On The State Of Men's Souls. (October, 1838.)

The sublimity of the gospel consists in two sentiments, which manifest themselves in it simultaneously,—hatred of evil, and tenderness for man who does evil; horror of sin, to speak as the gospel speaks, and love of the sinner.

How profound a depth of judgment as well as of moral justice! How admirable a knowledge of things as well as of men! For evil is truly hateful both in itself and in its effects; and men, the best of men, are surcharged with evil. Yet, at the same time, man is infinitely capable of good, infinitely worthy of affection; and with all his imperfections, a being to be loved beyond expression.

How great, too, the knowledge displayed of the true conditions of moral authority! It is not acquaintance with the nature of man, but power over him, that the Gospel seeks. Yet to influence men morally, it is needful both to love and reform them; to win their confidence by love and their respect by severity. Severity and love are the two engines wherewith to control the heart of man, for men know by instinct their moral wants—those which press them down as well as those which please them. They are deeply troubled by the sense of their imperfections; they wish to be raised. Love felt and inspired is at once their noblest and their most lively joy; they desire to love and be beloved. Complete control over them, I mean moral control, involves these two conditions,—that much be required from them of virtue, much be bestowed on them of love.

The last century had thus much good; it loved mankind and men. It bore a really deep affection to them, and wished them well. But as it was a critical and reasoning age, the sentiment of love often disguised itself in the dress and shape of controversy and analysis. Nevertheless, the feeling was there, sincere and powerful. That spirit of universal justice and humanity which characterized the epoch, whence did it spring if not from a lively sympathy with man, and a tender interest in his welfare?

But, together with this virtue, the last century certainly exhibited one great defect; it did not feel for evil the aversion it deserves. Not only as regarded certain rules of conduct and certain duties, but as concerned a rule in general and the very principle of duty, the spirits of the day were victims to doubt, that great corrupter of the human heart. In the moral system, stability and elevation go together; to waver is to descend; uncertainty is the sign and the cause of abasement. Not knowing where the evil existed, or even if it did exist, the eighteenth century denied or excused it when met with, instead of execrating and opposing it to the utmost.

And with the fixed points the long perspectives disappeared. By an admirable law of his nature, in order that man may hope he must believe, and believe in good. Virtue alone demands an eternity. Doubting about duty, they doubted their own future. Moral faith tottered; God veiled his countenance.

In such a state of mind, in an age which loved man and interested itself about him, man must have been an object of pity. What a destiny was that of a creature thus powerful yet faltering; always in motion, yet not knowing where to fix his foot firmly in this world, or where to fix his gaze beyond it! To aspire so high, in order to fall low and pass away so quickly! Such ambition without a worthy object! Such labour without any sure results! What father, if he thought his child were reserved for such a lot, but would feel overwhelmed by compassion and grief?

But no! at the same time that the last century loved men it admired them; and I can understand this. God and duty being abandoned, what remains of great and good if it be not man? Imperfect as is human nature, a mixture of good and evil, good is found there; the power of good makes itself felt. All that it possesses of what is elevated, rich, tender, or attractive, does not necessarily vanish because the mind misunderstands its source and government. And if it should happen, as it then did, that these great mental errors should occur in the midst of a period of great intellectual developement, of a great outflowing of sympathetic and noble sentiments, of a great march in the condition of mankind; if, at the moment when man rises highest and shines with most brilliancy, he loses sight of his compass, his God, how can he do otherwise than admire himself? how avoid a feeling of pride? He has no longer faith or hope on high, yet he advances, prospers, becomes rich, triumphs. He must believe; he must hope in himself; he must worship himself. Does religion fall? Then idolatry must arise, the idolatry of man for man. Man was the god of the eighteenth century, the object of worship as well as of love. Thence a great and deplorable leaning to human nature, to its weaknesses and inclinations. It was loved, but with a blind and weak love, which could only approve, caress, and promise, having nothing to advise, nothing to require.

Thence an immoderate thirst, in the name of and for man, of immediate worldly and palpable happiness. Loving man truly, and having nothing to offer him in this world superior to this world's happiness, nothing better or eternal beyond, it was necessary that men should be happy, that all should be happy here below; as here below their destiny and their treasure were contained. To accept the imperfect condition of humanity may be the part of selfishness which cares for nothing, and of faith which hopes for everything; but he who loves men, and yet can only dispose in their favour the blessings of this life and this world, cannot resign himself to a lot for the most part so rude, to progress so slow and always so incomplete. He is compelled to find much more to bestow on men, to distribute something, and at once, to all. And as spirits imbued with so noble a longing do not dream of the impossibility of satisfying it, they are compelled to assign to the sufferings and hardships of the human state an accidental and factitious cause, one which human wisdom and power can overcome. Hence the other maxim of the last century, that, left to themselves and their natural equilibrium, men and things go on well; that evil proceeds not from our innate nature and state, but merely from the ill regulated state of society, where the few have substituted their will and interest for the wills and interests of the many; that it is society and not men that need reformation, as the latter would not need it had not society corrupted him.

A maxim which has given rise, and naturally, to the sorest and most plausible of modern grievances, that incurable impatience of whatever is, that boundless disquiet, that insatiable thirst for change in the pursuit of a social condition which shall give at last to man, to every man, all the happiness to which he aspires.

This is the state in which the eighteenth century has placed men's souls. And I here speak of upright, honest, and sincere minds, not carried away by selfishness, not domineered over by evil passions, which think of others, and only wish for themselves as well as for those others what they consider legitimate.

The great mistakes and ills of any epoch are those of the good. These must be looked to and provided against, for there lies the hidden danger. Who can struggle against ill if the good are themselves infected with it?

I have seen the last of the master spirits of the eighteenth century—those who had remained faithful to it. I have seen them emerging from our revolution after their fearful experience of it. The condition of their minds was a touching and instructive spectacle. They were sorrowful, but not discouraged; full of esteem and affection for mankind; full of confidence and hope despite so many mistakes and reverses. The same fertility of wit, the same generosity of heart, the same spirit of justice and progress animated them. They accounted for their momentary failure by the violence of passion, the force of old habits, the want of public intelligence, the too hasty application of good principles carried to too great a length. And while their explanation bore witness to their sincerity and perseverance, still there was visible and perceptible in them at every step a persistance in the same mistakes; the same absence of moral dogma and religious faith; the same idolatry of man, the same tenderness towards him, the same pretensions for him. They had lost nothing of their noble ambition or tender sympathy for human nature, but they had learned nothing of its inward laws nor of the true methods for its government.

Thus a secret feeling of disquiet was apparent through the constancy of their ideas and of their hope; and they remained melancholy after their explanation, as if hardly satisfied with it themselves.

We are far in advance of our fathers. "I was carried here by a cannon shot," said Danton to M. de Talleyrand, who saw him at the Ministere de la Justice. The same shot has carried us all a hundred leagues from our cradle. We have learnt much. We have seen novel appearances under a new light. The intelligence and power of man; his reason, his morality, his power of action, and resistance to direction and restraint in the affairs of the world; all has been put to the proof, gauged, and measured. We know how deeply seated and closely hidden is the evil in our nature, yet how readily and terribly it occasionally breaks out. We know the bounds both of our spirit and of our will. We have been powerful, immensely powerful; and yet we have been unable to accomplish our will because it was in opposition to the laws of eternal wisdom, and our power was shivered against them like glass. At this price, we have acquired a more accurate and profound knowledge of ourselves and our condition. We no longer put ourselves off with desires or arguments, appearances or hopes. We see that which is. We live more than our fathers did in the truth. We are wiser and more modest.

But our wisdom has one grave defect. It is still, if I may so speak, but an outward good, which influences our life and conduct, but has not yet penetrated our soul and become for us a moral property, a moral wealth. It redounds to the honour and greatness of man that he is not content with what is, merely because it is. The mere fact does not suffice; he wishes to see more. For the fact he would discover an end, a reason. He wishes to attach it to the laws of his own inward nature, his own destiny; to feel it in relation to and harmony with his soul. Then only in man's eyes does a fact assume a moral aspect and acquire a moral power; then only does man accept it and obey it with respect as truth, instead of yielding and submitting to it with pain as a necessity. Moreover, we do not yet understand all the lessons of experience which we have received and recognized. They have not yet assumed in our moral being the rank which belongs to them. They are for us unimpeachable facts rather than great and good laws; and mistakes rather than progress. They direct more than they have enlightened us, and if we conform our actions and thoughts to them, it is because we are subdued rather than convinced.

Were it not so, why this dejection, this secret disgust, this indifference, this bluntness, this chill which now so often accompany wisdom and sound sense? You say you are discouraged, you do not hope, you do not dare any more to attempt aught that is difficult and great. What then has happened? What has this experience, at the same time so much vaunted and so mournful, taught you? That duty, not interest or passion, is the principle of morality; that God has not ceased to watch over the world; that he resists the proud and punishes the guilty; that order has her natural and inviolable laws, and avenges herself on those who mistake them; that evil, always present, always at our door, in us and about us, needs to be incessantly resisted. Of what do you complain? These are advances, not mistakes; truths reconquered, power recovered, not hopes thrown away. It is true, man was carried away by an ambition beyond his strength and right; it must be brought down, his reason and his will must agree to restore what they attempted to usurp. Instead of setting up and adoring himself as a monarch, man here must acknowledge his primitive imperfection, his definite insufficiency, and yield submission in thought and life on the bosom of liberty. But is it nothing that this liberty is now more firmly established than man has ever known it? Is the general progress of justice and happiness in the world nothing? Is there not therein a fitting reward for the toils and sufferings of our age? Is there not, after so many mistakes, enough to satisfy the most exacting, to refresh the most exhausted?

Let us look higher. In return for the sacrifices required from our pride, in compensation for the demonstrated weakness of our nature and the marked bounds of our power, has nothing been given to us? Do we not regain more than we lose? Do we not ascend more than we have been forced to descend? The eighteenth century had inflated us with pride, yet had in reality only lowered us. In making us monarchs of this world, it had at the same time confined and reduced us to it alone. No more immensity, no more eternity for the soul; no longer a bond of kindred between God and man. We came and passed over the earth like all that springs from and returns to it. Our noblest ambition, our purest desires, our most sublime flights, all that there is in us of noble and truly divine, was no more than a delusion and a burden. Not only in respect of our worldly goods and joys, but of ourselves and for ever, we had to exclaim, "vanity of vanities, all is vanity." We have escaped; we are leaving this confined and low condition; we are rising; we are again about to attain our dignity, our hope, our futurity, our soul. We can no more parade ourselves in our pride, but we are no longer plunged into and abandoned in misery; we find again a Master here below, and also "our Father which is in heaven."

I know how much there is of the frivolous and superficial in the return of our time to religious hopes and beliefs. I know how much even serious minds are doubtful and agitated upon this subject, the evils that are still at work, the problems that await solution, and that perhaps a tardy one. Nevertheless, we have got back to the right track. Man does not increase his distance from God; he has turned towards the East; he seeks the light. Here we still yield rather to the force of facts than of ideas; and experience is credited rather than conviction. Still we believe in experience rather than in our own talent, and submit to facts though we hardly render a free and enlightened homage to the truths of which they witness.

It is not yet adoration, but it is the fear of God, that beginning of wisdom.

Had we already reached the point of adoration—were the wisdom for which we have so dearly paid really established amongst us, in the affairs of this world and in those of eternity, in questions political, moral, and religious, in short, in everything; and were we fully satisfied as to the rational lawfulness and practical utility of her counsels, if she enlightened our understandings as she rules our conduct—we should be far other than we are; more tranquil, more confiding, more firm, more worthy, more exalted. We should distinguish further; we should advance higher and faster in the paths of new and amending progress, in which we now walk slowly and with bended head, as if constrained and humbled.

But, I repeat, it is needful, for this salutary transformation of our ideas to be accomplished, that our experience may become our reason. We have more good sense than enlightenment; we act better than we think. Inwardly and deeply we are imbued with prejudices which fetter although they do not rule us; we are still doubtful about the very truths by which we test our deeds; only doubt has changed its form and language. With our fathers it was infatuated and bold; with us it is detracting and useless. Pride has turned it into contempt; and because we do not experience for human nature the unbounded ambition and chimerical hopes which formerly prevailed, we no longer love men tenderly, nor think well of their nature, nor take an interest in their destiny. We imagine that wisdom binds us to indifference and immobility.

Many, too, of the ills of the eighteenth century, which sprung from the maxims then prevalent, and which, to all appearance, ought to have expired with them, still exist. We no longer have the same tenderness for man, nor do we show greater aversion to evil. Indifference has not made us more strict. For though human nature is no longer judged with the same blind partiality, we are still full of indulgence towards it, and cowardly in our treatment of it; we exhibit towards it the same complaisance, without feeling the former esteem and love. Materialist and impious doctrines are on the decline, but we are more than ever tormented by an eager thirst for immediate material happiness.

Is it true then, as is said, that we are in a state of moral decay? Is our age destined to continue the evil of its precursor, and while losing its virtues add to it its own evils?

I confidently answer in the negative. Nothing would tempt me to flatter the age I live in, but I love it. I am struck by its evil; I think a remedy urgently called for, an immediate struggle necessary; I also see in it much good, a good deep and fruitful and sufficient with the help of God to resist and conquer the evil.

I said just now that the great mistakes, the serious maladies of any period are those of the good. On the other side, it is in the sound ideas and good dispositions of the same class that the moral force of an epoch and its means of safety are to be found. Now the general and ruling disposition of the good at the present day is the spirit of order, the deep desire for order after so much trouble and contest.

This is said to be merely the result of prudence, of a clear idea of interest, not of morality.

In my opinion this is an inconsiderate sentence; one which shows little knowledge of man and of what passes within him, of which he is often himself unconscious. There is morality, true morality, in the spirit of order, especially when largely developed and hardly tried. The word interest is pronounced disdainfully, as if it implied pure selfishness, and excluded virtue. Thanks be to God, who has created legitimate interests. Interests inherent to legitimate situations and relations are essentially moral and animated by moral impulsion. The father of a family who protects his household, the labourer who takes care of the fruit of his industry, act for their own interest it is true, and according to the dictates of prudence. But around and connected with this interest are grouped the most praiseworthy feelings, domestic affections, respect of the law, care for the future, defence of right, fulfilment of duty, efforts, devotion, sacrifice. Who will refuse to these the name of morality? Public instinct answers this question. "There are but two parties," said a man of simple mind, and a stranger to all sophism, "that of honest men and that of rogues." When it was desired to define and rally under one banner the party of order in France, it was inscribed "The Charter and Property." [Footnote 2]

In fact, at the present day the ideas of honesty, dignity, morality, and virtue are closely allied with that of order. Public morality is in the general mind the cause of order as well as of individual security. It is because, after so many convulsions as corrupt as painful, the taste for and love of order are amongst us the first effect, the first symptom of attachment to the maxims and practice of duty.

Besides, democratic societies, still so novel and mysterious, are little known and ill understood. Their virtues want the éclat,—I will go further, want the finish, the charm which belong to the elevation of persons, the beauty of form, the influence of time, the complete, varied and harmonious developement of great and glorious human nature. Yet they want neither virtue itself nor morality. There will be found in these crowded and unknown masses, in their laborious and modest lives, much uprightness, much simple justice, much active benevolence, much submission to law, much resignation to their lot, a rare power of effort and sacrifice, a noble and touching disposition to forgetfulness of self, without pretension, without noise, without reward.

Even the jealousy of all superiority, the passion of envy—that poison of democratic society,—does not always affect as much as might be apprehended their moral judgment. This venom has affected us deeply; nevertheless, excellence is met with joy and welcomed with gratitude as a service done to society, which feels the necessity of being elevated and purified. Respect is more genuine, taste more correct while it remains a stranger to systematic opinions, to mere flights of fancy, and to all romantic emphasis. By a singular and very significant phenomenon, the exaggeration and emphasis of the present period tend towards evil and disorder. The declaimer plunges into the mire. Our times wish good to be true, simple, sedate, and sensible. It is only because it is good, a moral good, that it is esteemed and loved. It is asked to appear but what it is.

Where such a disposition prevails; where good is thus honored for itself, and for itself alone, there may still be much evil, and very serious evil; but such can hardly be the lot of the future.

We are hardly yet advancing towards a future. As yet we have struggled, and still strive to acquire from the heritage of the last century a spoil that suits us; a heritage so loaded, so mingled, that it has plunged us in confusion. We have co-existing in us good and bad, true and false, in direct opposition. We bear about in ourselves the most contradictory ideas and sentiments. We are driven about and stagger under their varying influence. Now we try to reject all absolutely, now to forget all and live from day to day without thought or design. Vain efforts! The problem harasses every soul, agitates or wearies it, leaves it in doubt or inactivity. None can elude it. A solution is necessary in moral as well as in political order, for individuals as for the state. For this is not a purely political question, which can be settled wholly and completely by charter, law, or cabinet. It is a matter which comes home to each of us; one for which each of us individually has to provide. We must keep, apart from the impulse which the eighteenth century has given to the world and the minds of men, that which agrees with the eternal order which that era often mistook for the world and the human mind. The new truths and laws which come to us from that date, as well as the immutable truths and laws which it overlooked, must live and reign together in our thoughts; we must know for a certainty and unhesitatingly practice what they demand from us. On this condition only shall we see the end of that mixture of agitation and depression, this doubting both of well and ill regulated minds, this barrenness of movement as of wisdom which are the peculiar evils of our era. Government and people reciprocally accuse each other of this evil, and charge on each other the task of applying a remedy. "Let Power be dignified, firm, active, fertile," says the one; "let it sustain and animate, rule and aid society; society will assist, evils will be remedied, good will be done; but it is for Power to take the initiative and responsibility in all this." "How can I do it?" replies Power. "How undertake the responsibility? It is in society itself—in the mind itself—that the evil exists. They are weak, tottering, inactive; full of doubts and fears. Let people ascend in the social scale; let them show self-control. I do not prevent them. No one can ask me to do more; I can do no more."

The defence of both weakness of mind and heart is bad. The regeneration of our time demands from all both duty and exertion. From power, because it is set on high, it sees and is seen; it shows the light and holds the standard. If it lowers them, society falls into darkness and disorder. From society too, from every individual, for we are all infected by the evil which we call upon power to cure. Yet power of itself is not able to cure, individually and collectively, the evils for which we ask a remedy. Our active and intelligent co-operation is indispensible. And it is precisely in this coalition of public power and individual will that the value and honor of free governments consist. Hence they are morally and politically powerful, salutary for immortal souls as for temporal occasions.

This good must be the work of all. Power or society, rulers or plain citizens, let us each look to our own share in the great work, and perform our own part of the general duty. To him who shall be able the best and speediest to fulfil his, will belong the glory as well as the power inherent to success.