la ..r J / ■ I \4 / THE PEOPLE. J. MICHELET. TRAX3L.VTED, WITH. TRF. AUTIIOPv's E3l'ECIA.L APPR08A.TI0N', BY C. COCKS, B.L. THAN?I,ATOa OF "priests, women, an'd Families," " anton'io persz and philip ii.," ETC. ETC. T II I n D E D I T I O X. LOXDOX: PUl:>TKD KOR LOXGMAX, BROWX, GKEEX, AND LONGilANS, rATEBXOSTER-ROW. 184G. J. PETER MAYEfT LIBRARY London : Printed by A. Spottiswoodf. Nevr- Street- Square. URRARY UxMVF.RSIiV OF (AJIFORMA SA-MA UAHBAIIA EXTRACT FROM A LETTER ADDRESSED BY M. MICHELET TO THE TRANSLATOR. MONSIKIR, ^lon nouvel ouvrage " Le Peiiple," est peu avanct^ encore. Je vous en enverrai le primier exemplaire en feuilles (en Janvier? ouFevrier?). Croyez^ Monsieur, a ma reconnoissance pour tout le temps que vous consacrez a mes ouvrageSj et recevez mes cordiale.>5 salutations. J. MICFIELET. Paris, Oct. Gth, 1845. CON T E :n^ t s. Page Introduction' — To IM. Enr.Aiv Quinet - - . This Book is derived rather I'lom the Author's Experie:ice than' from 1 Books - - - - - - 2 Statistical Information insufficient - - - - 3 France better known than Europe, - - - - 3 and judged more severely - - - -4 Danger of slandering one's self - - - - 5 The Life of the People has its Sacred Poetry, which we know how to penetrate - - - - - - 5 Their Virtue of Sacrifice strong - - - . (j Example taken from my own Family - - - 7 PART I. ox BONDAGE AND HATRED. CHAPTER I. ' BONDAGE OF THE PEASANT. Devotion of the Peasant to the Land - - - 17 3Iarriage between INIan and the Soil - - - - 18 Acquisition of Land, before the Revolution, interrupted several Times, and now once more - - - - - 19 The Peasant has made the Land, and is in love with it - - 21 lie borrows in order to go on acquiring Land - - - 22 He is worsted — his Irritation - - - - 24 Tiie Townsman keeps away - - - - 24 The Peasant is slandered ----- 25 Nobility and IMisLTy of the Frencii Peasant - - - 25 His Sui)eriorlty - - - - - 26 Can lie remain a Proprietor? - - - - 27 He envies the M'orkman - - - - - 28 CHAPTER IL Ii0?-I>AGE OF THE WORKMAN DEPENDENT ON 5IACIUNERT. Tlie Peasant migrates to Town, and turns Workman - - 31 Democratical Iniluence of Manufactures^ - - - 33 A 3 VI ^ CONTENTS. Page Degradation of the Man wlio is dependent on Machines - - 34 Better Condition of the solitary Workman - - - 33 Almost fatal Immorality of the Machine- Workman .. - 36" Woman ; the Child - - - - - 37 The Child, compared with the Peasant Child - - - 38 Suciabilitv and Kindness of our Workmen ... ;59 CHAPTER III. BONDAGE OF THE AIITISAX. The Rigour of Apprenticeship - - - - 40 Uneasy Existence of the Modern Workman - - - 41 Uneasy Condition of the Modern Workman - - - 42 His Household — his Vs'ife - - - - 4'3 The Mother's Ambition - - - - - 44 The Son becomes an Artist : — Studious - •• - 44 SufTerii-.gs of the Workman who is fond of Literature - - 45 The Poetry of Workmen - - - - - 45 Universal Soaring towards Light - - - - 46 CHAPTER IV. BONDAGE OF THE 3IAN UFACTLT-EK. Our Manufacturers are the Workmen of 1815 - - - 47 Their present Embarrassments - - - - 48 Their Hardheartedness - - - - - 49 Faint Aspirations of Humanity - - - - 50 They do not know the Vt'orkman well - - - 5 1 French Industry is stifled, it struggles by Art - - - 52 CHAPTER V. BONDAGE OF THE TRADESMAN. Tradesmen the Tyrants of Manufacturers - - - 53 Falsification - - - - - - 54 Destructive Competition - - - - 54 The Tradesman compared with the Workman - - -55 He is obliged to please - - - - -56 His Family - - - - - - 57 His Family often compromised - - - - 57 CHAPTER VI. BONDAGE OF THE OFFICIAL. Changeableness of his present Condition - - -58 low Salaries - - - - - - 59 Is the Official corrupt - " i " " - 59 CONTENTS. VU Page Miseries of some Functionaries - - - - 60 The extreme Misery of the Schoohnaster - - - 61 Voluntary Nullity of the Employe - - - 61 Man corrupted by his Family - - - - 62 But supported by JMilitary Honour - . - - 63 CHAPTER VII. BONDAGE OF THE RICH >IAK ANl) THE BOCKGEOIS ; THE AXCIEXI BOURGEOISIE. The nen- Bourgeoisie, already old, has not grown young by Industr y 64 Rapid Decline — Inertia - - - - - (Jo Timidity of the Bourgeoisie - . .. _ 57 Terrorism - - - - - -67 Communism - - - - - . gg The Isolation of the Bourgeois, and tiic Man grown lie!) - - 69 Isolation has produced Vacuity - - - - 69 Alliances of the Bourgeois - - - - 70 Exhaustion — The People will renevv' Life and Science - - 71 CHAPTER VII. REVIEW OF THE FIRST PAllT INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND. How every Class loves France - - - - 72 Miseries of the Upper Classes - . . . 7-5 Man become very sensitive - - - - 74 Ruffled by Machinism - - - - .74 Administrative and Commercial ^lachinism - - -15 It dispenses with our having Mora! Uuion - - - 76 Hatred occasioned by Ignorance - - - - 76 Men of Instinct and Men of Reflection - - .77 PAllT II. ENFRANCmSE-MENT UV LOVE. XATLllE. CHAPTER I. INSTINCT OF THE PEOPLE, lUTIIERTO EITTE STUDIED. The People depicted are only Exceptions - - - 79 An unnatural, depraved Class - - - - 80 That is not the I'eojile - - - - - 81 We must take them in tlie Mass : ai'd profoundly - - 82 YUl CONTEXTS. CIIAI'TER IT. THE IXSTINCT OF THE PEOPLK, 'WEAKENED, BUT STILL rOWEUFUL, ' Page Our Research is not external - - - - 83 We study the People in their Condition - - - 84 In their Relation to other Nations - - - - 85 Is ours a Poetical People ? - - - - 8G They, however, preserve their Instinct - - -86 Good Sense and Sagacity of our old Peasants - - - 87 Wisdom and great Experience of the Old Women of the People - 88 CHAPTER III. [no THE PEOPLE GAIK 3IUCH IK SACRIFICIXG THEIR INSTINCT? SPURIOUS CLASSES. The New Bourgeois - - - - - 89 Vulgarity of the Men grown rich - - - - 90 Efforts of the English to escape from it - - - 91 Advantage of remaining one's self - - - - 91 CHAPTER IV, THE SIMPLE THE CHILD THE INTERPRETER OF THE PEOPLE. Simplicity of Mind and of Heart - - - - 92 Sages may loarn from Children - - - - 93 Precocious Logic of Children - - - - 93 Divine Character of Infiints - - - - 94 Divine Character of the Dying - - - -9.5 The Infant loses it in growing up - - - - 95 He will resume it at his Death - - - - 9G CHAPTER V. CONTINUATION IS THE NATURAL INSTINCT OF THE CHILD PERVERSE? The Infant damned at its Birth - - - - 97 Suhtle Instruction — Cruel Education - - - 98 Love and Humanity protest - - - - 99 Palliative of tlie Umbo - - - - - 99 Victory of Hamanity - - - - - 100 CHAPTER VL DIGRESSION INSTINCT OF ANniALS PROTESTATION IN THEIR FAVOUR. The Animal in relation to the Child - - - 101 The East acknowledge Nature as a Sister - - - 102 Nature disavowed by the Greek and Roman City - - 103 CONTEXTS. IX Sterility — Christ Ims not saved the Animal - _ ■ 104 Tlie Devil seen in Animals - - - - lOt They arc re-instated by the Child - - - - 105 The Church refuses to receive them - - - _ 105 !\Ian takes them to her at Christmas - - - 106 Science has just re-instated them - - _ ^ 105 lyCt ^5 an resume the Education of the Animal - - - 107 CHAPTER VII. THE INSTINCT OF THE SIMPLE THE MAX OF GENIUS IS SUPERLATIVELY THE SIMPLE, THE CHILD, AND THE PEOPLE. The Simple do not like Analysis - - - - 108 They sympathise with Life - - - -109 Genius combines Simplicity and .Analysis - - - 109 Genius is superlatively the simple Man - - • 110 Genius Is the People more than the People themselves - - III : CHAPTER VIII. THE BIRTH OF GENIUS, A TVPE OF THE BIUTII OF SI AN." The Man of Genius is fruitful - - - - 112 In him Criticism does not destroy Inspiration - - - 113 Birth of Genius, Type of the Birth of 3Ian - - - 114 The Type for every Social Work - ..J - - - J 15 Its Struggles and Inward Sacrifice - - - - 115 The i\Ian of Genius improves by his Work - - - 1 16 He remains one of the Simple - - - - 116 CHAPTER IX. REVIEW OF THE SECOND PAHT INTKODUCTION TO THE THIRD. Tlie Instinct of the Child is i-.ot perverse - - - 117 Africa will help Prance to comprehend herself - - - 118 We are indebted to mute Instincts for a Voice - - - 118 A Protection, an Entrance into the City of Right - - 119 PART III. E.VFRANCUISEMENT BY LOVE. OUR NATIVE COUNTBY. CHAPTER I. FRIENDSHIP. Great Friendship, or our Native Land ■ . - 121 IVIan is born the Friend of Man - - - - 122 Love makes the last first - - - - 123 CONTENTS. Page Democracy, as Love and Initiation - - - 123 Early Friendships - - - - - 124 How precious between the Rich and the Poor - - 125 The Rich and I'oor are necessary to each other - - 1 25 Oppositions, Jealousies - . _ - 126 Magnanimity of the Generals of the Revolution - - 126 CHAPTER II. LOVE AND MARRIAGE. Marriage became impossible in the Roman Empire - - 127 Inconvenience of marrying an inferior Woman - - 128 Happiness of the Poor Family - - - 129 What is lost in abandoning the Poor Girl - - - 129 Utility of the Mixture of Races and Conditions - - ISO CHAPTER III. ASSOCIATION OF THE FISHEllMEN- OF NORMANDY. Association of Cheesemongers at Jura - - - 131 No more Associations in France - - - 1 32 Agricultural Associations now dissolving - - - 1 S3 Is France less Sociable? - - - - ISS Tlie Pretension to Equality has destroyed Patronage - -134 The Frenchman has much Individuality - - -135 He must have a Society of Souls - - - - 136 No Society of Souls without Sacrifice - - - 137 CHAPTER IV. OUR NATIVE COL'NTKV. ARE NATIONALITIES ABOUT TO DISArl'EA It ? Provincialities have disa])pcared to the P)cnefit of Nationality - 138 The Soul of a People wants a Body, a Place - . _ 140 No Nation will perish - - - - -111 What v,-ould happen if France perished - - - 142 CHAPTER V. Danger of Cosmopolitanism - - - - 143 Danger in France imitating England - - - 144 England is rich, and France is poor : why? - - - 145 Because France has had the Genius of Sacrifice - - 146 CHAPTER VI. FRANCE SUPERIOR AS DOCMA, AND AS LEGEND. FRANCE IS A RELIGION. The Popedom of France - - - - 147 It is a Living Brotherhood - - - - 148 It may be taught as a Dogma and as a Legend - - 149 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER VII. THE FAITH OI' THK KEVOLUTION IT HAS NOT KEPT ITS FAITH TII.I. THE END, AND HAS NOT TIIANSJIITTED ITS SPIRIT BY EDUCATION. Page Normal, Primary, and Central Schools - - - 150 Normal School (Ecolc Normale) ... 151 Polytechnic School - - - - - 152 The Ecole Normale does not teach France . - - 152 The Revolution not jjreparcd in Education - - - 153 The Convention loses Faith - . - . 15,'} Transmits not the Genius of Revolution . - . 1 54 CHAPTER VIII. OF EDUCATION WITHOUT FAITH. Faith in our Native Country - - - - 15G How Faith may be recovered - - - - 156 Youth will restore Faith to us - - - - 157 CHAPTER IX. GOIl IN OVK NATIVE COUNTRY THE YOUNG COUNTRY OF THE FUTURE '[ SACRIFICE THE MOTHER REVEALS GOD. The Father reveals the Country - - - - 158 School is an Infant Country ..... 159 One First School common to all wliere they would feel their Country 160 The Country taught as a Dogma and a Legend - - 161 It ought alone to initiate into the World - - - 162 Politics identical witli Education - - - - 162 The Power of Sacrifice - - - - - 1 63 Sacrifice and Salvation - - . . 164 TO M. EDGAIl QUINET. This book is more than a book ; — it is myself. That is the reason it belongs to you. Yes, it is myself ; and, I may venture to affirm, it is you also. As you have justly remarked, our thoughts, -whether communicated or not, are ever in unison. We live with the same heart. A de- lightful harmony ! It may surprise, but is it not natural? All our various works have sprung from the same living root: — "The sentiment of France, and the idea of our country." Accept, then, this book of " The Pkople,'' because it is you^ because it is myself ! We represent, as much as any, perhaps — you by your military, I by my industrial, origin — the two modern conditions of the People, and their new advent. I have made this book oi myadf, of my life, and of my heart. It is the fruit of my experience, rather than of my research. I have derived it from my observation, and my intercourse with friends and neighbours ; I have gleaned it from the highway : fortune loves to favour him who ever follows the self-same thought. Lastly, I have found it, above all, in the reminiscences of my youth. To know the life of the people, their toils and sufferings, I had but to interrogate my memory. For I, too, my friend, have worked with my hands. The true name of modern man, that of vorkmcni, I am entitled to, in more than one sense. Before I made books, I compo.scd them literally ; I ar- ranged letters before I grouped ideas ; and I am not ignorant of the sathiess of the workshop, and the wearisomeness pf long hours. Sad tiir.cs ! It was the latter years of the Empire ; all seemed to be lost at once to me — my family, 'my fortune, and my country. It is to those trials, doubtless, that I owe the best part of my nature ; to them must be ascribed the little value I possess as a man and an B 2 EXPERIENCE, NOT BOOKS, THE ORIGIN OF THIS VOLUME. historian. From these I have especially retained a profound sen- timent of the people, the perfect knowledge of the treasure that is in them, the virtue of sacrifice, the tender remembrance of precious souls that I have known in the most humble conditions. Nobody must be surprised, if, knowing as well as anybody the past condition of that people, and having shared their life myself, I feel a burning desire for truth when I am spoken to about them. When the progress of my history led me to study the questions of the day, and I cast my eyes upon the books in which they are dis- cussed, I confess I was surprised to find them almost all in contra- diction to my memory. I then shut the books, and placed myself among the people to the best of my power ; the lonely writer plunged again into the crowd, listened to their noise, noted their words. They were perfectly the same people, changed only in outward ap- pearance ; my memory did not deceive me. I ■went about, therefore, consulting men, listening to their account of their own condition, and gathering from their lips, what is not always to be found in the most brilliant writers, the words of common sense. This inquiry, begun at Lyons about ten years ago, I have pro- secuted in other towns, studying, at the same time, with practical men of the most positive minds, the true situation of the rural dis- tricts so much neglected by our economists. The mass of new in- formation I have thus acquired, and which is not in any book, would scarcely be credited. Next to the conversation of men of genius and profound erudition, that of the jieople is certainly the most instruc- tive. If one be not able to converse with Beranger, Lamennais, or Lamartine, we must go into the fields and chat with a peasant. What is to be learned from the middle class } As to the salons, I never left them without finding my heart shrunk and chilled. My varied studies of history had revealed to me facts of the great- est interest, unnoticed by liistorians : — the phases, for instance, and the vicissitudes of small properties before the Revolution. My inquiry among living documents taught me likewise many things that are not in our statistics. I Avill mention one, which some •will, perhaps, find trivial, but which I consider important and worthy of all attention. It is the immense increase of linen articles acquired by poor families about 1842, though wages have lowered, or, at least diminished in value, by the natural diminution in the value of money. This fact, important in itself as an advance in cleanliness, which is connected with so many other virtues, is still more so, inasmuch as it proves an increasing stability in households and families, — above all, the influence of woman, who, gaining little by her own means, can only make this outlay by appropriating part of the wages of the husband. "Woman, in these households, is economy, order, and FRANCE BETTER KNOWN THAN EUROPE. 8 providence. Every influence she gains, is an advancement in morality.* This instance was not altogether iiseless, to show the insufficiency of the documents gathered from statistics and other works of political economy, to make us comprehend the people ; they give partial, artificial results, taken at a sharp angle, and which may be wrongly interpreted. Writers, literary artists, whose course is directly the opposite of these abstract methods, would seem likely to bring the sentiment of life to the study of the people. Some of the most eminent among them have attempted this grand subject, and talent did not fail them ; their success has been immense. Europe, long little inventive, receives with avidity the produce of our literature. The English scarcely write any thing now-a-days but articles in reviews : as for German books, who reads them but the Germans ? It would be worth while to examine whether these French books, which have so much popularity, so much authority, in Europe, represent France truly, — whether they have not exhibited certain exceptional, very unfavourable, shades of character, — whether these pictures, in which people see scarcely any thing but our vices and our defects, have not done our country immense harm among foreign nations. The talent, the honesty of the authors, and the well-known liberality of their principles, lent an overwhelming weight to their words. The world has received their books as a terrible judgment of France upon herself. France has this serious point against herself, — that she shows herself naked to the nations. All others, in a manner, remain clothed and dressed. Germany, — nay even England, with all her inquiries, all her publicity, are, in comparison, little knoAvn. They cannot see themselves, not being centrahsed. That which is first remarked on a naked figure, is its defects. These strike the eye at once. What would be the result, if an obliging hand placed over these very defects a magnifying glass that would make them appear colossal, and reflect upon them such a * This prodigious acquisition of linen, which all the manufacturers can testify, implies some acquisition of other goods and household furniture. We must not be surprised if the savings banks receive less from the workman than from the man-servant. The latter buys no goods, and but little api)arel ; he easily finds means to get clothed by his masters. People ought not to estimate, as they do, the progress of economy by that of the savings bank, nor believe that whatever is not paid in there, is spent in the tavern. It seems that the family — I speak especially of the wife — has desired, in preference to all else, to make clean, attractive, and agreeable, the little home which supersedes the other place of resort ; hence, also, the taste for flowers, which has reached classes bordering on poverty. B 2 4 FRANCE BETTER KNOWN THAN EUROPE, pitiless light that the most natural accidents of the skin should burst forth on the liorror-struck eye ? That is precisely v/hat has happened to France. Her undoubted defects, which are amply accounted for by her unbounded activity antl the shock of interests and ideas, have expanded, under the hand of her powerful writers, into monstrous forms. And behold, Europe, even now, looks upon her as a monster herself. In the political world, nothing has better served the so-called system of cordial understanding (J'entente dcs honnctes (jen-f). Every aristocracy, English, Russian, or German, needs only to point out one thing as testimony against her, — viz., the portraits she makes of herself by the hand of her great writers, most of whom are friends of the people and of advancement. " Are not the people thus described, the terror of the world ? Have we armies and for- tresses enough to pen them up, and watch them till a favourable opportunity occurs to crush them altogether .'' " Some classic and immortal novels, revealing the domestic tragedies of the wealthy classes, have firmly established in the mind of Europe, that domestic ties no longer exist in France. Others, of great talent, and with the darkest and most fantastic colours, have represented the common life of our cities as nothing but a point round which felons, escaped from justice or the galleys, are congregated by the police. A sketcher of manners, admirable for his genius for details, de- lights in depicting a horrible country cabaret, a tavern for rogues and thieves ; and beneath this hideous sketch he boldly writes a %vord which is the name of most of the inhabitants of France. Europe reads it eagerly ; admires and recognises this or that petty detail. From some minute accident of which she feels t!ie truth, she easily infers the truth of the whole. No people could stand such a test. This singular mania of slander- ing one's self, of exposing one's wounds, and, as it were, courting shame, would be fatal in the long run. Many, I am'aware, thus de- nounce the present, to hasten on a better future. They exaggerate evils, to make us enjoy the sooner that felicity which their theories are pre- paring for us.* Take care, however, — take care. That is a danger- * Philosophers, political economists, and politicians, in these days, seem all to unite in lessening the idea of France in the mind of the people. This is most dangerous. Remember that this nation is, above all others, in the superlative sense of the term, a true society. Remove it from its social idea, and it becomes very weak. The people have been told, for fifty years, by all governments, that the France of the Revolution, which v. as their glory, their faith, was a disorder, an absurdity, a pure negation. The Revolution, on the other hand, which had obliterated ancient France, told the people that nothing of their former age THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE HAS ITS SACRED POETRY. 5 ous game. Europe inquires but little into all these clever tricks. If we call ourselves contemptible, she will perhaps take us at our word. Italy was still very powerful, even in the sixteenth century. The land of Michael Angelo and Christopher Columbus was not wanting in energy. But when she had proclaimed herself miserable and infamous by the voice of Machiavelli^ the world took her at her word, and trod upon her. VVe are not Italy, thank God ; and the day the world might con- spire to come and take a close view of France, would be hailed by our soldiers as the tinest in their lives. Let it suffice nations to be well assured, that this nation is by no means like its pretended portraits. It is not that our great painters have always been incorrrect ; but they have generally painted ex- ceptional details, accidents at most, in each species : — the minority : the worst side of things. Grand views appeared to them too well known, trivial, and vulgar. They wanted effect; and they have often sought it in whatever deviated from the general rule. Sprung from agitation, from commotion, so to speak, they have been gifted with passion, with a tempestuous strength, with a touch occasionally true as well as fine and strong : but, generally, they have lacked the sense of majestic harmony. Romantic writers had fancied that art lay especially in the hor- rible. These thought that the most infallible effects of art were in moral ugliness. Erratic love has seemed to them more poetical than domestic, theft than labour, the galleys than the workshop. If they had themselves descended, by their own personal sufferings, into the profound realities of present life, they would have seen that the family circle, toil, the humblest life of the people, have in themselves a sacred poetry. To feel and represent this, is not the business of the machinist ; it is not deser^-cd to be remembered. Ancient France has disappeared from their memory, the new one haf5 grown pale. It was no fault of politicians if the people did not become a tabula rasa, and forget themselves. How can they be otherwise than weak at this moment? They know not themselves ; every thing is done to make them lose the sentiment of that grand unity which was their life. They take from them their soul. Their soul was the feeling of France, as the grand brotherhood of living men, as a glorious association with our Frenchmen of the olden time. The nation contains these ages, bears them, and faintly feels them moving, yet cannot recognise them. They have not been told what that mighty whisper is, which often, like the hollow sound of an organ in a cathedral, is heard within them. Men of reflection and study, authors, writers ! we have a holy sacred duty towards the people ! It is to lay aside our sad paradoxes, our witticisms, which have not a little .assisted politicians in concealing France from the people, in obscuring their idea of her, in making them despise their native land. B 3 6 THEIR VIRTUE OF SACRIFICE STRONG. necessary to accumulate here theatrical accidents. It is only neces- sary that we should have eyes formed for that gentle light, eyes to look into the dark, the petty, and' the lowly ; and the heart too helps us to see into those corners of the hearth, those shadows of Rembrandt. Whenever our great writers have looked there, they have been admirable. But, generally, they have turned their eyes towards the fantastic, the violent, the whimsical, the exceptional. They have not deigned to warn us that they were sketching the exception. All readers, but especially foreigners, thought they were describing the rule. They said, " The people are so." And I, who have sprung from them, — I, who have lived, toiled, and suffered with them — who, more than any other have purchased the right to say that I know them, — I come to establish against all mankind the personality of the people. This personality I have not taken from the surface, in its pic- turesque or dramatic aspects. I have not seen it from without, but experienced it within ; and, in this very experience, more than one deep quality of the people, which they possess within themselves without comprehending it, I have comprehended. AVhy ? Because I was able to trace it to its historical origin, and see it issue from the depths of time. Whoever will confine himself to the present, the actual, will not understand them. He who is satisfied with see- ing the exterior, and painting the form, will not even be able to see it. To see it accurately, and translate it faithfully, he must know what it covers : there is no painting without anatomy. It is not in this little book that I can teach such a science. It is sufficient for me to give — suppressing every detail, methodical, learned, and initiatory — a few observations essential in the state of our manners, — some general results. One word only here. The chief and most })iomineiit feature which has always struck me the most, in my long study of the people, is, that among the disorders of destitution, and the vices of misery, I have found a richness of sentiment and a goodness of heart, very rare among the wealthy classes. Every body, moreover, may have observed this. At the time of the cholera, who adopted the orphan children .'' The poor. The faculty of devotedness, the power of sacrifice, is, 1 confess, my standard for classing mankind. He who possesses this quality in the highest degree, is the nearest to heroism. Intellectual superi- ority, which proceeds partly from education, can never be put in the balance against this sovereign faculty. To this it is generally replied : '■' The lower class of people have generally but little foresight ; they follow an instinct of goodness, the blind impulse of a good heart, because they do not foresee all EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. 7 that it may cost them." Even if this observation were just, it by no means docs away with the unremitting devotedness, the indefati- gable sacrifices, which one may see so often exemplified in hard- working families, — a devotedness which is not even exhausted in the immolation of one life, but which is often continued from one to another for several generations. I have here many excellent stories which I might relate. I can- not do so ; but I am strongly tempted, my dear friend, to tell you one story, viz., that of my own family. You are not yet acquainted with it ; we converse more frequently about philosophical or politi- cal, than about personal matters. I yield to this temptation. I have a rare opportunity of acknowledging the persevering heroic sacri- fices that my family have made for me, and of thanking my rela- tions, lowly retired people, some of whom have hid in obscurity their superior gifts, desirous to live only in me. The two families from which I am descended, from "Picardy and from Ardennes, were originally peasants, who joined a little of mechanics to their agricultural pursuits. These families being very large (twelve children in one, nineteen in the other), many of my father's and mother's brothers and sisters would not marry, in order that they might the better contribute to the education of some of the boys, whom they sent to college. This is the first sacrifice I have to notice. In my maternal family particularly, the sisters, all remarkable for their economy, seriousness, and austerity, made themselves the hum- ble servants of their brothers, and, to pay their way, remained buried in the village. Several, however, though uneducated, and in that wilderness, on the border of the forests, were richly endowed with natural abilities. I have heard one of them, then in the vale of years, relate the old legends of the border as well as Walter Scott. What was common to them all was great clearness of head and soundness of judgment. There were plenty of priests among their cousins and relations, priests of various sorts, worldly and fanatical ; but they had no power over them. Our sagacious and austere maidens gave them not the slightest hold. They would readily relate how one of our grand-uncles (named Michaud ? or Paillart.'') had for- merly been burnt for having made a certain book. .My father's father, a music-master at Laon, gathered up his little savings, after the reign of Terror, and came to Paris, where my father was employed at the Imprimerie des Assiynats.* Instead of buying land, like so many others at that period, he confided what * The Printing Office for paper money during the Revolution, from 789 to 1796. B 4: S EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. he had to my father, his eldest son, and placed his all in a printing- house, at the risk of the Revolution. A brother and a sister of my father, to facilitate the arrangement, did not marry ; but my father married ; he espoused one of those sober damsels of Ardennes of whom I have just spoken. I was born in 1798, in the choir of a church of nuns, then occupied by our printing-office : occupied, I say, but not profaned ; i'or what is the Press, in modern times, but the holy ark ? Tills printing-office prospered at first, fed by the debates of our assemblies, the news of our armies, and the bustling activity of the period. About 1800, it was overthrown by the general suppression of the newspapers. My father was allowed only to print an eccle- siastical journal ; and after the undertaking had been begun at a con- siderable expense, the sanction was suddenly withdrawn in favour of a priest whom Napoleon thought safe, but who soon betrayed him. ^V'e know how that great man was punished by the priests, for having believed the consecration of Rome better than that of France. He saw clear in 1810. Upon whom did his anger fall? Upon the Press ; in two years he hurled at it sixteen decrees. My father, half-ruined by him for the profit of the priests, was then entirely so, in expiation of their fault. One morning, we received a visit from a gentleman, more polite than the generality of the imperial agents, who informed us that his ]\Iajesty the Emperor had reduced the number of printers to sixty ; the principal ones were preserved ; tlte smaller ones suppressed, but with a good indemnity, at the rate of four sous for four francs. We were among these smaller ones. To be resigned, and to starve, was all that was now before us : but we were in debt. The Emperor gave us no reprieve against the Jews, as he had done for Alsatia. We had but one resource : it was to print for our creditors a few works belonging to my father. "We had no longer any journeymen ; we did the work ourselves. IMy father, who was occupied with his business abroad could not assist us ; my mother, though sick, turned binder, cut and folded ; I, a child, was the compositor; my grand- father, very old and feeble, betook himself to the hard work of the press, and printed with his trembling hands. These books Avhich we printed, and Avhich sold pretty well, con- trasted singularly by their triviality with those tragical years of im- mense destruction. Tliey were only petty jokes, little games, amusements for evening parties, charades, and acrostics. There was nothing there to nourish the soul of the young compositor : but precisely the dryness, the emptiness of these miserable productions left me the more liberty. Never, I tliink, did I travel more in imagination, than whilst I was confined motionless in that cellar. EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. 9 The more my personal romances glowed in my mind, the faster my hands went, the quicker the letters. From that time I have felt convinced that manual labours which require neither extreme deli- cacy, nor the exercise of much strength, are by no means shackles to the imagination. I have heard many distinguished women say, they could think and converse well only when at their needlework. I was twelve years old, and knew nothing yet but four words of Latin, which I had picked up from an old bookseller, formerly the village teacher, who doted on grammar, a man of quaint manners, an ardent revolutionist, who had, nevertheless, saved, at the peril of his life, those emigrants whom he detested. At his death, he left me all he had in the world, a manuscript, a very remarkable gram- mar, but incomplete, having been able to devote to it only thirty or forty years. Very lonely and very free, left entirely to myself by the excessive indulgence of my parents^ I was all imagination. I had read a feAv books that had fallen into my hands, a JNIythology^ a Boileau, and a few pages of the Imitation. In the excessive and incessant difficulties of my family, my mother being ill, my father so busy abroad, I had not yet received any reli- gious education. And, beliold, in those pages, I perceived suddenly, at the close of this sad world, a deliverance from death, another life and hope ! Religion thus received, without human interference, was very strong within me. I felt it to be something peculiarly my own, a thing free and living, so well mixed up with my life that it found food in every thing, strengtheni'jg itself on the way with a multitude of tender and holy things in art and poetry, which people erroneously suppose to be foreign to it. How shall 1 describe the dreamy mood into which I was cast by the first words of the Imitation ? I did not read : I heard — as though that gentle and paternal voice addressed itself to me. I still see the large, cold, unfurnished room ; it seemed to me truly illumin- ated with a mysterious light. I could not go very far into this book, not understanding Christ, but I felt God. The strongest impression of my childhood next to that, was the museum of French monuments, so unfortunately destroyed. It was there, and no where else, that I first received the vivid impressions of history. I peopled these tombs with my imagination ; I felt the dead through the marble, and it was not without a feeling of awe, that I entered under the low vaults, in which slept Dagobert, Ohilperic, and Fredegonda. The scene of my labours, our workshop, was not less sombre. For some time this was a cellar, belonging to the boulecard where we were living, a ground floor to the street beloAv. There I had for company, occasionally, my grandfather, when he came to see us, but 10 EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. always^ and without interruption, an industrious spider that worked by me, and, most certainly, more assiduously than I. Among very severe privations, far heavier than what ordinary artisans have to support, I had some compensation, — the kindness of my parents, their faith in my future prospects, truly inexplicable, when we reflect how backward I was. Save the binding duties of my work, I enjoyed extreme independence, which I never abused. I was apprenticed, but without being in contact with coarse-minded people, whose brutality would, perhaps, have crushed the precious blossom of liberty within me. In the morning, before work, I went to my old grammarian, who gave me a task of five or six lines. I have retained thus much : that the quantity of work has much less to do with it than is supposed, children can imbibe but a little every day ; like a vase with a narrow neck, pour little or pour much, you ■will never get a great deal in at a time. In spite of my musical incapacity (the despair of my grandfather), I was very sensible of the majestic harmony of Latin ; that grand Italic melody restored me like a ray of southern sunshine. I had been born like a blade of grass in the shade between two flag-stones of Paris. This warmth of another climate had such beneficial effects upon me, that, before knowing any thing of the quantity or learned rhythm of the ancient languages, I had sought and found, in my exercises, Romano-rural melodies, like the prose of the middle ages. A child, provided he be free, follows precisely the road pursued by infant nations. Save the sufferings of poverty, which were very great for me in winter, that period, varied as it was with manual labour, Latin, and friendship, (I had for one moment a friend, and I speak of him in this book,) is very grateful to my memory. Rich in boyhood, im- agination, and perhaps even love, I envied nobody any thing. It is my conviction that man would never know envy of himself — he must be taught it. However, every thing became more cheerless. My mother became worse; France also (Moscow ! — 1813 !). The indemnity was ex- hausted. In our extreme penury a friend of my father's proposed to get me into the imperial printing-office. What a temptation for my parents ! Others would not have hesitated ; but faith had ever been strong in our family : first, faith in my father, to whom all were sacrificed ; then, faith in me ; I was to repair all, save all. If my parents, in obetUence to reason, had made me an artisan, and saved themselves, should I then have been lost } No ; I see among artisans men of much merit, men who, in point of intellect, are equal to men of letters, and in point of character their superiors. But, in short, what difl^culties should I have encountered ! What EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. 11 a struggle against the absolute want of means ! against the fatality of the time ! JMy father without resources, and my mother sick, decided that I should study, happen what would. Our situation was urgent. Knowing neither verses nor Greek, I entered upon the third form in the College of Charlemagne. My embarrassment may be conceived, having no master to assist me. My mother, so firm till then, despaired and wept. My father set about making Latin verses — he who had never made any. The best thing still for me in that terrible passage from solitude to the crowd, from night to day, Avas, without all doubt. Professor Andrieu d'Alba, a kind-hearted pious man. The worst were my school-fellows. I was among them just like an owl in broad day- light, quite frightened. They found me ridiculous, and I now think they were right. I then attributed their laughter to my dress — my poverty. I began to perceive one thing, that I was poor. I thought all rich men, all men, bad; I scarcely saw any who were not better off than myself. I pined into a misanthropic humour, rare among children. In the most deserted quarters of Paris, the Marais, I sought the most deserted streets. Yet amid this excessive antipathy against the human species, this good point remained — I had no envy. My greatest delight, which restored my heart, was, on Sunday or Thursday, to read two or three times over a canto of Virgil or a book of Horace. Gradually I retained them ; in other respects I have never been able to learn a single lesson by heart. I well re- member that in the midst of that thorough misery, privations of the present, fears for the future, the public enemy being at the gates (1814 !), and my own enemies daily deriding at me, one day, one Thursday morning, I sat ruminating about myself, without fire (the snow lay deep), not well knowing whether I should find bread at night, fancying it was all over with me. I had within me, but without any mixture of religious hope, a pure stoic sentiment. With my frost-bitten hand I struck my oaken table (which I have always preserved), and felt a powerfully joyous impulse of youth and future prospects. Tell me, friend, what should I fear now ? I, who have suffered death so many times in myself and in my reading? And what should I desire ? God has given me in History the means of participating in every thing. Life has but one hold on me, that wliich I felt on the 12th of February last, about thirty years after. I found myself, on a similar day, equally covered with snow, opposite the same table. One thing smote my heart : " Thou art warm — others are cold ; that is not right. Oh ! who will relieve me from this cruel inequality ?" Then, looking at my hand, the one which, from 1814, still shows the traces of the cold, I said to myself 12 EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. for consolation, " If you were working with the people, you would not be working for them. Come, then, if you give its history to your country, I will pardon you for being happy." <•''-, To return. My faith was not absurd ; it was founded upon will. I believed in the future, because I was making it myself. My studies entled soon and well.* I had the good fortune to escape two influ- ences which ruined young men, — that of the majestic but sterile school of the Doctrinaires, and of the manufactory of literature (Jittcrature industriellf^ , whose most miserable essays were then easily accepted by the just-reviving book-ti-ade. I would not live by my pen. I wanted a real occupation. I took the one my studies had prepared me for — teaching. I thought even then, with Rousseau, that literature ought to be the thing i-e- served, the grand luxury of life, the inward blossom of the soul. It was a great happiness for me when, in the morning, 1 had given my lessons, to return to my faubourg near Pcre-la-chalse, and there to read at my leisure all day long such poets as Homer, Sophocles, or Theocritus, and occasionally the historians. One of my old com- panions and dearest friends, M. Porct, was reading the same, about which we used to converse together in our long walks to the wood of Vincennes. This life of ease lasted scarcely less than ten years, during Avhich time I never imagined that I should ever write. I taught at once the languages, philosophy, and history. In 1821, I procured by competition the professorship in a college. In 1827, two works, wliich appeared at the same time, my Vico and Precis d'IIi.stoire Modernr, gained me a professorship in the Ecole Norinale.\ Teaching did me good service. The fierce trial at college had altered my character — had made me reserved and close, shy and distrustful. Marrying young, and living in great retirement, I de- sired less and less the society of men. That which I found in my pupils at the Ecole Normale, and elsev/here, once more opened and expanded my heart. Those young people, amiable and confiding, who believed in me, reconciled me to mankind. I was touched, and often sad, to see them succeed each other so rapidly before me. Hardly had I become attached to them than they departed. They are all dispersed, and several (so young!) are dead. Few have for- * I owed much to the encoui'iisement of my iUustrious professors, Messrs. Yillemahi and Leelerc. I shall always remember how ^L A'illemaiii, after the reading of a task that had pleased him, left his ehair, and, under an impulse of charming sensibility, came and sat down upon the bench beside me. f 1 left it with regret in 1837, when the eeleetic influence prevailed there. In 1838, the [nstiUit and the College of France having equally elected me for their candidate, I obUiined the chair I now occupy. EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. L3 gotten me ; for my part^ whether they be hving or dead, I shall never forget them. They have done me, without knowing it, an immense service. If I had, as an historian, any special merit to sustain me on a level with my illustrious predecessors, I should owe it to teaching, which for me was friendship. Those great historians have been brilliant, judicious, and profound ; as for me, 1 have loved more. I have also suffered more. The trials of my boyhood are always before me ; I have retained the impression of toil, of a hard labo- rious life ; I have remained one of the people. I said, just now, I grew up like grass between two paving-stones; but this grass has retained its sap as much as that of the Alps. My very solitude in Paris, my free study and my free teaching (ever free and every where the same), have raised, without altering me. They who rise, almost always lose by it ; because they become changed, they become mongrels, bastards ; they lose the originality of their own class, without gaining that of another. The difficulty is not to rise, but in rising to remain one's self. Often, in these days, the rise and progress of the people are com- pared to the invasion of the Barbarians. The expression pleases me ; I accept it. Barbarians ! Yes, that is to say, full of new, living, regenerating sap. Barbarians, that is, travellers marching towards the Rome of the future, going on slowly, doubtless ; each generation advancing a little, halting in death ; but others march forward all the same. We other IJarbarians have a natural advantage ; if the upper classes have culture, we have much more vital heat. They cannot work hard, neither have they intensity, eagerness, or conscience in work. Their elegant writers, true spoiled children of the world, seem to slide upon the clouds ; or, proudly eccentric, deign not to regard the earth : how should they fertilise it ? That earth must imbibe the sweat of man, and he impressed with his heat and living virtue. Our Barbarians lavish all that upon her, and she loves them. On the other hand, their love is boundless and too great ; devoting themselves sometimes to details, with the delightful awkwardness of Albert Uurer, or the excessive pohsh of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who does not sufficiently conceal his art : by this minute detail they com- promise the whole. "VVe must not blame them too much ; it is the excess of the will, the superabundance of love, occasionally the luxuriancy of the sap ; this sap, ill-directed or perplexed, wrongs itself: it wants to give every thing at once — leaves, fruit, and flowers ; it bends and twists the branches. These defects of great workmen are often found in my books, ■without their good qualities. No matter ! They who come thus. 14 EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. with the sap of the people, do not the less bring into art a new- degree of life and rejuvenescence, at the very least a grand effort. They generally fix their aim higher, farther than others, scarcely consulting their strength, but rather their heart. Let it be my part in the future to have not attained, but marked, the aim of history, to have called it by a name that nobody had given it. Thierry called it narration, and M. Guizot analysis, I have named it resurrection, and this name will remain. Who would be more severe than I, if I were to criticise my own works ? The public has treated me too well. Do you fancy that I do not see how very imperfect this present volume is ? " Why, then, do you publish it } You must have surely some very great interest at stake ? " An interest .'' Several, as you shall see. First, I lose by it many ties of friendship. Next, I emerge from a tran- quil position, entirely in unison with my tastes. I postpone my great book, the monument of my life. " To enter public life apparently ? " Never. I have estimated myself. I have neither health, nor talent for the government of men. "■ Why then do you publish it ? " If you really insist on know- ing, I will tell you, I speak, because nobody would speak in my stead. Not that there is not a crowd of men more capable of doing so, but all are soured, all hate. As for me, I still loved. Perhaps, also, I knew better the antecedents of France ; I lived in her grand eternal life, and not in her present condition. I was more alive in sympathies, more dead in interests ; I came to the questions with the disinterestedness of the dead. I was suffering, moreover, far more than any other from the deplorable divorce that some are endeavouring to produce among men, between different classes, I who combine them all within me. The situation of France is so serious, that there was no room for hesitation. I do not exaggerate to myself the power of a book ; but the question is one of duty, by no means of ability. Well ! I see France hourly declining, engulfed like an Atlantis. Whilst we were here quarrelling, this country is swallowed up. Who does not see, that from east to west, a shadow of death is pressing upon Europe, and that every day there is less sun ; that Italy has perished, that Ireland has perished, that Poland has perished, and that Germany is bent on destruction } O Germany ! Germany ! If France were dying a natural death, if her hour had come, I should perhaps be resigned ; and, like a passenger on board a sinking ship, cover up my head, and commend myself to God. But her EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM MY OWN FAMILY. 15 situation is nothing like that ; and hence I am indignant ; the idea of our ruin is absurd, ridiculous ; it proceeds only from ourselves. ^Vho has a literature ? Who still sways the mind of Europe ? We, weak as we are. "Who has an army ? ^Ve alone. England and Russia, two feeble bloated giants, impose an illusion on Europe. Great empires, weak people ! Let France be united, for an instant ; she is strong as the world. The first thing is, that before the crisis* we should reconnoitre ourselves well; and have not, as in 1792 and in 1815, to alter our line, manoeuvres, and system, in presence of the enemy. The second is, that we should trust in France, and not at all in Europe. Here, every one goes to seelc friends elsewhere | : — the politician hies to London, the philosopher to Berlin, the Communist says, " Our brother Chartists ! " The peasant alone has preserved the tradition of salvation ; to him a Prussian is still a Prussian, an Englishman an Englishman. His common sense has been right against all of you, refined gentlemen though you are ! Your friend Prussia and your friend England drank the other day to France, the health of \Vaterloo ! " Children, children, I say unto you, — Climb up a mountain, pro- vided it be high enough : look to the four winds, you will see nothing but enemies. Try, then, to understand one another. That perpetual peace which some promise you whilst the arsenals are smoking ! (see that black smoke over Cronstadt and Portsmouth!) — let us try to begin that peace among ourselves. Doubtless we are divided ; but Europe believes us to be more divided than we are. That is what emboldens her. The harsh things we have to say, let us say them, — pour out our hearts, hide none of the evils, and seek well the remedies. * I never saw, in any history, a tiiirty years' peace. Tlie bankers, who have never foreseen any revolution (not even that of July, which many of them were preparing^, reply, that there will be no stir in Europe. The first reason they give is, that peace is projitable to the world. To the world ! Yes ! — and but little to us. Others are running, we are walking ; we shall soon be the last (a la rjuew:). Secondly, they say, " War can only be^in with a loan ; and we will not (jrant it." But, if it be begun with a treasure, as Russia is making one ? — if the war pays the war, as in the time of Napoleon, &c. &c. ? -j- Take the most liberal, a German or an Englishman, at random, — speak to him of liberty ; he will answer, "Liberty." And then just try to see what they imderstand by it. You will then perceive that this word has as many meanings as there are nations ; that the (ierman or English democrats are aristocrats at heart ; that the barrier of nationalities, which you believe effaced, remains almost entire. All these people, whom you believe so near, are five hundred leagues from you. 16 EXAMPLE TAKEN FROM Mr.vOWN FAMILY. One people ! one country ! one France ! Let ^o never become two nations, I entreat you. 'Without unity, -vve perish. How is it that you do not perceive this ? Frenchmen, of every condition, every class, every party, remember well one thing ! — You have on earth but one sure friend, France ! Before the ever-enduring coalition of aristocracies, you will always be guilty of one crime, — to have wished, fifty years ago, to deliver the world. They have not forgiven it, nor will they ever forget it. You are always their dread. Among yourselves, you may be dis- tinguished by different party names ; but you are, as Frenchmen, condemned together. Tn the face of J]urope, know that France will never have but one inexpiable name, which is her true, eternal desig- nation, — The Revolution ! January 24th, 1846. THE PEOPLE. PART I. ON BONDAGE AND HATRED. CHAPTER I. bon]>a(;e of Tin; rf:A!?AXT.l If we would knovr tlie inmost thought, the passion of the French peasant, it is very easy. AV'alk, any Sunday, into the country, and follow him. Look ! there he is yonder before us ! It is two o'clock; liis wife is at vespers ; and he is in his Sunday clothes. I warrant you he is goinp; to see his mistress. AVhat mistress ? His land. I do not say he will go straiglit to it. No, he is free to-day ; ho is at liberty to go or not to go. Does he not go often enough every day in the week? Accordingly he turns aside, and goes elsewhere; Lis business is somewhere else, and yet he goes there. 'Tis true, he was passing very near ; there was an opportunity. He now looks at it, but apparently he will not enter ; what should he do there ? And yet he goes in. At all events, it is probable he will not work ; he has on his Sun- day clothes, his blouse and clean shirt. But what prevents him from plucking up a weed, or throwing aside a stone. And then that old stump looks ugly ; but he has not his spade ; that must wait till to- morrow. Then he folds his arms, stops, looks serious and thoughtful ; he looks a long, long time, and seems to forget himself: at last, if he fancies himself overlooked, if he perceives anybody passing, he moves slowly away ; after a few steps, he stops, turns round, and casts upon his land one last profound and melancholy look : but, to the keen- sighted, that look is full of passion, full of heart, full of devotion. 18 MARRIAGE BETWEEN MAN AND THE SOIL. If that be not love, by what token shall we kiiow it in this world ? It is love ! — do not laugh : the land will have it ko^ in order to pro- duce ; otherwise this poor land of France, almost A'ithout cattle and pasture, would yield nothing : it brings forth because it is loved. The land of France belongs to fifteen or twenty millions of pea- sants, who cultivate it ; the land of England belongs to an aristo- cracy of thirty-two thousand persons, who have it cultivated.* The English, not being equally rooted in the soil, emigrate where- ever they find profit. They say country ; we, native country (pafnef). With us, man and the soil are bound together, and will not be severed ; there is between them a lawful marriage for life and death ; the Frenchman has espoused France. France is a land of equity. In doubtful cases, she has "generally adjudged the land to him who tilled it.:!: England, on the contrary, has pronounced for the lord, and driven away the peasant : she is now cultivated only by workmen. A grave moral difference ! Whether property be large or small, it exalts the heart : many a man who would not have respected him- self on his own account, does so on account of his property. This sentiment adds to the just pride with which our people are inspired by their unrivalled military tradition. Take at random, in that crowd, any petty day-labourer, who possesses the twentieth part of * And of these thirty-two thousand, twelve thousand are mortmain corpo- rations. If, in reply to this, it be stated, that in England near three millions of persons share the landed property, the reason of it is that this word, besides the land, designates the houses, patches of ground, yards, pleasure-grounds and gardens attached to the houses, especially in the manufacturing districts. I Our French-Englishmen say le pays in order to avoid sayiiig la patrie. See an animated and enlightened page of M. G^nin's " Variations du Langagc Franfais," p. 417. J This is one of the spiritual characters of our Revolution : man and man's work seemed to it of inestimable value, and not to be put in the scale with that of the funds : man outweighed the land. In England, the land has outweighed man. Even in districts that are in no respects feudal, but organised upon the principle of the Celtic clans, the English civilians have applied the feudal law with the greatest rigour, deciding that the lord was not only paramount, but proprietor. Thus the Duchess of Sutherland had a county of Scotland, larger than the department of the Haut-Rhin, adjudged to her, and drove out of it (from ISll to 1820) three thousand families, who had occupied it ever since Scotland had existed. The duchess caused a trifling indemnity to be offered them, which many did not accept. Read the account of this fine operation, for which we are indebted to James Loch, the agent of the duchess : " An Ac- count of the Bonifications made to the Domains of the Marquis of Stafford," 8vo., 1820. M. de Sismondi gives an analysis of it in his " Etudes d'Economie Politique," 183, ACQUISITION OF LAND BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 19 an acre ; you will not find in him the sentiments of a hireling ; he is a proprietor, a soldier (he has been one, and would be one to- morrow) ; his father was one of the grande armee. Small properties are nothing new in France. People have erro- neously imagined that they were constituted in the last crisis, and at once ; that they are accidents of the Revolution — a mistake. The Revolution found this movement far advanced, and itself sprung from it. In 1785, an excellent observer, Arthur Young, is asto- nished and alarmed to see the land in our country so much divided. In 1738, the Abbe de Saint- Pierre remarks, tliat in France " Day- labourers have almost all a garden or some patch of land or vineyard* In l697j Boisguillebert deplores the necessity in which small pro- prietors are placed, under Louis XIV., of selling a great part of the properties acquired in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This grand history, so little known, presents this singular cha- racter : in the very worst periods, at times of universal poverty, when even the rich are poor and are forced to sell, then the poor man finds himself able to buy ; no purchasers appearing, the peasant in rags comes forward with his piece of money, and acquires a bit of land. Strange mystery ! That man must have a hidden treasure ! He has one, indeed : persevering toil, sobriety, and fasting. God seems to have given, as a patrimony to this indestructible race, the gift of working, fighting if necessary, without food, of living on hope, and a brave lightness of heart. Those disastrous moments, when the peasant was able to buy land cheap, have always been followed by a sudden burst of prosperity, which was then unaccountable. About 1500, for instance, when France, exhausted by Louis XL, seemed to be crowning her ruin in Italy, the nobility, at their departure, are obliged to sell ; the land, passing into new hands, suddenly grows flourishing again ; they work and build. This bright moment (in the style of monarchial history) has been called good Louis XII. Unfortunately, it lasts not long. Scarcely is the land restored to a good condition, when the exchequer pounces upon it ; next come religious wars, which seem to rase every thing to the groundj"; horrible calamities, atrocious famines, when mothers devoured their children! Who would believe that the country would emerge again after that i* "Well, then, scarcely is the war at an end when those ravaged fields. * Saint-Pierre, vol. x. p. 2,51 (Rotterdam). The authority of this author, though not M eighty, is inii)()rtant here ; because he wrote according to the in- formation wliiih he had demanded of several intendants. •j- See Froumenteau, '-Secret des Finiinces de France" (1581), Preuves, pp. 397, 398. 2 20 INTTERKUPTED SEVERAL TIMES. those burnt and still blackened cottages, again refund the savings of the peasant. He buys; in ten years, the aspect of F'rance is changed: in twenty or thirty, all the estates have doubled or trebled their value. This moment, once more baptized with a royal name, is called good Henrt/ IF. and g7'cat Richelieu. A cliarming progress ! what manly heart would not participate in it ? Why, then, must it always stop, and so many efforts, hardly rewarded, be almost lost? The words the poor man sare.s', tite peasant buys, tliose simple words so soon said : what toils, sacrifices, and mortal privations, it is well known, do they contain ? Our brow perspires, when we observe, in detail, the divers accidents, the ups and downs in that obstinate struggle ; when we see the invincible effort with which that miserable man has seized, let go, and again grasped the land of France: as the poor shipwrecked mariner, who touches the shore, holds on, but the wave ever drags him back into the sea ; again lie grasps it, maimed and bruised, but he still clings to the rock with his bleeding hands. This movement, I am obliged to say so, declined, or stopped, about l()oO. Tlie nobles who had sold, found means to redeem at a low rate. The very time our Italian ministers, a Mazarin, or an Emeri, were doubling the taxes, the nobles, who crowded the court, easily got off, so that the double burden fell directly upon the shoulders of tiie feeble and the poor, who were absolutely obliged to sell or give this scarcely acquired land, and again become hirelings, tenants, farmers, labourers. By what incredible efforts could they, during the wars and bankruptcies of the great king and the regent, keep or get back the lands, which, we have seen, were in their hands in the eighteentli century ? This is what is inexplicable. I beg and beseech those who make us laws, or enforce them, to read the detail of the fatal re-action of IMazarin and Louis XIV., in those pages, full of indignation and sorrow, in which it has been embodied by a great citizen, Pesant de Boisguillebert.* ]\Iay that history warn them, at a moment when divers influences are eagerly at work, to suppress the main work of Fiance — the acquisition of land by the labourer ! '^ * A great citizen, an clocjucnt writer, and a practical ccniu^, whom wc must not confound with the Utopians of that period. Thi' idea of the royal tithe has been erroneously attributed to him. What can be bolder than the com- mencement of his " Factum," and, at the same time, wliat more painful ? It is the deep sigh of the agony of France. Boisguillebert published it in March, 1707, when Vauban had just been condemned, in February, for a book far less daring. Why has this heroic man not yet a sbttue at Rouen, that received him in triumph on his retuni from exile ? (Lately reprinted in the " Collection des Economistcs.") THE PEASANT HAS MADE THE LAND. 21 Our magistrates especially have need to enlighten tliemselves in this matter to fortify their conscience, for knavery besieges them. Large proprietors, awakened from their natural apathy by the lawyers, have latterly rushed into a thousand unjust lawsuits. There has been created against the communes and small proprietors a species of antiquarian advocates, who are working all together in the falsification of history to deceive justice. They know that judges rarely have time to examine their lying fabrications. They know that those whom they attack have scarcely ever any regular title-deeds. The communes especially have either kept them carelessly, or have never had any. Why ? Precisely because their right is often very an- cient, and of a date when people trusted to tradition. In all the districts, on the fi-cntier especially *, the rights of the poor peasants are so much the more sacred, as nobody without them would have inhabited such dangerous ground ; the land would have been deserted ; there would have been neither people nor cultivation. And behold now, at a time of peace and security, you come and dispute the possession with those without whom the land did not exist ! You demand their title-deeds, but they are buried ; they are the bones of their ancestors who guarded your frontier, and who even now occupy the sacred boundary. In more than one province of France the cultivator has a right, which is certainly the first of all, that of having created the land. I speak not metaphorically. Behold those parched rocks, those arid hills in the south. I ask you where would the land be there with- out man ? Property there is entirely in the proprietor. It lies in the indefatigable arm that breaks the flint-stones all day long, and mixes the dust with a little earth. It lies in the strong back of the vine-dresser, who, from the bottom of the hill, is ever banking up his Held that is always wasting away. It lies in the docility, the })atient ardour of the wafe and child, who draw the plough with an ass. A painful sight ! and Nature herself sympathises with them. The little vine takes root between thi rocks: the chesnut — sober and courageous tree — flourishes without soil, by grasping the pure flint with its roots ; it seems to live on air, and, like its master, to produce even fasting.f Yes, man makes the land : this may be said * Af!(1, moreover, that in the middle a;;cs, in the division of so many pro- vinces, iieiiinaii-it:H, iind fiefs, secmin;? to form !-o many states, the frontier was evcryicherc. Even at a later period the English frontii'r was in the centre of France, in Poitou till the thirteenth cfiitiiry, in Eimoiisin till the fourteenth, j I felt all that v.hen, in the month of May, 1 Stt, m jroins; from Nismes to I'uy, I passed tln-ou^'h Ardi-ehe, thar barren country where man has created every thing. Nature had made it frightful ; but, thanks to him, it is now c 3 22 HE BORROWS, IN ORDER TO GO ON even of the least barren countries. Let us never forget this, if we wish to know how much and how passionately he loves it. Let us reflect that for centuries generations have devoted to it the sweat of their brow, the bones of the dead, their savings, and their food. That land, where man has so long deposited the best part of man, his sap and his substance, his efforts, and his virtue: — that land he feels is human, and he loves it like a human being. He loves it: to acquire it he consents to any thing, even to lose sight of it : he emigrates, goes abroad, if necessary, sustained by this thought and this reminiscence. Of what, think you, is that poor Savoyard errand-boy dreaming, as he sits upon the step at your door } He is musing about the little field of rye, or meagre pas- turage, that he hopes to buy on his return to his native mountains. It will take ten years ! No matter * ; to get land in seven years the Alsacian sells his life, and goes to meet death in Africa. f To have a few feet of vineyard, the woman of Burgundy tears her breast from the mouth of her own child, puts a stranger's child in its place, and weans her own too soon. " My child ! " says the father, " either you will live or die : but if you live you shall have a bit of land ! " Is it not cruel, nay, almost impious, to speak thus ? Reflect well before you decide. " You shall have a bit of land," means, " You shall not be a mercenary, to be hired to-day and turned off" to-mor- row ; you shall not be a serf for your daily bread ; you shall be free I" Free! glorious word ! comprising, indeed, all human dignity. There is no virtue without liberty. Poets have often spoken of the attractions of water, those danger- ous fascinations which allured the imprudent fisherman. More dan- charming, — charming in May, and even then always rather austere, but pos- sessing a moral charm so much the more touching. There nobody will say that the seigneur has given the land to the vilain ,- there was none to give. Accordingly, how my heart was wounded to see still, upon the heights, those dreadful dark towers which so long levied tribute on people so poor, so de- serving, and who owe nought but to themselves. The monuments for me, those which relieved my eyes, were the humble houses of stone and flint in the valley whore the peasants dwell. Those houses have a very sombre, nay, sad aspect with their poor, little, meagre, ill-watered gardens ; but the arcades which support them, the large flight of steps, and the spacious landing under the arcades, give them nuich character. It happened to be the very moment of the vintage. At that fine season they were making silk, and the poor country seemed rich ; every house showed beneath its sombre arcade, a maiden winding skeins, who, tapping the pedal of the winder with her foot, smiled with her pretty white teeth, and wound off her golden skein. * Leon Faucher, La Colonie des Savoyards a Paris, Revue des Deux-Mondes, Nov. 1834, iv. 343. f See further, p. 28. note. ACQUIRING LAND. 23 gerous still, if possible, is the attraction of land. Large or small, it has ever this strange, attracting quality, that it is always incomplete — it always wants enlarging. There is wanting but very little, only that side, or still less, that corner. There's the temptation ; to en- large, buy, borrow. " Lay by, if you can ; do not borrow," says Reason. But that is too slow. Then, " Borrow ! " says Passion. The proprietor, a timid man, does not like lending ; though the peasant shows him a very clear and till now unencumbered land, he is afraid lest a woman, a ward (for such are our laws), should spring up, whose superior rights may outweigh the whole value of the loan. Hence he dares not lend. Who, then, will ? The usurer of the place, or the lawyer who has all the peasant's documents, who knows his business better than himself, who knows, too, that he runs no risk, and who will be kind enough, out of friendship — to accom- modate him .'' — No; but to procure him a loan at seven, eight, and ten per cent. ! Is he to accept that fatal money ? His wife is seldom of that opinion. His grandfather, if he consulted him, would not recom- mend it. His forefathers, our old P'rench peasants, most assuredly would not have done so. That humble patient race never calculated on aught but their own savings ; a sou which they retrenched from their daily food, or the small coin they sometimes saved in returning from market, and which, the same night, went (as one still finds) to repose with its fellows at the bottom of a pot buried in the cellar. Our peasant is no longer that man ; his heart is more aspiring ; he has been a soldier. The grand things he has achieved in this age have accustomed him to believe easily in impossibilities. This ac- quisition of land is for him a combat ; he goes to it as he would to the charge, and will not retreat. It is his battle of Austerlitz ; he will win it ; it will be a desperate struggle, he knows, but he has seen plenty of these under his old commander. If he fought with a good heart when there was nothing to be gained but wounds, think you he will go softly to work in this struggle for land } AVatch him before daylight ; you will find him at work, with all his family ; and even his wife, scarcely out of her confinement, creeping along the dewy earth. At noon, when rocks split with the heat, when the planter's negro gets repose, the volun- teer negro takes none. Behold his food, and compare it with the artisan's ; tlie latter feeds better every day than the peasant on Sunday. This heroic man thought that by the power of his will he could do any thing, even suppress time. But there is a difference between this and war ; time is not to be suppressed ; it weighs heavy ; the c 4 24 HE IS WORSTED HIS IRRITATION. struggle lasts and is prolonged between usury, which time accumu- lates, and the strength of man, which it diminishes. The land brings him in two per cent., and usury demands eight; that is to say, usury is fighting against him like four men against one. Every year's in- terest wipes away four years' work. Are you now surprised that this Frenchman, this merry singer of former days no longer smiles ! Are you surprised, if, meeting him on that land which devours him, you find him so gloomy ! In pass- ing you salute him cordially ; he will not see you, but slouches his hat. Do not ask him tlie way ; if he answers, he may perhaps make you turn your back on the place you are going to. Thus the peasant becomes more and more bitter and retiring. His heart is too much oppressed to open it to any sentiment of be- nevolence. He hates the rich, his neighbour, and the world. Alone, in this miserable property, as in a desert island, he becomes a savage. His insociability, proceeding from the feeling of his misery, renders it irremediable ; it prevents him from being on a kindly footing with those who ought to be his helpmates and natural friends *, the other peasants; he would sooner die than advance one step towards them. On the other hand, the townsman has no desire to approach that fierce-looking man ; he is almost afraid of him. " Tiie peasant is malicious, spiteful, capable of any enormity. It is not safe to be his neighbour." Thus, the more wealthy class become more and more distant ; they pass some time in the country, but do not settle there ; their home is in town. They leave the field open to the village-banker and the lawyer, the secret confessor of all, who preys on all. " I will no longer have any dealings v.-ith those people," says the proprietor; '•' the notary shall arrange every thing; I leave it with him ; he shall settle with me, and give out and divide the rent as he pleases." The notary, in many places, thus becomes the sole farmer, tlie only me- dium between the rich proprietor and the labourer. A great mis- fortune for the peasant. To escape from the thraldom of the pro- prietor, who would generally wait, and was long satisfied with pro- mises, he has taken, for his master, the lawyer, the monied man, who knows only when a bill is due. The proprietor's unkindly feelings seldom fail to be justified to him by the pious personages whom his wife receives. TJie mate- rialism of the peasant is the usual text of their lamentations : " Im- pious, material age !" say they; " those people love but the land ! • * I shall speak farther of association. As to the economical advantajres and disadvantages of small properties, which are foreign to my subject, — see Gas- pariji, Passy, Bureau De Lamalle, &c. NOBILITY OF THE FREN'CH PEASANT. 23 that is all their religion ! They adore only the manure of their fields!" Miserable Pharisees! if this land were merely land, they ■would not purchase it at such desperate prices ; it would not drag them into this madness, this illusion. You, spiritual and any thing but material men, no one would ever catch you at it ; you calculate, within a franc, what each field yields in corn or wine. Yet he, the peasant, adds to it an infinite price in imagination ; it is he who, in this, allows too much to the imagination, he is the poet. In this vile, obscure, and filthy land, he distinctly sees the gold of liberty gleaming. Liberty, for him who knows the forced vices of the slave, is virtue (/« vertu possible). A family, who from hirelings become proprietors, respect themselves, rise in their own esteem, and change altogether ; they reap from their land a harvest of virtues : the father's sobriety, the mother's economy, the son's brave toil, the daughter's chastity, — all those fruits of liberty. Are these, 1 ask, material possessions ? Are these treasures that can be bought too dearly ? * Men of the past, who call yourselves men of faith, if you are so indeed, own that that was a faith which, in our own days, by the arms of this people, defended the liberty of the world against the world itself. Be not, I entreat you, for ever prating of chivalry. That was a chivalry, and the proudest chivalry ; viz. that of our peasant soldiers. It is said the Revolution has suppressed the nobility ; but it is just the reverse ; it has made thirty-four millions of nobles. "W^ien an emigrant was boasting of the glory of his ancestors, a peasant, who had been successful in the field, replied, " I am an ancestor ! This people is noble, by reason of those grand doings ; Europe has remained plebeian. But we must take serious measures for defending this nobility ; it is in danger. The peasant, on becoming the serf of the usurer, would not only be miserable, but would lose heart. Think you that that man, a sad, restless, trembling debtor, afraid to meet his creditor, and skulking about, preserves much courage .'' How would it be with a race thus brought up, in awe of the Jews, and whose emotions are those of arrest, seizure, and ejectment ? The laws must be altered ; law must undergo this high moral and political necessity. * The peasant does not got off so. After the priest comes the artist, the neo-catholie artist, to slander him : that impotent race of keeping mourners of the middle a:.'es, wlio know only how to weep and copy — to weep for stones ; for, as for men, let them starve, if they will. As if the merit of those stones was not to remind us of man, and bear his impress. 'J'he peasant, to siicli peo- ple, is nothiiii,' hut a demolishcr; every old ^vall he throws down, every stone moved by the plough, is an incomparable ruin. 26 HIS SUPERIORITY. If you were Germans or Italians, I should say, " Consult the civilians ; you have only to observe the rules of civil equity." But you are France ; you are not a nation only, but a principle, a great political principle. It must be defended at any cost. As a principle, you must live. Live for the salvation of the world ! In the second rank by industry, you are in tlie first in Europe by that vast and profound legion of peasant-soldier-proprietors ; the strongest foundation that any nation has had since the Roman empire. It is by that that France is formidable to the world, and at the same time ready to aid it ; it is this that it looks upon with fear and hope. What, in fact, is it ? The army of the future on the day the Barbarians appear. One thing comforts our enemies, which is, that this great dumb France, which is undermost, has been for a long time swayed by a petty, noisy, meddling France. No government, since the Revo- lution, has taken the agricultural interest into consideration. In- dustry, the younger sister of Agriculture, has put the elder out of mind. The Restoration favoured landed property, but only the great properties. Even Napoleon, so dear to the peasant, whom he well understood, began by abolishing the duties which affected the capitalist and relieved the land ; he effaced the mortgage laws which the Revolution had made to bring money within the reach of the labourer. At present, the capitalist and the manufacturer govern alone. Agriculture, which goes for more than half in our income, receives only a hundred and eighth part in our expenditure ! It is not much worse treated by government than by political economists, who are especially anxious about manufactories and manufacturers. Several of our economists speak of the labourer {trur-ailleur^ instead of the workman {ouvrier^, forgetting only twenty-four millions of agricul- tural labourers. And yet the peasant is not only the most numerous class of the nation, but the strongest, the most healthy, and, if we fairly weigh the physical with the moral, on the whole the best.* In the de- cline of the belief which formerly sustained him, left to himself, between the old faith Avhich he no longer has, and the modern light which is not given to him, he preserves for his support the na- tional sentiment, the grand military tradition, something of the honour of the soldier. He is self-interested, churlish in business, no doubt ; who can blame him, when we know what he suffers ? Such as he is, though he may occasionally be blamed, compare him, * The town population, which constitutes but one-fifth of the nation, afTords two-fifths of the criminals. CAN HE REMAIN A PROPRIETOR i 27 I pray you, in ordinary life, with your tradespeople, who lie all day long, and with the manufacturing vulgar. Man of the land, and living wholly in it, he seems formed in its image. Like it, he is greedy ; the land never says, " Enough ! " He is as obstinate as tlie land is firm and constant ; he is patient, like it, and not less indestructible ; every thing passes away, but he remains ! Do you call this having faults ? Ah ! if he had them not, you would long have had no France. "Would you form any idea of our peasants .'' Behold them, on their return from military service ! You see those terrible soldiers, the first in the world, who scarcely landed from Africa, from the war of lions, set quietly to work between their mother and sister, resume the paternal life of saving and fasting, and no longer wage war but against themselves. You behold them, without either vio- lence or repining, seeking by the most honourable means the accom- plishment of the holy work which constitutes the strength of France : I mean, marriage between man and the soil. The whole of France, if she had the true feeling of her mission, would help those who are carrying on this work. By what fatality must she to-day stop short in their hands ! * If the present state of things continued, the peasant, far from acquiring, would sell, as he did in the middle of the seventeenth century, and once more become a hirehng. Two hundred years lost ! That would be, not the down- fal of a class, but of our country. They pay more than five hundred millions (of francs) to the state every year, and a thousand millions to the usurers ! Is that all ? No, the indirect charge is, perhaps, as heavy, that, viz., which industry imposes on the peasant by its custom -duties, which, keeping out foreign produce, prevent also our merchandise from being exported. These men, so laborious, are the worst fed. They get no meat ; our cattle-breeders (who are manufacturers in an abstract sense) prevent the agriculturist from eating any-j-, alleging the interest of * She is stopping, or even receding. M. Hipp. Passy assures us (Mem. Acad. Polit. vol. ii. p. .301.) that from 1815 to 1835, the number of proprietors, compared with that of the rest of the population, has diminished 2\ per cent., OT one fortieth. He goes by the census of 1815. But is that census exact? Is it more important than that of 1826, than the tables of the increase and decrease of the population during the Empire, &c. ? — See Villerme, Juiirnal des Economistes, No. 42. May, 1845. ■j- And who sell him at so high a price his only cow and his working oxen. The breeders say, " No agriculturists without manure, no manure without cattle." They are right, but argue against themselves. Changing nothing and improving nothing (except for productions of luxury, and the triumphs of vanity), maintaining high prices for inferior articles, they prevent all the poorer countries from buying the little cattle which suits them, and obtaining the necessary manure ; man and the land, not being able to recruit their strength, languish from exhaustion. 28 HE ENVIES THE AVORKMAN. agriculture. The lowest workman eats white bread ; but he who grows the corn eats only brown. They make the wine, and the townsman drinks it. Nay more, the whole world drinks joy at the cup of France, save the French vine-dresser.* The manufactures of our towns have recently received a consider- able relief, the weight of which recoils upon the land, at a moment when the smaller industry of the country, the humble work of the spinning-girl, is devoured by the flax machine. The peasant, thus losing, one by one, his trades of industry, to- day flax, to-morrow silk perhaps, can with difficulty keep his land. It escapes from him, carrying along with it all the fruits of his laborious years, savings, and sacrilices. He is ejected from his very life. If any thing remain, speculators ease him of it ; he listens, with the credulity of misfortune, to all the fables they promulgate. Algiers produces sugar and coffee ; every man in America earns ten francs a day ; one must emigrate ; what does it signify ? Tiie Alsacian believes them when he is told that the ocean is scarcely broader than the Rhine, t * One may remembor the calculation of Paul Louis Courrlcr who found, that, in the gross, the acre of vine produced (>/. to the vine-planter, and 52/. to the treasury. This is an exaggeration. But, as a set-ofF, we must add that this acre is now much more in debt than in 1 820. There is no occupation more laborious, however, or move worthy of its hire. Pass through Burgundy in spring, or autumn ; you travel for forty leagues over a country twice a year (lug, turned up, unplanted, and replanted with vine props. What labour I And in order that this produce, so dearly obtained, may be adulterated and dishonoured at Berry and Rouen, an infamous art calumniatt"^ nature and this excellent beverage ; the wine is as ill-treated as the vii:e-i:rower. f This is what an Alsacian said to a friend of mine (September, 1.S4.j). Our Alsacians who emigrate thus, sell, in departing, the little they possess ; the Jew is at hand ready to buy. The Germans end'-avour to cany their goods away with them ; they travel in waggons, like the barbarians who emigrated into the Roman Empire. I remember once, in Sual)ia, on a very hot dusty day, I met one of these emigrating v.aggons, full of chests, furniture, and effects, heaped all together. Behind, a very small waggon, attached to the large one, eonveycd an infant two years old, of a sweet expression of countenance. It thus went along, weeping, under the care of a little sister, who walked beside it, but was unal)le to pacify it. Some women having blamed the parents for leaving their infant behind, the father sent his wife down to fetch it. Those people seem to me to be both dejected, almost insensible, prematurely dead, through misery? — or regret? Could they ever reach their destination? It was scarcely probable. And the infant, would its frail carriage last through tliat long journey ? I durst not ask myself. Only one member of that family seemed to me alive and life-like, it was a b.oy about fourteen, who, even at that moment, was putting on the drag for going down hill. That boy with blaclc hair, and a serious but impassioned countenance, seemed full of m')ral strength and ardour; at least I thoug|it so. He already felt himself the head of a HE ENVIES THE WORKMAN. 29 Before going to that exfremity, before quitting France, every re- source will be employed. The sou will sell himself*, the daughter turn servant, the young child enter the nearest manufactory, and the wife place herself as wet-nurse in the citizen's house t, or take to her own home the infant of the small shop-keeper, or even of the labourer. The artisan, if he does but gain a pretty good livelihood, is the object of the peasant's envy. lie who calls the manufacturer " master " {bourgeois'), is himself a master in the estimation of the countryman. The latter sees him on Sunday walking about dressed like a gentleman. He himself attached to the land, believes that a man who carries his trade about with him, who works without caring about the seasons, frost or snow, is as free as a bird. He knows not, and will not see the slavery of the manufacturer. He judges of him by the young travelling artisan whom he meets on the roads, making his tour of France, and who, at every halt, gains enough for his lodging and his journey ; and then, resuming his long walking- stick and his knapsack, marches towards another town, singing as he sroes along. family, their provider, and charared with their safety. The real mother was the sister ; she performed the part of one. The little one, weepini; in his cradle, had also his part, and not the least important ; he was the unity of the family, the l)ond hctv>'een the brother and sister, their common foster child; in his little osier wasrgon, he was transporting the domestic hearth and the father-land ; there, if he lived, Suabia would still be found, even in an unborn world. Alas ! how much will these children have to do and to sutler ! In looking at the eldest, and his beautiful serious countenance, I blessed him from my heart, and gave him as much as was in my power. * These substitutes are too much despised. M. Vivien who, as a Member of the Commission of the Chamber, has made an inquiry upon this subject, has done me the honour to inform me that their motives were often very laudable: to succour their family, acquire a small property, &c. •f- Iso painter of morals, novelist, or political economist, as far as I know, has deigned to speak to us of the wet-nurse. There is, however, there a sad story, not sufficiently known I People do not know how much these poor women are speculated upon and unfairly used, fn-st by the conveyances which transport them (often barely out of their confinement), and afterwards by the .servants' office {bvrcau) whi:-h receives them. M hen taken as nurses, o?t the spilt, they must send away their own child, who often dies in consequence. They have no binding agreement with the family that hires them, and may be sent away at the first cai)rice of the mother, the monthly nurse, or the doctor ; if the change of air and living should dry up the source of their milk, they are discharged without any indenuiity. If they remain, they contract habits of idleness, and suffer e?ctremely when they are obliged to return to their life of poverty ; several become servants, in order never to leave the town ; they never rejoin their husbands again, and the family is broken up. 30 CHAPTER II. BONDAGE OF THE WORKMAN DEPENDENT ON MACHINERY. '^ How brilliant is the city ! How sad and poor is the country !" That is what you hear the peasants say, who come to see the town on holidays. They do not know that if the country is poor, the city, with all its splendour, is perhaps more miserable* Few people, moreover, make this distinction. On Sunday, observe at the city gates {barricrea^, those two crowds moving in opposite directions ; the artizan towards the country, the peasant towards town. Between those two seemingly analogous movements, there is a great difference. The peasant's is not a simple walk ; he admires every thing in the town, desires all, and will remain there if he can. Let him consider. One seldom returns to the country after once leaving it. They w-ho come as servants, and partake of most of their masters' pleasures, by no means care to return to their life of absti- nence. Should those who become workmen in manufactories desire to return to the country, they could not ; they are speedily enervated, and incapable of enduring severe toil, or the sudden variations of heat and cold ; the open air would kill them. But if the city is so absorbing, it seems that it ought not to be too much blamed for it ; to the best of its power, it keeps away the peasant by high duties and the enormous prices of provisions. Be- sieged by these crowds, it thus attempts to drive off her assailants. But nothing deters them ; no terms are hard enough. They will come in, in whatever character they please ; as servant, workman, mere machine assistant, and himself a machine. One is reminded of those ancient Italic nations, who, in their frantic desire of entering Rome, sold themselves for slaves in order, at a later period, to be- come freedmen and citizens. The peasant does not allow himself to be intimidated by the re- pinings of the artizan, or by the terrible descriptions he receives of his situation. He does not understand, he who earns one or two francs, how, with wages at three, four, or five francs, one can be miserable. " But the fluctuations of work, and the want of work ?" * A distinction veiy cleverly set forth in the work of the esteemed and regretted M. Buret : " De la Misere," &c. 1840. In this work he has, perhaps, adopted too readily the exaggerations of the English inquiries. THE PEASANT MIGRATES AND TURNS WORKMAN. 31 What does it signify ? He used to economise out of his small earn- ings ; how much more easily, then, out of so large a salary, will he lay by for a rainy day ! But, apart from wages, surely life is more agreeable in town. There, people generally work under cover ; that alone, the having a roof over one's head, seems a great improvement. Without speaking of the heat, the cold of our climate is a punishment for those even who seem the most accustomed to it. For my part, I have spent many winters without a fire, without being less sensible of the cold. When the frost was over, I felt a happiness to whicli few enjoyments are comparable. Spring was a delight. These changes of seasons, so indifferent for the rich, constitute the bases of the poor man's life — his real events. The peasant, by living in town, is better off in regard to food ; it is, if not more wholesome, at least more savoury. It is not uncom- mon, in the first months of his residence, to see him grow fat. To counterpoise this, his complexion changes, and not for the better. What has he lost, in his removal ? something most vital and even nutritious, which alone explains how country workmen remain strong even on food but little nutritious, — this is pure, free air, re- freshed without ceasing, and renewed by vegetable perfumes. That the air in town is as unwholesome as is alleged, I do not believe ; but it most assuredly is so in the miserable lodgings where so many poor workmen are pent up every night between wenches and thieves. The peasant little expected this ; nor did he calculate that, in earning more money, he was losing his treasure, — his sobriety, parsimony, nay, avarice, if we must speak frankly. It is easy to be saving far from temptations to spend, when only one pleasure occurs, that of saving. But how very difficult is it, — what resolution, what self-possession does it require, to keep money close, and your pocket buttoned, when every thing entices to open it ! Add, also, that the savings bank, keeping an invisible treasure, by no means imparts those emotions which the peasant feels in burying and digging up his treasure with so much pleasure, mystery, and fear : still less has it the charms of a nice piece of land, always to be seen, always to be dug, and always wanting to be enlarged. Indeed, the workman needs a fund of virtue to be saving. If he be a simple, good-natured fellow, and easily entrapped into company, a thousand various expenses, — the cabaret, the cafe, and so forth, — leave him penniless. If he be serious and honest, he marries at some prosperous moment, when work is plentiful : the wife earns little at first, but nothing when she has children ; the husband, well off' when he was single, knows not how to meet this certain over- whelming every-day expenditure. 32 THE PEASANT TURNS WOTIKMAN. Besides the town imposts (droitv d'cntree), there was formerly an- other obstacle which barred the peasant from towns, and prevented him from turning workman : this barrier was the difficulty of enter- ing into any trade^ the length of apprenticeship, the spirit of ex- clusion in fraternities and corporations. Manufacturing families took few apprentices — and those chiefly their own children, whom they mutually exchanged. But now new occupations have been created, requiring scarcely any apprenticeship, and taking any man. The real workman, in these trades, is machinery : it is not necessary for man to have much strength or skill ; he is there only to superintend and aid that iron workman. This unfortunate class of population, enslaved to machinery, com- prises four hundred thousand souls, or rather more.* It is about the fifteenth part of our workmen. Whoever knows no kind of ■work, comes and offers himself to the manufactories to serve ma- * They who enlarge this figure, include in it workmen occupied, it is true, in manufactories which employ machinery, but not enslaved to machines. These men are, and ever will be, an exception. Is the extension of machinism (to designate this system by a word) to be feared ? Ought machinery to in- vade every thing ? Will France become, in this respect, another England ? To these grave questions I answer unhesitatingly, No ; we must not judge of the extension of this system by the epoch of the great European war \\hen it was over-excited by the extravagant premiums which are not afforded by ordi- nary trade Eminently fitted to lower the price of objects that are to descend among all classes, it has supplied an immense want, that of the lower classes, who, at a time of rapid ascension, wanted at once to have comforts, even to mal „ 1788 (Arthur Young) . 19 „ lfl9 (Chaptal) . . 25 „ 18.;2 (Morogne) . . 30 „ 18-10 (Villennr) . . 40 „ This is for labour in towns. Wages have increased very little in tiie country. 42 HIS HOUSEHOLD HIS WIFE. To be a man in the true sense^ is first, and especially, to have a wife. The workman, generally single in former times, is often a married man at the present day. Married or not, he generally finds, on his return, a female in his house ; a home, a fire-side, a wife — Oh ! life has been transformed ! A wife, a family — children presently! Expense, misery! If work failed ? — It is very affecting to see all these hard-working men in the even- ing, striding homewards at a rapid pace. See this man, after his long day's labour, often at a league from home, after a miserable breakfast and a solitary dinner, who has been standing for fifteen hours, — see how active he is at night ! He is hastening to his nest. To be a m.an one hour a day, in fact, is not too much. A sacred sight ! He is carrying bread home, and, when once arrived, he rests himself ; he is no longer any thing, but gives him- self up, like a child, to his wife. Nourished by him, she nourishes and warms him ; they both serve the child, who does nothing, but is free, and is their master. That the last should be master, — such is, indeed, the city of God ! The rich man never tastes this delightful enjoyment, this supreme blessing of man, to feed his family every day with the essence of his life — his work. The poor man alone is a father ; every day he creates anew, and re-produces his family. This grand mystery is better felt by woman than by the sages of the world. She is happy in owing every thing to man. That alone imparts a singular charm to the poor household. There, nothing is foreign or indifferent ; every thing bears the stamp of a beloved hand, the seal of the heart. Man very often little knovrs the priva- tions she endures in order that, on his return, he may find his dwell- ing modest, yet adorned. Great is the ambition of woman for the household, clothes, and linen. This last article is new ; the linen closet, the pride of the countrywoman, was unknown to the wife of the town workman, before the revolution in industry which I have men- tioned. Cleanliness, purity, modesty, those graces of woman, then enchanted the house ; the bed was surrounded with curtains ; the child's cradle, dazzling with whiteness, became a paradise : — the whole cut out, and sewed in a few evenings. Add, moreover, a flower at the window ! What a surprise ! the husband, on his re- turn, no longer knows his own home ! This taste for flowers, which has spread (there are now several markets for them here), and this little expenditure to ornament the interior, are they not lam.entable, when the?e people never kiiow whether they have any work on the morrow.^ — Call it not c.xpi'udi- tiirc, say rather econonn/. It is a very great one, if the innocent THE MOTHER S AMBITION. 43 attraction of the wife renders this house charming to the husband, and can keep him there. Let us ornament, I beseech you, botli the liouse and the wife ! A few ells of printed cotton make her another woman ; see, she is regenerated, and become young again. '• Remain here, I entreat you." This is on Saturday evening ; slie casts her arms round his neck, and saves her children's bread that he was about to squander away.* The Sunday comes, and the wife has conquered. The husband, shaved and changed, allows her to clothe him in a good warm gar- ment. That is soon done. But that which is a long, serious busi- ness, is the child, such as they would Hke to dress him out on that day. They then set out, the child walks on before, under his mother's eye ; let him take especial care not to spoil her capital work. Look well at these jieople, and be well assured that how high soever you go, you will never find any thing morally superior. This woman is virtue, with a particular charm of unaffected reason and address to govern strength, without being aware of it. That man is the strong, the patient, the courageous, who bears for society the heaviest load of human life. A true companion of duUj (a noble title of coiiipagnonagc !) He has stood strong and firm, like a soldier at his post. The more dangerous his trade, the more sure is his mo- rality. A celebrated architect, sprung from the people, and who knew them well, said one day to a friend of mine, " The most honest men I have known were of this class. They know, at their departure in the morning, they may possibly not return in the even- ing, and they are always ready to appear before God.t Still, such a profession, however noble it may be, is not that which a mother desires for her son. Hers promises much ; he will go far. The Fr(res'\. speak highly of him, and caress him much. His draw- ings, holiday compliments, and writing-specimens, already ornament the room, between Napoleon and the Sacred Heart. He will be cer- tainly sent to the free school for drawing. The father asks why ? Drawing, replies the mother, will always be serviceable to him in his business. A reply of double meaning, we must confess, under which she conceals a far greater ambition. Why should not this * Bread ! and the Landlord ! two ideas of the wife, which never forsake Iier. AVhat skill, virtue, and strengtli of mind, it often requires to save up a quarter's rent ! Mho will ever know it ? f This is what M. Percier said one day to M. Belloc, the director of the free- school of Ucrifrn. The intelllf^ent artist caught up the word, and used it in one of his excellent discourses (full of new views and fruitful sketches) ; and M. Percier, grateful for this homage paid to his dearest opinions, bequeathed a leiracy to the school, a month before his death. \ Ecclesiastical teachers in the free schools of the poor. C. C. 44 THE SON BECOMES AN ARTIST." STUDIOUS. child, so well born and gifted, be a painter or a sculptor, as well as any other ? She pinches herself for a few sous for crayons, and that very expensive paper. Her son will presently show up, and carry off all the prizes ; in her fond dreams, already thunders the grand name of Rome. Maternal ambition thus too often succeeds in making a poor miser- able artist of one who would have better gained his livelihood as a workman. The arts are scarcely productive, even in time of peace, when all the richer classes, especially the women, instead of purchas- ing the products of art, are artists themselves. Should a war or a revolution break out, art is absolute starvation. Often also the aspiring young artist, starting full of ardour and inspiration, is stopped short ; his father dies, and he must succour his family ; so, he turns workman. A great affliction for his mother — much lamentation, which discourages the young man. All his life he will curse his fate ; he will work here, but his soul will be elsewhere. A cruel tormenting position. And yet nothing will dissuade him. Come not near him to give him advice ; you Avould be ill received. It is too late ; and he must surmount every obstacle. You will see him for ever reading and meditating ; reading during the ie^w moments allotted to meals, and in the even- ing, nay, throughout the night, absorbed in a book ; on Sunday, ever at home and melancholy. One can hardly imagine how great is the thirst for reading in that state of mind. During work, and that the most irreconcileable of all with study, amid the rolling and trembling of twenty machines, I have known an unfortunate spinner put a book in the corner of his loom, and read a line every time the sledge receded and allowed him a second. How long is the day when it passes thus ! How tormenting are the last hours ! For him who is waiting for the bell and cursing its slowness, the odious workshop, at the close of day, seems quite fantastic ; the demons of impatience are cruelly sporting in those shadows. "^ O liberty ! O light ! "Will you leave me here for ever ? " I pity his family, on his return, if he has one. A man im- bittered in this struggle, and wholly intent on personal progress, considers every thing else of little value. The faculty of loving diminishes in this sombre life. The family is less loved ; it annoys him ; he weans himself even from his native land, imputing to it the injustice of fate. The father of the studious workman, though more clownish, heavy, and inferior in so many respects, had more than one advan- tage over his son. The national sentiment was more powerful within him ; he thought less about mankind, and more about France. The great French family and his own dear little family constituted his world, and he set his heart upon it. But, alas ! what has be- SUFFERINGS OF THE WORKMAN FOND OF LITERATURE. 45 come of that charming home and the delightful household that we used to admire ? Science in itself does not harden and wither the heart. If it has this effect in the present case, it is hecause it is cruelly cramped ■when it reaches the mind. It does not show itself in its natural hues, in its true and perfect light, but obliquely, partially, like those narrow and false rays gleaming in a cellar. It does not make one malevolent and envious by what it imparts, but by what it withholds. He, for instance, who knows not the complicated means by which wealth is created, will naturally believe it is not created ; that it does not augment in this world, but is only displaced ; that one ac- quires only by stripping another: every acquisition will seem to him a theft, and he will hate every possessor. Hate ? AVhy ? For the possessions of this world ? ^Vhy, the world itself would be worthless, were it not for love. "\\'hatever be the inevitable errors of an imperfect study, we must respect that moment. What is more touching, more serious, than to see the man who till now learned at hazard, wanting to study — pursuing science, with an impassioned will, through so many obstacles ? It is voluntary culture which places the workman, at the moment under consideration, not only above the peasant, but above the classes that are thought superior, who, in fact, have books, leisure, everything — whom science courts, but who, when once rid of the education imposed upon them, abandon study, and no longer care about truth. I see many a man who, after passing honourably through our higher schools, still young in years, but already old in heart, forgets the science he cultivated, without even having the im- petuosity of the passions for an excuse, but feels weary, sleeps, smokes, and dreams. Obstacles, I know, are great incentives. The workman loves books because he has but few ; sometimes he has but one, but if it be good, he will learn so much the better. A single book read through and through, ruminated on and pondered over, is often more fruitful than a vast mass of indigested reading. I lived for whole years on a A'irgil, and found myself well off. An odd volume of Racine, purchase by chance at a stall on the quay, created the poet of Toulon. They who are inwardly rich have always sufficient resources. They extend what they have, fertilise it by thought, and transport it to infinity. Instead of envying this world of clay, they make one for themselves, all of gold and light. They say to this world, •' Keep thy poverty that thou callest riches, I am rich within myself." The greater part of the poetry written by workmen in later times is stamped with a peculiar character of meekness and melancholy. 46 UNIVERSAL SOARING TOWARDS LIGHT. which often reminds me of their predecessors, the workmen of the middle ages. If some of them are bitter and violent, they are the minority. This lofty inspii-ation would have transported these true poets still higher, if, in regard to form, they had not followed the aristocratic models with too much deference. They are scarcely beginning. AV'hy are you in a hurry to say they will never reach the highest ranks ? You start from the false notion that time and culture do every thing ; you reckon as nothing the inward development which the soul acquires by its own strength, even amid manual labour — a spontaneous vegetation which thrives by obstacles. Book-men ! know that this man, without books, and of little culture, has, in compensation, a substitute for them, — he is master of sorrows. Whether he succeed or not, I see no remedy. He will pursue his road, the path of meditation and suffering. " He sought the light (says my Virgil), caught a glimpse of it, and groaned ! " And, ever groaning for it, he will seek it for ever. "Who that has once had a glimpse of it, could ever renounce it ? "■ Light ! more light ! " Such were the last words of Goethe. This prayer of expiring genius is the general cry of nature, and it resounds from world to world. What that mighty man, one of the eldest born of God, then said, his most humble children, the least advanced in animal life, the Mollusca, say also in the deptiis of the sea ; they will not live in any place where light does not reach them. The flov.er wants light, turns towards it, and decays without it. The companions of our toil, even animals, rejoice like ourselves, or grieve, according as it comes or goes. My grandson, two months old, weeps v.heu day declines. This summer, whilst walking in my garden, I heard a bird on a branch, singing to the setting sun ; he was perched facing the light, and v/as Msibly delighted. And so was I to see him ; our sad domestic birds had never given me the idea of this intelligent, power- ful creature, so small, yet so impassioned. I thrilled with joy at his song. He cast back his head and his dilated breast ; and never was a singer, never was a poet in such natural ecstasy. Yet it was not love (the season had passed) ; it was evidently the charm of day, the loveliness of sunset, that filled him with joy. Barbarous the science and cruel the pride that so degrades ani- mated nature, and separates man so vvidely from his inferior brethren ! I said to him through my tears, " Poor child of light, who reflect it in your soiig, you do well indeed to sing it ! Night, full of ambush and perils for you, is near akin to death. Who knows whether you will ever see day again ? " Then, passing mentally from his destiny, to that of ail the i:eings which, from the depths of creation, are so slowly ascending towards day, I said with Goethe and the little bird, " Light ! O Lord ! more hght ! " 47 CHAPTER IV. BOKDACE OF THE 3IANUFACTUKEK. I READ in the little book of the Rouen weaver, already quoted, " Our manufacturers are all workmen by origin ; " and again : "^Our manufacturers of the day (1836) are the laborious and economical working men of the early times of the Restoration." This, I believe, is pretty general, and not peculiar to the manu- factories of Rouen. Several building contractors have told me that they had all been workmen, and had come to Paris as masons, carpenters, &c. If working men have been able to rise to the very vast and com- plicated business of great manufactories, it will easily be believed that, with greater reason, they have become masters in those branches of industry which require much less capital, such as petty m^anu- factures, trades, and retail businesses. Licensed tradesmen, who had scarcely increased during the Empire, have nmltiplied two-fold during the thirty years that have passed since 1815. About six hundred thousand men have become manufacturers or tradesmen. Now, as in our country, whoever can just manage to live, keeps to his business, and does not embark in speculation, we may say with confidence, that half a million of working men have become masters, and obtained what they believed to be independence. This progress was very rapid in the first ten years, from 1815 to 1825. Those brave men, who, returning from war, wheeled suddenly to the right about towards industry, charged, as for an onset, and, without difficulty, carried every position. So great was their confidence, that they imparted some of it even to the capitalists. Men of such spirit would carry with them even the most lukewarm ; people believed, without any difficulty, that they were about to re- commence in industry the Avliole series of our victories, and give us, in this field, satisfaction for our late reverses. It is beyond a doubt that these parvenu workmen, who founded our manufactures, had excellent qualities : spirit, boldness, intre- pidity in speculation, and often a sure eye for business. Many of them have made their fortunes : may their sons not ruin themselves ! With such qualities, our manufacturers of 1815 felt but too well the demoralisation of that sad period. Political death is not far from moral death ; and so they could see then. They preserved. 48 THEIR PKESENT EMBARRASSMENT. generally, not the sentiment of honour, but the violence of military life ; cared neither for men, things, nor the future, and treated un- mercifully two classes of individuals, — the workman and the consumer. M^orkmen, however, being still scarce at that period, even in machineiy manufactories, which require so little apprenticeship, they were obliged to give high wages. They thus presiied men in town and country, placed these conscripts of labour at the pace of the machine, and required that they should be, like it, indefatigable. They seemed to apply to industry the great imperial principle : sacrifice men to abridge warfare. Our national impatience, which often renders us barbarous towards animals, acquired the force of law against men of military traditions ; work was to go on at a quick march, at a gallop : so much the worse for those who perished ! As to commerce, the manufacturers of that time traded as if tlicy were in a hostile country ; they treated the purchaser just as the female shopkeepers ransomed the Cossaks in 181.5. They sold at false weight, false die, and false measure ; they thus played their cards very quickly, and retired ; having shut France out from her best markets, compromised for a lengthened period her commercial reputation, and, what is more serious, done the English the essential service, not to mention other points, to estrange from us a v.hole world, Spanish America, the imitator of our Revolution. Their successors, who are either their sons or their principal work- men, now find it a difficult matter to get on, with this reputation in every market. They are astonished and tormented to find their profits so much reduced. Most of them would be heartily glad to retire, if they could; but they are engaged, they must go on — march ! march ! Elsewhere industry is based upon large capitals, upon a mass of customs, traditions, and sure relations ; it has a vast regular trade for its foundation. But here (in France), to say the truth, it is but a fight. A persevering workman, who inspires confidence, becomes a sleeping partner ; or else a young man is willing to hazard his father's earnings ; he starts with a small capital, a dowry, or a loan. God grant that he may escape between two critical periods ; for we have a crisis every six years (1818, 182,5, 18.30, 1S3()). It is always the same story ; a year or two after the crisis come a few orders, oblivion, and hope ; the manufacturer thinks he is launched ; he urges, presses, and strains men and things, workmen, and machines; the commercial Bonaparte of 1820 reappears for a moment ; then, encumbered and glutted, they are obliged to sell their goods at a loss : add, that these expensive machines are, about every five years, past service, or outdoue by some new invention ; if any profit remain, it goes to alter the machinery. THEIR PUESENT EMBARRASSMENTS. 49 The capitalist, warned by so many lessons, now believes that France is rather an industrious than a commercial nation, more fitted to manufacture than to sell. He lends to the new manufacturer, like a man departing on a dangerous voyage. What security has he ? The most splendid manufactories are sold only at a great loss; these brilliant buildings are, in a few years, worth only the iron and copper. It is not upon the factory that they lend, but upon the man ; the manufacturer has the sad advantage of being able to be im- prisoned, and that gives a value to his signature. He knows right well he has embarked his person, occasionally much more than his person, the lives of his wife and children, the property of his fathei- in-law, or that of some too credulous friend, perhaps even a sacred deposit, in the frenzy of this terrible existence. So, there is no mincing the matter, he must conquer or die ; make a fortune, or jump into the river. A man in this state of mind is not very tender- hearted. It would be a miracle if he were gentle and kind to his people, his workmen. See him as he strides along his vast workshops, with a sullen unfeeUng air. "W^hen he is at one end, the workmen, at the other, say in a whisper, " How furious he is to-day ! how he has treated the fore- man !" He treats them as he has just been treated himself. He has just returned from the money-market — say, from Basle to ^lulhausen, or from Rouen to Deville. He bawls, and they are as- tonished ; they little know that the Jew has just taken from his body a pound of flesh ! From whom will he try to get it back? From the consumer? The latter is on his guard. The manufacturer falls back upon the workman. Wherever there is no apprenticeship, wherever appren- tices are imprudently multiplied, they present themselves in crowds, and offer themselves at a low price, and the manufacturer profits by the fall of wages.* Then the glut in the market obliging him to sell even at a loss — the lowness of wages, which is death for the workman, is no longer profitable to the manufacturer ; and the con- sumer alone gains by it. The moat hard-hearted manufacturer, however, was born man"; * I was unwilling to believe what I was told of the infamous frau Is practisecT by certain manufacturers, upon the consumer as to quality, and upon the work- man as to quantity of work. I have been obliged to yield. The same things have been authenticated by friends of the manufacturers who have spoken of them to me with grief and humiliation, and by persons of note, both merchants and bankers. The j>rnst flagrant impositions. It is no longer enough to adulterate qualiti.'s, they must sometimes become forgers, and assume the marks of ma- nufactures in vogue. The repugnance for industry exhibited by the noble republics of antiquity, and the haughty barons in the middle ages, is doabtl:!ss « AVe speak here of individual trading, as is generally the case in France^ not of partnernhip concerns, which exist, as yet, only in a few large towns. j New classes of men now springing up, as M. Leclaire very well explains (Ptfinivrc en batimcnt). They l^now nothing of the real value of articles. They, want what is showy — washy ! No matter. E 6 54 FALSIFICATION. unreasonable^ if by industry we understand those complicated fabrics which require science and art^ or a grand wholesale trade, which re- quires such a variety of knowledge, information^ and combination. But this repugnance is truly reasonable when it relates to the or- dinary usages of commerce, the miserable necessity in which the tradesman finds himself of lying, cheating, and adulterating. I do not hesitate to affirm that for a man of honour the position of the most dependent working man is free in comparison with this. A serf in body, he is free in soul. To enslave his soul, on the con- trary, and his tongue, to be obliged from morning to night to dis- guise his thoughts, this is the lowest state of slavery. Picture to yourself this man who has been a soldier, who has preserved in every thing else the sentiment of honour, and who is resigned to that. He must suffer much. It is singular that it is precisely for honour that he lies everv day, viz. to honour his affairs. Dishonour for him is not falsehood, but bankruptcy. Rather than fall, commercial honour will urge him on to the point at which fraud is equivalent to robbery, adulteration to poisoning; — a gentle poisoning, I know, with small doses, which kill only in the long run. Even though they pretend that they mix only innocuous and inert materials Avith their commodities *, the working man who thinks he shall derive from them the restoration of his strength, but finds nothing at all, can no longer repair his substance ; he declines, is exhausted, and lives (?o to speak) upon the principal, the funds of his life, which will dwindle away by degrees. What I find culpable in this adulterator, this vendor of intoxica- tion, is not only his poisoning the people, but his debasing them. Man, fatigued with work, enters that shop in all confidence ; he loves it as his house of liberty. "Well, what does lie find there } Shame ! The spirituous mixture sold to him under the name of wine, has, as soon as drunk, an effect that a double or triple quantity of wine would not produce ; it masters the brain, troubles the mind, the tongue, and the motions of the body. Drunk and iienr.iless, he is cast by the tradesman into the street. Who is not pierced to the heart in seeing, sometimes in winter, a poor old woman, who has partaken of this poison to warm herself, thrust out in this state, to be a butt for the barbarity of children ? The rich man passes by, and says, — " Behold the people !" * It h;!s been IcguJhj ;;scer!;iincd that many of the^e substances were anj' thing but innocuous. See the " .Journal de Chiniic Mt'dicale," tlie " Aunales d'llygiene, and Messrs. Gamier and Hurel on " FaliiScations des Substances Alimer.taircs," ] 844. 1HE TRADESMAN COMPARED WITH THE WORKMAN. 55 Every man who may have or can borrow 1000 francs (^0/.), boldly begins trade. J>om artisan he turns tradesman, that is to say, a man of leisure. He used to live in the cabaret, or drinking- shop ; so he opens a cabaret. He sets up not far from the old- established shops ; on the contrary, as near as possible, to filch their custom from them ; he comforts himself with the pleasant idea that he will swamp his neighbour. In fact, he gets customers immedi- ately, — all those who owe the other, and will not pay. At the end of a few months, this new shop becomes old ; for others have set up around it. He declines and perishes ; he has lost money, but more still, what was worth more, his working habits. A joyful day that for the survivors, who gradually, however, end in the same way. Others come, but he never appears. Sad and miserable trade, void of industry, and every other idea but that of preying one upon an- other. Scarcely does the custom improve, when tradesmen increase, mul- tiply visibly, together with opposition, envy, and hatred. Tliey do nothing, but stand at their doors, with their arms folded, eyeing one another askance, to see if the faithless customer will not enter an- other shop by mistake. Those of Paris, eighty thousand in number, had last year forty-six thousand trials before the Tribunal of Com- merce alone, without speaking of the other tribunals. An awful number ! How many quarrels and enmities does it imply ? The especial object of this hatred, he whom the licensed trader pursues, and gets arrested when he can, is the poor devil who rolls his shop along, and stops for a moment ; it is the unfortunate woman who carries hers in a basket ! Alas, and often a child also ! * Let her not think of sitting down, let her be always moving on — otherwise she is seized ! I really do not know whether that wretched shopman, who has had her arrested, is more happy for being seated ; never stirring, ever waiting, and able to foresee nothing. The tradesman scarcely ever knows whence his protit will arise. Receiving his goods at a second or third hand, he has no idea of the state of his own trade in Europe, and cannot guess whether next year he will make a fortune or become a bankrupt. The manufacturer, even the artisan, have tv.-o things, \vhich, in spite of work, render their lot better than that of the tradesman: — First. — Tlie tradesman docs not create : he has not the important happiness — worthy of a man — to produce something — to see his work growing under his liand, assuming a form, becoming harmoni- ous, responding to its framer by its progress, and thus consoling his ennui and his trouble. * See the touching piece of Savinicn Lapointc. K 1 56 HE IS OBLIGED TO PLEASE. Secondly. — Another awful disadvantage, in my opinion, is — the trnde-^nian ix obliged to please. The workman gives his time, the manufacturer his merchandise, for so much money ; that is a simple contract, which is not humiliating. Neither has occasion to flatter. They are not obliged, often with a lacerated heart and tearful eyes, to be amiable and gay on a sudden, like the lady behind the counter. The tradesman, though uneasy and tormented to death about a bill that falls due to-morrow, must smile and give himself up, by a cruel effort, to the prating of some young fashionable lady, who makes him unfold a hundred pieces, chats for two hours, and after all departs "without a purchase. He must please, and so must his wife. He has staked in trade, not only his wealth, his person, and his life, but often his family.* The man the least susceptible on his own account, will suffer, every hour, in seeing his wife or daughter at the counter. Even a stranger, an indifferent spectator, does not see, without pain, the do- mestic concerns of a respectable family, beginning trade, violently disturbed, their fire-side turned into the street, their holy of holies displayed in the shop-window ! The young lady listens, with down- cast eyes, to the impertinent language of some indelicate customer. "VVe return a few months after, and find her bold. The wife, moreover, contributes much more than the daughter to the success of a house of business. She talks gracefully, charmingly. Where is the impropriety, in such a public life, before the eyes of the crowd .'' She 'chats, but she listens — and to everybody rather than her husband. That husband of hers has a miOcdy minil, is any thing but amusing, full of doubts and trifles, wavering in politics, in every thing discontented with the government, and discontented even with the discontented. That woman perceives more and more plainly that she has there a tiresome task ; twelve hours a day on the same spot, exposed be- hind a shop window among the goods. She will not remain for ever £0 motionless, — that statue may become animated. There is the beginning of the husband's keen sufferings. The most cruel place in the world for a jealous man is a shop. Every- body comes there, and everybody flatters the lady. The wretched man even does not always know on whom to lay the fault. Sometimes he * People have spoken of the pilk workwoman, and the clerk who m;Kle her pay him for conniving at the theft. People hiive also spoken of the cotton workwoman, in my opinion, erroneously : the manufacturer associates very little \\\t\\ his male and female workpeople. Lastly, they have said that the fountry usurer often ofi'ers terms at an immoral price. M hy have the>- not flioken of the female shopkeeper, so exposed, so ohliged to please the purchaser, to talk long with him, and who is generally so disgusted ? HIS FAMILY OFTEN COMPROMISED. 57 goes mad, — kills himself or her: some take to their bed and die. More wretched still is he who is resigned. There was a man who died thus a slow death, — not from jea- lousy, but grief and humiliation, being every day insulted and out- raged in the person of his wife : I mean the unfortunate Louvet. After escaping the dangers of the Reign of Terror, and returning to the Convention, without the means of living, he set his wife up as a bookseller in the Palais-Royal, the book trade being, at this period, the only flourishing one. Unfortunately, this ardent Girondin, as opposed to the Royalists as to the Mountain, had a thousand enemies. A party, called jetinesse doree, — they who ran away so famously on the 13 Vendemiaire, — went to parade bravely before Louvet's shop, entered, sneered, and revenged themselves on a woman, answering the furious husband's provocations only by shouts of laughter. lie had furnished them with matter himself, by printing, in the account of his flight and misfortunes, a thousand impassioned details, doubt- less indiscreet and imprudent, about his dear Lodoiska, One thing ought to have protected her, and made her sacred for men of feeling, — her courage and devotedness ; she had saved her husband. Our gallant gentlemen did not feel that; they coolly carried on their cruel jests, and Louvet died in consequence. His wife wanted to die, but her children, who were brought to her, condemned her to live. 58 CHAPTER VI. BONDAGE OF THE OFFICIAL. When children grow up, and the family circle begin to inquire " What is to be done with them ? " the most lively and least govern- able seldom fails to say, " I will be independent." He will com- mence business, and find therein the independence we have just spoken of. The other brother, the quiet, gentle boy, will be a government servant ; at all events, there will be an attempt to make him one. To accomplish this, the family will make enormous sacri- fices, often beyond their fortune. Great efforts, — and what result? After several years of schooling and ten years of college life, he will be made an extra clerk, and at length regularly appointed with a trifling salary. His brother, the tradesman, who during that time has had far different adventures, is heartily jealous of him, and loses few op- portunities of making allusion to the unproductive classes, " who fall asleep comfortably at their desk." In the eyes of the man of in- dustry, there is no producer but himself: — the judge, the soldier, the professor, the official, are •' unproductive consumers." * The parents knew well that a career in a public office was not lucrative ; but they wanted for their gentle, quiet child, a sure, fixed, and re- gular livelihood. Such is the ideal of families, after so many revo- lutions ; such, in their opinion, is the lot of the official ; all the rest comes and goes, varies, and changes ; the official alone escapes from the vicissitudes of this mortal life, and is, as it were, in a better world. I know not whether the man in office ever had this paradise on earth, this life of immobility and sleep ; but in these days I see no man more on the wing. ^Vithout speaking of dismissals which are sometimes inflicted, and are ever to be feared, his life is but a series of changes, journeys, sudden transportations (for some electoral mystery or other) from one end of France to the other, inexplicable disgraces, so-called promotions, which, for two hundred francs more, send jhim from Perpignan to Lille. All the roads are filled with officials, travelling with their furniture ; many have discontinued having any. Quartered in an inn, with their trunks all ])acked. * As if justice and civil order, the defence of the country, and instruction, were not also productions, and the tirst of all I LOW SALARIES. 69 they live there a sad solitary life, for a year, or less, in an unknown town : at length, when they are just beginning to make acquaintances, they are started off to the opposite pole. Above all, let them not marry ; their position would be still worse. Independently of this roving life, their low salaries are not fit for a household. Those who are obliged to make their position respected, — such as the priest, the judge, the officer, the professor, — will pass their lives, if they have no fortune, in a continual struggle, in miserable efforts to hide their wretchedness, and envelope it in some imaginary dignity. Have you not met (not once but often), in a diligence, a re- spectable, serious, or rather sad-looking lady, in humble and some- what worn apparel, with a child or two, and an abundance of luggage and boxes, — a household on the top of the coach ? On alighting, you see her met by her husband, a brave, worthy officer, no longer young. She follows him thus, with every species of annoyance and enmii, from one garrison to another, is confined on the road, nurses at an inn, and then sets out again. Nothing more sad than to see these poor women thus mixed up by affection and duty with the slavery of a military life. The salaries of functionaries, whether military or civil, have changed very little since the empire.* The fixed salary, which people consider as their supreme good fortune, is, in this respect, enjoyed by almost all of them. But as money has fallen, the same figure is ever lessening in real value, and ever representing less : we have remarked this in speaking of commercial wages. France can boast of one thing, — which is, that, with the exception of a few high posts too well remunerated, her public functionaries serve the State almost for nothing. Yet for all that, I affirm that in this country, of which so much injurious has been said, there are few, very few, functionaries accessible to a bribe. I hear an objection : many are corrupted by the hope of pro- motion, by intrigue, and sinister influence; I know it — granted. And yet I will, nevertheless, maintain, that, among these very ill- remunerated people, you will not find any who accept money, like those in Russia, Italy, and so many other countries. Let us consider the highest order. The judge who decides the fate, the fortune of men, who has every day affairs worth several * They have improved in almost all the other States of Europe. Here (in Prance) they have been augmented for a very small number of places, and lowered for others : for instance, for the clerks in prcftctiins and sous-preftcturcs. For the general character and the divisions of this large army of funetionaries read M. Vivien's imiiortant work, "Etudes Administratives, 1845." 60 MISERY OF SOME FUNCTIONARIES. millions in his hamls, and who for such lofty, assiduous, fatiguing functions^ earns less than many a workman — the judge receives no bribe. Now take the lowest, in a class Avhere temptations are great, — take the custom-house officer: there are some, perhaps, who will accept a trifling fee {pour hoirc') on some insignificant occasion, but never for any thing the least suspected of fraud. Do you wish to know, now, how much he gets for this ungiateful service? Six hundred francs : rather more than thirty sous (l.v. 3d.) a day ; add now the nights uiipaid for; he passes every other night upon the frontier, or the coast, with no other shelter but his cloak, exposed to the attack of the smuggler, and the tempestuous gale, which some- times hurls him from the cliff into the sea. There it is, upon tliat strand, that his wife brings him his scanty meal ; for he is married, has children ; and, to feed four or five persons, has about thirty sous! A baker's boy, at Paris*, earns more than two custom-house officers, more than a lieutenant of infantry, more than many a magistrate, more than the majority of professors ; he earns as much as six (pai'ish) schoolmasters ! Shame ! infamy ! the nation that pays the least to those that instruct the people (let us blush to confess it) is France. I speak of the France of these days. On the contrary, the true France, that of the Revolution, declared that teaching was a holy office, that the schoolmaster was equal to the priest. It laid down as a principle that the first expense of the State was instruction. The Convention, in its terrible penury, wished to give fifty-four millions (of francs) to primary instiuctiont, and would certainly have done so, had it lasted longer. A singular age, when men called themselves mate- rialists, but which was, in reality, the apotheosis of the mind, the reign of the spirit. I do not conceal it; of all the miseries of the present day, there is not one that grieves me more. The most deserving, the most miserable, the most neglected man in France is the ([larish) school- master.! The State, which does not even know what are its true * I mean in eeneral, the workman at an average salary, without winter choinape, or slack time. See a former note, p. .32. f Three months after the 9th Thermidor (27th Brumaire, in the year III.), upon Lakanal's report. See the " Expose sommaire des Travaux de Lakanal," p. 135. f M. Lorain, in his " Tableau de I'lnstruction Primaire," an official work of the highest importance, in which he pives a summary of the Reports of 490 Inspectors who visited all the Schools in 1 ,'^.33, cannot find expressions strong enough to describe the state of misery and abjeetness in which he found our teachers. He declares (p. 60. ) that some get altngither but one hundred francs, some sixty, others fifty (2/. ) a year ! Moreover, they have to wait a long time tor payment, which often is not forthcoming ! They are not paid in money ; THE EXTREME MISERY OF THE SCHOOLMASTER. 61 instruments and its strength, that does not suspect that its most powerful moral lever is this class of men, — the State, I say, abandons him to the enemies of the State. You say that the freres (ecclesiastical teachers) teach better ; I deny it. But even if it were true, wliat does it signify .'' The school- master is France; the frere is Home, the stranger, the enemy : read rather their books ; note their habits and relations ; flatterers of the university : — they are all Jesuits at heart. I have spoken elsewhere of the bondage of the priest * ; it is hard and pitiable : the slave of Rome, the slave of his bishop, moreover, almost always in a position that gives to the well-informed superior a mortgage over him. Well, then, this priest, this serf, is the tyrant of the schoolmaster. The latter is not legally his subordinate, but he is his valet. His wife, a mother of a family, courts mudaine, the housekeeper, the influential favourite of monsieur, the curate. This woman, who has a family, and finds it so difficult to live, feels per- suaded that a schoolmaster, on bad terms with his cure, is a lost man ! They do not go about by two roads to overwhelm him ; they do not stand trifling, saying he is an ignorant fellow ; no, he is immoral, a drunkard, a . His children, multiplied, alas ! year after year, in vain bear witness by their good conduct. The brethren alone are moral ; they have certainly a few little lawsuits; but so soon hushed up. Bondage ! heavy bondage ! I find it among the high and the low in every degree, crushing the most worthy, the most humble, the most deserving ! * I do not speak, mark me, of hierarchical and legitimate dependency, of obedience to the natural superior. I speak of another kind, of an oblique, indirect dependency, which, beginning high, descends low, weighs heavily, penetrates, enters into details, inquiries, and wants to tyrannise even over the very soul. A vast difference between the tradesman and the official ! The former, as we have said, is condemned to lie about paltry objects of outward interest ; but in what concerns his soul, he often preserves his independence. It is precisely on that side they attack the official ; he is disquieted in the affairs of the sou), occasionally obliged to lie in what concerns his religious and his political creed. ever>' family sets apart the worst of the crop for the schoolmaster, who goes on Sunday to beg at every door with a sack on his huch ; he is not welcome when he claims his small lot of potatoes, they Jind he is rohljiiuj, the pigs ! &c. Since these official reports, new schools have been erected ; but the fate of the old masters has not improved. Let us hope that t!ie Chamber of Deputies will grant this year the increase of a Imndrcd francs, that was demanded in vain last year. • See my work • Priests, Women, and Families." Longman and Co., 1845. 62 MAN CORRUPTED BY HIS FAMILY, The wisest strive to be forgotten ; they avoid living and thinking, pretend to be nobody, and play this game so well, that they end by needing no simulation ; they become, in reality, what they wished to appear. Our officials, who are however the eyes and limbs of France, try to see no longer, nor to stir ; a body with such members must be very ill indeed. For thus annihilating himself, does the unhappy man get off so ? Not always. The more he yields, the more he recedes, — the more they require. They go so far as to ask him for what they call pledges of devotion, positive services. He might be promoted if he made himself useful, if he informed about such and such persons, — "such a one, for instance, your colleague, is he a safe man ? " There is a man tormented, sick. He goes home care-worn and de- jected. Pressed tenderly, he confesses what is the matter. Where, think you, in this serious trial, does he find support ? In his family ? Rarely. It is a sad, a cruel thing to say, but it must be said : man in these days is not corrupted by the world, he knows it too well ; nor by his friends. Who has friends ? — No, what corrupts him most fre- quently is his own family. An excellent woman, uneasy about her children, is capable of any thing, even of urging her husband to base- ness, to get him promoted. A devoted mother finds it very natural that he should make his fortune by devotion ; the end sanctifies every thing : how can one sin in serving a holy cause ? \\'hat will man do, when he finds temptation in his very family, that ought to keep him from it ; when vice comes to him under the form of virtue, filial obedience, and the respect of paternal authority ? This side of our morals is serious; I know none more gloomy. But that baseness, even with these appliances, that servility and Jesuitism should ever triumph in France, is what I will never believe. A repugnance for whatever is false and base is invincible in this noble country. The mass is good ; do not judge of it by the floating scum. That mass, though wavering, has yet within it an assuring power : the sentiment of military honour ever renewed by our heroic traditions. Many a one, at the moment of fainting, stops short, without knowing why, because he feels upon his face the in- visible spirit of the heroes of our wars, the breath of the old flag ! Ah ! my hope is in the flag ! that it may save France, the France of the army ! May our glorious army, upon which the eyes of the world are fixed, maintain itself pure !* ]\Iay it be a sword against * If atrocious actions have been committed, they were commanded. May they recoil upon those who gave such orders ! — Let us remark, l)y the way, that, from party interest, our newspapers too often ^vclcome the calumnious in- ventions of the Engli-rh. BUT SUPPORTED BY MILITARY HONOUR. 63 the enemyj a buckler against corruption ! may a spirit of police never enter there ! and may it ever have a horror for traitors^ vil- lanous proposals, and backstairs promotion ! What a deposit in the hands of those young soldiers ! what a re- sponsibility for the future ! On the day of the last grand battle between civilisation and barbarism (who knows but it may be to- morrow?), the judge must find them irreproachable, their swords pure, and their bayonets gleaming without spot ! Every time I see them pass, my heart bounds within me : " Here, and here only, strength and mind, valour and right, those two blessings, separated throughout the earth, go hand in hand. If the world is saved by war, you wiU save it. Holy bayonets of France ! watch that nothing may darken that glory, impenetrable to every eye, now hovering above you. 64 CHAPTER VII. BOXnAGE OF THE RICH MAX ANO THE B0LRGE0I3 ; THE ANCIENT BOURGEOISIE. The only nation that has an important army is that which is of no account in Europe. This phenomenon is not sufficiently accounted for by the weakness of a ministry or a government; it proceeds, unfortunately, from a more general cause — the decline of the governing class, so very new, yet so soon worn out — I mean the bourffcoisie. I shall go back to an early date, in order the better to make my- self understood. The glorious bourgeoisie that shattered the middle ages, and brought about our first French Revolution, in the fourteenth cen- tury, had this peculiar character — of being a rapid transition of the people to the nobility.* It was far less a class than a stepping- stone, a passage. Then, having finished its work in a new nobility and a new royalty, it lost its changing character, was stereotyped, and remained a class, too often ridiculous. The citizen (^bourgeois) of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is a spurious being, whom nature seems to have arrested in its imperfect development, a mongrel being, graceless to behold, neither from above nor from below, that can neither walk nor fly, that is satisfied with himself, and struts with much pretension. Our present bourgeoisie, produced in sucli quick time from our Revolution, did not, in rising, find nobles above them. They wanted so much the more to become a class all at once. They fixed themselves at their birth, and so firmly, that they fancied, rather sillily, they could engender an aristocracy ; as much as to say they could extemporise an antiquity. This production has been found, as might be foreseen, not antique, but old and worn out.+ Though the bourgeoisie wish for nothing better than to be a sepa- rate class, it is not easy to specify tlie limits of this class, where it begins and where it ends. It does not comprehend exclusively * This transition was cfFected, as is well known, by the nobility of the robe. But, what is not known, is the facility with which this nobility Ijccame mili- tary in the fourteenth and fifteen centuries. f Ancient France has three classes. New France has but two, the people and the bourgeoisie. THE BOURGEOIS. 65 people well off, for there are many poor bourgeois.* In our country places, the same man, a day-labourer here, is a bourgeois there, be- cause there he has property. Hence, thank God, the bourgeoisie can- not, strictly speaking, be opposed to the people, as is done by some folks, which would be no less than creating two nations. Our small rural proprietors, whether they be called bourgeois or not, are the people, and the heart of the people. ' Whether this denomination be extended or limited, what it be hoves us to observe is this, that the bourgeoisie, which, for the last fifty years, has taken upon itself to act almost alone, seems now paralysed and incapable of action. A very recent class seems as though destined to renew it ; I speak of the commercial class, created in 1815, increased in the struggles of the Restoration, and which more than any other caused the Revolution of July. Perhaps more French than the bourgeoisie properly so called, it is bourgeoisie by interest ; it dare not stir. The bourgeoisie will not,"cannot ; it has lost all motion. Half a century has then sufficed to see it spring from the people, rise by its activity and energy, then suddenly, amid its triumph, sink down upon itself. There is no example of so rapid a decline. It is not we who say so, but itself. The most melancholy con- fessions escape it about its own rapid decline and that of France, whom it drags down with it. A minister said, ten years ago, in the presence of several persons, " France will be the first of the second-rate powers." That saying, then so humble, is, at the point to which things have since come, almost ambitious. So rapid is the decline ! As rapid within as without. The progress of the evil shows itself even in the discouragement of the very persons who profit by it. They can hardly be interested in a game in which nobody any longer expects to deceive anybody else. The actors are almost as much tired out as the spectators ; they yawn with the public, worn out with their own efforts, and with the feeling of their decline. * If you observe attentively how the people employ this ■word, you will find that, among them, it signifies not so much riches as a certain standard of in- dependence and leisure, the absence of care for their daily bread. Many an artisan, who earns five francs a day, says without hesitation, Mori bourgeois, to the famishing rentier, who enjoys an income of three hundred francs (12?. ) a year, and walks about in a black coat in the depth of January. If security be the essential distinction of the bourgeois, must we include those who never know whether they are rich or poor, — the commercial class ; or those again ■who seem more firmly estiiblished, but who, by purchasing employments or otherwise, are the serfs of the capitalist ? If they are not true bourgeois, they nevertheless adhere to the same class, by interest, fear, and the fixed idea of " peace at any price." F 66 RAPID DECLINE. INACTION. One of them, a man of sense, wrote a few years ago, that great men were no longer necessary, that henceforth people would be able to do without them. \ The work told. Only, if he print it again, he must extend it, and prove this time that men of mediocrity, second- rate talents, are not indispensable, and may be done without also. The press, ten years ago, pretended to some influence. It has laid aside its pretension. It has felt convinced, to speak only of litera- ture, that the bourgeoisie, who alone read (the people scarcely read at all), had no need of art. It has consequently been able, without anybody complaining of it, to reform two expensive articles — art and criticism ; it has applied to hack writers, to a firm of novel writers ; then, retaining only their names, to v.'orkmen of a third- rate character. The general decline is less felt, because it is shared by all ; all descending together, the relative level is the same. Who would say, from the little noise stirring, that we have been so noisy a nation .'' The ear becomes gradually accustomed to it, and so does the voice. The diapason is changed. Many a one thinks he is shouting, whilst he is only squeaking. The only noise of any compass, is that of the Exchange. He who hears it near, and sees that agitation, will too easily imagine that that torrent pi'o- foundly troubles the great stagnant marsh of the houryeoisie. A mistake. It is doing the mass of bourgeois at once too great an in- jury and an honour, to suppose they have so much activity for ma- terial interests.* They are egotists, it is true, but given to routine, inert. Except a few short feverish moments, they generally hold to their first acquisitions, which they fear to compromise. It is incre- dible how very easily this class, especially in the provinces, resigns itself to mediocrity in everything. They have but little, and that little only since yesterday ; but provided they keep it, they settle so as to live without acting or thinking.f * France has not the shopkeeper spirit, except in its English moments (like that of Law, and the present one), which are exceptional fevers. This is espe- cially seen in the facility with which the men who at first seem the most eager, generally halt early on the road to fortune. The Frenchman who has gained in trade, or otherwise, an income of a few thousand fanes, fancies himself rich, and docs nothing more. The Englishman, on the contrary, sees, in the wealth he has acquired, the means of becoming more rich ; he perseveres in his work till death. He remains rivetted to his chain, wholly wrapped up in his busi- ness ; only he pursues it on a larger scale. He does not feel the want of the leisure, which would allow him to spend his life freely. Accordingly, there are very few rich men in France, if you except our foreign capitalists. These few rich people would be almost all poor in England. From our rich men you must deduct a number of people who make a good figure, but whose fortune is cither at stake, or still uncertain, or mortgaged. ■f I know, near Paris, a pretty considerable town, which counts some hundreds of proprietors or rentiers, of from four thousand to six thousand francs TIMIDITY OF THE BOURGEOISIE. TERRORISM. 67 What characterised the ancient bourgeoisie, what is wanting in the new one, is, especially, security. The bourgeoisie of the two last centuries, firmly established on the foundation of fortunes already old, on financial and long robe digni- ties, which were reckoned as properties, on the monopoly of com- mercial corporations, &c., believed itself quite as secure in France as the monarchy. Pride, the awkward imitation of the great, was its ridicule. This aspiring to rise higher than they could, has left its stamp in the emphasis, the bombast which characterises most of the monuments of the seventeenth century. The ridiculous feature of the new bourgeoisie is the contrast be- tween its military antecedents and its present timidity, which it nowise conceals, but expresses on every occasion with singular simpli- city. Should three men be in the street, talking together about wages, or should they ask the contractor for an augmentation of one sous the botirgcoise is frightened, cries out, and calls for the police. I'he ancient bourgeois was, at least, more consistent. He ad mired himself in his privileges, wanted to extend them, and looked upwanls. Our man looks downwards, he sees the crowd ascending behind him, even as he ascended; he does not like it to mount, he retreats, and holds fast to the side of power. Does he avow to him- self liis retrograde tendency ? Seldom ; for his past is averse to it; he remains almost always in this contradictory position, a liberal in principle, an egotist in practice, wanting, yet not willing. If there remain anything French within him, he quiets it by the reading of some innocently growling, or pacifically warlike newspaper. Most governments, we must say, have speculated upon this sad progress of fear, which is, in the end, nothing but moral death. They have thought that the dead were to be had at a cheaper price than the living. To inspire a fear of the people, they have con- stantly shown those terrified persons two heads of Medusa, which have at length petrified them — terror and communism. History has not yet closely examined that unique phenomenon of terror, which no man, and assuredly no party, could restore. All that I can say here is, that, behind this popular phantasmagoria, the directors, our grand terrorists, were, by no means, men of the a year, or ratlicr more ; who never think of ;r<)ing beyond that figure, who do nothing, read nothing, neither books nor (scareely) ne\vsi)apers, are interested al)out nothing, never visit one another, never unite, and hardly know one another. The al)SorI)ing interest of the Bourse is never felt there, but, un- fortunately, it is felt among the lov/er class, for instance, among the saving poor in towns, and even in the country, where the peasant has not even a news- paper to enlighten him upon the snare. C8 ISOLATION OF THE BOURGEOIS. people, but bourgeois, nobles, with cultivated, subtle, Avhimsical minds, sophists, and scholastics. As to communism, to which I shall hereafter revert, one word will here suffice. The last country in which property will be abolished, will be precisely France. If, as some one of that school said, " Property is nothing but theft," we have here twenty-five millions of thieves, who will not refund in a day. They are, nevertheless, excellent political machines to frighten those who possess, make them act contrary to their principles, or deprive them of every principle. See what a fine handle the Jesuits and their friends have made of communism, especially in Switzerland. Whenever the liberal party is gaining ground, they discover, at a given moment, and proclaim with loud clamour, some new calumny, some atrocious plot, which horrifies the good proprie- tors, both Protestants and Catholics, Berne as much as Fribourg. No passion is permanent; fear less than any other. We must submit to its progress. Now, fear does this : it continues ever in- creasing its object, and weakening the sickly imagination. Every day, some new distrust : such an idea seems dangerous to-day ; to- morrow such a man, such a class ; they then shut themselves up closer and closer, they barricade, and strongly block up at once their doors and their minds; no more daylight — not the shghtest crevice to admit a ray of light. No more contact v/ith the people. The bourgeois no longer knows them but by the " Gazette des Tribunaux." He sees them in his servant who robs him and laughs at him. He sees them, through his window, in the drunken man passing yonder, shouting, tumbling, and rolling in the mud. He knows not that the poor fellow is, after all, more honest than the wholesale and retail poisoners who have brought him to that sad condition. Hard work makes hardy men and blunt language. The voice of the man of the people is rough ; he has been a soldier, and always affects a military energy. The bourgeois concludes that his manners are violent, and very often he is mistaken. The march of time is perceptible in nothing more than in this. Lately, when an armed force rushed rudely into the house of the mother of the carpenters, when their money-box was broken open, their papers seized, together with their little savings, have we not seen those courageous men keep within the bounds of moderation, and refer the matter to the law ? The rich man, generally, is a man who has grown rich — the poor man of yesterday. Yesterday he was himself the artisan, the soldier, the peasant, whom he avoids to-day. I dan better under- stand that the grandson, wlio was born rich, can forget that ; but ISOLATION HAS PRODUCED VACUITY. 6J that within a man's life, in thirty or forty years, one should disown himself, is inexplicable. And you, man of our warlike times, who have a hundred times faced the enemy, do not, I beseech you, fear to look your poor countrymen in the face, at whom you have been so frightened. What are they doing ? Why, beginning to-day as you began. That man yonder is yourself, only younger. That young recruit, who goes away singing the Marseiilai-se, — is he not yourself, who left, when a boy, in '92 ? Does not the officer of Africa, full of ambition and warlike aspirations, remind you of 1801, and the camp at Boulogne ? The tradesman, the artisan, the in- ferior manufacturer, strongly resemble those v.ho, like you, followed fortune in 1820. These men are like you ; if tliey can, they will rise, and very pro- bably by better means, being born in better times. They will gain, but you will lose nothing. Lay aside the false notion that people gain only by taking from others. Every flood of rising people brings with it a flood of new wealth. Do you knov/ the danger of remaining so isolated, so closely pent up ? It is to imprison nothing but vacuity. By excluding men and ideas, you yourself dwindle away and become poor. You shut yourselves up in your class, your little circle of habits, where the mind and personal activity are no longer necessary. The door is well closed; but there is nobody within. Poor rich man ! if you are no longer any thing, what is it you want to guard so closely ? Let us open that soul, and see wl;ether it has any remembrance of Avhat was, of what remains. Is there any of the young enthu- siasm of the Revolution ? Alas ! who would find the least trace of it ? The warlike strength of the empire, and the liberal aspiration of the Restoration, are no more to be seen. "We have seen this man of to-day decrease at every step that seemed to exalt him. When a peasant, he had austere morals, sobriety, and economy ; when a workman, he vv'as a good companion and a great help to his family; -vvhen a manufacturer, he was active, energetic, and had his manufacturing patriotism, which struggled against foreign industry. He has left all that on the road, and nothing has taken its place ; his house is filled. Ins coffer is full, his soul is — empty. Life glows and clings to life ; it becomes extinct by isolation. The more it mingles with lives different from itself, the more it becomes amalgamated with other existences, and the more strongly, happily, and fruitfully does it exist. Descend in the scale of crei- tion to the poor beings that make us doubt whether they be plants or animals, and -you enter a solitude ; these miserable creatures have scarcely any connexion with others. Stupid egotism ! on what F 3 70 ALLIAKCES OF THE BOURGEOIS. side does the timid class of rich men and honrgeois turn their eyes ? AVith •whom will it associate? where find alliances? Precisely with Avhat is most fluctuating, the political powers that come and go in this country, the capitalists who, on the day of revolutions, will take their ledgers and cross the channel. Proprietors, do you know who it is that will not move any more than the land itself? It is the people. Trust to them. Rich men ! the safety of France and of yourselves consists in your not being afraid of the people, in your going to them, in your knowing them, in your laying aside the fables imposed upon you, and which bear no relation to reality. You must understand one another, open your hearts, no longer gnash your teeth, and speak to one another like men. You will go on descending, dwindling, ever declining, if you do not summon around yoa and adopt all that is strong and able. The question is not to have capacities, in the common meaning of the word. It is of no consequence if an assembly that contains a hun- dred and fifty advocates has three hundred. The men educated in our modern scholastics will not regenerate the world. No ; it is the men of instinct, inspiration, either uncultivated or of different cultures (strangers to our proceedings, and which we do not appre- ciate) — these are the men whose alliance will bring life to the man of study, and practical sense to the man of business, which certainly he has latterly been in want of; this appears but too plain from the state of France. AYhat I ought to hope from the rich and the honrgcois, towards a broad, frank, generous association, I know not. They are very ill ; people so far gone are not easily cured. But, I confess, I have still some hope in their sons. Those young men, such as I behold them in our schools, before my chair, have a better tendency. They have ever welcomed with a generous heart every sentence in favour of the people. Let them do more ; let them give them their hands, and form early with them the alliance of common regeneration. Let not our rich youths forget that they bear a heavy load, the life of their fathers, who, in so short a time, have risen, enjoyed, and fallen ; they are exhausted from their birth, and, young as they are, they have much need to grow young by imbibing the popular spirit. Their strength lies in their being still very near the people, their root, whence they have but just sprung. AV'ell, then ! Let them return to them with sympathy and heart, and get back from tbem a little of the vigour which, since '89, has constituted the genius, riches, and strength of France. "W^e are fatigued, both young and old. AV'hy not own it, at the end of this hard day's work, which has lasteil half a century ? Even LIFE AND SCIENCE. 71 they who have traversed, like me, different classes, and who, through all sorts of trials, have preserved the fruitful instinct of the people, have no less lost by the way, in inward struggles, a great part of their strength. It is late — I feel it; the evening is coming on. "Already longer shadows fall from the tops of the mountains." Come on, then, you, the young, the strong ! Come, you work- men. We will open our arms to you. Bring back to us a new warmth ; let the world, let life, let science begin again. For my part, I fondly hope that my science, my dear study, his- tory, will go on reviving in that popular life, and become by means of these new comers the grand and salutary thing that I had dreamed of. The historian of the people will spring from the people. That man, doubtless, will not love them more than I. All my past life, my true country, my home, and my heart, are among them. But many things have prevented me from taking the most fertile element. The entirely abstract education that is given us hardened me for a long time. It took many long years to efface the sophist that had been created within me. I came to myself only by shaking ofi' that foreign accessory ; I have learned to know myself only by negative means. That is the reason why, sincere, passionate after truth, as I have ever been, I have not attained the ideal of sublime simplicity which I had before my mind. On you, then, young man, devolve the gifts which have been wanting in me.* You, son of the peo];le, being less removed from them, will come at once upon the field of their history, with their colossal strength and inexhaustible vigour ; my streams Avill, of their own accord, come and be mingled with your torrents. I give you all that I have done. You will give me oblivion. May my imperfect history be swallowed up in a more worthy monument, where science and inspiration better harmonise ; where, among vast and searching inquiries, we perceive everywhere the vital breath of immense crowds, and the fruitful soul of the people. • But I ought to help beforehand, and prepare the young man. That ismy object in continuing my historv'. A book is the mean- of making a better lx)ok. F 4 72 CHAPTER VIII. KEVIEW OF THE FIRST PART INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND. In glancing over this long social scale^ traced in a very few pages^ a multitude of ideas, of painful sentiments, a world of melancholy- rushes upon me. So many physical pains ! But how many more moral sufferings ! Few are unknown to me ; I know, I feel, I have had quite my share. I must, however, banish my own sentiments and my own memory, and follow niy glimmering light through this obscure mist. My light especially, one that will not deceive me, is France. The French sentiment, the devotedness of the citizen to his native country, is my standard for estimating these men and these classes ; a moral, but also a natural standard ; in every living thing, every part is especially valuable by its relation to tlie whole. In nationality, as in geology, heat is below. Descend, and you will find it increases ; in the inferior layers it is burning hot. The poor love France, as being under an obligation towards her, and having duties towards her. The rich love her as belonging to them, and being imder obligations to them. The patriotism of the former is the sentiment of duty ; that of the others is a demand, the pretension to a right. The peasant, as we have said, has espoused France in legitimate marriage; she is his wife for ever; he is one with her. For the artisan, she is a handsome mistress ; he has nothing, but he has France, her noble past existence, her glory. Free from local iileas, he adores grand unity. He nmst be very miserable, enslaved by hunger or by toil, when this sentiment fades within him — it is never extinct. The unhappy bondage of interest still augments if we ascend to the manufacturers and tradespeople. They feel themselves ahvays in danger, and walk as if upon a tight rope. Bankruptcy ! to avoid a partial bankruptcy, they would rather risk making a general one. They have made and unmade July. And yet, can we say, that in that great class of several millions of souls, the sacred fire is extinct, absolutely, and beyond all remedy ? No, I would rather believe that the flame is within them in a latent state. P'oreign competition, the Englishman, will prevent them from losing the spark. HOW EVERY CLASS LOVES FRANCE. 73 What chilliness, if I ascend higher ! It is like the cold among the Alps. I reach the snowy region. Moral vegetation gradually dis- appears, the national flower grows pale. It is like a Avorld seized in one night by a sudden chill of egotism and fear. Should I ascend one step higher, even fear has ceased; it is the pure egotism of the calculator who had no country ; no more men, only ciphers. An actual glacier abandoned by nature.* Allow me to descend, the cold is here too powerful for me, I cannot breathe. If, as I believe, love is life itself, there is very little life up there. It seems that, viewing it from the point of national sentiment, which makes a man extend his life throughout the whole life of France, the more we ascend to- wards the upper classes, the less living we become. But, as a set-ofF, are they less sensible to sufferings, more free, more happy ? I doubt it. I see, for instance, that the great manu- facturer, so very superior to the miserable small rural proprietor, is, like him, and oftener than he, tlie slave of the banker. I see that the small tradesman, who has risked his savings in trade, who com- promises his family (as I have explained), who is panting with uneasy expectation, envy, and rivalry, is not much happier than the workman. The latter, if he be a single man, if he can spare thirty sous for slack periods, out of his four francs of daily wages, is in- comparably more merry than the shopkeeper, and more independent. The rich man, it will be said, suffers only from his vices. And that is much ; but we must also add his ennui, and moral decline, the sentiment of a man who was once better, and who preserves life enough to be sensible of its decline, to see in lucid moments that he is sinking into the miseries and ridicule of a petty spirit. What can be more melancholy than to fall ever lower, and never to be able to effect any act of the will that might restore you ? From being a Frenchman to dwindle to a cosmopolite, to any kind of man, and frcm man to the lyiollusca ! "What have I intended to say in all this ? That the pauper is * These ghicicrs are not impartially inditi'ercnt like those of the Alps, which accumulate fruitful streams only to pour them out indiscriminately among the nations. The Jews, whatever he said of them, have a country, — the exchange of London : they operate everywhere, but they are rooted in the country of geld. Now that an armed peace, that motionless war, that devours Europe, has put into their hands the funds of every state, what can they love? — The countiy of statu ijiio, England. ^Vhat can they hate ? — the country of pro- gress, France. 'I'hey thought lately to deaden her by buying up a score of men which France refuses. Another mistake : from vanity, from an exag- gerated sentiment of security, they have enlisted kings in their band, mingled with the aristocracy, and, by so doing, have become associated in political hazards. That is what their forefathers, the Jews cf the middle ages, would never have done. What a decline in Jewish wisdom I 74 3IAN BECOME VERY SENSITIVE. happy ? that every destiny is equal ? " that there is a compensa- tion ? " God forbid I should maintain so false a proposition, so well fitted to annihilate the heart, and administer consolation to egotism ! Do I not see^, do I not know by experience, that physical suffering, far from excluding moral suffering, is for the most part united to it ; fatal sisters who agree together to crush the poor I See, for instance^ the destiny of woman in our poorer quarters ; she scarcely ever brings forth but for death, and finds in material wants an infinite cause of moral suffering. In a moral and physical aspect, this society has, beyond all others, an affliction peculiar to itself; it is become infinitely sensitive. That the ordinary ills of humanity have decreased, is my own opinion, and history sufficiently proves it. But they have diminished in a finite, while sensibility has increased in an infinite, ratio. Whilst the expanded mind opened a new sphere to grief, the heart gave, by love and family ties, a new advantage to fortune. Dear opportunities of suffering, which no one assuredly would sacrifice. But how much more uneasy have they rendered life ! People no longer suffer from the present only, but from the future, from what may be. The soul, all-aching in anticipation, has the sentiment and presentiment of future ill, occasionally of ills that will never happen. To crown all, this age of extreme individual sensibility is precisely that which, doing everything by collective means, is the least inclined to spare the individual. Action, in every variety, is cen- tralised in some grand power ; and, whether he will or not, man is ilrawn into this whirlwind. Hov/ little his weight is there, and wliat becomes of his dearest thoughts, his poignant griefs, in these vast general systems, alas ! who can tell ? The machine rolls on, immense, majestic, and indifferent, without even knowing that its .petty wheels, so cruelly ruffled, are hving men. But surely those animated wheels, which act under one and the same impulse, know each other ? Surely their necessary co-operative relation must produce a moral relation .'' By no means. This is the strange mystery of this age ; the period at which we act the most together is, perhaps, that in which hearts are the least united. The collective means which places thought in common, circulates and diffuses it, has never been greater ; yet never was isolation more profound. The mystery remains inexplicable to all who do not observe, historically, the progress of the system from which it proceeds. This system, to call it by one word, is Mnch'uiiiim ; let me be permitted to state its origin. The middle ages laid down a formula of love, and it led only to hatred. It consecrated inequality and injustice, which made love an ADMINISTRATIVE AND COMMERCIAL MACHINISM. 75 impossibility. The violent reaction of love and nature, called the Renaissance, did not found a new order, and seemed a disorder. The ■world, to which order was a necessary want, then said, " Well, let us not love ; an experiment of a thousand years is sufficient. Let us seek order and strength in the union of powers ; we shall find machines which will keep them united together without love, which Avill frame, and hold men so fast, nailed, rivetted, and screwed together, that, though detesting one another, they will act together." And then they reconstructed administrative machines, analogous to those of the old Koman empire, a bureaucracy u la Colbert, armies a la Louvois. These machines had the advantage of employing man as a regular power, — life, without its caprices and inequalities. However, these are still men ; they retain something human. The wonder of Machinism would be to do without men. Let us seek powers which, once set in motion by us, may act without us, like clockwork. !Moved hij us ? Here we still have man ; that is a defect. Let Nature furnish not only the elements of the machine, but the moving power. Then it Avas that they created those iron workmen, which, with a hundred thousand arms, a hundred thousand teeth, comb, spin, Aveave, and do all manner of work ; the power, — they derive it, like Anta;us, from the bosom of their mother, Nature, • — from the elements, from water that falls, or which, held captive and expanded in steam, animates and upheaves them with its powerful breath. Political machines, to make our social acts uniformly those of an automaton, to relieve us from patriotism ; commercial machines, which, once created, multiply monotonous products ad infinitum, and which, by the art of one day, dispense with our being artists every day. That is so far well ; man no longer appears much. Machinism, nevertheless, wants more ; man is not yet mechanized profoundly enough. He preserves his solitary reflection, his philosophical meditation, the pure thought of truth. There they cannot reach him, unless a borrowed scholastic divinity drag him from himself to involve him in its formulas. When once he has set his foot in this wheel, which turns in vacuity, the thinking machine, indented in the poli- tical machine, will roll on triumphantly, and will be termed Political Fhilo-soplnj. But fancy still remains free, — that vain poetry which loves and creates according to its caprice. Tseless movement ! Sad waste of powers ! Are, then, those objects, which fancy goes pursuing at random, so numerous, that we cannot, by well classing them, stamp for each class a mould, into which we shall only have to pour, 76 HATRED OCCASIONED BY IGNORANCE. according to the wants of the day, such a novel or such a drama, — any -work that may be ordered ? This attained, no more men engaged in literary labour, no more passion, no more fancy. In England's eyes, the heau ideal of manufacturing perfection is a single machine with a single individual to set it going. How much finer is the triumph of mechanism, to have mechanized the fairy world of fancy ! Let us sum up this history : The State, without the country ; industry and literature, without art ; philosophy, without research ; humanity, without mian. How can we be surprised if the world suffer, and no longer breathe under this pneumatic machine ; it has found means to do without what is its soul, its life ; I mean love. Deceived by the middle ages, which promised union and did not keep their word, it has renounced it, and sought, in its discourage- ment, arts for not loving. Machinery (not even excepting the finest commercial or adminis- trative machines) has given to man, among so many advantages*, an unfortunate faculty, that of uniting powers, without the necessity of a union of hearts; of co-operating without loving; of acting and living togetiier, Aviihont knowing one another. The moral power of association has lost all tliat mechanical concentration had gained. Wild isolation, even in co-operation itself, ungrateful contact, without either will or heat, which is felt only by the rouchness of tlie friction. The result is not indifference, as one might suppose, but antipathy and hatred, not the mere negation of society, but the reverse ; society actively endeavouring to become unsociable. I have, before my eyes and in my heart, the grand review of our miseries which has been made in my own case. ^Vell ! I would affirm on oath, that among all tliese very real miseries, which I do not extenuate, the worst still is the wretchedness of the mind. I mean, by that, the incredible ignorance in which we live relatively to each other, practical as well as s])cculative men. And the principal cause of this ignorance is, that we do not think it necessary that Ave should know one another. The thousand mechanical means of acting without the soul, exempts us from knowing what man is, from, viewing him otherwise than as a power, a cipher. Ciphers ourselves, and abstract things, disengaged f/om vital action by the aid of machinism, we feel ourselves every day declining and sink- ing to zero. • 1 do not by any means intend to dispute tliese aciv.-.ntages (sec page 21.) Who -would go back to those powerless ages when man had no machines ? MEN OF INSTINCT AND MEN OF REFLECTION. 77 I have observed, a hundred times, the perfect ignorance in which every class lives relatively to the others, not seeing, and not wanting to see. We, for instance, with cultivated minds, what trouble have we in acknowledging whatever good qualities may be in the people ! We impute to them a thousand things which depend, almost necessarily, on their situation, an old or dirty coat, an excess after long abstinence, a rude word, rough hands, what else ? But what would become of us if they were less rough ? We stop to consider outward things, trifles of form, and we do not see the good and great heart Avhich is often within. They, on the other hand, do not suspect that an energetic soul may exist in a feeble body. They laugh at the learned man for leading a cripple's life. In their opinion he is a sluggard. They have no idea of the powers of reflection, meditation, and the force of calcu- lation made tenfold by patience. Every superiority that is not gained in war, seems to them ill-earned. How often have I perceived with a smile, that the Cross of the Legion of Honour seemed to them ill- placed upon an insignificant-looking man, with a pale, sad face. Yes, there is a misunderstanding among us. They hold cheap the powers of study and persevering reflection which create in- ventions ; and we ill appreciate the instinct, inspiration, and energy which beget heroes. This is, rest assured, the greatest evil in the Avorld. We hate and despise one another, that is, we are unknown to one another. The partial remedies which might be applied, are, doubtless, good ; but the essential remedy is a general one. We must cure the soul. The poor suppose, that if the rich were bound down by such and such laws, aU would be right — that the world would go on well. The rich think, that in restoring the poor to such and such religious forms, extinct for two centuries, they are strengthening society. Fine topics ! They imagine, apparently, these political or religious formulas to have a cabalistic power to charm the world ; as if their power was not in the harmony which they find or do not find in the heart ! The evil is in the heart. Let the remedy be also in the heart ! Lay aside your old receipts. The heart must open, and so must our arms. Why ! they are your brothers after all : had you for- gotten that ? I do not say that this or that form of association may not be excellent ; but the question at first is far less about the form than the foundation. The most ingenious forms will not be of much service to you if you are unsociable. 78 MEN OF INSTINCT AND MEN OF REFLECTION. Between men of study and reflection, and men of instinct, who is to make the first advances ? We, the men of study. The obstacle (whether repugnance, idleness, or indifference) is frivolous on our side. On theirs the obstacle is truly serious ; it is the fatality of ignorance — it is suiFering, which withers and hardens the heart. The people reflect, doubtless, and often more than we ; never- theless, what characterises them is their instinctive powers, which belong equally to the mind and to the body. The man of the people is especially a man of instinct and action. The disunion of the woi-ld is principally the absurd opposition which has been formed in our days, in this age of machinery, be- tween instinct and reflection ; it is the contempt which the latter entertains for instinctive faculties, which it believes it can do without. Hence I must explain what instinct and inspiration are, and lay down their law. Follow me, I beseech you, in this inquiry : it is the condition of my subject. The political city will then only be acquainted with itself, its evils and remedies, when it shall have seen itself reflected in the mirror of the moral city. 79 PART II. ENFRANCHISEMENT BY L0\T5. — NATURE. CHAPTER I. INSTINCT OF THE PEOPLE, HITHERTO LITTLE STUDIED. About to enter on this vast and difficult inquiry, it is not very en- couraging to reflect that I am alone on this road ; I meet nobody from whom I can derive assistance. I am alone ; but I will never- theless march forward, full of courage and hope. Noble writers, of an aristocratical genius, who had always sketched the manners of the upper classes, have bethought themselves of the people ; they have undertaken, with a benevolent intention, to bring the people into fashion. They have gone down from their saloons into the street, and inquired of the passengers where the people lived. They were directed to the galleys, the prisons, and the low neighbourhoods. The result of this misunderstanding is very sad ; for they have produced an effect contrary to that which they intended. In order to interest us in the people, they have chosen, depicted, and related things which would naturally disgust and frighten us. " What ! are the people so constituted ? " cried, with one voice, the timid race of citizens. " Haste ! let us increase our police, arm ourselves, shut our doors, and bolt them ! " It is found, however, on well consider- ing things, that these artists, famous dramatists, before every thing else, have depicted, under the name of the people, a very limited class, whose life, full of incidents, violence, and felony, offered them an easy, picturesque effect, and success, by means of terror. All, whether writers of criminal law, economists, or sketchers of manners, have, almost exclusively, studied an exceptional people, that unclassed class, which frightens us every year with the progress of crime and the number of old offenders. It is a well-known people, who, thanks to the publicity of our tribunals, and the con- scientious slowness of our law courts, occupies a place in public attention, such as it obtains in no other country in Europe. 80 THE PEOPLE FALSELY DEPICTED. The secret law proceedings of Germany, and the rapid adminis- tration of justice in England, give to their imprisoned or transported criminals no kind of eclat. England, twice or thrice richer than France in this respect, does not thus display her wounds. Here, on the contrary, tliere is no class that obtains the honours of a more complete publicity. A strange society living at the expense of the other, yet followed by it with interest : they have their newspapers to register their gestures, arrange tb.eir v/ords, and give them clever- ness. They have their heroes and illustrious men, whom ail the world knows by name, and who come periodically to the assizes to relate their campaigns. This chosen tribe that is almost solely privileged to sit before these painters of the people, is principally recruited from the po- pulace of large towns : and no class contributes more to it than the working class. Here, again, our criminalists have held sway over opinion ; it is under their auspices that our economists have studied what they call the people. In their opinion the j)eople is especially the workman, and most especially the workman in manufactories. This mode of speech, which would not be out of place in England, where the "working population form two thirds of the whole, is singularly so in France — a great agricultural nation, where the working classes do not constitute a sixth part of the population.* It is, no doubt, a numerous class, but, after all, a small minority. They who go to find their models there, have no right to inscribe beneath, " This is a portrait of the people." Examine well those witty but corrupt crowds of our cities, vvhich so much strike the observer : listen to their language, note their flashes of wit, often happy, and you will discover something that nobody has yet spoken of, — viz. that these people, who sometimes know not how to read, have, nevertheless, in their own way, highly cultivated minds. Men who live together, ever in contact with one another, neces- sarily develope themselves by the mere fact thereof, as by the effect of natural warmth. They give each other an education, — a bad one, if you please, but still an education. The simple sight of a great city, where, without intending to learn any thing, we are instructed every instant, and where, in order to be acquainted with a thousand new things, it is sufficient to go into the street, and walk Avith our eyes open, — this sight, this city, be assured, is a school. They who live there do not live an in- * And of this sixth, the manufactory-worliman forms a very trilling por- tion. WE MUST TAKE THE PEOPLE IN THE MASS : 81 sttnctive, natural life; they are men of cultivated minds, who observe more or less, and reflect well or ill. I find them often very subtle, viciously cunning. The effects of a refined culture are there but too plainly visible. If you would find something in the world contrary to nature, directly opposed to all the instincts of childliood, look at that artificial creature denominated the yamin de Parid* Still more, artificial is the youngest imp of Satan, tlie horrible boy-man of London, who, at twelve years of age, trades, robs, drinks gin, and goes with the girls. Artists, such are your models ! The fantastical, the exceptional, the monstrous, that is what you seek. Are you moralists, or are you caricaturists ? ^Vhat difference is there now .'' One day there came a man to the famous Themistocles, and proposed to him an art of memory. He answered bitterly, '•' Give me, rather, the art of forgetfulness." May God give me this art, to forget from this moment all your monsters, your fantastic creations, those shocking exceptions, with which you perplex my subject! You go about, spy-glass in hand; you hunt in the gutters, and find there some dirty, filthy object, and bring it to us, exclaiming, " Triumph ! we have found the people!" To interest us in them, they show them to us forcing doors and picking locks. To these picturesque descriptions they add those profound theories, by which the people, if we listen to them, jus- tify themselves in their own eyes for this warfare against property. Truly, it is a frightful misery, in addition to so many otliers, for them to have these imprudent friends. These acts and these theories are not at all of the people. The mass is doubtless neither pure nor irreproachable; but still, if you want to characterise it by the idea which prevails in the immense majority, you will find it occupied, quite on the contrary, in i'ounding, by toil, economy, and the most respectable means, the immense work which constitutes the strength of this country, the participation of all classes in property. I said, I feel I am alone, and I should be sad, indeed, if I had not with me my faith and hope. I see myself weak, botli by nature and my previous works, in presence of this mighty subject, as at the foot of a gigantic monument, that I must move all alone. Alas ! how disfigured it is to-day ! how loaded with foreign accumulations, moss, and mouldiness, spoilt by the rain and mud, and by the injuries it has received from passengers! The jjainter, the man of art for art, comes and looks at it ; what pleases him is precisely that moss. But I would pluck it off. Painter, now passing by ! this is not a plaything of art, mind you, — this is our altar ! * It is a marvel in the national character, that this abandoned child, incited to evil, and over-excited in every manner, retains some gooil qualities, wit and courage. 82 AND PROFOUNDLY, I must dig away the earth, and discover the deep foundation *of this monument ; the inscription I see, is now quite buried, hidden very far under ground : to dig there I have neither pickaxe, spade, nor mattock ; my nails shall suffice. I shall, perhaps, be as fortunate as I was ten years ago, when 1 discovered two curious monuments at Holyrood. I was in the famous chapel, which, having been long unroofed, is exposed to rain and fogs, which have clothed all its tombs with thick green moss. The remembrance of the old alliance, so unfortunately lost, made me regret that I Avas not able to read anything on those tombs of the old friends of France. Mechanically I scraped away the moss from one of these stones, and read the inscription of a Frenchman, who had been the first paver of Edinburgh. j\Iy curiosity being excited, led me to another stone with a death's head sculptured upon it. This tomb, quite sunken, was itself buried and shrouded in mouldiness. I scratched away with my nails, having no other instrument, and 1 began to read something of a Latin inscription, four words almost effaced, which I at length deciphered — words of a very serious im- port, well fitted to cause reflection, and raise the suspicion of a tragical end — " Legibus fidus, non regibus : " Faithful to laws, not to kings.* And now I dig again ; I would get to the bottom of this earth. But this time it is not a monument of hatred and civil war that I would disinter. What I want is, on the contrary, to find, in de- scending below this sterile, cold ground, those depths where social heat begins, where the treasures of universal life are kept, and where the dried up fountains of love would again gush out for all the world. * Here is the whole inscription as I read, or fancied I read it, for it was almost effaced beneath the moss of three centuries : — JF. Ilarier. Lcgibia- Jidus, non regibus. Januar, 1388. 83 CHAPTER II. THE INSTINCT OF THE PEOPLE WEAKENED, BUT STILL POWERFUL. Criticism waits for my first word, anil imposes silence on me: "• You have made, in a hundred and odd pages, a long balance of social miseries, of the bondage attached to every condition. We have been patient, in the hope that, after the evils, we should at length learn the remedies. To evils so real, so positive, and so specified, we expect that you will offer something better than vague words, a hackneyed sentimentality, moral and metaphysical remedies. Propose special reforms ; draw up, for every abuse, a neat formula of what must be changed ; address it to the Chambers. Or, if you confine yourself to lamentations and reveries, you would do better to return to your middle ages, which you ought not to have quitted." Special remedies have not been wanting; I fancy we have some fifty thousand in the Bulletin dcs lots ; we add more to them every day, but I do not see that Ave improve. Our legislative physicians treat every symptom which appears in this or that place as a distinct and particular case, and expect to cure it by some local application. They little know the profound bond of union of all the parts of the social body, and that of all the questions which relate to it.* Hero- dotus tells us that the Egyptians, in the infancy of science, had different physicians for every part of the body ; one attended to the nose, anotlier to the ear, a third to the belly, &c. They cared little whether their remedies harmonised ; each of them worked apart, without disturbing the others ; if, each separate member being cured, the man still died, that was his own affair. I have, I confess, formed a different standard of medicine. It seemed to me, tliat before every external and local remedy, it would ' For instance, they would not sec that the penitentiary question was a corollary of that of public instruction. AVhether the question be to fonii or reform man, to raise or relieve him, it is not the mason, but the teacher, that the State should invoke — the religious, moral, and national instructor, who will speak in the name of God and in the jiame of France. I have seen many a miserable creature, supposed to be desperately depraved, and upon whom the ventiment of morality and religion would have had no effect, still preserve that of his native couiitrv. 84 OUR RESEARCH IS NOT EXTERNAL. not be amiss to inquire into the inward evil that produces all these symptoms. This evil is,, in my opinion, the chill, the paralysis of the heart, which creates insociability ; and the latter is especially connected with the false notion that we may isolate ourselves with impunity, that we have no need of others. The wealtliy and educated classes imagine especially that they have nothing to do with the instinct of the people, that their book knowledge is sufficient for every thing, and that men of action would teach them nothing. To enlighten them, I have been obliged to explore •what is fruitful in the instinctive , THE INTERPRETER OF THE PEOPLE. He who would know the highest gifts of the instinct of the people^ ought to pay little attention to the niixed^ spurious, half-cultivated minds, which partake of the qualities and defects of the citizen classes. What he ought to seek and study are especially the simple. The simple are in general those who little distract their minds ; who, not being armed with the machinery of analysis and abstrac- tion, see every thing as one, entire, concrete, as life presents it. The simple form a great people. There are the simple by nature, the simple by culture, the poor in intellect, who will never distinguish, children who do not yet distinguish, the peasants, and the common multitude, who are not used to distinguish. The scholastic, the critic, or the man of analysis, of 7}isi and dis- tinguo, looks down from his eminence upon the simple. They have, however, the advantage, as they never divide, of seeing things in their natural slate, organised, and living. Little inclined to reflec- tion, they are often rich in instinct. Inspiration is not uncommon in these classes — it is sometimes even a kind of divination. Among them are found persons quite apart, who preserve in a dull unima- ginative life what is the highest moral poetry, the simplicity of the heart. Nothing is more uncommon than the preservation of these gifts of childhood ; to do so implies generally a special grace and a species of holiness. It would be necessary to have that grace to be able only to speak of it. Science, it is true, by no means excludes simplicity ; but it does not give it. The will has little to do with it. -The great civilian of Toulouse, at the most difficult point in his ■work, pauses, and beseeches his auditory to pray that he may have a special light to guide him in such subtle matter. How much more do we need it ! I, and you, my friends, who read me ! How great is our need to obtain, not a gift of subtility, but, on the contrary, of simplicity and a childlike heart ! Sages must no longer remain satisfied with saying, — '' Let the little ones come unto me." They must go to them ; they have much to learn in the midst of those children. The best thing they can do SIMPLICITY OF MIND, AND OF HEART. 93 is, to postpone their study, lock up their books, that have been of so little use to them, and go fairly among mothers and nurses to unlearn and forget. To forget ? No, but mucli rather to reform their wisdom, and control it by the instinct of those who are nearer to God ; to rectify it, by placing it beside this small standard, and say that the science of the three worlds does not contain more than lies in that cradle. To speak only of our present subject, nobody will dive deeply into it who has not well observed the child. The child is the interpreter of the people. 'What do I say ? It is the people themselves, in their native truth, before they are deformed ; the people without vulgarity, rudeness, or envy, inspiring neither distrust nor repugnance. Not only does it interpret them, but justifies and acquits them on many occasions ; many a word that you find rude and coarse in the mouth of a rude man, you think natural (as it truly is) in the mouth of your child ; you thus learn to guard against unjust prejudices. The child being, like the people, in a happy ignorance of conventional language, formulas, and ready-made sentences, which relieve us from invention, shows you, by its example, how much the people are obliged to seek its language, and to find it incessantly: both often find it with a happy energy. It is, moreover, by the child that you may appreciate what is still young and primitive in the people, changed though they be. Your son, like the peasant of Brittany or of the Pyrenees, speaks at every instant the language of the Bible or the Iliad. The boldest criticism of \'ico, Wolf, or Niebuhr, is nothing in comparison to the luminous and profound flashes which certain words of the child will suddenly open to you in the darkness of antiquity. How often, in observing the historical and iivrrative form that he gives to even abstract ideas, may you perceive how infant nations must have ?i«?v*a;erf their dog- mas in legends, and made a history of every moral truth I It is there, O sages, that we must remain silent. Let us form a circle, and listen to this young master of by-gone ages ; he has no need to analyse what he says, in order to instruct us ; but he is like a living wit- ness, — " he was there, and knows the story better." In him, as in young nations, every thing is still concentrated, iti a concreti; and living state. It is sufficient to look at him, to perceive the singularly nhntrart state which v.-e have attained in the present day. Many hollow abstractions cannot stand this examination. Our children of France especially, who are so lively and talkative, with a fund of very precocious good sense, are incessantly bringing us back to realities. These innocent critics never fail to become embarrass- ing to the philosopher. Their simple questions too often present to him the insolvable difficulty of things. They have not learned, like 94 DIVINE CHARACTER OF INFANTS. usj to turn aside difficulties, to avoid certain problems, which it seems to be an agreement among philosophers never to meddle with. Their bold little logic ever goes straight forward. No pompous absurdity would have maintained itself in this world, if mankind had not silenced the objections of the child. From four to twelve years of age especially, is their reasoning period ; between lactation and pu- berty, they seem lighter, less material, more sprightly in mind, than they afterwards are. An eminent grammarian, who would never live with any but children, told me that, at that age, he found in them a capacity for the most subtle abstractions. They lose an infinite deal in developing so fast, in passing rapidly from the life of instinct to the life of reflection. Till then, they were living upon the large fund of instinct, they were swimming in a sea of milk. When from that obscure and fruitful sea logic begins to disentangle a few luminous threads, there is, doubtless, progress, a necessary progress, one of the conditions of life ; but this progress is, nevertheless, in one sense a decline. The child then becomes man, but he was a little god. Early infancy and death are the moments Avhen infinity, graiie, shine forth in man, whether we take the word in the acceptation of art, or of theology. Grace, lively in the infant that plays and makes an attempt at life ; grace, austere and solemn in the dying man, when life is ending ; but ever grace divine. Nothing could make us better perceive the truth of the grand biblical saying, — " You are gods, you shall be as gods." Apelles and Correggio studied incessantly these divine moments. Correggio passed whole days in seeing infants play. Apelles, says one of the ancients, delighted in painting none but the dying. On these days of arrival, departure, and transition between two worlds, man seems to combine them altogether.* The instinctive life in which he is then plunged, is like the dawn and the twilight of the mind, doubtless more vague than thought, but how much more vast ! All the intermediate work of reasoning and reflecting life is like a straight line, which starts from the misty regions of boundless space, and returns back to them. If you want to perceive it well, study closely the infant, or the dying. Place yourself at their pillow, observe, and be silent. * The horror of the fatal enigma, the seal that shuts the mouth at the mo- ment one knows the word, all that has once been grasped in a sublime ■work, that I discovered in an enclosed part of Pere la Chaise, in the cemetery of the Jews. It is a bust by Preault, or rather a head, held and clasped in its shroud, with its finger pressed upon its lips — a truly fearful work, whose impression the heart can scarcely withstand, and which appears to have been sculptured by the great chisel of death. DIVINE CHARACTER OF THE DYING. 95 I have, unhappily, had too many opportunities of contemplating the approach of death to persons very dear to me. I remember, especially, a long winter's day that I spent between the bed of a dying woman and the reading of Isaiah. This very painful scene was that of a combat between watching and sleeping, a toilsome dream of the struggling and sinking soul. Her eyes, swimming in the void, expressed, with painful truth, uncertainty between two worlds. The mind, obscure and vast, rolled along the traversed space of life, and expanded with immense presentiments. The wit- ness of this great struggle who participated in its ebb and flow, and all its anxieties, held last, as in a shipwreck, to the firm belief, that a soul which, even in returning to our primitive instincts, already anticipated that of the unknown world, could not pass that way to annihilation. Every thing implied rather that she was about to endow, with that double instinct, some young existence that would more happily resume the work of life, and impart to the dreams of that soul, to its latent ideas, and mute desires, the language that had failed them.* One thing ever strikes us in observing children and the dying, viz. the perfect nobleness with which Nature impresses them. Man is born noble, and dies noble ; it requires all the labour of life to become coarse, ignoble, — to produce the difference ! Behold that child whom his mother, kneeling, so well termed her ■Jesus. Society or education have very soon altered him. The infinite that was in him and deified him, is disappearing ; he charac- terises himself and specifies himself, it is true, but he contracts. Logic and criticism hew and sculpture without mercy whatever seems an entire block within him ; cruel statuaries, whose chisel cuts into that too tender substance, every stroke chipping off' whole pieces ! Alas ! how meagre and mutilated he is already ! Where is now the noble amplitude of his nature ? The worst is, that under the in- fluence of so rude an education, he will not only be weak and sterile, but will become vulgar. * " The grandfather receives the infant, when it spi-ings to life from its mother. — ' Lo I thou art there, O my soul, to sleep anew in a body.' " (Indian laws, quoted in my " Origines du Droit.") Without admitting the hypothesis of the transmigration of souls (still less that of the transmission of sins), one is much temiited to believe that our first instincts are the mind of our ancestors, ■which the young traveller brings with him as provisions for his journey. He adds much to them. If I lay aside theories, and shut up books to consider nature, I see thought spring up within us, like an obscure instinct, gleam through twilight, enlighten and develop itself by the light of reflection ; then, becoming a fornmla, and being more and more accepted as one, pass into our habits, into the things that are fitted for us, which we no longer examine, and then, obscured again, become a portion of our instincts. 96 DEATH RESTORES ALL THAT IS VALUABLE. ' When we regret our childhood, it is not so much life, the years that were then before us, as our nobleness, that we regret. We had then, indeed, that simple dignity of the being that has not yet been bent, — equality with all; then all were young, all handsome, all free. Let us be patient, that must return : inequality is only for life ; equality, liberty, nobleness, every thing returns to us at our death. Alas ! that moment returns but too soon for the greater number of children. People are willing to see, in childhood, only an ap- prenticeship for life, a preparation to live, — and the greater number do not live. They want them to be happy "hereafter," and to in- sure the happiness of those uncertain years, they overload with, ennui and sorrow the brief moment which is already insured.* No, infancy is not only an age, a stage in life, it is a people, the innocent people. That flower of the human race Avhich, generally, is short-lived, follows Nature, to whose bosom it is soon to return. And it is precisely Nature that they want to subdue in it. ^lan, who, in his own case, retreats from the barbarity of the middle ages, still maintains it towards the child, ever starting from the in- human principle, that our nature is bad, that education is not its good economy, but its reformation, that art and human wisdom ought to amend and chastise the instinct that God has implanted within us. * I do not speak of the overloading Mith work, nor of the iimumerable and excessive punishments that v>e infiict upon their changeful cliavactor, ordained by Nature herself, but of the silly cruelty which causes us to plunge, rudely and incautiously, into cold abstractions, a young being, just come from the maternal bosom, still warm, and which only wants to unfold its blossoms. 97 CHAPTER V. CONTINIATIOX IS THE NATURAL INSTINCT OF THK CHILD PERVERSE?* , Is the human instinct perverted beforehand ? Is man wicked from his birth ? Can the infant that I receive in my arms, as it spring'* from its mother's breast, be already one of the damned ? To this atrocious question, which pains one even to write it, the middle ages, without any pity or hesitation, answer. Yes. ^^'hat ! this creature that seems so innocent, so disarmed, to whom all nature is attached, whom the she-wolf or the lioness would come and suckle, in default of a mother, — has only the instinct of evil, the inspiration of that which ruined Adam ? What ! it would be- long to the devil, if we did not hasten to exorcise it ? Nay, after- wards, if it die in its nurse's arms, it is judged, it is in danger of damnation, it may be cast to the black beasts of hell ! " Deliver not to the beasts," says the church, " the souls that testify of thee ? " And how should this one testify ? It cannot yet understand or speak, AVhilst visiting, in the month of August, 1843, a few cemeteries in the neighbourhood of Lucerne, I found there a very simple and painful expression of religious terrors. At the foot of every tomb was (according to ancient use) a holy-water vase (benitier^, to guard the deceased night and day, and prevent the beasts of hell from coming to snatch away the body, from tormenting or worrying it, or making a vampire of it. As for the soul, alas ! they had no means of defending it : this cruel fear was expressed in several inscriptions. I remained a long time before this one, without being able to tear myself away: " I am a child two years old ; what a terrible tliing is it Jor such an infant to fjo to jndijmi'ut, and appear alrcadij before the face of God." I burst into tears ; I had caught a glimpse of the abyss of maternal despair ! The poorer quarters of our large towns, those vast factories of death, where women, miserably fruitful, bring forth only to weep, give us some idea, though a very imperfect one, of the perpetual * This chapter, which inattentive minds will think foreign to the subject, is its very basis. See p. 1 1 7. 98 SUBTLE INSTRUCTION CRUEL EDUCATION. mourning of the mother in the middle ages. The latter, incessantly fruitful through barbarous improvidence, produced^ without inter- mission or truce, in tears and desolation, children doomed to death, and damned. Horrible age ! a world of cruel illusions, over which an infernal irony seems to hover ! Man, the sport of his fluctuating, divine, and diabolical dream ! ^\"oman, the sport of man, ever a mother, ever in mourning ! The child, who plays, alas I for a day, at the sad game of life, smiles, weens, and disappears — unfortunate little shadows that come by millions and hundreds of millions, and last only in the memory of a mother ! The despair of the latter shows itself especially in one thing : she easily abandons herself to sin and damnation ; she willingly revenges herself for man's brutality ; she deceives him, weeps, laughs!* She ruins herself; — what matter, provided she rejoin her child? The child that survived was scarcely more happy; the middle ages were a terrible pedagogue for him ; they proposed to him the most complicated symbol that was ever taught, the most inaccessible to the simple. This subtle lesson which the Roman empire, in its highest wisdom, had much trouble to understand, this child of the Barbarians, the son of the rustic serf, lost in the woods, must retain and comprehend. He retains, and repeats it ; but as for under- standing that thorny, Byzantine, and scholastic formula, that is more than the rod, blows, and cuffs will ever obtain from him. The church, democratical by her principle of election, was eminently aristocratical by the difficulty of her instruction, and the very small number of men who could really attain it. She damned the natural instinct as perverse and spoilt beforehand, and made science metaphysics, and a most abstract formula, the condition of salvation, y * The frailty of woman is the subject proper of the middle ages ; other ages were little accjuainted with it. This eternal topic of jests, these merry stories, can only afflict him who knows and understands. They prove but too plainly the prodigious ennui of that age, the vacuity of souls without any aliment ap- propriate to their weakness, a moral prostration, the despair of virtue, and the abandonment of one's self and one's salvation. f If it be answered, that uncultivated minds (which, for that period, means everybody, or nearly so) were exempted from understanding, it must be con- fessed that so terrible an enigma imposed, upon pain of damnation, the general abandonment of the human intellect into the hands of a few learned men who thought they knew the meaning. Mark also the result. The enigmas once laid down, and once surrounded with its commentaries, no less obscure, mankind is silent, and remains gaping, mute, and unfruitful. Throughout an inmiense period, as long as the entire brilliant period of antiquity, from the fifth to the eleventh century, he scarcely ventures a few prayers, a few childish legends, and, moreover, that movement is arrested by the express prohibition of the Carlo- vingian council?. LOVE AND HUMANITY PROTEST. 99 All the mysteries of the religions of Asia, all the subtleties of the Western schools — in one word, all the difficulties that the world contains from east to west — all that, compressed and heaped toge- ther into one formula ! " Well, yes,"' says the church, " it is the whole world in one immense cup. Drink it in the name of love ! " and she brings here, in support of the doctrine, history, affecting legends ; it is the honey on the edge of the vase. " Whatever it contain, I will drink, if tridy love is at the bottom : " such was the answer of the human race. That was the real difficulty, the objection ; and it is love that made it, not hatred, or human pride, as they are ever repeating. The middle ages had promised love, and had not given it. They had said, '' Love ! love !"* but they had consecrated a hateful eivil order, inequality in the law, in the state, and in the family. Their too subtle instruction, accessible to so few, had brought a new kind of inerjuality into the world. They had put salvation at a price rarely attained, at the price of an abstruse science, and they had thus overborne, with all the metaphysical science in the world, the simple and the child. The latter, who had been so happy in antiquity, re- ceived its hell in the middle ages. It reqviired ages for reason to struggle into light, for the child to re-appear, as he is, an innocent. One grieved to believe that man was au hereditarily perverse being.t It became difficult to maintain * Xot only had they s^id so, but sincerely wished it.' 1, This touching as- pirinir towards love is what ctinstitutes the genius of the middle ages, and in- sures them our eternal sympathy. I do not efface one word of what I have said of them in the second volume of my " History of France." Only, there I gave thtir transport, their ideal ; to-day, in a book of practical interest, I can only give the real, the results. I have expressed (at the end of the same volume, printed in 18-33) the impotency of this system, and the hope that it may escape its ruin, and succeed in transforming itself. How very far it is already from us, we saw on the 11th of May, 1844, when a magistrate in the Chambre, a sincere and courageous orthodox Christian, deduced a penal theory from the Original Sin and the Fall : even the Catholics recoiled from it. t The embarrassment of theology proceeded especially from the progress of jurisprudence. As long as jurisprudence maintained, in all their severity, the laws of list- Majc.ste, which, by confiscation, &c., extended the penalty to the heir, theology could defend its law of divine high treason, which damned the children for the sin of the father. But, when law became more merciful, it was more and more difficult to maintain in theology, the world of love and grace, — this horrible doctrine of the inlieritance of sin, abandoned by human law. The scholastics, St. Bonaventura, Innocent III., and St. Thomas, found no other way of palliating it than to exempt children from everlasting tire, /eaviiiy them iit oilier respects in ilamnution. Bossuet has very well established (against Sfondrata), that this doctrine is not particular to the Jansenists, as they pretended to believe, but was even that of the Church, of the Fathers 11 2 100 VICTORY OF HUMANITY. ill its barbarity the principle which damned the non-Christian sages. the simple and the ignorant, and children who had died without baptism. They invented for children the palliative of the Limbo, a little somewhat milder hell, where they v/ere always to hover about, weeping, far from their mothers. ^ Insufficient remedies ; the heart was not satisfied. "With the Renaissance burst forth the re-action of love, in opposition to the cruelty of their musty doctrines. It came, in the name of justice, to save the innocents, condemned in the system which had styled itself one of love and grace. But that system, which was based entirely upon the two ideas of the damnation of all by one, and the salvation of all by one, could not renounce the former without shaking the stability of the latter. I\Iothers began again to believe in the salvation of their children. Thenceforth they ever say, without inquiring whether they be per- fectly orthodox : " They must be angels on high, as they were v.hen alive on earth." The heart has prevailed, mercy has prevailed. Humanity is retiring fartlier and farther from ancient injustice. It is now sailing in an opposite direction to the old world. Whither is it steering? Towards a world (we can well foresee it) that will no more condemn innocence, and where wisdom may truly say in truth, '' Let the simple and the little ones come unto me." (except Gregorj- of Nazianzus), of the Councils, and of the Popes ; indeed, if they exempt children from damnation, they give up Original Sin, and the in- lievifanre of crime. M'hifh is the basis of the whole system. 101 CHAPTER VI. DIGRESSION INSTINCT OF ANI.MALS PROTKSTATION IN THKIR FAVOUR. HowEVKit hurried I may be in this review of the simple, the humble children of instinct, my heart stops me, and forces me to say one word about the superlatively simple, the most innocent, ])erhaps the most unfortunate, 1 mean, animals. I just now made the remark that every child was born noble. Naturalists have remarked likewise that the young animal, more in- telhgent at its birth, seemed then approaching near to the child. As it grows up, it becomes brutish, and sinks into the beast. It seems that its poor soul succumbs under the weight of the body, and sub- mits to the fascination of nature, the magic of the potent Circe. Man then turns away, and will no longer recognise a soul in it. The child alone, by an instinct of the heart, still feels tliere is a person in that despised being ; he speaks to it, and questions it ; and the animal, for its part, listens too, and loves the child. The animal ! Dark mystery ! An immense world of musings and dumb sorrows ! ]>ut, in default of language, signs too visible express those sufferings. All nature protests against the barbarity of man, who disavows, debases, and tortures his inferior brother; she accuses him before Him who created them both ! P Mark, without prejudice, their gentle musing air, and the attrac- tion which the most advanced among them visibly feel for man ; would you not say they are children whose development some evil genius has prevented, and who have not been able to unravel their first infantine dream ; perhaps, chastised and humiliated souls, under the curse of some temporary fatality ! A sad enchantment, in which tlie captive being of an imperfect form is dependent on all those who surround it, like a person asleep. But, because he is as if asleep, he has, by way of compensation, access to a sphere of dreams of which we have no idea. We see the bright side of the world, the animal the dark side ; and who knows wliether the latter be not the most extensive ? * * " Let us act to-day, if we will, the proud lords of the creation. But let us not forget our education under the discipline of nature. Plants and animals — these were our first preceptors. All these beings that we direct, then ij 3 102 THE EAST ACKNOWLEDGED NATURE AS A SISTER. The East came to this belief, that the animal is a soul either en- chanted or lulled to sleep ; the middle ages returned to it. Religions and systems have not been able^ in the leasts to stifle this voice of nature. India, nearer than we to the creation, has much better pre- served the tradition of universal brotherhood. She has inscribed it in the beginning and at the end of her two great sacred poems, the " Ramayan " and " Mahabharat_," those gigantic pyramids before which all our petty Western productions must stand humble and respectful. When tired of this disputing W^est, give yourself, I beseech you, the pleasure of returning to your mother, that majestic antiquity, so noble and so tender. Love, humility, grandeur, you will find all united together, and in a sentiment so simple, so detached from every petty feeling of pride, that there is never any need to speak there of humility. India was well rewarded for her kindness to nature ; with her, genius was a gift of pity. The first Indian poet sees two doves on the wing ; and whilst he is admiring their grace and amorous flight, one of them falls pierced with an arrow. He weeps ; his groans measured, without his dreaming of it, by the pulsations of his heart, assume a rhythmical movement, and poetry is born. Since that time, the melodious doves, two and two, born again in the songs of man, love and fly throughout the world (Ramayan). Grateful nature has endowed India with another admirable gift, — fecundity. Surrounded by her with tenderness and respect, nature has multiplied for her, together with the animal creation, the spring of life by which the earth is renewed. There exhaustion is un- known. So many wars, so many disasters and servitudes, have not been able to exhaust the milk of the sacred cow. Streams of milk are ever flowing for that thrice blessed country, — blessed by her own benevolence, her gentle treatment towards the lower animals. That affecting union, which at first bound man to the humblest offspring of God, has been dissolved by jmde. But not with im- punity ; the earth has rebelled, — she has refused to nourish in- human races. guided us better than we should have done ourselves. They guided our ycauig reason by a surer instinct ; those little ones that wc now despise then gave us counsel. We profited by the contemplation of those irreproachable children of God : they, calm and pure, seemed, in their silent existence, to be keeping the secrets of heaven. Has the tree, which has seen all times — has the bird, that flics over all places, nothing to teach us ? Does not the eagle read in the sun, and the owl in darkness ? And have those great oxen themselves, so grave under the dark oak, no thought in their long reveries ? " — Origines du Droit, p. Ixix. NATURE DISAVOWED BY THE GREEK AND ROMAN CITY. 103 The world of pride, the Greek and Roman city, had a contempt for nature ; it valued only art, and esteemed only itself. That proud antiquity, that would have nothing hut wliat was noble, suc- ceeded but too well in suppressing all the rest. AV'hatever seemed low or ignoble disappeared from their eyes ; animals perished as well as slaves. The Roman empire, rid of both, entered upon the majesty of the desert. The earth, ever spending and no longer re- plenished, became, among so many monuments which coveretl it, a garden of marble. Cities still remained, but the country was no more ; circuses, triumphal arches, — but no more cottages, no more labourers. Magnificent roads were ever waiting for the traveller, who no longer passed ; sumptuous aqueducts continued to transport rivers to silent cities, but there was no one to -quench his thirst. One man alone, before this desolation, had found in his heart a protestation, a lamentation for all that was becoming extinct. One alone, amid the devastation of civil wars, in which men and animals perished at once, found, in the immensity of his pity, tears for the labouring ox that had fertilised ancient Italy. He consecrated a divine poem to these disappearing races.* Tender and profound \'irgil ! I, who have been fed by him, as it were, upon his knees, I am happy that this unique glory belongs to him, — the glory of pity and of excellence of heart. That peasant of mantua, with his virgin timidity and long rustic hair, is, however, without his having known it, the true pontiff and augur, between two worlds, two ages half way on the road of history. An Indian in his tenderness for nature, a Christian in his love for man, he, even this simple man, reconstitutes, in his great heart, the grand universal city, from which nothing having life is excluded, — whereas each wishes none to enter there but his own. Chri'otianity, in spite of its spirit of meekness, did not renew the ancient union. It ])reserved a Jewish prejudice against nature; Judea, who knew herself, was afraid to love too much this sister of man ; she fled from her with curses. Christianism, obedient to its fears, kept animal nature at an infinite distance from man, and vili- fied it. The symbolic animals which accompany the evangelists, the cold allegories of the lamb and the dove, did not better the beast. The newjbcnedictioujlid not reach it ; salvation did not come for *■' In ancitlu'r i)irco — the most highly finished one in'i-haps ^ — -which he consecrates to his dearest friend the consul, the poet (iallus, he does not hesiUite to t.'ive him, for brethren and comforters, the most humble children of nature, — th'j nnocent animals. After having invited all the rural deities to assuajie the pans of tlie love-sick poet, " /'/.v shrep tilso stand (irnvnd him" (then, by a charmin;: turn, fearful of v.oundini^ the pride of Gallus) : " Xostri nee p'r/iitet illns ; nee /c prciiihnt pccori^, divine porta.'' II t 104 THE DEVIL SEEN IN ANIMALS. the smallest, the most humhle of the creation. The God died for Man, and not for them. Having no share in salvation, they remain beyond the Christian law, as Pagans, as impure, and too often sus- pected of conniving with the principle of evil. Has not Christ in the gospel permitted the demons to take possession of the swine ? Never shall we know the terrors in which the middle ages lived for several centuries, ever in presence of the devil ! The vision of the invisible evil one — wicked dream, absurd torture ! And thence a strange fantastical life which would make us laugh every instant, did we not feel that it was sad even to tears. 'NVho could then doubt of the devil ? I have seen him, says the Emperor Charles. I have seen him, says Gregory VII. The bishops who make the popes, the monks who pass all their lives in prayer, declare he is there behind them, that they feel him, that he does not stir. The poor rustic serf, who sees him under the figure of a beast, sculptured in the church porch, is afraid, on his return, to find him among his cattle. The latter assume, in the evening, quite a fan- tastic aspect, in the flickering light of the hearth ; the bull has a strange mark, the goat an equivocal look, — and what must he think of that cat whose hair, as soon as he touches it, throws out sparks in the dark ! It is the child that allays the feai-s of man. He fears those ani- mals so little that he makes them his companions. He gives leaves to the ox, mounts upon the goat, and boldly handles the black cat. He does still better, he imitates them, counterfeits their voice — and the family smiles. " Why, indeed, should I be afraid of tliem f I was wrong. I am in a Christian house, with holy water and lioly flowers; he would not dare a])proach. My beasts are God's crea- tures, innocents, cliildren. Why, even the animals in the fields seem by their looks to know God ; they live like hermits. This fine stag, for instance, who bears the cross upon his liead, who stalks like a living forest through the woods, seems himself a miracle. The hind is as gentle as my cow, and has not even her horns ; the hind, in default of a mother, would have suckled my child." This last sentence, expressed, as every thing then was, in an historical form, ended by being developed into the finest of the legends of the middle ages, — that of Genevieve de Brabant : the family oppressed by man, saved by tlie animal ; the innocent wife saved by the innocent beast of the woods : salvation thus coming from the least, the most humble. The animals, re-instated, take their places in the rustic family next the child that loves them, as poor relations figure at the lower end of the table in a noble mansion. They are treated as such on grand days, share the joys and sorrows^ wear mourning or wedding THEY ARE DISABLED BY THE CHILD. 105 garments' (lately still in Brittany). They say nothing, it is true, but they are docile, and listen patiently ; man, like a priest in his own house, preaches to them in the name of the Lord.* Thus popular genius, more simple and more profound than sacred scholastics, brought about timidly, but efficiently, the re-establish- ment of nature's rights. The latter was not ungrateful. i\lan was rewarded ; those poor beings, that have nothing, gave treasures. The animal, as soon as it was loved, lasted and multiplied : and the earth became fruitful again, and the world, that seemed at an end, grew rich and powerful again, because it had received, like dew, the benediction of mercy. The family being thus composed, the next question is to make it enter, if possible, entire into the Church. Now comes the difficulty ! They are very willing to receive the animal ; but only to sprinkle it with holy water, exorcise it, as it were, and only at the porch. " Simple man I leave thy beast behind ; enter alone. The entrance of the Church is the judgment that you see represented upon the doors : the Law sits on the tlireshold ; Saint Michael stands holding the sword and the scales, IIow can the animal you bring with you be judged, saved, or damned ? Has that beast a soul? What is to be done with the souls of brutes ? Siiall we open a limbo for them, like hat for little children r " No matter, our man is obstinate ; he listens respectfully, but he cares not to understand. He has no wish to be saved alone, and without his family. AV'iiy should not his ox and his ass get their salvation as well as St. I'aulin's dog ? They have certainly worked as well. " Well! I will be cunning," says he to himself; " I will choose Christmas-day, when the Church makes her family festival, the day when God is yet too young to be just. Just or not, we shall aU pass; I, my wife, my child, and my ass. He too! He was at iieihlehem, and bore our Lord. As a reward, the poor beast ought to have his day. It is not quite sure, moreover, that he is what he seems ; he is at bottom malicious and lazy, just like me ; if I was not also forced to it, I should not work niuch."^; It was a grand spectacle, and one far more touching than laugh- able, when the beast of the people was, in spite of the commands of bishops and councils, taken with him into the Church. Nature, condemned and cursed, returned victorious under the most humble form that could gain her pardon. She returned with the saints of Paganism, between the Sibyl and Virgil. t They held out to the animal the sword that stopped him under Balaam ; but that sword • Sue tlie little Sermon to IJccs, in my Orhjims dii JJroit. T Preserved a long time at Kouen. Ducange, verbo Festuiit. 106 SCIENCE HAS JUST REINSTATED THEAT. of the ancient law, being blunted, frightened him no more; the law- was near its end in that day, and was making room for grace. Humbly but assuredly, he was going straight to the manger. There he listened to the service, and, like a baptized Christian, knelt in de- votion. Then they sang to him, and for him, partly in the language of the Church and partly in French, that he might understand this comic yet sublime anthem : — A genoiix ! et dis amen ! Assez mange d'herbe ct dc foin. Amen ! encore une fois ! Laisse les vieilles choses, et va ! The animal gained little by this reparation.* The Councils shvit him out from the Church. The philosophers, who in pride and hard-heartedness perpetuated the theologians, decided that he had no soul."}" He suffers in this world — what matter? He must expect no recompence in a superior life. Thus there must be then no God for him ; the merciful Father of man is to be for whatever is not human, a cruel tyrant ! To create playthings, but sensible ones, machines, but suffering ones, automatons, who should resemble superior creatures only in the faculty of enduring evil ! May the earth lie heavy on you, hard-hearted men, who conceived this im- pious idea ; who inflict such a sentence upon so many innocent but suffering creatures ! Our age will have one great glory. It has produced a philosopher with a human heart.;}; He loved the child and the animal. The child, before its birth, had excited interest only as a sketch, a pre- paration of life ; but he loved it in itself, followed it patiently in its petty, obscure life, and discovered in its changes, the faithful repro- duction of animal metamorphoses. Thus, in the bosom of woman, in the true sanctuary of nature, the mystery of universal brotherhood has been discovered. Thanks be to God ! * Popular genius did more for its protege. AVithout stopping at the oppo- sition of the church, it created for the animal a legal position, treated it as a person, made it appear in court : and even in the most serious cases, in criminal trials, it figured as a witness, and sometimes as tlie prisoner. No doubt but this importance attributed to the animal contributed powerfully to its preser- vation and perpetuation, and, consequently, to the fecundity of the land, which generally depends on the treatment the animal experiences from man. This is, perhaps, the true cause why the middle ages always recovered after so many frightful devastations. f Bougeaut, the Jesuit, objected that beasts must have a soul, since they jvcrc devils. J So gloriously continued in the persons of his friend and his son ; Scrres and Isidore Geofl'roy Saint Ililaire. I see with pleasure a youth full of future promise enter upon this scientific path, which is the road of life. LET MAN RESUME THE EDUCATION OF THE ANIMAL. 107 This is the true re-instalment of inferior life. The animal^ that serf of serfs, finds himself once more related to the lord of the universe. Let the latter, then, resume, along with a more merciful sentiment, the grand work of the education of animals, which formerly gained him the dominion of the globe*, and which he has abandoned for two thousand years, to the great detriment of the earth. Let the people learn that their prosperity depends on tlieir merciful treat- ment of this poor inferior people. Let science remember that the animal, more closely related to nature, was her augur and interpreter in antiquity. She will find a voice of God in the instinct of these simple among the simple. * This age of machinery, that wants machines everywhere, ought to per- ceive, one would think, that if it wishes animals to remain as they are, they are most certainly the foremost of all machines ; giving, besides such a quan- tity of positive power, another infinite and inappreciable power, which proceeds (if they will not say from the soul) from animated life. It would seem that one ought to resume the study and the domestication of animals. See a fine article on Domestication, by M. Isidore Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, in the " En- cyclopedic Nouvelle," of Messrs. Leroux and Reynaud. 108 CHAPTER VII. THE INSTINCT OF THE SIMPLE THE MAN OP TgENIUS IS SUPERLA- TIVELY THE SIMPLE, THE CHILD, AND THE PEOPLE. I HAVE read in the life of a great doctor of the Church, that, having returned after death to his monastery, he honoured with his appari- tion, not the most distinguished among his brethren, l)ut the least so, the most simple one poor in spirit. The latter received from him the favour of dying three days after. He bore upon his visage a truly celestial joy. " One might," says the legendary, " apply to him the words of Virgil : ' Infant, know thy mother by her smile ! ' " It is a remarkable fact, that most men of genius have a particular predilection for children and the simple. The latter, on their side, generally timid in public, dumb in presence of wit, feel completely safe with men of genius. That power which overawes everybody, on the contrary encourages them. They feel that from them they ■will meet with no derision, but with benevolence and protection. Then they find themselves truly in their natural state ; their tongue is untied, and it may be seen that these people, called simple because they are ignorant of conventional language, are often but so much the more original, especially very imaginative, and endowed with a singular instinct to seize very distant relations. They compare and connect very willingly, but divide and analyse but little. Not only is every kind of division troublesome to tlieir minds, but it pains them, and seems to them a dismembering. They like not dissecting life, and every thing seems to them to have life. Objects, whatever they be, seem to them organic beings, which they would scruple to alter in the least. They shrink back the moment it is necessary to disturb by analysis any thing that shows the least appearance of vital harmony. This disposition usually implies natu- ral gentleness and goodness of heart: they are called good people. Not only do they not divide, but as soon as they find any thing divided, or partial, they either neglect it, or mentally rejoin it to the whole whence it is separated; they recompose this whole with a ra- pidity of imagination which was not to be expected from their natu- ral slowness. They are powerful in putting together in the same THE SIMPLE SYxMPATHY OF LIFE. 109 ratio as they are powerless in separating. Or^ rather, it seems, on beholding so easy an operation, that it is neither power nor impo- tency, but a necessary fact, inherent in their existence. In fact, it is in that they exist as siviple. A hand appears in the light. The reasoner concludes that doubt- less there is a man in the shade, whose hand alone he sees ; from the hand he infers the man. The simple man does not reason, does not infer ; on beholding the hand, he says immediately, " I see a man." And so he does, in fact, with the eyes of the mind. Here they both agree. But on a thousand occasions, the simple, who, by a part, sees a whole unseen by others, who, by a sign, divines and affirms a yet invisible being, is laughed at, or passes for a mad- man. To see what appears to the eyes of nobody, is second-sight. To see what seems to be coming or about to be, is prophecy. Two things which cause the wonder of the crowd, and the derision of phi- losophers, and which are generally a natural gift of simplicity. This gift, rare among civilised men, is, as we know, very common among simple nations, be they savages or barbarians. The simple sympathi&e with life, and have for a reward this mag- nificent gift, that the least sign suffices for them to see it and fore- see it. '■ That is their secret relationship with the man of genius. They often attain without effisrt, by mere simplicity, what he obtains by the power of simplification within him ; so that the first of mankind, and they who seem the last, meet very well and understand one an- other. Their mutual understanding is owing to one thing, their common sympathy for nature, for life, which causes them to delight only in the living imity. If you study seriously in his life and his works that mystery of nature, called the man of genius, you will generally find it is he who all the while he was acquiring the gifts of the critic, preserved the gifts of the simple.* These two men, otherwise opposed, are harmonised in him. At the moment when his inward criticism seems to have urged him to infinite division, his simplicity maintains present unity. It ever pre- serves for him the sentiment of life, and keeps it indivisible. But though genius has both these powers within it, its love of living har- mony, its tender regard for life, are still so strong, that it would sacrifice study and science itself, if the latter could only be obtained ♦ Genius has, I know, a thousand foniis. The one I give here is certainly the most original, the most fruitful, that whicli the most frequently charac- teri.-es great inventors. La Fontaine and Corneille, IVewton and Lagvange, Ampere and GeoH'roy Saint Hilaire, were at the sauie time the most simple and the most subtle of men. 110 GENIUS IS SUPERLATIVELY THE SIMPLE MAN. by means of dissection. Of the two men within him, it would leave him who divides ; the simple one would remain^ with his unknowing power of divination and prophecy. This is a mystery of the heart. If genius, among all the divisions, the fictitious subdivisions of science, ever preserves within a simple faculty, that never consents to absolute division, that ever tends towards unity, that fears to destroy it in the minutest existence, it is because the property of genius is the love of life itself, the love that causes it to be preserved, and the love that produces it. The crowd, who see all that cofifusedly and from the outside, without being able to account for it, occasionally find this great man a good man and a simpleton. They are astonished at the contrast ; but there is no contrast ; it is simplicity and goodness, which are the basis of genius, its prime reason ; it is by these he participates in the fecundity of God. This goodness, which gives the man of genius a regard for minute existences neglected by others, which sometimes arrests him sud- denly, that he may not destroy a blade of grass, is the amusement of the crowd. The spirit of simplicity which never allows his mind to be shackled by divisions, which by a part, a sign, makes him see or foresee a whole being, a system that nobody yet divines — this wonderful faculty is precisely that which excites the astonishment, almost the scandal, of the vulgar. It raises him above the world, as it were, sets him above opinion, time, and place ; him, who alone ought to leave a vestige of himself. The trace he will leave is not the work of genius alone ; but that very life of simplicity, childhood, goodness, and holiness, to which all ages will come and seek a sort of moral refreshment. This or that discovery of his will become, perhaps, less useful in the progress of the human race ; but his life, which in his lifetime seemed his weak side, in which envy found satisfaction, will remain the treasure of the world, and the eternal festival of the heart. Assuredly the people are quite right to call this man simple. He is the superlatively simple, the child among children, the people more than the people themselves. To explain. The simple man has unintelligent parts, confused and undecided views, wherein he wavers, hunts about, follows several roads at once, and quits the character of a simple man. The sim- plicity of genius, which is true simplicity, has never any of these ob- lique views ; it applies itself to objects, like a powerful light, that needs no by-path, because it pierces and traverses the whole. Genius has the gift of childhood, such as the child never has. This gift, as we have said, is the vague, powerful instinct which reflection soon specifies and narrows, so that the child early becomes THE MAN OF GENIUS IS THE PEOPLE. Ill a questioner, a caviller, and brimful of objections. Genius preserves the native instinct in its grandeur, in its strong impulse, together wiih a divine grace, which unfortunately the child loses, — young and lively hope. , The people, in the highest ideal sense, are difficult to be found among the people. AVhether 1 observe them here or there, they are not the people, but a certain class, some partial form or other of the people, changed, and ephemeral. In their reality, in their highest power, they are solely in the man of genius ; in him resides the great soul. All the world is surprised to see the inert masses vibrate at his slightest word, the roar of the ocean huslied at his voice, the popular tide prostrate at his feet. Why wonder ? That voice is the people's ; mute in themselves, tliey speak in that man, and God with him. Tlien it is we may truly say, " Vox populi, vox Dei." Is he a God, or is he a man ? Is it necessary to seek for mystic names, inspiration, or revelation, for the instinct of genius ? It is the tendency of the vulgar ; they must make gods for themselves. '•'Instinct? Nature? Fie!" say they. " Were it but instinct, we should not be carried away by it. It is the inspiration from above ; it is the well-beloved of God, a God, anew Messiah !" Rather than admire a man, or admit the superiority of their fellow creature, they will make him inspired by God, or God if necessary ; every one says to himself that it required nothing less than a supernatural ray to dazzle him to such a degree. So, they set him beyond nature, ob- servation, and science, him who was true nature, him whom, of all others, science ought to observe ; they exclude from humanity him who alone was vain. This man of men is by an imprudent adora- tion sent back to heaven, banished from the land of the living, where he had taken root. Ah ! pray leave him, who is the essence of life on earth, still among us ! Let him remain man ; let him remain the people. Do not separate him from the children, the poor, the simple, where his heart is, to exile him upon an altar. Let him be enveloped in the crowd, whose spirit he is ; let him plunge into full, fertile life, live with us, and suffer with us ; in participating in our suffer- ings and weaknesses, he will draw forth that strength which God has concealed within, and which will be his very genius. 112 chaptp:r VIII. TUE BIRTH OF GENIUS, A TYPE OF THE BIRTH OF MAN. If perfection is not here below, that which approaches it the nearest is, according to all appearance, the harmonious and fruitful man who manifests his inward excellence by a superabundance of love and strength ; who proves it, not only by transitory actions, but by im- mortal works, wherein his great soul will remain in company with all mankind. This superabundance of gifts, this fecundity, this durable creation, is apparently the token that we ought there to find the plenitude of nature and the model of art. Social art, the most com- plicated of all, ought to see well whether this master-piece of God, wherein rich diversity is harmonised in fruitful unity, could not throw some light upon the object of its search. Permit me, then, to dwell upon the character of genius, to pene- trate its inward harmony, and to consider the wise economy and good policy of this great moral city, which stands in the heart of man. Genius, the inventive and generating power, supposes, as we have said, that the same man is endowed with two powers : that he unites in himself, what may be called, the two sexes of the mind, — the instinct of the simple, and the reflection of the wise. He is, in a manner, man and woman, child and man, barbarous and civilised, people and aristocracy. This duality, which astonishes, and causes the vulgar to regard it often as a whimsical phenomenon, a monstrosity, is what constitutes in him in the highest degree, the normal and legitimate character of man. To say the truth, he alone is man, and there is none other. The simple man is half a man, and the critic is half a man ; they do not produce ; still less do those of mediocrity, whom we might call neuter, having neither sex. He who is alone complete, can also alone engender ; he is commissioned to carry on the divine creation. All others are sterile, save at those moments when by means of love they reconstitute for themselves a sort of double unity; their natural apti- tude, transmitted by generation, remains powerless till they meet the complete man, who alone possesses fecundity. It is not that the instinctive, the inspiring spark, has been want- ing in all those men ; but, in them, reflection soon congeals or ob- THE MAN OF GENIUS IS FRUITFUL. 113 scures it. The privilege of genius is, that inspiration acts in it before reflection ; its flame burns with a full light. In other men, every thing emerges slowly and in succession : the interval sterilises tliem. Genius, on the other hand, Alls up the interval, joins both ends, and suppresses time — it is a lightning flash of eternity. Instinct, rapid to tliis degree, touches upon the act, and becomes the act itself ; the idea thus concentrated, quickens and engenders. Many a one, now vulgar, had also received, in the bud, this fruit- ful duality of two persons, the smiple man and the critic ; but his natural mahgnity early destroyed the harmony : at his first step in science came pride and subtlety; the critic destroyed the simple man. Reflection, vainly proud of her precocious manhood, despised instinct as a feeble child ; vain and aristocratic, she mingled as soon as she could in the glittering croAvd of sophists, and, wincing under their sneers, denied the humble relationship, which connected her too closely with the people. She has gone beyond them : fearful of their derision, she set about the impious task of deriding her brother. Well! she will remain alone; alone she does not produce a man. That man is impotent. Genius knows notliing of this sad policy. He has no mind to stifle his inward flame, for fear of the laughter of the world ; he does not even hear it. In him reflection is neither bitter nor ironi- cal : she treats kindly the tiifancij of instinct. This instinctive half needs to be spared by he otlier : feeble and vague, it is subject to tumultuous emotions ; because, being full of aspiration, blinded by love, it rushes forth to meet the light. Reflection knows well that, if she is superior, by already possessing light, she is inferior to in- stinct, as prolific heat, as a living concentration. Tlie question be- tween them is of one age, rather than of dignity. Every thing begins under the form of instinct. The reflection of to-day was hi- stinct yesterday. Which is worth most ? Who can say ? The young and the weak has, perhaps, the advantage. The fecundity of genius, let us repeat it, depends, doubtless, in a great measure, on the goodness, meekness, and simplicity of heart, with which he welcomes the feeble "endeavours of instinct. He welcomes them v.itliin himself, in his inner world, and quite as much in the external world, in man and in nature. He everywhere sympathises with the simple, and his easy indulgence is incessantly evoking from infant purgatory new germs of thought. They fly to him of their own accord. Innumerable things, which had yet no form, whicli were floating about alone and abandoned, come fearlessly towards him. And he, keen-sighted man, will not inquire whether they are shapeless or coarse ; he welcomes them, smiles at them, delights in their vivacity, absolves and encourages 114 BIRTH OF GENIUS, TYPE OF BIRTH OF MAN. them. From this clemency results this singular advantage to him : every thing comes to enrich, succour, and strengthen him. For all others, the world is a sandy desert, where they seek and do not find. How could love fail to come into that soul, so full and rich in the living gifts of nature ? Some beloved object presents itself. Whence does it come ? One cannot say. It is beloved, that suffices. It will grow and live in him, as he also lives in nature, welcoming all that comes, feeding on every thing, increasing and adorning itself, becoming the flower of genius, as genius is the flower of the world. Sublime type of adoption ! that living speck which just now ap- peared still obscure, hatched under the paternal eye, gradually assumes its functions, its vivacity, and shines with splendour, — it is some grand invention, a work of art, a poem. I admire this fine creation in its result ; but how I should have wished to follow it in its birth*, in the tender incubation under which its life, its heat, began! You, mighty men, in whom God accomplishes these grand things, deign to teach us yourselves ; what was the sacred moment, when Invention, when the work of Art, flashed forth for the first time ! What were the first words in your soul with that new being ! what dialogue took place within you between Old ^^^isdom and Young Creation ! the kind welcome offered ! How the former encouraged the latter, still rude and rough, formed it without changing it ; and, far from restraining its liberty, used every effort that it might become free, and be truly herself. Ah ! if you revealed that, you would have enlightened not only art, but moral art also, the art of education and policy. If we knew the culture that genius gives to the well-beloved of his thought, how they live together; by what address and gentleness, without injuring its originality, he encourages if to produce itself according to its nature, we should have at once the rule of art, and the model of education and civil initiation, t * How much it is to be regretted that men of genius efface the successive traces of their own creation ! They seldom keep the series of the sketches which have prepared its way. You may find something of this, with mucli trouble, and incomplete, in the progressive series of the pictures of a few great painters, who incessantly painted their thoughts, and fixed every moment of them by immortal works. It is not imjjossible to follow thus the birth of an idea in Raphael, Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt. To speak only of the latter, his "Good Samaritan," " Christ at Emmaus," "Lazarus," and lastly, " Christ consoling the People," indicate the successive degrees by which the great artist, touched with the new spectacle of profound modern miseries, hatched and en- gendered his idea. In the last expression that he gives it, and which is so strong and so popular, the work and the workman have attained an unheai'd of degree of tenderness. f This is not a simple comparison, like that given by Plato, in book iv. of his Republic. No, it is the thing itself, taken in itself, in its inmost depths, its THE TYPE FOR EVERY SOCIAL WORK. 115 Goodness of God ! it is there we must behold you ! It is in that superior soul in which wisdom and instinct are so well harmonised, that we must seek the type for every social work. The soul of the man of genius, that soul evidently divine, since it creates like God, is the inward City according to which we are to model the outward one, that it may be divine also. This man is harmonious and productive, when the two persons who are in him, the simple and the reflecting, understand and aid each other. Well ! society will be in the highest degree harmonious and pro- ductive, if the educated and reflecting classes, welcoming and adopt- ing the men of instinct and action, receive heat from them, and lend light to them.* " ^Vl^at a difference !" people will say. " Do you not see that in the soul of a single man, the inward City is ever composed of one and the same? between two persons so nearly related acquaintance is easy. But in the political city, how many opposite discordant elements ! what varied resistance ! The data are here infinitely more complex ; nay, one of the objects compared is almost the opposite of the other : in one I see only peace ; in the other, only war.'' Would to Heaven the objection was reasonable, that I might accept it ! AV^oukl to Heaven that discord was only in the outward city, and that in the inward city, in the apparent unity of the individual, there was truly peace ! I feel rather quite the contrary. The general battle of the world is far less discordant than the one I bear within me, the struggle of myself with myself, the combat of the homo duplex. birth and its nature. In proportion as we accustom ourselves to consider tlie social world in the moral world, we shall see that the latter is the origin, the mother, the womb of the other, or rather that they form but one. The struggle of the soul with the soul — the progress and the education which result from it — the treaties which its inward powers make among themselves — the love that she has for herself — the marriages and adoptions effected in this narrow and varied enclosure, — will reveal to philosophy the secret of policy, education, and social initiation. Let the artist exalt his work, man the infant of his choice, and the city the still infant classes ; — these three things are analogous ; at least, by the progress of science and love, they will become so more and more. This science remains to be created. Philosophy, which for ages has confined iti-elf to the same ideas, has not yet reached it. The mystics, who have so scrutinised the human soul, grew blind in endeavouring to find God there ; who no doubt is there, but who maybe distinguished much better when he is seen in his image that he deposited there, the divine and human City. ♦ Extend this to the great society of the human race. Some nations are re- latively in the instinctive state, others in the state of reflection. When they come in contact, cultivated nations ought, in the name of humanity, and of their own interest, to make for themselves an art, a language, to come to a friendly understanding with those that have only the barbarous instinct. I 2 116 THE MAN OF GENIUS IMPROVES BY HIS WORK. This warfare is visible in every man. If there is a truce and pacification in the man of genius, that proceeds from a grand mystery, the inward sacrifices which his opposite powers make to one another. The basis of art, like that of society — do not forget it — is sacrifice. This struggle is worthily rewarded. ^V^ork, which one would think inert and passive, modifies its workman. It morally improves him ; thus rewarding the benevolence with which the great artist cherished it, when it was young, weak, and as yet without form. He made it, but it makes him ; it makes him in proportion as it increases, very great and very good. If the whole world, with its miseries, necessities, and hostile fatalities, did not oppress him, we should see that there is no man of genius, who, in excellence of heart, is not a hero. All these inward trials, which the world knows not, preserve genius from every paltry feeling of pride. If he repels, in the name of his work, the stupid laughter of the vulgar, it is on account of his work, and not for his own sake. He remains in his inner man heroically meek, ever a child, the people, simple. Whatever be his great achievement, he is on the side of the little ones. He lets the crowd of vain and subtle men go on wandering in the void, rejoicing in mockery, sophisms, and negations. Let them triumph and run, as much as they please, in the ways of the world. He, for his part, remains calm there, whither all the simple ones will come, at the steps of the throne of the Father. And is it through liim that they will come ? "What support, or what other protector have they ? He is the common inheritance of this disinherited people, their glorious indemnification. He is the voice of these mutes, the power of these powerless souls, the tardy accomplishlVient of all their aspirations. In him, finally, they are glorified, and by him they are saved. He drags, he hurries them all on, in the long chain of classes and kinds into which they are divided . women, children, the ignorant, the poor in intellect, and, with them, our humble fellow-workmeii, Avho have possessed but the pure in- stinct ; and, last of all, the infinite tribes of inferior life, as far as instinct extends. They all claim relationship with the simple one, at the gate of the City, into which they are all to enter sooner or later. '' AVhat do you want here? ' Who are you, poor simple ones.''" '^' The younger brothers of the eldest born of God." 117 CHAPTER IX. REVIEW OF THE SECOND PART INTRODUCTION TO THE THIUD. I HAVE been far^ very far, perhaps, hurried away by the enthusiasm of my heart. I wished to characterise the popular instinct, and show there the fountain of life in which the educated classes ought, in the present day, to seek to become young again ; I wanted to prove to these classes, born yesterday, yet already worn out, that they have need to draw nearer to the people whence they have sprung. These people, disfigured by their misfortunes, and adulterated by their very progress, 1 have, in order to find out their genius, been obliged to study especially in their purest element, the people, among children and the simple. There it is that God preserves for us the source of the living instinct, the treasure of eternal youth. But it has come to pass, that these simple ones, these children whom I summoned into my book to bear v.itness for the people, have implored for themselves : and I have listened to them ; I have vindicated, as I could, the simple from the contempt of the world. I have demanded for the child, why tlie cruelty of the middle ag?s was still practised against him. ^\'hat ! you have rejected, in belief and in life, the cruel fatalism which supposed man to be perverted at his birth for a crime he had not committed ; and when the question is about the child, you set out from tliis idea; you chastise tlie innocent ; you deduce, from an hypcthesis which is daily more and more given up, an education of ])unishments. You stifle, you gag the child of revelation ; this Joseph, or this Daniel, who alone would tell you your enigma and your forgotten dream. If you maintain that the instinct of man is bad, spoilt before- hand ; that man is worthy only inasmuch as he is chastised, corrected, and metamorphosed by science or school divinity, you have coii- dcmripd the pcop/e, both the people among children, and the people who are still children, whether they be called savages or barbarians. This prejudice has been fatal for all the poor sons of instinct. It has made the cultivated classes disdainful and malevolent towards the uncultivated classes. It has inflicted upon children the hell of our education. It has sanctioned against infant nations a thousand 118 INDEBTED TO MUTE INSTINCTS FOR VOICE. nonsensical fables, which have contributed not a little to encourage our self-called Christians in the extermination of these people. My book wished, moreover, to shroud these nations, whether savages or barbarians, and shelter the few that remain. Presently, it will be too late ; the work of extermination is going on rapidly. In less than half a century, how many nations have I seen disap- pear ! "Where are now our allies, the Highlanders of Scotland ? An English bailiff has driven away the people of Fingal and Robert Bruce. Where are our other friends, the Indians of North America, to whom our old France had so kindly stretched forth her hand t Alas ! I have just seen the last of them, whom they were showing about at fairs. The American-English traders and Puritans, in their cruel unintelligence, have just now driven back, famished, and anni- hilated those heroic races, who leave for ever an empty place upon the globe, and a regret to mankind. In the face of these devastations, together with that in the north of India, that of Caucasus, and that of Libanus, may France per- ceive in time that our interminable war in Africa comes especially from our being ignorant of the genius of those nations ! we remain ever at a distance, without doing any thing to dispel the mutual igno- rance, and the misunderstandings which it occasions. They avowed the other day that they were fighting against us only because they believed us the enemies of their religion, which is the Unity of God ; they were ignorant that France, and almost all F^urope, had cast off the yoke of idolatrous belief, which obscured the Unity during the middle ages. Bonaparte told it them at Cairo; who will repeat it now ? The mist will be dispelled one day or other between each shore, and the nations will know each other. Africa, whose races so closely resemble those of our south — Africa, whom I occasionally recognise in my most distinguished friends of the Pyrenees and of Provence, will do France a great service ; she will explain many things in her which are despised and misunderstood. We shall then better com- prehend the rough popular vigour of our mountaineers, and the in- habitants of our least adulterated provinces. INIany an incident of manners, as I have said, which is found rude and clownish, is, in reality, barbarous, and united our people to those doubtless barbarous, but by no means vulgar, populations. Barbarians, savages, children, even people (for the most part) have all of them this common misery, that their instinct is misunderstood, and they themselves knov.' not how to make us comprehend it. They are like mutes ; they suffer and become extinct in silence. And we are nothing, we scarcely know it. The man of Africa starves upon his devastated Silo, he dies, and without complaint. The man of ENTRANCE INTO THE CITY OF RIGHT. 119 Europe works himself to death, ends in an hospital, without any body knowing it. The child, even the rich child, languishes and cannot complain ; nobody will listen to him ; the middle ages, though ended for us, continue for him in their barbarity. A strange sight ! on one hand, existences full of young and power- ful life. But those beings are as if still enchanted ; they cannot well make known their thoughts and their sufferings. On the other hand, behold others who have collected together all the instruments that humanity has ever forged to analyse and express thought, lan- guages, classifications, logic, and rhetoric, but life is feeble in them. They would require those mutes, whom God filled so abundantly with his vigour, to give them one single drop. Who would not offer up prayers for that great people, who, from low and obscure regions, aspires and ascends, groping in the dark, without having even a voice to groan .'' But their silence speaks. They say that Ca.'sar, when coasting along the shores of Africa, fell asleep and had a dream ; he saw as it Avere a vast army, weeping and stretching their hands towai-ds him. On awaking, he wrote down upon his tablets — Corinth and Carthage; and he rebuilt those cities. I am not Ca>sar, but how often have I dreamed Ctesar's dream ! I saw them weeping, I understood their tears, — " Urbem orant :" They want their city ! They ask her to receive and protect them. And I, a poor solitary dreamer, what could I give to that great dumb nation ? All I had, — my voice. May it be their first entrance into the city of right, from which they have been hitherto excluded ! I have made those speak in this book, who as yet do not even know whether they have a right to the world. All those who groan or suff'er in silence, all that are aspiring and struggling towards life, are my people. They are the people ! Let them all come with me. Why can I not enlarge the city, so that it may be solid ? It shakes, it crumbles to pieces, as long as it is incomplete, exclusive, and un- just. Its justice is its solidity. If it wants to be but just, it will not even be just. It must be holy and divine, founded by Ilim who alone can found. It will be divine, if, instead of jealously shutting its gates, it rally all who are tlse children of God, the least, the most humble (woe unto him who will be ashamed of his brethren !). Let all, without distinction of class or classification, weak or strong, simple or wise, bring here their wisdom or their instinct. Those impotent, those incapable niiscrahUci pcmoiKP, who can do nothing for themselves, can do much for us. They have in them a mystery of unknown power, a hidden fecundity, living fountains in the depths of their nature, 'i he City, in calling them, calls life, which can alone renew it. I 4 120 ENTRANCE INTO THE CITY OF RIGHT. Then, may man have liere with man, and man with nature, after this long divorce, a happy reconciliation ! may every species of pride cease, and may the City of protection extend from heaven to the lowest abyss, vast as the bosom of God ! For my part, I protest, that if there remains any one behind whom it still rejects and does not shelter with its right, I will not enter, but remain on the threshold. 121 PART III. ENFRANCHISEMENT BY LOVE. OUK NATIVE COUNTRY. CHAVTER I. KRIKNDSHIP. It is a grand glory for our old conimuncs of France to have been the first to have found the true name of our native land. In their simplicity, full of good sense and profound feeling, they called it yriendshij).* Our country is, indeed, the great friendship -which contains all the others. I love France, because she is PVance, and also because she is the country of those whom I love and have loved. Our country, the great friendship, in which all our attachments centre, is at first revealed to us by them ; then, in her turn, she generalises, extends, and ennobles them. The friend becomes a whole people. Our individual friendships are like the first steps in that great initiation, stations through which the soul passes, and mounts by degrees, to know and love herself in that better, more disinterested, and more exalted soul, which is called Patria. I say disinterested, because wherever it is strong it causes us to love one another, in spite of the clashing of interests, difference of conditions, and inequality. Poor and rich, great and small, we are all exalted by it above the petty feelings of envy. It is truly la yrunde umitir, because it renders us heroic. They who are united in it, are firmly united ; their attachment will last as long as the country. Nay, it is nowhere more indestructible than in their im- mortal souls. Though it had ended in tlie world and in history, and become entombed in the bosom of the globe, it would survive as friend.sliip. * The nativp land (la jmtrie) was then only in the camivvne. They said the Awili(' of Lille, the Amitic'^iti Aire, &c. See Michelet's "llistoire de France," v. ,315. 122 MAN IS BORN THE FRIEND OF MAN. It would seem, from the language of our philosophers, that man is such an unsociable being, tliat it would require much trouble, and all the efforts of art and meditation, to invent the ingenious machine that should bring man and man together. But, for my part, I per- ceive, at a mere glance, that even from his very birth he is a sociable being. Before he has his eyes open, he loves society ; he weeps as soon as ever he is left alone. How can we be surprised at this? On the day we call his first day, he quits a society, already become very old, and so agreeable ! He began by it ; and when nine months old, he must forsake it, enter solitude, and seek, groping, whether he can find again a shadow of the dear union he had, but which he has lost. He loves his nurse and his mother, and but little distinguishes them from himself. But what is his delight, when, for the first time, he sees another, a child of his own age, who is himself, yet not himself ! Scarcely will he know any thing like that moment again in the most lively transports of love. His family, his nurse, even his mother, for some time, all give way before the comrade — he has made him forget every thing. It is there we must see how little inequality, that stumbling-block of politicians, embarrasses nature. She amuses herself, on the con- trary, in all the relations of the heart, to sport with the differences, the inequalities, which would seem likely to create insurmountable obstacles to union. "W^oman^ for instance, loves man just because he is stronger. The child loves his friend, often because he is superior. Inequality pleases them as an opportunity for devotedness, as emula- tion, as a hope of equality. The dearest wish of love is to make one's self an equal ; its fear is to remain superior, to preserve an advantage that the other has not. It is the singular character of the beautiful friendships of child- hood, that inequality powerfully promotes them. It must exist, to give rise to aspiration, exchange, and reciprocity. Observe those children : what makes their friendship delightful to them is, in the analogy of character and habit, an inequality of mind and culture ; the weaker follows the strong, without either servility or envy ; he listens to him with rapture, and follows him with joy. Friendship, whatever be said to the contrary, is, still more than love, a means of progress. Love is, like friendship, doubtless an initiation ; but it cannot create any emulation between tliose whom it unites ; lovers differ in sex and in nature ; the least advanced of the two cannot change much, in order to resemble the other ; the effort of mutual assimilation stops short very early. The spirit of rivalry, which awakes so early among little girls, begins late among boys. It requires the school, the college, all the LOVE MAKES THE LAST FIRST. 123 efforts of the master, to rouse those sad passions. Man, in this respect, is born generous, heroic. He must be taught envy, he does not know it of himself. Ah ! how right he is, and how much he gains by it ! Love does not calculate, cannot measure. It does not set about calculating a mathematical and rigorous equality, which is never attained. It prefers much more to go beyond it. It creates, for the most part, in opposition to the inequality of nature, an inequality in a totally opposite direction. Between man and woman, for instance, it causes the stronger to wish to be the servant of the weaker. In the progress of the family, when the child is born, the privilege descends to this new comer. The inequality of nature favoured the stronger, the father ; the inequality substituted by love favours the weaker, the weakest, and makes the last first. Such is the beauty of the natural family. And the beauty of the artificial family is, to favour the elected son, the son of the will, dearer than those of nature. The ideal of the City that it ought to pursue, is the adoption of the weak by the strong — inequality for the advantage of the least. Aristotle says very well in opposition to Plato : — " The City is composed, not of similar, but of dissimilar men." To which I add : — " Dissimilar, but harmonised by love, made more and more like." Democracy is love in the City, and initiation. The initiation of patronage, Roman or feudal, was artificial, and the creature of circumstances.* It is to the invariable and natural relations of man that we must return. What are those relations.'' Do not search very far for them. Only consider man before he is enslaved by passion, crushed by a harsh education, and soured by rivalry. Take him before love, before envy. What do you find in him ? Something that is the most natural of all others, the first (ah! and may it also be the last !) — friendship. I shall soon be an old man. I have, besides mine own age, the weight of two or three thousand years which history has heaped * Ancient and feudal patronage will not, must not, retui'n. We feel we am equals. Character, moreover, and originality lo^t immensely in those relations of strict dependency in which man had ever his eyes fixed on man, became his shadow, his poor copy. The long common table at which the baron sat, near the fire, and which, from the chaplain, the seneschal, and the other vassals, reached as far as the door, where the little kitchen-boy, standing to serve, used to cat, — this table was a school in which imitatiun descended through all ranks : each ' tudicd and copied liis neighbour of a superior rank. Their sen- timents were not always servile, but their minds were so. This servility of imitiition is doubtless one of the causes which retarded the middle ages and kept them so long sterile. 124 EARLY FRIENDSHIPS. upon me ; so many events, passions^ and different reminiscences, in which my life and that cf the world enter pell-mell. Well ! among these great innumerable things, these poignant sufferings, one pre- dominates, triumphs, ever young, fresh, and flourisliing, — my first friendship. It was, I remember it well (much better than my thoughts of yesterday), an immense insatiable desire of communications, con- fidence, and mutual revelations. Neither talk nor paper could suffice. After the longest walks, we escorted, and re-escorted, each other home. "What a joy it was, when day returned, to have so much to say ! I started early, in my full strength and liberty, im- patient to talk, to resume the conversation, and confide so many things. " AVhat secrets ? What mysteries ? " Why, some his- torical fact, perhaps, some verse of Virgil, that I had just learned. How often did I mistake the hour ! At four or five o'clock in the morning I went and knocked, got the door opened, and awoke my friend. How shall I describe, in words, the light and vivid dawn of those mornings in which every thing was brilliant and on the wing ? My existence seemed to fly ; I have still the impression of it, mingling wiih the morning and the spring ; 1 felt I lived in the dawn. An age to be regretted, a true paradise on earth, knowing neither hatred, contempt, nor baseness, when difference of rank is so wholly unknown, when society is still truly human, truly divine. All that passes quick. Different interests arise, and opposition, and rivalry. And yet something of it would still remain, if education strove to unite men as much as it does to separate them. If the two classes of children, the poor and the rich, had only been sitting on the benches of the same school, if, connected by friendship, though separated by careers, they saw each other often, they would do more good between them than all the politicians, all the moral lessons in the world. They would preserve, in their disinterested innocent friendship, the sacred bond of the City. The rich man would know life, inequality, and would sigh at it; all his endeavours would bo to share with his poor friend. The poor man would show a great heart, and console him for being rich. How can we live, without knowing life ? Now, it is only known on one condition : to suffer, work, and be poor ; or else, to make one's self poor in sympathy and heart, and willingly participate in toil and suffering. What should a rich man know, with all tlie science in the world? The very circumstance of his living an easy life causes him to be ignorant of its great and profound realities. Never investigating deeply, or with energy, he runs, and glides along, as on the ice ; lie FRIENDSHIPS BETWEEN RICH AND POOR. 125 never penetrates, always remains on the surface ; in that rapid ex- ternal and superficial existence, he will reach the goal to-morrow, and will depart just as ignorant as he came. What he lacked was, a solid resting place, on which he might lean with his soul, and dive deep into life and knowledge. In direct opposition to the rich man, the poor man is fixed on an obscure spot, without seeing either sky or land. What he lacks, is the power to rise, breathe, and behold the sky. Riveted to this place by fatality, it would be necessary for him to expand, to generalise his existence, and even his sufferings, live away from this spot where he suflTers, and since he has an infinite soul, give it infinite expansion. He is wholly without tlie means ; the laws will do but little ; it must be friendship. The man of leisure, culture, and reflection, must restore this captive soul to its relations to the world ; change it ? No, but help it to be itself, and remove the obstacle that prevented it from unfolding its wings. All that would become easy, if each of the two comprehended that he will find his enfranchisement only in the other. The man of science and culture, in these days, the slave of abstractions and formulas, will recover his liberty only by contact v.-ith the man of instinct. His youth and his life, that he expects to renew by foreign travel, are there, near him, in that which is social youth, I mean in the people. The latter, on the other hand, for whom ignorance and solitude are like a prison, will extend his horizon, and find his pure air again, if he accept the comnmnication of science ; if, instead of calumniating it through envy, he respect the accumulation of the works of humanity, all the efforts of the men before him. This assistance, this vigorous and important mutual culture, which they will find in each other, implies, I confess, a genuine mag- nanimity in both. We summon them to heroism. What appeal more worthy of man ? more natural also, as soon as he returns to himself and recovers, by the grace of God? The heroism of the poor man is to sacrifice envy ; it is to be him- self sufficiently above his own poverty, not even to wish to inquire Avhether riches are well or ill acquired. The heroism of the rich is in knowing the rights of tlie poor man, to love him, and go to him. '•' Heroism ! ^\'hy, is not this the most simple duty? " Doubt- less ; but it is precisely because it is a duty, that the heart keeps shut. Sad infirmity of our nature; we scarcely love any one, but him to whom we owe nothing, the abandoned, inoffensive being, who holds up no right against us. The heart must expand on both sides. They have taken de- mocracy by right and duty, by the law. — and they have had but the dead law. Oh, let us take it again by grace ! 126 GENERALS OF THE REVOLUTION. You say, " What does it signify to us ? We will make such such wise laws, so artificially drawn up and arranged, that people will have no need to love." To wish to have wise laws, and to obey them, you must first love. "How love? Do you not see the insurmountable barriers that interest raises between us ? Amid the overwhelming competition in which we are struggling, can we indeed be simple enough to help our rivals, or lend a hand to-day to those who will be our rivals to- morrow ?" Sad confession ! What ! for a little money, for some miserable place that you will soon lose, you give up the treasure of man, all that is good and great within him, — friendship, your native country, the genuine life of the heart ? ' Alas, miserable man ! so near, yet so far from the Revolution ! have you then so soon forgotten that the foremost men in all the world, those young generals, in their awful energy, their furious rushing to an immortal death, which they all disputed with one another, — as desperate rivals of that lovely mistress, Victory, who inflames hearts with the keenest love, — that they felt no jealousy ? That glorious letter will remain for ever by which the Conqueror of La Vendee shielded, with all his virtue and his popularity, the man who was already to be dreaded*, the Conqueror of Areola, and became security for him. O noble period ! and you, great men, true conquerors, to whom every thing must of necessity yield ! you have conquered envy as easily as you subdued the world ! Noble souls, wherever you be, give us, for our salvation, a breath of your spirit ! * It is known that Bonaparte had become suspected, while acting as lord and arbiter of Italy, granting or refusing, without consulting any body, armistices which decided peace or war, sending directly funds to the army of the Rhine, without the intervention of the treasury, kc. A report was spread that he was to be arrested in the midst of his army. Hoche, to justify him, wrote to the Minister of Police a letter that was made public. Therein he lays to the charge of the Royalists the reports that were circulated: — "Why is Bonaparte the object of the fury of those gentlemen ? Is it because he defeated them in Vendemiaire ? — Is it because he disbands the armies of the kings, and fur- nishes the Republic the means of ending gloriously this war ? Ah ! brave youth, where is the republican soldier that does not burn to imitate thee ? Courage, Bonaparte, lead our victorious armies to Naples, to Vienna ; reply to thy personal enemies by humbling kings, by giving a new lustre to our arms, and leave us the care of thy glory." 127 CHAPTER II. LOVE AND MARRIAGE. One must have very little feeling for the importance of such a subject, to undertake to treat it in a few pages. I shall content my- self with making a single observation^ essential in the state of our manners. Indifferent as we are to our country and the world, being neither citizens nor philanthropists, we have barely but one thing by which we pretend to escape from egotism : this is the family tie. To be a good father of a family is a merit to be displayed, and often very profitably. Well ! we must confess it:' — in the upper classes, the family is dangerously ill. If things went on so, family would be an impossi- bility. Men have been accused, and not without reason. I myself have spoken elsewhere of their materialism, of their harshness, and the egregious awkwardness with which they lose the ascendancy of the first days.* However, it must be confessed, the fault is especially with the women, — I mean the mothers. The education that they give, or allow to be given, to their daughters, has made marriage an intolerable burden. AV'hat we see reminds us but too much of the latter ages of the Roman empire. The women having become heiresses, knowing they were rich, and patronising their husbands, rendered the con- dition of the latter so miserable, that no pecuniary advantage, no legal right could prevail on men to submit to the degrading servitude. They preferred flying to the desert. The Thebaid became inhabited. The legislator, afraid of depopulation, was obliged to favour and regulate inferior attachments, the only ones accepted by man. It would be, perhaps, the same in these days, if our society, more mer- cantile than that of the Roman empire, did not speculate upon mar- riage. Modern man accepts through cupidity, or necessity, the chances which disgusted the Romans. Unsafe speculation ! The * See Michelct's "Priests, Women, and Families." Longman and Co., London, lb45. 128 MARUYlNGr AN INFERIOR WOMAN. young wife knows she brings much ; but she has not in the least learned the value of money, and spends still more. If I considered recent events, and the overthrow of fortunes, I should be inclined to ■ say, " If you want to ruin yourself, marry a rich woman." I know all the inconveniences in choosing a woman of inferior condition and education. The first is, we isolate ourselves, leave our circle, and lose our position in society. Another is, that we do not marry the woman alone, but her family, whose habits are often coarse. This woman we certainly hope to raise, to make her as our- selves and for ourselves ; but it often happens, that with a happy instinct and some docility, she is not capable of being raised. The tardy education that they attempt to give to the vigorous, harder, and less pliant races of tlie people, has seldom any hold upon them. These inconveniences being acknowledged, I am not less obliged to return to one far more serious inconvenience, — that of the bril- liant marriages of the present day. It consists simply in this, that life is there an hupossihilitij. This life consists in commencing every evening, after the day's work, a still more fatiguing task of amusements and pleasures. There is nothing like this in the other countries of Europe, and no- thing like this among the people ; the Frenchman of the richer classes is the only man in the world who never reposes. This is, perhaps, the principle reason why our enrirhis, our bourgeois, a class created but yesterday, is already worn out. In this working age, in which time is of an incalculable value, serious productive men who want results, cannot accept, as a con- dition of marriage, so enormous an expenditure of life. The night, thus employed in promenading a woman, prematurely destroys the morrow. j\Ian wants at night his home and repose. He returns full of cares ; he ought to be able to collect his scattered thoughts, and confide his ideas, his plans, his anxieties, the struggles of the day, — to have a home where he may pour out his heart. He finds a woman who has done nothing, who hastens to put forth her strength, ready decked out, and impatient. 'Wliat means has he of speaking to her ? " Very well, sir ; it isjate, we shall not be in time. You will tell me that to-morrow." Let him go, if he will not confide her to the care of some elderly lady, her friend; who, too often a depraved malevolent mischief-maker, will find no pleasure greater than to set the young wife against her tyrant, compromise her, and launch her into the saddest follies. No, he cannot leave her with such a guide. He will conduct her himself; he starts ofF. With what envy he sees the workman return late home ! The latter, it is true, has tired WHAT IS LOST IX ABANDONING THE POOR GIRL. 129 himself out during the day, but he is about to find repose, a home, a family, and. Lastly, shmiber, that legitimate happiness wliich God gives him every evening. His wife expects liim ; she counts the minutes : the cloth is laid ; the mother and child are watching foi- his coming. If that man be worth any thing, she puts her vanity in him ; she admires and reveres him. And how careful she is ! I see her, without his perceiving it, keeping the smallest portion of their scanty meal for herself: I see her reserving for the husband, who works harder, the wholesome food that will recruit his strength. He retires to rest ; she puts the children to bed, and then remains up to work till very late at night. Early in the morning, long before he opens his eyes, she is up ; every thing is ready, — the •warm food he takes, and that which he carries Avith him. He departs, his heart satisfied, very easy about what he leaves, after kissing his wife and Ids sleeping children. I have said it, and will say it again, — happiness is there. She perceives that she is supported by liim, and she is happy ; he works so much the better, as he knows he works for her., Such is true marriage. Monotonous happiness, some will say. No ; the child gives it variety. If the supreme spark were added, if the workman, with a little security and leisure, had but moments of a higher life, if he took woman as a partner in them, and nourished lier with his own spirit It would be too much: we should only pray to heaven for an eternity like the life on earth. Sad victim of cupidity, you might liave had that happiness ; but you have sacrificed it. The humble girl that you loved, who loved you, but whom you have forsaken — you may well regret her now ! AV'as it wise (I speak not of honour or humanity) to crush the poor creature, and to crush your own heart, in order to espouse slavery ? The money you sought will slip away of itself, — it will not remain in your hands. The children of this union without love, conceived in calculation, will bear their sad origin on tlieir brow ; their dis- cordant existence will bear witness to the inward divorce that this marriage contained ; they will not have the heart to live. ^^'as then the difference so great between those two girls ? Both, after all, are of the people. The rich.er one has i'or i'er father a workman wlio has become v^ealthy. Between tlie true, unadulterated people, and the hourgrois and spurious classes, there is no gulf fixed. If our Ijoxq/rois wish to recover from their precocious exhaustion, they will fear less to be urnted to families that are to-day what they themselves were yesterday. Therein is tl.e streiigth, the beauty of the future. Our young men marry late, already worn out, and generally espouse a sickly young lady ; their children die, or remain 130 UTILITY OF THE MIXTURE OF RACES. sickly. In the second or third generation, our bourgeois will be as puny as our nobles were before the Revolution.* And not only are bodily endowments failing, but the moral faculty is also declining. How are we to expect a series of works, serious business, or any grand invention, from a man who, having sold him- self to a marriage for money, is the slave of a woman, of a family, obliged to parade himself out, and cast his time and his life to the four winds.? Imagine what must become of a nation in which the governing classes consume themselves in vain words and empty agitation. For life to be fruitful, there must be tranquillity of mind, and the repose of the heart. A remarkable fact of our time is, that the women of the people (who are by no means coarse, like the men, and who feel the want of delicacy and distinction), listen to men above them with a con- fidence that they did not at all possess before. They saw the no- bility as an insurmountable barrier to love ; but riches do not appear to them a separation of classes f ; it is reckoned so little when one loves ! Touching confidence of the people, who, in their better, most amiable, and most tender part, thus draw nearer to the upper ranks, and bring with them vigour, beauty, and moral grace ! Ah ! woe to those who deceive them ! If they are inaccessible to remorse, they will at least suffer regret, in the reflection that they have lost what is worth all the treasures of the world, heaven and earth, — to be beloved ! * As M. dc Maistre tells them so well in his " Considerations siir la Revo- lution." \ An observation of Pierre Leroux, as judicious as it is ingenious and pro- found. How many things must be added ! "What a sad side of our morals ! I am especially grieved to see the family, — the mother ! — urge the youth to treachery. And was it not from that mother that the young deceived girl was to hope for protection ? Ought not a pious woman to have bowels of compas- sion, a heart of infinite goodness for that poor child, who, after all, (what does it matter before God if the proud world murmurs at it ? ) is become her own ? What regard are women to expect from us, if they do not protect one another ? They have a mystery in common, which ought to bind them much stronger than men can be bound, the mystery of maternity, which is that of life and death, that which mal', that is to say, on devotedness and sacrifice, has nothing to do with the doctrine of attraction passionyielle. I nevertiieless seize this op- lK)rtunity to cxpre>s my admiration for so many Inc-enious, profound, and some- times very practical views, my tender admiration for a misinterpreted genius, whose whole life was occupied with the happiness of mankind. I shall one day speak of him as my heart shall dictate. What a singular contrast docs his boa-t of materialism exhibit to his self-denyinir, disinterested, and si)iritual life ! This contrast has very recently re-appeared, for the glory of his disciples. Whilst the friends of virtue and religion, their necessary defenders, those born conservatives of i)ublic morality, were enlisting clandestinely in the hand of those who jilay a -afe game ; the disciples of Fourier, who sjjcak only of interest, money, and enjoyments, have trodden interest under foot, and smitten cou- rageously theHaal of the Fxchange. The liaal ! No, the ISIoloch, the idol that was devouring men. K 2 132 NO MORE ASSOCIATIONS IN THANCE. risk and the profit. Each brings his milk to the common cheese, and shares proportionally in the sale. This collective economy re- quires no moral union ; it puts egotism at its ease, and is reconcile- able with all the hard-heartedness of individualism. It does not seem to me to deserve the charming name of association. That of the fisherman of Xormandy eminently deserves this title; it is moral and social quite as much as economical. AFhat is it at bottom ? A young, serious, honest girl, who, out of her work, her nightly task, and her savings, enters into partnership with young men, stakes her fortune on their bark, before she stakes her heart ; she has a right to know, to choose, and to love the skilful, lucky fisherman. There is an association truly worthy of that name; far from removing from the natural association of the family, it pre- pares the tie — and by so doing is profitable to the grand association, that of our native country. Here my heart fails me, and my pen stands still. I must confess that the country and the family profit but little by it now. Those net-associations will soon exist only in history ; they are already suc- ceeded, in many parts of the coast, by that which takes the place of every thing — the bank and usury. You noble race of Norman mariners ! who were the first to dis- cover America, who founded the colonies of Africa, conquered the tv.'O Sicilies, and England I shall I then no longer find you, save in the tapestry of Bayeux ? "Who is not pierced to the heart, in pass- ing from our cliff's to the Downs, from our languishing coasts to those opposite so teeming with life, from the indolence of Cher- bourg* to the burning and teriible activitv of Portsmouth ? "What care I if Havre is filled v,ith Americ;in vessels, with a transit-trade Avhich is made by France, without Erance, and sometimes against her ? Heavy malediction ! A truly severe purn's'iment for our insocia- bility ! Our economists declare that there is nothing to be dcme for free association. Our academies efface the word from their lists of competition prizes. This name is that of a crime, punishable by our penal laws. One single association remains lawful, the in- creasing intimacy between Saint (Jloud and ^V'indsor. Commerce has form.ed a few societies, but for war, to absorb the minor trades, and destroy small tradespeople. It has done much harm, and gained but little. The large joint-stock companies, created in this expectation, have had little success. They are not advancing ; as soon as a new cne is formed, the others suffer and decay. Several * ^Maritime indolence ; Imt inasons are not wantina: there any more than elsewhere. An engineer is engaccd with headable activity in completing the dike. AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS NOW DISSOLVING. 133 have already fallen^ and those which subsist have no tendency to increase. In country places, I see our very ancient agricultural communities of Morvan, lierri, and Picardy, gradually dissolving, and calling on the tribunals to finish the business. They had lasted for ages ; several had been prosperous. Those convents of married labourers which united in one bond a score of families, related to each other, under the self-same roof, and under the direction of a chief, whom they elected, possessed however, beyond all doubt, great economical advantages.* If from these peasants I pass on to the most cultivated minds, I see scarcely any spirit of association in literature. The men the most naturally brought together by their pursuits and mutual esteem and admiration, nevertheless live apart. The relationship of genius itself is of little use in bringing hearts together. I know here four or five men who are certainly the aristocracy of mankind, and who have no peers or judges but themselves. These men, who will live for ever, would, had they been separated by centuries, have bitterly regretted not having known each other. They are living at the same time, in tiic same city, next door to, but never see, one another. In one of my pilgrimages to Lyons, I visited some weavers, and, according to my custom, inquired about their evils and the remedy. I asked them especially whether they could not, whatever might be their difference of opinions, associate for certain material economic purposes. One of them, a man full of good sense and of a high moral character, who perceived well how heartily, and with what good intention I was making my inquiry, allowed me to continue it further than I had yet done. '' The evil," said he at once, " is the partiality of the Government for manufactures." " And what next ? " " Their monopoly, their tyranny, their unreasonableness." " Is that all ?" lie was silent for a minute or two, and then with a sigh uttered these important words: " There is another evil, sir, — we are uti-sociahle." Those words pierced me to the heart, and fell upon me like a seii- tence of death. How many reasons had I to suppose this was just and true! How many times it recurred to me! " ^Vhat!" said I to myself, " is France, that country renowned beyond all others for the eminently sociable agreeableness of its manners and of its genius, immutably divided, and for ever ! If it be so, have we any * But secmint;Iy they were too irksome to the two sentiments wliich cha- racterise our ;i;;e, — the love of per^onul proiierty, anil that of the family. Read a very curious jiamphUt by M. Duiiiu, Sen. — J^vciirsion dans la Nievre, I '•40. — See also )iiy " Oriuines tie Droit," on cullaburutio, the jMimoiuikni, the i/iaiiteau, vivrc u un pain et uii pot, &c. K 3 134 THE PRETENSION TO EQUALITY chance left of living, and are we not already dead even before death ? Is the soul dead within us ? Are we worse than our fathers, whose pious associations are incessantly being lauded?* And is love, is brotherhood for ever at an end in this world ? " In such sombre thoughts, resolved, like a dying man, to feel well whether I was dying, I considered seriously not the highest, nor the lowest, but one man, neither good nor bad, a man in whom several classes are represented, who has seen and suffered, and who, certainly in spirit and in heart, bears within himself the thought of the people. That man, who is no other than myself, though living alone and in voluntary seclusion, has nevertheless remained sociable and sympathetic. There are also many others in the same predicament. An im- mutable, unalterable fund of sociability sleeps here in the depth of society. It remains wholly treasured up ; I perceive it everywhere among the masses when I descend into them, when I listen and ob- serve. But how can we wonder if this instinct of easy sociability, so discouraged of late, has shut itself up and retired ? After being de- ceived by different parties, speculated upon by commercial people, and treated with suspicion by the Government, it no longer either stirs or acts. All the powers of society seem turned against the sociable instinct ! To unite stones and disunite men is all they know. Patronage by no means makes good in this case what is wanting to the spirit of association. The recent appearance of the idea of equality has stifled (for a time) the idea that had preceded it, — that of benevolent protection, adoption, and fraternity. The rich man has sternly said to the poor one : " You claim equality, and the rank of brother? Well, be it so ! But, from this moment, you shall get no assistance from me ; God imposed upon me the duties of a father ; by claiming equality, you yourself have absolved me from them.f * Nece^isity alone, with its iron chains, had bound together the ancient bar- barous associations (see in my " Origines," the terrible forms of blood, drunk or shed — underground, &c. ) — necessity, I say, ;ind the certainty of perishing, if people remained disunited. In monastic associations, friendship is strictly forbidden, as a theft committed against God (see my " Histoire de France," vol. V. p. 12. note). The bariiarity of the compfupwnage. and its o\\n attempt at reformation (see A. Perdiquier), teach us veil enough what were the com- mercial associations of the middle ages. Brotherhoods, originating in danger and prayer (so natural to man in peril), certainly hated stranceis more than they loved themselves. The banner of the holy patrons rallied them, and ltd them from the procession to the combat. It was much less brotherhood than a defensive league and jiower, often oflensive too, in the hates and jealousy of trades. j The effort of the world and its salvation will be to recover the harmony of these two ideas. rratcrnity and paternity, two words irreconcilable in the HAS DESTROYED PATRONAGE. 135 Among this people, we run far less chance of being on the wrong scent than with any other. No social comedy, no outward diflPer- ence can create an illusion as to their sociability. They have not the subdued manners of the Germans. They are not like the English, ever with their hats off before all who are rich or noble. If you speak to them, and they answer you civilly and cordially, you may fairly believe that they pay that tribute truly to the person, very little to his position. The Frenchman has passed through many trials — revolution and warfare. Such a man is most assuredly difficult to guide, and diffi- cult in associating. 'Why ? Precisely because, as an individual, he has much valour. You are making men of iron in your war of Africa ; a very per- sonal war, which compels man incessantly to rely only upon himself. No doubt you are right in wishing to have and to form them such, on the eve of the crisis which we must expect in Europe. But, at the same time, be not much surprised if those lions, who have but just returned, retain, even in submitting to the curb of the laws, something of a savage independence. Those men, I warn you, will take to association only through the influence of the heart, through friendship. Do not think that you will yoke them to a negative society in which the soul will have no place, or that they will live together without loving one another, by economy and natural gentleness of character — as, for instance, the German workmen do at Zurich. The co-operative society of the English, who unite perfectly well for any special affiiir, though hating and thwarting one another in some affair in which their interests differ, does not suit our Frenchmen. France must have a society of friends ; it is her commercial disadvantage, but her social superiority, not to admit of any other. Union is effected here neither by weak- ness of character and community of habits, nor by an eagerness of huntsmen who herd together like wolves for a prey. The only union possible here is the union of minds. 'i'here is scarcely any form of association that is not excellent, if this condition exist. The main question, with this sympathetic people, is that of persons and moral characters. " Do the members of the association love and suit one another ? " That is what must always be inquired in the first place.* Societies of workmen will be family, are not so in the least in civil society. It finds, as I have already said, the model which harmonizes them, in the moral society which every man bears within him. See the end of the second part. * In association, the form is doubtless important, but it is only secondarj', K 4 136 THE FRENCHMAN HAS MUCH INDIVIDUALITY: formed, and they will Isrst, if then love one another ; and societies cf master-workmen, who, without chiefs, will live as brothers, but there must be great mutual love. To love is not simply to have feelings of mutual benevolence. The natural attraction of characters and analogous tastes would not suffice. It is necessary to follow one's nature, even heartily ; that is to say, to be ever ready for sacrifice, and that devotedness which immolates nature, ^V'hat would you do in this world without sacrifice ? * It is its very support; without it, the world would presently tumble to pieces. Even with the best instincts, the most upright characters, the most perfect natures (such as are not seen here below) — every thing would perish without this supreme remedy. " Sacrifice one's self to another!" Strange unheard of motto, which will offend the ears of our philosophers. " Sacrifice one's self to whom } To a man whom we know to be wortii less than our- selves ; and lose, for the advantage of this nonentity, an infinite value ! " It is this, in fact, that no one seldom fails to attribute to himself. This is, we do not attempt to disguise it, a real difficulty. People seldom sacrifice themselves for any thing but what they be- lieve to be infinite. For sacrifice, they must have a God, an altar ; a God, in whom men recognise and love one anotlier. How then could we sacrifice ourselves ? We have lost our Gods ! ^\'as the Logos (^Dieu vcrhe), in the form in v.-hich it was con- To re-establish ancient forms, corporations, commerci;'.! tyrannies ; resume shackles in order to walk the better ; undo the work of the Revolution, and destroy inconsiderately what was demanded for so many ages, — appears to me to be madness. On the other hand, to imagine that the State, that does so little of its own, could perform the functions of universal manufacturer and tradesman — what is this but to tni>:t every thing to the functionari/ .' Is this functionary an angel ? When invested with this strange power, will he be less corrupt than the manufacturer or the tradesman ? What is certain is, that he will never have their activity. — As to conmumitij, three words will suffice. Xaiitnd community is a very ancient, barbarous, and unproductive state. Voluntarij community is a fleeting transport, an heroic emotion, Mhich marks a new faith, and which soon declines, /o/'cet/ community, imposed by violence, is a thing iiniiossible at a period when property is equally divided, and nowhere more impossible than in France. To return to the possible fonns of associa- tion, I think they ought to differ according to the different professions, which, more or less complicated, require more or less unity of direction ; and also according to the different countries, and to the diversity of national genius. This essential observation, which I shall some day develope, might be supported by an immense number of facts. * No period has exhibited such famous examples. In what age were such great armies, so many millions of men, ever seen to suffer and die, without revolt, meekly, and in silence ? HE MUST HAVE A SOCIETY OF SOULS. 137 sidered by the middle ageSj this necessary tie ? Universal history is ready here to answer. No. The middle ages promised union, and gave only war. It was necessary that (Jod should have a second l)eriod, and appear upon earth in his incarnation of '8.9. He then gave to ai-sociation its form, at once the most vast and most true, tliat which still alone can unite us, and by us save the world. O France ! glorious mother ! you who are not only ours, but who are destined to restore every nation to liberty, teach us to love one anotlier in you ! 138 CHAPTER IV. OUR COUNTRY. ARE NATIOXALITIES ABOUT TO DISAPPEAR? National antipathies have diminished, the law of nations has be- come more humane, we have entered upon an era of benevolence and brotherhood, if we but compare our own times with the malevolent period of the middle ages. Nations have already become somewhat amalgamated by interests, and mutually copied their fashions and. their literature. Are we thence to infer that nationalities are on the decline ? Let us inquire carefully. One thing is most assuredly on the decline in every nation — intestine dissent. Our French provincialities are rapidly disappear- ing. Scotland and "Wales have joined the British unity. Germany is seeking for hers, and fancies herself ready to sacrifice to it a long list of conflicting interests, which have hitherto kept her divided. This sacrifice of the different intestine nationalities to the great nationality which contains them, beyond all doubt, strengthens the latter. It effaces, perhaps, the striking picturesque particulars, which characterised a people in the eyes of the superficial observer ; but it strengthens their genius, and permits them to display it. It is at the moment when France has suppressed in her bosom each conflict- ing France, that she has given her high and original revelation. She found she was herself, and, whilst proclaiming the future common rights of the world, she distinguished herself from the world more than she had ever done before. We may say as much of England : with her machinery, her vessels, and her fifteen millions of workmen, she differs at present from all other nations much more than in the time of Elizabeth. Germany, who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was groping about to find herself, has at length discovered herself in Goethe, Schelling, and Beethoven ; it is only since that period that she has been able to aspire earnestly after unity. So far are nationalities from disappearing, that I see them every day morally characterising themselves ; and, from being what they were, collections of men, becoming individuals. It is the natural progress of life. Every man, at his origin, feels his genius con- fusedly ; he seems, in his early years, to be any man ; as he advances, he investigates himself, and goes on characterising himself outwardly ARE NATIONALITIES ABOUT TO DISAPPEAR T 139 by his acts, his works ; he becomes gradually an individual man, leaves class, and deserves a name. The opinion that nationalities are soon about to disappear, can be the result of but two causes: — First, an ignorance of history, an acquaintance with it only by shallow formulas, like the philosophers who never study it, or else by literary commonplaces, to prattle about it, like the women. They who know it thus, see it in the past like a small obscure point, which they may blot out if they will. Secondly, this is not all ; we must also be as ignorant of nature as of history, forget that national characteristics are not at all derived from our caprices, but are profoundly based upon the influence of climate, food, and the natural productions of a country ; that, though they may become somewliat modified, they are never effaced. Those who are not thus bound, either by physiology or history, and who constitute humanity without inquiring about either man or nature, may, at their leisure, efface every frontier, fill up rivers, and level mountains. I warn them, however, that the nations will still sub- sist, unless they intend to eradicate cities, the great centres of civili- sation, where nationalities have summed up their genius. We said towards the end of the second part of this book, that if God has placed anywhere the type of the political City, it was, ac- cording to every appearance, in the moral City, — I mean in the soul of man. Well! what does this soul do first? It takes up a fixed position, meditates there, forms for itself a body, a dwelling-place, a train of ideas. And then it can act. In the same manner, the soul of a people ought to make for itself a central point of organism ; it should seat itself on one spot, collect itself, meditate, and harmonise itself with some nature or other : the seven hills, for instai.ce, for that little Rome ; or, for our France, the Ocean, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, for those are our seven hills. It is a power for every life to circumscribe itself, to carve for one's self a share of time and space, to feed on something of our own, in the midst of indifferent and dissolving nature, tliat would wish ever to confound. This is existence — tliis is to live ! A mind fixed upon one point will go on fathoming itself. A mind floating in space, dissolves and fades away. Behold the man who shares his love vith many : he dies without having known love; let him love but once, and long, and he finds in one passion the infinity of nature and all the progress of the world.* * The native land (or motherland as the Dorians so appropriately termed it) is the love of loves. She appears to us in our dreams as a ) oung adored mother, or a powerful nurse who suckles us by millions. A poor image ! Kot only does she nourish us, but she contains us within herself : in, ed movtmnr et sumus. 140 THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE WANTS A BODY, A PLACE. The Patria, the City, far from being opposed to nature, are for that soul of the people which dwells therein, the single and all- powerful means of realising its nature, giving it, at once, the vital starting-point and the liberty of development. Imagine the Athenian genius, without Athens; it floats, wanders, is lost, and dies un- known. But set in the narrow but happy frame of such a city, built on that exquisite land, where the bee gathered the honey of Sophocles and Plato, the mighty genius of Athens has made as much of an imperceptible city, in two or three centuries, as twelve nations of the middle ages in a thousand years. The most powerful means employed by God to create and aug- ment distinctive originality, is to maintain the world harmoniously divided into those grand and beautiful systems which we call nations, each of which opening to man a different field of action, is a living education. * The more man advances, the more he enters into the spirit of his country, and the better he contributes to the harmony of tlie globe ; he learns to know his native country, both in its positive and in its relative value, as a note in the grand concert ; by it, he participates therein ; and in it, he loves the world. One's native country forms the necessary initiation to the country of all mankind. . Union is thus always advancing without any danger of ever at- taining unity, since every nation, at every step it takes towards concord +, is more original in itself. If, by an impossibility, diver- sities were to cease, if unity were established, every nation singing the same note, the concert would be at an end ; harmony in con- fusion would be nothing but an unmeaning sound. The world, monotonous and barbarous, might then perish without even causing a regret. * Every thing tends to this education. No object of art, no br.inch of in- dustry, even of luxuiy, no form of exalted culture is \vithout action upon the mass, without influence upon the lowest, — the poorest. In this great body of a nation, spiritual circulation goes on, insensibly descendhig and ascend- ing, to and from the highest and the lowest. One idea enters by the eyes (fashions, shops, museums, kc). another by conversation, by language, which is the grand depot of general advancement. All receive the mind of all, without perhaps analysing it ; but at all events they receive it. f In proportion as a nation enters upon the possession of its own genius, and reveals and establishes it by works, it needs less and less to oppose it by war to that of other nations. Its originality, every day better secured, shines forth in prodnction more than in opposition. National diversity, which manifested itself violently by war, displays itself still better when each nation lets its grand voice be heard distinctly : all used to shout in the self-same note ; now each sings its own part ; there is gradually a concert — harmony ; the world be- comes a lyre. But at what price is this harmony obtained ? At the price of diversity. KO NATION WILL PERISH. 141 Nothing will perish, I am sure of it, neither the soul of man, nor of the people : we are in too good hands. On the contrary, -we shall go on ever livin;^; more, that is to say, strengthening our in- dividuality, and acquiring more powerful and more productive originalities. God preserve us from losing our personal identity in Him ! and if no soul perishes, how could those great souls of nations, with their vivid genius, their history rich in ''martyrs, abounding with heroic sacrifices, and brimful of immortality, ever perish ? When one of them is momentarily eclipsed, the whole world is sick in all its nations, and the world of the heart in its fibres which respond to nations. Header, that suffering fibre, which I see in your heart, is Poland and Italy.* Nationality, the fatherland, is ever the life of the Avorld : it dead, all would be dead. Ask rather the people; they feel it, and will tell you. Ask science, history, and the experience of mankind. Those two grand voices are in unison. Two voices.'' No, — two realities, — what is and what Avas, opposed to empty abstraction. Upon this point I set my heart and history; I was firm upon that rock, and wanted nobody to confirm my faith. But I have been in crowds, I have questioned the people, both young and old, small and great. I have heard them all give testimony for their native country. That is the living fibre which dies last in them. I have found it in the dead. I have been into those cemeteries called prisons, hagnes, and there I have opened the hearts of men ; well, then, in these dead men, where the breast was empty, guess what I found, — France, once more ! the last spark by which, perhaps, they might have been resuscitated. Say not, I beseech you, that it is nothing at all to be born in the country surrounded by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the Ocean. Take the poorest man, starving in rags, him whom you supi)ose to be occupied solely with material wants. He will tell you it is an inheritance of itself to participate in this immense glory, this unique legend which constitutes the talk of the world. He well knows that if he were to go to the most remote desert of the globe, imder the equator or the ])oles, he would find Napoleon, our armies, cur grand historv, to shelter and protect him ; tliat the children would come to him, that the old men would hold their peace and entreat him to speak, and that to hear him only mention those names, tliey would kiss the hem of liis garment. For our pirt, whatever happens to us, poor or rich, ha])py or imhappy, while on this side the grave, we will ever thank (iod for * Sutrcrinir, and nov.- mute at the College of France, in the voice it still had in our dear and great Miekiewicz. 142 WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF FRANCE PERISHED. having given us this great France for our native land. And that^ not only on account of the many glorious deeds she has performed, but because in her we find especially at once the representative of the liberties of the world, and the country that links all others together by sympathetic ties, the initiation to universal love. This last feature is so strong in France, that she has often forgotten herself. We must, at present, remind her of herself, and beseech her to love all the nations less than herself. Doubtless, every great nation represents an idea important to the human race. But, gracious Heaven ! how much more true is this of France ! Suppose for a moment that she were eclipsed, at an end, the sympathetic bond of the world would be loosened, dissolved, and probably destroyed. Love, that constitutes the life of the world, would be wounded in its most vital part. The earth would enter into the frozen age where other worlds close at hand have already landed. I had, on this very subject, a horrible dream in broad daylight, which I am forced to relate. I was in Dublin, near a bridge, and walking along the quay, looking at the river, which was ghding along, sluggish and narrow, between wide sandy strands, very much as we see ours at the quai des Orfevres : — I thought 1 was by the Seine. The very quays were similar, Avithout, however, the rich shops, the monuments, Tuileries, the Louvre ; it was almost Paris without Paris. From that bridge were descending a few ill-dressed persons, not, as with us, in blouses, but in old stained coats. They were disputing violently, in a sharp, guttural, and very barbarous tone, with a frightful^ ragged, humpbacked man, whom I still see before my eyes : other persons were passing along, miserable and deformed. As I looked at them, a strange idea took possession of me, terrified me, — that all those figures were Frenchmen. It was Paris — it was France — a France grown ugly, brutal, and savage. I ex- perienced, at that moment, how great is the credulity of terror ; I made no objection. I said to myself that another 1815 must have happened, but long, long ago ; that ages of misery had oppressed my irrevocably doomed country, and that I had returned thither to take my share in that world of suffering. Those ages were crushing me, like a mass of lead ; so many centuries in two minutes ! I re- mained riveted to the spot, unable to stir. ]\Iy fellow-traveller shook me, and then I recollected myself a little ; but I could not quite banish from my mind that terrible dream — I was inconsolable ; as long as I remained in Ireland, it filled me with an overpowering melancholy, which has even now returned to me, with all its vivid- nesSj as I trace these lines. 14S CHAPTER V. The head of one of our economical schools said a few years ago, " What is our native country ?" Their cosmopolite Utopias of material enjoyments seem to me, I confess, a prosaic commentary on the poetry of Horace : — " Rome is tumbling down, let us fly to the fortunate islands;" that sad song of abandonment and despondency. The Christians who come next, with their celestial country and universal brotherhood here below, do not the less give the death- blow to the empire by this beautiful and affecting doctrine. Their brethren of the north soon come and put the rope round their necks. We are not the sons of a slave, without a country and without gods, as was the great poet we have just quoted ; we are not Romans of Tarsus, like the apostle of the Gentiles ; we are the Romans of Rome, and the Frenchmen of France. We are the sons of those who, by the efforts of an heroic nationality, have done the work of the world, and founded, for every nation, the gospel of equality. Our fathers did not comprehend brotherhood in the sense of that vague sympathy which induces one to accept and love every thing which amalgamates, degenerates, and confounds. They be- lieved brotherhood was not the blind amalgamation of existences and characters, but much rather the union of hearts. They preserved for themselves, for France, the originality of devotedness, of sacrifice which no one disputed with them ; and alone, she watered with her blood the tree that she planted. It was a glorious opportunity for the other nations not to leave her thus alone. They did not imitate France in her devotedness ; and do they now want France to imitate them in their egotism, their immoral indifference, and, as she failed in exalting tliem, now to descend to their level .'' Who could see without astonishment the same people that lately raised the beacon of the future towards which the eyes of the world are turned, now walking with downcast look in the road of imita- tion ? AVhat is that road ? We know it but too well; many nations have followed it: it is simply the road to suicide and death. Poor imitators ! so you think that is imitation ? They take from a neighbouring people this or that which among them is a living thing ; they a])propriate it to themselves^ ill or well, in spite of the 144 DANGKR, IN FRANCE IMITATING ENGLAND. repugnance of a frame that was not made for it : but it is a foreign body that you are engrafting in your flesh ; it is an inert lifeless thing ; it is death that you are adopting. U^hat shall Ave say, if this thing is not only foreign and different, but even hostile ? If you will go and seek for it precisely among those whom nature has given you for adversaries, whom she has diametrically opposed to you ? If you ask a renewal of life from that which is the negation of your own life ? If France, for in- stance, proceeding in the direct teeth of her history and her nature, goes and copies what may be called Anti-France — England. Here there is no question of national animosity, or of blind mal volence. We entertain the esteem that we ought for that great British nation ; we have proved it, vrhile studying it, as earnestly as any man of the present day. The result of this study and this very esteem is the conviction that the progress of the world depends on these two nations not losing their respective qualities in an indistinct amalgamation, on these two opposite magnets acting inversely, and these two electricities, positive and negative, never being confounded. The element which, of all others, was the most heterogeneous for xis — -the English element — is precisely that to Avhich we have given the preference. We have adopted it, politically, into our constitu- tion, on the faith of the docti'inaires who copied without compre- hending it; into our literature, without seeing that the foremost genius that England has had in our days, is he who has the most strongly denied it. Lastly, a thing incredible and ridiculous, we have adopted this same English element in art and in fashion. That stiffness, that awkwardness, which is not external nor accidental, but proceeds from a profound physiological mystery — we copy even that. I have now before me two novels, written witli much talent. Well ! in these French novels, who is the ridiculous man ? The Frenchman — always the Frenchman. The Englishman is the ad- mirable man — the invisible, yet ever present Providence, who saves every thing. He comes in just in time to repair all the follies of the other. How ? Because he is rich. The Frenchman is poor, and poor in intellect. Rich ! Is that, then, the cause of this singular infatuation ? The rich man (for the most part the Englishman) is the well-bclnved of (iod. The most liberal, the strongest minds find it difficult to guard themselves from a prepossession in his favour. The women find him handsome, the men would fain believe him t > be noble. His sorry nag is taken as a model by the artists. llich ! Come, confess this is the secret motive of the universal admiration. England is the rich nation ; never m-ind her millions of beggars. For any one who does not investigate mankind, she ENGLAND IS RICH: FRA^'CE POOR: AVHY T 145 presents to the world an unparalleled spectacle, that of the most enormous accumulation of wealth that ever existed. A triumphant agriculture, so much machinery, so many vessels, so many ware- houses all choke-full, that Exchange, the mistress of the world — gold flows there like water. Oh! France has nothing like that; it is a country of poverty. The comparative statement of all that the one possesses and all that the other does not, would really lead us too far. England can with a good grace ask France with a smile, what are, then, after all, the visible results of her activity ? — what remains of her labours, of so many commotions, and so many efforts ? '■■ Behold poor France ! sitting on the ground, like Job, among her friends, the nations, who come to comfort, interrogate, better her, if they can, and work out her salvation ! *' Where are thy vessels, thy machinery ? " says Jjngland : and Germany, " A\'here are thy systems ? Have yo not at least, like Italy, works of art to show ? " Kind sisters, who come thus to comfort France, permit me to answer you: she is ill, mind you, I see her head drooping — she will not speak. If we would heap up all the blood, the gold, the efforts of every kind, that each nation has expended for disinterested matters, that were to be profitable only to the world, France would have a pyramid that would reach to heaven ; and yours, O nations ! all of you put together — oh ! yours ! the pile of your sacrifices would reach up to the knee of an infant ! Do not, then, come and say to me, " How pale France is ! " She has shed her blood for you. " How poor she is !" For your sake she has given away without reckoning; "t and having no longer any * The visible results of France, the durable results of her work, are nothing in fonipari:-oii to those not obvious to the eye. The latter were mostly acts, movements, words, and thouahts. Her written literature (which is, however, the first in my opinion) is far, very far below her oratory, and her brilliant and fruitful c her according to material things, liy what istouchcil and seen. Do not .i!; tn" froiiti' ■:. Oi'.ir, ( spc, iiiMy, as I v,as entering Sv, itzir- h'Ud, i fciL \vo-,ii!l( :1 i<, the lua'.t l';- i:. 'j'o -ee our 'hmji- pc.i-asts ol J'l .-niclK- L 146 BECAUSE FRANCE HAS HAD THE GENIUS OF SACRIFICE. thing, she has said, " I have neither gold nor silver, but what I have I give unto you." Then she gave her soul, and it is that on v?hich you are living.* " What she has left is what she has given away ? " Come, listen to me well, and learn, O nations ! what without us you would never have learned : " the more one gives, the more one keeps ! " Her spirit may slumber within her, but it is always entire, and ever on the point of waking in its might. For a very long time I have been France, living day after day with her for two thousand years. We have seen the v.orst days to- gether , and I have acquired this faith, that this country is the one of invincible hope. God certainly must enlighten it more than any other nation, since she sees in the darkest night, when others can no longer distinguish : during that dreadful darkness which often pre- vailed in the middle ages and since, nobody perceived the sky ; France alone saw it. Such is France : with her nothing is finished, but always to be recommenced. When our Gallic peasants drove away the Romans for a moment, and established an empire of the Gauls, they stamped upon their coin the first motto of this country (and the last) — Hope ! Conito so miserable : and suddenly, after passing a stream, the people of Neuf- chatel so comfortable, so mcII clothed, and evidently happy ! What are, at bottom, those two principal loads, the debt and the army, that are now crushing France ? Two sacrifices that she is makinsr to the world as much as to lierself. The debt is the money that she pays it for having given it her principle of salvation, the law of liberty tliat it copies in calumniating her. And the army of France ? Is the defence of the world, the reserve that it keeps fcr the day when the barbarians will arrive, when Germany ever seeking her unity (whicii she has been seeking ever since Charlemagne), will be obliged either to put us before her, or to make herself, against liberty, the vanguard of Russia. * No, it is not the commercial machinism of England, nor the scholastic machinism of Germany, that gives life to the world ; but the breath of P'rance, in whatever state she may be, the latent heat of her Revolution that Europe ever bears within her. 147 CHAPTER VI. FRANCE SUPERIOR AS DOGMA, AND AS LKGENd/ FRANCE IS A RELIGION. The foreigner thinks he has exhausted the subject, when he says, smiling, " France is the infant of Europe." If you give her this title, which, in the eyes of God, is not the least one, you must confess that it is the infant Solomon sitting in judgment. Who, but France, has preserved the tradition of the law .'' Of ecclesiastical, political, and civil law ; the chair of Papinienus, and the stool of Gregory VII. Rome is nowhere but here. Ever since Saint Louis, to whom has Europe gone to ask for justice? The pope, the emperor, and the kings ? Who could disown the theological popedom in Gerson and Bossuet, the philosophical popedom in Descartes and Voltaire, the political and civil popedom in Cujas andDumoulin, in Rousseau and Montesquieu ? Her laws, which are but those of reason itself^ force themselves upon her very enemies. England has just given the Code Napoleon to the island of Ceylon. Rome held the pontificate of the dark ages, the royalty of the ob- scure ; and France has been the pontiff of the ages of light. This is not an accident of the latter ages, a revolutionary chance. It is the legitimate result of a particular tradition, connected with general tradition, for two thousand years. No people has one like it. In this is continued the grand human movement (so clearly marked out by the languages) from India to Greece and to Rome, and from Rome to us. Every other history is mutilated, ours alone is complete ; take the hisTory of Italy, the last centuries afe^^vallliiig j-talnr-thc— history of Germany, or of England, the first arc missing; take that of France, with it you know the world. And in this grand tradition there is not only a connected series, but progress. Frc-uice has continued the Roman and Christian worT^. Christianity iiad promised, and she lias performed. Brotherly equality, postponed to the next life, has been taught by her to the world, as the law here below. This nation has two very potent qualities that I do not find in any other. She has at once the principle and tin- legend, the idea more comprehensive and more humane, andj at the same time, a more connected tradition. 2 148 THE POPEDOM OF FRANCE. This principlej this idea, sunk in the middle ages under the dogma of grace, are, in the language of man, called brotherhood. It is this tradition which, from Caesar to Charlemagne, to Saint Louis, and from Louis XIV. to Napoleon, makes the history of France that of humanity. In her is perpetuated under divers forms, the moral ideal of the world, from Saint Louis to the inaid of Orleans, Joan of Arc,~aturfrom'lier to our young generals of the R.evolution ; the Saint of France, wlioever he is, is the Saint of all nations ; he is adopted, blessed, and lamented by the human race. " For every man,'' said an American philosopher impartially, " the first country is his native land, and the second is France." ButJiow ma^y men like better to live here than in their own country ! As soon as ever they can break for a moment the thread that binds them, they come, poor birds of passage, to settle, take refuge, and enjoy here at least a moment's vital heat. They tacitly avow that this is the universal country. This nation, considered thus as the asylum of the world, is much more than a nation, it is a living brotherhood. Into whatever weak- ness she may fall, she contains, at the bottom of her Nature, this living principle, which preserves for her, happen what may, par- ticular chances of restoration. The day when France, remembering that she was, and must be, die jatyafiqTToFjii^nTn^^ tier children around her, ami teach them France, as faith and as religion, she will find herself" living,' ahdTifitras" the globe. What I say here is an important matter, of which 1 have long thought, and which contains, perhaps, the regeneration of our country. It is the only one that has the right thus to teach itself, because it is the one that has the most mixed up its own interest and its own destiny ■with those of humanity. It is the only one that can do so, because its great national and yet universal legend is the only complete one, and the most connected of all, the one that by its historical conca- tenation answers the best to the demands of reason. And this is not fanaticism ; it is the concise expression of an earnest opinion founded upon long study. It would be very easy for me to show that the other nations have but special legends which the world has not accepted. These legends, moreover, have often the character of being isolated, individual, without any connection, like points of light separated from one another.* The natural legend * To speak first of that great nation which seems the richest in legends Germany — those of Sigfrid the invulneralile, Frederic Barbarossa, ami Goet with the iron hand, are poetical dreams, which turn life back to the past, the imi)ossililc, and to vain regrets. I.uther, rejected and spit uiion by one half of Germany, has not been al)Ie to leave a Kgeiid. Frederic, hav(Il>' a German, but a Prussian (which is vci-y different) — a Frencliman, moi'cover, and a phi- MAY BE TAUGHT AS A DOGMA AND AS A LEGEND. 149 of France is an immense, uninterrupted stream of light, a true milky way, upon which the world has ever its eyes fixed, Ger many a nd England, in race, language, and instinct, are strangers to tK e greatll omaii(vChristran aiul (Tembcralical tradition of the world. They have a Certain share in it; ijnt without Well bringing it into unison with their basis, which is exceptional : they have it obliquely, indirectly, awkwardly — have it, and yet have it not. Observe well those nations ; you will find in them, both in their physical and mental endowments, a discordance of life and principle, which France does not present, and which (even without reckoning intrinsic value by stopping at the form and consulting only artj ought ever to prevent the world from seeking there their models and their instruction. France, on the contrary, is not composed of two principles. In her_,_jthe_Celtic element has combined with the *Rbman,^and makes but one with it. The Germanic element, about wliich some make so mu«ii noise, is truly imperceptible. She proceeds from Rome, and she ought to teach Rome, its lan- guage, history, and law. In this our education is not at fault. It is at fault, inasniuch as it does not imbue this Roman education with the sentiment of France ; it lays much scholastic stress upon Rome, which is the way, and conceals France, which is the goal. It would be necessary, at the very entrance, to point out this goal to the child, to make him set out from France, which is himself, and bring him back by way of Rome to France, again to himself. Then only would our education be perfect. The day when this people, returning to themselves, will open their eyes and consider themselves, they will understand that the first institution that can make them live and last, is to give to all (in greater or less extent, according to the time at their command) this harmonious education, which would found the country in the very heart of the child. Other salvation there is none. We have grown old in our vices, and wish not to be cured of them. If Ciod save this glorious but unfortunate country, he will save it by means of infancy. loiopher — has left the trace of strength, but nothing for the heart, nothing :is poetry, or national faith. The historical legends of England, the victory of Edward III., and that of Elizabeth, present rather a glorious fact than a moral model. One type, thanks to Shakspeare, has remained very powerful in the English mind, and influence it but too much, — that of Richard III. It is curious to observe how easily their tradition has broken up; it seems as though three times three dif- ferent nations had si)rung up. The ballads of Itobin Hood and others, with which the middle aires fed them-elves, finish with Sliaksiieare ; Shakspeare is jiut to silence by the IJible, by Cromwell, and by Milton, who, also, are etl'aced by industrialism and the half-great men of later ages. AVhere is their complete man on whom a legend might be founded ? L 3 150 CHAPTER VII. THE FAITH OF THK REVOLUTION IT HAS NOT KEPT ITS FAITH TILL THE ENDj AND HAS NOT TRANSMITTED ITS SPIRIT BY EDUCATION. The only governirient that has busied itself heartily about the education of the people is that of tbe RevoluHolT. The^conslituenf and legislative Assembly laid do\vn tlie~princTples with admirable clearness^ and with a sentiment truly humane. The Convention, in the middle of her terrible struggle against the ■world, and against France, whom she saved in spite of herself, among the personal dangers she encountered, being assassinated piecemeal, decimated, and mutilated, never let go her hold, but prosecuted with obstinacy this holy and sacred subject of the people's education ; in those stormy nights, when she sat in arms, prolonging each session which might be her last, she nevertheless took the time to call forth every system, and to examine them : "■ If we decree education," said one of her members, '' we shall have lived long enough," The three projects adopted are full of good sense and greatness of soul. At first they organise the high and the low, the normal and the primary schools. They kindle a bright flame, and transport it instantly into the vast depths of the people. After that, being more at leisure, they fill up the intervening space, the central schools or colleges, where the rich may be educated. Nevertheless, every thing is created uniformly and harmoniously ; they knew then that a living work is not to be made bit by bit. O ever memorable day ! It was two months after the 9 Ther- midor. They were beginning to believe in life again. France, issuing from the tomb, suddenly grown more mature by twenty ages, enlightened, yet bloody France, called all her children to receive the sovereign instruction of her great experience, — she said to them : Come and see.* * And the principal fruit of that experience is, that human blood has a ter- rible virtue against those who have shed it. It would be too easy for me to prove that France was saved in spite of the reign of Terror. Those terrorists have done us an immense mischief, which still lasts. Go into the lowest cot- NORMAL, PRIMARY, AND CENTRAL SCHOOLS. 151 When the rapporteur of the Convention pronounced these simple important words : " Time alone could be the professor of the Re- public," whose eyes were not filled with tears ? They had all paid dearly the lesson of the time, they had all passed through death, and had not escaped entire ! After those great trials there seemed to be a moment's silence for all human passions ; one might have fancied there was no longer any pride, self-interest, or envy. The highest men in the state, and in science, accepted the most humble offices of public instruction.* Lagrange and Laplace taught arithmetic. Fifteen hundred pupils, men full grown, and several already illus- trious, came unhesitatingly to take their seats on the benches of the normal school, to learn to teach. They came as they could, in the depth of winter, at that moment of poverty and famine. Above the ruins of all material things hovered the majesty of the mind, alone and without a shadow. The chair of the great school was occupied in turns by creative geniuses ; some, like BerthoUet and Morvan, came to found chemistry, to open and penetrate the inner world of tage of the most distant countiy of Europe, and you will find the remembrance of this and its malediction. Kings have put to death in cold blood upon their scaffolds, in their Spielbergs, their presides, and their Siberias, &c. &c., a much greater number of men. What does that matter ? The victims of the reign of Terror do not the less remain ever bleeding in the minds of nations. We ought never to lose an opportunity of protesting against those horrors which were not ours, and are not imputable to us. The enthusiastic vigour of our armies alone saved France. The committee of public safety doubtless seconded that enthusiasm, but precisely by the excellent military administrators they had among themselves, whom Robespierre detested, and would have put to death, had he been able to do without them. Our purest generals found in Robespierre and his friends only malevolence, distrust, and obstacles of every kind. I have not the time now to enter into all this. But on this head I beg that those who reprint the useful compilation of Messrs. Roux and Buchcz will suppress their sad paradoxes, the apology of the 2d September and the Saint Bartholomew, the brevet of good Catholics given to the Jacobins, the satire jigainst Charlotte Corday (t. xxiii. p. 337.), and the eulogy of Marat. " Marat distributed his denunciations icith upright good sense and pretty sure tact" (p. 34.5.): — a judicious praise of the man who ^demanded _two hundred thousand heads at once (see the " Publiciste," 14th Dec, 17f»2). These nco-Catholics, in their fine justification of the reign of Terror, have taken seriously that which Ch. Jfwlier, the paradoxical edition of the " Quotidicnne," amused himself to make. I should not have made this observation, if they did not endeavour to spread these absurdities, by cheap newspapers, among the peciple and the work- men who have no time for inquiry. * I have before me ( Aux Archives) the original list of those who accepted the office of itrofesMtrs in the central schools, which were the colleges of those times : Sieyes, Daunou, Roederer, Hauy, Cabanis, Legendre, Lacroix, Bossut, Saussure, Cuvier, Fontanes, Ginguene, l.aharpe, Laromiguiere, &c. 152 POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL. bodies ; others, like Laplace and Lagrange, had, by calculation, strengthened the system of the world, and secured the earth upon its basis. Never did spiritual power appear more indisi)Utab]e. Reason, by obedience, yielded to reason. And how much did the heart participate in it, when among those matchless men, each of whom appears but once in countless ages, they saw a very precious life, the good Haiiy, who, when on the eve of perishing, Avas saved by GeofFroy-Saint-Hilaire ! A great citizen, Carnot, he who organised victory, foresaw Hoche and Bonaparte, and saved France in spite of the reign of Terror, was the real founder of the Polytechnic School. They learned, as they fought, completed three years of lectures in three months. At the end of six, Monge declared that they had not only received science, but that they had advanced it. Being the spectators of the uninterrupted inventions of their masters, they too went on invent- ing. Imagine the spectacle of a Lagrange, who, in the middle of his lecture, suddenly stopped short, and mused. The auditory waited in silence. He at length awoke, and delivered to them, all glowing as it was, his infant invention, hardly yet cmananated from his mind. Every thing was wanting, except genius. The pupils could not have come, had they not had a remuneration of four sous a-day. They received food, with the food of the mind. One of the masters (Clouet) would have for salary only a nook of ground in the sandy plains of the Sablons, and lived on the vegetables that he cultivated there. What a fall, after that time ! a moral fall, and not less great in the sphere of the mind. Read after the reports made in the Con- vention, those of Fourcroy and Fontane, and you lapse in a few years from manhood to old age — decrepit old age.* Is it not painful to see that heroic disinterested transport of enthusiasm decline and fall so soon ? That glorious Ecole Normale bears no fruit. We are but little surprised at it, when we see that man was taught so little, the sciences of man renouncing and con- tradicting themselves, being, as it were, ashamed of themselves. The professor of history, Volney, taught that history i.s the science of dead facts, — that there is no living history. Garat, the professor of philosophy, said that philosophy M' onli/ the studi/ of sirjns ; in other words, that phisosophy is nothing. Signs against signs, the * One man had the rare coura:;e to protest, under the empire, in favour of the organisation p-iven to instruction by the convention : Lacroix, " Essais sur rEnseignement, 1805." THE CONVENTION- LOSES FAITH. 153 mathematics had the advantage, as well as the cognate sciences, such as astronomy. Thus, Revolutionary France, in the great school that was to diffuse its spirit throughout tlie world, lectured on the fixed stars, and forgot herself. It is here especially, in this last effort of the revolution to found, that we see it could he only a prophet, and was dying in the desert, without having seen the promised land. How' could it have reached its destination? It had been obliged to do every thing, having found nothing ready, and no aid in the system that preceded it. It had entered upon possession of an empty world, and b;/ rhjht of dis- inheritance. I Avill sliow some day, on unequivocal testimony, that it found nothing to destroy. The cleruy, the nobility, and royalty Avere at an end, and it had nothing at all to put in their places. It went round in a vicious circle. Men were wanting to make the revolution ; and to create those men she ought to have been already made. There was no assistance to perform the passage from one world to the other ! A gulf to be traversed, and no wings to fly across it ! It is painful to witness how very little the guardians of the people, royalty and the clergy, have done to enlighten them in the four last centuries. The church spoke to them in a learned language that they no longer understood. She made them repeat by heart that prodigious metaphysical doctrine, the subtlety of which strikes with amazement the most cultivated minds. The State had done only one thing, and that very indirect ; it had brought together the people into camps, and grand armies, where they began to appreciate themselves. The legions of Francis I., and tlie regiments of Louis XIV'., were schools in wliich, without any instruction at all, they spontaneously formed themselves, imbibed common ideas, and rose by little and little, to the sentiment of their native country. The only direct instruction was that which the citizens received in the colleges, and which they followed up as advocates and men of letters. It was a verbal study of languages, rhetoric, literature, and the study of the laws, not learned and precise, like that of our ancient juris-consults, but self-termed philoso})liical and full of shallow abstractions. Being logicians without metaphysics, civilians without law and history, they had no faith save in signs, forms, figures, ])hrases. In every thing, substance, life, and the sentiment of life, were wanting in them. When they arrived upon the great theatre where vanities waged war to the death, one could see all the bad qualities that scholastic subtlety can superadd to a bad nature. Those terrible ub.'stractor.s of quintessence armed themselves with five 154 TRANSMITS NOT THE GENIUS OF REVOLUTION. or six formulas, which, like so many guillotines, served them to abstract men.* It was a very terrible thing when that great assembly, which, under Robespierre, had made the reign of Terror by terror itself, raised her head, and saw all the blood she had shed. Faith had not failed her in the presence of the combined world, nor even against France, when, with thirty departments, she restrained and saved every thing. Faith had not failed her, even in her personal danger, when, having no longer even Paris, she was reduced to arm her own members, and saw herself very nearly without any defennder but herself. But, in the presence of blood, before all those dead men who were rising from their tombs, before all that host of released prisoners who came to judge their judges, she felt faint, and began to abandon herself. She did not take the step which would have put her in possession of the future. She had not the courage to put her hand upon the young rising world. The Revolution, to get possession of that, ought to have had one lesson, and that alone : the Revolution. To do so, it would have been necessary, not to deny the past, but, on the contrary, to challenge it, seize it again, and make it her own, as she was doing with the present ; and to show that she possessed, together with the authority of reason, that of history and all our historical nationality; that the revolution was the tardy, but just and necessary, manifestation of the genius of this people, that it was only France herself having at length discovered her right.. She did nothing of the kind, and the abstract reason, which she invoked alone to aid her, did not support her in presence of the * The genius of the inquisition and the police, which has astonished so many people in Kobespierre and Saint-Just, little surprises those who are acquainted with the middle ages, and who find there so often those dispositions of inquisitors and sanguinary cavillers. This affinity of the two periods has been seized with much penetration by M. Quinet: — " Christianity and the French Revolution," p. 349 — 351 (1845). Two men of scrupulous equity, and inclined to judge their enemies favourably, Carnot and Daunou, agreed perfectly in their opinion of Robespierre. The latter has often told me that, except the last moment, when necessity and peril made him eloquent, the famous dictator was a man of secondary order. Saint-.Just had more talent. They who wish to make us believe them both to have been innocent of the last excesses of the reign of Terror, are refuted by Saint-Just himself. On the loth of April, 1794 (so short a time before the 9 Thermidor!), he deplores the culpable indulgence they have had till that moment , " In these latter days the relachement des tribitnanx had increased to such a degree, kc. — What have the tribunals been doing for two years ? Have people spoken of their justice? — Instituted to maintain the Revolution, their indulgence has left crime everywhere free," &.c. — " Histoire Parlementaire, t. xxxii., p. 311. 319. 26 germinal an. ii. THE HOLY ALLIANCE. 155 terrible realities which were rising up against her. She doubted of herself, deposed, and effaced herself. It was necessary that she should die and enter the sepulchre, in order that her living spirit might spread throughout the world. Ruined by her defender, he pays her homage in the hundred days. Ruined as she was by the Holy Alliance, kings establish their compact against her, on the social dogma that she laid down in '89. The faith, which she had not in herself, prevails over those who have fought against her. The sword, with which they pierced her heart, works miracles and cures. She converts her persecutors, and instructs her enemies. Why did she not instruct her children .'' 156 CHAPTER VIII. NO EDUCATION WITHOUT FAITH. The first question of education is this : Have you faith ? Do you put faith ? The child must believe. Let th^_child believe the things ^vhich,_wllen a man, he may be able to prove to himself by reason. To make a child a reasoner, a wrangler, or a critic, is an absurdity. To be incessantly stu-rlng up, at our jrfeasure, all the seeds v.l-'Tiave sown — what agriculture ! To make a child learned, is absurd. To load his memory with a chaos of useful and useless knowledge — to heap up within him an indigested mass of a thousand ready-made things, not living, but dead, and dead fragments, without his ever having the whole : — this is to assassinate his mind. Before adding, accumulating, one must exist. We must create and strengthen the living germ of the young being. The child exists at first by faith. ^ajth is thecommon base of inspiration and action. There is nothing great without it. The Athenian had the faith that all human culture had de- scended from the Acropolis of Athens, and that his Pallas, sprung from the brain of Jupiter, had produced the light of art and science. That faith was realised. That city, with her twenty thousand citizens, has inundated the world with her light ; though dead, she enlightens it still. The Pioman had the faith that the living and bleeding head found under his Capitol, promised he should be the head, the judge, the prtetor of the world. That faith was realised. If his empire has passed away, his law remains, and continues to regulate nations. The Christian had the faith that a God-made-man would make a people of brothers, and would sooner or later unite the world in one and the same heart. That has not yet been verified, but it will be verified by us. I^ ■wasj20t_sufHcient^io_say_lliat^GQd_w:as_jaMe_ju^ this truth, remaining in such general terms, has not been productive. We must seek how God has manifested himself in the man of every nation, how, in the variety of national genius, the father has ac- commodated himself to the wants of liis children. The unity that •he oiight to give us is not a monotonous unity, but a harmonious unity, in Avhich all the varieties love one another. FAITH IN OUR NATIVE COUNTRY. 157 Let them love, but let them subsist; let them go on increasing in splendour, the better to enlighten the world ; and let man, from his childood, accustom himself to recognise a living God in his native country. Here, then, arises a serious objection : " How can I put faith, when I have so little myself? Faith in my native country, like my religious faith, has grown weak within nie." If faith and reason were opposite things, having no reasonable means of obtaining faith, we should be obliged, like the mystics, to re- main there, sigh and wait. But the faith, worthy of man, is a belief of love, in what is proved by reason. His object is not this or that accidental miracle, but the permanent miracle of nature and history. In order to put faith in France, to hope in her future, we must re-ascend towards her past, and fathom her natural genius. If you do so, seriously and heartily, you will see the consequence infallibly follow from this study, and these established premises. From the deduction of the past, the future, the mission of France will arise before you ; it will appear to you in full light ; you will believe, and you will rejoice to believe ; faith is nothing else. How would you be resigned to remain ignorant of France? Your origin is in her ; if you know her not, you will know nothing of yourself, t^he surrounds and presses you on every side ; you live in her, and on her ; and you will die with her. May she live, and you live, by faith ! She will return to your heart, if you look at your children, that young world which wishes to live, that is still so good and docile, and demands the life of be- lief. You have grown old in indifference ; but which of you would wish his son to be dead in heart, without a country, and without God ? All those children, in whom are the souls of our ancestors, are the old and new country. Let us help it to know itself; and it will give us back the gift of loving. As the poor man is necessary to the rich man, so is the child ne- cessary to the man. We give him still less than we receive from him. Young people, you who will soon take our place, I must thank you. ^Vho, more than I, had studied the past of France ? AVho should know her better, by so many personal trials, which have re- vealed to me her trials also ? Still, I must say, my soul, in solitude, had languished within me, and was either idling, at its leisure among curiosities and trifles, or else soaring towards the ideal, and not treading the ground. Tlie reality escaped me, and onr country, which I ever pursued and ever loved, was ever far below ; she was my object, my end and aim, an object of science and of study. She has ai);)earfd to me living. " In wjioui ?" Jn ycu who read me. In ycu, young man, I saw my country, her elLr;:ul youtli. How should I not believe in lier ! 158 CHAPTER IX. GOD IN OUR NATIVE COUNTRY. THE YOUNG COINTRY OF THE FUTURE SACRIFICE. THE MOTHER REVEALS GOD. Education, like every work of art, demands, before every thing else, a simple, strong sketch ; no subtlety, no minutiae, nothing that presents any difficulty, or provokes objection. By a grand, salutary, sound, and lasting impression, we must in this child found man, and create the life of the heart. First, God revealed by the mother, in love and nature. After- wards, God revealed by the father, in the living country, in her heroic history, in the sentiment of France. God, and the love of God. Let the mother take him, on St. John's day, when the earth performs her annual miracle, when every herb is in flower, when the plant seems to grow while you behold it, • — let her take him into the garden, embrace him, and say to him tenderly, " You love me, you know only me. Well ! listen : I am not all. You have another mother. All of us, men, women, children, animals, plants, and whatever has life, we have all a tender mother, who is ever feeding us, invisible but present. Love her, my dear child ; let us embrace her with all our hearts." Let there long be nothing more. No metaphysics that destroy the impression. Let him brood over that sublime and tender mys- tery, which his whole life Avill not suffice to clear up. That is a day he will never forget. Throughout all the trials of life, and the intricacies of science, amid all his passions and stormy nights, the gentle sun of St. John's day will ever illumine the deepest recesses of his heart, with the immortal blossom of the purest, best love. Some other day, later, when man is just beginning to be formed within him, his father takes him ; 'tis a great public festival, — im- mense crowds in Paris. He leads him from Notre Dame to the Louvre, the Tuileries, the triumphal arch. From some roof, or terrace, he shows him the people, the army passing, the bayonets clashing and glittering, and the tricoloured flag. In the moments of expectation especially, before the fC'te, by the fantastic reflections of the illumination, in that awful silence which suddenly takes place in that dark ocean of people, he stoops towards him and says, " There, my son, look, there is P>ance, there is your native country ! All this is like one man, — one soul, one heart. They would all die SCHOOL IN AN INFANT COUNTRY. 159 for one ; and each man ought also to live and die for all. Those men passing yonder, who are armed, and now departing, are going away to fight for us. They leave here their father, their aged mother, who will want them. You will do the same ; you will never forget that your mother is France." If I know nature at all, this impression will be lasting. He has seen his country. That God, invisible in his high unity, is visible in his members, and the great works in which the life of the nation is deposited. It is really a living person that this child touches and feels on all sides : he cannot embrace her, but she embraces him, warms him with her great soul diffused tliroughout the mass, and speaks to liim by her monuments. It is a charming sight for the Swiss to be able witli one look to contemplate his canton, embrace from the heights of his Alps his beloved country, and bear away her image witli him. But it is truly grand for the Frenchman, to have here the glorious and immortal Putrie gathered in one point, with all ages, all places together, and to follow, from the Thermes de Cesar to the Colonne, to the Louvre, to the Champ-de-Mars, from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, the history of France and the world. ^Moreover, for the child, the strong or lasting knowledge of his country, is before all, the school, the grand national school, as it will one day be made. I speak of a truly common school, where children of every class and every condition should come for one or two years, to sit together (before special education begins) *, and where they would learn nothing but France. ^V^e hasten to place our children among children of our own class, whether citizens or people, in schools or colleges; we avoid every mixture, we are quick to separate the poor and the rich at that happy period, when the child would not, of his own accord, have perceived these vain distinctions. We seem to be afraid of their truly know- ing the world in which they are to live. By this premature separa- tion, we prepare that hatred which springs from ignorance and envy, that internal warfare, from which we afterwards suffer. If inequality must subsist among men, how I should wish that childhood might at least be able to follow its instinct for a moment, and live in equality ! That these little innocetit men of God, devoid of envy, might preserve for us, in the school, the touching ideal of * The special education of the college or the workshop would come after- wards : the workshop, tempered and regulated hy the school ( according to the judicious views of M. Faucher, "Travail des Eiifans ") ; the eollcne tempered especially during the first years when the child would learn only as much grammar as he can understand. More exercise and recreation, and less use- less writing. Mercy ! mercy for little children ! 160 OKE FIRST SCHOOL COMMON TO ALL. society ! And it would be also a school for us ; we should go and learn from them the vanity of ranks, the silliness of rival pretensions, and all the true life and happiness in there being neither a first nor a last class. Our country would appear there young and charming ; at once in all her variety, and all her uniformity ; a diversity of characters-, visages, races, — a rainbow witli a hundred colours, all teeming with instruction. Every rank, every fortune, every dress, all together on the same benches ; velvet and the blouse, brown bread and dainty food. Let the rich, when still young, learn there what it is to be poor; let him suffer from inequality, be allowed to participate, and strive already to re-establish equality according to his powers ; and may he find, seated on those wooden benches, the City of the World, and begin there the City of God ! The poor man, on the other hand, will learn, and recollect per- haps, that if this rich man is rich, it is not his fault; after all, he was born so ; and his riches often render him poor in the first of qualities, poor in will and moral strength. It would be a fine thing if all the sons of one same people, thus united, at least for a time, could see and know one another before the vices of poverty and riches, before the age of envy and egotism. The child would receive an indelible impression of his country, finding it in the school not only as a study and instruction, but as a living, an infant country, like himself, a better city before the City, a city of equality, where all would be seated at the same spiritual banquet. And I would not only that he should learn and see his native country, but feel it as a Providence, recognising it as a mother and a nurse by its strengthening milk, its vivifying heat. God forbid that we should send away a boy from the school, or refuse him spiritual food, because he has not that of the body. Oh ! the impious avarice that would give millions to masons and to priests, that would be rich only to endow death *, and yet would haggle with these little children, who are the hope, the dear life of France, and her heart of hearts ! I have said so elsewhere. I am not one of those who are always weeping, now with the hearty artisan who earns five francs, now Avith the poor woman who gains but ten sous. So impartial a pity is not pity. Women must have asylums, free convents, temporary * And it is de;ith that toachos : 'Flic fffiwi-nn/ ins force on the children the .lesults' History of France (Lovi(;uet), in which I read, amonj^ otlicr infamous cHluinuies, that which the er.iiarant Vauljan has liimsclf contrad)(;te(i : that at (iiiiiieron, lloche hud pni.ii'ncJ tiff, and liLcrf// to whoever would lay down their anii-', t. ii. p. i.JU. THE COUJSTKY TAUGHT AS A DOGMA AND A LEGEND. IGl workshops, and not be starved any longer in convents.* And to little children we must all be fathers, and open our arms to«them; the school must be their asylum, a pleasant generous asylum ; let them be comfortable there, and go tliere of their own accord ; and let them love that house of P'rance as much as the paternal roof, and even more. If your mother cannot maintain you, if your father ill treat you, if you be naked or hungry, come, my dear son, the doors are all wide open, and France is on the threshold to embrace and welcome you. That great mother will never blush to undergo for your sake all the cares of a nurse ; she will make for you with her own heroic hand the soldier's soup, and if she had not Avhere- with to cover and warm your little frozen limbs, she would even tear off a shred of her old flag ! Comforted, caressed, happy, and free in mind, let him receive upon those benches the food of truth. Let him know, above all, that God has shown him the favour to give him, for his native home, a land that proclaimed and sealed with her blood the law of divine equity and fraternity, and that the God of nations has spoken by France. First of_alI, the country, as a dogm^and a principle^ Nex^, the country, as~a~Tegebd : our two redemptions, by the holy Alaid oT^" Orleans and by the Revolution; the enthusiasm of '92 ; the miracle ~ of the young^ftag-;- our joTirig generals admired and mourned by the enemy; the purity of INIarceauj the magnarnity of Hoche ; the glory of Areola and Austerlitz ; Csesar and the second Cicsar, in ■^gm our greatest kings re-appeared still greater. Farther back still, the glory of our sovereign assemblies ; the pacific and truly humane genius of '89, when France offered so heartily to all peace and liberty. Lastly, above all, as a last lesson, the immense faculty of devotedness and sacrifice displayed by our fathers, and how France has so often given her life for the world. Child, let this be thy first Gospel, thy staff of life, the aliment of thy heart. Thou wilt remember it amid the toils and troubles into which necessity is about to cast thee. It will be a powerful cordial, which will come to comfort thee on many occasions. It will charm thy memory in long days of labour, in the ennui of the manufactory; thou wilt find it again in the deserts of Africa, as a remedy for thy home-sick heart, in thy wearisome marches and watchings, when standing a forlorn sentinel two steps from the barbarians. The child will know the world, but he must first know himself, — tile best part of himself, — I mean France. The rest he will learn from her. It will be for her to initiate him, and tell him her tra- * See M. Michek't's " Priests, 'NVonion, and l'';i;iiilic"s." T.cngniun and Co. London, 1845. 162 POLICY IDENTICAL WITH EDUCATION. dition. She will tell him the three revelations she has received ; how Home taught her the Just, Greece the Beautiful, andJudea the Holy. She will connect her last lesson with the first lesson that his mother gave him : the latter t.iught him God, and his great mother Avill teach him the dogma of love, — God in Man, — Christianity; — and how love, impossible in the barbarous, malevolent times of the middle ages, %ra.s inscribed in the lavs, by the Revolution, so that the inward God of man might he manifested. If I was making a book on education, I would show how general education, suspended by special education (that of the college or the workshop), ought to be resumed under the flag by the young soldier. ]t is thus the country ought to pay him for the time he gives her. On his return home, she ought to follow him, not as a law only, to govern and punish him., but as a civil providence, — as a religious, moral culture, acting through the medium of assemblies, popular libraries, theatres, and fiites of all kinds, and, above all, musical festivals. How long will his education last ? Just as long as his life. What is the first part of pohcy ? Education. The second ? Education. And the third ? Education. I have grown too old in history to believe in laws v.'hen they are not prepared, and when men have not been brought up long before to love and desire the law. Fewer laws, I beseech you ; but strengthen the principle of laws by education ; render them applicable and possible ; make men, and all will be well.* Politic s prom ise us order, peace, and public security. But why all these blessingT? To~ei7joy7T(rste?pTTr-an~E'gotistical tranquillity, to relieve us from associating with and loving one another ? Let it perish, if that be its aim. As for me, I would rather believe that if this order^, this grand social harmonj, has an^ end and aim, it is to nid the advan cement -ofJiberty, to favour the promotion of all by all. Society ought to be only an initiation from, birth to death, an educa- tion that embraces our life in this world, and prepares the life to come. Education, a word so little understood, is not only the culture of the son by the father, but in the same, and occasionally in a greater degree, that of the father by the son. If we can recover from our moral decline, it is by our children, and for them, that we shall make the effort. The worst of all men wishes his son to be good ; he who * In a plan of a constitution, which we owe to Turcot, one of the greatest and best men that ever existed, before the State he founds the commune, and before the commune he founds man by education. That is admirable. Only- let it be well understood, that the education given in the commune ought to emanate from the State, — the country. That is not a communal alfair. THE POWER OF SACRIFICE. 163 would make no sacrifice to humanity or to his country, still makes it to his family. If he has not lost, at once, moral sense and his senses, he pities that child who runs the risk of being like him. Search deeply into that soul ; all is spoilt and empty ; and yet, at the low- est depth, you will almost always find a solid bottom, paternal love. "NV^ell ! in the name of our children, let us not, I beseech you, allow this, our country, to perish. Do you want to bequeath a ship- wreck to them, and receive their malediction, — that of the whole future, and that of the world, lost, perhaps, for a thousand years, if France be undone ! You will save your children, and with them France, and the world,, only in one way : — Found tneir faith. Faith in devotedness, sacrifice, and the grand association, where all sacrifice themselves for all, — I mean, our native country. I know very well that this is a difficult lesson, because words are not sufficient for it — there must be examples. The strength, the magnanimity of sacrifice, so common among our fathers, seems lost with us. This is the true cause of our evils, our hatred, and that inward discord which makes this country feeble to death, and which makes it the laughing stock of the world. If I take aside the best, the most honourable men, and question them a little, I see that each of them, disinterested in appearance, has, at bottom, some trifle in reserve, which he would not sacrifice on any account. Ask him for every thing else. jMany a one would give his life for France ; but v.-ould not give up an amusement, a habit, a vice. There are, moreover, some pure men among the rich, whatever may be said to the contrary — but, araong the proud? Are they also pure ? Will they take off their gloves to lend a hand to the poor man, who is crawling along the rough path of fate ? And yet, I tell you, sir, if your white cold hand does not touch that strong, warm, and living one, it will perform no works of life. Our habits, far dearer than our enjoyments, must, however, cer- tainly be sacrificed in a short time. An age of warfare is coming on. And the heart has its habits, its dear ties, which are now so well mingled in it, with its living fibres, that they are other living fibres. It is hard to pluck them out. I have felt this occasionally in writing this book, in which I have wounded more than one who was dear to me. First, to those middle ages, in which I have passed my life, and •who?e touching, though impotent, aspirations I have reproduced in my histories, to them I was obliged to say, avaunt ! even to-day, when impure hands are dragging them from their tomb, and placing that stone before us to make us stumble on the path of the future. 164 SACRIFICE AND SALVATION. Another religion, the humanitary dream of philosophy, which thinks to save the individual by destroying the citizens, denying nations, and abjuring the native land, I have likevvise sacrificed. The native country, my native country, can alone save the world. From the poetic legend to logic, thence to faith to the heart, — ■such has been my road. In that very heart and faith, I found many venerable and antique reminiscences that protested ; and friendship;-, the last obstacles, that could not stop me before my country in danger. May she accept this sacrifice ! All I have in this world — my affections — I offer up to her, and, to give to my country the grand name found Ijy ancient France, I lay them on the altar of urih^p,rml friendship ! THE EM). ^Z'- ,j::^^^i^ LosnoK : Printed by A. SruTTiswooD:., New-Street- Square. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. uc SOUTHERN REGlONAlUB^ABVFAg;; X7 000 094 324 1 3 1205 00931 7007 ^ l>, t