Part 12

"Take as an example the conflict between the senate and people of Rome. Marius having been made the champion of liberty is followed by Sulla the master of reaction; the fight is long, bitter, and when finally the people triumph they find themselves under the absolute rule of one man. Now this results from the fact that men worship the name of freedom, rather than the thing itself; those who fight in the cause of liberty are fighting for their own establishment in power and, being established, they seek to protect themselves, and fortify their position as the central authority; and, having been raised up by the popular voice, they are stronger than the power which they have supplanted; thus it happens that the people warring against their government in the cause of liberty do but increase the power which they have aimed to destroy. The present struggle is to rid the State of the interference of the Church: to found greater States. The popes have destroyed Italy by playing off faction against faction, and city against city, in the hope that by this method they might become supreme over all; but having introduced disorder into every town, and destroyed all civic morality, they have also lessened their own power; for these states and cities were the Church's bulwarks against the invader. Now, whatever may be the issue of present affairs, the Pope must become subject either to the Emperor or to the King of France. This is the nemesis of their policy. The liberty of the State will be achieved, at least in a great measure; but the State being stronger will be more absolute, more tyrannous. The solvent of the new learning, as you call it, will be smiled upon by kings, so long as it doth help them to rid themselves of the Pope; but it will be repressed the moment that it shows any desire to alter or limit the power of the States."

"Yes," answered Cromwell; "but if they once let in the flood, it will be too late to think of building a dam."

"When I was a young man I remember to have heard Politian," said Machiavelli. "But I think that the enthusiasm which began with Petrarch, and continued into my younger days, has died down. It is true that our studies are better organised: we have the academies; but learning in Italy at the present day is rather a polite accomplishment than a serious business. It hath not penetrated the mass of people. To them, the two bases of the social order are still the Pope and the Emperor, as in Dante's day; and they condemn the new learning as tending to overthrow these bases, and so destroy the whole fabric of society. The monks point to Erasmus as the cause of the present troubles in Germany."

"Erasmus doth seem to me to be the one wise man," answered Cromwell. "He steereth a middle course, condemning the fanatics on both sides. It is his wish to avoid any tumult, and merely to further the growth of light and reason; for he is persuaded the whole evil of the time comes from ignorance. Colet, such another man, was persecuted with accusations of heresy, so that he thought well to withdraw himself from the public eye. But neither of these men desired to overthrow the Papacy or to promote a schism; for they thought, if I remember aright, that such methods, with their incidental violence, would only prejudice the cause they had at heart; their aim was to act upon the Church from within, to reform its abuses, to root out this pestilent brood of monks, and to promote a healthy growth of lay opinion. To Erasmus the German schismatics are no whit less ignorant or less intolerant than his old enemies the monks, and equally entangled in the webs of vain theological sophistries. He believes that the great influences are secret, and of slow growth, gradually penetrating all things; and he seeketh to form a party of intellectual men, who shall work within reasonable limits, acting as a new leaven to leaven the whole lump."

"I have little faith in such an influence, except as a preparation for the combat," said Machiavelli. "What I praise in Erasmus is that clearness of judgment, which insists that the Bible should be read as any other book, that each man should go direct to the source, and fill his own vessel; for by that means they will recognise the chicanery, which isolates texts and phrases, and distorts their sense. But not by any gentle methods will the regeneration of Europe come to pass. There is a stir, a commotion of minds, abroad, which is testing the pretensions of the Church, and rejecting them one by one. The sands are shifting beneath the foundations of a structure we thought builded upon a rock; and though as yet the fabric stands, it showeth great rents. So: the Pope and Emperor remain to the majority the bases of the social order, as I have said, and soon it will be perceived by all men that the humanists, in playing with questions of grammar, have trenched upon matters of faith: a crime not serious in itself, but exceedingly grave when after reflection we learn that it compromises temporalities. Men have not yet clearly seen this danger, though a few, perhaps, have suspected it. And, when the reaction against humanism sets in, upon what arm will the humanists rely to defend them?

"They will by that time have created not only a large following, but a temper among the people. I myself, Messer, have great hopes of our young King of England, who hath grown under the influence of men similar to Erasmus. He hath a royal nature, a dominant will, a power not only of making his people's aspirations his own, but that supreme gift in a ruler which can make what is to his own private advantage seem a matter tending to further the public good. Though as yet he be not fully tried, this much I will venture to prophesy of him, that no hindrances in the path he chooses will prevent him, and that no man in his realm of England who fails him once will fail him again."

"You are either very fortunate, or very unfortunate, to have such a prince," said Machiavelli, with a smile. "But humanism is of recent growth in your country. It must be followed by reform. And, if your King hath that quality of true kingliness, which maketh the aspirations of his people his own, would he withstand reaction?"

"I cannot conceive that one of his nurture and character should be found on any side but that of reform."

A light, incredulous smile played upon the other's face.

"It might be politic," he suggested.

But Cromwell protruded his under-lip obstinately.

"I cannot conceive the possibility," he said.

Machiavelli shrugged his shoulders, leaned back in his chair, and looked at his guest over joined finger-tips.

"He hath written against Luther, but rather for the reasons of Erasmus than for those of the monks," said Cromwell slowly. "It is even conceivable that if he once take up the business of reforming the Church in England, he may be forced into a more extreme position; I mean into a denial of the Pope's authority, and a position similar to that of the followers of Luther. In that case, I admit, the war will be between two extreme parties; but it would be difficult to say which he would support, or how far he would be compelled to go. Certain it is to me that he will ally himself with whatever party is likely to serve his own ends, and will not forsake them until they have gained him what he requires. Then, indeed, he may cast aside the tool, which he hath blunted by use, and choose one keener; yet, in reality, he would be but sacrificing the show for the substance; and his vicegerent will always be the man who discerns his will and executes it. Thus, his policy will be consistent, though his ministers change; for at times perhaps, since the people always blame those who surround a prince as the abusers of his confidence, he may find it necessary for him to discard, or even to sacrifice one, whose sole fault is in the thoroughness with which he carries out the royal will, for often in history we read of the sacrifice of a minister in order to lull popular feeling. Witness the example, which you yourself give, in your treatise of _The Prince_; where you show how Messer Remiro d'Orco, Cesare Borgia having set him over Romagna, by the sternness of his measures soon cleansed it of evil-doers and reduced it to order, for which his master, fearful lest the harshness of his lieutenant should be attributed to himself, rewarded him with axe and block, exposing the severed head in the market-place of Cesena. Thus, though he had himself commanded the severities which his lieutenant practised, he escaped the odium consequent to them, and was hailed by the people as their deliverer."

They sat for a little time, silent, in the gathering dusk.

"Still," said Cromwell thoughtfully, "there must be ways of avoiding the ingratitude of a master: either by the minister imputing to the King openly, and upon every possible occasion, all actions, whether of good or evil; or else by his fortifying himself with powerful friendships, and seeking in every way to gain the voice of popular favour, so that becoming greater than his master he may withstand him."

Machiavelli shifted a little in his chair, and the darkness hid an ironic smile.

_TO ALBERT HOUTIN_

VI

THE PARADISE OF THE DISILLUSIONED

VI

THE PARADISE OF THE DISILLUSIONED

"The final _Vale_!"

He spoke, and lay silent. The dim figures in the crowded room seemed to slip away from him, his mind ceased to grasp at earthly realities, a thick darkness enveloping it and them; but the frail, wasted body still clung insatiably to life, and answered the phrases of the litany with long quavering sobs. At last it, too, resigned its hold on life. He seemed to see again, for one brief moment, the kneeling cardinals; and then to join some great current of being which swept him away beyond the consciousness of time and space. Gradually another consciousness dawned on him. Upon the golden brown clouds, which seemed to limit his vision, there was projected suddenly a huge grotesque figure; the shadow of a being more or less similar to man.

"Is it a devil come to torment me?" he wondered incredulously.

As the shadow advanced it became smaller; he noticed that it seemed to have talons.

"It is a devil."

But even as he spoke the shadow melted about him, and out of the golden mist came a strange-looking man, with a large, ungainly head, gray hair in rather long straight wisps, and lively intelligent eyes of a clear blue. The figure was absurd, gnome-like, with a pear-shaped stomach. The finger-nails were very long. The stranger bowed, smiling, as he approached, and spoke in a pleasant voice.

"Monsieur, je suis charmé de vous voir. Etes-vous, par hazard, de notre petite planète terre?"

"I am Gioacchino Pecci," he answered.

A livelier interest was apparent on the other's face; the smile became ironical.

"It is curious," he said after a pause. "It is curious that we should have reached the same paradise. On earth, Your Holiness, I was Ernest Renan."

"But is this paradise?" said Leo uneasily. "Je n'ai jamais cru----"

"It is the paradise of the incredulous," answered Renan. "There are many paradises: that state of being which on earth was called hell is the paradise of those given over to animal passions. The paradise of the ascetics is an eternal Shrove Tuesday, with the eternal prospect of an eternal Ash Wednesday; the case of Tantalus reversed and made pleasurable. All good Buddhists have attained Nirvana. The righteous Mahometan is distracted by the charms of innumerable _houris_. We Epicureans enjoy that moment which is eternity; and every man is justified in his own eyes."

"It is charming," said Leo.

"It is more," said Renan; "it is rational. How puerile is the mortal conception of paradise! Man has imagined a place where virtue is rewarded and vice punished. He believes in it with a passionate conviction, because he is not quite sure. He forgets that virtue must be disinterested, or it ceases to be virtue. If man is capable of a free and unhampered choice between vice and virtue, if the distinction between them be clear and precise, and the reward or punishment entailed by the choice definite and finally revealed, mankind, then, is obviously divided into two parts: the astute and the infatuate. One feels immediately that both the reward and the punishment are excessive; or else that vice and virtue have ceased to exist. However, in mortal things there is always an element of doubt, and perhaps the chief glory of man is born from it. Our choice is not entirely free, the distinction is not absolutely clear, the reward is purely hypothetical."

"Ah, M. Renan," said Leo, "why are you here? You were always a believer at heart; one might almost say a scholastic. You invented a system of doubt, as others might a system of faith; even your doubts were affirmations. Science with you was only a synonym for God, and round it you constructed an hierarchy of saints and martyrs, a church suffering, militant, triumphant. Lucian----"

"He is here," said Renan.

"Lucian," continued Leo, "imagined the soul of Plato inhabiting a paradise constructed after the model of his own Republic. I imagine you projected into that strange future which you announced in your _Dialogues Philosophiques_."

"Doubt must be systematic," answered Renan; "but there is no need for system in religion. The essence of a creed is in its assertions, not in its arguments. Its arguments are nearly always a series of after-thoughts, of apologies; its reason is always _à priori_; the very fact that an argument should be considered necessary is blasphemous and heretical. You exaggerate my scholasticism; but there was always in me the nature of a priest, and I could not put away from me my education, as I could put off my ecclesiastical dress. I imported the unction of a priest into the region of philosophic doubt, and by that means invented a substitute for faith. Science, in limiting the field of its researches, has increased the mystery which lies beyond. I became, as it were, the priest of an unknown God; and the first article of my creed was, that perhaps he did not exist at all. 'Sois béni pour ton mystère,' I cried in my _Magnificat_; 'béni pour t'être caché, béni pour avoir reservé la pleine liberté de nos cœurs.' The _Dialogues Philosophiques_ were written at a time when the whole thought of France was depressed and reactionary. They were a play of intelligence upon contemporary ideas. Progress does not tend to establish a scientific aristocracy at the head of its affairs; science is progressive because it has saturated the commercial classes with its ideals; it has increased production, and economised in by-products. This alliance between democracy and the scientific spirit is the unique characteristic of our age. I think, myself, that society is tending to adopt the Chinese model. Kingship, the State, the present conventions of society, may continue to exist in atrophied and rudimentary forms; but I imagine the whole earth in a few thousand years regulated by examinations and trade-unions, with an effete mandarinate surviving amid the débris of the ancient order, like the solitary column of Phocas in the Roman Forum, or the teeth in an embryonic whale."

"In this paradise," said Leo with an elusive smile, "you have, doubtless, infinite leisure for the discussion of these academic questions."

"Naturally," answered Renan; "and we have a little Academy modelled on the Académie Française. I hope, Monsieur, to have the honour of welcoming you among us, and of replying to your _discours de réception_; it is an amiable duty which my colleagues have delegated to me. Sometimes; it is what remains of my mortal vanity, Monsieur; I imagine that I have some talent in these things."

Leo had intended to be ironical; but his own vanity was now flattered. One ambition is always left to those who occupy a throne; it is to be considered equal with the great.

"Your response, Monsieur, will be my apotheosis," he replied. "But, tell me, are you become a socialist? Your prophecy of the reformation of the earth on the Chinese model seems to point that way."

Renan smiled.

"No," he said; "the Chinese are not a socialistic nation. They have not the notion of the State which is peculiar to socialism. But they are a nation governed by trades-unions and examining boards; and through the same institutions we may arrive at the same stagnation. Our progress at present seems to follow that direction, because the aim of our materialistic civilisation is to make everything cheap, food, education, state-offices; and its final effect will be to make men cheap, then we shall have large, flat, arid masses of humanity, to whom few luxuries will be possible, and the forms of our civilisation will become stereotyped. As it was with Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt, as it is with China, so it will be with us. Evolution is the progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity; but the process is not indefinite.

"After a race or a nation has produced a great number of diverse personalities, it becomes decadent and tends to produce a single type: the process of evolution is arrested, and the race may either lie dormant for centuries if like the Chinese it has been prolific and exists in sufficient numbers; or, if sparse and scattered like the Phœnicians, they may be completely annihilated by their more vigorous neighbours. Socialism is neither a remedy nor a disease, but it may be a symptom. No society has been free from socialistic groups. Jerusalem had its _ebionim_; there was the eclectic philosophy of Rome under Nero, the Flavians, and the Antonines; primitive Christianity was communistic, and Neo-Christianity under Joachim of Flora and St Francis was an imitation of it. The Jacobins had communistic notions. The poor, the humble, the oppressed have always been liable to the dreams of millenarism; and the difference between the Maccabean aspiration, which was, according to Daniel, to establish the kingdom of God upon earth, and the aspiration of Robespierre, who wished 'to found upon earth the empire of wisdom, of justice, and of virtue,' is merely the difference of time and place. A beautiful, but intangible vision; a divine inspiration! Like all divine inspirations, alas! it is by its nature impracticable. Imagine a sudden uprising of the proletariate, a vast social movement, an European revolution. Slowly, after its momentary chaos, a new cohesion would take effect. The abstract virtues, from which the movement had had its derivation, would become personified in our most popular legislators; the new constitution would include, beside the disadvantages of an untried mechanism, many errors latent in the old patterns which it would necessarily follow; and we should discover, after a series of futile and extravagant adventures, that the laws which govern society are essentially natural laws, the slow growth of tacit acceptance, and not merely the dusty records of a popular legislating assembly. Mankind does not learn the lesson easily. One revolution engenders another, and eventually the habit becomes ingrained. The history of mine own country, from 1789 through the nineteenth century, a history of revolution, of the conflict between ideals and realities, is a signal and a reminder to the nations."

"You treat Christianity and Jacobinism as cognate ideas," said Leo, after a pause. "There is surely this distinction between them, that one was almost entirely religious, and the other almost entirely political."

"Ah," said Renan, with a deprecating smile, "all religions are political, just as all politics are religious. Christianity with its notion of mankind as a brotherhood, and the Papacy with its notions of a spiritual empire, a suzerainty, over all peoples, have destroyed the ancient conception of the unity of Church and State. The religion of the Greeks was embodied in their laws; and the politics of the Jews, in their religion. The ideal conception of religion as something quite distinct from the State has proved unworkable, if not disastrous. All the churches have had to smite their mystics with the thunders of excommunication, to extinguish the inward light, to restrain the free play of thought. Even the most primitive form of Christianity, the Messianic notion, was purely political. If we are to talk on social questions we cannot separate religion from politics. The distinction between them is artificial; they are merely the opposite poles of a single idea."

"Ah, well!" said Leo, shrugging his shoulders; "the progress of humanity is a chimæra if it ends merely in stagnation. These bleak, arid masses of mankind living without pleasures in their Chinese frugality, what future have they before them?"

"An awakening," said Renan prophetically; "the Kings of Uruk reigning over a decadent civilisation, Sardanapalus foreseeing the stagnation of his people did not dream of a future which they had helped to create. The process of evolution acts in tides; there is a continuous ebb and flow; the seed lies hidden in the ground until the wizardry of Spring calls it forth, and rain and sunlight nourishing it into new life, it ripens for the harvest. Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. In the ruined palaces of Nineveh the beasts of the desert bring forth their young, and the green lizards creep out from the crevices to sun themselves upon a fragment of some boastful inscription; but the music which echoed in its painted halls, the dancing and the choirs, the great processions of its Kings, its wisdom and folly, its vain desires and failures, its tears and laughter, these have their being still, they move mysteriously in us, a breath would quicken them into life again, we can rebuild them in moments that seem to have all the profundity of time."

"Poet!" said Leo, with a smile creasing about his lean jaws. "The world does not become socialist, it becomes Chinese; our civilisation tends to a variety of forms, becomes uniform, and then again becomes diverse in endless recurrence. Continue, Monsieur, but let us keep within the bounds of our own age. Socialism is a definite political force; and even if it do not triumph completely it must create certain new conditions. I, myself, have condemned socialism in one of my encyclicals. I have denied the sacred right of insurrection. Human institutions, which we may think have survived their usefulness, are in reality only waiting for their transformation, their character is moulded from outside. We may sometimes fail to understand their mission, or to grasp the reasons which impel them to follow certain paths, because these reasons are pale reflections of some unappreciated causes. The world seems to progress, within the limits of natural laws, by a series of unforeseen developments. The future is latent in us; but the force which impels it is hidden."