CHAPTER V THE LAW OF FOUR-CENTURY PERIODS.

The Law of Four-Century Periods
CHAPTER V
(AN APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER)
How many analogies does the Theory of Temperaments
permit us to weave! It draws threads
not only from all points of space and from all
manifestations of mind, but likewise from time
and history.
Having remarked, for example, that the order of
evolution of the Four Temperaments, by their
analogy with the Seasons, the Ages of Life, etc.,
presents regularly the Bilious or Obstinate followed
by the happy Sanguine, this by the Nervous
and it in turn by the Lymphatic, to recommence
with the Bilious, and so on, which is equivalent to
saying in face of every activity: Growth, Completeness,
Decline and Repose, is it not plain that
the 17th, 13th, 9th, 5th and 1st centuries of our
era (those of Louis XIV, of Saint Louis, of Charlemagne,
of Clovis and of Augustus, which our
histories call the "Grands Siecles"), like the 4th,
8th, 12th and 16th of the pre-Christian era (those
of Alexander, of Romulus, of Agamemnon, of
Sesostris), return every 400 years, like a full moon,
or a historic Summer?
Besides the nine great Figures just named,
they bring, like bolts of thunder, the most tremendous
downfalls and destructions with which
the world has resounded : the fall of Jericho, the
fall of Troy, the fall of Nineveh, that of the Persian
Empire, that of Jerusalem, that of Rome,
that of the Carlovingian Empire, that of the
Hohenstaufens, that of the Catholic Empire. And
at the same time are precipitated the most irresistible
invasions and streams of migration: the
Jews into the Promised Land, the Heraclides
across Greece, the black Ethiopians into Egypt,
the blonde Gauls to Rome, the brown Romans to
the limit of their conquests, the great Invasions,
in return, to the very heart of that Empire; those
of the Northmen across its reconstitution, of the
Mongols into Europe in the 13th century, and the
expansion of France over Europe and the world
(17th century). And finally, in one of these
Summers of History there rises the figure of
Christ.
The dark centuries of Winter (10th, 6th, 2nd
B.C.; 3rd, 7th, llth, 15th and 19th A.D.) offer, by
contrast, grave and often sorrowful and bitter,
figures : the Buddha (whether of the 10th or the
6th century), then Confucius (with Zoroaster, it
is said, and Pythagoras) ; the aged Cato ; four
hundred years later the great heresiarch Mani,
whose despairing philosophy dared equalize God
and the Devil; in the 7th century the fatalist
Mahomet, in the llth Ghibellinism, happily overcome
by Gregory VII at Canossa; John Huss,
and finally Hegel and Schopenhauer. Ages of
transition and of grievous yet fecund error!
Napoleon (whose prefiguration seems to have been
the Gaulish Sigovese, conquering the German
tribes 24 centuries earlier), Mahomet II, William
the Conqueror and the founder of the Sassanids;
Ardashir and Marius and Cyrus the adventurer
and Erechtheus form the tokens of it, behind
these heroes of the advance-guard: the Revolutionaries,
Jeanne d'Arc, the Cid and the Guelphs;
the Gracchi, Harmodius and Aristogition, the
first Brutus. Livingstone followed by Stanley
and Christopher Columbus followed by the Conquistadores
correspond to the first Crusaders and
to the Arab Conquest, as Verlaine to Villon.
It is as if the travail of germination pierces, for
the ages to come, the cold black earth of the
Louis-Philippes and the Louis XI's, the Rothschilds
and the Jacques Coeurs, the Croesuses and
the Eclectics. This is also a series of Germanizing
centuries; every one of them wears, as an armor,
the Germanic grandeur, from the formidable
organization of the Prankish and Sueve Leagues
(3rd century) and the preponderance of the Mayors
of Austrasia (7th), to the Franconian House (llth)
and that of the Habsbourgs (15th) and the triumphant
rise of the Hohenzollerns (19th).
Each one of them, as a night or winter, extinguished
and swept away the century immediately
preceding, this latter belonging to the series of
Autumn or Evening.
In the Autumn or Sunset periods to which we
now come, we find always elegance enraptured
with itself, a varied and fragile splendor, luxury
and profusion; always the vintage-time of a
declining civilization. Even the kings are so
learned that they pose as sages! Joseph II and
Catherine of Russia, and thou, Charles V, father
of the mortal schism of the West, wherein perished
our supremacy in Europe; and you, the Basileus
philosopher^ of 10th century Byzantium; even
thou, Chilperic, the grammarian of the 6th century,
succeeding Marcus Aurelius and the Antonines
(2nd century), who follow 400 years after the
Ptolemies of Alexandria; and thou, Solon (7th
century B.C.) and finally, at the summit, thou,
Solomon, author or not of the Book of Wisdom!
With the sneering scepticism which Voltaire,
across four times four centuries, received as a heritage
from Lucian, reigns also the most absurd
credulity; Cagliostro, Rosenkranz and the Freemasons
of the 14th century, occultism of the time
of Gerbert, the frenzied Gnostics, and that disquieting
pythoness of Endor whose words
resounded in the troubled mind of Saul, the
foolish king, prefiguration, four centuries in
advance, of Nebuchadnezzar, and by 24 centuries
of our Charles VI ! grins, convulsions, the
appearance of the animal grimace beneath the
human mask. And with this series of centuries is
connected the birth of idolatry which tradition
makes contemporaneous with Ninus. Thought
would perish, if the learned, everywhere modestly
limited to the tangible, did not extract some
elements of survival; Thales and the sages,
Archimedes and Euclid, Ptolemy the geographer,
the lawyers of Justinian, the Arabian scholars and
the inventors of the 14th century have done so.
In contrast, let us unroll the series of Spring.
If Jesus chose one of the Summer-cycles for His
glory ; if Idolatry rose in the decline of the Autumn
cycles; if some yet mysterious menace darkens
those of Winter, it was one of the cycles of Spring
that saw the creation of this beautiful world,
according to the Bible; in the 41st century before
Christ (the date most frequently adopted, notably
by Bossuet, Daunou, Dreyss, etc.).
Four times 400 years nearer to us, in the 25th
century, Creation was reborn, purified by that
fantastic baptism, the Deluge. The Flood of
Deucalion is still 400 years nearer (21st century) ;
it corresponds to the epoch of the Jewish people's
origin in Abraham.
But hark while rises, from the slopes of Sinai, the
divine poetry of Moses! (17th century B.C.), and,
following like an echo below from the sea, that of
Orpheus (13th century). Who are the greatest of
creators, if not Homer (9th century), the Tragics
of the 5th century, Virgil (1st century B.C.); in
sacred literature, the sublime Fathers of the 4th
century (St. John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine,
Ambrose, Basil, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen,
founder, it is said, of the Christian
theatre), and in non-Christian literature, the Eddas
(8th century) ; then the French and German epics
of the 12th century, and, finally, Shakespeare.
Our 20th century belongs to this glorious family.
Let us not forget that each of the giants whom I
have just evoked marches amid the luxuriant
flowering of all the arts; the Renaissance dawns
over almost all Europe, despite Protestant anathema,
as, 800 years earlier, reviving Byzantine
art triumphed over the Iconoclasts; the ogival
architecture of the 12th century (Notre Dame de
Paris) rivals that of the Parthenon after four times
400 years ; but who could enumerate the poets
and artists of these privileged ages? Even war is
ennobled, and seems made for dreams and visions :
the expedition of the Argonauts, the Medic
Wars, the glory of Greece, the struggles for
equality in Rome, the conflicts with the Arian
belittlers of the great Mystery, the combat with
the Saxons, and that of Roland at Roncesvalles,
preluding, four centuries in advance, the Crusades
of the 12th century against Islam; lastly the
religious wars in resistance to the sectarianism of
that new Arius, Luther. But special disciplines
have each time responded to new heresies :
Loyola, St. Bernard, St. Benoit, St. Augustine and
the Nicene Creed, the Incarnation, Socrates, the
just Herakles, the Decalogue (17th century B.C.,)
appear at intervals of four centuries and confirm
the ancient call of Abraham (21st century) and the
splendid forecast of the Bow of Promise (25th
century).
Do we not see, even in the midst of our surprised
indifference, religious passion reviving, and decorative
art everywhere throwing over the ugliness of
the past century its network of beauty? solemn
portents, and perhaps the last. Four times four
make sixteen; the first 16 centuries, which comprised
the world's youth, expired with the sobs of
Buddha, that personification of disillusion; the
intoxicating fruits of maturity ripened, on the
thrice sacred shores of the Mediterranean, between
Homer and Mahomet. Is it old age, is it decline,
which began under the pale skies of the north, with
the Eddas and the ancestors of the Carlovingians,
to terminate with the 23rd century? may it be
that humanity has but four more centuries to
live? Strangely, already the commentators of the
Apocalypse profess to discover therein that the
Last Judgment will follow not long after the year
2000, and from elsewhere the prophecies of St.
Malachy announce but ten more Popes to lead the
Church to the fulfillment of her task.