Notes

Note A (Page 1)

That political passions affect a large number of men they never before affected ...

It is very difficult to know to what extent crowds are moved by the political events of their time (of course, I am leaving on one side all truly popular movements). Crowds do not write their memoirs, and those who write memoirs scarcely ever speak of the crowds. However, I do not think my proposition will be seriously disputed. To limit ourselves to France and the two examples I quoted—suppose we had another upheaval like the Religious Wars, I do not think we should see the immense majority of country districts possessed by no other passion than a hatred for soldiers, whatever party they belonged to.⁠[170] Nor should we see cultivated bourgeois who keep diaries giving a couple of lines to such events as Luther’s preaching, along with the thousand little facts they relate.⁠[171] Nor do I think that a month after an event like the taking of the Bastille we should find a foreigner on his travels in France, writing: ‘13th August, 1789. Before I leave Clermont I must remark that I have dined or supped five times at the table d’hôte with some twenty to thirty merchants and tradesmen, officers, etc.; and it is not easy for me to express the insignificance—the inanity of the conversation. Scarcely any politics, at a moment when every bosom ought to beat with none but political sensations.’ (Arthur Young.)⁠[172]

The attitude of populations towards wars between States long seems to have been that described by Voltaire in the following lines: ‘It is indeed a deplorable evil that this multitude of soldiers should always be kept up by all Princes. But, as we have pointed out, this evil produces a good. The peoples take no part in the wars carried on by their masters; the citizens of besieged towns often pass from the power of one to another without having cost the life of a single inhabitant; they are simply the prize of the King who possesses most soldiers, cannons and money.’ (Essai sur les Moeurs, towards the end.) Again, in 1870, a Prussian servant girl said to a French prisoner employed on the farm where she was working: ‘When the war is over I will marry you. Don’t be surprised at what I say, patriotism doesn’t mean much to us, you know.’ I imagine that in 1914, many servant girls, Prussian or otherwise, felt in their hearts and put into practice, this absence of patriotism; but I dare to assert that very few would have formulated it, even to themselves. The really new fact to-day is not perhaps that the peoples feel political passions, but that they claim the right to feel them. This claim is sufficient to make them act and therefore furnishes a magnificent opportunity for their leaders to exploit them.

Note B (Page 15)

Louis XIV annexing Alsace and not for one moment thinking of forbidding the German language ...

It was not until 1768 that the Monarchy thought of setting up schools in Alsace, ‘where French is to be taught’. Vidal de la Blanche, who relates this (La France de l’Est, 1, vi) adds: ‘This indifference (to the language question) must not shock us too much. Let us rather learn a lesson from it. It raises us above the narrowly jealous conceptions which since then have set nation against nation, under this language pretext. It takes us into an age when another spirit presided over human relations. There was then no language question. Fortunate eighteenth century, when war bred no lasting hatred, when the poison of national animosities was not inoculated and fostered by all the means now at the disposal of the State, including the schools.’ The eminent historian forgets that the State has these means at its disposal, with the consent of the peoples. The peoples, or at least the cultivated classes among them, at the bidding of their men of letters, during the past century have set themselves up arrogantly against one another in their languages and cultures, even though they one day come face to face with the unexpected results of this attitude, as is happening to-day to France in its difficulties with Alsace.

Note C (Page 19)

The Union of capitalism, anti-semitism, anti-democracy with nationalism.

I am under no illusion concerning the solidity of certain among these unions. Although the conservative passions fully comprehend their immense interest in identifying themselves with national passion and thereby benefiting by its popularity, although one may even admit that they have been caught in their own net and have become sincere in this feeling, yet it is none the less true that conservatism (chiefly capitalism) is essentially something entirely different from patriotism, and that this difference, whose manifestations in the course of history have been innumerable (how many times have the bourgeoisie treated with foreigners when they thought it was to their interests!) may once again display itself. It is easy to imagine that the French bourgeoisie would turn against France if they thought their patrimony was being too seriously threatened by the legislation of the Republic. This may already be seen in the case of families who, in recent years, have exported their capital abroad. I may say the same thing of monarchist passion. It is easy to imagine that certain followers of that passion might one day decide to work against a nation which decisively and finally rejects the system they propose. I think I observe this when I see monarchist writers publishing that ‘from the Spree to the Mekong, the whole world knows that France is in a state of weakness bordering upon disintegration’. However, such things are still exceptional, and those who are responsible for them would refuse to admit—perhaps sincerely—that they meant to harm their nation.

Moreover, the bourgeoisie have another interest in keeping up nationalism and the fear of war. These feelings create a sort of permanent military spirit in a nation. More precisely, they create in the people a disposition to accept the existing hierarchy, to obey orders, to recognize superiors, i.e. the very things required of them by those who wish them to continue in a state of service. The confused perception of this truth inspires the bourgeoisie with that curious ill-humour they display towards every attempt at international agreement, in whatever form this may be presented by the governments. This ill-humour (they declare) arises from the fact that they consider it simple-minded and imprudent to believe in the extinction of national hatreds. At bottom, it arises from the fact that they do not want this extinction to occur. They know that the maintenance of these hatreds will cost the lives of their children, but they do not hesitate to make the sacrifice, if by doing so they retain possession of their property⁠[173] and their power over their servants. Here is a grandeur of egotism which is perhaps insufficiently appreciated.

Note D (Page 28)

On the attitude of the modern Catholics towards Catholicism when it is in opposition to their nationalism.

A good example is the attitude of the German Catholics in the past twenty years. It has been described with all desirable detail by M. Edmond Bloud in his great study: Le nouveau Centre et le catholicisme.⁠[174] It will be seen that it strangely resembles the attitude of many a non-German Catholic.

The ‘Centre’ began by declaring itself ‘a political party which has assumed as its duty the representation of the interests of the whole nation in all domains of public life, in accordance with the principles of Christian doctrine.’ (Katholische Weltanschauung: Catholic conception of the world.) Soon they announced political action founded on ‘a Christian basis’ (christliche Basis), the spirit of which is thus defined by one of its apostles (Doctor Brauweiler, April, 1913): ‘In the domain of practical action, concepts are determined by the end in view. The formation of political concepts is comparable with the formation of juridical concepts. The jurist forms his concepts with no other consideration than that of what is needed, in relation solely to the required end. But no one can say that the juridical concept thus formed is a false one. In the same way, one may speak in politics of Christianity or Christian doctrine.’ In 1914, Doctor Karl Bachem of Cologne, published a pamphlet entitled: Centre, Catholic Doctrine, Practical Politics, where he declares that the doctrine of ‘universal Christianity’ is only a political formula intended to render possible the collaboration of Catholics and Protestants, chiefly in Parliament; that from the religious point of view this formula has only a negative meaning, and only means the determination to struggle against materialism, atheism and nihilism; that its positive content is defined by the Prussian Constitution which in paragraphs 14 and 18 lays down that ‘the Christian religion’ is the ‘foundation of the institutions of the State’.

Thus, as M. Edmond Bloud justly remarks, Doctor Bachem makes the Prussian Constitution the Rule of Faith. Put ‘national interest’ in place of ‘Prussian Constitution’ and you will have the state of mind of many a modern French Catholic.

The attitude of the German Catholics seems to me also representative of a certain Catholicism common to-day to other nations, in declarations of this sort:

‘The Catholic members of the “Centre” remain Catholics individually, but the party, as a party, does not necessarily accept the Catholic conception of the world.’

And again:

‘The Pope and the Bishops have authority in matters of religion, but wherever political matters are concerned we shall not allow ourselves to be influenced by the authority of the Pope or by that of the Bishops.’ (M. Edmond Bloud alludes to a conversation reported in the Frankfurter Zeitung, April, 1914, where one of the chief of the ‘syndicats mixtes’ declared that, ‘The German Catholics have had enough of the Pope.’)

What M. Bloud calls the ‘declericalization of the Centre’ is not a thing peculiar to our neighbours, nor is the joy of the great German nationalist organ (the Prussian Annals) when it observes that ‘the Catholic idea of the State is ceasing to be ultramontain and is becoming nationalist’.⁠[175]

The attitude common to German Catholics and to certain Catholics of other nations seems to me well brought out by two protests which M. Bloud quotes.

The first is from Father Weiss:

‘There exist,’ says the eminent theologian, ‘several kinds of political Catholicism.... The worst of all consists in looking upon pure politics, social politics, national politics, not only as something wholly independent of religion, but as being the standard by which we should determine the degree to which Catholicism or Christianity may be utilized in public life.’

The other is from Cardinal Kopp (then Bishop of Fulda) in a letter written in 1887:

‘Unhappily a gust of madness is blowing over us. Formerly we held to the principle: Faith first, politics afterwards. Now they say: Politics first! The Church and the Faith afterwards.’

Our Catholics of the Action Française have not invented much.

Note E (Page 33)

The ‘clerk’, by adopting political passions, brings them the tremendous influence of his sensibility if he is an artist, of his persuasive power if he is a thinker, and in either case his moral prestige.

This prestige itself is something new in history, at least from my point of view. The results produced in France by the intervention of the ‘intellectuals’ in the Dreyfus affair, and those produced by the manifesto of the German Intellectuals in 1914, not only in their own country but throughout the world, are things to which I find no equivalent in the past. One cannot imagine the Roman Republic feeling that the moral support of Terence and Varro was of value to it during the war with Carthage, or the government of Louis XIV finding that the approbation of Racine and Fermat, gave it additional strength in the war with Holland. This increase of strength which a cause to-day receives from the approbation of the men of thought (or those who are considered such) does great honour to the modern world. It is an homage to the mind hitherto unexampled in humanity.

Naturally, this prestige has a double result. Though the modern ‘clerk’ fortifies a cause by giving it his approbation he can also seriously harm it by refusing his approbation. If in 1915 men like Ostwald and Mach had refused to approve the acts of their nation, they would have seriously harmed it. The ‘clerk’ who to-day condemns the realism of the State to which he belongs does really harm that State.⁠[176] Hence it follows that the State, in the name of its practical interests, to defend which is its function, has a right—perhaps a duty—to punish them. This appears to me to be the true order of things: The ‘clerk’, faithful to his essential duty, denounces the realism of States; whereupon, the States, no less faithful to their duty, made him drink the hemlock. The serious disorganization in the modern world is that the ‘clerks’ do not denounce the realism of States, but on the contrary approve of it; they no longer drink the hemlock.⁠[177]

Let me point to another disorganization. That is when the State does not punish the ‘clerk’ for denouncing its realism. This occurred in France during the Dreyfus affair. The order of things demanded that the ‘clerks’ should demand abstract justice, as they did; but perhaps it also demanded that the State, weakened in strength by their idealism, should throw them into prison. When the ‘clerk’ performs the layman’s task, the result is anarchy; but there is also anarchy when the layman acts and speaks as a ‘clerk’, when those whose duty is to defend the nation display their cult for the abolition of frontiers, universal love, or other spiritual things.⁠[178] When I see philosophers concerning themselves with the safety of the State and Ministers striving to bring about love among mankind, I think of what Dante says: ‘You turn to religion him who was born to wear the sword, you make a King of one who was born to preach. Thus all your steps are out of the true way.’ However, this second disorganization of orders has been denounced by others, and it is not my function to combat it.

Note F (Page 37)

Think how willingly the ecclesiastics now accept military service.

I think this willingness is worthy of the historian’s attention. Obviously, it implies some sincere attachment to their country in those who display this willingness, although their law is to be dead to all worldly attachments. Moreover, it appears that in the last war most of the ministers of Jesus Christ able to bear arms were glad to defend their country, whatever that country was, and whatever notion they may have had of the justice of its cause. Here is a most suggestive fact: Certain Belgian monastic orders (and others as well, I am told) established abroad at the declaration of war, and authorized by the government to remain abroad, insisted upon returning to the capital to perform their military duties. True, the behaviour of these monks may be explained, not on grounds of patriotism, but from the fear that they would be severely criticized by their fellow-citizens if they acted otherwise; for the modern ‘clerks’ have ceased to understand that the sign of an attitude truly in harmony with their function is that it should be unpopular with the laymen.

But the most remarkable thing here for the historian, is that the imposition of military service on ecclesiastics does not appear to arouse any protest from the Church. Certain Church teachers even assert (Mgr Battifol, L’Eglise et le Droit de la guerre): ‘There is no further doubt about the legality of military service.’⁠[179] It is also curious to see in the Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique (Art. ‘Paix et Guerre’) the strenuous efforts of the author (Father de la Brière) to prove that bearing arms, even by ‘clerks’ in holy orders, is in no sense contrary to Christian law. However, the opinion of these theologians does not seem to be shared, at least publicly, by the higher ecclesiastical authorities; for every ‘clerk’ who bears arms is laid under an interdict, as he was in the past—only the interdict is taken off a few minutes after it has been declared.

The modern laymen (Barrès for example) praise this patriotism of the ecclesiastic and his willingness to fight. The laymen of the past tried to make him ashamed of it, and liked to exhort him to sentiments which they considered more in harmony with his sacred ministry. The warlike ardours of John XII and Julius II were severely condemned by their contemporaries. Apart from Erasmus—the type of the man of letters fully aware of the ‘clerk’s’ high function, who was continually saying: ‘Their tonsure does not warn them that they ought to be free from all the passions of this world and think only of the things of Heaven’—the Italian Tizio wrote: ‘It is astonishing that the Pontiffs, whose part is to be pacific and independent, should take part in the shedding of Christian blood.’ The French poet Jean Bouchet shows the weeping Church imploring Julius II to end the war (though it is true that Julius II was fighting France):

In Le Songe du Verger, a kind of summary of moral doctrines current in France in the fourteenth century, there is a dialogue between a Knight and a Clerk, when the Clerk claims for his caste the right to make war, and the Knight tells him that ‘the arms of the “clerks” are prayers and tears’. It is suggestive to see a soldier urging a minister of the spiritual to perform his true function and seeming to think that the performance of this function is necessary to the good order of the world. Here is a feeling for ‘clerkdom’ and its social value which is very seldom to be found among the modern laymen, even the non-military ones—I nearly said, especially the non-military ones.⁠[180]

Note G (Page 53)

That self-examination to which every spectator is impelled by a representation of human beings which he feels to be true and solely pre-occupied with truth.

Let me quote the following passage concerning the civilizing effects of such representation:—

‘This spectacle of man offered to man has considerable moral effects. First, a valuable exercise of the intelligence, an increase of reflection, a widening of the view in every direction, result from the habit thus set up of getting out of oneself and entering into others, to understand their actions, to share in their passions, sympathize with their sufferings, appreciate their motives. This faculty of the artist communicated to the spectator or the listener, this faculty of participation and assimilation, is something set up in opposition to egotism and is a condition of tolerance and benevolence, frequently even of justice. Then, lessons of virtue, frequently not the least effective, are given to the spectator, from the very fact that he is placed in a position to praise or condemn acts or thoughts which are set before him relative to cases where his own interests are not involved. He recognizes his own image in the actor of the epic, a man like himself, a voluntary and impassioned agent, whose dangers though perhaps magnified are not foreign to his own experience. Then the essential phenomena which characterize conscious humanity and morality occur in him who thus witnesses himself in the person of another, i.e. disinterested objectivity of himself to himself, generalization of passion, motive and maxim, judgment founded on the universal, self-examination to arrive at what is duty, clear and defined sentiment of the direction of the will.

‘But this must not lead us to think that the poet’s object is utility or morality. If it were, he would be lacking in the true feeling of art. Teaching, moralizing—this object of the artist is indirect, i.e. does not exist systematically for him. He must only attain it without having sought it, and sometimes he attains it when he seems to have departed from it. What he desires to do, is to touch the feelings, to arouse emotions. But it happens that by doing so he elevates, purifies, moralizes. The poet (I am especially speaking of him) does indeed address himself to everyone. That means he can only sing the universal, however curious such an assembly of words may appear. He may indeed sing it under the form of the particular, without which his fictions would be lacking in life, he none the less excludes the pure, incomprehensible, inexplicable individual, shorn of all truth if he does not express a relationship.⁠[181] He generalizes passion, therefore ennobles it and renders it at once the object of observation, reflection and disinterested emotion. The listener, carried away from his own relatively base private preoccupations and transported without hope or fear (at least, too personal and too present hope and fear) into the superior sphere of humanity’s common passion, feels the benefit of an elevation of soul; his consciousness is temporarily freed from egotism.’ (Renouvier, Introduction à la philosophie analytique de l’Histoire, p. 354.)

Note H (Page 56)

... Napoleon, who ordered the chief of police to take measures for the history of France to be written in a manner favourable to his own throne.

Here are some portions of a note on this subject dictated by Napoleon at Bordeaux in 1808. It promulgates the conception of history as practised, mutatis mutandis, by many of our historians of the past:—

‘I do not approve the principles laid down in his note by the Minister of the Interior. They were true twenty years ago, they will be true sixty years hence, but they are not true to-day. Velly is the one fairly detailed author who has written on the history of France. The abridged chronology of the President Hénault is a good classical book. It is useful to have them both continued. It is of the greatest importance to make certain of the spirit in which these continuations are written. I ordered the Minister of Police to look after the continuation of Millot, and I desire the two Ministers will consult over the continuation of Velly and the President Hénault....

‘They are to be just to Henri IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV and Louis XV, but without adulation. The September Massacres and the horrors of the Revolution must be painted in the same colours as the Inquisition and the massacres of the Sixteen. They must take care to avoid all reaction in speaking of the Revolution, no man could have opposed it successfully. No blame attaches either to those who perished or to those who survived. There was no individual power capable of changing the elements and foreseeing the events which arose from the nature of things and circumstances.

‘They are to point out the perpetual disorganization of the national finances, the chaos of the provincial assemblies, the claims of the Parlements, the lack of regulation and resort in the administration. This checkered France, without unity of laws and administration, was rather a union of twenty Kingdoms than a single State, so that one breathes freely on coming to the period when the benefits of unity of laws, administration and territory are enjoyed.... The opinion expressed by the Minister, which, if followed, would result in abandoning this task to private enterprise and the speculation of some publisher, is wrong and could only produce regrettable results.’

Of course, the champions of authority are not the only persons who make history serve their own interests. Condorcet (Tableau historique, 10^e Epoque) says that history should serve ‘to maintain an active vigilance in recognizing and crushing under the weight of Reason the first germs of superstition and tyranny, if they ever dare to appear again.’

Note I (Page 62)

Humanitarianism and Humanism.

Here, on this subject, is a curious passage from one of the ancients:—

‘Those who created the Latin language and those who spoke it well do not give the word humanitas the vulgar meaning which is synonymous with the Greek word philanthropia, which means an active kindness, a tender benevolence for all men. But they give the word the meaning which the Greeks attach to paideia, which we call education, knowledge of the fine arts. Those who show the most taste and disposition for these studies are the most worthy to be called humanissimi. For man alone among all living beings is able to devote himself to cultivating a study which for that reason has been called humanitas. Such is the meaning given to this by the ancients, particularly by Varro and Cicero. Almost all their works show examples, so I shall content myself with quoting one only. I have chosen the opening of the first book of Varro “Concerning human things”: “Praxiteles, qui propter artificium egregium nemini est paulum modo humaniori ignotus (Praxiteles, whose excellent talent as an artist has made him known to every man at all skilled in the arts)”. Here humanior does not bear the vulgar meaning of easy, tractable, benevolent even though lacking in knowledge of letters. That meaning would not express the author’s thought. It means an educated, a learned man, one who is acquainted with Praxiteles through books and history.’ (Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, Book XIII, XVI.)

Note J (Page 82)

... they cannot sufficiently denounce all institutions based on liberty and discussion.

Note that the novelty here lies in the passion, the fury with which they condemn liberty of discussion. Otherwise, we see most of the so-called liberal thinkers in history themselves recognize the necessity for submission to the sovereign’s judgment. Spinoza declares that ‘there is no possible government if every man makes himself the defender of his own rights and the rights of others.’ The Letters of Descartes contain passages in favour of the ‘reason of State.’

It is perhaps not sufficiently noticed how frequently the old French absolute monarchists say that justice is the chief function of the sovereign. ‘The most important of the King’s rights,’ says one of these theorists (Guy Coquille, Institution du droit des Français, 1608) ‘is to make the laws and general statutes for the good order of his Kingdom.’ Another (Loyseau, Des Seigneuries, 1608) says: ‘The usage of public lordship must be regulated by justice ...’ Bossuet (Instruction à Louis XIV) says: ‘When the King administers justice or has it exactly administered in accordance with the laws, which is his principal function ...’ The modern absolute monarchists, even French, seem to be inspired by the German theorist, who says: ‘The State has two functions to perform: the administration of justice and the waging of war. But war is by far the principal.’ (Treitschke.)

Note this famous passage from Bossuet (Pol., Book VIII, art. II, par. I):

‘It is one thing for it (the government) to be absolute, another for it to be arbitrary. It is absolute in relation to constraint, there being no power which is capable of compelling the sovereign, who in this sense is independent of all human authority. But it does not follow that government is arbitrary; because, apart from the fact that all things are subject to God’s judgment (which applies also to the government we have called arbitrary), there are laws in empires, and everything which is done contrary to them is void of right.’

It will be seen that the defence of arbitrary government is a new thing among French teachers, even in regard to Bossuet. (I am speaking of Bossuet’s doctrines, not of his practical advice.)

Note K (Page 91)

This is the teaching of Nietzsche.

I must repeat that throughout this work I am considering the teaching of Nietzsche (and Hegel’s too) insofar as it has become the pretext for a great moral preaching, though I know perfectly well that in reality this teaching is something far more complex. I shall quote the following judicious observation, in connection with the fact that certain philosophers have only themselves to blame for ‘the misunderstanding of their true thought’:

‘Nietzscheism has been subjected to the same test as Hegelianism. And no doubt here and there philosophical themes have served especially as pretexts to cover up a new offensive on the part of barbarism. But the fact that they have been utilized, the manner in which they have been utilized, have a significance which must not be overlooked. Is it not the criterion of a philosophy which may be called rational without reserve and equivocation, that it should remain incorruptibly faithful to itself? On the other hand, the systems which begin by accepting contradictions, reserving the right to add that they are capable of surmounting them or of “living” them, lodge their enemy in their midst. Their punishment is that their antithesis still resembles them; and that is what has happened to Nietzsche.’ (L. Brunschvicg, Le Progrès de la Conscience dans la philosophie occidentale, p. 431.) This book contains an excellent exposition of ‘Hegelian themes’ and ‘Nietzschean themes’, precisely insofar as they have become political breviaries.

Note L (Page 94)

Long before the disciples of Taine and Auguste Comte.

When this book appeared in a periodical, certain persons declared that the whole of my attack on the modern ‘clerk’ went astray because I did not give more space to the author of Origines de la France Contemporaine. He, they said, was the ‘great realist “clerk” of the past fifty years, while those I attacked were only his small change.’ (This sudden contempt for the thought of Barrès and Maurras of the part of certain people is certainly surprising.)

There is here a manifest abuse of the word realism. Taine threw light on the true nature of the real, or rather the political real, and reminded the universalist that this domain is not under his jurisdiction. He never exalted this real at the expense of the universal, which is the realism I am denouncing here. He plainly taught, on the contrary, that the universalist who stays in his own domain (see his admiration for Spinoza and Goethe) is the great human model. Compare this with Maurras for whom the universalist, even when non-political (the infinitist, the pantheist) is profoundly contemptible. It is also difficult for me to see Taine as the godfather of those who glorify the soldier at the expense of the man of justice and the man of study,⁠[182] who exhort the nations to cultivate their prejudices where they are ‘totally foreign to reason’ (Barrès) and who declare that the intelligence which cares nothing about what is social is the activity of a savage. I think Taine would cheerfully say of those who claim to derive from him the same thing that M. Bergson is reported to have said of some of his ‘disciples’: ‘These gentlemen are most original.’

Nevertheless, Taine seems to me to be the initiator of the modern realists in two points. The first is his condemnation of individualism, more exactly, of the moral liberty of the citizen (for this, at bottom, is the meaning of his regret for the old corporations, and, more generally, of his exhortation to form groups, which shape the individual’s soul, instead of allowing it to be autonomous as against the State); and the second, which is far more novel than the first among French teachers, is his condemnation of idealist education. The peroration of the ‘Régime moderne’ obviously establishes the whole educational argument of the Déracines and L’Étape:—

‘Sometimes when he is with his intimates, as bitter and as overfatigued as he is, the young man is tempted to say to us: “By your education you induced us to believe that the world is made in a certain way. You deceived us. It is much uglier, stupider, dirtier, gloomier and harsher, at least to our sensibility and our imagination. You think they are over-excited and out of gear; well, if they are, it is your fault. That is why we curse and despise the whole of your world, and reject your pretended truths, which for us are lies, including those elementary and primary truths which you say are evident to common sense, and upon which you build your laws, your institutions, your society, your philosophy, your sciences and your arts.” That is what contemporary youth have been telling us aloud for fifteen years by their tastes, their opinions, their inclinations in literature, the arts and life.’

Against this manifesto in favour of a practical education, let me set this protest of a true descendant of Montaigne, Pascal and Montesquieu:

‘In his diatribe for the classical spirit and the primary truths of reason and philosophy which direct literary education of all kinds, Taine comes to use words similar to those of the adversaries of ancient literature,⁠[183] of the general ideas which are inseparable from them, and of disinterested culture even. The only object would then be to prepare persons for an empirical world,⁠[184] people taught to know the world as it is, and trained to make it continue as it now is. However, the school laws are too recent for one to be able decently to blame them for the evils of the age, and make them the cause of the hatred and scorn poured on society by those who are bored, enervate and out of their class. However, even if it were true that the comparison between the general principles of reason, morality and beauty, and empirical life engendered more disgust with the realities than it has done in the past, it would be a sad paradox to ask that this danger should be averted by banishing from education all elevated views and all idealism.’ (Renouvier, Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire, tome iv, p. 541.)

Note M (Page 95)

This cult brings out a silliness of mind which to me seems wholly an acquisition of the nineteenth century.

This silliness of mind assumes another form, i.e. the belief (rigidly formulated by Maurras) that in politics you can find laws of cause and effect as certainly valid as those of weight or electricity. (‘Politics are a science.’) This is the superstition of science, held to be competent in all domains, including that of morality; a superstition which, I repeat, is an acquisition of the nineteenth century. It remains to discover whether those who brandish this doctrine believe in it or whether they simply want to give the prestige of a scientific appearance to the passions of their hearts, which they perfectly well know are nothing but passions. It is to be noted that the dogma that history is obedient to scientific laws is preached especially by partisans of arbitrary authority. This is quite natural, since it eliminates the two realities they most hate, i.e. human liberty and the historical action of the individual.

Note N (Page 98)

Our age has seen priests of the mind teaching that the gregarious is the praiseworthy form of thought, and that independent thought is contemptible.

Note that what is new in this crusade against individualism (the great apostle of which is M. Maurras) is not the recognition that ‘the individual is only an abstraction’, that to a great extent, he is formed by his race, his surroundings, his nation, a thousand things which are not himself. The novelty is the cult for this servitude, the order given to mankind to submit entirely to it, the contempt shown for any attempt to get free from it. Once again this is the cult (so strange in French thinkers) for the inevitable part of the human being, the hatred for its free part.

Note that those who to-day preach obedience of the mind, not only demand it from the uncultured masses but from the men of thought, especially from the men of thought. The anti-individualists of the Dreyfus affair particularly opposed the independence of scientists, writers, and philosophers—‘the mad vanity of a few intellectuals’. Nevertheless, the most curious thing is not that they require this obedience, but that they obtain it. When M. Maritain declares that ‘everyone cannot philosophize and that, for men, the essential thing is to choose a master’, and when M. Maurras asserts that the function of most minds is to be ‘servants’ and to reflect the thought of some leader, these teachers find a number of men of thought to applaud and abdicate their liberty of mind in their favour. The thinkers of the eighteenth century said: ‘A religion is needed for the people.’ Those of our age say: ‘A religion is needed for ourselves.’ What Barrès wrote: ‘The part of the masters is to justify the habits and prejudices of France, so as best to prepare our children to take their place in the national procession,’ he certainly meant that he and his colleagues were to walk in this procession. Here we again come upon that thirst for discipline which I spoke of above and which seemed to me so worthy of remark in the descendants of Montaigne and Renan. The cause, I said, was their desire to belong to a ‘strong group’. In them it also arises from a feeling for the artistic value of regimenting a collection of men in a beautiful ‘procession’, and also from the joy felt by so many souls in being governed, if not having to make the effort to think for themselves—a most curious joy in so-called men of thought.

The cult for the collective soul, with all its violation of human consciousness, seems to me admirably denounced by a passage of Maine de Biran, quoted by M. L. Brunschvicg (op. cit., La Sociologie de l’ordre, p. 526):—

‘... According to M. Bonald, it is not the human mind, it is not the individual understanding which is the seat, the true subject of inherence of the nations or (universal) truths under discussion; but it is society, which, gifted with a kind of collective understanding different from that of individuals, was from its origin imbued with them through the gift of speech and by virtue of a miraculous influence exerted on the mass alone, independent of its parts. The individual, the man, is nothing; society alone exists; society is the soul of the moral world, it alone exists, while individual persons are only phenomena. Let those who can, understand this social metaphysics. If the author himself understands it clearly, then I am in the wrong. Then we must cease to talk of philosophy and recognize the nothingness of the science of intellectual and moral man, we must admit that all psychology based on the primitive fact of consciousness is simply false, and we must consider science itself as an illusion which perpetually deceives and misleads us by showing us everything, even our own existence, in a false and fantastic light.’

M. Brunschvicg very rightly adds: ‘The antithesis could not be stated more clearly. Either the primary fact of consciousness, or the primary fact of language; either Socrates or Bonald.’

Either Socrates or Bonald. Barrès and Maurras made their choice.

Note O (Page 118)

... Péguy who admires philosophies to the extent that ‘they are good fighters.’⁠[185]

This determination to praise philosophers for their virtues of action rather than for their intellectual virtues is very frequent among men of thought to-day. In his Souvenirs concernant Lagneau, Alain, wishing to give as favourable a picture of his master as possible, praises his energy and his resolution at least as much as his intelligence. It is also very remarkable—although here literature only is in question—to see a professor of moral science (M. Jacques Bardoux) setting a special value on those French literary men who were soldiers, i.e. Vauvenargues, Vigny, Péguy. As to the men of letters themselves, I shall content myself with pointing out that one of them who is most applauded by his own colleagues recently declared that he chiefly admired d’Annunzio for his attitude as an officer, and expressed regret that he had returned to literature.⁠[186] The Emperor Julian praised Aristotle for having said that he felt prouder of being the author of his Treatise on Theology than he would have felt if he had destroyed the power of the Persians. One might still find soldiers in France who would agree with this judgment, but very few men of letters. Elsewhere (Les Sentiments de Critias, p. 206) I have attempted to give the history and the explanation of this desire (so curious in men of the pen) to exalt a warlike life and to scorn a sedentary life. Note that this characteristic is to be seen in contemporary writers long before the war of 1914, and that those who talk most about a warlike life are not always those who lead it.

The new thing, I repeat, is not that we see men of letters praising an active life and scorning a sedentary life; it is the absence of naiveté, the dogmatic tone. When Ronsard exclaims: ‘Good Gods, who would praise those who let life go by bent over books’;⁠[187] when Bertrand de Born wishes that ‘no man of high lineage should have any thought but cutting off heads and arms’; when Froissart sings the glories of chivalry and casts his scorn in the faces of the bourgeois, no one will take these candid lyre-players, who like noble poses and do not even know that the word doctrine exists, for the ancestors of our grave professors of belligerent aesthetics. Moreover, I doubt whether the author of Scenes and Doctrines of Nationalism would have condescended to be a descendant of these simple-minded persons.

I find scorn for the life of the mind clearly professed in a dogmatic tone, in a writer of the seventeenth century who frequently reminds one of certain modern authors by his efforts to humiliate the toga before the sword. (It is true that this writer was a gentleman of the very minor nobility.)

‘Certainly, there is no better way of relaxing the vigour of men’s courage than to occupy their minds with peaceful and sedentary exercises, and idleness cannot enter civilized States in a more subtle or dangerous disguise than that of literature. Lazy and idle persons have in part ruined commerce and agriculture, which are the cause of the weakness of our condition and the cowardice of our age.’ (J. L. de Balzac, Le Prince, 1631. He then admits literature and the sciences to the State insofar as ‘they strengthen and embellish the Mother-country’.)

On the other hand, a master from the great period of French literature writes a eulogy of the life of the mind at the expense of the active mind, which I hardly think would be accepted by many of the moderns who venerate that period (I am especially thinking of those who admire the thought of Georges Sorel).

‘In France great strength of character and width of mind are needed if a man is to reject offices and employments and thus consent to remain at home and do nothing. Scarcely anyone possesses sufficient merit to play this part with dignity, nor sufficient resources to fill up the void of time without what the vulgar call “business”. But the wise man’s idleness needs only a better name, and we ought to say that one who meditates, talks, reads and is calm, is working.’ (La Bruyère, Du Mérite personnel.)

Note P (Page 122)

The ‘Manifesto of the Party of Intelligence’ (Figaro, 19th July, 1919).

This manifesto, signed by fifty-four French writers, several of whom are among the teachers most respected by their fellow-citizens, is of the greatest importance to the present inquiry. In addition to the strange passage on the Church’s mission which I quoted above, it contains things like this:—

‘Nationalism, which the conceptions of the intelligence impose on political conduct as well as on the order of the world, is a reasonable, humane system, and French in addition.’

And further on:—

‘When a literature becomes national does it not acquire a more universal significance, a more humanly general interest?’

And again:—

‘We believe—and the world believes with us—that it is part of the destiny of our race to defend the spiritual interests of humanity.... We are solicitous for Europe and all the humanity remaining in the world. French humanity is the sovereign protector of this.’

And above all:—

‘Victorious France means to take her place again in the order of the mind, the only order whereby a legitimate domination may be exercised.’

Hence the desire to found (the manifesto itself underlines the words): ‘The intellectual Federation of Europe and the world under the aegis of victorious France, the guardian of civilization.’

Victory under arms conferring the right to command in the intellectual order—that is professed to-day by French thinkers! One remembers the Roman writers, from whom these thinkers claim descent, who took as the leader of their minds Greece, which had been conquered by force of arms; one also remembers the German teachers of 1871 who also claimed intellectual hegemony for their ‘victorious’ nation, which they too claimed as ‘the guardian of civilization’.⁠[188]

When this manifesto was published, somewhat similar reflections seem to have occurred to the mind of one of our great writers. In a letter concerning this document,⁠[189] Marcel Proust deplores the proclamation of ‘a kind of “Frankreich ueber alles”, the policeman of the literature of all nations.’ As a true priest of the mind, he goes on: ‘Why take this peremptory attitude towards other countries in such matters as literature, where a man only reigns by persuasion?’ I am happy to take this opportunity to do homage to this true ‘clerk’, and to say that I know that there are still other writers in France beside those who only believe in the virtue of cold steel.

Note Q (Page 138)

Those who base their judgments on their artistic sensibilities.

This artistic origin of the political attitudes of so many men of letters has been pointed out with great ability by M. Daniel Halévy in the case of M. Maurras. In an old article (La Grande France, 1902) M. Halévy quotes this beautiful passage from M. Maurras’s Anthinéa on the walk of women carrying a clay pot balanced on their heads:—

‘The bosom swells and is modelled like a vase, it opens like a flower. The neck settles, the loins strain nervously. Their walk becomes graver and more supple, is measured with an inestimable sobriety; it unrolls in the mind like a piece of music. This living pillar moves, glides, advances, without being interrupted by any sudden jerk or any break. It follows the undulations of the ground, adapts itself to the slightest rises, and thus resembles the stem of a beautiful young tree set free from its roots, moving over the ground without leaving it for a fraction of an inch. An infinite multitude of half-pauses make the jerks imperceptible, or one is only conscious of their succession, a continual harmony which leaves its curves in the air....’

M. Daniel Halévy adds:—

‘I quote the whole passage because it gives the very idea of Charles Maurras. For his classical way of thought, things are beautiful, not from the shocks of feeling and passion, but from the form and rhythm which give them continuity, or rather existence in the human sense of the word. M. Charles Maurras applies this taste for form to the study of history, and that is the whole of his “sociology”.’

There could be no better definition of the type of man for whom things are good insofar as they satisfy his artistic sensibility. Let me place in opposition to him the exactly contrary type, leaving the reader to judge which of the two may claim to belong to ‘the intelligence’:—

‘... For the perfection of things should be measured by their nature alone, and things are not more or less perfect because they flatter or wound our senses.’ (Spinoza.)