Part 14

[70] Loisy’s _Guerre et Religion_, p. 60. Nevertheless, a certain number of practising clergy speak in the same way; see Guillot de Givry, _Le Christ et la Patrie_, towards the end.

[71] It is current knowledge that Italian Fascism and Russian Bolshevism both derive from the author of _Reflections on Violence_. He did, indeed, preach class egotism to some extent in a universal manner, but without any explicit preference for the interest of one class rather than that of another. In his preaching of egotism there is a kind of impartiality which does not lack grandeur, a quality not inherited by his disciples.

[72] And even the teaching of Jesus Christ. R. Johannet says (op. cit., p. 153), ‘I have tried to show what a vast amount of Christianity is contained in the bourgeois type, when it is pure. To condemn the bourgeois, because he is a bourgeois, in the name of Christ, seems to me a somewhat daring paradox.’ But this author does not quote a single text of the Gospels. He only quotes a few interpreters of Saint Thomas Aquinas, whom he praises for their ‘extra-realist sense of affairs’, and who apparently for him incarnate the thinking of Jesus Christ. This work is one of the most perfect examples of the modern ‘clerk’s’ desire to idealize the practical spirit. (On the subject of Christian doctrine in the matter of property, see Father Thomassin, _Traité de l’aumône_.)

[73] It might be said that in Christian theology the bourgeois state is a _function_, and not a rank.

[74] The essential position of the Church on this point (I say essential; for, by close search, one can find texts supporting the opposite thesis, but once more the curious thing is the fact that this search should be made) seems to me defined in these lines: ‘Malebranche inclines, like Bossuet, to look upon social inequalities and injustices as the results of sin, which must be endured as such, and to which exterior conduct must conform.... We must not even attempt to remedy these injustices except by charity, for we should simply disturb the peace of the world, probably without any result. Only, _we should not in our own souls attach any sort of importance to these circumstances and conditions, for the true life is not there_’ (H. Joly, _Malebranche_, p. 262).

[75] On the relation between Durckheim’s theses and those of the French traditionalists, see D. Parodi, _La Philosophie contemporaine en France_, p. 148.

[76] ‘Germany is the sole judge of her methods.’ (Major von Disfurth, November, 1914.) The philosophy of national moralities seems essentially German. Is it not very remarkable to see Hegel and Zeller desiring at all costs to prove that Plato in his _Republic_ defined a state of good which was only valid for the Greeks, and not for all peoples? (See P. Janet, _Histoire des idées politiques_, tome 1, p. 140.)

[77] Barrès wrote in 1898: ‘The professors are still arguing about justice and truth, when every self-respecting man knows that he must limit himself to inquiring if there is justice in the relations between two given men, at a given time, under specified circumstances.’ That is exactly what the Germany of 1914 said in answer to those who brought accusations against her. Not a single moralist in France before Barrès--not even de Maistre or Bonald--would have asserted that ‘every self-respecting man’ can conceive of no justice but one specially arranged for the circumstances.

[78] _L’Appel au Soldat._ Compare this with the traditional French teaching, of which Barrès claims to be the heir: ‘Whatever your country may be, you should only believe what you would be disposed to believe if you were in another country.’ (_Logique de Port-Royal_, iii, xx.) It must not be thought that dogma of national truths aims only at moral truth. Recently certain French thinkers waxed indignant that the doctrines of Einstein were accepted by their compatriots without more resistance.

[79] The adoration of the contingent _for its own sake_; otherwise, and as a step towards the eternal, the knowledge of ‘strange things’ is highly recommended by Leibniz, and even by Spinoza. Renouvier, so hostile to a certain kind of universalism, never bestows philosophical value on a knowledge of what is ‘unique and inexpressible’ in the object. (See G. Séailles, ‘Le Pluralisme de Renouvier,’ _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, 1925.) He would never have signed this charter of modern metaphysics: ‘That the philosophers since Socrates should have contended as to which should most scorn the knowledge of the particular and should most adore knowledge of the general, is something which passes understanding. For, after all, must not the most honourable knowledge be the knowledge of the most valuable realities! And is there a valuable reality which is not concrete and individual?’ (William James.)

[80] An important literary review recently reproached a critic (M. Pierre Lasserre) for his supposed inaptitude to understand ‘contemporary literature’.

[81] Curiously enough, these metaphysics of the historic may also be found among the poets. We all know Claudel’s cult of ‘the present minute’ (because it differs from all other minutes in that it is not the extremity of the same quantity of the past); Rimbaud before this said: ‘One must be absolutely modern.’ Moreover, for certain Christians dogma is only valid _relative to a time_. There again particularism seems to have been started by the Germans: ‘No exposition of morality can be the same for all periods of the Christian Church; each possesses full and complete value for a certain period only.’ (Scheiermacher.) On the Germanism in this desire to see everything in its ‘becoming’, see Parodi, _le Problème moral et la Pensée contemporaine_, p. 255.

[82] These views on the modern cult of the particular do not seem to me to be invalidated by the arrival of a recent school (Neo-Thomism) which opposes the cult of Being to that of Becoming. According to the leaders of this school, it is clear that, despite certain universalist declarations, human Being really belongs only to them and their group, although in this case the group is wider than the nation. One of them would quite willingly say with a Christian of the second century: ‘We are men; the rest are pigs and dogs.’ Nor do I think I need take into account those particularisms which claim that by working for themselves they are working for the universal, seeing that for them their own group represents the universal. ‘I am Roman, I am human’ (Maurras). ‘I am German, I am human’ (Fichte) and so on.... However, these claims show the prestige of the universal in despite of doctrines.

[83] See Note J at the end of this book.

[84] On the cult of the ‘Prussian model’ even among the English ‘clerks’, see Elie Halévy, _Histoire du Peuple anglais_, Epilogue, livre ii, ch. i.

[85] Sorel, _Le procès de Socrate_.

[86] This has been perfectly obvious to all those guardians of the spiritual who have condemned it, whatever their motives may have been. More precisely, Maurras’s work makes the passion of man to found the State (or to strengthen it) an object of religious adoration; it is really the worldly made transcendental. This displacing of the transcendental is the secret of the great influence exerted by Maurras on his contemporaries. These persons, especially in irreligious France, were plainly eager for such a doctrine, if one may judge by the outburst of gratitude with which they greeted it, and which seems to say: ‘At last we are delivered from God; at last we are allowed to adore ourselves in our will to be great, not in our will to be good; we are shown the ideal in the real, on earth and not in heaven.’ In this sense, Maurras’s work is the same as Nietzsche’s (‘be faithful to the earth’), with this difference, that the German thinker deifies man in his anarchic passions, and the Frenchman in his organising passions. It is also the same as the work of Bergson and James, inasmuch as it says like them: the real is the only ideal. This _secularizing of the divine_ may be compared with the work of Luther.

[87] Machiavellian morality is plainly proclaimed in the following lines, where every open-minded person will recognize, except for the tone, the teaching of _all_ the present teachers of realism, whatever their nationality: ‘In his relations with other States, the Prince should know neither law nor right, except the right of the strongest. These relations place in his hands, under his responsibility, the divine rights of the Destiny and government of the world, and raise him above the precepts of individual morality into a higher moral order, whose content is enshrined in the words: Salus populi suprema lex esto.’ (Fichte, quoted by Andler, op. cit., p. 33.) The advance on Machiavelli is obvious.

[88] The teaching of this writer may be put in this form: ‘All that is good from the point of view of politics is good; _and I know no other criterion of good_.’ This enables him to say that he makes no pronouncement in matters of private morality.

[89] In Richelieu’s _Testament politique_ and the _Mémoires de Louis XIV pour l’Instruction du Dauphin_, the catalogue of good and ill might be signed by Saint Vincent de Paul. We read in them: ‘Kings should take care in making treaties, but once the treaties are made, _they must observe them religiously_. I know that many politicians teach the contrary; but, without taking into consideration all that the Christian Faith provides us with against these maxims, I maintain that since the loss of honour is greater than the loss of life itself, a great Prince should hazard his person and _even the interest of his State rather than break his word_, which he cannot violate without losing his reputation, and consequently _the greatest strength_ of a Sovereign.’ (_Testament Politique_, part 2, ch. vi.)

[90] Similarly with the writer--Machiavelli, who writes for his peers, can allow himself the luxury of not being a moralist; Maurras who writes for crowds cannot do so. No one writes with impunity in a democracy. Moreover, a political activity which is supported by moral activity proves that it understands the true conditions of its success. A master in these matters says: ‘There can be no profound political reform unless religion and morality are also reformed.’ (Hegel.) Clearly the particular influence of the _Action Française_ among all other conservative organs is due to the fact that its political movement is supported by a moral teaching, although other interests oblige it to deny this.

[91] _Dictionnaire des Cas de Conscience_ (ed. 1712), article ‘Guerre’. With such a morality the territorial formation of any European State would become impossible. This is the type of non-practical teaching, i.e. of what I mean by the true ‘clerk’. (See Note F at the end of this book on the subject of the welcome given to this teaching by the material world.) In the opinion of Vittoria as well, the extension of empire is not a just cause.

[92] This is the thesis of Alfonso Liguori which to-day prevails in the Church’s teaching over that of Vittoria.

[93] Cardinal Gousset (_Théologie morale_, 1845).

[94] This is the Scholastic doctrine of war, formulated in all its rigidity by Thomas Aquinas. According to this doctrine, the Prince (or the people) who declares war, acts as a magistrate (minister Dei) under whose jurisdiction a foreign nation falls, owing to an injustice it has committed and which it refuses to repair. From this it follows, in particular, that the Prince who has declared war ought solely to punish the guilty, if he is victorious, and not to acquire any personal benefit from his victory. This high moral doctrine is entirely abandoned by the Church to-day. (See Vanderpol, _La Guerre devant le Christianisme_, titre ix.)

[95] Apparently this was the view adopted by the Holy See in 1914 towards the Franco-German war, Germany benefiting by what theology calls ‘invincible’ ignorance, i.e. implying that one has used all the diligence of which a man is capable in trying to understand the explanations of an adversary. Obviously, one may feel that some goodwill was needed to think that Germany had a right to this benefit.

[96] Like the thesis of war being just on both sides, this is the doctrine of Molina, which in matters of law in war has entirely replaced Scholastic doctrine in ecclesiastic teaching.

[97] In the _Dictionnaire théologique_ of Vacant-Mangenot (1922, article ‘Guerre’), I find the following passage, which I recommend to all aggressors desirous of sheltering under a high moral authority: ‘It is not only the right but the duty of the leader of a nation to adopt this method (i.e. war) to safeguard the general interests committed to his care. This right and duty apply not only to a strictly defensive war, but also to an offensive war rendered necessary by the actions of a neighbouring State whose ambitious intrigues constitute a real danger.’ In the same article will be found a theory of colonial wars identical to Kipling’s when he calls them: _the white man’s burden_.

[98] This expression (i.e. ‘la blague’) is Sorel’s (see Julien Benda, _Les Sentiments de Critias_, p. 258); and again (_Reflexions sur la Violence_, ch. ii): ‘You cannot sufficiently execrate those who teach the people that they should carry out some alleged superlatively idealistic injunction of a justice moving towards the future.’ Moreover, Sorel professes a similar hatred for those who preach this injunction to the bourgeoisie.

[99] See Note K at the end of the book.

[100] See _Reflexions sur la Violence_, ch. vi: ‘The morality of Violence.’ We shall be told that the justice denounced by Sorel is the justice of tribunals, which according to him is a false justice, a ‘violence with a judicial mask’. There is no indication that a justice which was a true justice would receive any more respect from him.

[101] In this respect one cannot stress too much in certain political teachers a defence of intolerance, carried out with a consciousness and arrogance which hitherto had only appeared sometimes in the mandatories of a revealed religion. A specimen is quoted by G. Guy-Grand (_La Philosophie nationaliste_, p. 47). See also one of these defences in L. Romier, _Nation et Civilisation_, p. 180.

[102] ‘Modern science has established as the measure of truth, not the deductive demands of its understanding, but the observed existence of the fact.’ (Paul Bourget.) The ‘truth’ here is evidently moral truth; for scientific truth the phrase would be a tautology. Once more, here the ‘fact’ is solely the fact which happens to suit the author’s passions. When M. d’Haussonville points out to M. Bourget that democracy is a fact, and an unavoidable fact, he is told that this belief is a ‘prejudice’ and one suddenly learns that ‘boats are made to row against the stream’. This is exactly what revolutionaries say.

[103] See Note L at the end of this book.

[104] Another thinker to whom our empiricists are strangely ungrateful is the author of these words: ‘Consider the danger of one stirring up the enormous masses which form the French nation. Who could restrain the disturbance set up, or foresee all the results it might produce? Even if all the advantages of the new scheme should be indisputable, what man of good sense would dare to undertake to abolish old customs, to change old maxims, and to give a new form to a State other than that it has reached after an existence of 1,300 years?’ (J. J. Rousseau.)

[105] See Note M at the end of this book.

[106] ‘A truly scientific mind,’ says one of these devotees of fact, ‘feels no need to justify a privilege which appears as an elementary and irreducible datum of the social world.’ (Paul Bourget.) But this same ‘truly scientific’ mind is scandalised at an _insurrection_ against this privilege, which is also an ‘elementary and irreducible datum of the social world’. I shall be told this that insurrection is not a datum of the social world, but of the world of passion where it is most anti-social. And that indeed is the position of this dogmatism: It considers the social _independent of the passionate_, whether the latter has been made social (by Catholic education), or has been reduced to silence by force (school of Maurras) or by skill (school of Bainville). The strangest part of it all is that those who argue in this way about the social _in itself_ accuse their adversaries of dealing in abstractions.

[107] The position I am here denouncing has nothing in common with that of a recent school of moralists (Rauh, Lévy-Bruhl) who also desire ‘to take man as he is’, but in order to discover how he may be made better.

[108] This pessimism, whatever some of its heralds may say, has nothing in common with the pessimism of the masters of the seventeenth century. La Fontaine and La Bruyère attribute nothing inevitable or eternal to the ills they portray. Let me also point out that in their efforts to discourage hope, the Romantics of Pessimism cannot claim (as M. Georges Goyau has pointed out to them) that they are based on Catholic tradition.

[109] Such a group logically comes to declarations like the following, which every supporter of ‘integral nationalism’ is bound to admire: ‘From to-night onwards let there be an end to the silly Utopia where everyone thinks with his own head.’ (Impero, 4th November, 1926.) See Note N at the end of this volume.

[110] On Pragmatism, especially Nietzschean pragmatism, and the place it holds (whether they confess it or not) in almost all the moral and political teachings really characteristic of this time, see R. Berthelot, _Un Romantisme Utilitaire_, tome i, page 28 onwards. I can best show the novelty of the pragmatist attitude, especially among the French moralists, by quoting a remark of Montaigne which they all, before Barrès, would have ratified: ‘The honour and beauty of an action cannot be argued from its utility.’ Let us not forget, however, that Nietzsche, always unfaithful to his disciples, declares that ‘in the long run, utility, like everything else, is simply a figment of our imagination, and may well be the _fatal stupidity by which we shall one day perish_’.

[111] That it why Pragmatism is also called Humanism. (See F. Schiller, _Protagoras or Plato_.)

[112] We know how the two are reconciled. Jesus, they say, preached the spirit of sacrifice, which is the basis of all human institutions. As if Jesus preached the spirit of sacrifice which wins battles and secures empires!

[113] ‘The true warrior remains human in the midst of the blood he sheds.’ (De Maistre.)

[114] For example, when they make a soldier say in heaven: ‘You must know, my friends, that among all things done upon earth, nothing is more agreeable to the eyes of those who rule the universe than societies of men founded upon respect for laws, which we call cities.’ (Cicero, _Scipio’s Dream_.)

[115] Sorel, loc. cit.

[116] And from any patriotism. Nietzsche and Sorel prove that love of war is something totally distinct from love of country, although most often they coincide.

[117] Ernest Psichari, _Terres de Soleil et de Sommeil_. And, in _L’Appel des armes_, through the mouth of a character who obviously has all the author’s sympathies; ‘I think it necessary that there should be in the world a certain number of the men who are called soldiers and who place their ideal in fighting, who have a taste for battle, not for victory but for the contest, as hunters have a taste for hunting, not for game!... The part we have to play, or otherwise we lose our reason for existing and have no more meaning, is to maintain a military ideal, not a nationally military ideal, but a militarily military ideal, if I may so express it.’ The religion of this moralist is, according to his own expression, _integral militarism_. ‘Big guns,’ he says, ‘are the most real realities which exist, the sole realities of the modern world.’ And obviously these realities are divinities for this ‘spiritual’ person and his followers.

[118] This depreciation of Greece, to be seen in many French traditionalists since de Maistre, is constant among the Pangermanists. (See notably Houston Chamberlain, _Genesis of the Nineteenth Century_, tome i, page 57.) In a periodical with dogmatic claims (_Notre Temps_, August, 1927), under the suggestive title ‘Towards a Practical Idealism’, I read: ‘A young generation trained in this way, _more sporting than ideological_, supports those who ask whether we are not at the dawn of a great age.’ Here again the Churchmen do not lag behind. In _La Vie Catholique_ (24th September, 1927) I find a warm eulogy of a champion boxer. It is true that this eulogy ends up with the words: ‘Finally, let us add that Tunney is a convinced and practising Catholic, and that two of his sisters are nuns.’

[119] Laws, Book I. The exact text of Plato is: ‘In the order of virtues, wisdom is first, temperance comes next, courage occupies the last place.’ Plato here means by courage (see the context, notably the passage about those soldiers who ‘though insolent, unjust, immoral, know how to fight’) Man’s aptitude for facing death. It seems that he would not have given the first place to the courage which is strength of mind, a resistance to misfortune, as the Stoics afterwards did. With him strength of mind always comes after justice--according to his doctrine, it is a consequence of justice. Moreover, the courage placed in the supreme rank by Barrès is not Stoic patience but the active defiance of death. For Nietzsche and Sorel it is essential audacity, where audacity is irrational--a form of courage depreciated by all ancient moralists and their disciples. (See Plato, Laches; Aristotle, Ethics, VIII; Spinoza, Ethics, IV, 69; even the poets--‘Our reason which commands our fire,’ Ronsard.)

It seems that facing death, even on behalf of justice, was not so much the object of praise among the ancient philosophers as it is among the moderns. In the Phaedo, Socrates is praised for his justice; he is not very loudly praised because he died for justice. Moreover, the views of the ancients on this point seem to me well expressed by Spinoza: ‘Death is a thing of which the free man thinks least of all,’ a thought which does not imply much admiration for those who face death bravely. One wonders whether the veneration of courage, at least among the moralists, has not been created by Christianity, with the importance it attaches to death, and the subsequent appearance before God.

I cannot leave this point without recalling a passage where Saint-Simon speaks of a nobility ‘accustomed to be good for nothing except to get itself killed’, _Mémoires_, t. xi, page 427, ed. Cheruel. It may be asserted that there is not one modern writer, even a Duke of France, who would speak of courage in such a tone.

[120] And to hold.

[121] There will be found in Barrès (_Une Enquête aux pays du Levant_, chap. vii: ‘Les derniers fidèles du Vieux de la Montagne’) a striking example of admiration for the cult of honour inasmuch as this cult, when ably exploited by an intelligent leader, gives practical results.

[122] This is especially the case with Montaigne who, as everyone knows, extols honour insofar as it is man’s sensitiveness to the judgment of his conscience, but very little insofar as it is a desire for glory--‘put off with other pleasures that which comes from the approbation of others.’ Barrès believes he sees in that ‘a foreigner who does not share our prejudices’. Barrès confuses the moralists and the poets. Before him I do not know one French author with dogmatic claims who has attributed a high moral value to the love of glory; the French moralists before 1890 are very unmilitary, even the soldiers like Vauvenargues and Vigny. (See the excellent study of G. Le Bidois, _L’Honneur au miroir de nos lettres_, especially on Montesquieu.)