History Of Civilisation In Europe. (continued 2)

I shall proceed to draw these two particulars from obscurity, and to sever them in succession from the contest of allegations which I have previously mentioned.

What do the different elements of European civilisation—the theocratical, monarchical, aristocratical, and popular—claim when they assert themselves the first possessors of society in Europe? Is it not that each proclaims itself to be solely legitimate? Political legitimacy is evidently a right based on antiquity and duration. Priority of time is invoked as the source of right, as the proof of the legitimacy of power. And here I beg attention to the fact, that this pretension is not confined to one particular system or element of our civilisation, but that it spreads over all. We are accustomed in modern times to consider the idea of legitimacy as involved in only one system—the monarchical—which is a great mistake, for it is at issue in all the others. We have already seen that all the elements of our civilisation have endeavoured to monopolise it; and if we cast a look forward into the history of Europe, we shall see the most varied social forms and governments equally in possession of this character of legitimacy. The Italian and Swiss aristocracies and democracies, the republic of San Marino, like the greatest monarchies of Europe, have styled themselves, and have been esteemed, legitimate; they, exactly like the others, have founded their claim to legitimacy upon the antiquity of their institutions, upon the historical priority, and upon the prolonged duration, of their system of government.

If we go beyond Europe, and carry our observation to other times and countries, we encounter on all sides this idea of political legitimacy, and find it clinging to some portion of the ruling government, to some of its institutions, forms, or maxims. There is no country or time in which a certain portion of the social system, of the public powers, has not bestowed upon itself, and had recognised as inherent in it, this character of legitimacy derived from antiquity and stability.

And what is this principle! What are its elements? How came its introduction into European civilisation?

All systems of power are, at their origin, mixed up with force. I do not mean to say that they are all based upon force alone, or that if they had not originally had other titles than force, they would have been established. They most certainly needed others; powers are established in accordance with certain social wants, and with reference to the state of society, to manners and opinions. But we cannot avoid perceiving that force has sullied the foundation of all the systems of power in the world, whatever may have been their nature and form.

But every one repudiates this origin, all the systems of every description deny it, and there is none that will consent to spring from force. An invincible instinct apprises governments that force does not confer right, and that if their claims rested upon that alone, right could never be deduced. For this reason, when we recur to ancient times, and unmask the different systems and powers abandoned to violence, all hasten to exclaim, 'I was earlier, I subsisted previously, and by virtue of other titles; society belonged to me before this state of violence and strife in which you discover me; I was legitimate; my just prerogatives were contested and wrenched from me.'

This single fact demonstrates that the maxim of force is not the groundwork of political legitimacy, and that it reposes upon some other base. What is the effect of this formal repudiation of force by all the systems? Their acknowledgment that there is another legitimacy, the veritable foundation for all others, the legitimacy of reason, justice, and right. Such is the origin to which they are all eager to cling. And because they discard force as their initiatory element, they are driven to assert themselves robed with a different title, quoting their antiquity. The main characteristic, then, of political legitimacy, is to deny force as the source of power, and to allege it as cohesive with a moral idea and force, with the idea, in fact, of right, justice, and reason. This is the fundamental element which constitutes the principle of political legitimacy. It has taken its rise therefrom, receiving a helping hand from time and stability. We will trace the process.

Force having presided at the dawn of all governments and societies, time progresses and effects changes in the operations of force; it administers correctives, from the very circumstance that a society endures and is composed of men. Man bears within him a certain number of notions of order, justice, and reason, and a certain craving to give them sway, and to introduce them into the facts amidst which he lives. To attain this object, he labours unremittingly; and if the social state in which he is located continues, his labours are not fruitless. Man brings reason and right to bear in the sphere he moves in.

Independently of the exertions of man, there is a law of Providence too palpable to be denied, a law analogous to that which rules the material world, by which a certain measure of order, reason, and justice, is indispensable to the continuance of a society. Indeed, from the mere fact of durability, we may be assured that any particular society is not utterly absurd, insensate, or iniquitous, and that it is not entirely bare of that element of reason, truth, and justice, which can alone give life to any society. If, furthermore, the society is developed, if it becomes more vigorous and powerful, if its terms are from time to time accepted by an increasing number of people, then are we sure that by the action of time, more reason, justice, and right have been infused into it; for facts imperceptibly arrange themselves according to true legitimacy.

Thus has the idea of political legitimacy spread over the world, and from the world penetrated men's minds. For foundation or first origin, it has, in a certain degree, at least, moral legitimacy, justice, reason, and truth; and afterwards the sanction of time, which gives ground for belief that reason has become part and parcel of existing facts, that, in reality, true undeniable legitimacy has been introduced into external matters. In the epoch we are about to open upon, we shall find force and falsehood ingredients in the first composition of royalty, aristocracy, democracy, and even of the church; and then force and falsehood will be perceived undergoing gradual reformation under the plastic hand of time, and right and truth taking their places in civilisation. It is this introduction of right and truth into the social state that has developed by degrees the principle of political legitimacy, and it is thus that it has become established in modern civilisation.

When attempts have been made at various times to raise this idea as the banner of absolute power, its real origin has been grossly mistaken or perverted. So utterly apart is it from identification with absolute power, that right and justice are the titles by which it has been diffused, and has taken root in the world. It is not in any degree exclusive, it appertains to none in particular, but is planted wherever right finds development. Political legitimacy, I assert again, is as much bound up with liberty as with power, and with individual rights equally with the forms, whatever they may be, by which public functions are exercised. We will meet it in our progress, in the most discordant systems—equally in the feudal system, in the municipalities of Flanders and Germany, in the republics of Italy, as in monarchy. It is a character partaken of by all the different elements of modern civilisation, and it behoves us fully to comprehend it in investigating the history of that civilisation.

The second fact which is brought to light by the simultaneous pretensions of which I have so often spoken, is the real character of the epoch styled barbarous. As I have said, all the elements of European civilisation assert that they possessed Europe at that period; as a consequence, none of them predominated. When a social form domineers in the world, there is not so much difficulty in recognising it. When we come to the tenth century, we shall have no hesitation in recognising the preponderance of the feudal system; in the seventeenth, we shall have no doubt in affirming the prevalence of the monarchical principle; and if we regard the Flemish corporations or the Italian republics, we shall immediately declare the sway of the democratic principle. When a principle is really predominant in the world, there is no possibility of mistaking it.

The contest that has arisen among the various systems which are included in European civilisation, upon the question as to which ruled it at its origin, proves that they had all a co-existence therein, without any one so generally or assuredly prevailing as to impress upon society its form and name.

And herein lies the actual character of the barbarous epoch—a chaos of all the elements, an outburst of all the systems, a universal hubbub, in which the struggle was neither permanent nor systematic. By examining, in all its phases, the social state of that era, I might demonstrate the impossibility of discovering any fact or principle approaching to a general or established recognition. I will confine myself to two essential points—the state of individuals, and the state of institutions. They will suffice to depict the entire society.

We discern four classes of persons at this epoch: 1st, The free men—that is to say, those who depended upon no superior or patron, who held their possessions, and regulated their lives, in full liberty, without any tie binding them to another man; 2d, The leudes, fideles, anstrustions, &c. bound by a relation—first that of companion to a chief, then of vassal to a suzerain—to another man towards whom they had contracted the obligation of a service, in respect of a grant of lands or other gifts; 3d, The freedmen; 4th, The slaves.

But these different classes were not immovably fixed; men, when once included within their limits, did not remain there for ever; the relations of the various classes were neither definite nor permanent. Among the free men were some ever and anon leaving their position to assume service under a particular person, receiving from him some gift, and passing into the class of leudes; whilst others fell into that of slaves. On the other hand, some leudes struggled to get rid of their patron, to re-establish their independence, and return into the free class. On all sides was a continual movement and transition from one class to another, a general uncertainty and instability in the mutual bearings of the classes: no man adhered to his position, and no position remained unchanged.

Tenures of land were in the same state; they were distinguished as allodial, or completely free, and beneficiary, or subject to certain obligations towards a superior. It is well known that attempts have been made to establish, in this last class of tenures, a precise and determined system; it has been said that the grants were made for a certain number of years, then for life, and that finally they became hereditary. The attempts are vain; all these varieties of tenure existed simultaneously; the self-same epoch displays benefices for years, for life, to heirs; and even the same lands passed in a few years through those different states. Nothing was more stable or generalised in the condition of landed property than in that of individuals. The difficult transition is everywhere perceptible from the wandering to the sedentary life, from relations merely personal to those in combination with bodies of men and the rights of property, which are real, substantial, obligatory relations. In this state of transition all was confused, partial, and disordered.

The same instability and turmoil marked the institutions. Three systems were in juxtaposition—royalty, aristocratical institutions, or superiorities over men and lands in gradation, and free institutions, or assemblies of free men deliberating in common. No one of these systems was in possession of society, no one had a preference. Free institutions existed, but the men who should have taken part in the assemblies did not attend. The signorial jurisdiction, likewise, was not exercised. Royalty, which is the most simple institution, and the easiest to determine, had no fixed character: election and hereditary right were mingled together: sometimes the son succeeded his father; sometimes a selection was made out of the royal family; and sometimes a pure and simple election took place of a distant relative, or perhaps of a stranger. We find nothing settled in any system; all the institutions, like the social conditions, existed together, were confounded, and continually changing.

Countries were in the same unsettled state. They were created and suppressed, united and divided. Frontiers, governments, nations, ceased to be distinguishable. A universal confusion in positions, principles, facts, races, and tongues, was the condition of barbarian Europe.

Within what limits is this strange epoch contained? Its commencement is well marked—it occurred at the fall of the Roman Empire. But when did it end? In order to answer this question, we must inquire to what this state of society was owing, what were the causes of the barbarism.

I think two main ones are discoverable. The one physical, arising outwardly from the course of events; and the other moral, working inwardly from the mental state of man himself.

The physical cause was the prolongation of the invasion. We are not to conclude that the invasion of the barbarians was arrested at the fifth century, nor that because the Roman Empire had fallen, and barbaric kingdoms were founded on its ruins, the populations brought their movements to a close. On the contrary, they continued long after the fall of the Empire, of which we have all-sufficient proof.

We see the Frank kings, even of the first race, continually compelled to make war beyond the Rhine; we see Clotaire, Dagobert, incessantly engaged in expeditions into Germany, fighting against the Thuringians, the Danes, and the Saxons, who occupied the right bank of the Rhine. For what reason? Because those nations wished to cross the river, and gather their share of the spoils of the Empire. What caused, about the same period, those great invasions of Italy by the Franks established in Gaul, principally of the eastern or Austrasian Franks? Why did they precipitate themselves on Switzerland, pass the Alps, and enter Italy? Because they were pushed on the north-east by new populations; their expeditions were undertaken from necessity, and were not mere forays for pillage; their settlements were interfered with, and they went forth to seek others. Then a new German nation appeared upon the stage, and founded in Italy the kingdom of the Lombards. In Gaul, the first Frank dynasty was subverted: the Carlovingians succeeded the Merovingians. It is now acknowledged that this change of dynasty was in truth an accession of population which displaced the western for the eastern Franks. The change was effected, and the second race reigned. Charlemagne began against the Saxons what the Merovingians had directed against the Thuringians, and became involved in ceaseless wars with the nations beyond the Rhine. And these were urged onwards by the Obotrites, the Wiltzes, the Sorabes, the Bohemians, by the whole Slavonic race which pressed upon the Germanic, and from the sixth to the ninth century goaded it to advance towards the west. To the whole of the north-east, the invading movement continued and controlled events.

In the south a movement of the same nature occurred, occasioned by the Moslem Arabs. Whilst the Germanic and Slavonic populations crowded along the Rhine and the Danube, the Arabs began their career of conquest on all the coasts of the Mediterranean.

The invasion of the Arabs had a peculiar character. The spirit of conquest and that of proselytism were united; their invasion was made both to conquer territory and spread their faith. There was a great difference between this movement and that of the Germans. In the Christian world, the spiritual and temporal arms were disjoined. Zeal for the propagation of a faith was not felt by the same men who burned with the desire of conquest. The Germans on their conversion had preserved their manners, sentiments, and tastes; earthly interests and passions continued to sway them; and though they might be Christians, they were not missionaries. The Arabs, on the contrary, were conquerors and missionaries; with them the sword and the Word were wielded by the same hands. At a later date, this circumstance gave the unfortunate turn to the Mussulman civilisation; for it is from the unity of the temporal and spiritual powers, from the confused mixture of moral influence with material force, that the tyranny which seems inherent in that civilisation took its rise; and such is, as I believe, the principal cause of the stagnant state into which it has fallen. But this was far from appearing at the first outburst; on the contrary, a prodigious power was thereby imparted to the Arab invasion. Strengthened as it was by moral ideas and passions, it gained, upon the instant, a lustre and greatness which had been signally wanting to the German invasion; more energy and enthusiasm were displayed in it, and the minds of men were affected by it in a very different manner.

Such was the situation of Europe from the fifth to the ninth century; pressed on the south by the Mohammedans, on the north by the Germans and Slavi, the interior of the European region was inevitably kept in continual disorder by the reaction of this double invasion. Populations were incessantly displaced and hurled upon each other; no settlement could be established; the nomade life recommenced in every quarter. There was certainly some difference in this respect amongst the various countries; the turmoil was greater in Germany than in the rest of Europe, for it was the very furnace of agitation; and France was more convulsed than Italy. But nowhere could society get fixed or regulated; barbarism was prolonged on all sides, from the same cause which had given it a commencement.

So much for the material cause which sprang from the course of events. I now come to the moral cause, founded upon the internal state of mankind, which was not less powerful.

Whatever external events may be, it is, after all, man himself who makes his world; it is from the ideas and sentiments, the moral and intellectual dispositions of men, that the world is regulated in its progress; it is upon the inward state of men that the outward state of society depends.

What is needful to men in order to found a society at all durable and regular? It is evidently requisite that they have a certain number of ideas sufficiently expansive to suit that society, and to be applicable to its wants and relations. It is furthermore necessary that these ideas be common to the majority of the members of the society, and that they exercise some sway over their desires and actions.

It is clear that if men have no ideas extending beyond their own existence, if their intellectual horizon be limited to themselves, if they give unrestrained play to the fury of their passions and inclinations, if they have not amongst them a certain number of notions and sentiments held in common, around which they may be rallied, then it is clear, I repeat, that no society can possibly exist among them, and that each individual will be an element of disorder and dissolution in any society into which he enters.

Wherever individuality gains a nearly absolute sway, where man considers only himself, where his ideas stretch not beyond his own person, where he listens only to his own passions, society (meaning thereby a society calculated for some small degree of extension and permanence) is almost an impossibility. Now this was the moral state of the conquerors of Europe in the epoch treated of. I observed, in the preceding lecture, that we are indebted to the Germans for the vigorous sentiment of individual liberty, of human individuality. But in a state of extreme coarseness and ignorance, this sentiment is pure selfishness in all its brutality and unsociability. It was at this point among the Germans from the fifth to the eighth century. They were concerned only for their own interests, with their own passions and inclinations, and how could they thus accommodate themselves to a state approaching the social? Attempts were made to induce them to enter into it; they even tried it of themselves. But from some act of recklessness, some burst of passion, or some deficiency in understanding, they broke immediately loose. Society was incessantly endeavouring to form itself, but as incessantly was it routed by the act of man, by the absence of those moral conditions which are essential to its existence.

Such were the two disposing causes of the barbaric state. So long as they lasted, barbarism continued. Let us inquire how, and when, they finally ceased.

Europe laboured to get out of this state. It is the nature of man to struggle to emerge from such a chaos, even though he has been plunged into it by his own fault. However brutal and ignorant, however much devoted to his own gratification and passions, there is within him a voice or instinct which repeats to him that he is made for something else, that he has another capacity and destiny. In the midst of his disorganisation, a taste for order and advancement pursues and torments him. Longings for justice, for foresight, for development, agitate his breast even under the yoke of the most boorish selfishness. He feels himself urged to reform the material world, society, and himself; and he labours for this object without much cognisance of the want that goads him. Thus the barbarians aspired at civilisation, although utterly incapable of it, I may say, indeed, utterly detesting it, when its restraints were felt.

There remained, likewise, some considerable remnants of the Roman civilisation. The name of the Empire, the remembrance of that great and glorious society, agitated the memories of men, especially of the town senators, the bishops, the priests, and of all those who had their origin in the Roman era.

Many of the barbarians themselves, or of their barbarian forefathers, had been witnesses of the grandeur of the Empire; they had served in its armies, or fought against it. The image and name of the Roman civilisation had an imposing effect upon them, and they experienced a desire to imitate it, to bring it back, or to preserve some portion of it. In this was an additional stimulus to drive them from the state of barbarism which I have described.

There was a third, which suggests itself to every mind—I mean the Christian church. The church was a society regularly constituted, having principles, rules, and discipline of its own, and actuated by an ardent zeal to extend its influence, and to vanquish its conquerors. Among the Christians of that epoch, in the ranks of the clergy, there were men who had pondered deeply upon all moral and political questions, who held fixed opinions and energetic sentiments upon all things, and strove strenuously to propagate them and render them paramount. No society ever made such efforts as did the Christian church, from the fifth to the tenth century, to extend its sphere, and smooth the external world into its own likeness. When we study its particular history, we shall perceive the full extent of its labours. It attacked barbarism, as it were, on all its sides, to civilise by subduing it.

Finally, there existed a fourth cause of civilisation, one which it is impossible accurately to weigh, but which is not the less real on that account—namely, the influence of great men. No one can say why a great man comes at a particular era, or what he infuses of his own into the development of the world; the secret remains with Providence, but the fact is certain. There are men whom the spectacle of anarchy or of social stagnation strikes and distresses, who are intellectually shocked thereat as with a fact which should not be, and who become possessed with an uncontrollable desire to change it, and to plant some rule, some uniformity, regularity, and permanency in the world before them: a terrible, and often a tyrannical power, committing a thousand iniquities and errors, for human weakness accompanies it; yet a glorious and salutary power, for it gives to humanity a vigorous jerk, an admirable impulse.

These different causes and influences originated various attempts to emancipate European society from the clutch of barbarism, in the epoch stretching from the fifth to the ninth century.

The first of these attempts (although it may have had little effect, yet requires to be noticed, for it emanated from the barbarians themselves) was the digesting the barbarian laws. Between the sixth and eighth centuries, the laws of almost all the barbarous tribes were written. Formerly it was otherwise, these people having mere customs for governance before they established themselves on the ruins of the Roman Empire. There were the laws of the Burgundians, of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks, of the Visigoths, the Lombards, the Saxons, the Frisons, the Bavarians, the Allemanni, &c. Here was evidently a commencement of civilisation, an endeavour to transfer society to the empire of general and regular principles. It was impossible for much success to attend it, for it presented the laws of a society which no longer existed, the laws of the social state of the barbarians before their establishment on the Roman territory, before they had changed a wandering for a sedentary life, and the condition of nomad warriors for that of proprietors. Here and there are found some articles as to the lands which the barbarians had acquired, and as to their relations with the old inhabitants of the country, and even attempts are made to regulate some of the new circumstances with which they were mixed up; but the ground-work of the majority of these laws is the ancient life and state of things in Germany, which were utterly inapplicable to the new society, and have had but little influence in its development.

An attempt of another nature was commenced in Italy and the south of Gaul at the same period. The Roman society had not perished there so completely as in other quarters; in the cities there remained a somewhat greater degree of order and energy. Civilisation attempted to rear itself there again. For example, we find the municipal system recover breath, as it were, and exercise some influence upon the general course of events, in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy, under Theodoric, although both king and nation were barbarian. The Roman society had humanised the Goths, and to a certain extent assimilated them with itself. The same fact is perceptible in the south of Gaul. At the commencement of the sixth century, a Visigoth king of Toulouse, Alaric, caused the Roman laws to be collected, and published a code for his Roman subjects, under the name of the Brevarium Aniani.

It was the church which endeavoured to give a new beginning to civilisation in Spain. Instead of the old German assemblies of warriors (the malla), the council of Toledo held sway in Spain, and although influential laymen attended the council, the bishops governed it. In the laws of the Visigoths there is not a barbaric enactment; the compilation is evidently the work of the philosophers of the era, the clergy. They abound in general ideas and in theories which are completely foreign to barbarian manners. Thus it is known that the legislation of the barbarians was a personal legislation; that is to say, the same law applied only to men of the same race. The Roman law governed the Romans, the Franco law governed the Franks; each people had its own law, although they were united under the same government, and inhabited the same territory. This is the system which is called personal legislation, in opposition to the system of real legislation, founded upon territorial distinctions. Now the legislation of the Visigoths was not personal, but territorial. All the inhabitants of Spain, whether Romans or Visigoths, were subject to the same law. But there are still more evident traces of philosophy to be found. Amongst the barbarians, men were valued at a fixed rate, according to their situations; the barbarian, the Roman, the freeman, the vassal, &c. were not estimated at the same sum; their lives were made matter of tariff. The principle of men being of equal value in the eyes of the law, was established in the code of the Visigoths. With regard to the system of procedure, we find the oath of compurgatores and the judicial combat displaced for the proof by witnesses, and such a rational examination into facts as might be adopted in any civilised society. In a word, the whole Visigoth code bears a wise, systematic, and social character. We perceive in it the labours of that same clergy which held command in the councils of Toledo, and operated so powerfully on the government of the country.

Therefore in Spain, up to the great invasion of the Arabs, it was the theocratic principle which laboured to raise up civilisation.

In France, the same endeavour was the work of a different influence; it originated with great men, especially with Charlemagne. If we examine his reign in its various phases, we shall find that the prevailing idea of his mind was the civilisation of his people. First, with regard to his wars. He was constantly in the field, ranging from the south to the north-east, from the Ebro to the Elbe or the Weser. These were not mere arbitrary expeditions, arising from an insatiable thirst for conquests. I do not assert that all he did may be systematically accounted for, or that his plans display a profound diplomatic or strategetic wit, but he obeyed the impulse of a great necessity resulting from his scheme to repress barbarism. During the whole period of his reign, he was employed in arresting the double invasion of the Mussulmans on the south, of the Germans and Slavi on the north, in prosecution of that object. This is the character of the military part of the reign of Charlemagne: as I have previously said, this was also the end and purpose of his expeditions against the Saxons.

Passing from his wars to his internal government, we find the same principle in activity, the attempt to introduce order and uniformity into the administration of all the countries which he possessed. I cannot call them a kingdom or a state, for these expressions are of too regular a stamp, and raise ideas too little in accordance with the society over which Charlemagne presided. This much, however, is certain, that he, master of an immense territory, was indignant at beholding all things therein in a most dissevered, anarchical, and brutish condition, and devoted his energies to soften its hideousness. His first measure was to despatch his missi dominici into the different districts of his possessions, to inquire into facts, and either reform them, or report them to him. He afterwards held general assemblies with much more regularity than his predecessors, which he compelled almost all the influential men of his territories to attend. These were not free assemblies; nor were they summoned for what we would call deliberation. They were used by Charlemagne as a means of getting information as to facts, and of introducing some regularity and union among his disorganised subjects.

In whatever point of view the reign of Charlemagne is considered, the same character is found predominant, a contest against the barbaric state, the genius of civilisation at work. This is the spirit which is evinced in his eagerness to institute schools, in his taste for learned men, in his predilection for ecclesiastical influence, and in his adoption of everything which appeared to him capable of acting beneficially either on society as a whole, or on man as an individual.

An attempt of the same nature was made by King Alfred in England somewhat later.

Thus the different causes which I have particularised, as tending to put an end to barbarism, were in action, in some quarter or other of Europe, from the fifth to the ninth century.

Not one was successful. Charlemagne failed to give stability to his great empire, and the system of government which he wished to institute. In Spain, the church was not more happy in its endeavours to establish the theocratic principle. In Italy and the south of Gaul, although the Roman civilisation made various efforts to rise again, it was not until afterwards, towards the end of the tenth century, that it really assumed any vigour. Up till that period, all the endeavours to extinguish barbarism were fruitless: they proceeded on the idea that men were more advanced than the reality demonstrated: they all strove for a society more extended and regular than comported with the actual diffusion of coercive influences, and the state of men's minds. However, they were not completely thrown away. At the commencement of the tenth century, there was no longer any question about the great empire of Charlemagne, or the glorious councils of Toledo, but barbarism did not the less surely approach extinction. Two great results were obtained:

1st, The invading movements were arrested both on the north and the south. After the dismemberment of the empire of Charlemagne, a strong barrier was opposed to the tribes still pushing to the west, by the nations established on the right bank of the Rhine. The Normans prove this fact incontestibly; for up to this era, excepting the tribes that had fallen on Britain, the action of maritime invasion had not been considerable. It was in the course of the ninth century that it became constant and general, and principally because invasions by land were rendered very difficult, since society had acquired more fixed and assured frontiers on that side. That portion of the roving population which could not be driven back, was yet constrained to turn away and pursue its adventurous career on the sea. Whatever evil the Norman invasions inflicted on the west, they were much less fatal than the inroads by land, and gave infinitely less general disturbance to the infant society.

In the south, the same consequence ensued. The Arabs took up quarters in Spain, and the struggle between them and the Christians continued, but it was no longer attended with the displacement of the population. The Saracenic bands still infested from time to time the coasts of the Mediterranean, but Islamism had evidently ceased its grand march.

2d, In the interior of the European territory, the wandering life came to a cessation; populations were settled, property was fixed, and the relations of men no longer varied from day to day at the impulse of force or chance. The internal and moral state of man himself began to change, his ideas and sentiments acquired some stability as well as his life; he became attached to the locality he inhabited, to the ties he had contracted, to those domains which he flattered himself with leaving to his children, to that abode which in time he was to designate his castle, and to that miserable assemblage of colonists and slaves which was one day to rise into a village. Small societies, petty states, were everywhere formed, hewn, so to express myself, according to the extent of ideas and knowledge possessed by men. Amongst these societies a bond of confederation, which did not destroy individual independence, was gradually introduced, according to a principle which lurked in the barbarian manners. On one hand, every considerable personage established himself in his domains with his family and retainers; on the other, a certain gradation of services and rights was instituted among these warlike proprietors scattered over the territory. What was the result?—the feudal system, which ultimately arose from the bosom of barbarism. Of the different elements of our civilisation, it was natural that the Germanic should first of all prevail, for it had the force, and it had conquered Europe; and the first social form and organisation were necessarily received from it.

The feudal system, its character, and the part which it has played in the history of European civilisation, will be the object of the next lecture. In the very heart of the victorious feudal regime, we shall, however, encounter at every step the other elements of our civilisation, royalty, the church, and corporations; and we shall have little difficulty in concluding that they were not destined to be crushed under that feudal form to which they assimilated themselves, whilst struggling against it, and waiting for the hour that victory might declare for them in their turn.

Lecture IV. Influences Of The Feudal System.

We have now surveyed the state of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, in the first epoch of modern history—namely, the barbaric. We have seen that, at the end of that era, at the commencement of the tenth century, the first principle or system which was developed, and which took possession of European society, was the feudal system, the earliest offspring of barbarism. It is therefore the feudal system that we shall make the present object of our inquiry.

I need scarcely here repeat that it is not the history of events, properly so called, that I treat of. I am not called upon to detail the destinies of feudalism: it is the history of civilisation with which I concern myself, and that is the general, hidden fact, which I seek for under all the exterior facts which envelope it.

Thus events, social crises, and the various states through which society has passed, interest us only in their relations with the development of civilisation; we have to inquire how they opposed or aided it, what they gave to it, and what they abstained from giving. It is simply in this point of view that we take the feudal system into consideration.

On commencing this inquiry, we determined what civilisation was, we endeavoured to distinguish its elements, and we became aware that it involved, in one respect, the development of man himself, of the individual, of human nature; and in the other, that of his outward and visible condition, of society. Every time, therefore, that we open out an event, a system, a general order of things, we have this double question to ask: What has it effected for or against the development of humanity—what for or against the development of society?

In this investigation, it is impossible for us to avoid encountering in our progress very important questions in moral philosophy. When we would decide to what extent an event or system has contributed to the development of man and of society, it behoves us to ascertain what is the true development of society and of humanity, and whether certain developments are not deceitful and illegitimate, tending to pervert rather than to ameliorate, and leading to a retrograde instead of an advancing movement.

We shall not attempt to elude the task that is imposed upon us. Not only should we thereby emasculate and degrade our ideas, and the facts themselves, but the actual state of the world compels us frankly to adopt as law this unquestionable alliance between philosophy and history. This conjunction is precisely one of the features, if not the main and essential feature, of our age. We are called upon to study, and to give simultaneous weight to science and reality, to theory and practice, to right and fact. In previous times, these two powers have lived apart: the world was accustomed to behold scientific theory and practice take different routes, without acknowledging each other, or at least without forming a union. And when doctrines or general ideas operated upon events, and stirred up the world, they have succeeded in doing so only by the impulsion of fanaticism. The sway over human societies, and the direction of their affairs, have hitherto been divided between two sorts of influences: on the one hand, the believers, the men of general ideas and of principles, the fanatics; on the other, men strangers to all rational principle, making circumstances their only rule of conduct, practicians, libertines, as the seventeenth century called them. This state of things has now ceased; neither the fanatics nor the libertines can any longer wield predominance. In order to govern and have influence amongst men at present, it is necessary to ascertain and comprehend both general ideas and circumstances; it is necessary to have the capacity to keep count of principles and facts, to respect truth and expediency, and to avoid as well the blind presumption of the fanatics, as the insensate disdain of the libertines. The development of the human mind and of the social state has conducted us to this point: on the one hand, the human understanding, elevated and unshackled, has a clearer conception of the entirety of things, can direct its scrutiny to all questions, and bring everything that has being into its combinations; on the other hand, society is brought to that state of advancement that it can bear testing by the application of truth; and facts may be supported by appeal to principles, without inspiring, by such comparison, an overwhelming discouragement or disgust, in spite of their great imperfection. Therefore, by passing, as occasions arise, from the examination of circumstances to that of ideas, from an exposition of facts to an inquiry into theories, I shall only follow the natural tendency, the tone and the demands of our age. Perhaps, also, there is an additional reason in favour of this method, derived from the actual disposition of men's minds. For some time past, a decided taste, I will even say a sort of predilection, for facts, for the practical point of view and the positive side of human affairs, has manifested itself amongst us. We have been so much a prey to the despotism of general ideas and theories, and they have cost us in many respects so dear, that they have become objects of partial distrust. We prefer to appeal to facts, to special circumstances, and to the tests of application. Nor is this matter for regret: it is a fresh advance, a great step towards the knowledge and empire of truth; taking care, nevertheless, that we avoid being carried too far by this disposition, and provided we always bear in mind that truth alone has a prerogative to reign in the world, and that facts have no merit but as they give it expression, and take form upon its model; that all true greatness springs from thought, and is indebted to it for fruitfulness. The civilisation of our country has this peculiar character, that it has never been wanting in intellectual grandeur: it has always been rich in ideas: the influence of the human understanding has been great in French society, perhaps greater than anywhere else. It must not lose this glorious feature, it must not fall into that somewhat subordinate and material state which characterises other societies. Intellect and thought must still hold in France at least the place that they have hitherto occupied.

We shall therefore on no account shun general and philosophical questions; we shall not beat about in search of them, but when facts bring us on them, we shall face them without hesitation or embarrassment. More than one occasion for this hardihood will present itself, on considering the feudal system in its relation to the history of European civilisation.

That the feudal system was necessary, and the only possible social state, in the tenth century, is proved by the universality of its establishment. Wherever barbarism ceased, everything took the feudal form. At the first moment, men saw in it only the last stage of chaos. All unity and general civilisation seemed finally prorogued; society was seen dismembered on all sides, and a multitude of petty, obscure, isolated, and incohesive societies, to arise. This appeared to contemporaries the dissolution of all things, a universal anarchy. Both the poets and chroniclers of the era believed the end of the world at hand. Yet this feudal society was so necessary and inevitable, so completely the only possible consequence of the anterior state, that all entered into it, all adopted its form. Even elements the most foreign to the system—the church, municipalities, royalty—were constrained to accommodate themselves to it: churches became superiors and vassals, towns had lords and vassals, and royalty was hid under the mask of paramount lordship. All things were given as fiefs— not only lands, but certain rights, as those of cutting in forests, and of fishing: churches gave their casualties to be held in fief, revenues from baptisms, and the churchings of women. And in the same manner that all the general elements of society entered into the feudal frame, the minor details and circumstances of common life became its objects.

On beholding the feudal form thus take possession of everything, we are tempted to believe at the first blush that its essential and vital principle had also universal predominance. But this is a great error. The institutions and elements of society, which were not analogous to the feudal system, did not renounce their peculiar nature or principle, although borrowing the feudal form. The feudal church did not cease to be animated and governed at bottom by the theocratic principle; and in order to give it prevalence, it struggled unceasingly, sometimes in concert with the royal power, sometimes with the pope, and sometimes with the people, to destroy the system whose livery, so to speak, it wore. It was the same with royalty and the corporations; the first continued, at bottom, to be actuated by the monarchical principle, the last by the democratic. In spite of their feudal trappings, these varied elements of the European society constantly laboured to free themselves from a form alien to their nature, and to assume that which corresponded to their own vital principle.

After demonstrating the universality of the feudal form, it behoves us, then, to avoid concluding therefrom the universality of the feudal principle, and studying that system indiscriminately wherever its outward aspect meets our eyes. In order to gain a full knowledge and comprehension of it, in order to unfold and form a judgment of its effect upon modern civilisation, we must seek it only where the principle and form are in harmony; we must contemplate it in the hierarchy of the conquerors of the European territory. There truly resides the feudal society, and upon it I shall forthwith enter.

I mentioned just now the importance of moral questions, and the necessity of grappling with them. There is another order of considerations quite opposed to that one, which has in general been too much neglected; I mean the physical condition of society, the physical changes introduced into men's modes of existence by a new occurrence, by a revolution in the social state. Sufficient attention has not always been paid to this matter; inquiry has not been sufficiently directed to the modifications these great crises in the world have produced in the material existence of men and in their relations. These modifications have more influence upon the entirety of society than is usually imagined. Every one knows how much the question of the influence of climate has been discussed, and the great importance attached to it by Montesquieu. If the direct influence of climate upon men be mooted, it is perhaps not so extensive as is supposed; at all events, the appreciation is vague and difficult. But the indirect influence of climate—that which results, for example, from the fact, that in a hot country men live in the open air, whilst in cold countries they shut themselves up in habitations, and that they support themselves in the two extremes after different modes—becomes of extreme importance, since the mere variation in physical life has a powerful operation on civilisation. Now every great revolution brings with it modifications of the sort I have mentioned into the social state, and it is incumbent upon us to give them great attention.

The establishment of the feudal system produced one of these changes of grave import; it completely altered the distribution of the population on the face of the land. Previously, the masters of the territory, the conquering population, had lived in masses more or less numerous, either sedentary in the interior of towns, or roving in bands over the country. By the feudal system, these men came to live isolated, each in his habitation, at great distances from each other. This change of course exercised material influence upon the character and course of civilisation. The social preponderance, the government of society, passed at once from the towns to the country; private property necessarily became of greater importance than public property, and in the same manner public life was absorbed in private life. Such was the first effect, a purely physical effect, of the triumph of the feudal society. The farther we investigate it, the more will the consequences of this single fact be unveiled.

In order to get more unequivocally at the part borne by this system in the history of civilisation, let us first of all take it in its most simple phase, in its primitive and fundamental element; let us contemplate a possessor of a fief in his domain, and inquire what becomes of all those who compose the petty society around him.

He establishes himself in an isolated and elevated locality, which he takes care to render sure and strong; he builds there what we shall call his castle. With whom does he establish himself? With his wife and children: perhaps some free men, who are not proprietors, are attached to his person, and continue to live with him and frequent his table. These are the occupiers of the interior of the castle. Around its base is grouped a small population of colonists and serfs, who cultivate the domain of the owner of the fief. In the midst of this inferior population religion erects a chapel, which attracts a priest. In ordinary cases, during the first period of the feudal government, this priest was at once the chaplain of the castle and the curate of the village; in time these two characters were separated, and each village had its minister, who dwelt beside his church. Such was the elementary, the atomic state (so to speak), of the feudal society. This is the condition that we have first to examine; and we will subject it to the double question that it is expedient for us to address to all facts—What resulted from it towards the development, 1st, of man himself, 2d, of society?

We are strictly correct in submitting this narrow society to the double analysation, and in relying on the result, for it is the faithful type and image of the feudal society in its full extent. The lord, the people of his domains, and the priest, represent feudalism on the large scale as well as on the small, when it is severed from royalty and the towns, which were distinct and foreign elements.

The first fact which strikes us in considering this petty association, is the prodigious importance which the possessor of the fief must have had in his own eyes, and in the eyes of those who surrounded him. The sentiment of personality, of individual liberty, was the predominant one of the barbarian life. But here the matter was quite altered; there was not only the independence of the man or warrior, but also the importance of a proprietor, of a family chief; of a master. From this position must have sprung an impression of immense superiority, a superiority altogether peculiar, and greatly different from anything perceptible in the course of other civilisations. I will give an illustration of this. I take a high aristocratic condition in the ancient world; a Roman patrician, for example. Like the feudal lord, he was the head of a family, a master, a superior. He was the priest, the pontiff, in the interior of his family. Now his importance as a religious magistrate came to him from without; it was not an importance purely personal or individual; he received it from above, as the delegate of the Divinity, the interpreter of the religious doctrines attached to that idea. The Roman patrician was, furthermore, the member of a corporation which was gathered into one place, the senate, giving him an additional importance derived from without, received and borrowed from his corporation. The grandeur of the ancient aristocrats, associated as it was with a religious and political character, belonged to the station, to the corporation in general, rather than to the individual. That of the possessor of a fief was purely personal; he drew nothing from any one; all his rights and all his power came to him from himself alone. He was not a religious magistrate, he made part of no senate; in his own person, in his individual self, all his importance resided, and all that he was he was by himself, and in his own right. How great an influence must such a position have exercised upon him who occupied it! How much of individual haughtiness, what prodigious pride—let us not mince the word—what insolence, must have been generated in his mind! Above him was no superior whose representative and interpreter he might be; near him, no equals; no powerful and general system of law restraining him, no external control shackling his will, and no curb upon him but the limitations of his strength and the presence of danger. Such was the moral result of the situation on the character of the man.

I proceed to a second consequence, also of grave moment, and too little noticed—the particular tone of the feudal family spirit.

Let us cast a glance upon the various systems of family, taking first of all the patriarchal, of which the Bible and the eastern records sketch the model. Here the family was very numerous; it formed a tribe. The chief or patriarch lived in common with his children, his near relatives, the different generations which had sprang up around him; in a word, his whole kindred, together with his servants; and not only did he live with them, but he had the same interests and occupations, and his existence was in all things the same as theirs. Was this not the situation of Abraham, of all the patriarchs, and of the Arab chiefs who still present the image of the patriarchal life?

Another family system offers itself, the clans, a sort of petty associations, of which the type is to be found in Scotland and Ireland, through which in all probability a great portion of the European world has passed. This was very different from the patriarchal family. There existed an important distinction between the situations of the chief and the rest of the population: they did not lead the same life; the greater part tilled and served, whilst the chief was an idler and a warrior. But they had a common origin, and they all bore the same name; whilst relations of kindred, old traditions, identity in recollections, and feelings of attachment, established a moral tie, a sort of equality, amongst all the members of the clan.

These are the two principal types of family association that history supplies. But do they contain the feudal family? Certainly not. At the first glance, some similarity may be imagined to exist with the clan, but in reality there was a great difference. The population which surrounded the possessor of a fief was perfectly alien to him; it neither bore his name, nor was there between him and it any relationship, or traditional or moral tie. And assuredly it was not the patriarchal family. The fief-holder led not the same life, nor surrendered himself to the same labours, as those who encompassed him; he was addicted to idleness and war, and their occupations were servile and toilsome. The feudal family was not numerous; it formed no tribe; it included simply the family, properly so called, the wife and children, who lived apart from the rest of the population in the seclusion of the castle. The serfs made no part of it; their origin was distinct, and their inequality of condition prodigious. The feudal family was composed of five or six individuals, occupying a position at once superior and antagonistic. In such a state, it was sure to be invested with a peculiar character. Thus it was close and concentrated, perpetually on the alert to defend itself, doubtful of, or at least isolating itself from, its very retainers. The home life, or domestic manners, were certain to become of preponderating influence in this sequestered state. I am well aware that the development of domestic manners would meet with great obstacles from the brutal passions of the chief, and his habits of consuming time in war and the chase. But these obstacles would be overcome; the chief, of course, must have habitually returned to his home, and there he would always find his wife and children; they alone must have been his permanent society, and the assured sympathisers with his interests and projects. Under these circumstances, it was impossible that the domestic existence should not acquire a great sway. There are numerous proofs of it. Was it not in the bosom of the feudal family that the importance of women received its grand development! In all the ancient societies, not adducing those in which the spirit of family did not prevail, but in those even where it was potential, in the patriarchal life, for example, the women were very far from holding the station they acquired in Europe under the feudal system. This change or advancement in their position was mainly owing to the development, to the necessary preponderance, of domestic manners in the feudal state. Its cause has been sought for in the peculiar manners of the ancient Germans, in a sort of national respect which, it is asserted, they paid to women amidst their primeval forests. Founding upon a phrase of Tacitus, German patriotism has reared a fabric of such superior gentleness, of such native and ineffaceable purity, in the relations of the two sexes amongst the old Germans, as is truly surprising. Similar phrases to those of Tacitus, sentiments and usages analogous to those of the ancient Germans, are found in the recitals of a host of describers of savage or barbarian populations. The result was not owing to anything primitive, or peculiar to a certain race. It was from the consequences of a social situation strongly marked, from the progress and preponderance of domestic manners, that the importance of women in Europe originally sprang, and this very preponderance became, at a very early date, an essential characteristic of the feudal system.

A second fact, forming an additional proof of the sway of domestic ties, likewise distinguished the feudal family—namely, the hereditary spirit, the desire for perpetuity which clearly prevailed in it. The idea of hereditary descent is inherent in the spirit of family, but it never took so great a development as in the feudal system. This resulted from the nature of the property to which the family was linked. The fief was not like any other property; it had constant need of a possessor to defend it, to do its services, to fulfil the obligations cohesive to the domain, and so maintain its position in the general association of the lords of the soil. Thence arose a species of identification between the actual possessor of the fief, and the fief itself, and the series of his future successors.

This circumstance greatly contributed to strengthen and bind more closely the family ties, already so powerful from the nature of the feudal state.

I shall now leave the seignorial abode, and descend amongst that petty population which surrounded it. Here things bore a very different aspect. The nature of man is so happily disposed, so open to impressions, that when a social situation endures any length of time, a certain moral tie, sentiments of protection, benevolence, and affection, are inevitably established between those whom it draws together, whatever conditions may clog the junction. So it happened in the feudal system. There is no doubt that after the lapse of a certain period, some moral relations, some habits of affectionate regard, were formed between the serfs and the owner of the fief, in spite of their reciprocal situation, and certainly not in consequence of it; for, considered in itself, the situation was radically vicious. There was nothing morally in common between the lord and the serfs; they formed part of his domain, and were his property; under which designation were comprised all the rights that we at present call rights of public sovereignty, as well as the privileges of private property, he having the right of giving laws, of imposing taxes, and of inflicting punishment, as well as that of disposing and selling. In fact, as between the lord and the labourers on his domain, there were no recognised laws, no guarantees, no society, at least so far as may be predicated of any state in which men are brought into contact.

Hence arose, as I believe, that vast inextinguishable hatred which the country people have borne at all times to the feudal system, to its recollections, and to its very name. We are not without examples that men may endure oppressive despotisms, become used to them, and even voluntarily accept them. Both theocratic and monarchical despotisms have more than once obtained the sanction, almost the affection, of the population subjected to them. The feudal despotism was always repulsive and odious; it sat heavily on the destinies, but it never reigned over the minds, of men. The reason of the difference is obviously deducible from the fact, that power in a theocracy or monarchy is exercised by virtue of principles common to the wielder and the subject; the former is the representative and administrator of another power, superior to all human powers; he speaks and acts in the name of the Divinity, or of a general idea, and not in right of man himself, and of man alone. The feudal despotism was quite the contrary; it recognised the power of one individual over another, the dominion of the personal and capricious will of a man. This is perhaps the only tyranny that man, to his eternal honour, never would yield to. Wherever he perceives that his master is but a man, so soon as the will which weighs upon him is but a human individual will like his own, he grows indignant, and submits to the yoke with wrath. Such was the veritable and distinctive character of the feudal sway, and such also was the origin of the antipathy which it never ceased to inspire.

The religious element which was associated with it was little calculated to lighten the burden. I do not believe that the influence of the priest was at all considerable in the confined society I have just depicted, nor that he succeeded, to any great extent, in imparting a juster character to the relations between the servile population and the lord. The church has doubtless exercised an important influence on European civilisation, but it has done so by proceeding in a general manner, by operating a change on the general dispositions of men. Now when we narrowly scrutinise the petty feudal society, limiting the designation as I have previously done, we find the influence of the priest, as between the lord and the serfs, almost a nullity. In the majority of cases, he was himself as boorish and subservient as the serf, and in very poor condition and weak inclination to bear up against the arrogance of the superior. We can readily imagine that he, the sole instrument to sustain and develop any sort of moral life in the lower population, would be useful to it in that respect, and attract some regard; he would confer a modicum of consolation and enlightenment; but he neither could nor did effect much in his ministry.

I have now examined the elementary feudal society, and brought forward the principal consequences that necessarily flowed from it, as affecting the possessor of the fief himself, his family, and the population gathered around him. We will now emerge from this narrow circle. The population of the fief was not alone on the face of the land; there were other societies, analogous or different, with which it had relations. The influence of this general society upon civilisation, therefore, becomes our present object of inquiry.

Before entering upon it, I will hazard a short remark. It is true that the owner of the fief and the priest both belonged to a general society; at a distance, they had numerous and frequent relations. It was not so with the serfs: whenever we use a general word, as, for instance, the word 'people,' to designate the rural population at this epoch, which conveys the idea of a society, one and indivisible, we speak inaccurately. For this population there was no general society; its existence was purely local. Beyond the territory in which they had habitation, the serfs held communication or interests with no individual or thing. There was for them no common destiny or common country: they did not compose a people. Therefore when we speak of the feudal association in its entirety, reference is made to the owners of fiefs alone.

Let us see, then, what were the relations of the lord of the isolated society with the general society in which he was involved and what consequences they brought to bear upon the development of civilisation.

The reciprocal ties that united the possessors of fiefs, the duties attached to their tenures, the obligations of service on one side, of protection on the other, are well known. I will not enter into their detail; a general idea of them is sufficient for my purpose. There must necessarily have flowed from them a certain number of ideas and moral sentiments, conceptions of duty, and feelings of attachment, impressed on the mind of each proprietor. That the principle of fidelity, of devotedness, of loyalty to engagements, and all the sentiments thereunto persuading, were evolved and sustained by the mutual relations amongst the holders of fiefs, is sufficiently evident.

It was attempted to convert these obligations, duties, and feelings, into rights and institutions. Every one is aware that the feudal system endeavoured to make matter of legal regulation the services that the possessor of the fief owed to his superior, and those that he might claim in return, the cases in which the vassal could be called upon by his suzerain for a military or money aid, and the forms in which he might obtain the consent of his vassals for services to which they were not bound by the holding of their fiefs. They essayed to put all these rights under the guarantee of institutions calculated to insure respect. Thus, the seignorial jurisdictions were intended to administer justice between holders of fiefs, upon reclamation to their common suzerain. Thus, also, every considerable lord gathered his vassals into a parliament, in order to treat with them upon affairs which required their consent or co-operation. In fact, there was a concourse of political, judicial, and military modes, by which they strove to organise the feudal system, and to convert the relations of the possessors of fiefs into rights and institutions.

But these rights and institutions had no substantiveness or guarantee.

When we are asked in what a political guarantee consists, we are induced to acknowledge that its fundamental character is the constant presence in society of a force, disposed and conditioned to impose law upon individual will and power, and to compel their observance of rules laid down for all, and their respect to general rights.

There are only two possible systems of political guarantees. Either there is requisite one particular will or force, so superior to all others, that none can resist it, and to which all are obliged to submit when it interferes; or a public force and will, the result of the concurrence and demonstration of individual wills, is required to be in such a state, when once fairly developed, as to awe and impose submission upon all.

Therefore the despotism of a single man or body, or a free government, are the only two possible systems of political guarantees. When we come to review the various governing forms, we shall find that they are all assignable within one or other of these systems.

But neither the one nor the other existed, or could exist, in the feudal state.

Yet the possessors of fiefs were not all equal amongst themselves, for a great many of them were powerful enough to oppress the weaker. But there was none, even taking the king, the first of the suzerains, who was in a condition to impose law upon all the others, and enforce obedience. All the permanent means of power and action were wanting; no permanent troops, or imposts, or tribunals, were in existence. Every time a call was made for aid on the social strength and institutions, they required a new commencement, a fresh creation, as it were. Tribunals were to be created at each process, an army when war was imminent, a revenue when the necessity for money was urgent: all was occasional, accidental, and merely adapted for the special exigency: all the springs of a central, stable, and independent government were deficient. In such a system, it is quite clear that no individual was in a condition to make his will a rule for others, or to render the general law respected by all.

On the other hand, resistance was as easy as repression was difficult. The possessor of a fief could defend himself with great facility, shut up in his habitation, having but a small number of enemies to oppose, and many means of forming coalitions, and drawing succour from vassals in the same situation as himself.

Therefore the first system of political guarantees—namely, that which intrusts them to the intervention of one preponderating strength—was palpably impossible in the feudal state.

The other system, that of free government, of a public power and force, was likewise out of the question; it never could have taken root in the midst of feudalism. This was owing to a very simple cause. When we speak at the present day of a public power, and of what we call the rights of sovereignty—namely, the rights of legislation, of taxation, and of punishment—we know and feel that they appertain not to any individual, and that no person has a prerogative, derived from himself alone, to punish others, or to impose upon them a burden or a law. These are privileges which are only vested in society as a mass, exercised in its name, and held not from itself, but imparted from a higher influence. So when an individual is arraigned before a power invested with these rights, he is irresistibly, and perhaps unwittingly, impressed with the feeling, that he is at the bar of a public and legitimate tribunal, which holds a mission to command over him, to which he yields a mental and immediate submission. Now, in the feudal system, on the contrary, the holder of a fief was invested with all the rights of sovereignty in his domain, and over the people inhabiting it; they were inherent to the domain, and matter of private property—so much so, that the prerogatives now recognised as public were then private, and the public powers were equally appropriated. When the possessor of a fief, in the habit of exercising sovereignty, in his own name, and by right of property, over all the population amongst which he lived, attended an assembly or parliament held by his suzerain—a parliament generally scanty in numbers, and composed of his equals, or those who were nearly so—he carried neither to it nor from it the idea of a public power. Such an idea was in contradiction to his whole existence, and to all that he was accustomed to do in the interior of his domains. He saw in that assembly only men invested with the same rights as himself, in the same situation as he was, and acting, like him, by virtue of personal will. Nothing led or compelled him to acknowledge in the most elevated portion of the government, or in the institutions now known as public, that superior and general character inherent in the idea that we entertain of political powers. And if he were dissatisfied with the decision, he refused to concur in it, or appealed to force to resist it.

In reality, force was the true and habitual guarantee of rights in the feudal system, if it be permitted to call force a guarantee. The only means of inducing acknowledgment and respect to rights was an incessant recurrence to force. No institution availed; and so perfectly was this felt, that institutions ceased to be invoked. If the seignorial courts and feudal parliaments had been conditioned to act, they would have been much more energetic and frequent than history represents them: their rarity proves their uselessness.

Nor need we be surprised at this result, for it proceeded from a cause yet deeper and more decisive than those I have just indicated.

Of all systems of government and political guarantees, assuredly the most difficult to establish, and give stability to, is the federative; that system which consists in leaving to each locality and particular society all the portion of governing power that can possibly remain in it, and removing only that portion which is indispensable to the maintenance of general society, in order to form therefrom, in the heart of that society, a central government. In fact the federal system, although logically the most simple, is actually the most complex. To reconcile the degree of local independence and liberty which it leaves in force, with the degree of general order and submission which it demands and involves in certain cases, evidently requires a very advanced civilisation: it is absolutely essential that the inclinations of men, and individual choice, co-operate in the establishment and maintenance of the system much more than in any other, for the coercive means are far inferior.

The federal system, therefore, is one which certainly requires the highest development of reason, morality, and civilisation, in the society for which it is intended. Yet this was the system that feudalism essayed to establish, for, in its general features, it was an actual federation. It rested upon the same principles as those upon which the confederation of the United States of America is at present founded. It assumed to confer upon each lord all the government and sovereignty that he could wield, and invest the suzerain, or the general assembly of barons, with the least possible portion of power, and this only in cases where it was absolutely necessary. The impossibility of establishing such a system amidst the ignorance, the brutal passions, and the imperfect moral state of men, as existing under the feudal regime, cannot be matter of doubt. The very nature of such a government was utterly opposed to the manners of the men to whom it was to be applied. Who, then, can be surprised at the failure of these attempts at organisation!

We have now considered the feudal society, first in its most simple and fundamental element, and latterly in its entirety. Under these two aspects, we have endeavoured to trace what its necessary and natural influence must have been on the course of civilisation. We are led, as I conceive, to this double result:

1st, Feudalism has exercised a considerable, and, upon the whole, a salutary influence upon the inward development of the individual being; it excited in the minds of men energetic ideas and sentiments, moral wants, and fine displays of character and passion.

2nd, In a social point of view, it failed in founding either legal order or political guarantees. It was a system indispensable to give a new commencement in Europe to the society so utterly dissolved by barbarism as to be incapable of a more regular or extended form, and the feudal form, radically bad in itself, could neither be reduced to regularity, nor be made expansive. The only political right that the feudal system has given prevalence to in the European society, is the right of resistance. I do not speak of legal resistance, for that could not become a question in a society so little advanced. The progress of society alone effects the substitution, on the one hand, of public powers for individual wills, and on the other, of legal resistance for that offered by particular persons. In this is the great object and chief perfection of the social order: a considerable latitude is left to personal liberty, and when that liberty comes to fail, and is reduced to defend its rightfulness, it is to public reason only that appeal can be made, to decide the process instituted against individual freedom. Such is the system of legal order and of legal resistance. Under the feudal system, there was of course nothing similar. The right of resistance, supported and practised by the feudal law, was the right of personal resistance—a terrible and unsocial right, since it is an appeal to force, to war, which is the destruction of society itself; but it is nevertheless a right which can never be completely extinguished in the human mind, for its abolition would be a recognition of servitude. The sentiment of the right of resistance had perished in the decay of the Roman society, and could not be raked up from its ashes; nor could it spring very naturally, as I imagine, from the principles of the Christian society. Feudalism, then, introduced it into the manners of Europe. It is to the honour of civilisation to render it always active and dormant, whilst it is to the credit of the feudal system to have constantly professed and asserted it.

Such is the result, if I mistake not, of the examination into the feudal society, considered in itself and in its general elements, independently of the historical development. If we pass to facts, to history, we shall find that everything has happened as was destined, that the feudal regime has effected what it was sure to do, and that its destiny has been in conformity with its nature. Events may be adduced in corroboration of all the conjectures and inductions that I have drawn from the mere nature of that system.

Let us cast a glance upon the general history of feudalism from the tenth to the thirteenth century. It is impossible to be blind to the fact, that it exercised a great and salutary influence upon the individual development of man, of his sentiments, character, and ideas. We cannot open the histories of that period without meeting a crowd of noble sentiments, of great actions, and agreeable developments of humanity, evidently springing from the inward temper of the feudal manners. It is true, chivalry does not resemble feudalism, yet it is its daughter. It was from feudalism that the first notions of those lofty, generous, and faithful sentiments came.

Again, in another point of view, the first burst of the European imagination, the first essays at poetry and literature, the first intellectual pleasures that Europe tasted after shaking off barbarism, were encouraged and fostered by the feudal spirit, and were brought forth in the recesses of the castles. For this sort of development of humanity, a movement in the mind and in life, leisure, a thousand conditions are required, which cannot be met with in the toilsome, sad, and boorish existence of the common people. Hence it is with the feudal times in France, England, and Germany, that the first literary recollections, the first intellectual enjoyments of Europe, are associated.

In return, if we investigate history as to the social influence of feudalism, it will tell us, agreeably to our conjectures, that it has been everywhere opposed, as well to the establishment of general order, as to the extension of general liberty. In whatever quarter we consider the progress of society, we shall find the feudal system standing as an obstacle. From the first period of its existence, we perceive the two forces that have been the great levers in the development of order and liberty, the monarchical power on the one hand, and popular power on the other, royalty and the people attack it, and struggle unceasingly against it. Some attempts were made at various eras to give it regularity, to bring it to a state somewhat legal and general; as in England by William the Conqueror and his sons, in France by St. Louis, and in Germany by several of the emperors. But all the trials and attempts failed, for the very nature of the feudal society was repugnant to order and legality. In modern times, some ingenious men have endeavoured to dress up feudalism as a social system, and to give it a legal, regular, and progressive form: they have made a golden age of it. But if they are asked to adduce their proofs, to assign a locality or a time for this Utopia, they are unable to do so; for they would represent a drama, for which neither theatre nor actors are to be found in the past. The cause of this error is easy of discovery, and it is one which equally explains the contrary mistake of those who cannot entertain the idea of the feudal system without absolute execration. Both parties have failed to take into consideration the double aspect under which feudalism presents itself: to distinguish, on the one hand, its influence upon the individual development of man, upon his character, sentiments, and passions; and on the other, its influences on the social state. The first are unable to conceive that a social system should be so full of evils, and so fatal, as is alleged, in which such lofty sentiments, and so many virtues, are found, in which they see literature take root, and manners assume a certain elevation and dignity. The others behold only the ill resulting from feudalism to the mass of the population, and the obstacles planted by it to the establishment of order and liberty, and are unwilling to believe that noble characteristics, great virtues, or any advancement whatsoever arose from it. Both have overlooked the double element of civilisation, and forgotten that it consists in two developments, one of which can be produced in the course of time, independently of the other; although after many ages, and a long series of events, they must reciprocally call and bring forth each other.

In conclusion, what the feudal system was, and what it effected, it was necessitated to be and to effect. Individuality, a personal existence in full energy, was the predominant feature amongst the conquerors of the Roman world, and therefore the development of individuality necessarily resulted from the social system founded by them. What man himself bears with him into a social system when he enters it, his inward and moral dispositions, powerfully influence the situation he occupies. The situation in its turn reacts upon the dispositions, fortifies and developes them. The individual swayed in the German society; therefore the feudal system, the offspring of the German, exercised its influence to the promotion of individual development. The same fact is discernible in the various elements of civilisation. They have remained faithful to their original principles; they have advanced and pushed forward the world in the route upon which they first entered. In the succeeding lecture, which will embrace the history of the church from the fifth to the twelfth century, and of its influence upon European civilisation, a new and striking example will be supplied.

Lecture V. The Church From The Fifth To The Twelfth Century.

Having examined the nature and influence of the feudal system, we next enter upon the subject of the Christian church from the fifth to the twelfth century; of the church, as I have once before remarked, because I do not purpose to descant upon Christianity properly so called, upon Christianity as a religious system, but upon the church, upon the Christian clergy as an ecclesiastical society.

In the fifth century this society was almost completely organised. Of course it has undergone since that era many and important changes, but it may be asserted that the church, considered as a corporation and government for the Christian people, had attained a complete and independent existence.

It requires but a single glance to recognise a prodigious difference between the state of the church in the fifth century, and that of the other elements of European civilisation. I have particularised, as the fundamental elements of our civilisation, the municipal and feudal systems, royalty, and the church. In that age the municipal system was a mere relic of the Roman Empire, a lifeless and formless shadow. The feudal system had not emerged from chaos. Royalty existed but in name. All the civil elements of modern society were in decay or struggling infancy. The church alone was at once young and constituted; it alone had acquired a definitive form, and preserved all the vigour of its first ages; it alone possessed the principle of movement and of order, energy and system, the two great instruments of influence. Is it not, I ask, by the moral action, the internal movement on the one hand, and by order and discipline on the other, that institutions are ingrafted upon societies? Besides, the church had stirred up all the great questions which interest men; all the problems concerning human nature, and all the chances of human destiny, were its matters of discussion. Thus its influence upon modern civilisation has been very great, much greater, perhaps, than its hottest adversaries or its most zealous defenders made it. They, occupied in serving or opposing it, considered it only in a polemical point of view, and were unable, as I conceive, to judge it with impartiality, or to measure it in all its extent.

The church of the fifth century presents itself as an independent and constituted society, standing between the masters and sovereigns of the world, the possessors of temporal power on the one hand, and the people on the other, serving as a link between them, and acting upon all.

Therefore, to ascertain and perfectly understand its action, we must consider it under three aspects. We must first of all survey it in itself, and take account of what it was, its internal constitution, the principles which predominated in it, its nature; then examine it in its relations with temporal sovereigns, kings, lords, or others; and finally, in its relations with the people. And when, from this triple examination, we have deduced a complete idea of the church, of its principles, situation, and the influence it was destined to exercise, we will verify our reasonings by history, or, in other words, we will inquire whether facts, properly so called, are in accordance with the results which the study of the church and of its various relations led us to draw.

First, then, of the church in itself, of its internal state, its nature.

The first imposing fact, and the most important perhaps, is its mere existence—the existence of a government based on religion, of a clergy, of an ecclesiastical corporation, of a priesthood, of a religion in the sacerdotal state.

To very many enlightened men, these words alone, a body of priests, a priesthood, a government based on religion, appear decisive of the question. They are of opinion that a religion which has worked up to a body of priests, to a clergy holding a legal constitution, a religion, in fact, under governance, exercises an influence, taken upon the whole, more hurtful than beneficial. According to their idea, religion is a purely individual affair between man and God; and whenever it loses this character, and an external authority is interposed between the individual and the object of his religious creed, that is to say, the Almighty, religion is adulterated, and society endangered.

The examination of this question is imposed upon us. In order to learn the influence exercised by the Christian church, it is necessary to have a distinct idea of what ought to be the influence of a church or body of clergy, from the nature of the institution itself. To attain this end, it behoves us to enter upon the preliminary investigation, whether religion is, in fact, purely individual? whether it provokes, and gives rise to, nothing more than an inward relation between each man and God? or whether it of necessity becomes a source of new relations between men, from which religious society, and a government for that society, as inevitably result?

If religion be reduced to the religious sentiment properly so called, to that sentiment certainly quite real, yet still somewhat vague and uncertain in its object, which we cannot further characterise than by its mere mention; that sentiment which addresses itself sometimes to exterior nature, sometimes to the most subtle emotions of the soul, now to poetic effusions, now to the mysteries of the future, which ranges inimitably, seeking everywhere for satisfaction, and fixing itself nowhere; if religion be restricted to this sentiment, I say, then must it, in my understanding, remain purely individual. Such a sentiment may indeed provoke a momentary association amongst men; it may, and in fact must, take pleasure in sympathy, and be nourished and strengthened by it. But from its unsettled and wavering nature, it is incapable of becoming the principle of a permanent and extended association, or of accommodating itself to any system of precepts, rites, and forms; in a word, to give origin to a religious society and government.

But I am strangely at fault, if this religious sentiment gives complete expression to the whole religious nature of man. According to my idea, religion is a great deal more.

There are problems in human nature and in human destiny whose solution is beyond this world, which are linked to an order of things unknown to the visible creation, but which irrepressibly torment the minds of men, and which they are absolutely bent upon solving. The solution of these problems, with the creeds and dogmas which contain, or at least profess to contain it, is the first object, and the first source of religion.

Yet another route conducts mankind to it. To those who have pursued philosophic studies to some extent, it is, I believe, clear enough that morality exists independently of religious ideas; that the distinction between good and evil in morals, and the obligation to shun evil and do good, are laws that man recognises in his own nature as much as the laws of logic, having their principle inherent in him, and their application in his actual life. But these facts being settled, and morality invested with independence, a question arises in the human understanding—Whence comes morality?—whither does it lead? Is this obligation to do good, which subsists by itself, an isolated fact, without an author or an end? Does it not veil from, or rather does it not reveal to man, an origin and a destiny which is not of this world? This is a spontaneous, inevitable question, and it is one by which morality, in its turn, leads man to the threshold of religion, and opens to him a sphere from which he has not originally received it.

Thus, on one hand, the problems concerning our nature, on the other, the necessity of seeking for morality a sanction, an origin, and a purpose, are fruitful and assured sources to religion. Hence it presents itself under many other aspects than that of a pure sentiment, such as I have described: it presents itself as a whole, combining, 1st, Doctrines evoked by the problems which beset man himself; 2d, Precepts corresponding to those doctrines, and giving a meaning and sanction to natural morality; and, 3d, Promises addressed to the hopes of futurity entertained by humanity. These are what truly constitute religion, and such it is at bottom, and not a mere expression of sensibility, a burst of the imagination, or a variety in poetic inspiration.

Thus brought to its true elements, to its essence, religion no longer appears as a matter purely individual, but as a powerful and fruitful principle of association. First take it as a system of creeds and dogmas. Truth belongs to none peculiarly; it is universal and absolute; men require to seek and profess it in common. Then as to the precepts associated to doctrines: an obligatory law for one individual is so for all; it must be promulgated, and all men must be brought under its empire. Lastly, as to the promises which religion makes under sanction of its creeds and precepts: they must be spread far and wide, and all must be called to enjoy their blessing. Therefore it is from the essential elements of religion that religious society arises; and it results so infallibly from them, that the word proselytism, which is especially applied to religious creeds, and seems almost exclusively consecrated to them, is still that which expresses the most forcible of social sentiments, that incessant craving to propagate ideas, and give extension to any particular society.

When the germs of the religious society are once laid, that is, when a certain number of men are united in common religious articles of belief, under a law of common religious precepts, and in common religious hopes, a government is needed for them. No society can exist a week, even an hour, without a government. At the very moment that the society is formed, and by the mere fact of its formation, it calls up a government to proclaim the common truth, the bond of the society, and to promulgate and maintain the precepts which that truth may bring to light. The necessity for a power or government over the religious society, as over every other, is implied in the fact of the existence of the society. And not only is the government absolutely essential, but it forms itself naturally. I cannot linger long in explaining how government is produced and established in society at large; I will confine myself to the remark, that when things follow their natural laws, when force takes no part, power falls to the most able, to the best, to those who will lead society to its object. Is a warlike expedition contemplated? The most valiant will take the power. Has the association in view some skilful investigation or enterprise? The most qualified will attain the mastery. In all cases, whenever the world is left to its natural course, the natural inequality of men is freely displayed, and each takes the place which he is capable of filling. And in the religious relation, men are not more equal in talents, powers, and capacity, than in other respects: such a man will be more capable than another to shed light upon religious doctrines, and to make them generally adopted; another will derive from himself more authority to enforce the observance of the religious precepts; and some other will excel in sustaining and raising the emotions of the mind and the religious hopes. Hence the same inequality in faculties and influence, which gives birth to power in civil society, is equally its cause in religious. Missionaries come forth and declare themselves, like generals. So that, as on the one hand a religious government necessarily results from the nature of a religious society, so on the other, by the mere operation of human faculties, and their unequal distribution, its development also is perfectly natural. Therefore, as soon as religion is planted in man, a religious society is formed; and as soon as the religious society appears, it produces its government.