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CRITICAL MISCELLANIES | |
BY | |
JOHN MORLEY | |
VOL. II. | |
Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre | |
London | |
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited | |
New York: The MacMillan Company | |
1905 | |
JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. | |
PAGE | |
The Catholic reaction in France at the beginning of the century 257 | |
De Maistre the best type of the movement 262 | |
Birth, instruction, and early life 263 | |
Invasion of Savoy, and De Maistre's flight 268 | |
At Lausanne, Venice, and Cagliari 270 | |
Sent in 1802 as minister to St. Petersburg 275 | |
Hardships of his life there from 1802 to 1817 276 | |
Circumstances of his return home, and his death 285 | |
De Maistre's view of the eighteenth century 287 | |
And of the French Revolution 291 | |
The great problem forced upon the Catholics by it 293 | |
De Maistre's way of dealing with the question of the divine | |
method of government 293 | |
Nature of divine responsibility for evil 294 | |
On Physical Science 298 | |
Significance of such ideas in a mind like De Maistre's 299 | |
Two theories tenable by social thinkers after the Revolution 303 | |
De Maistre's appreciation of the beneficent work of the | |
Papacy in the past 307 | |
Insists on the revival of the papal power as the essential | |
condition of a restored European order 313 | |
Views Christianity from the statesman's point of view 314 | |
His consequent hatred of the purely speculative temper of | |
the Greeks 316 | |
His object was social or political 318 | |
Hence his grounds for defending the doctrine of Infallibility 319 | |
The analogy which lay at the bottom of his Ultramontane | |
doctrine 320 | |
His hostility to the authority of General Councils 323 | |
His view of the obligation of the canons on the Pope 325 | |
His appeal to European statesmen 326 | |
Comte and De Maistre 329 | |
His strictures on Protestantism 331 | |
Futility of his aspirations 335 | |
JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. | |
Owing to causes which lie tolerably near the surface, the remarkable | |
Catholic reaction which took place in France at the beginning of the | |
present century, has never received in England the attention that it | |
deserves; not only for its striking interest as an episode in the | |
history of European thought, but also for its peculiarly forcible and | |
complete presentation of those ideas with which what is called the | |
modern spirit is supposed to be engaged in deadly war. For one thing, | |
the Protestantism of England strips a genuinely Catholic movement of | |
speculation of that pressing and practical importance which belongs to | |
it in countries where nearly all spiritual sentiment, that has received | |
any impression of religion at all, unavoidably runs in Catholic forms. | |
With us the theological reaction against the ideas of the eighteenth was | |
not and could not be other than Protestant. The defence and | |
reinstatement of Christianity in each case was conducted, as might have | |
been expected, with reference to the dominant creed and system of the | |
country. If Coleridge had been a Catholic, his works thus newly coloured | |
by an alien creed would have been read by a small sect only, instead of | |
exercising as they did a wide influence over the whole nation, reaching | |
people through those usual conduits of press and pulpit, by which the | |
products of philosophic thought are conveyed to unphilosophic minds. As | |
naturally in France, hostility to all those influences which were | |
believed to have brought about the Revolution, to sensationalism in | |
metaphysics, to atheism in what should have been theology, to the notion | |
of sovereignty of peoples in politics, inevitably sought a | |
rallying-point in a renewed allegiance to that prodigious spiritual | |
system which had fostered the germs of order and social feeling in | |
Europe, and whose name remains even now in the days of its ruin, as the | |
most permanent symbol and exemplar of stable organisation. Another | |
reason for English indifference to this movement is the rapidity with | |
which here, as elsewhere, dust gathers thickly round the memory of the | |
champions of lost causes. Some of the most excellent of human | |
characteristics--intensity of belief, for example, and a fervid anxiety | |
to realise aspirations--unite with some of the least excellent of them, | |
to make us too habitually forget that, as Mill has said, the best | |
adherents of a fallen standard in philosophy, in religion, in politics, | |
are usually next in all good qualities of understanding and sentiment to | |
the best of those who lead the van of the force that triumphs. Men are | |
not so anxious as they should be, considering the infinite diversity of | |
effort that goes to the advancement of mankind, to pick up the | |
fragments of truth and positive contribution, that so nothing be lost, | |
and as a consequence the writings of antagonists with whom we are | |
believed to have nothing in common, lie unexamined and disregarded. | |
In the case of the group of writers who, after a century of criticism, | |
ventured once more with an intrepid confidence--differing fundamentally | |
from the tone of preceding apologists in the Protestant camp, who were | |
nearly as critical as the men they refuted--to vindicate not the bare | |
outlines of Christian faith, but the entire scheme, in its extreme | |
manifestation, of the most ancient and severely maligned of all | |
Christian organisations, this apathy is very much to be regretted on | |
several grounds. In the first place, it is impossible to see | |
intelligently to the bottom of the momentous spirit of ultramontanism, | |
which is so deep a difficulty of continental Europe, and which, touching | |
us in Ireland, is perhaps already one of our own deepest difficulties, | |
without comprehending in its best shape the theory on which | |
ultramontanism rests. And this theory it is impossible to seize | |
thoroughly, without some knowledge of the ideas of its most efficient | |
defenders in its earlier years. Secondly, it is among these ideas that | |
we have to look for the representation in their most direct, logical, | |
uncompromising, and unmistakable form of those theological ways of | |
regarding life and prescribing right conduct, whose more or less rapidly | |
accelerated destruction is the first condition of the further elevation | |
of humanity, as well in power of understanding as in morals and | |
spirituality. In all contests of this kind there is the greatest and | |
most obvious advantage in being able to see your enemy full against the | |
light. Thirdly, in one or two respects, the Catholic reactionaries at | |
the beginning of the century insisted very strongly on principles of | |
society which the general thought of the century before had almost | |
entirely dropped out of sight, and which we who, in spite of many | |
differences, still sail down the same great current, and are propelled | |
by the same great tide, are accustomed almost equally either to leave in | |
the background of speculation, or else deliberately to deny and | |
suppress. Such we may account the importance which they attach to | |
organisation, and the value they set upon a common spiritual faith and | |
doctrine as a social basis. That the form which the recognition of these | |
principles is destined to assume will at all correspond to their hopes | |
and anticipations, is one of the most unlikely things possible. This, | |
however, need not detract from the worth for our purpose of their | |
exposition of the principles themselves. Again, the visible traces of | |
the impression made by the writings of this school on the influential | |
founder of the earliest Positivist system, are sufficiently deep and | |
important to make some knowledge of them of the highest historical | |
interest, both to those who accept and those who detest that system. | |
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were three chief | |
schools of thought, the Sensational, the Catholic, and the Eclectic; or | |
as it may be put in other terms, the Materialist, the Theological, and | |
the Spiritualist. The first looked for the sources of knowledge, the | |
sanction of morals, the inspiring fountain and standard of aesthetics, to | |
the outside of men, to matter, and the impressions made by matter on the | |
corporeal senses. The second looked to divine revelation, authority and | |
the traditions of the Church. The third, steering a middle course, | |
looked partly within and partly without, relied partly on the senses, | |
partly on revelation and history, but still more on a certain internal | |
consciousness of a direct and immediate kind, which is the supreme and | |
reconciling judge of the reports alike of the senses, of history, of | |
divine revelation.[1] Each of these schools had many exponents. The | |
three most conspicuous champions of revived Catholicism were De Maistre, | |
De Bonald, and Chateaubriand. The last of them, the author of the _Genie | |
du Christianisme_, was effective in France because he is so deeply | |
sentimental, but he was too little trained in speculation, and too | |
little equipped with knowledge, to be fairly taken as the best | |
intellectual representative of their way of thinking. De Bonald was of | |
much heavier calibre. He really thought, while Chateaubriand only felt, | |
and the _Legislation Primitive_ and the _Pensees sur Divers Sujets_ | |
contain much that an enemy of the school will find it worth while to | |
read, in spite of an artificial, and, if a foreigner may judge, a | |
detestable style. | |
De Maistre was the greatest of the three, and deserves better than | |
either of the others to stand as the type of the school for many | |
reasons. His style is so marvellously lucid, that, notwithstanding the | |
mystical, or, as he said, the illuminist side of his mind, we can never | |
be in much doubt about his meaning, which is not by any means the case | |
with Bonald. To say nothing of his immensely superior natural capacity, | |
De Maistre's extensive reading in the literature of his foes was a | |
source of strength, which might indeed have been thought indispensable, | |
if only other persons had not attacked the same people as he did, | |
without knowing much or anything at all at first-hand about them. Then | |
he goes over the whole field of allied subjects, which we have a right | |
to expect to have handled by anybody with a systematic view of the | |
origin of knowledge, the meaning of ethics, the elements of social order | |
and progressiveness, the government and scheme of the universe. And | |
above all, his writings are penetrated with the air of reality and life, | |
which comes of actual participation in the affairs of that world with | |
which social philosophers have to deal. Lamennais had in many respects a | |
finer mind than De Maistre, but the conclusions in which he was finally | |
landed, no less than his liberal aims, prevent him from being an example | |
of the truly Catholic reaction. He obviously represented the Revolution, | |
or the critical spirit, within the Catholic limits, while De Maistre's | |
ruling idea was, in his own trenchant phrase, '_absolument tuer | |
l'esprit du dix-huitieme siecle_.' On all these accounts he appears to | |
be the fittest expositor of those conceptions which the anarchy that | |
closed the eighteenth century provoked into systematic existence. | |
FOOTNOTE: | |
[1] See Damiron's _La Philosophie en France au XIXieme Siecle_. | |
Introduction to Vol. I. (Fifth edition.) | |
I. | |
Joseph de Maistre was born at Chambery in the year 1754.[2] His family | |
was the younger branch of a stock in Languedoc, which about the | |
beginning of the seventeenth century divided itself into two, one | |
remaining in France, the other establishing itself in Piedmont. It is | |
not wonderful that the descendants of the latter, settled in a country | |
of small extent and little political importance, placed a high value on | |
their kinship with an ancient line in the powerful kingdom of France. | |
Joseph de Maistre himself was always particularly anxious to cultivate | |
close relations with his French kinsfolk, partly from the old | |
aristocratic feeling of blood, and partly from his intellectual | |
appreciation of the gifts of the French mind, and its vast influence as | |
an universal propagating power. His father held a high office in the | |
government of Savoy, and enjoyed so eminent a reputation that on his | |
death both the Senate and the King of Sardinia deliberately recorded | |
their appreciation of his loss as a public calamity. His mother is said | |
to have been a woman of lofty and devout character, and her influence | |
over her eldest son was exceptionally strong and tender. He used to | |
declare in after life that he was as docile in her hands as the youngest | |
of his sisters. Among other marks of his affectionate submission to | |
parental authority, we are told that during the whole time of his | |
residence at Turin, where he followed a course of law, he never read a | |
single book without previously writing to Chambery to one or other of | |
his parents for their sanction. Such traditions linger in families, and | |
when he came to have children of his own, they too read nothing of which | |
their father had not been asked to express his approbation. De Maistre's | |
early education was directed by the Jesuits; and as might have been | |
expected from the generous susceptibility of his temper, he never ceased | |
to think of them with warm esteem. To the end of his life he remembered | |
the gloom which fell upon the household, though he was not nine years | |
old at the time, when the news arrived of the edict of 1764, abolishing | |
the Society in the kingdom of France. One element of his education he | |
commemorates in a letter to his favourite daughter. 'Let your brother,' | |
he says, 'work hard at the French poets. Let him learn them by heart, | |
especially the incomparable Racine; never mind whether he understands | |
him yet or not. I didn't understand him when my mother used to come | |
repeating his verses by my bedside, and lulled me to sleep with her | |
fine voice to the sound of that inimitable music. I knew hundreds of | |
lines long before I knew how to read; and it is thus that my ears, | |
accustomed betimes to this ambrosia, have never since been able to | |
endure any sourer draught.' | |
After his law studies at the University of Turin, then highly renowned | |
for its jurisconsults, the young De Maistre went through the successive | |
stages of an official career, performing various duties in the public | |
administration, and possessing among other honours a seat in the Senate, | |
over which his father presided. He led a tranquil life at Chambery, then | |
as at all other times an ardent reader and student. Unaided he taught | |
himself five languages. English he mastered so perfectly, that though he | |
could not follow it when spoken, he could read a book in that tongue | |
with as much ease as if it had been in his own. To Greek and German he | |
did not apply himself until afterwards, and he never acquired the same | |
proficiency in them as in English, French, Italian, Latin, and Spanish. | |
To be ignorant of German then, it will be remembered, was not what it | |
would be now, to be without one of the literary senses. | |
Like nearly every other great soldier of reaction, he showed in his | |
early life a decided inclination for new ideas. The truth that the | |
wildest extravagances of youthful aspiration are a better omen of a | |
vigorous and enlightened manhood than the decorous and ignoble faith in | |
the perfection of existing arrangements, was not belied in the case of | |
De Maistre. His intelligence was of too hard and exact a kind to | |
inspire him with the exalted schemes that present themselves to those | |
more nobly imaginative minds who dream dreams and see visions. He | |
projected no Savoyard emigration to the banks of the Susquehanna or | |
Delaware, to found millennial societies and pantisocratic unions. These | |
generous madnesses belong to men of more poetic temper. But still, in | |
spite of the deadening influences of officialism and relations with a | |
court, De Maistre had far too vigorous and active a character to subside | |
without resistance into the unfruitful ways of obstruction and social | |
complacency. It is one of the most certain marks, we may be sure, of a | |
superior spirit, that the impulses earliest awakened by its first fresh | |
contact with the facts of the outer world are those which quicken a | |
desire for the improvement of the condition of society, the increase of | |
the happiness of men, the amelioration of human destiny. With this | |
unwritten condition of human nature De Maistre, like other men of his | |
mental calibre, is found to have complied. He incurred the suspicion and | |
ill-will of most of those by whom he was immediately surrounded, by | |
belonging to a Reform Lodge at Chambery. The association was one of a | |
perfectly harmless character, but being an association, it diffused a | |
tarnishing vapour of social disaffection and insurgency over the names | |
of all who ventured to belong to it, and De Maistre was pointed out to | |
the Sardinian court as a man with leanings towards new things, and | |
therefore one of whom it were well to beware. There was little ground | |
for apprehension. In very small countries there is seldom room enough | |
for the growth of a spirit of social revolution; not at least until some | |
great and dominant country has released the forces of destruction. So, | |
when the menacing sounds of the approaching hurricane in France grew | |
heavy in the air, the little lodge at Chambery voluntarily dissolved | |
itself, and De Maistre was deputed to convey to the king, Victor Amadeo | |
III., the honourable assurance of its members that they had assembled | |
for the last time. | |
In 1786, at the age of thirty-two, De Maistre had married, and when the | |
storm burst which destroyed all the hopes of his life, he was the father | |
of two children. In one of his gay letters to a venerable lady who was | |
on intimate terms with them both, he has left a picture of his wife, | |
which is not any less interesting for what it reveals of his own | |
character. 'The contrast between us two is the very strangest in the | |
world. For me, as you may have found out, I am the _pococurante_ | |
senator, and above all things very free in saying what I think. She, on | |
the contrary, will take care that it is noon before allowing that the | |
sun has risen, for fear of committing herself. She knows what must be | |
done or what must not be done on the tenth of October 1808, at ten | |
o'clock in the morning, to avoid some inconvenience which otherwise | |
would come to pass at midnight between the fifteenth and sixteenth of | |
March 1810. "But, my dear husband, you pay attention to nothing; you | |
believe that nobody is thinking of any harm. Now I know, I have been | |
told, I have guessed, I foresee, I warn you," etc. "Come now, my dear, | |
leave me alone. You are only wasting your time: I foresee that I shall | |
never foresee things: that's your business." She is the supplement to | |
me, and hence when I am separated from her, as I am now, I suffer | |
absurdly from being obliged to think about my own affairs; I would | |
rather have to chop wood all day.... My children ought to kiss her very | |
steps; for my part, I have no gift for education. She has such a gift, | |
that I look upon it as nothing less than the eighth endowment of the | |
Holy Ghost; I mean a certain fond persecution by which it is given her | |
to torment her children from morning to night to do something, not to do | |
something, to learn--and yet without for a moment losing their tender | |
affection for her. How can she manage it? I cannot make it out.' She was | |
laughingly called by himself and her friends, Madame Prudence. It is | |
certain that few women have found more necessity for the qualities | |
implied in this creditable nickname. | |
They had not been married many years before they were overtaken by | |
irreparable disaster. The French Revolution broke out, and Savoy was | |
invaded by the troops of the new Republic. Count De Maistre, with his | |
wife and children, fled from Chambery across the Alps to Aosta. '_Ma | |
chere amie_,' he said to his wife, by the side of a great rock which he | |
never afterwards forgot, 'the step that we are taking to-day is | |
irrevocable; it decides our lot for life;' and the presentiment was | |
true. Soon the _Loi des Allobroges_ was promulgated, which enjoined upon | |
all who had left their homes in Savoy to return instantly, under pain of | |
confiscation of all their property. It was the very depth of winter. | |
Madame de Maistre was in the ninth month of her pregnancy. She knew that | |
her husband would endure anything rather than expose her to the risks of | |
a journey in such a season. So, urged by a desire to save something from | |
the wreck of their fortune by compliance with the French decree, she | |
seized the opportunity of her husband's absence at Turin, and started | |
for Savoy without acquainting him with her design. She crossed the Great | |
St. Bernard in the beginning of January on the back of a mule, | |
accompanied by her two little children wrapped in blankets. The Count, | |
on his return to Aosta two or three days afterwards, forthwith set off | |
in her steps, in the trembling expectation of finding her dead or dying | |
in some Alpine hovel. But the favour of fate and a stout heart brought | |
her safe to Chambery, where shortly afterwards she was joined by her | |
husband. The authorities vainly tendered him the oath, vainly bade him | |
inscribe his name on the register of citizens; and when they asked him | |
for a contribution to support the war, he replied curtly that he did not | |
give money to kill his brothers in the service of the King of Sardinia. | |
As soon as his wife was delivered of their third child, whom he was | |
destined not to see again for nearly twenty years, he quitted her side, | |
abandoned his property and his country, and took refuge at Lausanne, | |
where in time his wife and his two eldest children once more came to | |
him. | |
Gibbon tells us how a swarm of emigrants, escaping from the public ruin, | |
was attracted by the vicinity, the manners, and the language of | |
Lausanne. 'They are entitled to our pity,' he reflected, 'and they may | |
claim our esteem, but they cannot in their present state of mind and | |
fortune contribute much to our amusement. Instead of looking down as | |
calm and idle spectators on the theatre of Europe, our domestic harmony | |
is somewhat embittered by the infusion of party spirit.' Gibbon died in | |
London almost at the very moment that De Maistre arrived at Lausanne, | |
but his account of things remained true, and political feuds continued | |
to run as high as ever. Among the people with whom De Maistre was thrown | |
was Madame de Stael. 'As we had not been to the same school,' he says, | |
'either in theology or in politics, we had some scenes enough to make | |
one die of laughter; still without quarrelling. Her father, who was then | |
alive, was the friend and relative of people that I love with all my | |
heart, and that I would not vex for all the world. So I allowed the | |
_emigres_ who surrounded us to cry out as they would, without ever | |
drawing the sword.' De Maistre thought he never came across a head so | |
completely turned wrong as Madame de Stael's, the infallible | |
consequence, as he took it to be, of modern philosophy operating upon a | |
woman's nature. He once said of her: 'Ah! if Madame de Stael had been | |
Catholic, she would have been adorable, instead of famous.' We can | |
believe that his position among the French _emigres_ was not | |
particularly congenial. For though they hated the Revolution, they had | |
all drunk of the waters of the eighteenth century philosophy, and De | |
Maistre hated this philosophy worse than he hated the Revolution itself. | |
Then again, they would naturally vapour about the necessities of strong | |
government. 'Yes,' said the Savoyard exile, 'but be quite sure that, to | |
make the monarchy strong, you must rest it on the laws, avoiding | |
everything arbitrary, too frequent commissions, and all ministerial | |
jobberies.' We may well believe how unsavoury this rational and just | |
talk was to people who meant by strong government a system that should | |
restore to them their old prerogatives of anti-social oppression and | |
selfish corruption. The order that De Maistre vindicated was a very | |
different thing from the deadly and poisonous order which was the object | |
of the prayers of the incorrigible royalists around him. | |
After staying three years at Lausanne, De Maistre went to Turin, but | |
shortly afterwards the Sardinian king, at the end of a long struggle, | |
was forced to succumb to the power of the French, then in the full tide | |
of success. Bonaparte's brilliant Italian campaign needs no words here. | |
The French entered Turin, and De Maistre, being an _emigre_, had to | |
leave it. Furnished with a false passport, and undergoing a thousand | |
hardships and dangers, he made his way, once more in the depth of a | |
severe winter (1797), to Venice. He went part of the way down the Po in | |
a small trading ship, crowded with ladies, priests, monks, soldiers, and | |
a bishop. There was only one small fire on board, at which all the | |
cooking had to be done, and where the unhappy passengers had to keep | |
themselves warm as they could. At night they were confined each to a | |
space about three planks broad, separated from neighbours by pieces of | |
canvas hanging from a rope above. Each bank of the river was lined by | |
military posts--the left by the Austrians, and the right by the French; | |
and the danger of being fired into was constantly present to aggravate | |
the misery of overcrowding, scanty food, and bitter cold. Even this | |
wretchedness was surpassed by the hardships which confronted the exiles | |
at Venice. The physical distress endured here by De Maistre and his | |
unfortunate family exceeded that of any other period of their | |
wanderings. He was cut off from the court, and from all his relations | |
and friends, and reduced for the means of existence to a few fragments | |
of silver plate, which had somehow been saved from the universal wreck. | |
This slender resource grew less day by day, and when that was exhausted | |
the prospect was a blank. The student of De Maistre's philosophy may see | |
in what crushing personal anguish some of its most sinister growths had | |
their roots. When the cares of beggary come suddenly upon a man in | |
middle life, they burn very deep. Alone, and starving for a cause that | |
is dear to him, he might encounter the grimness of fate with a fortitude | |
in which there should be many elevating and consoling elements. But the | |
destiny is intolerably hard which condemns a man of humane mould, as De | |
Maistre certainly was, to look helplessly on the physical pains of a | |
tender woman and famishing little ones. The anxieties that press upon | |
his heart in such calamity as this are too sharp, too tightened, and too | |
sordid for him to draw a single free breath, or to raise his eyes for a | |
single moment of relief from the monstrous perplexity that chokes him. | |
The hour of bereavement has its bitterness, but the bitterness is | |
gradually suffused with soft reminiscence. The grip of beggary leaves a | |
mark on such a character as De Maistre's which no prosperity of after | |
days effaces. The seeming inhumanity of his theory of life, which is so | |
revolting to comfortable people like M. Villemain, was in truth the only | |
explanation of his own cruel sufferings in which he could find any | |
solace. It was not that he hated mankind, but that his destiny looked as | |
if God hated him, and this was a horrible moral complexity out of which | |
he could only extricate himself by a theory in which pain and torment | |
seem to stand out as the main facts in human existence. | |
To him, indeed, prosperity never came. Hope smiled on him momentarily, | |
but, in his own words: 'It was only a flash in the night.' While he was | |
in Venice, the armies of Austria and Russia reconquered the north of | |
Italy, and Charles Emanuel IV., in the natural anticipation that the | |
allies would at once restore his dominions, hastened forward. Austria, | |
however, as De Maistre had seen long before, was indifferent or even | |
absolutely hostile to Sardinian interests, and she successfully opposed | |
Charles Emanuel's restoration. The king received the news of the perfidy | |
of his nominal ally at Florence, but not until after he had made | |
arrangements for rewarding the fidelity of some of his most loyal | |
adherents. | |
It was from Florence that De Maistre received the king's nomination to | |
the chief place in the government of the island of Sardinia. Through the | |
short time of his administration here, he was overwhelmed with vexations | |
only a little more endurable than the physical distresses which had | |
weighed him down at Venice. During the war, justice had been | |
administered in a grossly irregular manner. Hence, people had taken the | |
law into their own hands, and retaliation had completed the round of | |
wrong-doing. The taxes were collected with great difficulty. The higher | |
class exhibited an invincible repugnance to paying their debts. Some of | |
these difficulties in the way of firm and orderly government were | |
insuperable, and De Maistre vexed his soul in an unequal and only | |
partially successful contest. In after years, amid the miseries of his | |
life in Russia, he wrote to his brother thus: 'Sometimes in moments of | |
solitude that I multiply as much as I possibly can, I throw my head back | |
on the cushion of my sofa, and there with my four walls around me, far | |
from all that is dear to me, confronted by a sombre and impenetrable | |
future, I recall the days when in a little town that you know well'--he | |
meant Cagliari--'with my head resting on another sofa, and only seeing | |
around our own exclusive circle (good heavens, what an impertinence!) | |
little men and little things, I used to ask myself: "Am I then condemned | |
to live and die in this place, like a limpet on a rock?" I suffered | |
bitterly; my head was overloaded, wearied, flattened, by the enormous | |
weight of Nothing.' | |
But presently a worse thing befell him. In 1802 he received an order | |
from the king to proceed to St. Petersburg as envoy extraordinary and | |
minister plenipotentiary at the court of Russia. Even from this bitter | |
proof of devotion to his sovereign he did not shrink. He had to tear | |
himself from his wife and children, without any certainty when so cruel | |
a separation would be likely to end; to take up new functions which the | |
circumstances of the time rendered excessively difficult; while the | |
petty importance of the power he represented, and its mendicant attitude | |
in Europe, robbed his position of that public distinction and dignity | |
which may richly console a man for the severest private sacrifice. It is | |
a kind destiny which veils their future from mortal men. Fifteen years | |
passed before De Maistre's exile came to a close. From 1802 to 1817 he | |
did not quit the inhospitable latitudes of northern Russia. | |
De Maistre's letters during this desolate period furnish a striking | |
picture of his manner of life and his mental state. We see in them his | |
most prominent characteristics strongly marked. Not even the | |
painfulness of the writer's situation ever clouds his intrepid and | |
vigorous spirit. Lively and gallant sallies of humour to his female | |
friends, sagacious judgments on the position of Europe to political | |
people, bits of learned criticism for erudite people, tender and playful | |
chat with his two daughters, all these alternate with one another with | |
the most delightful effect. Whether he is writing to his little girl | |
whom he has never known, or to the king of Sardinia, or to some author | |
who sends him a book, or to a minister who has found fault with his | |
diplomacy, there is in all alike the same constant and remarkable play | |
of a bright and penetrating intellectual light, coloured by a humour | |
that is now and then a little sardonic, but more often is genial and | |
lambent. There is a certain semi-latent quality of hardness lying at the | |
bottom of De Maistre's style, both in his letters and in his more | |
elaborate compositions. His writings seem to recall the flavour and | |
bouquet of some of the fortifying and stimulating wines of Burgundy, | |
from which time and warmth have not yet drawn out a certain native | |
roughness that lingers on the palate. This hardness, if one must give | |
the quality a name that only imperfectly describes it, sprang not from | |
any original want of impressionableness or sensibility of nature, but | |
partly from the relentless buffetings which he had to endure at the | |
hands of fortune, and partly from the preponderance which had been given | |
to the rational side of his mind by long habits of sedulous and accurate | |
study. Few men knew so perfectly as he knew how to be touching without | |
ceasing to be masculine, nor how to go down into the dark pits of human | |
life without forgetting the broad sunlight, nor how to keep habitually | |
close to visible and palpable fact while eagerly addicted to | |
speculation. His contemplations were perhaps somewhat too near the | |
ground; they led him into none of those sublimer regions of subtle | |
feeling where the rarest human spirits have loved to travel; we do not | |
think of his mind among those who have gone | |
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone. | |
If this kind of temper, strong, keen, frank, and a little hard and | |
mordent, brought him too near a mischievous disbelief in the dignity of | |
men and their lives, at least it kept him well away from morbid weakness | |
in ethics, and from beating the winds in metaphysics. But of this we | |
shall see more in considering his public pieces than can be gathered | |
from his letters. | |
The discomforts of De Maistre's life at St. Petersburg were extreme. The | |
dignity of his official style and title was an aggravation of the | |
exceeding straitness of his means. The ruined master could do little to | |
mitigate the ruin of his servant. He had to keep up the appearance of an | |
ambassador on the salary of a clerk. 'This is the second winter,' he | |
writes to his brother in 1810, 'that I have gone through without a | |
pelisse, which is exactly like going without a shirt at Cagliari. When I | |
come from court a very sorry lackey throws a common cloak over my | |
shoulders.' The climate suited him better than he had expected; and in | |
one letter he vows that he was the only living being in Russia who had | |
passed two winters without fur boots and a fur hat. It was considered | |
indispensable that he should keep a couple of servants; so, for his | |
second, De Maistre was obliged to put up with a thief, whom he rescued | |
under the shelter of ambassadorial privilege from the hands of justice, | |
on condition that he would turn honest. The Austrian ambassador, with | |
whom he was on good terms, would often call to take him out to some | |
entertainment. 'His fine servants mount my staircase groping their way | |
in the dark, and we descend preceded by a servant carrying _luminare | |
minus quam ut praeesset nocti_.' 'I am certain,' he adds pleasantly, | |
'that they make songs about me in their Austrian patois. Poor souls! it | |
is well they can amuse themselves.' | |
Sometimes he was reduced so far as to share the soup of his valet, for | |
lack of richer and more independent fare. Then he was constantly fretted | |
by enemies at home, who disliked his trenchant diplomacy, and distrusted | |
the strength and independence of a mind which was too vigorous to please | |
the old-fashioned ministers of the Sardinian court. These chagrins he | |
took as a wise man should. They disturbed him less than his separation | |
from his family. 'Six hundred leagues away from you all,' he writes to | |
his brother, 'the thoughts of my family, the reminiscences of childhood, | |
transport me with sadness.' Visions of his mother's saintly face | |
haunted his chamber; almost gloomier still was the recollection of old | |
intimates with whom he had played, lived, argued, and worked for years, | |
and yet who now no longer bore him in mind. There are not many glimpses | |
of this melancholy in the letters meant for the eye of his beloved | |
_trinite feminine_, as he playfully called his wife and two daughters. | |
'_A quoi bon vous attrister_,' he asked bravely, '_sans raison et sans | |
profit?_' Occasionally he cannot help letting out to them how far his | |
mind is removed from composure. 'Every day as I return home I found my | |
house as desolate as if it was yesterday you left me. In society the | |
same fancy pursues me, and scarcely ever quits me.' Music, as might be | |
surmised in so sensitive a nature, drove him almost beside himself with | |
its mysterious power of intensifying the dominant emotion. 'Whenever by | |
any chance I hear the harpsichord,' he says, 'melancholy seizes me. The | |
sound of the violin gives me such a heavy heart, that I am fain to leave | |
the company and hasten home.' He tossed in his bed at night, thinking he | |
heard the sound of weeping at Turin, making a thousand efforts to | |
picture to himself the looks of that 'orphan child of a living father' | |
whom he had never known, wondering if ever he should know her, and | |
battling with a myriad of black phantoms that seemed to rustle in his | |
curtains. 'But you, M. de Chevalier,' he said apologetically to the | |
correspondent to whom he told these dismal things, 'you are a father, | |
you know the cruel dreams of a waking man; if you were not of the | |
profession I would not allow my pen to write you this jeremiad.' As De | |
Maistre was accustomed to think himself happy if he got three hours' | |
sound sleep in the night, these sombre and terrible vigils were ample | |
enough to excuse him if he had allowed them to overshadow all other | |
things. But the vigour of his intellect was too strenuous, and his | |
curiosity and interest in every object of knowledge too | |
inextinguishable. 'After all,' he said, 'the only thing to do is to put | |
on a good face, and to march to the place of torture with a few friends | |
to console you on the way. This is the charming image under which I | |
picture my present situation. Mark you,' he added, 'I always count books | |
among one's consoling friends.' | |
In one of the most gay and charming of his letters, apologising to a | |
lady for the remissness of his correspondence, he explains that | |
diplomacy and books occupy every moment. 'You will admit, madam, there | |
is no possibility of one's shutting up books entirely. Nay, more than | |
ever, I feel myself burning with the feverish thirst for knowledge. I | |
have had an access of it which I cannot describe to you. The most | |
curious books literally run after me, and hurry voluntarily to place | |
themselves in my hands. As soon as diplomacy gives me a moment of | |
breathing-time I rush headlong to that favourite pasture, to that | |
ambrosia of which the mind can never have enough-- | |
_Et voila ce qui fait que votre ami est muet._' | |
He thinks himself happy if, by refusing invitations to dinner, he can | |
pass a whole day without stirring from his house. 'I read, I write, I | |
study; for after all one must know something.' In his hours of | |
depression he fancied that he only read and worked, not for the sake of | |
the knowledge, but to stupefy and tire himself out, if that were | |
possible. | |
As a student De Maistre was indefatigable. He never belonged to that | |
languid band who hoped to learn difficult things by easy methods. The | |
only way, he warned his son, is to shut your door, to say that you are | |
not within, and to work. 'Since they have set themselves to teach us how | |
we ought to learn the dead languages, you can find nobody who knows | |
them; and it is amusing enough that people who don't know them, should | |
be so obstinately bent on demonstrating the vices of the methods | |
employed by us who do know them.' He was one of those wise and laborious | |
students who do not read without a pen in their hands. He never shrank | |
from the useful toil of transcribing abundantly from all the books he | |
read everything that could by any possibility eventually be of service | |
to him in his inquiries. His notebooks were enormous. As soon as one of | |
them was filled, he carefully made up an index of its contents, numbered | |
it, and placed it on a shelf with its unforgotten predecessors. In one | |
place he accidentally mentions that he had some thirty of these folios | |
over the head of his writing-table. | |
'If I am a pedant at home,' he said, 'at least I am as little as | |
possible a pedant out of doors.' In the evening he would occasionally | |
seek the society of ladies, by way of recovering some of that native | |
gaiety of heart which had hitherto kept him alive. 'I blow on this | |
spark,' to use his own words, 'just as an old woman blows among the | |
ashes to get a light for her lamp.' A student and a thinker, De Maistre | |
was also a man of the world, and he may be added to the long list of | |
writers who have shown that to take an active part in public affairs and | |
mix in society give a peculiar life, reality, and force to both | |
scholarship and speculation. It was computed at that time that the | |
author of a philosophic piece could not safely count upon more than a | |
hundred and fifty readers in Russia; and hence, we might be sure, even | |
if we had not De Maistre's word for it, that away from his own house he | |
left his philosophy behind. The vehemence of his own convictions did not | |
prevent him from being socially tolerant to others who hated them. 'If I | |
had the good fortune to be among his acquaintances,' he wrote of a | |
heretical assailant, 'he would see that among the people with | |
convictions it would be hard to find one so free from prejudice as I am. | |
I have many friends among the Protestants, and now that their system is | |
tottering, they are all the dearer to me.' In spite of his scanty means, | |
his shabby valet, his threadbare cloak, and the humbleness of his | |
diplomatic position, the fire and honesty of his character combined with | |
his known ability to place him high in the esteem of the society of St. | |
Petersburg. His fidelity, devotion, and fortitude, mellowed by many | |
years and by meditative habits, and tinged perhaps by the patrician | |
consciousness of birth, formed in him a modest dignity of manner which | |
men respected. They perceived it to be no artificial assumption, but the | |
outward image of a lofty and self-respecting spirit. His brother | |
diplomatists, even the representatives of France, appear to have treated | |
him with marked consideration. His letters prove him to have been a | |
favourite among ladies. The Emperor Alexander showed him considerable | |
kindness of the cheap royal sort. He conferred on his brother, Xavier de | |
Maistre, a post in one of the public museums, while to the Sardinian | |
envoy's son he gave a commission in the Russian service. | |
The first departure of this son for the campaign of 1807 occasioned some | |
of the most charming passages in De Maistre's letters, both to the young | |
soldier himself and to others. For though without a touch of morbid | |
expansiveness, he never denied himself the solace of opening his heart | |
to a trusted friend, and a just reserve with strangers did not hinder a | |
humane and manly confidence with intimates. 'This morning,' he wrote to | |
his stripling, soon after he had joined the army, 'I felt a tightening | |
at my heart when a pet dog came running in and jumped upon your bed, | |
where he finds you no more. He soon perceived his mistake, and said | |
clearly enough, after his own fashion: _I am mistaken; where can he be | |
then?_ As for me I have felt all that you will feel, if ever you pursue | |
this mighty trade of being a father.' And then he begs of his son if he | |
should find himself with a tape line in his hand, that he will take his | |
exact measure and forward it. Soon came the news of the battle of | |
Friedland, and the unhappy father thought he read the fate of his son in | |
the face of every acquaintance he met. And so it was in later campaigns, | |
as De Maistre records in correspondence that glows with tender and | |
healthy solicitude. All this is worth dwelling upon, for two reasons. | |
First, because De Maistre has been too much regarded and spoken of as a | |
man of cold sensibility, and little moved by the hardships which fill | |
the destiny of our unfortunate race. And, secondly, because his own keen | |
acquaintance with mental anguish helps us to understand the zeal with | |
which he attempts to reconcile the blind cruelty and pain and torture | |
endured by mortals with the benignity and wisdom of the immortal. 'After | |
all,' he used to say, 'there are only two real evils--remorse and | |
disease.' This is true enough for an apophthegm, but as a matter of fact | |
it never for an instant dulled his sensibility to far less supreme forms | |
of agony than the recollection of irreparable pain struck into the lives | |
of others. It is interesting and suggestive to recall how a later | |
publicist viewed the ills that dwarf our little lives. 'If I were asked | |
to class human miseries,' said Tocqueville, 'I would do so in this | |
order: first, Disease; second, Death; third, Doubt.' At a later date, he | |
altered the order, and deliberately declared doubt to be the most | |
insupportable of all evils, worse than death itself. But Tocqueville was | |
an aristocrat, as Guizot once told him, who accepted his defeat. He | |
stood on the brink of the great torrent of democracy, and shivered. De | |
Maistre was an aristocrat too, but he was incapable of knowing what | |
doubt or hesitation meant. He never dreamt that his cause was lost, and | |
he mocked and defied the Revolution to the end. We easily see how | |
natures of this sort, ardent, impetuous, unflinching, find themselves in | |
the triumphant paths that lead to remorse at their close, and how they | |
thus come to feel remorse rather than doubt as the consummate agony of | |
the human mind. | |
Having had this glimpse of De Maistre's character away from his books, | |
we need not linger long over the remaining events of his life. In 1814 | |
his wife and two daughters joined him in the Russian capital. Two years | |
later an outburst of religious fanaticism caused the sudden expulsion of | |
the Jesuits from Russia, to De Maistre's deep mortification. Several | |
conversions had taken place from the Orthodox to the Western faith, and | |
these inflamed the Orthodox party, headed by the Prince de Galitzin, the | |
minister of public worship, with violent theological fury. De Maistre, | |
whose intense attachment to his own creed was well known, fell under | |
suspicion of having connived at these conversions, and the Emperor | |
himself went so far as to question him. 'I told him,' De Maistre says, | |
'that I had never changed the faith of any of his subjects, but that if | |
any of them had by chance made me a sharer of their confidence, neither | |
honour nor conscience would have allowed me to tell them that they were | |
wrong.' This kind of dialogue between a sovereign and an ambassador | |
implied a situation plainly unfavourable to effective diplomacy. The | |
envoy obtained his recall, and after twenty-five years' absence returned | |
to his native country (1817). On his way home, it may be noticed, De | |
Maistre passed a few days in Paris, and thus, for the first and last | |
time, one of the most eminent of modern French writers found himself on | |
French soil. | |
The king accorded De Maistre an honourable reception, conferred upon him | |
a high office and a small sum of money, and lent his ear to other | |
counsellors. The philosopher, though insisting on declaring his | |
political opinions, then, as ever, unwaveringly anti-revolutionary, | |
threw himself mainly upon that literary composition which had been his | |
solace in yet more evil days than these. It was at this time that he | |
gave to the world the supreme fruit of nearly half a century of study, | |
meditation, and contact with the world, in _Du Pape_, _Les Soirees de | |
Saint Petersbourg_, and _L'Eglise Gallicane_. Their author did not live | |
long to enjoy the vast discussion which they occasioned, nor the | |
reputation that they have since conferred upon his name. He died in | |
February 1821 after such a life as we have seen. | |
FOOTNOTE: | |
[2] The facts of De Maistre's life I have drawn from a very meagre | |
biography by his son, Count Rodolphe de Maistre, supplemented by two | |
volumes of _Lettres et Opuscules_ (Fourth edition. Paris: Vaton. 1865), | |
and a volume of his _Diplomatic Correspondence_, edited by M. Albert | |
Blanc. | |
II. | |
It is not at all surprising that they upon whom the revolutionary deluge | |
came should have looked with indiscriminating horror and affright on all | |
the influences which in their view had united first to gather up, and | |
then to release the destructive flood. The eighteenth century to men | |
like De Maistre seemed an infamous parenthesis, mysteriously interposed | |
between the glorious age of Bossuet and Fenelon, and that yet brighter | |
era for faith and the Church which was still to come in the good time of | |
Divine Providence. The philosophy of the last century, he says on more | |
than one occasion, will form one of the most shameful epochs of the | |
human mind: it never praised even good men except for what was bad in | |
them. He looked upon the gods whom that century had worshipped as the | |
direct authors of the bloodshed and ruin in which their epoch had | |
closed. The memory of mild and humane philosophers was covered with the | |
kind of black execration that prophets of old had hurled at Baal or | |
Moloch; Locke and Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau, were habitually spoken of | |
as very scourges of God. From this temper two consequences naturally | |
flowed. In the first place, while it lasted there was no hope of an | |
honest philosophic discussion of the great questions which divide | |
speculative minds. Moderation and impartiality were virtues of almost | |
superhuman difficulty for controversialists who had made up their minds | |
that it was their opponents who had erected the guillotine, confiscated | |
the sacred property of the church, slaughtered and banished her | |
children, and filled the land with terror and confusion. It is hard amid | |
the smoking ruins of the homestead to do full justice to the theoretical | |
arguments of the supposed authors of the conflagration. Hence De | |
Maistre, though, as has been already said, intimately acquainted with | |
the works of his foes in the letter, was prevented by the vehemence of | |
his antipathy to the effects which he attributed to them, from having | |
any just critical estimate of their value and true spirit. 'I do not | |
know one of these men,' he says of the philosophers of the eighteenth | |
century, 'to whom the sacred title of honest man is quite suitable.' | |
They are all wanting in probity. Their very names '_me dechirent la | |
bouche_.' To admire Voltaire is the sign of a corrupt soul; and if | |
anybody is drawn to the works of Voltaire, then be sure that God does | |
not love such an one. The divine anathema is written on the very face of | |
this arch-blasphemer; on his shameless brow, in the two extinct craters | |
still sparkling with sensuality and hate, in that frightful _rictus_ | |
running from ear to ear, in those lips tightened by cruel malice, like a | |
spring ready to fly back and launch forth blasphemy and sarcasm; he | |
plunges into the mud, rolls in it, drinks of it; he surrenders his | |
imagination to the enthusiasm of hell, which lends him all its forces; | |
Paris crowned him, Sodom would have banished him.[3] Locke, again, did | |
not understand himself. His distinguishing characteristics are | |
feebleness and precipitancy of judgment. Vagueness and irresolution | |
reign in his expressions as they do in his thoughts. He constantly | |
exhibits that most decisive sign of mediocrity--he passes close by the | |
greatest questions without perceiving them. In the study of philosophy, | |
contempt for Locke is the beginning of knowledge.[4] Condillac was even | |
more vigilantly than anybody else on his guard against his own | |
conscience. But Hume was perhaps the most dangerous and the most guilty | |
of all those mournful writers who will for ever accuse the last century | |
before posterity--the one who employed the most talent with the most | |
coolness to do most harm.[5] To Bacon De Maistre paid the compliment of | |
composing a long refutation of his main ideas, in which Bacon's | |
blindness, presumption, profanity, and scientific charlatanry are | |
denounced in vehement and almost coarse terms, and treated as the | |
natural outcome of a low morality. | |
It has long been the inglorious speciality of the theological school to | |
insist in this way upon moral depravity as an antecedent condition of | |
intellectual error. De Maistre in this respect was not unworthy of his | |
fellows. He believed that his opponents were even worse citizens than | |
they were bad philosophers, and it was his horror of them in the former | |
capacity that made him so bitter and resentful against them in the | |
latter. He could think of no more fitting image for opinions that he did | |
not happen to believe than counterfeit money, 'which is struck in the | |
first instance by great criminals, and is afterwards passed on by honest | |
folk who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they do.' A | |
philosopher of the highest class, we may be sure, does not permit | |
himself to be drawn down from the true object of his meditations by | |
these sinister emotions. But De Maistre belonged emphatically to minds | |
of the second order, whose eagerness to find truth is never intense and | |
pure enough to raise them above perturbing antipathies to persons. His | |
whole attitude was fatal to his claim to be heard as a truth-seeker in | |
any right sense of the term. He was not only persuaded of the general | |
justice and inexpugnableness of the orthodox system, but he refused to | |
believe that it was capable of being improved or supplemented by | |
anything which a temperate and fair examination of other doctrines might | |
peradventure be found to yield. With De Maistre there was no | |
peradventure. Again, no speculative mind of the highest order ever | |
mistakes, or ever moves systematically apart from, the main current of | |
the social movement of its time. It is implied in the very definition of | |
a thinker of supreme quality that he should detect, and be in a certain | |
accord with, the most forward and central of the ruling tendencies of | |
his epoch. Three-quarters of a century have elapsed since De Maistre was | |
driven to attempt to explain the world to himself, and this interval | |
has sufficed to show that the central conditions at that time for the | |
permanent reorganisation of the society which had just been so violently | |
rent in pieces, were assuredly not theological, military, nor | |
ultramontane, but the very opposite of all these. | |
There was a second consequence of the conditions of the time. The | |
catastrophe of Europe affected the matter as well as the manner of | |
contemporary speculation. The French Revolution has become to us no more | |
than a term, though the strangest term in a historic series. To some of | |
the best of those who were confronted on every side by its tumult and | |
agitation, it was the prevailing of the gates of hell, the moral | |
disruption of the universe, the absolute and total surrender of the | |
world to them that plough iniquity and sow wickedness. Even under | |
ordinary circumstances few men have gone through life without | |
encountering some triumphant iniquity, some gross and prolonged cruelty, | |
which makes them wonder how God should allow such things to be. If we | |
remember the aspect which the Revolution wore in the eyes of those who | |
seeing it yet did not understand, we can imagine what dimensions this | |
eternal enigma must have assumed in their sight. It was inevitable that | |
the first problem to press on men with resistless urgency should be the | |
ancient question of the method of the Creator's temporal government. | |
What is the law of the distribution of good and evil fortune? How can we | |
vindicate with regard to the conditions of this life, the different | |
destinies that fall to men? How can we defend the moral ordering of a | |
world in which the wicked and godless constantly triumph, while the | |
virtuous and upright who retain their integrity are as frequently | |
buffeted and put to shame? | |
This tremendous question has never been presented with such sublimity of | |
expression, such noble simplicity and force of thought, as in the | |
majestic and touching legend of Job. But its completeness, as a | |
presentation of the human tragedy, is impaired by the excessive | |
prosperity which is finally supposed to reward the patient hero for his | |
fortitude. Job received twice as much as he had before, and his latter | |
end was blessed more than his beginning. In the chronicles of actual | |
history men fare not so. There is a terribly logical finish about some | |
of the dealings of fate, and in life the working of a curse is seldom | |
stayed by any dramatic necessity for a smooth consummation. Destiny is | |
no artist. The facts that confront us are relentless. No statement of | |
the case is adequate which maintains, by ever so delicate an | |
implication, that in the long run and somehow it is well in temporal | |
things with the just, and ill with the unjust. Until we have firmly | |
looked in the face the grim truth that temporal rewards and punishments | |
do not follow the possession or the want of spiritual or moral virtue, | |
so long we are still ignorant what that enigma is, which speculative | |
men, from the author of the book of Job downwards, have striven to | |
resolve. We can readily imagine the fulness with which the question | |
would grow up in the mind of a royalist and Catholic exile at the end of | |
the eighteenth century. | |
Nothing can be more clearly put than De Maistre's answers to the | |
question which the circumstances of the time placed before him to solve. | |
What is the law of the distribution of good and evil fortune in this | |
life? Is it a moral law? Do prosperity and adversity fall respectively | |
to the just and the unjust, either individually or collectively? Has the | |
ancient covenant been faithfully kept, that whoso hearkens diligently to | |
the divine voice, and observes all the commandments to do them, shall be | |
blessed in his basket and his store and in all the work of his hand? Or | |
is God a God that hideth himself? | |
De Maistre perceived that the optimistic conception of the deity as | |
benign, merciful, infinitely forgiving, was very far indeed from | |
covering the facts. So he insisted on seeing in human destiny the | |
ever-present hand of a stern and terrible judge, administering a | |
Draconian code with blind and pitiless severity. God created men under | |
conditions which left them free to choose between good and evil. All the | |
physical evil that exists in the world is a penalty for the moral evil | |
that has resulted from the abuse by men of this freedom of choice. For | |
these physical calamities God is only responsible in the way in which a | |
criminal judge is responsible for a hanging. Men cannot blame the judge | |
for the gallows; the fault is their own in committing those offences for | |
which hanging is prescribed beforehand as the penalty. These curses | |
which dominate human life are not the result of the cruelty of the | |
divine ruler, but of the folly and wickedness of mankind, who, seeing | |
the better course, yet deliberately choose the worse. The order of the | |
world is overthrown by the iniquities of men; it is we who have provoked | |
the exercise of the divine justice, and called down the tokens of his | |
vengeance. The misery and disaster that surround us like a cloak are the | |
penalty of our crimes and the price of our expiation. As the divine St. | |
Thomas has said: _Deus est auctor mali quod est poena, non autem mali | |
quod est culpa._ There is a certain quantity of wrong done over the face | |
of the world; therefore the great Judge exacts a proportionate quantity | |
of punishment. The total amount of evil suffered makes nice equation | |
with the total amount of evil done; the extent of human suffering | |
tallies precisely with the extent of human guilt. Of course you must | |
take original sin into account, 'which explains all, and without which | |
you can explain nothing.' 'In virtue of this primitive degradation we | |
are subject to all sorts of physical sufferings _in general_; just as in | |
virtue of this same degradation we are subject to all sorts of vices _in | |
general_. This original malady therefore [which is the correlative of | |
original sin] has no other name. It is only the capacity of suffering | |
all evils, as original sin is only the capacity of committing all | |
crimes.'[6] Hence all calamity is either the punishment of sins actually | |
committed by the sufferers, or else it is the general penalty exacted | |
for general sinfulness. Sometimes an innocent being is stricken, and a | |
guilty being appears to escape. But is it not the same in the | |
transactions of earthly tribunals? And yet we do not say that they are | |
conducted without regard to justice and righteousness. 'When God | |
punishes any society for the crimes that it has committed, he does | |
justice as we do justice ourselves in these sorts of circumstance. A | |
city revolts; it massacres the representatives of the sovereign; it | |
shuts its gates against him; it defends itself against his arms; it is | |
taken. The prince has it dismantled and deprived of all its privileges; | |
nobody will find fault with this decision on the ground that there are | |
innocent persons shut up in the city.'[7] | |
De Maistre's deity is thus a colossal Septembriseur, enthroned high in | |
the peaceful heavens, demanding ever-renewed holocausts in the name of | |
the public safety. | |
It is true, as a general rule of the human mind, that the objects which | |
men have worshipped have improved in morality and wisdom as men | |
themselves have improved. The quiet gods, without effort of their own, | |
have grown holier and purer by the agitations and toil which civilise | |
their worshippers. In other words, the same influences which elevate and | |
widen our sense of human duty give corresponding height and nobleness to | |
our ideas of the divine character. The history of the civilisation of | |
the earth is the history of the civilisation of Olympus also. It will be | |
seen that the deity whom De Maistre sets up is below the moral level of | |
the time in respect of Punishment. In intellectual matters he vehemently | |
proclaimed the superiority of the tenth or the twelfth over the | |
eighteenth century, but it is surely carrying admiration for those loyal | |
times indecently far, to seek in the vindictive sackings of revolted | |
towns, and the miscellaneous butcheries of men, women, and babes, which | |
then marked the vengeance of outraged sovereignty, the most apt parallel | |
and analogy for the systematic administration of human society by its | |
Creator. Such punishment can no longer be regarded as moral in any deep | |
or permanent sense; it implies a gross, harsh, and revengeful character | |
in the executioner, that is eminently perplexing and incredible to those | |
who expect to find an idea of justice in the government of the world, at | |
least not materially below what is attained in the clumsy efforts of | |
uninspired publicists. | |
In mere point of administration, the criminal code which De Maistre put | |
into the hands of the Supreme Being works in a more arbitrary and | |
capricious manner than any device of an Italian Bourbon. As Voltaire | |
asks-- | |
_Lisbonne, qui n'est plus, eut-elle plus de vices | |
Que Londres, que Paris, plonges dans les delices? | |
Lisbonne est abimee, et l'on danse a Paris._ | |
Stay, De Maistre replies, look at Paris thirty years later, not dancing, | |
but red with blood. This kind of thing is often said, even now; but it | |
is really time to abandon the prostitution of the name of Justice to a | |
process which brings Lewis XVI. to the block, and consigns De Maistre to | |
poverty and exile, because Lewis XIV., the Regent, and Lewis XV. had | |
been profligate men or injudicious rulers. The reader may remember how | |
the unhappy Emperor Maurice as his five innocent sons were in turn | |
murdered before his eyes, at each stroke piously ejaculated: 'Thou art | |
just, O Lord! and thy judgments are righteous.'[8] Any name would befit | |
this kind of transaction better than that which, in the dealings of men | |
with one another at least, we reserve for the honourable anxiety that he | |
should reap who has sown, that the reward should be to him who has | |
toiled for it, and the pain to him who has deliberately incurred it. | |
What is gained by attributing to the divine government a method tainted | |
with every quality that could vitiate the enactment of penalties by a | |
temporal sovereign? | |
We need not labour this part of the discussion further. Though conducted | |
with much brilliance and vigour by De Maistre, it is not his most | |
important nor remarkable contribution to thought. Before passing on to | |
that, it is worth while to make one remark. It will be inferred from De | |
Maistre's general position that he was no friend to physical science. | |
Just as moderns see in the advance of the methods and boundaries of | |
physical knowledge the most direct and sure means of displacing the | |
unfruitful subjective methods of old, and so of renovating the entire | |
field of human thought and activity, so did De Maistre see, as his | |
school has seen since, that here was the stronghold of his foes. 'Ah, | |
how dearly,' he exclaimed, 'has man paid for the natural sciences!' Not | |
but that Providence designed that man should know something about them; | |
only it must be in due order. The ancients were not permitted to attain | |
to much or even any sound knowledge of physics, indisputably above us as | |
they were in force of mind, a fact shown by the superiority of their | |
languages which ought to silence for ever the voice of our modern pride. | |
Why did the ancients remain so ignorant of natural science? Because they | |
were not Christian. 'When all Europe was Christian, when the priests | |
were the universal teachers, when all the establishments of Europe were | |
Christianised, when theology had taken its place at the head of all | |
instruction, and the other faculties were ranged around her like maids | |
of honour round their queen, the human race being thus prepared, then | |
the natural sciences were given to it.' Science must be kept in its | |
place, for it resembles fire which, when confined in the grates prepared | |
for it, is the most useful and powerful of man's servants; scattered | |
about anyhow, it is the most terrible of scourges. Whence the marked | |
supremacy of the seventeenth century, especially in France? From the | |
happy accord of religion, science, and chivalry, and from the supremacy | |
conceded to the first. The more perfect theology is in a country the | |
more fruitful it is in true science; and that is why Christian nations | |
have surpassed all others in the sciences, and that is why the Indians | |
and Chinese will never reach us, so long as we remain respectively as we | |
are. The more theology is cultivated, honoured, and supreme, then, other | |
things being equal, the more perfect will human science be: that is to | |
say, it will have the greater force and expansion, and will be the more | |
free from every mischievous and perilous connection.[9] | |
Little would be gained here by serious criticism of a view of this kind | |
from a positive point. How little, the reader will understand from De | |
Maistre's own explanations of his principles of Proof and Evidence. | |
'They have called to witness against Moses,' he says, 'history, | |
chronology, astronomy, geology, etc. The objections have disappeared | |
before true science; but those were profoundly wise who despised them | |
before any inquiry, or who only examined them in order to discover a | |
refutation, but without ever doubting that there was one. Even a | |
mathematical objection ought to be despised, for though it may be a | |
demonstrated truth, still you will never be able to demonstrate that it | |
contradicts a truth that has been demonstrated before.' His final | |
formula he boldly announced in these words: '_Que toutes les fois qu'une | |
proposition sera prouvee par le genre de preuve qui lui appartient, | |
l'objection quelconque,_ MEME INSOLUBLE, _ne doit plus etre ecoutee._' | |
Suppose, for example, that by a consensus of testimony it were perfectly | |
proved that Archimedes set fire to the fleet of Marcellus by a | |
burning-glass; then all the objections of geometry disappear. Prove if | |
you can, and if you choose, that by certain laws a glass, in order to be | |
capable of setting fire to the Roman fleet, must have been as big as the | |
whole city of Syracuse, and ask me what answer I have to make to that. | |
'_J'ai a vous repondre qu'Archimede brula la flotte romaine avec un | |
miroir ardent._' | |
The interesting thing about such opinions as these is not the exact | |
height and depth of their falseness, but the considerations which could | |
recommend them to a man of so much knowledge, both of books and of the | |
outer facts of life, and of so much natural acuteness as De Maistre. | |
Persons who have accustomed themselves to ascertained methods of proof, | |
are apt to look on a man who vows that if a thing has been declared | |
true by some authority whom he respects, then that constitutes proof to | |
him, as either the victim of a preposterous and barely credible | |
infatuation, or else as a flat impostor. Yet De Maistre was no ignorant | |
monk. He had no selfish or official interest in taking away the | |
keys of knowledge, entering not in himself, and them that would | |
enter in hindering. The true reasons for his detestation of the | |
eighteenth-century philosophers, science, and literature, are simple | |
enough. Like every wise man, he felt that the end of all philosophy and | |
science is emphatically social, the construction and maintenance and | |
improvement of a fabric under which the communities of men may find | |
shelter, and may secure all the conditions for living their lives with | |
dignity and service. Then he held that no truth can be harmful to | |
society. If he found any system of opinions, any given attitude of the | |
mind, injurious to tranquillity and the public order, he instantly | |
concluded that, however plausible they might seem when tested by logic | |
and demonstration, they were fundamentally untrue and deceptive. What is | |
logic compared with eternal salvation in the next world, and the | |
practice of virtue in this? The recommendation of such a mind as De | |
Maistre's is the intensity of its appreciation of order and social | |
happiness. The obvious weakness of such a mind, and the curse inherent | |
in its influence, is that it overlooks the prime condition of all; that | |
social order can never be established on a durable basis so long as the | |
discoveries of scientific truth in all its departments are suppressed, | |
or incorrectly appreciated, or socially misapplied. De Maistre did not | |
perceive that the cause which he supported was no longer the cause of | |
peace and tranquillity and right living, but was in a state of absolute | |
and final decomposition, and therefore was the cause of disorder and | |
blind wrong living. Of this we shall now see more. | |
FOOTNOTES: | |
[3] _Soirees de Saint Petersbourg_ (8th ed. 1862), vol. i. pp. 238-243. | |
[4] _Soirees de Saint Petersbourg, 6ieme entretien_, i. 397-442. | |
[5] _Ib._ (8th ed. 1862) vol. i. p. 403. | |
[6] _Soirees_, i. 76 | |
[7] De Maistre found a curiously characteristic kind of support for this | |
view in the fact that evils are called _fleaux_: flails are things to | |
beat with: so evils must be things with which men are beaten; and as we | |
should not be beaten if we did not deserve it, _argal_, suffering is a | |
merited punishment. Apart from that common infirmity which leads people | |
after they have discovered an analogy between two things, to argue from | |
the properties of the one to those of the other, as if, instead of being | |
analogous, they were identical, De Maistre was particularly fond of | |
inferring moral truths from etymologies. He has an argument for the | |
deterioration of man, drawn from the fact that the Romans expressed in | |
the same word, _supplicium_, the two ideas of prayer and punishment | |
(_Soirees, 2ieme entretien_, i. p. 108). His profundity as an | |
etymologist may be gathered from his analysis of _cadaver_: _ca_-ro, | |
_da_-ta, _ver_-mibus. There are many others of the same quality. | |
[8] _Gibbon_, c. xlvi. vol. v. 385. | |
[9] See the _Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon_, vol. ii. 58 _et seq._ | |
III. | |
When the waters of the deluge of '89 began to assuage, the best minds | |
soon satisfied themselves that the event which Bonaparte's restoration | |
of order enabled them to look back upon with a certain tranquillity and | |
a certain completeness, had been neither more nor less than a new | |
irruption of barbarians into the European world. The monarchy, the | |
nobles, and the Church, with all the ideas that gave each of them life | |
and power, had fallen before atheists and Jacobins, as the ancient | |
empire of Rome had fallen before Huns and Goths, Vandals and Lombards. | |
The leaders of the revolution had succeeded one another, as Attila had | |
come after Alaric, and as Genseric had been followed by Odoacer. The | |
problem which presented itself was not new in the history of western | |
civilisation; the same dissolution of old bonds which perplexed the | |
foremost men at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had distracted | |
their predecessors from the fifth to the eighth, though their conditions | |
and circumstances were widely different. The practical question in both | |
cases was just the same--how to establish a stable social order which, | |
resting on principles that should command the assent of all, might | |
secure the co-operation of all for its harmonious and efficient | |
maintenance, and might offer a firm basis for the highest and best life | |
that the moral and intellectual state of the time allowed. There were | |
two courses open, or which seemed to be open, in this gigantic | |
enterprise of reconstructing a society. One of them was to treat the | |
case of the eighteenth century as if it were not merely similar to, but | |
exactly identical with, the case of the fifth, and as if exactly the | |
same forces which had knit Western Europe together into a compact | |
civilisation a thousand years before, would again suffice for a second | |
consolidation. Christianity, rising with the zeal and strength of youth | |
out of the ruins of the Empire, and feudalism by the need of | |
self-preservation imposing a form upon the unshapen associations of the | |
barbarians, had between them compacted the foundations and reared the | |
fabric of mediaeval life. Why, many men asked themselves, should not | |
Christian and feudal ideas repeat their great achievement, and be the | |
means of reorganising the system which a blind rebellion against them | |
had thrown into deplorable and fatal confusion? Let the century which | |
had come to such an end be regarded as a mysteriously intercalated | |
episode, and no more, in the long drama of faith and sovereign order. | |
Let it pass as a sombre and pestilent stream, whose fountains no man | |
should discover, whose waters had for a season mingled with the mightier | |
current of the divinely allotted destiny of the race, and had then | |
gathered themselves apart and flowed off, to end as they had begun, in | |
the stagnation and barrenness of the desert. Philosophers and men of | |
letters, astronomers and chemists, atheists and republicans, had shown | |
that they were only powerful to destroy, as the Goths and the Vandals | |
had been. They had shown that they were impotent, as the Goths and the | |
Vandals had been, in building up again. Let men turn their faces, then, | |
once more to that system by which in the ancient times Europe had been | |
delivered from a relapse into eternal night. | |
The second course was very different from this. The minds to whom it | |
commended itself were cast in a different mould and drew their | |
inspiration from other traditions. In their view the system which the | |
Church had been the main agency in organising, had fallen quite as much | |
from its own irremediable weakness as from the direct onslaughts of | |
assailants within and without. The barbarians had rushed in, it was | |
true, in 1793; but this time it was the Church and feudalism which were | |
in the position of the old empire on whose ruins they had built. What | |
had once restored order and belief to the West, was now in its own turn | |
overtaken by decay and dissolution. To look to them to unite these new | |
barbarians in a stable and vigorous civilisation, because they had | |
organised Europe of old, was as infatuated as it would have been to | |
expect the later emperors to equal the exploits of the Republic and | |
their greatest predecessors in the purple. To despise philosophers and | |
men of science was only to play over again in a new dress the very part | |
which Julian had enacted in the face of nascent Christianity. The | |
eighteenth century, instead of being that home of malaria which the | |
Catholic and Royalist party represented, was in truth the seed-ground of | |
a new and better future. Its ideas were to furnish the material and the | |
implements by which should be repaired the terrible breaches and chasms | |
in European order that had been made alike by despots and Jacobins, by | |
priests and atheists, by aristocrats and sans-culottes. Amidst all the | |
demolition upon which its leading minds had been so zealously bent, they | |
had been animated by the warmest love of social justice, of human | |
freedom, of equal rights, and by the most fervent and sincere longing to | |
make a nobler happiness more universally attainable by all the children | |
of men. It was to these great principles that we ought eagerly to turn, | |
to liberty, to equality, to brotherhood, if we wished to achieve before | |
the new invaders a work of civilisation and social reconstruction, such | |
as Catholicism and feudalism had achieved for the multitudinous invaders | |
of old. | |
Such was the difference which divided opinion when men took heart to | |
survey the appalling scene of moral desolation that the cataclysm of '93 | |
had left behind. We may admire the courage of either school. For if the | |
conscience of the Liberals was oppressed by the sanguinary tragedy in | |
which freedom and brotherhood and justice had been consummated, the | |
Catholic and the Royalist were just as sorely burdened with the weight | |
of kingly basenesses and priestly hypocrisies. If the one had some | |
difficulty in interpreting Jacobinism and the Terror, the other was | |
still more severely pressed to interpret the fact and origin and meaning | |
of the Revolution; if the Liberal had Marat and Hebert, the Royalist had | |
Lewis XV., and the Catholic had Dubois and De Rohan. Each school could | |
intrepidly hurl back the taunts of its enemy, and neither of them did | |
full justice to the strong side of the other. Yet we who are, in England | |
at all events, removed a little aside from the centre of this great | |
battle, may perceive that at that time both of the contending hosts | |
fought under honourable banners, and could inscribe upon their shields a | |
rational and intelligible device. Indeed, unless the modern Liberal | |
admits the strength inherent in the cause of his enemies, it is | |
impossible for him to explain to himself the duration and obstinacy of | |
the conflict, the slow advance and occasional repulse of the host in | |
which he has enlisted, and the tardy progress that Liberalism has made | |
in that stupendous reconstruction which the Revolution has forced the | |
modern political thinker to meditate upon, and the modern statesman to | |
further and control. | |
De Maistre, from those general ideas as to the method of the government | |
of the world, of which we have already seen something, had formed what | |
he conceived to be a perfectly satisfactory way of accounting for the | |
eighteenth century and its terrific climax. The will of man is left | |
free; he acts contrary to the will of God; and then God exacts the | |
shedding of blood as the penalty. So much for the past. The only hope of | |
the future lay in an immediate return to the system which God himself | |
had established, and in the restoration of that spiritual power which | |
had presided over the reconstruction of Europe in darker and more | |
chaotic times than even these. Though, perhaps, he nowhere expresses | |
himself on this point in a distinct formula, De Maistre was firmly | |
impressed with the idea of historic unity and continuity. He looked upon | |
the history of the West in its integrity, and was entirely free from | |
anything like that disastrous kind of misconception which makes the | |
English Protestant treat the long period between St. Paul and Martin | |
Luther as a howling waste, or which makes some Americans omit from all | |
account the still longer period of human effort from the crucifixion of | |
Christ to the Declaration of Independence. The rise of the vast | |
structure of Western civilisation during and after the dissolution of | |
the Empire, presented itself to his mind as a single and uniform | |
process, though marked in portions by temporary, casual, parenthetical | |
interruptions, due to depraved will and disordered pride. All the | |
dangers to which this civilisation had been exposed in its infancy and | |
growth were before his eyes. First, there were the heresies with which | |
the subtle and debased ingenuity of the Greeks had stained and distorted | |
the great but simple mysteries of the faith. Then came the hordes of | |
invaders from the North, sweeping with irresistible force over regions | |
that the weakness or cowardice of the wearers of the purple left | |
defenceless before them. Before the northern tribes had settled in their | |
possessions, and had full time to assimilate the faith and the | |
institutions which they had found there, the growing organisation was | |
menaced by a more deadly peril in the incessant and steady advance of | |
the bloody and fanatical tribes from the East. And in this way De | |
Maistre's mind continued the picture down to the latest days of all, | |
when there had arisen men who, denying God and mocking at Christ, were | |
bent on the destruction of the very foundations of society, and had | |
nothing better to offer the human race than a miserable return to a | |
state of nature. | |
As he thus reproduced this long drama, one benign and central figure was | |
ever present, changeless in the midst of ceaseless change; laboriously | |
building up with preterhuman patience and preterhuman sagacity, when | |
other powers, one after another in evil succession, were madly raging to | |
destroy and to pull down; thinking only of the great interests of order | |
and civilisation, of which it had been constituted the eternal | |
protector, and showing its divine origin and inspiration alike by its | |
unfailing wisdom and its unfailing benevolence. It is the Sovereign | |
Pontiff who thus stands forth throughout the history of Europe, as the | |
great Demiurgus of universal civilisation. If the Pope had filled only | |
such a position as the Patriarch held at Constantinople, or if there had | |
been no Pope, and Christianity had depended exclusively on the East for | |
its propagation, with no great spiritual organ in the West, what would | |
have become of Western development? It was the energy and resolution of | |
the Pontiffs which resisted the heresies of the East, and preserved to | |
the Christian religion that plainness and intelligibility, without which | |
it would never have made a way to the rude understanding and simple | |
hearts of the barbarians from the North. It was their wise patriotism | |
which protected Italy against Greek oppression, and by acting the part | |
of mayors of the palace to the decrepit Eastern emperors, it was they | |
who contrived to preserve the independence and maintain the fabric of | |
society until the appearance of the Carlovingians, in whom, with the | |
rapid instinct of true statesmen, they at once recognised the founders | |
of a new empire of the West. If the Popes, again, had possessed over the | |
Eastern empire the same authority that they had over the Western, they | |
would have repulsed not only the Saracens, but the Turks too, and none | |
of the evils which these nations have inflicted on us would ever have | |
taken place.[10] Even as it was, when the Saracens threatened the West, | |
the Popes were the chief agents in organising resistance, and giving | |
spirit and animation to the defenders of Europe. Their alert vision saw | |
that to crush for ever that formidable enemy, it was not enough to | |
defend ourselves against his assaults; we must attack him at home. The | |
Crusades, vulgarly treated as the wars of a blind and superstitious | |
piety, were in truth wars of high policy. From the Council of Clermont | |
down to the famous day of Lepanto, the hand and spirit of the Pontiff | |
were to be traced in every part of that tremendous struggle which | |
prevented Europe from being handed over to the tyranny, ignorance, and | |
barbarism that have always been the inevitable fruits of Mahometan | |
conquest, and had already stamped out civilisation in Asia Minor and | |
Palestine and Greece, once the very garden of the universe. | |
This admirable and politic heroism of the Popes in the face of foes | |
pressing from without, De Maistre found more than equalled by their | |
wisdom, courage, and activity in organising and developing the elements | |
of a civilised system within. The maxim of old societies had been that | |
which Lucan puts into the mouth of Caesar--_humanum paucis vivit genus_. | |
A vast population of slaves had been one of the inevitable social | |
conditions of the period: the Popes never rested from their endeavours | |
to banish servitude from among Christian nations. Women in old | |
societies had filled a mean and degraded place: it was reserved for the | |
new spiritual power to rescue the race from that vicious circle in which | |
men had debased the nature of women, and women had given back all the | |
weakness and perversity they had received from men, and to perceive that | |
'the most effectual way of perfecting the man is to ennoble and exalt | |
the woman.' The organisation of the priesthood, again, was a masterpiece | |
of practical wisdom. Such an order, removed from the fierce or selfish | |
interests of ordinary life by the holy regulation of celibacy, and by | |
the austere discipline of the Church, was indispensable in the midst of | |
such a society as that which it was the function of the Church to guide. | |
Who but the members of an order thus set apart, acting in strict | |
subordination to the central power, and so presenting a front of | |
unbroken spiritual unity, could have held their way among tumultuous | |
tribes, half-barbarous nobles, and proud and unruly kings, protesting | |
against wrong, passionately inculcating new and higher ideas of right, | |
denouncing the darkness of the false gods, calling on all men to worship | |
the cross and adore the mysteries of the true God? Compare now the | |
impotency of the Protestant missionary, squatting in gross comfort with | |
wife and babes among the savages he has come to convert, preaching a | |
disputatious doctrine, wrangling openly with the rival sent by some | |
other sect--compare this impotency with the success that follows the | |
devoted sons of the Church, impressing their proselytes with the | |
mysterious virtue of their continence, the self-denial of their lives, | |
the unity of their dogma and their rites; and then recognise the wisdom | |
of these great churchmen who created a priesthood after this manner in | |
the days when every priest was as the missionary is now. Finally, it was | |
the occupants of the holy chair who prepared, softened, one might almost | |
say sweetened, the occupants of thrones; it was to them that Providence | |
had confided the education of the sovereigns of Europe. The Popes | |
brought up the youth of the European monarchy; they made it precisely in | |
the same way in which Fenelon made the Duke of Burgundy. In each case | |
the task consisted in eradicating from a fine character an element of | |
ferocity that would have ruined all. 'Everything that constrains a man | |
strengthens him. He cannot obey without perfecting himself; and by the | |
mere fact of overcoming himself he is better. Any man will vanquish the | |
most violent passion at thirty, because at five or six you have taught | |
him of his own will to give up a plaything or a sweetmeat. That came to | |
pass to the monarchy, which happens to an individual who has been well | |
brought up. The continued efforts of the Church, directed by the | |
Sovereign Pontiff, did what had never been seen before, and what will | |
never be seen again where that authority is not recognised. Insensibly, | |
without threats or laws or battles, without violence and without | |
resistance, the great European charter was proclaimed, not on paper nor | |
by the voice of public criers; but in all European hearts, then all | |
Catholic Kings surrender the power of judging by themselves, and nations | |
in return declare kings infallible and inviolable. Such is the | |
fundamental law of the European monarchy, and it is the work of the | |
Popes.'[11] | |
All this, however, is only the external development of De Maistre's | |
central idea, the historical corroboration of a truth to which he | |
conducts us in the first instance by general considerations. Assuming, | |
what it is less and less characteristic of the present century at any | |
rate to deny, that Christianity was the only actual force by which the | |
regeneration of Europe could be effected after the decline of the Roman | |
civilisation, he insists that, as he again and again expresses it, | |
'without the Pope there is no veritable Christianity.' What he meant by | |
this condensed form needs a little explanation, as is always the case | |
with such simple statements of the products of long and complex | |
reasoning. In saying that without the Pope there is no true | |
Christianity, what he considered himself as having established was, that | |
unless there be some supreme and independent possessor of authority to | |
settle doctrine, to regulate discipline, to give authentic counsel, to | |
apply accepted principles to disputed cases, then there can be no such | |
thing as a religious system which shall have power to bind the members | |
of a vast and not homogeneous body in the salutary bonds of a common | |
civilisation, nor to guide and inform an universal conscience. In each | |
individual state everybody admits the absolute necessity of having some | |
sovereign power which shall make, declare, and administer the laws, and | |
from whose action in any one of these aspects there shall be no appeal; | |
a power that shall be strong enough to protect the rights and enforce | |
the duties which it has authoritatively proclaimed and enjoined. In free | |
England, as in despotic Turkey, the privileges and obligations which the | |
law tolerates or imposes, and all the benefits which their existence | |
confers on the community, are the creatures and conditions of a supreme | |
authority from which there is no appeal, whether the instrument by which | |
this authority makes its will known be an act of parliament or a ukase. | |
This conception of temporal sovereignty, especially familiarised to our | |
generation by the teaching of Austin, was carried by De Maistre into | |
discussions upon the limits of the Papal power with great ingenuity and | |
force, and, if we accept the premisses, with great success. | |
It should be said here, that throughout his book on the Pope, De Maistre | |
talks of Christianity exclusively as a statesman or a publicist would | |
talk about it; not theologically nor spiritually, but politically and | |
socially. The question with which he concerns himself is the utilisation | |
of Christianity as a force to shape and organise a system of civilised | |
societies; a study of the conditions under which this utilisation had | |
taken place in the earlier centuries of the era; and a deduction from | |
them of the conditions under which we might ensure a repetition of the | |
process in changed modern circumstance. In the eighteenth century men | |
were accustomed to ask of Christianity, as Protestants always ask of so | |
much of Catholicism as they have dropped, whether or no it is true. But | |
after the Revolution the question changed, and became an inquiry whether | |
and how Christianity could contribute to the reconstruction of society. | |
People asked less how true it was, than how strong it was; less how many | |
unquestioned dogmas, than how much social weight it had or could | |
develop; less as to the precise amount and form of belief that would | |
save a soul, than as to the way in which it might be expected to assist | |
the European community. | |
It was the strength of this temper in him which led to his extraordinary | |
detestation and contempt for the Greeks. Their turn for pure speculation | |
excited all his anger. In a curious chapter, he exhausts invective in | |
denouncing them.[12] The sarcasm of Sallust delights him, that the | |
actions of Greece were very fine, _verum aliquanto minores quam fama | |
feruntur_. Their military glory was only a flash of about a hundred and | |
fourteen years from Marathon; compare this with the prolonged splendour | |
of Rome, France, and England. In philosophy they displayed decent | |
talent, but even here their true merit is to have brought the wisdom of | |
Asia into Europe, for they invented nothing. Greece was the home of | |
syllogism and of unreason. 'Read Plato: at every page you will draw a | |
striking distinction. As often as he is Greek, he wearies you. He is | |
only great, sublime, penetrating, when he is a theologian; in other | |
words, when he is announcing positive and everlasting dogmas, free from | |
all quibble, and which are so clearly marked with the eastern cast, that | |
not to perceive it one must never have had a glimpse of Asia.... There | |
was in him a sophist and a theologian, or, if you choose, a Greek and a | |
Chaldean.' The Athenians could never pardon one of their great leaders, | |
all of whom fell victims in one shape or another to a temper frivolous | |
as that of a child, ferocious as that of men,--'_espece de moutons | |
enrages, toujours menes par la nature, et toujours par nature devorant | |
leurs bergers_.' As for their oratory, 'the tribune of Athens would have | |
been the disgrace of mankind if Phocion and men like him, by | |
occasionally ascending it before drinking the hemlock or setting out for | |
their place of exile, had not in some sort balanced such a mass of | |
loquacity, extravagance, and cruelty.'[13] | |
It is very important to remember this constant solicitude for ideas that | |
should work well, in connection with that book of De Maistre's which | |
has had most influence in Europe, by supplying a base for the theories | |
of ultramontanism. Unless we perceive very clearly that throughout his | |
ardent speculations on the Papal power his mind was bent upon enforcing | |
the practical solution of a pressing social problem, we easily | |
misunderstand him and underrate what he had to say. A charge has been | |
forcibly urged against him by an eminent English critic, for example, | |
that he has confounded supremacy with infallibility, than which, as the | |
writer truly says, no two ideas can be more perfectly distinct, one | |
being superiority of force, and the other incapacity of error.[14] De | |
Maistre made logical blunders in abundance quite as bad as this, but he | |
was too acute, I think, deliberately to erect so elaborate a structure | |
upon a confusion so very obvious, and that must have stared him in the | |
face from the first page of his work to the last. If we look upon his | |
book as a mere general defence of the Papacy, designed to investigate | |
and fortify all its pretensions one by one, we should have great right | |
to complain against having two claims so essentially divergent, treated | |
as though they were the same thing, or could be held in their places by | |
the same supports. But let us regard the treatise on the Pope not as | |
meant to convince free-thinkers or Protestants that divine grace | |
inspires every decree of the Holy Father, though that would have been | |
the right view of it if it had been written fifty years earlier. It was | |
composed within the first twenty years of the present century, when the | |
universe, to men of De Maistre's stamp, seemed once more without form | |
and void. His object, as he tells us more than once, was to find a way | |
of restoring a religion and a morality in Europe; of giving to truth the | |
forces demanded for the conquests that she was meditating; of | |
strengthening the thrones of sovereigns, and of gently calming that | |
general fermentation of spirit which threatened mightier evils than any | |
that had yet overwhelmed society. From this point of view we shall see | |
that the distinction between supremacy and infallibility was not worth | |
recognising. | |
Practically, he says, 'infallibility is only a consequence of supremacy, | |
or rather it is absolutely the same thing under two different names.... | |
In effect it is the same thing, _in practice_, not to be subject to | |
error, and not to be liable to be accused of it. Thus, even if we should | |
agree that no divine promise was made to the Pope, he would not be less | |
infallible or deemed so, as the final tribunal; for every judgment from | |
which you cannot appeal is and must be (_est et doit etre_) held for | |
just in every human association, under any imaginable form of | |
government; and every true statesman will understand me perfectly, when | |
I say that the point is to ascertain not only if the Sovereign Pontiff | |
is, but if he must be, infallible.'[15] In another place he says | |
distinctly enough that the infallibility of the Church has two aspects; | |
in one of them it is the object of divine promise, in the other it is a | |
human implication, and that in the latter aspect infallibility is | |
supposed in the Church, just 'as we are absolutely bound to suppose it, | |
even in temporal sovereignties (where it does not really exist), under | |
pain of seeing society dissolved.' The Church only demands what other | |
sovereignties demand, though she has the immense superiority over them | |
of having her claim backed by direct promise from heaven.[16] Take away | |
the dogma, if you will, he says, and only consider the thing | |
politically, which is exactly what he really does all through the book. | |
The pope, from this point of view, asks for no other infallibility than | |
that which is attributed to all sovereigns.[17] Without either | |
vindicating or surrendering the supernatural side of the Papal claims, | |
he only insists upon the political, social, or human side of it, as an | |
inseparable quality of an admitted supremacy.[18] In short, from | |
beginning to end of this speculation, from which the best kind of | |
ultramontanism has drawn its defence, he evinces a deprecatory | |
anxiety--a very rare temper with De Maistre--not to fight on the issue | |
of the dogma of infallibility over which Protestants and unbelievers | |
have won an infinite number of cheap victories; that he leaves as a | |
theme more fitted for the disputations of theologians. My position, he | |
seems to keep saying, is that if the Pope is spiritually supreme, then | |
he is virtually and practically _as if he were_ infallible, just in the | |
same sense in which the English Parliament and monarch, and the Russian | |
Czar, are as if they were infallible. But let us not argue so much about | |
this, which is only secondary. The main question is whether without the | |
Pope there can be a true Christianity, 'that is to say, a Christianity, | |
active, powerful, converting, regenerating, conquering, perfecting.' | |
De Maistre was probably conducted to his theory by an analogy, which he | |
tacitly leaned upon more strongly than it could well bear, between | |
temporal organisation and spiritual organisation. In inchoate | |
communities, the momentary self-interest and the promptly stirred | |
passions of men would rend the growing society in pieces, unless they | |
were restrained by the strong hand of law in some shape or other, | |
written or unwritten, and administered by an authority, either | |
physically too strong to be resisted, or else set up by the common | |
consent seeking to further the general convenience. To divide this | |
authority, so that none should know where to look for a sovereign | |
decree, nor be able to ascertain the commands of sovereign law; to | |
embody it in the persons of many discordant expounders, each assuming | |
oracular weight and equal sanction; to leave individuals to administer | |
and interpret it for themselves, and to decide among themselves its | |
application to their own cases; what would this be but a deliberate | |
preparation for anarchy and dissolution? For it is one of the clear | |
conditions of the efficacy of the social union, that every member of it | |
should be able to know for certain the terms on which he belongs to it, | |
the compliances which it will insist upon in him, and the compliances | |
which it will in turn permit him to insist upon in others, and therefore | |
it is indispensable that there should be some definite and admitted | |
centre where this very essential knowledge should be accessible. | |
Some such reflections as these must have been at the bottom of De | |
Maistre's great apology for the Papal supremacy, or at any rate they may | |
serve to bring before our minds with greater clearness the kind of | |
foundations on which his scheme rested. For law substitute Christianity, | |
for social union spiritual union, for legal obligations the obligations | |
of the faith. Instead of individuals bound together by allegiance to | |
common political institutions, conceive communities united in the bonds | |
of religious brotherhood into a sort of universal republic, under the | |
moderate supremacy of a supreme spiritual power. As a matter of fact, it | |
was the intervention of this spiritual power which restrained the | |
anarchy, internal and external, of the ferocious and imperfectly | |
organised sovereignties that figure in the early history of modern | |
Europe. And as a matter of theory, what could be more rational and | |
defensible than such an intervention made systematic, with its | |
rightfulness and disinterestedness universally recognised? Grant | |
Christianity as the spiritual basis of the life and action of modern | |
communities; supporting both the organised structure of each of them, | |
and the interdependent system composed of them all; accepted by the | |
individual members of each, and by the integral bodies forming the | |
whole. But who shall declare what the Christian doctrine is, and how its | |
maxims bear upon special cases, and what oracles they announce in | |
particular sets of circumstances? Amid the turbulence of popular | |
passion, in face of the crushing despotism of an insensate tyrant, | |
between the furious hatred of jealous nations or the violent ambition of | |
rival sovereigns, what likelihood would there be of either party to the | |
contention yielding tranquilly and promptly to any presentation of | |
Christian teaching made by the other, or by some suspected neutral as a | |
decisive authority between them? Obviously there must be some supreme | |
and indisputable interpreter, before whose final decree the tyrant | |
should quail, the flood of popular lawlessness flow back within its | |
accustomed banks, and contending sovereigns or jealous nations | |
fraternally embrace. Again, in those questions of faith and discipline, | |
which the ill-exercised ingenuity of men is for ever raising and | |
pressing upon the attention of Christendom, it is just as obvious that | |
there must be some tribunal to pronounce an authoritative judgment. | |
Otherwise, each nation is torn into sects; and amid the throng of sects | |
where is unity? 'To maintain that a crowd of independent churches form a | |
church, one and universal, is to maintain in other terms that all the | |
political governments of Europe only form a single government, one and | |
universal.' There could no more be a kingdom of France without a king, | |
nor an empire of Russia without an emperor, than there could be one | |
universal church without an acknowledged head. That this head must be | |
the successor of St. Peter, is declared alike by the voice of tradition, | |
the explicit testimony of the early writers, the repeated utterances of | |
later theologians of all schools, and that general sentiment which | |
presses itself upon every conscientious reader of religious history. | |
The argument that the voice of the Church is to be sought in general | |
councils is absurd. To maintain that a council has any other function | |
than to assure and certify the Pope, when he chooses to strengthen his | |
judgment or to satisfy his doubts, is to destroy visible unity. Suppose | |
there to be an equal division of votes, as happened in the famous case | |
of Fenelon, and might as well happen in a general council, the doubt | |
would after all be solved by the final vote of the Pope. And 'what is | |
doubtful for twenty selected men is doubtful for the whole human race. | |
Those who suppose that by multiplying the deliberating voices doubt is | |
lessened, must have very little knowledge of men, and can never have sat | |
in a deliberative body.' Again, supposing there to present itself one of | |
those questions of divine metaphysics that it is absolutely necessary to | |
refer to the decision of the supreme tribunal. Then our interest is not | |
that it should be decided in such or such a manner, but that it should | |
be decided without delay and without appeal. Besides, the world is now | |
grown too vast for general councils, which seem to be made only for the | |
youth of Christianity. In fine, why pursue futile or mischievous | |
discussions as to whether the Pope is above the Council or the Council | |
above the Pope? In ordinary questions in which a king is conscious of | |
sufficient light, he decides them himself, while the others in which he | |
is not conscious of this light, he transfers to the States-General | |
presided over by himself, but he is equally sovereign in either case. So | |
with the Pope and the Council. Let us be content to know, in the words | |
of Thomassin,[19] that 'the Pope in the midst of his Council is above | |
himself, and that the Council decapitated of its chief is below him.' | |
The point so constantly dwelt upon by Bossuet, the obligation of the | |
canons upon the Pope, was of very little worth in De Maistre's judgment, | |
and he almost speaks with disrespect of the great Catholic defender for | |
being so prolix and pertinacious in elaborating it. Here again he finds | |
in Thomassin the most concise statement of what he held to be the true | |
view, just as he does in the controversy as to the relative superiority | |
of the Pope or the Council. 'There is only an apparent contradiction,' | |
says Thomassin, 'between saying that the Pope is above the canons, and | |
that he is bound by them; that he is master of the canons, or that he is | |
not. Those who place him above the canons or make him their master, only | |
pretend that he _has a dispensing power over them_; while those who deny | |
that he is above the canons or is their master, mean no more than that | |
_he can only exercise a dispensing power for the convenience and in the | |
necessities of the Church_.' This is an excellent illustration of the | |
thoroughly political temper in which De Maistre treats the whole | |
subject. He looks at the power of the Pope over the canons much as a | |
modern English statesman looks at the question of the coronation oath, | |
and the extent to which it binds the monarch to the maintenance of the | |
laws existing at the time of its imposition. In the same spirit he | |
banishes from all account the crowd of nonsensical objections to Papal | |
supremacy, drawn from imaginary possibilities. Suppose a Pope, for | |
example, were to abolish all the canons at a single stroke; suppose him | |
to become an unbeliever; suppose him to go mad; and so forth. 'Why,' De | |
Maistre says, 'there is not in the whole world a single power in a | |
condition to bear all possible and arbitrary hypotheses of this sort; | |
and if you judge them by what they can do, without speaking of what they | |
have done, they will have to be abolished every one.'[20] This, it may | |
be worth noticing, is one of the many passages in De Maistre's writings | |
which, both in the solidity of their argument and the direct force of | |
their expression, recall his great predecessor in the anti-revolutionary | |
cause, the ever-illustrious Burke. | |
The vigour with which De Maistre sums up all these pleas for supremacy | |
is very remarkable; and to the crowd of enemies and indifferents, and | |
especially to the statesmen who are among them, he appeals with | |
admirable energy. 'What do you want, then? Do you mean that the nations | |
should live without any religion, and do you not begin to perceive that | |
a religion there must be? And does not Christianity, not only by its | |
intrinsic worth but because it is in possession, strike you as | |
preferable to every other? Have you been better contented with other | |
attempts in this way? Peradventure the twelve apostles might please you | |
better than the Theophilanthropists and Martinists? Does the Sermon on | |
the Mount seem to you a passable code of morals? And if the entire | |
people were to regulate their conduct on this model, should you be | |
content? I fancy that I hear you reply affirmatively. Well, since the | |
only object now is to maintain this religion for which you thus declare | |
your preference, how could you have, I do not say the stupidity, but the | |
cruelty, to turn it into a democracy, and to place this precious deposit | |
in the hands of the rabble? | |
'You attach too much importance to the dogmatic part of this religion. | |
By what strange contradiction would you desire to agitate the universe | |
for some academic quibble, for miserable wranglings about mere words | |
(these are your own terms)? Is it so then that men are led? Will you | |
call the Bishop of Quebec and the Bishop of Lucon to interpret a line of | |
the Catechism? That believers should quarrel about infallibility is what | |
I know, for I see it; but that statesmen should quarrel in the same way | |
about this great privilege, is what I shall never be able to | |
conceive.... That all the bishops in the world should be convoked to | |
determine a divine truth necessary to salvation--nothing more natural, | |
if such a method is indispensable; for no effort, no trouble, ought to | |
be spared for so exalted an aim. But if the only point is the | |
establishment of one opinion in the place of another, then the | |
travelling expenses of even one single Infallible are sheer waste. If | |
you want to spare the two most valuable things on earth, time and money, | |
make all haste to write to Rome, in order to procure thence a lawful | |
decision which shall declare the unlawful doubt. Nothing more is needed; | |
policy asks no more.'[21] | |
Definitely, then, the influence of the Popes restored to their ancient | |
supremacy would be exercised in the renewal and consolidation of social | |
order resting on the Christian faith, somewhat after this manner. The | |
anarchic dogma of the sovereignty of peoples, having failed to do | |
anything beyond showing that the greatest evils resulting from obedience | |
do not equal the thousandth part of those which result from rebellion, | |
would be superseded by the practice of appeals to the authority of the | |
Holy See. Do not suppose that the Revolution is at an end, or that the | |
column is replaced because it is raised up from the ground. A man must | |
be blind not to see that all the sovereignties in Europe are growing | |
weak; on all sides confidence and affection are deserting them; sects | |
and the spirit of individualism are multiplying themselves in an | |
appalling manner. There are only two alternatives: you must either | |
purify the will of men, or else you must enchain it; the monarch who | |
will not do the first, must enslave his subjects or perish; servitude or | |
spiritual unity is the only choice open to nations. On the one hand is | |
the gross and unrestrained tyranny of what in modern phrase is styled | |
Imperialism, and on the other a wise and benevolent modification of | |
temporal sovereignty in the interests of all by an established and | |
accepted spiritual power. No middle path lies before the people of | |
Europe. Temporal absolutism we must have. The only question is whether | |
or no it shall be modified by the wise, disinterested, and moderating | |
counsels of the Church, as given by her consecrated chief. | |
* * * * * | |
There can be very little doubt that the effective way in which De | |
Maistre propounded and vindicated this theory made a deep impression on | |
the mind of Comte. Very early in his career this eminent man had | |
declared: 'De Maistre has for me the peculiar property of helping me to | |
estimate the philosophic capacity of people, by the repute in which they | |
hold him.' Among his other reasons at that time for thinking well of M. | |
Guizot was that, notwithstanding his transcendent Protestantism, he | |
complied with the test of appreciating De Maistre.[22] Comte's rapidly | |
assimilative intelligence perceived that here at last there was a | |
definite, consistent, and intelligible scheme for the reorganisation of | |
European society, with him the great end of philosophic endeavour. Its | |
principle of the division of the spiritual and temporal powers, and of | |
the relation that ought to subsist between the two, was the base of | |
Comte's own scheme. | |
In general form the plans of social reconstruction are identical; in | |
substance, it need scarcely be said, the differences are fundamental. | |
The temporal power, according to Comte's design, is to reside with | |
industrial chiefs, and the spiritual power to rest upon a doctrine | |
scientifically established. De Maistre, on the other hand, believed that | |
the old authority of kings and Christian pontiffs was divine, and any | |
attempt to supersede it in either case would have seemed to him as | |
desperate as it seemed impious. In his strange speculation on _Le | |
Principe Generateur des Constitutions Politiques_, he contends that all | |
laws in the true sense of the word (which by the way happens to be | |
decidedly an arbitrary and exclusive sense) are of supernatural origin, | |
and that the only persons whom we have any right to call legislators, | |
are those half-divine men who appear mysteriously in the early history | |
of nations, and counterparts to whom we never meet in later days. | |
Elsewhere he maintains to the same effect, that royal families in the | |
true sense of the word 'are growths of nature, and differ from others, | |
as a tree differs from a shrub.' | |
People suppose a family to be royal because it reigns; on the contrary, | |
it reigns because it is royal, because it has more life, _plus d'esprit | |
royal_--surely as mysterious and occult a force as the _virtus | |
dormitiva_ of opium. The common life of man is about thirty years; the | |
average duration of the reigns of European sovereigns, being Christian, | |
is at the very lowest calculation twenty. How is it possible that 'lives | |
should be only thirty years, and reigns from twenty-two to twenty-five, | |
if princes had not more common life than other men?' Mark again, the | |
influence of religion in the duration of sovereignties. All the | |
Christian reigns are longer than all the non-Christian reigns, ancient | |
and modern, and Catholic reigns have been longer than Protestant reigns. | |
The reigns in England, which averaged more than twenty-three years | |
before the Reformation, have only been seventeen years since that, and | |
those of Sweden, which were twenty-two, have fallen to the same figure | |
of seventeen. Denmark, however, for some unknown cause does not appear | |
to have undergone this law of abbreviation; so, says De Maistre with | |
rather unwonted restraint, let us abstain from generalising. As a matter | |
of fact, however, the generalisation was complete in his own mind, and | |
there was nothing inconsistent with his view of the government of the | |
universe in the fact that a Catholic prince should live longer than a | |
Protestant; indeed such a fact was the natural condition of his view | |
being true. Many differences among the people who hold to the | |
theological interpretation of the circumstances of life arise from the | |
different degrees of activity which they variously attribute to the | |
intervention of God, from those who explain the fall of a sparrow to the | |
ground by a special and direct energy of the divine will, up to those | |
at the opposite end of the scale, who think that direct participation | |
ended when the universe was once fairly launched. De Maistre was of | |
those who see the divine hand on every side and at all times. If, then, | |
Protestantism was a pernicious rebellion against the faith which God had | |
provided for the comfort and salvation of men, why should not God be | |
likely to visit princes, as offenders with the least excuse for their | |
backslidings, with the curse of shortness of days? | |
In a trenchant passage De Maistre has expounded the Protestant | |
confession of faith, and shown what astounding gaps it leaves as an | |
interpretation of the dealings of God with man. 'By virtue of a terrible | |
anathema,' he supposes the Protestant to say, 'inexplicable no doubt, | |
but much less inexplicable than incontestable, the human race lost all | |
its rights. Plunged in mortal darkness, it was ignorant of all, since it | |
was ignorant of God; and, being ignorant of him, it could not pray to | |
him, so that it was spiritually dead without being able to ask for life. | |
Arrived by rapid degradation at the last stage of debasement, it | |
outraged nature by its manners, its laws, even by its religions. It | |
consecrated all vices, it wallowed in filth, and its depravation was | |
such that the history of those times forms a dangerous picture, which it | |
is not good for all men so much as to look upon. God, however, _having | |
dissembled for forty centuries_, bethought him of his creation. At the | |
appointed moment announced from all time, he did not despise a virgin's | |
womb; he clothed himself in our unhappy nature, and appeared on the | |
earth; we saw him, we touched him, he spoke to us; he lived, he taught, | |
he suffered, he died for us. He arose from his tomb according to his | |
promise; he appeared again among us, solemnly to assure to his Church a | |
succour that would last as long as the world. | |
'But, alas, this effort of almighty benevolence was a long way from | |
securing all the success that had been foretold. For lack of knowledge, | |
or of strength, or by distraction maybe, God missed his aim, and could | |
not keep his word. Less sage than a chemist who should undertake to shut | |
up ether in canvas or paper, he only confided to men the truth that he | |
had brought upon the earth; it escaped, then, as one might have | |
foreseen, by all human pores; soon, this holy religion revealed to man | |
by the Man-God, became no more than an infamous idolatry, which would | |
remain to this very moment if Christianity after sixteen centuries had | |
not been suddenly brought back to its original purity by a couple of | |
sorry creatures.'[23] | |
Perhaps it would be easier than he supposed to present his own system in | |
an equally irrational aspect. If you measure the proceedings of | |
omnipotence by the uses to which a wise and benevolent man would put | |
such superhuman power, if we can imagine a man of this kind endowed with | |
it, De Maistre's theory of the extent to which a supreme being | |
interferes in human things, is after all only a degree less ridiculous | |
and illogical, less inadequate and abundantly assailable, than that | |
Protestantism which he so heartily despised. Would it be difficult, | |
after borrowing the account, which we have just read, of the tremendous | |
efforts made by a benign creator to shed moral and spiritual light upon | |
the world, to perplex the Catholic as bitterly as the Protestant, by | |
confronting him both with the comparatively scanty results of those | |
efforts, and with the too visible tendencies of all the foremost | |
agencies in modern civilisation to leave them out of account as forces | |
practically spent? | |
* * * * * | |
De Maistre has been surpassed by no thinker that we know of as a | |
defender of the old order. If anybody could rationalise the idea of | |
supernatural intervention in human affairs, the idea of a Papal | |
supremacy, the idea of a spiritual unity, De Maistre's acuteness and | |
intellectual vigour, and, above all, his keen sense of the urgent social | |
need of such a thing being done, would assuredly have enabled him to do | |
it. In 1817, when he wrote the work in which this task is attempted, the | |
hopelessness of such an achievement was less obvious than it is now. The | |
Bourbons had been restored. The Revolution lay in a deep slumber that | |
many persons excusably took for the quiescence of extinction. Legitimacy | |
and the spiritual system that was its ally in the face of the | |
Revolution, though mostly its rival or foe when they were left alone | |
together, seemed to be restored to the fulness of their power. Fifty | |
years have elapsed since then, and each year has seen a progressive | |
decay in the principles which then were triumphant. It was not, | |
therefore, without reason that De Maistre warned people against | |
believing '_que la colonne est replacee, parcequ'elle est relevee_.' The | |
solution which he so elaborately recommended to Europe has shown itself | |
desperate and impossible. Catholicism may long remain a vital creed to | |
millions of men, a deep source of spiritual consolation and refreshment, | |
and a bright lamp in perplexities of conduct and morals; but resting on | |
dogmas which cannot by any amount of compromise be incorporated with the | |
daily increasing mass of knowledge, assuming as the condition of its | |
existence forms of the theological hypothesis which all the | |
preponderating influences of contemporary thought concur directly or | |
indirectly in discrediting, upheld by an organisation which its history | |
for the last five centuries has exposed to the distrust and hatred of | |
men as the sworn enemy of mental freedom and growth, the pretensions of | |
Catholicism to renovate society are among the most pitiable and impotent | |
that ever devout, high-minded, and benevolent persons deluded themselves | |
into maintaining or accepting. Over the modern invader it is as | |
powerless as paganism was over the invaders of old. The barbarians of | |
industrialism, grasping chiefs and mutinous men, give no ear to priest | |
or pontiff, who speak only dead words, who confront modern issues with | |
blind eyes, and who stretch out a palsied hand to help. Christianity, | |
according to a well-known saying, has been tried and failed; the | |
religion of Christ remains to be tried. One would prefer to qualify the | |
first clause, by admitting how much Christianity has done for Europe | |
even with its old organisation, and to restrict the charge of failure | |
within the limits of the modern time. To-day its failure is too patent. | |
Whether in changed forms and with new supplements the teaching of its | |
founder is destined to be the chief inspirer of that social and human | |
sentiment which seems to be the only spiritual bond capable of uniting | |
men together again in a common and effective faith, is a question which | |
it is unnecessary to discuss here. '_They talk about the first centuries | |
of Christianity_,' said De Maistre, '_I would not be sure that they are | |
over yet_.' Perhaps not; only if the first centuries are not yet over, | |
it is certain that the Christianity of the future will have to be so | |
different from the Christianity of the past, as to demand or deserve | |
another name. | |
Even if Christianity, itself renewed, could successfully encounter the | |
achievement of renewing society, De Maistre's ideal of a spiritual power | |
controlling the temporal power, and conciliating peoples with their | |
rulers by persuasion and a coercion only moral, appears to have little | |
chance of being realised. The separation of the two powers is sealed, | |
with a completeness that is increasingly visible. The principles on | |
which the process of the emancipation of politics is being so rapidly | |
carried on, demonstrate that the most marked tendencies of modern | |
civilisation are strongly hostile to a renewal in any imaginable shape, | |
or at any future time, of a connection whether of virtual subordination | |
or nominal equality, which has laid such enormous burdens on the | |
consciences and understandings of men. If the Church has the uppermost | |
hand, except in primitive times, it destroys freedom; if the State is | |
supreme, it destroys spirituality. The free Church in the free State is | |
an idea that every day more fully recommends itself to the public | |
opinion of Europe, and the sovereignty of the Pope, like that of all | |
other spiritual potentates, can only be exercised over those who choose | |
of their own accord to submit to it; a sovereignty of a kind which De | |
Maistre thought not much above anarchy. | |
To conclude, De Maistre's mind was of the highest type of those who fill | |
the air with the arbitrary assumptions of theology, and the abstractions | |
of the metaphysical stage of thought. At every point you meet the | |
peremptorily declared volition of a divine being, or the ontological | |
property of a natural object. The French Revolution is explained by the | |
will of God; and the kings reign because they have the _esprit royal_. | |
Every truth is absolute, not relative; every explanation is universal, | |
not historic. These differences in method and point of view amply | |
explain his arrival at conclusions that seem so monstrous to men who | |
look upon all knowledge as relative, and insist that the only possible | |
road to true opinion lies away from volitions and abstractions in the | |
positive generalisations of experience. There can be no more | |
satisfactory proof of the rapidity with which we are leaving these | |
ancient methods, and the social results which they produced, than the | |
willingness with which every rightly instructed mind now admits how | |
indispensable were the first, and how beneficial the second. Those can | |
best appreciate De Maistre and his school, what excellence lay in their | |
aspirations, what wisdom in their system, who know most clearly why | |
their aspirations were hopeless, and what makes their system an | |
anachronism. | |
FOOTNOTES: | |
[10] De Maistre forgot or underestimated the services of Leo the | |
Isaurian whose repulse of the Caliph's forces at Constantinople (A.D. | |
717) was perhaps as important for Europe as the more renowned victory of | |
Charles Martel. But then Leo was an Iconoclast and heretic. Cf. Finlay's | |
_Byzantine Empire_, pp. 22, 23. | |
[11] _Du Pape_, bk. iii. c. iv. p. 298 (ed. 1866). | |
[12] _Du Pape_, bk. iv. c. vii. | |
[13] A remark of Mr. Finlay's is worth quoting here. 'The Greeks,' he | |
says, 'had at times only a secondary share in the ecclesiastical | |
controversies in the Eastern Church, though the circumstance of these | |
controversies having been carried on in the Greek language has made the | |
natives of Western Europe attribute them to a philosophic, speculative, | |
and polemic spirit, inherent in the Hellenic mind. A very slight | |
examination of history is sufficient to prove that several of the | |
heresies which disturbed the Eastern Church had their origin in the more | |
profound religious ideas of the oriental nations, and that many of the | |
opinions called heretical were in a great measure expressions of the | |
mental nationality of the Syrians, Armenians, Egyptians, and Persians, | |
and had no conception whatever with the Greek mind.'--_Byzantine Empire, | |
from 716 to 1057_, p. 262. | |
The same writer (p. 263) remarks very truly, that 'the religious or | |
theological portion of Popery, as a section of the Christian Church, is | |
really Greek; and it is only the ecclesiastical, political, and | |
theoretic peculiarities of the fabric which can be considered as the | |
work of the Latin Church.' | |
[14] Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen in the _Saturday Review_, Sept. 9, 1865, | |
p. 334. | |
[15] _Du Pape_, bk. i. c. i. p. 17. | |
[16] _Ib._ bk. i. c. xix. pp. 124, 125. | |
[17] _Ib._ bk. i. c. xvi. p. 111. | |
[18] '_Il n'y a point de souverainete qui pour le bonheur des hommes, et | |
pour le sien surtout, ne soit bornee de quelque maniere, mais dans | |
l'interieur de ces bornes, placees comme il plait a Dieu, elle est | |
toujours et partout absolue et tenue pour infaillible. Et quand je parle | |
de l'exercice legitime de la souverainete, je n'entends point ou je ne | |
dis point l'exercice_ juste, _ce qui produirait une amphibologie | |
dangereuse, a moins que par ce dernier mot on ne veuille dire que tout | |
ce qu'elle opine dans son cercle est_ juste ou tenu pour tel, _ce qui | |
est la verite. C'est ainsi qu'un tribunal supreme, tant qu'il ne sort | |
pas de ses attributions, est toujours juste_; car c'est la meme chose | |
DANS LA PRATIQUE, d'etre infaillible, ou de se tromper sans appel.'--Bk. | |
ii. c. xi. p. 212 (footnote). | |
[19] Thomassin, the eminent French theologian, flourished from the | |
middle to the end of the seventeenth century. The aim of his writings | |
generally was to reconcile conflicting opinions on discipline or | |
doctrine by exhibiting a true sense in all. In this spirit he wrote on | |
the Pope and the Councils, and on the never-ending question of Grace. | |
Among other things, he insisted that all languages could be traced to | |
the Hebrew. He wrote a defence of the edict in which Lewis XIV. revoked | |
the Edict of Nantes, contending that it was less harsh than some of the | |
decrees of Theodosius and Justinian, which the holiest fathers of the | |
Church had not scrupled to approve--an argument which would now be | |
thought somewhat too dangerous for common use, as cutting both ways. | |
Gibbon made use of his _Discipline de l'Eglise_ in the twentieth | |
chapter, and elsewhere. | |
[20] _Du Pape_, bk. i. c. xviii. p. 122. | |
[21] Bk. i. c. xvii. p. 117. | |
[22] Littre, _Auguste Comte et la Phil. Posit._ p. 152. | |
[23] _Du Pape_, Conclusion, p. 380. | |
* * * * * | |
END OF VOL. II. | |
* * * * * | |
_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_. | |
Transcribers' Notes: | |
Minor printer errors (omitted quotation marks) have been amended without | |
note. Other errors have been amended and are listed below. | |
OE/oe ligatures have not been retained in this version. | |
List of Amendments: | |
Page 305: lights amended to rights; "... freedom, of equal rights, and | |
by ..." | |
Page 329: impressisn amended to impression; "... theory made a deep | |
impression on the mind ..." | |
End of Project Gutenberg's Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3), by John Morley | |
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