Part 10

By this I mean the ‘clerk’s’ determination to put forth his principles as valid in the practical order of things, as reconcilable with the safeguarding of the sword’s conquests. This determination, which has affected the Church for twenty centuries and almost all the idealists (give me the names of those since Jesus who have declared themselves incompetent in the practical order of things), is the source of all the ‘clerk’s failures’. It may be said that the ‘clerk’s’ defeat begins from the very moment when he claims to be practical. As soon as the ‘clerk’ claims that he does not disregard the interests of the nation or of the established classes, he is inevitably beaten, for the very good reason that it is impossible to preach the spiritual and the universal without undermining the institutions whose foundations are the possession of the material and the desire to feel distinct from others. A true ‘clerk’ (Renan) says excellently: ‘The mother-country is a worldly thing; the man who wants to play the angel will always be a bad patriot.’ Thus we see that the ‘clerk’ who claims to secure the works of the world has a choice between two consequences. Either he secures them and transgresses all his principles, which is the case with the Church supporting the nation and property; or he maintains his principles and causes the ruin of the institutions he claimed he was supporting, which is the case with the humanitarian who claims to safeguard what is national. In the first case the ‘clerk’ is despised by the just man, who denounces him as cunning and strikes him out of the rank of ‘clerk’; and in the second case he collapses under the hooting of the nations who call him inefficient, while he provokes a violent and loudly acclaimed reaction on the part of the realist, which is what is now happening in Italy. From all this it follows that the ‘clerk’ is only strong if he is clearly conscious of his essential qualities and his true function, and shows mankind that he is clearly conscious of them. In other words he declares to them that his kingdom is not of this world, that _the grandeur of his teaching lies precisely in this absence of practical value, and that the right morality for the prosperity of the kingdoms which are of this world, is not his, but Caesar’s_. When he takes up this position, the ‘clerk’ is crucified, but he is respected, and his words haunt the memory of mankind.[168] The need to remind the modern ‘clerks’ of these truths (for everyone of them is angry at being called Utopian) is one of the most suggestive observations in connection with our subject. It shows that the desire to be practical has become general, that the claim to be so has now become necessary in order to obtain an audience, and that the very notion of ‘clerkdom’ has become obscured even in those who still tend to exercise that function.

It will be seen that I entirely dissociate myself from those who want the ‘clerk’ to govern the world, and who wish with Renan for the ‘reign of the philosophers’; for it seems to me that human affairs can only adopt the religions of the true ‘clerk’ under penalty of becoming divine, i.e. of perishing as human. This has been clearly seen by all lovers of the divine who did not desire the destruction of what is human. This is marvellously expressed by one of them when he makes Jesus say so profoundly to His disciple: ‘My son, I must not give you a clear idea of your substance ... for if you saw clearly what you are, you could no longer remain so closely united to your body. You would no longer watch over the preservation of your life.’[169] But though I think it a bad thing that the ‘clerk’s’ religion should possess the lay world, I think it still more to be dreaded that it should not be preached to the layman at all, and that he should thus be allowed to yield to his practical passions without the least shame or the least, even hypocritical, desire to raise himself however slightly above them. ‘There are a few just men who prevent me from sleeping’--that was what the realist said of the teachers of old. Nietzsche, Barrès, and Sorel do not prevent any realist from sleeping; on the contrary. This is the novelty I want to point out, which to me seems so serious. It seems to me serious that a humanity, which is more than ever obsessed by the passions of the world, should receive from its spiritual leaders the command: ‘remain faithful to the earth.’

Is this adoption of ‘integral realism’ by the human species permanent, or merely temporary? Are we, as some people think, witnessing the beginning of a new Middle Ages (and one far more barbarous than the former, for though it practised realism, it did not extol realism), from which, however, will arise a new Renaissance, a new return to the religion of disinterestedness? The elements we have discovered as forming the new realism scarcely allow us to hope so. It is hard to imagine the nations sincerely striving not to feel conscious of themselves as distinct from others, or, if they do so, having any other motive than that of concentrating inter-human hatred into that of class. It is hard to imagine the clergy regaining a real moral sway over the faithful and being able (supposing they desired to do so) to tell them with impunity unpleasant truths. It is hard to imagine a body of men of letters (for corporative action becomes more and more important) attempting to withstand the bourgeois classes instead of flattering them. It is still harder to imagine them turning against the tide of their intellectual decadence and ceasing to think that they display a lofty culture when they sneer at rational morality and fall on their knees before history. Nevertheless one thinks of a humanity of the future, weary of its ‘sacred egotisms’ and the slaughterings to which they inevitably lead, coming as humanity came two thousand years ago, to the acceptance of a good situated beyond itself, accepting it even more ardently than before, with the knowledge of all the tears and blood that have been shed through departing from that doctrine. Once more Vauvenargues’ admirable saying would be verified. ‘The passions have taught men reason.’ But such a thing only seems to me possible after a long lapse of time, when war has caused far more woes than have yet been endured. Men will not revise their values for wars which only last fifty months and only kill a couple of million men in each nation. One may even doubt whether war will ever become so terrible as to discourage those who love it, the more so since they are not always the men who have to fight.

When I set this limit to my pessimistic outlook and admit that such a Renaissance is possible, I mean no more than that it is just possible. I cannot agree with those who say it is certain, either because it happened once before, or because ‘civilization is due to the human race’. Civilization as I understand it here--moral supremacy conferred on the cult of the spiritual and on the feeling of the universal--appears to me as a lucky accident in man’s development. It blossomed three thousand years ago under a set of circumstances whose contingent character was perfectly perceived by the historian who called it ‘the Greek miracle’. It does not appear to me in the least to be a thing due to the human race by virtue of the data of its nature. It seems to me so little such a thing that I observe large portions of the species (the Asiatic world in antiquity, the Germanic world in modern times) who showed themselves incapable of it and quite likely to remain so. And this means that if humanity loses this jewel, there is not much chance of finding it again. On the contrary there is every chance that humanity will not find it again, just as a man who should find a precious stone in the sea and then drop it back in the water would have little chance of ever seeing it again. Nothing seems to me more doubtful than Aristotle’s remark that it is probable the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered and several times lost. The other position which maintains that civilization, despite partial eclipses, is something which humanity cannot lose, seems to me quite worthless except as an act of faith--though it is valuable as a means of preserving the good we wish to keep. I should not think it a serious objection to what I have said if someone should point out that civilization, lost once with the fall of the ancient world, nevertheless had its Renaissance. Everyone knows that the Graeco-Roman form of mind was far from being wholly extinguished during the Middle Ages and that the sixteenth century only brought to life what was not dead; to which I add that even if that form of mind had been ‘reborn’ _ex nihilo_, the fact that this is the only instance would make it insufficient to reassure me, although the fact that it had occurred would disturb me.

Let me point out in this respect that insufficient attention is perhaps paid to the fact that there are always only a very tiny number of instances in history on which are built up a ‘law’, which claims to be valid for the whole past and future evolution of humanity. Vico says that history is a series of alternations between periods of progress and periods of retrogression; and he gives _two_ examples. Saint-Simon says history is a series of oscillations between organic epochs and critical epochs; and he gives _two_ examples. Marx says history is a series of economic systems, each of which casts out its predecessor by means of violence; and he gives _one_ example! I shall be told that these examples could not be more numerous, owing to the fact that history, at least known history, is so short. The truth, implied by this very reply, is that history has lasted too short a time for us to be able to deduce laws from it to enable us to infer the future from the past. Those who do so are like a mathematician who should decide the nature of a curve from the form he finds it has at its very beginning. True, a somewhat uncommon turn of mind is required to confess that human history, after several thousands of years, is only beginning. I cannot sufficiently admire the rare mental value displayed by La Bruyère (in my opinion) when he wrote the following lines in a century which was strongly inclined to think it was the topmost summit of human development: ‘If the world lasts only a hundred million years, it will still be in all its freshness and only beginning; we ourselves are almost contemporary with the first men and the patriarchs, and who, in those far-off ages, will be able to avoid confusing us with them? But if we judge of the future from the past, what new things are we ignorant of in the arts, in the sciences, in Nature, and, I dare say, in history? What discoveries will be made! What different revolutions will occur in our Empires all over the world! How ignorant we are! And how slight is an experience of six or seven thousand years!’

I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man’s future, that prediction would be the contrary of reassuring. People forget that Hellenic rationalism only really enlightened the world during seven hundred years, that it was then hidden (this _a minima_ verdict will be granted me) for twelve centuries, and has begun to shine again for barely four centuries; so that _the longest period of consecutive time in human history on which we can found inductions is, upon the whole, a period of intellectual and moral darkness_. Looking at history, we may say in a more synthetic manner that, with the exception of two or three very short, luminous epochs whose light, like that of certain stars, lightens the world long after they are extinct, humanity lives generally in darkness; while literatures live generally in a state of decadence and the organism in disorder. And the disturbing thing is that humanity does not seem to mind these long periods of cave-dwelling.

To come back to the realism of my contemporaries and their contempt for a disinterested existence, I must add that my mind is sometimes haunted by a dreadful question. I wonder whether humanity, by adopting this system to-day, has not discovered its true law of existence and adopted the true scale of values demanded by its essence? The religion of the spiritual, I said just now, seems to me a lucky accident in man’s history. I shall go further, and say it seems to me a paradox. The obvious law of human substance is the conquest of things and the exaltation of the impulses which secure this conquest. Only through an amazing abuse were a handful of men at desks able to succeed in making humanity believe that the supreme values are the good things of the spirit. To-day humanity has awakened from this dream, knows its true nature and its real desires, and utters its war-cry against those who for centuries have robbed it of itself. Instead of waxing indignant at the ruin of their domination, would it not be more reasonable for these usurpers (if there are any left) to wonder that it lasted so long? Orpheus could not aspire to charm the wild beasts with his music until the end of time. However, one could have hoped that Orpheus himself would not become a wild beast.

It is scarcely necessary to say my remarks on realist desires and their violent perfecting do not blind me to the immense growth of gentleness, justice, and love written to-day in our customs and laws, which would certainly have amazed our most optimistic ancestors. There is an immense improvement in the relations between man and man within the groups which fight each other--especially within the nation where security is the rule and injustice is a scandal. But to keep more closely to our subject, perhaps we do not sufficiently realize the incredible degree of civilization implied by the good treatment of prisoners, and the care of enemy wounded in wars between nations, and by the institution of public and private charity in the relations between the classes. The denial of progress, the assertion that barbarity of heart has never been worse, are natural themes for poets and those who are discontented, and perhaps they are even necessary to progress. But the historian, whether he looks at national or class warfare, is amazed at the transformation of a species which only four centuries ago roasted prisoners of war in baker’s ovens, and, only two centuries ago forbade the workers to establish a pension fund for their aged members. Nevertheless I must point out that these improvements cannot be credited to the present age. They are the results of the teaching of the eighteenth century, against which the ‘masters of modern thought’ are in complete revolt. The establishment of war ambulances, the wide development of State charities are the work of the Second Empire, are connected with the ‘humanitarian clichés’ of Victor Hugo and Michelet, which are immeasureably despised by the moralists of the past half century. They exist to some extent _despite of_ these moralists, not one of whom has conducted a truly humane campaign, while the chief of them--Nietzsche, Barrès, Sorel--would blush to be able to say like Voltaire: ‘I have done a little good, ’tis my best work.’ I must add that these good works are now merely customs, i.e. actions performed from habit, without the will taking any part in them, without the mind reflecting on their meaning. And if the mind of our realists ever came to think of them, I think there is every possibility that it might prohibit them. I can well imagine a future war when a nation would decide not to look after the enemy wounded, a strike where the bourgeoisie would make up its mind not to support hospitals for the benefit of a class which was ruining it and anxious to destroy it. I can imagine both priding themselves on getting free from a ‘stupid humanitarianism’, and finding disciples of Nietzsche and Sorel to praise them for it. The attitude of the Italian Fascists and the Russian Bolshevists towards their enemies is not calculated to give me the lie here. The modern world still displays certain failures in pure practicality, a few stains of idealism from which it might well cleanse itself.

I said above that the logical end of the ‘integral realism’ professed by humanity to-day is the organized slaughter of nations or classes. It is possible to conceive of a third, which would be their reconciliation. The thing to possess would be the whole earth, and they would finally come to realize that the only way to exploit it properly is by union, while the desire to set themselves up as distinct from others would be transferred from the nation to the species, arrogantly drawn up against everything which is not itself. And, as a matter of fact, such a movement does exist. Above classes and nations there does exist a desire of the species to become the master of things, and, when a human being flies from one end of the world to the other in a few hours, the whole human race quivers with pride and adores itself as distinct from all the rest of creation. At bottom, this imperialism of the species is preached by all the great directors of the modern conscience. It is Man, and not the nation or the class, whom Nietzsche, Sorel, Bergson extoll in his genius for making himself master of the world. It is humanity, and not any one section of it, whom Auguste Comte exhorts to plunge into consciousness of itself and to make itself the object of its adoration. Sometimes one may feel that such an impulse will grow ever stronger, and that in this way inter-human wars will come to an end. In this way humanity would attain ‘universal fraternity’. But, far from being the abolition of the national spirit with its appetites and its arrogance, this would simply be its supreme form, the nation being called Man and the enemy God. Thereafter, humanity would be unified in one immense army, one immense factory, would be aware only of heroisms, disciplines, inventions, would denounce all free and disinterested activity, would long cease to situate the good outside the real world, would have no God but itself and its desires, and would achieve great things; by which I mean that it would attain to a really grandiose control over the matter surrounding it, to a really joyous consciousness of its power and its grandeur. And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died.

1924-1927.

_Notes_

Note A (Page 1)

_That political passions affect a large number of men they never before affected ..._

It is very difficult to know to what extent crowds are moved by the political events of their time (of course, I am leaving on one side all truly popular movements). Crowds do not write their memoirs, and those who write memoirs scarcely ever speak of the crowds. However, I do not think my proposition will be seriously disputed. To limit ourselves to France and the two examples I quoted--suppose we had another upheaval like the Religious Wars, I do not think we should see the immense majority of country districts possessed by no other passion than a hatred for soldiers, whatever party they belonged to.[170] Nor should we see cultivated bourgeois who keep diaries giving a couple of lines to such events as Luther’s preaching, along with the thousand little facts they relate.[171] Nor do I think that a month after an event like the taking of the Bastille we should find a foreigner on his travels in France, writing: ‘13th August, 1789. Before I leave Clermont I must remark that I have dined or supped five times at the table d’hôte with some twenty to thirty merchants and tradesmen, officers, etc.; and it is not easy for me to express the insignificance--the inanity of the conversation. Scarcely any politics, at a moment when every bosom ought to beat with none but political sensations.’ (Arthur Young.)[172]

The attitude of populations towards wars between States long seems to have been that described by Voltaire in the following lines: ‘It is indeed a deplorable evil that this multitude of soldiers should always be kept up by all Princes. But, as we have pointed out, this evil produces a good. The peoples take no part in the wars carried on by their masters; the citizens of besieged towns often pass from the power of one to another without having cost the life of a single inhabitant; they are simply the prize of the King who possesses most soldiers, cannons and money.’ (_Essai sur les Moeurs_, towards the end.) Again, in 1870, a Prussian servant girl said to a French prisoner employed on the farm where she was working: ‘When the war is over I will marry you. Don’t be surprised at what I say, patriotism doesn’t mean much to us, you know.’ I imagine that in 1914, many servant girls, Prussian or otherwise, felt in their hearts and put into practice, this absence of patriotism; but I dare to assert that very few would have formulated it, even to themselves. The really new fact to-day is not perhaps that the peoples feel political passions, but that they claim the right to feel them. This claim is sufficient to make them act and therefore furnishes a magnificent opportunity for their leaders to exploit them.

Note B (Page 15)

_Louis XIV annexing Alsace and not for one moment thinking of forbidding the German language ..._

It was not until 1768 that the Monarchy thought of setting up schools in Alsace, ‘where French is to be taught’. Vidal de la Blanche, who relates this (_La France de l’Est_, 1, vi) adds: ‘This indifference (to the language question) must not shock us too much. Let us rather learn a lesson from it. It raises us above the narrowly jealous conceptions which since then have set nation against nation, under this language pretext. It takes us into an age when another spirit presided over human relations. There was then no language question. Fortunate eighteenth century, when war bred no lasting hatred, when the poison of national animosities was not inoculated and fostered by all the means now at the disposal of the State, including the schools.’ The eminent historian forgets that the State has these means at its disposal, _with the consent of the peoples_. The peoples, or at least the cultivated classes among them, at the bidding of their men of letters, during the past century have set themselves up arrogantly against one another in their languages and cultures, even though they one day come face to face with the unexpected results of this attitude, as is happening to-day to France in its difficulties with Alsace.

Note C (Page 19)

_The Union of capitalism, anti-semitism, anti-democracy with nationalism._