Note 102 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal

‘Modern science has established as the measure of truth, not the deductive demands of its understanding, but the observed existence of the fact.’ (Paul Bourget.) The ‘truth’ here is evidently moral truth; for scientific truth the phrase would be a tautology. Once more, here the ‘fact’ is solely the fact which happens to suit the author’s passions. When M. d’Haussonville points out to M. Bourget that democracy is a fact, and an unavoidable fact, he is told that this belief is a ‘prejudice’ and one suddenly learns that ‘boats are made to row against the stream’. This is exactly what revolutionaries say.