mettrie published two books at about the same time in Holland; they were permeated with such violent materialism that even Dutch society could not bear them and expelled La Mettrie. Those inadmissible books of his were called Histoire naturelle de l'ame (Natural History of the Soul), and L'homme machine (Man-Machine).
In 1749, Diderot put out his Lettres sur les aveugles (Letter on the Blind), for which he spent three months in the fort of Vincennes.
In 1749, Rousseau published his Discours sur les sciences et les arts in which he showed that civilization has spoilt man. He was awarded a prize by the Academy of Dijon and at once became renowned throughout Europe.
1751 saw the publication of the first volume of the Encyclopedie.
In 1752, the second volume of the Encyclopedie appeared and a fierce storm arose. The book was censured by Sorbonne, and the Archbishop of Paris published a pastoral letter against it. Both volumes were prohibited. The result, as Barbier, a contemporary and eye-witness tells us, was that the book was bought and read by every Paris shopkeeper and ragman,
In 1753, Diderot published his Interpretation de la nature and Rousseau his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de - I'inegalite parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men).
The third volume of the Encyclopedie came out in the same Year. The government, having fallen out with the clergy, showed a more favourable attitude to this publication.
In 1754, Condillac published his Traite des sensations. All functions of psychic activity are derived from sensuous perceptions. Psychology is reduced to the physiology of the nervous system.
In 1755, Morelli published his Code de la nature, a project for a new system of society. All people have equal rights. Children are given social education. Land and instruments of labour are common property. There is not and must not be any money. Labour is compulsory for all. Labour is proportional to ability and rewarded by its products proportionally to the needs of each one according to the formula: chacun selon ses forces, a chacun selon ses besoins (each according to his ability, to each according to his needs). it is curious to note that, after reading Code de la nature, the minister Voyer d'Argenson,14 who was over sixty years old in 1755, called it "the book of books" and rated its author much higher than Montesquieu. This d'Argenson was the one who brought into the king's council some peasant bread made of chaff and bark and said to Louis XV: "See, Sire, what kind of bread your subjects eat!" "Were I in their place I would revolt," the king answered with ready wit. If Morelli's book had such an effect on a sixty-year old minister it is not difficult to imagine how it dumbfounded younger and more impressionable readers.
In 1757, Voltaire published his Essais sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations (Essays on the Morals and the Spirit of Nations) which does not justify Buckle for calling him the greatest of European historians. In any case, there is no doubt that this book was the first attempt at the history of ordinary life and provided the foundation for all modern historiography. In it, of course, Voltaire does not lose sight of his favourite aim, for the whole book can be called a huge, shattering pamphlet of murderous wit against superstition, fanaticism, clericalism and misty abstractions.
From 1754 to 1756, the fourth, filth and sixth volumes of the Encyclopedie came out. Without betraying the main idea, its chief editors Diderot and d'Alembert endeavoured to show more caution in the matter.
The seventh volume appeared in 1757. In it, the authors, encouraged by The lull, showed more boldness. D'Alembert wrote to Voltaire that the seventh volume would be more vigorous than all its predecessors. Voltaire bowed and thanked but the clericals raised the alarm in all their publication the government took their side.
In 1758, Helvetius published his book De l'esprit (On the Reason). Sensations of physical pain and physical pleasure the sources of all human passions, sentiments and acts. Egoism is acknowledged as the only motive power in all activity, the most criminal as well as that of the loftiest honour and heroism. The name good is given to what conforms to the general interest, evil to what is contrary to that interest and undermines the existence of society. Man performs good or evil as a result of similar stimuli, i.e., as a result of the satisfaction provided or promised by a given act. A furious storm was raised against this book; the Jesuits and Jansenists15 joined forces to persecute it; the Archbishop of Paris saw with good reason the negation of free will and moral law. The Sorbonne repeated and intensified that accusation; the state procurator saw in Helvetius's book a collection of the dangerous teachings set in circulation by the Encyclopedie. Even philosophers were dissatisfied with the book; Voltaire, Diderot, Buffon and Grimm condemned it as a collection of paradoxes or ridiculed it.
In 1759, Helvetius's book w as publicly burnt by order of parliament; the censor Tercier, who allowed it to be printed was dismissed from the service. Meanwhile the book was bought up and had fifty editions in a very short time; it translated into practically every living language of Europe. Helvetius won European renown.
In the same year, a month after the burning of Helvetius's book, an investigation committee, working strenuously on the Encyclopedie, successfully terminated its work. The privileges granted by the government in 1746 for the publishing Encyclopedie were withdrawn; the sale of previous and current numbers was prohibited "in view of the fact that the derived by art and science was in no way proportions the harm done to religion and morality "
In 1759, too, Quesnay published his Essai sur l'administration des terres (essay on the Administration of Lands) with Tableau economique, published in 1758, formed the basis the theory of the physiocrats, the economists who endeavoured to direct the attention of the government to agriculture , the only source of national wealth. These economists may called the successors of Vauban and Boisguillebert. Like these two writers, they in no way rose against despotism, demanded no constitutional guarantees and only wished that the Government should become a good administrator, understanding its own interests. The tendency of the whole school was characterized by the following words which are the epigraph Quesnay's main work, Tableau economique: "Pauvres paysans, pauvre royaume; pauvre royaume, pauvre roi." (Poor peasants, poor kingdom; poor kingdom, poor king.) The means suggested by the physiocrats to eliminate poverty are now acknowledged as one-sided and unsatisfactory, the importance these writers is determined not by their positive projects, it by the negative aspect of their activity; they all constantly assured society that France was poor and was rushing to ultimate ruin. These words, supported by a number of carefully collected facts, had their effect on society, an effect which was so strong that as early as 1759, Voltaire complained in his letters that society was growing cool towards the elegance literature. "Grace and taste," he wrote, "seem to have been banished from France and superseded by entangled metaphysics and politics of dreamers, a heap of considerations on finance, trade and population, which do not give the state a single ecu or a single man more." We must assume that grace and taste bring the statehood the one and the other!
In 1761, Rousseau published his La nouvelle Heloise. Grace and taste triumphed, in spite of the success of the economists. The novel was bought up with unexampled and unbelievable rapidity. The main motives of La nouvelle Heloise were love, virtue and pastoral nature. Ladies of distinction spent whole nights in succession over the novel, forgetting the ball and their coaches which were standing ready by the entrance. So many readers appeared in the reading libraries asking for La nouvelle Heloise that a fee of twelve sous was fixed for the book, and not per day, but per hour.
In 1762, Rousseau's Emile ou de l'education was published. This book contains the famous "profession de foi du vicaire savoyard" (profession of faith of the Savoy vicar) in which Rousseau rejects the clericals on the one hand, and the materialists on the other. Brilliant success and at the same time a violent storm in clerical and governmental spheres ensued. It began to be said in parliament that the authors as well as their books should be burnt. The book was burnt, orders were given for the arrest of the author, but he fled abroad. Geneva, where he sought a haven, expelled him So did Berne. Rousseau found refuge in the duchy of Neufchatel, which then belonged to Prussia. Meanwhile, as a result of all these persecutions, the price of Emile quickly rose. The book, which cost eighteen French pounds at the beginning, came to cost two Louis d'or. A reprint was made in Holland and spread in countless copies. An officer, infatuated with the ideas of Emile wished to give up the service and take up the craft of joiner. Rousseau himself dissuaded him. Ladies of the world who had read Emile began to feed their babies themselves. This became a fashion and was done in drawing-rooms—really so that men could see. first, the treasure of motherly love, and second, the beauty of the bare breast.
In the same year, 1762, Rousseau published his book, Du contrat social ou principes du droit politique (On the Social Contract or Principles of Political Law.) In it Rousseau laid the foundations of the republican school, just as Montesquieu had laid the foundations of the constitutional school with his The Spirit of the Laws. The Contrat social later became Robespierre's vade mecum and the constitution drawn up by the Convention in 1793 was based on it. Emile and The Social Contract brought their author immense popularity. "It is difficult to express," Hume wrote from Paris in 1765, "or even to imagine the people's enthusiasm for it. Nobody ever attracted the people's attention so much. Voltaire and all the others are completely eclipsed by it." In the same year Voltaire wrote his work on tolerance in defence of Calas, who had been executed. We have already said what an impression this book made on the educated world.
In 1764, the government forbade the publication of any works whatsoever on questions concerning the management of the state.
The last ten volumes of the Encyclopedie were published in 1766. The clericals wept and stormed. The government imprisoned booksellers for a week in the Bastille. But the sale of book went on. Choiseul, the minister, and Malherbe, the director of the book trade, gave the Encyclopaedists a helping hand and contrived by various court ruses to dispose the king to leniency. The government decided to close its eyes to the sale of the Encyclopedie which was progressing wonderfully. By 1769, thirty thousand copies had been sold and the net profits of booksellers amounted to 2,660,393 French pounds, though the printing cost 1,158,958 pounds.
In the same year, 1766, Gournav published his Essai sur l'esprit de legislation favorable a l'agriculture (Essay on the Spirit of Legislation Favourable to Agriculture). Gournay belonged to the same camp as Quesnay. Once more, considerations on finances, poverty and national economy, considerations absolutely hostile to grace and taste. The book contained protests against profits, excessive taxation, persecution of the guilds, interior custom duties and petty and arbitrary government regulations.
In 1767, the government threatened with execution any writer whose works tended to excite minds. At the same time writers were. forbidden under penalty of death to discuss finance.
In 1767 again, Mercier de la Riviere published his L'ordre naturel et essentiel de sciences politiques (The Natural and Essential Order Of Political Science). The author discussed, from the point of view of the physiocrats, all sorts of questions of state management and national economy. The prohibitions and threats of the government remained a dead letter.
In 1768, Qucsnav published his Physiocratie ou constitution naturclle du government le plus avantageux au genre humain (Physiocracy or the Natural Constitution Of the government Most Favourable to Humanity). The task was conceived on broad lines, paying little attention to government prohibition.
In the same year 1768, Holbach published his book Lettres a Eugenie ou preservative contre les prejujuges (Letters to Eagenie or Preservative against Prejudices). This, like all Holbach's works, was published without the name of the author, because all his works professed unbridled materialism which horrified even many philosophers of the Voltairian school.
In 1770, Galiani' published Dialogues sur le commerce des bles (Dialogues on the Wheat Trade). This was the beginning of a polemic with the physiocrats, who concentrated all their attention on agriculture. Galiani brings forward the subject of industrial labour and of factory workers. According to Hettner this book also contains the rudiments of modern social science.
In 1770, Holbach put out his Systeme de la nature. Buckle considers its appearance as an important epoch in the history of France. It is the custom to talk of this book only with virtuous horror and indignation. Even Goethe, who was never a clericalist or a deist, said that he could hardly bear the presence of that book arid shuddered before it as before a ghost.Voltaire, Frederick the Great and D'Alembert felt profound indignation at the System of Nature. Voltaire tried to shatter it by serious arguments and light sarcasm. But the hook held out and Voltaire himself was obliged to admit in print that it had spread among all classes of society and was read by scientists, ignoramuses and women. Of all the leading figures in French literature Diderot was the only one to approve of Holbach's book.
In 1773, Beaumarchais printed his apologetic memoirs. The were burnt by the executioner and, of course, were consequently bought up twice as quickly.
In 1774, Turgot, the most remarkable of the physiocrats published his References sur la nature et l'origines lies richesses (Investigation into the Nature and Origins of Wealth).
In 1775, Beaumarchais staged his Barber of Seville in which the plebeian Figaro ridicules and makes fools of his aristocratic masters.
In 1776, Mably published his De la legislation vu principes des lois (On Legislation or the Principles of Laws), All human beings, according to him, have an equal right to develop their bilities and enjoy life. Whoever keeps for himself the superabundance necessary for the life of his neighbour, introduces into society, according to Mably, the concept of war, perverts the divine order of the world and is impious.
In 1778, the aged Voltaire arrived in Paris. He was given a reception never granted to persons of property. The demonstrations of the Parisians were so remarkable and so clearly characterized the trend of the minds at the time that I consider it necessary to quote here the words of Grimm, an eye-witness. They arc cited by Hettner in his History of the Literature of tile 18th Century.
"The famous old man went for the first time to the Academy and to the theatre today, March 31. An enormous crowd followed his coach into the very courtyards of the Louvre. All doors and all accesses to the Academy were occupied and the crowd opened only to let him pass, then closed again quickly and greeted him with loud applause. The whole of the Academy went to the first hall to meet him, an honour which was never granted to any of the members or even to foreign monarchs. He was shown to the director's chair and unanimously appointed director.... His drive from the Louvre to the the theatre resembled a public triumph. People of both sexes, of all ages and all estates crowded everywhere on the way. As soon the coach could be seen in the distance a general shout of joy went up; the applause, the clapping and the jubilation of all kinds doubled in strength as he approached. At last, when the honourable old man, laden with so many years and such renown, was seen, and as he alighted from the coach supported by two men, the emotion and wonder reached their peak. All the streets, the steps and balconies of all the houses and all the windows were crowded with spectators and hardly had the coach stopped when they all tried to climb on to the top of the coach and the wheels to see the famous man close up. In theatre itself, where Voltaire was shown to the royal chamberlains' box, the joyful crowd seemed to be even denser. He sat between Madame Denis and Madame de Vilette. Brisard, the most famous of the actors, handed the ladies a laurel wreath with the request to crown the old man. But Voltaire immediately laid the wreath aside, although the public by clapping and loud acclamations from all parts of the hall pressed him to keep it on his head. All the women stood up. The hall was dark with dust from the surging of the human mass. Only with difficulty could the play begin.... When the curtain went down the tumult began again. The old man rose from hius seat to thank the public and at that moment a bust of the man appeared on a pedestal in the middle of the stage an the actors and actresses surrounded it with wreaths of flowers and garlands in their hands, while the soldiers who had ta part in the play stood in the background. Voltaire's name on all lips like a cry of joy, gratitude and wonder. Envy and hatred, fanaticism and intolerance were obliged to forget their malignance and perhaps for the first time one saw public opinion in France freely develop with great brilliancy. Brisard placed the first wreath on the bust, the other actors follow his example, and finally Madame Vestris read to the hero some verses by the Marquis Saint-Marc which said with solemnity that it was France that had awarded him the laurel wreath. The moment Voltaire left the theatre was almost more moving than his entrance. He seemed to be neighed down by the burden of years and of laurels. The coachman was asked to drive very slowly so that the coach could be followed. A large part of the crowd followed him, shouting without ceasing: 'Long live Voltaire!'"
Naturally, after this triumph, there was not a working man in the whole of Paris who did not know Voltaire's name and did not have at least a very general and vague idea of his services. Every working man knew at least that Voltaire was a writer and that a writer by his work can become the idol and pride of a whole people. It is in itself very important and remarkable when the same name is repeated and blessed by all sections of society. '
Two months after his triumphal procession Voltaire died. To avoid all sorts of expressive demonstrations the government forbade actors to play any of Voltaire's dramas for a certain time and did not allow the journalists to mention his death. Meanwhile, events were taking their course and the situation was getting tenser every year. I shall end my chronological enumeration with the following three facts.
In 1781, the minister Necker printed his Compte rendu (Account) on the position of French finances. The account tended to break the resistance of the privileged classes and of the king himself under the pressure of public opinion. Therefore, it was purely a revealing document and it made a shattering impression on society. More than 6,000 copies were sold on the very first day and then the uninterrupted work of two printing shops could not satisfy all demands from the capital, the provinces and abroad. Necker's Account was in every priest's pocket and every lady's boudoir. The sale of another work by ticker, Administration des finances, amounted to 80,000 copies.
On April 27, 1784, Beaumarchais' comedy The Marriage of Figaro was played for the first time. "From early in the morning," says Hettner, "the Theatre Francais was besieged by the masses. Distinguished ladles had their midday meal in the theatre boxes so as to be sure of good places; reliable reports say that three persons were crushed in the crowd. It was a thing unheard of in the history of the theatre. Sixty-eight performances followed without interruption."
Grimm defines the importance of Beaumarchais' comedies , follows: "Much that is true has been said of the great influence of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopaedists, but the people itself does not know these writers very well. The performances of The Marriage of Figaro and the Barber irrevocably delivered the government, the tribunals, the nobility and the financial world to the judgement of the whole population, of all towns large and small."
In 1787, Archbishop Lomenie de Brienne of Toulouse, who at the time was prime minister, presented to the Paris Parliament a royal edict granting the Protestants all the civil rights which had so far been enjoyed only by Catholics. The parliament, notwithstanding its oppositional tendencies at that time, unquestioningly recorded the edict in the proceedings and thus gave it force of law. In this way the king, the parliament and the church in the person of the Archbishop of Toulouse acknowledged the necessity of complete tolerance. France owed such an unprecedented miracle exclusively to her literature, which had quietly and unnoticeably transformed all conceptions not only in society, but even in higher governmental spheres. Louis XVI was also the son of his time and the role of Louis XIV was not only beyond his abilities, but also inconsistent with his convictions. The old system had be come loathesome even to the king himself.
VIII
The terse chronological summary in the preceding chapter was necessary so that the reader could embrace in a general view all the various intellectual impressions experienced by readers in France and after them by all thinkers in Europe in the second half of the last century. If the reader examines this summary attentively he will discern three different trends of ideas, three directions operating on minds with equal force and at the same time.
First, the work of the economists, Quesnay, Gournay, Marcier de la Riviera, and many others. These people patiently, attentively and conscientiously criticized the parts and branches of the feudal system which affected France's economy and her production forces. Often these writers had not sufficient broadness of view, but on the other hand, they always had an excellent knowledge of the facts they spoke of. They can be reproached with one-sidedness, but they can never be suspected of superficial dilettantism.
Second, the works of the Encyclopaedists, who continued Voltaire's work and shattered the last principles of clericalism and pietism.
Third, the work of writers who painted vivid pictures of the general prosperity which man had to strive for, but which could not be attained under the existing old institutions. The next forceful representative of the last trend was Jean Jacques Rousseau.
I will not dwell on the economists, firstly, because in order to do I would first have to go into very detailed investigations of the the economic absurdities of the old French monarchy and, secondly, because as early as 1776 the ideas of the French physiocrats were fully refuted by Adam Smith's remarkable hook on the national wealth. As Quesnay's principal work, Tableau economique, was published in 1758, the influence of the physiocrats did not last more than eighteen years. Their principal mistake consisted in considering the land as the only source of national wealth and the work of the tiller of the land as the only productive labour, entitled to exclusive encouragement from the state. The word physiocracy means the rule of nature. French economists of the last century gave their doctrine that name because they were determined to attach decisive preponderance to interests based on the land, the soil, the production forces of nature itself.
The influence of the representatives of social theories and of the Encyclopaedists was much more extensive. Their ideas profoundly stirred the whole of Europe and were presented in ever new forms, they still operate and develop even in our times. That is why I consider it necessary to dwell here first on Rousseau's activity, and then on the outlook of the Encyclopaedists.
At present all or nearly all people who think are convinced that mankind is always going forward, perfecting and developing itself. Whoever recognizes the theory of progress also knows that progress is achieved not by the whim of individual personalities, but by the universal and immutable laws of nature. But in the understanding of both these great ideas— progress and laws of nature—we must be careful to avoid two absurd extremities which involve the most senseless optimism. Mankind is progressing, that is true; but we must in no way think that every step mankind makes must necessarily be a step forward, or that every movement is towards improvement. On the contrary: mankind does not move forward in a straight line, but by zigzags: every success is paid for by a number of erroneous attempts. It is true that mistakes are not completely useless, for they increase our stock of experience and safeguard us to a certain extent from mistakes in the future; but still. mistakes are mistakes and the moment a nation pursues a shadow or deviates front its substantial profit we can by no means affirm that it is acting very reasonably and that its cause is improving.
The same can be said of the laws of nature. It must not be affirmed that individual personalities, by their acts, their personal qualities, the constitution of their minds and the peculiarities of their character cannot influence the general course of events either for good or for bad. On the contrary, individual personalities are constantly acting, for good or for bad, but their influence is reciprocally balanced and becomes imperceptible if we consider a sufficiently large period of time, for example, thousands of years. If we could cast our eyes at Europe's position in the year 2866, for instance, we would, of course, be unable to determine in what direction Napoleon I's personal character and military talent affected European civilization. All the effects of his influence would be smoothed out and in thousands of years Europe would have traversed the very road which it hard to traverse according to the eternal immutable laws of nature. But if now, in 1866, you presume to affirm that Napoleon I's intelligence and character had no influence at all on the course of events, you will be told that if for example, Napoleon I had had less military talent and vanity and more wisdom, the whole of Europe would have enjoyed profound peace in 1807 and there would not have been the raging Catholic reaction which was able to develop in all its splendour only thanks to the protection of victorious legitimism. Napoleon had his historic task, which was not particularly enviable and brilliant but which could be carried ant either well or badly. After the revolution had been halted when in full swing, military dictatorship became at first possible and then inevitable: but reasonable use could hove been made of it just as it could have been used in an absurd way; this or that use of the doctrine depended in no way on great and general principles, but simply on the personal peculiarities of the dictator. Napoleon fulfilled his task in an abominably bad way and people who had to live during the following ten years felt by experience the bad effects of his mistakes. The same can be said of every other historic task which has fallen to the lot of an individual personality: each task can be carried out very well or very badly or very badly, or pretty badly. In the middle of the 18th century a great task was on the order of the day. It was a question of directing against the feudal state the negation which in the first half of the century had operated exclusively against the clerical party. It had to be proclaimed to the World that it was time to pass from bold words to bold acts. It was Rousseau who fulfilled that task. His words were loud and attractive enough. People roused themselves, and the prospects of a new life opened before them. And yet it cannot but be regretted that Rousseau was the man who was fated to carry out this capital task. One cannot deny that it would
been very profitable for Europe if Rousseau had died in the prime of life without having had a line printed. Rousseau resolved the task, but he left in his solution traces of his efferminate, whimpering, whimsical, nebulous petty and at times time false, ambiguous and pharisaical personality. Rousseau had the talent, the intelligence and the passions necessary to carry out the task. But besides that he had a multitude of infirmities, weaknesses, vulgar and vile features which it would have been very convenient for the founder of French social science and very profitable for his cause not have. For instance, there was no need at all for Rousseau to suffer from a disorder of the bladder and chronic sleeplessness. The cause of the general reorganization would probably have profited if its first master had been a man of perfect health, vigour, gaiety, activity and endurance.
My readers will be horrified or amused. Can one talk about the bladder in connection with the solution of a very important historic task? What has Rousseau's bladder to do with Emile or The Social Contract? Unfortunately, these things have more points of contact than you, Messrs. Idealists, can imagine. I shall prove it by Rousseau's own words. In 1752, there was a very successful performance of Rousseau's comic opera The Village Fortune-Teller at the court theatre. The king, who liked the music very much, expressed the wish that Rousseau be introduced to him. Here Rousseau's bladder came into action. "My first thought," Rousseau says in his Confessions, "after I heard of the introduction, was that of the frequent need to leave the room from which I had suffered very much that evening at the performance and which could torment me the next day when I was in the gallery or the king's apartment, surrounded by all the grandees, waiting for his Majesty's entrance. This infirmity was the main cause which kept me away from all society and which prevented my paying visits to ladies. The mere thought of the predicament in which that need could place me had such an effect on me that it made me feel sick lest I would create a scandal, to| which I would have preferred death. Only people who know this condition can judge of the fear of such a risk." Rousseau himself, you see, admits that this infirmity was the main cause which kept him away from people. It must be noted that he had felt a continual uneasiness in society from in society from his very early childhood. This perfectly definite fear was in the end to produce in him a general constraint and shyness, which made him the object of the jokes and mockery of his comrades; as a result of this, his shyness increased and to it was added a malicious mistrust towards people and, as an undertone to this mistrust; a sentimental yearning for some better sort of people who would be kind, full of feeling, sensitive and tearful. All Rousseau's Confessions are one long and boring complaint that people cannot understand him, cannot love him, try all means to hurt him, form conspiracies against him and cause his splendid soul suffering that they, common vulgar people, cannot even understand. And Rousseau bends all his effort to be indifferent to people and to retire to the desert, into the womb of Mother Nature who prevents nobody from leaving the room.. But Rousseau was so petty that he was completely unable to show indifference to people; he was alarmed by every society gossip, however innocent or stupid; he saw insult for himself in every word and every glance, at every step, he, a recluse and a sage, took offense and offered explanations, displayed his dignity, whimpered, wept, threw himself into people's arms and in general bored all his acquaintances to such an extent that his presence did indeed begin to weigh on everybody. Rousseau hated the society in which he lived, but in his hatred there nothing lofty or noble. What he hated in it was not those huge obstacles that paralyse useful activity, but only trifling imperfections of individual persons, the lack of feeling of the malignant Diderot, the rigour of the rascal Holbach, the haughtiness of the brute Grimm, the lack of sincerity of the vile D'Epinay. In the radical Rousseau's Confessions, you will not find a single vigorous or profound political note, but you will find an abundance of imaginary considerations on the crafty intrigues Diderot and Holbach against the reputation of the meek and virtuous Jean-Jacques.
The political flabbiness of the radical Rousseau was such that for some petty personal reason he attacked Diderot in print and publicly declared that he had broken with him at very time when Diderot, as editor of the Encyclopedie, to bear the main weight of persecution from the government and the clericals. Saint-Lambert, to whom Rousseau, out of old friendship, sent a venomous pamphlet, answered him with a crushing letter which no one would like to receive from an old friend. "Truly, Monsieur, I cannot accept the present you have just sent me. At the place in your preface here, referring to Diderot, you quote a passage of Ecclesiastes, the book dropped out of my hands.... You are not aware of the persecutions he has to suffer and there you fo and mingle the voice of an old friend with cries of envy. I confess, Monsieur, that I cannot hide from you how revolting this atrocity is to me... Monsieur, we differ too much principles to be ever able to agree. Forget that I exist, must not be difficult for you.... I promise you, Monsieur, to forget your person and to remember only your talent." And Rousseau complacently quoted this letter in his Confessions considering that he was the victim of human perversion.
Rousseau's infirmity Made him love solitude, and solitude developed the habit of dreaming. Rousseau himself relates how in the forest of Montmorency he surrounded himself with ideal beings and shed sweet tears over the great benefactors Julie and Saint-Preux, heroes of La Nouvelle Heloise. Infirmity inspired Rousseau with aversion for an active and agitated life; at a time when everything around him was seething with furious struggle, Rousseau himself dreamed only of how he could find himself a quiet corner and build up a gentle idyll around himself. As struggle requiring continual and various clashes faith people was definitely beyond the strength of an invalid dreamer, he could never develop any passion for an aim that could only be achieved only by obstinate and prolonged fight. Rousseau, the idol of the Jacobins, had no definite aim in life. He had no desire to impress upon the consciousness of people any idea of any kind. Had he had that desire would have written until his last breath like Voltaire and would have arranged his life in the way required by the convenience of writing and printing. But he did not. He gave up literary activity as soon as he had the possibility of living a quiet life on what he had earned. In his choice of a place of residence he paid attention only to the beauty surrounding nature and not at all to the degree of freec which the printed word enjoyed in the given country. Would you not like to admire the ideal of a happy life painted by Rousseau's own hand?
"The age of romantic projects having passed and the vapours of petty vanity having inebriated rather than flatter me, the last hope that remained was to live without discomfort in eternal leisure. That is the life of the blessed in the other world and was henceforth my bliss In this world." “The idleness which I love is not that of the lazy man who remains with his arms folded in total inaction and thinks no more than he acts. It is that of the child, incessantly in motion without accomplishing anything, or that of a babbler whose head gets busy as soon as his hands are at rest. I like to be constantly engaged in doing trifles; to begin a hundred things without finishing one; to come and go as I feel like it, to change my plan at every instant; to observe a fly in everything it does; to try to root up a rock; to set without any fear about a work of ten years and give it up at end of ten minutes; finally to muse the whole day without any order or consistency and to follow in everything but whim of the moment."
It would be difficult to find another famous man who would publicly admire his own worthlessness and flaccidity with such frank complacency. You see from lain own words that when he wrote Emile and The Social Contract he was only inebriating himself with the vapours of petty vanity. The vapours have now dispersed and Rousseau understands the the eternal idleness of the child is his real vocation. Unable to lie a hero or a fighter, neither can Rousseau appreciate fighters or heroes. Strength, energy, boldness, insistence, elasticity, resourcefulness, tirelessness—all these qualities, which are precious in the eyes of the fighter, mean nothing all to Rousseau. He attaches value onlv to fine feelings, outpourings of emotion, the purity of a purposeful heart, the meekness of dove-like morals, the capacity to feel, revere, and shed burning tears of rapture. He is in love with some kind of virtue and wants all people to be as virtuous as possible but at the same time he thinks himself a very virtuous and is even moved to tears over the beauty of his soul. All this clearly shows that the virtue in which Rousseau has fallen in love with consists only in the subtleness of fine feelings, because that virtue did not present him from putting five of his own children into a home for waifs and in general did not induce him to perform a single act which was at all remarkable or anything that even remotely resembled the great feats of philanthropy accomplished by the malicious mocker Voltaire who never printed a single word about virtue.
So Rousseau's ideal was completely false; the yardstick with which he measured people's worth was completely useless. This false ideal and this useless yardstick, which owed their origin to the sickly condition of their author, cast a completely false shade on Rousseau's most remarkable works— /i]Emile and The Social Contract. In the person of his ideal educator, Emile, Rousseau trains not a citizen, not a thinker, not I hero in the great struggle which must reorganize and renovate society, but only a healthy and innocent child that will be able to preserve its innocence and health till death against the intrigues of society. Rousseau has an extreme fear of his Emile spending the night in the embraces of Camelia; but he has not the slightest fear of all Emile's life passing away fruitlessly in the sleepy idyllic improvidence which by age of thirty will turn him into an Afanasy Ivanovich. In The Social Contract Rousseau considers it necessary for the legislator and the government to make citizens virtuous. This desire sows in his ideal state the seeds of the most vicious clerical despotism. Rousseau thinks that people must be taught virtue artificially. That is an enormous mistake. Every heaIthy man is good and virtuous as tong as his natural requirements are satisfied to a sufficient extent. But when organic demands are unsatisfied, the animal instinct of self-preservation is aroused in man; it is always in him and it is necessarily always stronger than all grafted moral considerations. No virtuous suggestions will ever resist this instinct It is therefore useless for the state to waste time and energy on suggestions which in some cases are unnecessary and in others are powerless. The state fulfils its task to complete satisfaction when it shows Concern only for its citizens being healthy, well fed,and free, i.e., when it assures that all over the country they have pure air to breathe, that they do not contract marriage at too early an age, that they all have every opportunity for work and for sufficient use of the product of their work, and finally, that they can all acquire positive knowledge which will free them from the ruinous mystifications of all sorts of charlatans and wonder-workers. If the state does not confine itself to this, if it intrudes on the domain of convictions and moral conceptions, if it tries to impose on the citizens lofty feelings and praiseworthy desires, it makes the citizens dull and changes them into either obedient children or hypocrites without conscience. Official concern about virtue opens a wide road to religious persecution. This eve can see even in Rousseau's theoretical treatise. The fourth book of The Social Contract says that religion must exist in the state and must be obligatory for all citizens. Whoever does not recognize the state religion must be expelled from the state, not as an impious man, but as a violator of the law. Whoever recognizes that religion, but at the same time acts contrary to it, risks execution as a man who has lied before the law. By these two principles you can justify and legalize anything you like—the dragonnades, the Inquisition, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and in general every possible form of religious persecution. The Duke of Alba, Torquemada, and Le Tellier can cover up all their misdeeds with the argument that they punish not heretics but offenders against the state. This was precisely the argument by which persecutions against the Catholics were justified in England under Elizabeth. Following Rousseau's principles Robespierre had executed on the scaffold many people who were of great use to France, for example Danton, Desmoulins, Chaumette, Anacharsis Cloots. Admittedly, he accused them of various conspiracies and relations with Pitt, but it is hardly probable that he himself believed in the existence of those conspiracies. The real root of his hatred for those people was the fact that they were sceptics, and as a result, Robespierre, a docile pupil of Rousseau, qualified them as unworthy to live in the virtuous French Republic.
IX
Of the Encyclopaedists I will take only Diderot and Holbach. Both of them were healthy, merry, hard-working men, boundlessly devoted to their ideas. Both were much younger than Voltaire: Diderot nineteen years and Holbach twenty-nine. Diderot was brought up in a Jesuit college and at first wanted to join the clergy, but later, when his abilities developed, he completely gave up that intention, and devoted himself with special ardour to mathematics and ancient and modern languages; finally, he resolutely declared to his father that he would not choose a definite profession. His father, bourgeois of wealth and substance, was angry with him and thought he would intimidate him by privations. Diderot remained in Paris without any money at all and began to pursue literary work on the orders of booksellers. Then he entered into a marriage of love with a poor girl and thus completely estranged his father. Finally, in 1746, he made an agreement with Lebreton, a bookseller who held privileges for the publishing of a French translation of Chamber's Encyclopaedia but had nobody at hand who could undertake the translation. Diderot, who at the time was thirty-three years old and had long felt himself capable of undertaking a big and important work, advised Lebreton to put out an original French encyclopaedia and drew up on extensive plan for it. His idea was not to give French society some dead collection of technical terms and disconnected facts, but a work which would contain all the philosophy of the century and would clearly show the vital significance of the new world outlook, boldly declaring war on clerical despotism.
The work began in 1749 and continued until 1766. During the first years Diderot shared the editorial work with D'Alembert, but in 1757, when the seventh volume of the Encyclopedie roused stormy opposition, D'Alembert thought it prudent to retire from such a dangerous undertaking and all the burden of editorial work and responsibility fell upon Diderot alone. His collaborators were subject to continual fits of cowardice; Lebreton, in order to avoid clashes with the authorities, would allow himself to attenuate expressions in the articles which he thought too trenchant, and Diderot had to even out and arrange all this, to encourage the contributors, curb the bookseller, who was concerned only with profit, to maintain friendly relations and a subtle policy with the authorities, to make use of ruses and concessions in some articles and to make up for those concessions in others. All this he did with brilliant success. At the same time he was so conscientious in even the smallest details of his work that in order to find a satisfactory description for the different trades and professions, he used to spend whole days in workshops, examining the different machines with the greatest attention and mastering all the technical methods of the workers. The booksellers, as we saw above, made more than two and a half million French pounds net profit on the Encyclopedie, but for his whole seventeen years' work Diderot receiveed only a lump sum of twenty thousand pounds and too thousand five hundred pounds on each volume. For the rest, Diderot fostered no selfish aims; he gave his friends the most generous help with his money and his pen; he was always willing to improve or recast other writers' manuscripts or to write prefaces to them and generally he scattered numerous brilliant thoughts in various books of fellow-thinkers. The question, he often said, is not who does a thing, I or somebody else, but only that it must be done and well done.
Diderot did not acquire his philosophical convictions al1 at once. He bought them at the price of heavy doubts and protracted intellectual struggle. His works point out three phases in his development. In 1745 he wrote Essai sur le merite et sur la vertu in which he is a philosophizing Catholic and tries to prove that virtue can be based only on religion
In 17471/47, in his Strolls of a Sceptic he plunges, to use Hettner's expression, into the abyss of great doubt and affirms that man's life has not other aim than sensuous delight. Then attempts to save something of his former beliefs, and some time Diderot becomes a deist; but these attempts do not bring him satisfaction and from 1749 to the end of his life he is an extreme materialist. All his works published in Encyclopedie are permeated with these last convictions. He said at his death in 1784 that doubt is the beginning of Philosphy. Those were his last words.
Baron d'Holbach, a rich man who received a thorough education in Paris, pursued natural sciences, particularly chemistry, gave wonderful dinners for philosophers and helped with his extensive knowledge. He wrote articles on chemistry for the Encyclopedie and published materialistic books to which he never signed his name. His famous Systeme la nature was published when he was already forty years old. He was helped in some parts of this work by Diderot. Considering the horror with which this book inspired the whole of philosophizing Europe, we may positively afirm that Systeme de la nature was the last and highest peak in the development of the negative doctrines of the 18th century.
Holbach thinks that everything happens in nature according to eternal and immutable laws. This idea is the basis of all further constructions. Man, in his opinion, cannot free himself even in thought from the laws of nature. Holbach maintains that for both feeling and thought the nervous system with its contacts with the outside world by the organs ,and apparatuses of sight, hearing, taste, feeling and smell is absolutely necessary. Without the organs and the nervous system there is neither thought nor feeling, just as without a musical instrument there is no musical sound and, consequently, there are no individual qualities of sound, softness or shrillness, melodiousness or squeakiness, length or abruptness. According to Holbach to imagine thought disconnected from the necessary conditions of its appearance, i.e., from the nervous system, is equivalent to imagining sound existing independently of the instrument. It means imagining action without cause.... Matter, in Holbach's opinion, is indestructible; not one particle of it can disappear, but those particles are in unceasing motion and as a result of this motion form and combinations are destroyed and appear unceasingly. The motion of matter takes place according to the same eternal and immutable laws by which the course of the great heavenly bodies is determined. This means that if a particle of matter is placed a hundred million times in the same position, it will a hundred million times follow the same path and enter into the same combinations. The particles of matter which make up the human body are subordinate, in their motion, according to Holbach, to the very same eternal and immutable laws. There is no exception to this rule. As the particles of gastric juice enter into chemical combination with particles of food by necessity, as the corpuscles of the blood absorb oxygen by necessity, so in the same way tad particles of the brain move and undergo chemical modifications by necessity. The result of this motion and chemical modification is the process of thought, which, therefore according to Holbach, is also always characterized by unrelenting necessity. Man behaves in one way or another because he wishes one way or another; wish is conditioned by previous thought and thought is the inevitable result of given external impressions and the given capacities of the brain. What, therefore, is crime, and what is punishment? Nature, according to Holbach, recognizes neither one nor the other; in nature there is nothing but an infinite chain of causes and effects— a chain out of which not a single link can be rejected.
Apparently, Holbach must have been a most horrifying and repulsive man. Otherwise, how could he have been a materialist? Nevertheless, to the astonishment of all lovers of good morals, Holbach was a good man. "I have seldom met such a learned and all-round educated men as Holbach," says Grimm; “I never met anybody with so little vanity and ambition. Had he not had a lively zeal for the success of all sciences, a desire, which had become a second nature, to communicate to others all that seemed important and useful to him, he would never have shown his unprecedented erudition. It would have been the same with his learning as with his wealth. Nobody would ever have guessed it if he had been able to hide it without detriment to his own enjoyment and specially to the enjoyment of his friends. To a man with such views it can not have been very difficult to believe in he mastery of reason, because his passions and satisfactions were exactly such as they had to be to give predominance to good rules. He loved women, loved satisfaction at table, he was inquisitive; but not one of those inclinations mastered him entirely. He could not hate anybody; only when he spoke f the propagators of oppression and superstition did his inborn mildness change into bitterness and thirst for struggle."
Ending this essay I Advise readers who are interested in the intellectual life of the last century to read Hettner's History of World Literature in the 18th Century. In it they will find an intelligible, impartial and entertaining account of the biographical details and the philosophic doctrines linked with the general picture of the times.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."