Part 1

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MAIN CURRENTS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE

by

GEORGE BRANDES

In Six Volumes Illustrated

III

THE REACTION IN FRANCE

London: William Heinemann New York: The Macmillan Company MCMVI

_Hätt 'ich gezaudert zu werden, Bis man mir's Leben gegönnt. Ich wäre noch nicht auf Erden Wie Ihr begreifen könnt. Wenn Ihr seht, wie sie sich geberden._ --GOETHE.

_There is no philosophy possible where fear of consequences is a stronger principle than love of truth._ --JOHN STUART MILL.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. THE REVOLUTION II. THE CONCORDAT III. THE PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY IV. "LE GÉNIE DU CHRISTIANISME" V. JOSEPH DE MAISTRE VI. BONALD VII. CHATEAUBRIAND VIII. MADAME DE KRÜDENER IX. LYRIC POETRY: LAMARTINE AND HUGO X. LOVE IN THE LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD XI. DISSOLUTION OF THE THEORETICAL PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY XII. DISSOLUTION OF THE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORITY XIII. CULMINATION AND COLLAPSE OF THE REACTION XIV. CONCLUSION

LIST OF PORTRAITS ROBESPIERRE CHATEAUBRIAND JOSEPH DE MAISTRE BONALD LAMARTINE VICTOR HUGO LAMENNAIS

THE REACTION IN FRANCE

INTRODUCTION

A certain aggregation of personages, actions, emotions and moods, ideas and works, which make their appearance in France, find expression in the French language, and influence French society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, form in my eyes a naturally coherent group, from the fact that they all centre round one idea, namely, the re-establishment of a fallen power. This fallen power is the principle of authority.

By the principle of authority I understand the principle which assumes the life of the individual and of the nation to be based upon reverence for inherited tradition.

That power which is its essential quality, authority owes simply to its own existence, not to reason; it is a result of the involuntary or voluntary subjection of men's minds to existing conditions. Authority had originally only two instruments at its disposal, compulsion and fear, instruments which it will always retain and use; but at an early age it began to call forth such feelings as reverence and gratitude. Men were not ashamed of, did not suffer from, their dependence on authority, when they felt that they owed an obligation to it. The authority of the family, the authority of society, the authority of the state (long synonymous with the will of the despotic ruler) gradually asserted themselves, and supported themselves, one and all, upon a still higher authority, the authority of religion. In it the principle of authority reaches the absolute stage. The will of the Almighty becomes the supreme law, to which all must bow and which must be blindly obeyed.

The principle of authority has had a powerful educative influence on the human race; but its real mission is to make itself superfluous. At a comparatively low stage man submits to law because it emanates from authority; at a higher, because he recognises its reasonableness. Where authority is absolute it must, and as a matter of fact does, demand recognition as something mysterious and miraculous, and treat all criticism as rebellion and heresy.

It is its ratification by religion which makes authority absolute. Owing, however, to the manner in which Christianity had developed in Europe, the principle of authority had not as yet manifested itself in that continent in perfect purity. Christianity had (officially at least) proclaimed itself to be the religion of love, the religion of Christ. History shows that what the church in reality laid most weight on was belief in the dogmas of Christianity and in the duty of submission to supernatural authority--not love, but obedience was necessarily of supreme importance to it as well as to the state. So far, however, even the strictest of theologians, priests, and religious writers had employed the language of religious enthusiasm, had proclaimed the message of love along with the doctrines of the faith, and striven not merely to further the cause of authority, but also to win souls. It was not until a majority of the educated minds of many countries freed themselves from the yoke of authority in the domain of the supernatural, and consequently became critically disposed towards it in the political and social domains also, that the principle of authority in its purity and its barrenness began to be vindicated unemotionally, with arguments appealing most frequently to reason alone, but occasionally also to the imagination.

It is possible to champion the principle of authority in church and state, in society and in the family, nay, even in the domain of human knowledge, as the principle of knowledge and of wisdom. During the period of which I purpose describing the spiritual life it was so championed in all those domains, but at the time now referred to it was overthrown in them all.

In order to understand how it came to be resuscitated, proclaimed, developed, vindicated, established, and finally again overthrown, it is necessary that we should see how, and by virtue of what fundamental principles, it was annulled at the time of the Revolution.

It was not attacked at once in all the different domains; but it became evident that its existence in them all depended upon its existence in what was considered the highest, that of religion. For it was the church which, as authority, imparted authority in all the other spheres of life--to the "king by the grace of God," to marriage as a sacrament, &c. &c.

Therefore the principle of authority in general stood or fell with the authority of the church. When that was undermined, it drew all other authorities with it in its fall.

Not that the man who, in the eighteenth century, laboured more energetically and successfully than any other for the emancipation of the intellect from ecclesiasticism and dogma had foreseen such a result of his labour. Far from it! Voltaire desired no outward revolution. In his little tale, _Le monde comme il va_, the wise Babouc, who is at first utterly revolted by the depravity of the great city of Persepolis, gradually comes to see that the bad state of matters has its good sides; and, when the fate of the city hangs upon his report to the angel Ithuriel, he pronounces himself to be entirely opposed to its destruction. Even the angel does not in the end propose making any change in the customs of Persepolis, because, "though things are not good, they are certainly bearable." This train of thought can hardly be called revolutionary; and Voltaire is, at least at times, of the same opinion as Babouc. It was always to the sovereigns, not to the peoples, that he appealed to transform his ideas into actions, and he often declared that the cause of kings and of philosophers was one and the same. Hence when Holbach and his collaborators asserted that "hardly once in a thousand years was there to be found amongst these rulers by the grace of God, these representatives of the Deity, a man possessing the most ordinary sense of justice or compassion, or the commonest abilities and virtues," Voltaire could not control his wrath. His letters to the King of Prussia, too, contain violent outbursts of indignation at _Le Système de la Nature_. He did not recognise himself in these disciples and in these conclusions.

Nevertheless it is Voltaire who constitutes the destructive principle throughout the Revolution, just as it is Rousseau who is the rallying, uniting spirit. For Voltaire had destroyed the principle of authority by vindicating the liberty of thought of the individual, Rousseau had displaced and superseded it by the feeling of universal brotherhood and mutual dependence. What these two great men had planned the Revolution carried into effect; it was the executor of their wills; the thought of the individual became destructive action, and the feeling of mutual dependence, uniting organisation. From Voltaire came the wrath of the revolutionists, from Rousseau their enthusiasm.

I

THE REVOLUTION

Authority being originally, and in its essence, ecclesiastical and religious, an understanding of the successive developments in the position of the Revolution to church and religion is indispensable to a comprehension of the intellectual reaction which followed. For, as that reaction meant the re-establishment of the principle of authority, it naturally, as well as logically, began with the rehabilitation of the church.

The Revolution was in reality quite as much of a religious as of a political nature. Regarded from one standpoint, it was the practical result of the labours of the great free-thinking philosophers of the eighteenth century. It is to the Revolution of 1789 that we owe the greatest conquest wrested by the human intellect from prejudice and power--liberty of conscience, religious toleration. It is certainly not to the Christian church that humanity is indebted for this inestimable blessing, for the church opposed to the utmost every demand suggestive of it.

At the moment when the Revolution begins, all the preparations for the great encounter between the principle of authority on the one side and the principles of individuality and solidarity on the other are complete. All the leaders, all the knights and squires who are to fight in the great joust, are already at their posts, unknown to each other, unknown to the world, which is soon to ring with their names. They are men with very varied pedigrees and pasts. There are noblemen like Mirabeau, priests like Mauret, Fauchet, and Talleyrand, physicians like Marat, lawyers like Robespierre, poets, philosophers, orators, authors like M. J. Chénier, Condorcet, Danton, and Desmoulins--a whole host of men of talent and men of character. The church rallies all its forces for a desperate struggle, in which it is doomed to be worsted; the Revolution progresses, first hesitatingly, then threateningly, then irresistibly, finally in the intoxication of victory. With the summoning of the Estates the lists are opened; challenges are exchanged; and the great umpire, history, gives the signal for the fray.

As soon as the Estates are assembled the first and unanimous demand of the clergy is that "the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman religion" shall be recognised as the national religion, with the exclusive monopoly of public worship. And yet among the lower orders of the clergy were to be found many republicans; but of the liberty demanded by these, religious liberty did not form a part. The liberal-minded abbés might declaim against the Inquisition, and bestow on it such epithets as cannibal and tiger-like, but they were all opposed to toleration. The revolutionary abbé, Fauchet--he who, after the capture of the Bastille, blessed the tricoloured uniforms of the citizen soldiers, and made of the tricolour the national flag--now jeered at the idea of toleration, and prophesied general and complete demoralisation as its only possible result. He went so far as to maintain that those who belonged to no church ought not to have the right to marry, "since one could not consider such persons bound by their word."

When the Estates met as the National Assembly, the clergy were soon compelled to make concessions; but even when the feeling against them found expression, it always in the end assumed the mildest, most deferential form. When, for example, in February 1790, incensed by Garat's declaring consecration to the priesthood to be civic suicide, a number of priests, amongst them Abbé Maury and the Bishops of Nancy and Clermont, started up, accused Garat of blasphemy, and moved that the Catholic religion should be proclaimed as the national religion, the motion was rejected, but in such a manner as clearly evinced the timidity and hesitation of its opponents. It would, they declared, be an insult to religion, and to the feelings of the whole Assembly, to act as if there could be any doubt in such a matter. Men did not yet dare to say what they thought; and so an Assembly, the majority of which were free-thinkers, took part in church processions and attended Catholic public worship. Only two months later the motion that Catholicism should be proclaimed the state religion was again brought forward, this time after Maury's angry tirade against the proposal to secularise the property of the church. The proposer of the motion on this occasion was a priest, Dom Gerle, who afterwards, as a Jacobin, did his utmost to blot out the remembrance of his first public appearance. Mirabeau answered with a reference to a window in the Louvre which he could see from the place where he stood; "the very window," he shouted, "from which a French autocrat, who combined secular aims with the spiritual aims of religion, fired the shot which gave the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew." But once again the Assembly avoided the settling of the question by declaring that the majesty of religion and the reverence due to it forbade their making it the subject of debate. The Left with one accord refrained from voting and a protest was signed by 297 members, of whom 144 were ecclesiastics. Vacillation and self-contradiction were the order of the day.

The aristocracy, who a hundred years before had joyfully acclaimed Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had been influenced to such an extent by the literature of the eighteenth century that, in their capacity as an Estate, they in a genuinely Voltairean spirit expressed themselves in favour of universal toleration; but they at the same time gave hesitating expression to the opinion that the Catholic church ought to be the national church. The Third Estate, the citizens, a considerable proportion of whom were Jansenists, and consequently in reality less liberal-minded, had expressed itself in a similarly evasive manner. But once the National Assembly was constituted, there was no longer any real uncertainty. As we all know, one of the first acts of that Assembly was the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and liberty of thought and speech in matters of religion was specified as one of these rights. Article 10 of the Declaration runs as follows: "No one may be harassed on account of his opinions, not even of his religious opinions, provided his expression of the same be not subversive of lawful order." The Pope replied by declaring this liberty to be "an unnatural and foolish right, subversive of reason" (_sic_). This was a sufficient indication of the relative positions of the two camps.

When toleration becomes the subject of debate in the Constituent Assembly we perceive the direction things are taking. One of the clauses in the first draught of the Declaration of the Rights of Man ran thus: "Public worship being a matter of public import, it is the prerogative of society to control it, to permit the rites of one church and forbid those of another." Upon this clause Mirabeau made a violent attack.

"It is not toleration that I champion," he said. "In the matter of religion, unrestricted liberty is in my eyes such a sacred right that the employment of the word toleration to express it savours to me of tyranny; for the very existence of an authority which has the power to tolerate, and, consequently, the power not to do so, is an infringement on freedom of thought." In a subsequent debate he went still farther. "A ruling religion has been spoken of. What is meant in this case by 'ruling'? I do not understand the word, and must request a definition of it. Does it mean a religion which suppresses other religions? Has not the Assembly interdicted the word suppression? Or does it mean the religion of the sovereign? The sovereign has not the right to rule over men's consciences or to direct their opinions. Or does it apply to the religion of the majority? Religion is a matter of opinion. This or that religion is the outcome of this or that opinion. An opinion is not formed by counting votes. Thought is a man's own, is independent, and cannot be restricted."

It is evident that men were beginning to have the courage of their opinions in religious matters.

I adduce another example of the rapidity with which, both in the Assembly and in society in general, they were advancing from a timid first apprehension to certainty of the great spiritual revolution which was taking place.

In October 1789 there stood at the bar of the National Assembly a deputation of curiously dressed men with oriental features. They were Jews from Alsace and Lorraine, who had been deputed by their fellow-believers to appeal for mercy.

"Most noble Assembly," they said, "we come in the name of the Eternal, who is the source of all justice and truth, in the name of God, who has given to all men the same rights and the same duties, in the name of humanity, which has been outraged for centuries by the infamous treatment to which the unfortunate descendants of the oldest of nations have been subjected in almost every country, to beseech you humbly to take our unhappy fate into consideration. Those Jews who are everywhere persecuted, everywhere humiliated, and yet are always submissive, never rebellious; those Jews who are despised and harassed by all nations, whereas they ought to be pitied and tolerated, cast themselves at your feet, and venture to hope that, even in the midst of the important tasks which engross you, you will not neglect and despise their complaint, but will listen compassionately to the timid protests which they venture to offer from the depth of degradation in which they are sunk.... May an improvement in our position, which we have hitherto desired in vain, and which we now tearfully implore, be your work, your benefaction!"

Clermont-Tonnerre warmly supported this petition. He was opposed by the audacious and callous Abbé Maury, who argued thus: "It is absurd to talk in our days of persecution and intolerance. The Jews are our brothers. But to make the Jews citizens would be equivalent to permitting Englishmen or Danes to become Frenchmen without any process of naturalisation, without ceasing to be Englishmen or Danes." He also dwelt upon the usurious proclivities of the Jews and the other vices attributed to them: "Not a man amongst them has ennobled his hands by guiding a plough or cultivating a plot of ground."

Considering that Jews were strictly prohibited by law from acquiring even the smallest piece of land, and that their position was such that when they entered a town they were liable to the same duty as was imposed on pigs, Maury's argument was easy of refutation. But hatred of the Jews was still so strong that no one contradicted him. It was feared that, if civic rights were conferred on the Jews, they would turn the whole of Alsace into a Jewish colony.

There was a general feeling of embarrassment. Only one member of the Assembly, a man who as yet had attracted no notice, Maximilien Robespierre, spoke in favour of the motion for granting the Jews equality. He declared their vices to be the consequence of the degraded position in which they had been kept.

But he was alone in supporting a measure which, significantly enough, classed Protestants, actors, and Jews together. The human rights of the Protestants and the actors were acknowledged, but, as Mirabeau recognised the impossibility of passing the clause of the motion which concerned the Jews, he adjourned the debate on this clause indefinitely. Two years passed. In 1791 the Jews once more appealed. But in what a changed tone! The humble prayer of the slave had become the peremptory demand of the man. The conclusion of the appeal runs as follows:--

"If there were one religion which incapacitated its followers from being citizens, whilst the followers of all other religions made good citizens, then these other religions would be the ruling religions; but there is no ruling religion, since all have equal rights. If the Jews are refused civic rights because they are Jews, they are punished for belonging by birth to a certain religion. In this case there is no religious liberty, seeing that loss of civic rights accompanies the liberty. This much is certain--in advancing men to religious liberty, the intention was that they should simultaneously be advanced to civic liberty; there is no half liberty, just as there is no half justice."

Two years spent in the atmosphere of the Revolution had given to these pariahs not only self-esteem but pride. This time the measure was passed without debate.

In the Constituent Assembly the animosity towards positive religion and its priests with which the "philosophers" had inoculated their age did not find vent in words; as yet it only expressed itself in deeds. All church property was proclaimed to be state property. Voltaire had impressed upon his disciples that it was their mission "to annihilate the infamous thing" (_écraser l'infame_). In the decisions of the Assembly faithful Catholics saw an attempt to carry out this injunction. It seemed to them as if all the powers of hell had been let loose upon the church of Christ, "as if the philosophers were bent upon exterminating the Christian religion, not only in France, but throughout Europe, nay, throughout the whole world." (_Conjuration contre la religion catholique et les souverains_, 1792.) In order to attain this result the "philosophers" had addressed themselves to the sovereigns of the great countries, to Frederick of Prussia, Catherine of Russia, and others; but it was from the French middle class that the blow came.

The priests, who, as the saying goes, have found what Archimedes sought, a fulcrum in another world from which to move this one, now began to stir up the spirit of fanaticism in the provinces. In the town of Arras a picture of the crucifixion was paraded in the streets, in which Maury and the royalists were represented standing on the right side of the cross, and the revolutionists on the left side, below the unrepentant thief. At Nîmes there was a regular riot when the news came that a Protestant, Saint-Étienne, had been elected President of the National Assembly.

The new ordering of the church's affairs was brought about by a coalition of the Voltairean and Jansenist members of the Assembly. The Jansenists had a religious hatred of earthly greatness, and, as fatalists, unquestioningly accepted the existence of human misery. Therefore it displeased them to see the church rich, and they took no account of the manner in which the poor benefited by its wealth. Moreover, the scandalous lives led by many of the high-placed ecclesiastics aroused their moral indignation. Everyone, for instance, knew that Bishop Jarante's mistress, Mademoiselle Guimard, distributed ecclesiastical promotion behind the scenes of the opera, that the Archbishop of Narbonne had a regular harem in one of his abbeys, and that the monks of the Abbey of Granselve had quarters for their ladies in a neighbouring village, where the tables were regularly spread for nightly revels.