Part 19
Alas for the feebleness of human foresight! This so decisive day has passed, and, on the whole, we remain in very nearly the same position as before. The work of the great British tragedian was saluted with a thunder of applause; this intelligence was communicated by these same journals, but they also informed us that the thunder of applause proceeded almost exclusively from a small group of passionate admirers, who had come with the set purpose of going into ecstasies at every point, comma, or interjection, and of bestowing with profuse liberality the epithets of idiot, imbecile, and dolt upon every one who might seem to hesitate. {235} On the other hand, sufficiently audible hisses broke out in different places; but it appeared that these hisses proceeded not less exclusively from another small group, quite as insignificant as the other, of embittered detractors, resolved to consider every thing detestable, and to repay with equal liberality the vituperative epithets hurled at them by their adversaries. Between these two factions, the body of the audience in the pit appears to have preserved a reasonable neutrality. They were evidently on their guard, fearing lest their consecrated maxims should be violated, and they be led into some hasty demonstrations of feeling; and yet they were sensible, profoundly sensible, of the great beauties of the piece. Accordingly, during the whole course of the representation, they appeared constantly curious, astonished, moved, indulgent, submitting with good grace to the boldest departures from received rules; they willingly, though without warmth or violence, joined in the attempt to silence the detractors; and they good-naturedly allowed free scope to the enthusiasts, while taking great care not to enlist themselves on their side, or to mingle in their transports. Thus, then, their hearts were gained, but their minds remained still undecided; the difficulty with our reformers is not in obtaining a hearing; it is in procuring an open recognition even from those who give them their best possible wishes. They are in the same position as that which the negroes of Saint Domingo occupied during twenty years; the public refuses, or at least hesitates, to recognize them. But with patience they will ultimately attain their end; when once, in a revolution, power has been decidedly gained, right is never long withheld; they have triumphed over unreasonable habits and prejudices, and over involuntary opposition; this was the most intricate part of their work; theories, especially those which are a little superannuated, have not so lingering an existence.
{236}
Such, then, being the state of things--the progress of the spirit of innovation becoming every day increasingly manifest--it remains that we should inquire into the cause of this, and ask whether the change is for the better or for the worse--whether the spirit of innovation is, this time, a spirit of light or a spirit of darkness!
A spirit of darkness, it is exclaimed, from one quarter--a veritable child of perdition!
Consult, for instance, many of our men of taste; enter, if admission is allowed to you, into one of their assemblies; and there, at first, you will hear much noise about the confusion of species, the neglect of rules, the forgetfulness of sound doctrines, and the contempt for true models; afterward, however little you may feel at ease in this select committee, you will speedily learn the parties to whom all this disorder is attributed. The author of "L'Allemagne," the writer of the "Génie du Christianisme," the translator of "Wallenstein," the two Schlegels, besides many others, are the guilty individuals; their heads have been turned, and so they have turned the heads of their fellows. M. De Stendhal takes his share in these anathemas; the "Globe" has its allotment. Not even M. Ladvocat, the publisher of the "Thèâtre Etranger," has escaped from them. More than one sage poet, whether in the tragic or comic line, will inform you of this with all the seriousness in the world. {237} If no one had ever taken it into his head to translate by the yard the monstrous productions of the countries situated beyond the Rhine, the Channel, or the Pyrenees; if he had not afterward taken pains to publish them on fine paper and in elegant type, all with a huge parade of advertisements and placards, we should not have been brought into our present condition.
Well said this, undoubtedly, and still better reasoned!
The innocence of this unsuspecting public has been wantonly abused. The Parisian folk, like the Pnyxian people in the "Knights" of Aristophanes, are poor fools who allow themselves to be misled and duped by evil counsels.
If we diligently make all possible inquiries, we shall also find, on the left bank of the Seine, a number of saloons, in which are gathered every evening a company of worthy souls, who lament, with the truest sincerity, over the corruption of our manners. Hearing them, we might suspect that fire from heaven must fall upon us sooner or later; our wretched country is in a worse pass than even Sodom and Gomorrah; the French Revolution has fatally corrupted the very core of our hearts; and whom have we to thank for this accursed revolution? The Encyclopedists, M. Turgot and his reforms, the publication of M. Necker's Compte-Rendu, the--who knows what? perhaps the substitution of waistcoats for vests, and the introduction of cabs!
The two arguments are equally forcible. To throw fire and flames at the corruption of manners, and to raise loud cries about the decay of taste, to attribute it either to this or that event, to accuse these or those writers--one is, in truth, worth about as much as the other; the justice, good sense, and discernment are equal in either case.
{238}
May we not, in fact, say that the general sentiments of the masses, their habitual dispositions, and the ideas which rule them, are things which attach themselves to nothing, and which totter when they are but touched with the finger's end? May we not say that these are at the mercy of any fortuitous circumstances--things to be disposed of at pleasure by any half dozen volumes?
The influence of great men is, indeed, vast; we can not forget it--we would thank Heaven that it is so. And this influence is especially striking at epochs in which any important change is accomplished in government, laws, manners, or national taste; nothing, assuredly, is more natural than this--nothing can be more just and salutary. But whence do great men derive this unquestionable ascendency?
They belong to their time--in this fact is the mystery explained; they respond to its instincts, they anticipate its tendencies; the appeal which is addressed to all indiscriminately, they are the first to hear. That which to others is as yet only an indistinct longing, has disclosed its secret to them. Superior as they are, they march at the head, unfolding their wings to every breeze that rises, clearing the path, removing obstacles, and revealing to the astonished masses the luminous truths and the eternal laws which occasion their confused desires and their latest fancies. Herein, and herein only, resides all their power: this is the condition of their success.
The philosophers of the last century, then, were not the efficient causes of the great and glorious movement of 1789: such honor is not theirs. The general causes which, during a long course of years, prepared for 1789, these same causes in their early infancy gave birth to the philosophers of the last century.
{239}
And neither are the great writers of the present day the men who have transformed the taste of the public; we would rather say that the general causes, which were destined to produce this metamorphosis, excited and inspired, when the proper moment arrived, the great writers of our time.
What, then, were the causes of the French Revolution?
This, certainly, is neither the time nor the place to make such an inquiry; but every man of good sense and true wisdom will unhesitatingly allow that the causes for such an event must have been, and in fact were, very numerous, very profound, and very diversified; that they were active and potent causes--causes which, by reason of their number, their depth, and their diversity, were beyond all external control, and against which it were puerile to entertain any spite, and absurd to attempt any revolt.
And, perchance, no other than these same causes have now changed the face of our literature--perchance these same causes have now renovated the theatre, after having reformed, and precisely because they have reformed the spectators. If so, need we feel surprise? is there any thing very extraordinary in this? Would it not argue a ridiculous puerility to take offense at such a circumstance, and angrily to hurl stones at it?
Indeed, every thing depends upon the state of all other things; the human mind is one single fabric. The different faculties, which in their union constitute the entire man, aid and appeal to one another continually. Rarely do they march in a regular and parallel advance; but as soon as any one of them has gained decidedly upon the others, the others hasten to overtake it.
{240}
During two centuries, the French people offered a singular spectacle to the world; for that time it moved in the foremost ranks of European civilization, that is to say, so far as it was intrinsically worthy of occupying such a position; but to any one who takes merely a superficial glance, it might appear almost to have solved the problem of being at once the most frivolous and the most serious of all peoples--the most frivolous in important matters, the most flippant in all that affects the great interests of society and humanity, and the most grave, the most pedantic in puerilities and trifles. It was, by a hierarchical division, separated into classes, but this classification no longer corresponded to any thing that was useful or even real; it had no end out of itself, that is to say, it only existed for the mere sake of existence, to excite arrogance and vanity in the higher ranks, and envy in the lower. However, all social conditions had this in common, that they were all equally deprived of all political rights, equally estranged from all public existence, equally excluded from all participation in affairs of state, and from all active or civic callings.
The first rank was held by the court nobility. This nobility, excepting some months of occupation in times of war, was, by its very birth-right, given up to enjoyment; and this was their glory.
The provincial nobility occupied the second rank. These, in their smaller circle, imitated their betters at court. While detesting their brilliant model, they yet copied it; it never entered into the thoughts of any of their members to seek, by relations with the people, a credit and importance which they did not possess by any qualities of their ancestors, or any favors from their prince.
{241}
The civic robe had its functions; it was absolutely necessary that the townsmen should embrace different professions; but the functions of the magistracy were often an object of ridicule and disdain. In the great parliamentary families, each aimed at laying aside the civic robe, in order to become invested with the embroidered dress. The professions of civic life stamped those who abandoned themselves to it with vulgarity; in the good families among the townspeople, each aimed at acquiring some polish by purchasing a position as secretary to the king.
The artisans in the towns, the villagers in the country, worthy heirs of Jacques Bonhomme--a gentleman subject to taxes and duties at discretion--counted for nothing, and were nothing.
What must have been the preferences of a society so constituted?
Three things--three, in truth, and no more: ambition, gallantry, and dissipation. Ambition, that is to say, the disposition to gain advancement from a master, to obtain favors, distinctions, eminent positions, pensions, and to obtain them by favoritism and the power of being agreeable, by intrigues and solicitations. Gallantry--the gratification of personal vanity or sensuality. Lastly, dissipation--dissipation under all forms, hunting parties and gambling parties, assemblies for pleasure or debauchery, balls, suppers, sights; dissipation as the definitive aim of existence, the final end of all means--life having apparently been given to man only for enjoyment, and time only to be squandered and killed.
We are speaking of society in general, and without forgetting the fact that these absolute verdicts, by reason of their very absoluteness, are always somewhat unjust and exaggerated.
{242}
But it is worthy of remark that in this so vain a mode of existence, in this state of living and acting, of thinking and feeling, in which vanity was so predominant, nothing was abandoned to caprice; no one affected a style of independence; on the contrary, all was done according to rule--every where was method to be observed.
Louis XIV., while changing his nobles into courtiers, reducing his Parliaments to the level of dramatic critics, despoiling the townspeople of their franchises, and, to say all in one word, while transforming the political order of the entire nation into a civil order--had nevertheless contrived in some sort to impress on the manners and habits which resulted therefrom something of dignity and formality which belonged not to their nature--far from it--but to his character.
His court was grave, although the morals of the courtiers were in no respect better on this account; his magistrates were grave without being independent; the temper of his times was grave, and yet servile.
After his reign, that imperious necessity by which man is impelled to exalt into maxims the motives, whatever they may be, which determine his conduct, and to refer his own conduct to certain principles, were it only in order that he may know what he has done and whither he is tending--which also leads him thus to regard the actions of others, were it only that he may be able to approve or condemn them--this necessity operated, if not in the same sense, yet in one analogous to that in which it had operated under Louis XIV. Thus the best method of making way in the world became a science which the old courtier taught _ex cathedra_ to his children--a science which had its dogmas, its precepts, and its traditions.
{243}
Not more methodically does an engineer make his approaches to a place which he is besieging, than did those ambitious of vindicating the worthiness of their descent push their researches into the offices of the minister and the cabinets of Versailles. The Duke De Saint Simon, the most severe, the sincerest, and the most honorable man that ever lived at the court, devoted three fourths of his honorable life to the decision of points of precedence or respect, on his own account or for those connected with him--questions of which even the most important could, at the present day, only induce us to shrug our shoulders and to smile derisively. Sometimes he displayed more character than would have been necessary, on the other side of the Channel, to enable a Marlborough or a Bolingbroke to impose peace or war on their sovereign, and more erudition and research than a Benedictine would put into a folio volume.
Gallantry was a perpetual war between the two sexes--a war which had its tactics and stratagems, its principles of attack and defense, its appropriate times for resistance and surrender, its rights of conquest, and its law of nations.
In fact, the life of society was obliged to submit to all the exigencies of a conventional morality, very different from true morality, often in direct opposition to it, but quite as rigorous, and even more inaccessible to repentance. It recognized as the supreme law, even in its most minute details, a certain code of proprieties, the yoke of which must be borne gracefully--the sensibilities were to be controlled, while the scholar must appear perfectly at ease.
Good breeding was the highest of human attainments, and the art of living the first of all arts.
{244}
It is said that literature expresses the life of society-- especially is this affirmed of dramatic literature. If this be true, and, in a certain sense, it undoubtedly is true, due limitations being conceded, then our general literature, and more especially our drama, must have reflected more or less accurately this two-fold character of frivolity as to the essence of things, and pedantry as to their forms.
Accordingly it has done both. Here, too, undoubtedly, exceptions must be made, and that to a considerable extent. Our literature has ruled in Europe for a hundred years, and never has it demanded from men an admiration to which it was not reasonably and justly entitled; but still, with regard to its most general features, we may admit that it has been neither learned, as the literature of Germany at the present time is, and as was Italian literature in the times of Petrarch and Politian, nor popular as the literature of Spain was during the period of its greatest vigor. It was essentially and pre-eminently a polite literature, in which the main result aimed at was conversation.
The same may be said of our drama. Regarded in its most general features, it was not so much a national drama as an elegant and fashionable amusement, a pastime for gentlemen of respectable station and bearing, at which the public might assist if it paid liberally for the honor; nearly as it is allowed occasionally to look on from the outer side of the barriers, and watch the progress of a dress ball or a state dinner.
Admiration for the ancients was universally affected; our watch-word was, "Imitate the Ancients;" this was our "Montjoie Saint-Denis!" in literature. And yet a true appreciation of antiquity was not possessed by really learned men, even by those who really did possess a hearty appreciation of the refinements of Greek and Latin idiom. It is, however, well known that the period of erudition quickly passed. {245} It is not to be denied that, by the middle of the seventeenth century, sound learning and substantial erudition were every where on the decline, and that, at the end of the eighteenth, they had fallen almost into entire neglect. Accordingly, our dramatic productions only resembled the master-pieces of Greece in name and in the choice of subjects, by certain purely external characteristics, by the blind observance of certain maxims, whose origin was not cared for and whose relative importance was not appreciated, and by a punctilious deference to the distinction between different species of the drama. So far as the real character of the works was concerned, as to the characters, sentiments, ideas, and colorings introduced, all this was not only modern, but belonged to the existing state of society--not only French, but the French of Paris, or even of Versailles.
The appreciation of national history and monuments was hardly in a better position. There was no taste for antiquities; no sympathy with the recollections of the masses and the traditions of the country; there was nothing fresh and living in the study of foreign languages and literatures.
And how can we wonder at it? In mental culture, as in all other things, the thread of destiny was in the keeping of good society. At the cost of living and dying ignorant, it was necessary to be fashionable, first in the _ruelles_, then in the circles and entertainments of social life. Poets, orators, historians, or moralists, under the influence of the court during the reign of Louis XIV., who honored them increasingly with his notice, but who always kept them at a proper distance, became all-powerful under his successor, so as to be in some sort a fourth order in the state, astonishing at that time France and Europe by the boldness of their thoughts and the ascendency of their talent: they were not ashamed to affect the lofty airs of nobles of high rank, and the petty dignities of coxcombs. {246} Thus the writers of France have always ruled the life of men of the world, and have by their intrigues gained successes in society, degraded their genius to the limits of its narrow and confined atmosphere, and flattered those very whims which they professed to ridicule. No country has shown itself more fertile in men of great mind than ours; no country has, so much as our own, compelled these minds, whether they like it or not, to muffle themselves up in the livery of respectability. We may find even books of the greatest literary weight which seem, like their authors, to have adopted the fineries of the time, in order to adorn their exterior. Can we forbear smiling, for example, when we see the illustrious Montesquieu sometimes decking his great work with spangles, and oftener still using epigrams for the purpose of giving smartness to it; and all in order that the leaves of his immortal work might enjoy the rare advantage of being turned over by flippant spirits, and read aloud at ladies' toilets.
And then, what immeasurable importance was attached to light literature! What an event was the publication of a new piece, or of a collection of fugitive poems! What a hit for some election to a chair, or for some green-room intrigues! What a swarm of poetasters of all dimensions! What a herd of pretentious prose-writers on all subjects of interest! And what a conviction on the part of all these, that the human race ought, laying aside every other occupation, to fix its eyes upon them alone; and that the world had been created, five or six thousand years before, merely that it might enjoy their small productions, assist in their small triumphs, and take part in their small controversies!
{247}
The French Revolution cast down the whole of this social edifice; and it has, so to speak, razed it to the ground!
Whether this is an evil or a good, each man must determine for himself. Certain it is that we owe to this revolution the restitution of men to their proper ranks, and of things to their appropriate places; this it is that has restored the true relation of names and things. Henceforth the serious is serious, the frivolous is frivolous. Conventionalities have given place to realities.
The French are equal among themselves; they have their individual rights to carry out; and they have duties to fulfill toward the state. All honorable professions are honored; each leads to a worthy end. No longer are there legal distinctions which are not derived from any diversity of rights and functions; no longer are there social distinctions which rest upon no superior merit, education, or enlightenment. Ambition is obliged to exhibit its titles, and to show itself in open daylight; depraved habits must seek concealment; crime must shelter itself under excuses.