Part 12

These violent outbursts against Luther and Lutheranism are explained by the fact that the French reactionaries, like the German Romanticists, clearly perceived that the modern intellectual tendency of which they were so much afraid was the inevitable result of Protestantism. Lamennais, for example, writes (_Essai sur l'indifférence_): "It is now acknowledged that the church and its dogmas rest upon authority, as upon an impregnable rock. Hence it is that the adherents of all the different sects, who disagree upon every other point, unite in the attempt to undermine this main pillar of all truth. Lutheran, Socinian, Deist, Atheist, are the names which mark the gradual development of the one doctrine; one and all with unflagging perseverance pursue their particular plan of attack on authority."

Reason, then, Catholic reason, the alone genuine, sees everywhere (according to Bonald) the three social personages--power, minister, and subject. In the different domains of society they receive different names. In the religious world they are called God, priest, and flock; in the political, king, aristocracy or official class, subjects or people; in domestic life, father, mother, and child.

The reader who is not yet familiar with Bonald's mode of thought is likely to be taken aback by this last idea; but Bonald is so perfectly serious in his identification of the father with power, the mother with the minister, and the child with the subject, that he actually, as a rule, employs the designations father, mother, and child in place of the others; because, he says, they apply to animals as well as to man, whereas power, minister, and subject apply exclusively to thinking beings. Besides, he elsewhere says, we must do our utmost to spiritualise man and his relations in view of the attempts that are made to degrade them.

He introduces his theory with his customary formulæ. Man and woman, he says, both exist; but their manner of existence is not the same. They are like each other, but not equals. The union of the sexes is the object of the difference between them. The production of a human being is the object of their union. The father is strong, the child weak; the father active, the child inactive. The mother forms the connecting link. How so? The father, says Bonald, is a conscious being, and cannot become a father except with his own will; the mother, on the contrary, may, even with full consciousness, become a mother _against her will_ (hence inactively). The child neither wills to be born nor is conscious of being born.

It is, thus, upon that revolting and tragic arrangement of nature which permits a woman to become a mother against her will that Bonald bases the difference in rank of the sexes. He says, moreover (_Du Divorce_, fifth edition, p. 71): "In this gradation of their relationship is to be found the solution of the question of divorce," namely, that it ought not to be allowed.

If Bonald's mad theory, like many another equally mad, had simply remained a theory, which no one dreamt of putting into practice, there would be nothing to resent. But it was upon the principles proclaimed in his work that the laws of marriage and divorce which held good in France for the next seventy years were based![1] Immediately after the restoration of the Bourbons (twelve years after the publication of _Du Divorce_) Bonald's influence was so irresistible that the lethargic, religiously disposed National Assembly abolished divorce by an overwhelming majority--236 to 11 votes.

It may be said, proceeds Bonald, writing of education, that the father is the power which, through the mother as minister or means, performs the reproductive and maintaining acts, which have the child as object or "subject."

The relation of man and woman in marriage is simply this: Man is power (_le pouvoir_), woman is duty (_le devoir_). Does not Holy Scripture itself call man woman's head (or reason), woman man's helpmeet (or minister), and signify that the child is the subject by perpetually inculcating obedience as its duty?

Woman resembles man as man resembles God. Man is created in the image of God, but is not because of this his equal. Woman is made of the flesh and blood of man, but is his inferior. Bonald's theory chimes in with Milton's: "He for God only, she for God in him." (_Paradise Lost_, Book IV.) He says: "The society of the family is a society to which the man contributes the protecting power of strength, the woman the necessities of weakness; he _le pouvoir_, she _le devoir_." Thus does the French philosopher caricature the doctrine of St. Paul, which, in its day, was a great and noble advance in the direction of the emancipation of woman.

What, then, is Bonald's definition of marriage? Marriage is the engagement entered into by two persons of opposite sexes to found a society--the society which is called a family. It is this engagement which distinguishes marriage from every other species of cohabitation of man and woman. Bonald refers with the utmost indignation to Condorcet's witty saying, that if men have any duty towards the beings who do not yet exist, it cannot be that of endowing them with existence. "Indeed it is!" he exclaims. "Marriage exists for the express purpose of continuing the race." But we are not therefore to conclude, maintains Bonald, that a childless marriage, that is to say, a marriage which appears to have failed in accomplishing its purpose, may be dissolved; for, by annulling the first marriage in order to legalise a second, the production of children in the first is made impossible, without their production in the second being positively ensured. Though a husband and wife have no children, there is always a possibility that children may come; and since marriage is only instituted for the sake of the possible children, the fact that they as yet have none is no reason for annulling it. To Bonald marriage is the possible society, to which the family, as the real society, corresponds. "_The object of marriage_" he teaches, "_is not the happiness of the wedded pair._" What, then, is its object? "_Marriage_" he answers, "_exists for the sake of society._" In marriage religion and the state see only the duties which it imposes.

But if marriage exists only for the sake of society, what, we eagerly ask, is the aim of society? True to his theological dogma, that society by preserving its tradition, _i.e._ itself, preserves nothing less than God, Bonald answers (as indeed he must) with the empty formula: _The aim of society is its own preservation_.[2]

Not a word does he waste upon the vain supposition that institutions exist for man's sake; not a thought does he bestow on human happiness, on the development of the race, or the evolution of human greatness.

The one and only vital consideration being the production and welfare of children, polygamy, the putting away of a wife, and divorce seem to Bonald all equally reprehensible. He remarks that the introduction of divorce and the introduction of polygamy seem to follow naturally one on the other, seeing that Luther (this story appears in every single book of our period), who permitted divorce, also, though in all secrecy, countenanced the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse. Bonald declares that he sees no difference between the polygamy which consists in having several wives at the same time and that which consists in having them one after the other; he forgets that he hereby pronounces a second marriage, after the death of husband or wife, to be as culpable as marriage after divorce. Everywhere, he declares, where divorce is legal, and where, consequently, a woman is entitled to see in every man a possible husband, the women are devoid of chastity, or at any rate of modesty. He instances England as an example--England. He compares the state of matters in that country, where in given cases divorce is permitted, with the conditions prevailing among certain savage races, where the husband obliges his wife's lover, when he catches him _in flagranti delicto_, to pay for a pig, which the three roast and eat in company. England, with its comparatively liberal institutions, is Bonald's and Lamennais' scapegoat. Lamennais says of England that nowhere else is there to be found a population as blunted, as destitute of the sense of morality, of higher ideas, of everything that elevates the mind and ennobles human life.[3]

All this is exaggeration, and of a most untruthful and illogical kind. But there is both logic and truth in what gives these details their significance, namely, Bonald's conception of the close connection between the question of divorce and the whole political question. He sees that a republic or _democracy_ (the Republic is so obnoxious to him that he will not even use the word) inevitably leads to the loosening of the marriage tie.

He writes: "In 1792 divorce was legalised. No one was surprised, for this was one of the inevitable and long-foreseen consequences of the process of demolition carried on at that time with such ardour; but now, when our desire is to re-build, now, divorce entering as a principle into the edifice of society, shakes that edifice to its very foundations. Divorce was in harmony with the democracy which has too long ruled in France under different names and forms. In domestic as well as in public affairs power was delivered over to the passions of _the subjects_; there was disorder in the family and disorder in the state; there was similarity and harmony between the two disorders. But it is plain to every one that divorce is directly at variance with the spirit of the hereditary and indissoluble monarchy. If we retain divorce, we have order in the state and disorder in the family--indissolubility here, dissolubility there, hence no harmony. On that side to which man is inclined to bend, the law must prop him up; in our days it must forbid disorganised natures disorganisation, as in olden days it forbade half-savage barbarians cruel and bloody vengeance."

Thus Bonald succeeds in resting his theory of marriage upon his fundamental principle of sovereignty by the grace of God. The conclusion he arrives at is that divorce ought to be unconditionally prohibited, and that simple separation without permission to marry again is a sufficient remedy for the ills arising from unfortunate marriages. When his theories became laws, the marriage laws of France, they produced a state of matters in that country which excited the ridicule of the whole world--a state of matters which, for example, made it impossible for a young girl whose bridegroom ran off with her dowry on the wedding day ever to marry again or have lawful offspring. In the case of incendiaries and murderers the law permitted the plea of extenuating circumstances; they might be set at liberty after behaving well for a certain number of years; but, according to Bonald's doctrine and the laws of France, the deserted, victimised young girl had not the same hope of liberty that was extended to the girl who had burned a whole family in their beds or murdered her own father.

The scheme for a code of civil law prepared by the Convention contained the following clauses:--

In the matter of marriage men are free to act as they please, that is to say, marriage comes under the category of matters of conscience.

It is the formation of an alliance in which man and woman stand on an equal footing.

The contracting parties are free to determine the conditions of their union.

Husband and wife have or exercise equal rights as regards the disposal of their property.

Divorce is permissible if desired by both or by one of the spouses.

The law forbids any limitation of the right of divorce.

It appears that the great liberty in the matter of divorce thus suddenly bestowed was, like all suddenly acquired liberty, abused at first. Both men and women, without bestowing much thought on their children, recklessly gave way to ephemeral passions which had neither the justification nor the dignity of true love. Corresponding phenomena are to be found throughout all history, wherever fetters have been broken. But for those who, like Bonald, had no faith in liberty and believed in no disciplining power except that of restraint, what occurred sufficiently proved the necessity of returning to the old order of things.

The ideal marriage (an ideal which will never be lost sight of and which is sometimes realised) is, of course, that in which the two united human beings love each other till death, nay, with a love that lasts beyond death. But this ideal marriage is the result of a rare, fortunate choice, not of compulsory laws.

For such laws the children formed the natural pretext. Bonald propounds his doctrine of the rights of the child in the following effective, admirably expressed proposition: "As the contract of marriage concerns three persons, the father, the mother, and the child, it cannot be annulled because two agree in desiring that it should be. Since the child is under age, society defends its cause against its parents, and as the child's advocate protests against the dissolubility of marriage." This argument premises, in the first place, that the continuance of the marriage at all costs is what is undoubtedly best for the child, a premise which is distinctly open to doubt. In the second place, it presupposes the welfare of the child to be the one vital and all-important matter, a presupposition which only adherents of the principle of authority can be expected to accept without proof. And lastly, it takes account only of the children born in wedlock, regarding the others as non-existent, though it is well known that one of the saddest results of the traditional order of things is that not all children are born with equal claims upon their parents, nor, consequently, upon society. Bonald's social order, in which the welfare of the child is declared to be of supreme importance, has in our day led to more than 2,800,000 French men and women being born as illegitimate children, in an undeserved inferiority to their parents which is more strongly insisted on in France than in other countries.

But, absurd in many of its details as Bonald's theory is, it is valuable, nay, precious, as being in all its main features a consistent application of the principle of authority in the domain of the family. Bonald has, what semi-liberals never have, a keen perception of the connection between the political and the social principles of the Revolution. He is not able, like those whose very essence is foolish inconsistency, to separate the former from the latter, and to overlook the fact that the traditional theory of marriage, which is still in part the accepted one, is most intimately connected with the traditional theory of the state, which is now generally rejected.

The connection becomes obvious whenever the matter is discussed. The American slave-owners defended themselves against the accusations of the abolitionists by declaring that the relations existing between slaves and their masters were in no respect vitally different from those existing in the family and in marriage. We see, too, that quite as much has been said and written against the permissibility of divorce in any case whatever as would be said and written to-day against a proposal to increase the facility of divorce, or, indeed, against any change in the received conception of what makes the union of man and woman desirable.

In this province, as in every other, the principle of authority has as its opponent the principle of free thought--in various forms. If we leave the socialistic theories (which we shall consider later in connection with the Saint-Simonists) altogether out of the question, we find authority confronted in the matter under discussion by free thought in the shape of the principle of individualism, as developed by English, French, and American thinkers. The code of laws drafted by the Convention, from which extracts have been given above, is based on this principle, the fundamental idea of which is that it is not, as is generally maintained, the family, but the individual human being who is the main pillar of society, and that this individual is sovereign. The doctrine of the sovereignty of God, as proclaimed by the devotees of hereditary autocracy, and the ambiguous doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, as proclaimed by the revolutionary worshippers of the majority, are superseded by the doctrine of _the sovereignty of the individual_ (an expression first employed by the American writer Samuel Warren, from whom it was borrowed by John Stuart Mill).[4] Sovereignty of the individual ensures, as the phrase implies, the absolute liberty of every human being--prohibits any man's usurping any authority or control whatever over other men. The adherents of this doctrine say: _Either_ tutelage for every one, _i.e._ censorship of the press, a regular police-spy system, passports, tariffs, prohibition of divorce, laws regulating the intercourse of the sexes--the whole system of arbitrary restriction of the freedom of the individual, _or_ the sovereignty of the individual, _i.e._ liberty of the press, liberty of speech, liberty to travel, free-trade, liberty of research, and liberty in the relations of the sexes. From their standpoint the only possible vindication of a law which restricts the liberty of the individual is that the provisional compulsory order of things is merely the speediest means of arriving at a more perfect order of things with more complete liberty--for liberty is the ideal of individualism. The thinkers of this school regard the interference of the state in matters of the affections as unwarranted; they maintain that the legal tie which keeps two beings of opposite sexes united is _either superfluous_--when it is their own wish to remain united, _or revolting_--when it is not their wish. They hold that society acts most criminally towards a married couple, one of whom detests the other, if it obliges them to remain together and bring children into being, the fruit of the desire of the one and the loathing of the other. They consider it revolting that society should compel a woman against her will to bear a child to a drunkard, a child which from its birth possesses its father's depraved instincts and lusts. And they consider it equally terrible that a man's whole life should be sacrificed to a connection which reduces him to despair. They take as much thought of the children yet unborn as Bonald does of those already in existence. They do not, like him, see in the fact that it is possible for a woman to become a mother against her will a proof of the imperfection of woman, but a proof of the uncivilised condition of society. Clearly perceiving the interdependence of all the different provinces of human life, they maintain it to be most improbable that one alone of these provinces should be, by means of tradition, absolutely rightly ordered, seeing that the ordering of all the others has been found to be altogether wrong and has consequently been completely changed in the course of the last hundred years. Such is the line of argument most frequently employed by writers of this school.[5] In this case, as in many others, it is doubtful if pure liberalism points out the right way of arriving at the desired end. The principle is stated here simply as being the direct opposite of that of authority. What is undoubtedly desirable, in this as in every other case, is absolute liberty of investigation. If a thinker in a Catholic country expresses his opinion freely on the subject of the mass, or any other of the prescribed rites and practices of the church, he is, as a rule, dubbed a scorner of religion in general, if not an atheist. For the orthodox Catholic believes that "religion" consists in, or at least can only exist in combination with, certain ecclesiastical traditions and customs with which in his consciousness it has always been associated. It never occurs to him that the assailant of these customs may have a far nobler and purer conception of religion than himself. He has observed that those whom he has hitherto found wanting in respect for the ordinances of religion have been disorderly, immoral men, capable of all kinds of foolish actions. From this he too quickly draws a general conclusion; his intellect is not sufficiently developed to enable him to distinguish between the different types of assailants; he confuses the earnest thinker and champion of a higher truth with the common rabble of graceless scoffers--confuses his superior with his inferiors.

The very same thing happens in the matter of the traditional conception of the proper relation of the sexes. The rules and regulations of this relation in a given country at a given time are no more marriage than Catholicism in Spain in the eighteenth century is religion. Some men are below the standard presupposed by the institution of marriage as it exists, some are above it, whilst the majority in civilised countries exactly come up to it, bring public opinion into harmony with their views, and, confounding the two groups of those who think otherwise, hold them up together to public scorn.

The same idea which leads to the assertion of the principle of authority in religion and in the state leads to its assertion in the matter of the relation of the sexes.

The mistake as regards religion consists in the supposition that the church, because its mission for centuries has been to ennoble, is of essential importance in the production of nobler feelings and thoughts--the supposition that love of truth is not natural to man, increasing with his general development, but must be communicated to him and kept up in him by the perpetual agency of bishops, priests, churches, church councils, &c.

The corresponding mistake in the matter of the mutual relations of man and woman lies in the belief that human beings do not by nature love order and refinement in this relation, and love it the more the more highly developed and consequently refined they are, that men do not instinctively love their children and protect their children's mother, but that all these qualities and virtues must be first manufactured, then preserved in the human soul by the aid of legislation--although the requisite laws are, strangely enough, only produced by the combined action of all those persons who, taken separately, are supposed to be devoid of the qualities and virtues in question. Entirely the opposite of this is the real truth; it is only their love of these same virtues and blessings which induces men patiently to submit to all the artificial arrangements and compulsory rules under which they groan. They submit because it has been impressed on them from their childhood that such institutions as the existing ones are the only guarantee for the maintenance of the virtues and benefits they so highly prize.

One result of this state of matters is the repression or complete prevention of all unprejudiced inquiry into the nature and working of the human soul; men are trained to accept unquestioningly as truth everything that bears the warrant of tradition or authority, and the opponents of the principle of authority are accused of desiring and favouring immorality.

If a man set himself seriously to ascertain what in our day is the most degrading and stultifying of all the principles that exist upon this earth, he could not avoid arriving at the conclusion that the principle of authority is the one most deserving of this unenviable distinction.