Part 3

We can hardly imagine the tendency of all this wailing, or what good purpose all this indignation and snarling can serve--or who impels these Messieurs Geoffroy on a small scale to set themselves up as the Don Quixotes of morality, and, like genuine literary policemen, to lay hands upon and club, in the name of virtue, every idea that appears in a book with its mob-cap awry or its petticoats raised a little too high.--It is very strange.

Whatever they may say, the present age is immoral,--if the word means anything, which we much doubt,--and we require no other proof of it than the quantity of immoral books it produces and the success they meet with.--Books follow morals, morals do not follow books.--The Regency produced Crébillon, not Crébillon the Regency. Boucher's little shepherdesses were painted and immodest because the little marchionesses of the day were painted and immodest.--Pictures are painted after models, not models after pictures. Somebody or other has said somewhere or other that literature and the arts have a great influence on morals. Whoever he is, he is unquestionably a great fool.--It is as if some one should say: "Green peas make the springtime grow;" on the other hand, green peas grow because it is spring, and cherries because it is summer. The trees bear fruit, the fruit assuredly does not bear the trees--the law is everlasting and invariable in its variations; the centuries succeed one another and each bears its fruit, which differs from that of the preceding century; books are the fruit of morals.

Beside the moral journalists, under this shower of homilies, as if it were a summer shower in a park, there has arisen, between the boards of the Saint-Simonian stage, a school of little mushrooms of a curious new variety, of which we propose to give the natural history.

They are the utilitarian critics,--poor fellows whose noses were so short that they would not hold spectacles, and who could not see to the end of their noses.

When an author tossed upon their desk a volume of any sort,--novel or poetry,--these gentry would lean back nonchalantly in their chairs, balance them on their hind legs, sway back and forth, puffing themselves out with a knowing air, and say:

"What purpose does this book serve? How can it be applied to securing the moral and spiritual well-being of the most numerous and poorest class? What! not a word of the needs of society, nothing civilizing and progressive! How, instead of dealing synthetically with the great problems of humanity, and following, through the events of history, the phases of the regenerating, providential idea, can you waste time writing poetry and novels which lead to nothing, and which do nothing to help the generation forward in the pathway of the future? How can you concern yourself about form and style and rhythm, in presence of such grave interests?--What do we care for rhythm and style and form? that is all right in its place!" (Poor foxes, they are too green!)--"Society is suffering, it has a terrible gnawing at the vitals;" (translate: no one will subscribe to the utilitarian papers.) "It is for the poet to seek the cause of the trouble and cure it. He will find a way by sympathizing heart and soul with humanity;" (philanthropic poets! that would be something rare and charming.) "We await the coming of that poet, we pray for his coming with all our hearts. When he appears, his will be the acclamations of the multitude, his the palm-leaves, his the wreaths, his the Prytaneum."

Very fine; but as we desire the reader to stay awake to the end of this blessed preface, we will not continue this very close imitation of the utilitarian style, which, by its nature, is unusually soporific, and might advantageously replace laudanum and the discourses of the Academy.

No, fools, no, cretins and goitrous creatures that you are, a book does not make gelatine soup;--a novel is not a pair of seamless boots; a sonnet is not a syringe with a continuous stream; a drama is not a railroad,--all essentially civilizing things and tending to assist humanity along the pathway of progress.

By the bowels of all the popes, past, present, and to come, no, two hundred thousand times no.

You cannot make a nightcap out of a metonymy, or wear comparisons by way of slippers; you cannot use antithesis as an umbrella; unluckily we have not the secret of clapping a few variegated rhymes upon the stomach as we put on a waistcoat. I have a firm conviction that the ode is a garment too light for winter, and that one would be no more warmly clad with the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode, than the wife of the cynic who was contented to have only her virtue as a chemise and went about as naked as your hand, as history tells us.

The famous Monsieur de la Calprenède once had a coat, and when some one asked what kind of cloth it was made of, he answered: Silvandre.--_Silvandre_ was a play of his that had just been produced with success.

Such arguments make one raise his shoulders above his head, higher than the Duke of Gloucester's.

People who claim to be economists and who wish to rebuild society from top to bottom, seriously put forward such trash.

A novel may be useful in two ways:--one material, the other spiritual, if we may use such an expression with reference to a novel.--Its material utility consists, first, of the few thousand francs that go into the author's pocket, and ballast him so that neither the devil nor the wind can whisk him away; to the publisher it is a noble race-horse who stamps and rears with his cabriolet of ebony and steel, as Figaro says; to the paper manufacturer, one more factory on some stream and often the means of spoiling a fine site; to the printers, divers hogsheads of logwood to put their windpipes in shape once a week; to the circulating libraries, piles of big sous covered with proletariat verdigris and a quantity of grease, which if it were carefully collected and utilized would render the whale-fishery useless.--The spiritual utility consists in this: that, while you are reading novels, you fall asleep, and you are not reading utilitarian, virtuous, and progressive newspapers, or other similar indigestible, stupefying drugs.

Let any one say after this that novels do not assist civilization.--I will say nothing of the tobacco agents, grocers, and dealers in fried potatoes, who have a very great interest in this branch of literature, the paper used therein being, as a general rule, of a superior quality to that used by the newspapers.

Verily it is enough to make one split one's sides with laughter to hear messieurs the republican or Saint-Simonian utilitarians hold forth.--In the first place, I should be glad to know the exact meaning of that great lubberly substantive with which they daily lard the empty void of their columns, and which serves them as a sort of shibboleth and sacramental term:--Utility; what is the word, and to what is it applied?

There are two kinds of utilities, and the meaning of the word is always relative. What is useful for one is not for another. You are a cobbler, I am a poet.--It is useful for me to have my first line rhyme with my second.--A dictionary of rhymes is of great utility to me; you have no use for it in cobbling an old pair of boots, and it is fair to say that a cobbler's knife would be of no great use to me in writing an ode.--Now, you will remark that a cobbler is much above a poet, and that we could get along better without the latter than without the former. Without undertaking to cry down the illustrious profession of cobbler, which I honor equally with the profession of constitutional monarch, I will humbly confess that I should prefer to have my shoe down at heel rather than to have my lines haltingly rhymed, and that I should be more willing to go without boots than without poems. As I rarely go out, and walk more readily on my head than on my feet, I wear out fewer shoes than a virtuous republican who does nothing but run from one government department to another trying to induce somebody to toss him an office.

I know that there are those who prefer windmills to churches, and the bread that feeds the body to that that feeds the soul. To them I have nothing to say. They deserve to be economists in this world and also in the other.

Is there anything absolutely useful on this earth and in this life that we live? In the first place, there is very little use in one being on the earth and living. I challenge the most erudite of the band to say of what use we are, unless it be to subscribe neither to the _Constitutionnel_ nor to a journal of any sort.

Secondly, the utility of our existence being admitted _a priori_, what are the really useful things to maintain it? A plate of soup and a bit of bread twice a day are all that we need to fill the stomach, in the strict acceptation of the word. The man for whom a coffin six feet by two will be enough and more than enough after his death, does not need much more space during his life. A hollow cube, seven or eight feet broad, long and deep, with a hole to breathe through, a single cell in the hive, is all that he needs to lodge him and to keep the rain from falling on his back. A quilt, rolled properly about his body, will protect him from the cold as well as, yes, better than, Staub's most stylish and elegant frock-coat.

With that a man can exist, theoretically. They say that one can live on twenty-five sous a day; but to keep from dying is not living; and I cannot see wherein a city organized on utilitarian principles would be more agreeable to live in than Père La Chaise.

Nothing beautiful is indispensable to life.--If flowers should be suppressed, the world would not suffer materially; and yet who could wish that there were no flowers? I would rather give up potatoes than roses, and I do not believe there is more than one utilitarian in the world capable of digging up a bed of tulips to make room for cabbages.

What good purpose does female beauty serve? Provided that a woman is well-developed physically, in a condition to receive a man and to produce children, she will always be good enough for the economist.

What is the use of music? or painting? Who would be foolish enough to prefer Mozart to Monsieur Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard?

Nothing is really beautiful but that which cannot be made use of; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and the needs of man are vile and disgusting, like his poor, weak nature.--The most useful part of a house is the privy.

I myself, with due respect to those gentlemen, am one of those to whom superfluities are necessaries--and my liking for people and things is in inverse ratio to the services they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase, covered with dragons and mandarins, which is of no use to me at all, to a certain other vase, which is useful to me; and that one of my talents which I prize most highly is my inability to guess riddles and charades. I would very willingly renounce my privileges as a Frenchman and a citizen to see an authentic painting by Raphael, or a beautiful nude woman: the Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she was in her bath. For my part I would gladly consent to the return of that cannibal of a Charles X., if he would bring me, from his castle in Bohemia, a hamper of Tokay or Johannisberg, and I would agree that the suffrage laws were broad enough, if some of the streets were more so and other things less so.--Although I am not a born _dilettante,_ I prefer the noise of squeaking fiddles and bass drums to that of Monsieur le Président's bell. I would sell my trousers to buy a ring and my daily bread for sweetmeats.--The most becoming occupation for a polished man is, it seems to me, to do nothing, or to smoke his pipe or his cigar analytically. I also have a high regard for those who play at skittles and for those who write good poetry. You see that my principles are very far from being utilitarian, and that I shall never become editor of a virtuous newspaper unless I am converted, which would be droll enough.

Instead of awarding a Monthyon prize as a reward of virtue, I would prefer to give, like Sardanapalus, that great philosopher who has been so misunderstood, a handsome premium to the man who should invent a new form of pleasure; for enjoyment seems to me the true aim of life and the only useful thing in the world. God has so willed it, for it was He who made women, perfumes, light, lovely flowers, good wines, prancing horses, greyhounds, and Angora cats; nor did he say to his angels: "Be virtuous," but: "Love;" and he gave us a mouth, more sensitive than the rest of the skin, with which to kiss women, eyes uplifted to see the light, a subtle sense of smell to inhale the soul of flowers, well-knit thighs to press the sides of stallions and fly swifter than thought without railroad or steamboat, delicate hands with which to caress the long head of the greyhound, the velvety back of the cat, and the gleaming shoulders of creatures of doubtful virtue; in a word, he bestowed only upon us the threefold, glorious privilege of drinking without being thirsty, of striking a light, and of making love at all seasons, which distinguishes us from the brute much more than the custom of reading newspapers and drawing maps.

_Mon Dieu_! what an idiotic thing is this alleged perfectibility of the human race that is being dinned into our ears! One would say in truth that man is a machine susceptible of improvements, and that the more careful adjustment of a wheel, a counterpoise more conveniently placed, might make it work more smoothly and more handily. When they have succeeded in giving man a double stomach, so that he can chew his cud like an ox, and eyes in the back of his head, like Janus, so that he can see those who stick out their tongues at him behind his back, and contemplate his _unworthiness_ in a less uncomfortable position than that of the Venus Callipyges at Athens, and in planting wings on his shoulder blades so that he will not be obliged to pay six sous to ride in an omnibus; when they have given him a new organ, well and good: then the word _perfectibility_ will begin to mean something.

Since all these fine ameliorations, what has been done that was not done as well and better before the deluge?

Have we succeeded in drinking more than they drank in the days of ignorance and barbarism--old style? Alexander, the doubtful friend of the fair Hephæstion, was no small drinker, although there was no _Journal des Connaissances Utiles_ in his day, and I am unable to conceive how any utilitarian, unless he should become oïnopic and more puffed out than the younger Lepeintre or a hippopotamus, could drain the great beaker which he called Hercules' cup. The Maréchal de Bassompierre, who emptied his long boot to the health of the Thirteen Cantons, seems to me a singularly estimable personage in his way and very hard to improve upon. What economist will enlarge our stomachs so that they will hold as many beefsteaks as the late Milo of Crotona, who ate an ox? The bill of fare at Véfour's Café Anglais, or at any other culinary celebrity's that you choose, seems to me very ill-supplied and commonplace compared to the menu of Trimalcion's dinner.--At whose table in these days are a sow and her twelve shoats served on a single platter? Who has eaten muræna and lampreys fattened on man? Do you really think that Brillat-Savarin has improved upon Apicius? Could Vitellius's big tripe-man find at Chevet's the wherewithal to fill his famous Minerva's shield with pheasants' and peacocks' brains, tongues of flamingoes and scarus livers?--The oysters you eat at the Rocher de Cancale are such a great delicacy compared with the oysters of Lucrin, for which a lake was made expressly.--The little establishments in the suburbs kept by the marquises of the Regency were wretched little boxes, if we compare them with the villas of the Roman patricians at Baiæ, Capri, and Tibur. The Cyclopean splendor of the great voluptuaries who erected everlasting monuments for a day's pleasure should cause us to fall flat on our faces before the genius of antiquity and erase forever from our dictionaries the word _perfectibility._

Has a new capital crime been invented? Unfortunately there are only seven of them as before, the number of the just man's backslidings for one day, which is very moderate.--Indeed, I do not think that after a century of progress, at the rate we are travelling, any lover would be capable of renewing the thirteenth labor of Hercules.--Can a man be agreeable to his divinity a single time oftener than in the days of Solomon? Many very illustrious scholars and very respectable ladies answer that question in the negative, and aver that amiability is on the wane. Very good! if that is so, why do you talk of progress?--I know that you will tell me that there is an Upper Chamber and a Lower Chamber, that you hope that everybody will soon be an elector and the number of representatives doubled or trebled. Do you think that there are not enough mistakes in grammar made in the national tribune as it is, and that the deputies are not numerous enough for the vile work they have to do? I can hardly understand the utility of quartering two or three hundred provincials in a wooden barrack, with a ceiling painted by Monsieur Fragonard, there to botch and bungle nobody knows how many absurd or atrocious little laws.--What difference does it make whether it is a sabre, a holy-water sprinkler, or an umbrella that governs us?--It is a club all the same, and I am amazed that progressive men should dispute as to the kind of club that is to make their shoulders tingle, when it would be much more progressive and less expensive to break it and throw the pieces to all the devils.

The only one of you who has any common sense is a madman, a great genius, an imbecile, a divine poet far above Lamartine, Hugo, and Byron; it is Charles Fourrier, the phalansterian, who is all that in his single person: he alone is logical and has the courage to carry his theory through to its inevitable consequence.--He asserts, without hesitation, that man will soon have a tail fifteen feet long with an eye at the end of it; that surely is progress and will permit us to do a thousand fine things we could not do before, such as killing elephants without striking a blow, balancing ourselves on trees without swings, as handily as the most expert ape, doing without sunshade or umbrella by raising the tail above the head like a plume, as squirrels do, who get along very well without umbrellas; and other prerogatives too numerous to mention. Several phalansterians claim that they already have a little tail that asks nothing better than to grow longer, if only God gives them length of days.

Charles Fourrier has invented as many species of animals as George Cuvier, the great naturalist. He invented horses that will be thrice the size of elephants, dogs as large as tigers, fish capable of feeding more people than the three small fishes of the Saviour, which the incredulous Voltaireans believe were _poissons d'Avril_,[1] and I the text of a noble parable. He has built cities beside which Rome, Tyre, and Babylon are simply mole-hills; he has piled Babels one upon another and built spiral stairways ascending among the clouds to a greater height than all those in John Martinn's engravings; he has conceived I cannot say how many orders of architecture and new sauces; he has drawn a plan for a theatre which would seem immense even to Romans of the Empire, and prepared a dinner menu that Lucius or Nomentanus might have deemed sufficient for a dinner to their friends; he promises to create new forms of pleasure and to develop the organs and the senses; he is to make women fairer and more voluptuous, men more robust and sturdy; he guarantees you children and proposes to reduce the population of the world so that every one will be in easy circumstances; which is more reasonable than to urge paupers to make other paupers, with the idea of shooting them down in the streets when they breed too fast and sending them bullets instead of bread.

Progress is possible in no other way.--All the rest is bitter mockery, buffoonery without wit, which is not even calculated to deceive gullible fools.

The phalanstery is really a step in advance of the abbey of Thélème, and definitely relegates the earthly paradise to the ranks of those things that are altogether superannuated and old-fashioned. The Thousand and One Nights and Madame d'Aulnay's Tales alone can contend successfully with the phalanstery. What fertility! what invention! There is material there from which to supply marvels for three thousand cartloads of romantic or classic poems; and our versifiers, whether academicians or not, are paltry inventors compared to Monsieur Charles Fourrier, the inventor of startling attractions.--This idea of making use of impulses which people have hitherto sought to repress, is most assuredly a lofty and powerful idea.

Ah! you say that we are making progress!--Suppose that a volcano should open its maw to-morrow at Montmartre, and should make a winding-sheet of ashes and a tomb of lava for Paris, as Vesuvius once did for Stabia, Pompeii, and Herculaneum, and that, some thousand years hence, the antiquaries of that day should make excavations and exhume the corpse of the dead city, tell me what monument would remain standing to bear witness to the splendor of the mighty entombed, the Gothic Notre-Dame?--They would form truly a fine idea of our artistic development when they cleared away the rubbish from the Tuileries, redecorated by Monsieur Fontaine! The statues on Pont Louis XV. would look splendid in the museums of those days. And were it not for the pictures of the ancient schools and the statues of antiquity or the Renaissance crowded together in the gallery of the Louvre, that long shapeless conduit; were it not for the ceiling by Ingres, which would show that Paris was not a Barbary camp or a village of Welches or Topinamboux, the things that would be unearthed from the ruins would be very interesting.--Short swords carried by National Guardsmen, firemen's helmets, coins struck from pyriform dies, that is the kind of thing they would find instead of the beautiful, curiously-carved weapons that the Middle Ages left in the recesses of their towers and ruined tombs, the medallions that fill the Etruscan vases and pave the cellars of all Roman buildings. As for our wretched veneered furniture, all the cheap boxes, naked and ugly and shabby, that we call commodes or secretaries, and all our shapeless, fragile utensils,--I trust that time would have been compassionate enough to destroy the last vestige of them.