Part 15

[123] The Abbé Sertillanges, _L’Héroisme et la Gloire_. Compare this with Bossuet’s two sermons on ‘The Honour of the World’. You can measure the advance made by the Church during three centuries in its concessions to lay passions. See also Nicole: ‘On the true idea of valour.’ The sermons of the Abbé Sertillanges (‘la Vie Héroïque’) should be read entire, as a monument of a Churchman’s enthusiasm for warlike instincts. It is positively the manifesto of a helmed ‘clerk’. You can find in them such emotions as the following which, mutatis mutandis, might be an extract from the Regimental Orders of a Colonel of the Death’s Head Hussars: ‘Behold Guynemer, the young hero, the simple soul with the eagle glance, the slim Hercules, the Achilles who does not retire to his tent, the Roland of the clouds and the Cid of the French sky: was there ever a wilder and more furious paladin, more careless of death, whether his own or that of an enemy? This “kid”, as his comrades called him, only enjoyed the savage pleasure of attack, of the hard fight, of the clear victory, and in him the arrogance of the conqueror was at once charming and terrible.’

[124] Let me recall Thomas Aquinas’s definition of honour, which is not exactly the definition of the honour extolled by the Abbé Sertillanges: ‘Honour is good (like the love of human glory) on condition that charity is its principle, and the love of God or the good of one’s neighbour as its object.’

[125] See the recent Bill to amend Martial Law, known as the Paul Boncour Bill.

[126] This suggestive remark is Lavisse’s, _Etudes d’Histoire de Prusse_, page 30. See the whole passage.

[127] Love here is obviously love for the superior species--to which the preacher naturally belongs. Doubtless it is this love also which permits of a pity which is not ‘perverted.’

[128] Charles Maurras, _Action Française_, tome iv, page 596. One thinks of Nietzsche’s exclamation: ‘Humanity! Was there ever a more horrible old woman among all horrible old women!’ and the German master adds, always in agreement with many a French master as we shall see later, ‘unless perhaps it is truth.’

[129] Their harshness has obviously nothing in common with the harshness implied by these fine words: ‘The man of justice subordinates passion to reason, which seems regrettable if his heart is cold, but will appear sublime if he is capable of love’ (Renouvier).

[130] This is the opinion of Machiavelli (chap. xviii) who, there again, does not therefore consider cruelty as a proof of a high state of culture.

[131] I find this from the pen of a hero of the First Empire: ‘I was afraid of feeling _pleasure_’ (the author himself underlines the word) ‘in killing with my own hand some of these scoundrels’ (he is speaking of some Germans who murdered French prisoners after the battle of Leipzic). ‘I therefore sheathed my sabre and left the extermination of these assassins to the troopers.’ (_Memoirs of General Marbot_, tome iii, page 344.) There is a condemnation of the joy of killing which would be scorned by many a contemporary writer. In France the glorification of warlike instincts is much less common among the soldiers than among the authors. Marbot is far less bloody-minded than Barrès.

[132] ‘And the honour of virtue consists in contending, not in winning’ (Montaigne).

[133] _La Ruine du monde antique_, page 76. See also in _Les Illusions du progrès_ (page 259) Sorel’s derisive amusement at a thinker who said that the preponderance of intellectual emotions is the sign of superior societies. We may take up Sainte-Beuve’s famous distinction and say that modern thinkers extol _sword-intelligence_ at the expense of _mirror-intelligence_. On their own showing it is the former they admire in Nietzsche, Sorel, Péguy, and Maurras. (See R. Gillouin, _Esquisses littéraires et morales_, page 52.) Let me observe that contempt for ‘mirror-intelligence’ implies contempt for Aristotle, Spinoza, Bacon, Goethe, and Renan. Nor does it seem to me that M. Paul Valéry is exactly a ‘sword-intelligence’.

[134] _Victor Marie, Comte Hugo_, towards the end. See Note O at the end of this volume.

[135] This it the only reason why Nietzsche extols art, and declares (along with all modern moralism) the supremacy of the artist over the philosopher, because art seems to him to possess the value of action. Apart from this point of view, it seems just to say with one of his critics: ‘At bottom Nietzsche despised art and artists.... In art he condemns a feminine principle, the mimicry of the actor, the love of dress and all that glitters.... Remember the eloquent page where he praises Shakespeare, the greatest of poets, for having abased the figure of the poet, whom he treats as a stage-player, before Caesar, _that divine man_.’ (C. Schuwer, _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, April, 1926.) For Sorel art is great because it is an anticipation of intense production, as it tends to manifest itself more and more in our society.

[136] _Evolution Créatrice_, page 216. The true formula of Bergsonism should be, ‘I grow, therefore I am.’ Notice also the tendency of modern philosophy to make the practical character of thought its essential characteristic and to make its consciousness of itself a secondary characteristic: ‘Perhaps thought must be defined as the faculty of combining means towards certain ends rather than by the sole property of being clear to itself.’ (D. Roustan, _Leçons de Psychologie_, page 73.)

[137] The Sphex. The example is given in _L’Evolution Créatrice_, and has had an immense success in the literary world. (It is, moreover, imaginary. See Marie Goldsmith, _Psychologie Comparée_, page 211.) The defence of the practical value of instinct, with the same Romantic contempt of the rationalist as in Barrès, existed with J. J. Rousseau: ‘Conscience never deceives us; it is to the soul what instinct is to the body.... Modern philosophy, which only admits what can be explained, takes care not to admit the obscure faculty called instinct which, without acquired knowledge, seems to guide animals towards some end.’ (_Confession de foi du vicaire savoyard._)

[138] ‘If the utility which results from a man’s occupations determined our praise, the inventor of the plough would deserve the praise of being a great mind far more than Aristotle, Galilei, and M. Descartes.’ (Bayle.) Fontenelle and Voltaire have pointed out the utility of certain studies which were considered useless; they never meant that those who cultivated these studies while they thought them useless were therefore contemptible.

[139] See above, page 54.

[140] Or moral. Barrès denounces the ‘immorality’ of the scholar who shows the part played by chance in history. Compare Michelet’s remark, ‘respect kills history.’

[141] As is well known, this is the argument of the ‘Avenir de l’intelligence’. It allows followers to say (‘Manifeste de l’Intelligence,’ _Figaro_, 19th July, 1919; on this manifesto, see Note P at the end of this volume) that ‘one of the most obvious missions of the Church during the ages has been to protect the intelligence against its own errors’--an irrefutable saying from the moment that the errors of the intelligence are everything it says without reference to social order (whose basis is to be the teaching of the Church). This practical conception of the intelligence leads to definitions of this sort: ‘True logic is to be defined as the normal union of feelings, images and signs, to inspire in us the conceptions suited to our moral, intellectual and physical needs.’ (Maurras.) Compare this with the tradition teaching of the French masters: ‘Logic is the art of guiding reason properly in the knowledge of things.’ (_Logique de Port-Royal._)

The wish to esteem intelligence according to its practical results appears again in this astounding formula: ‘A critical mind is of value _through the influence it exerts_ by means of the enlightenment it bestows.’ (Maurras.) See also how severe is M. Massis (_Jugements_, i, 87) for Renan when he says: ‘The useful is what I abhor.’ Elsewhere (_Jugements_, 107) the same thinker speaks of a spiritual freedom ‘whose disinterestedness is merely a refusal of the conditions of life, of action, _and of thought_!’

[142] They add ‘and unscientific’, which is irrefutable as soon as science means ‘practical’. ‘Bringing up children religiously,’ says M. Paul Bourget, ‘is bringing them up scientifically’--a very defensible saying as soon as ‘scientifically’ means (as the author here wants it to mean) ‘in conformity with the national interest’.

[143] The French traditionalists condemn the truth in itself in the name of ‘social’ truth. This is the _glorification of prejudices_, a new thing indeed in the descendants of Montaigne and Voltaire. It may be said that certain contemporary French masters show a zeal in defending the interests of society never seen before in those whose business was to defend the interests of the mind.

The condemnation of disinterested intellectual activity is plainly laid down in this command of Barrès: ‘All questions must be solved in relation to France,’ to which a German thinker replies in 1920, ‘All the conquests of ancient and modern culture and of science are looked at by us from the German point of view before everything.’ (Quoted by C. Chabot, Preface to the French translation of _Speeches to the German Nation_, page xix). For the cult of the ‘useful error’, see an amazing page in the _Jardin de Bérénice_, quoted and commented on by Parodi. (_Traditionalisme et Democratie_, page 136.)

[144] Here M. Maurras separates from his Master, de Maistre, who speaks of ‘the ocean which will one day welcome everything and everyone to its bosom’. However, the author of the _Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg_ quickly adds: ‘But I refrain from touching on personality, without which immortality is nothing.’

[145] On the existence of this doctrine of immanence among almost all Christian teachers until our own times, see Renouvier: ‘l’Idée de Dieu’ (_Année Philosophique_, 1897), and also _Essai d’une Classification des doctrines_, 3: _l’évolution_; _la création_.

[146] According to Hegel, God constantly grows at the expense of His opposite; His activity is essentially that of war and victory.

[147] Let me note a keen protest against this conception in ‘Neo-Thomism’.

[148] Compare, for instance, the condemnation of Rosmini with that of Maître Eckart, where such propositions as ‘Nulla in Deo distinctio esse aut intelligi potest’ and ‘Omnes creaturae sunt purum nihil’ are declared to be, not heretical, but only ‘ill-sounding, rash and suspected of heresy’.

[149] Remember that in 1806, immediately after Jena, Hegel’s one thought was to find a corner in which to philosophize. In 1813 Schopenhauer was completely indifferent to the up-rising of Germany against Napoleon.

[150] ‘No one has the right to be indifferent to the disasters of his country; but the philosopher, like the Christian, always has reasons for living. The Kingdom of God knows neither conquerors nor conquered; that Kingdom resides in the joys of the heart, the mind, and the imagination, which the conquered enjoys more than the conqueror if he is morally on a higher plane and has more mind. Your great Goethe, your admirable Fichte have taught us, have they not, how to lead a noble and consequently happy life, when our country is humiliated abroad.’ (First Letter to Strauss.)

Need I say that Nietzsche, who seems to me a bad ‘clerk’ from the nature of his teaching, seems to me one of the finest from his entire devotion to the passions of the spirit alone?

[151] Of course, I am not doubting the sincerity of all the ‘right-thinking’ men of letters. Some persons are so fortunate that the most profitable attitudes are precisely those which they adopt sincerely.

[152] This may be clearly seen by the ill-will displayed by the French bourgeoisie towards the order of their ‘spiritual leader’ forbidding them to read a publication whose doctrines they like. The change may be estimated if you remember that when, a century ago, the Pope ordered the French Catholics to accept the law against the Jesuits voted by the government of Charles X, they all bowed to his will.

[153] At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession when the north of France was invaded, Fénelon delivered several sermons in which he told the invaded population that their sufferings were the just punishment for their sins. Imagine the reception of anyone who dared to preach such a sermon to the French in August, 1914! For the manner in which the ‘taught’ Church to-day treats the ‘teaching’ Church if the latter does not say what it wants to hear, think of the reception thirty years ago of Father Ollivier’s sermon on the victims of the fire at the charity bazaar.

[154] Similar observations may be made about the philosophers, most of whom--and not the least famous--do not live to-day like Descartes and Spinoza, but are married, have children, occupy posts, are ‘in daily life’. All of which seems to me to have a relation with the ‘pragmatic’ character of their teaching. (On this point, see my book: _Sur le Succès du Bergsonisme_, page 207.)

[155] This is the reign (which seems eternal in France) of the ‘wit’, with his attribute so admirably denounced by Malebranche in this delicious phrase: ‘The stupid person and the wit are equally blind to truth; with this difference, that the stupid person respects truth while the wit despises it.’

[156] The spectacle of democracies may satisfy another sort of artistic sensibility, i.e. the sort which is moved, not by the spectacle of order, but by the spectacle of an equilibrium between forces which are naturally in opposition. (On this distinction, see the great book by M. Hauriou, _Principes de droit public_, chap. i.) Nevertheless, a sensibility to equilibrium is far more intellectual than truly artistic. See Note Q at the end of this book.

[157] More precisely, since the haughty Romanticism I mentioned above. The artist’s desire to set himself up as an exceptional being dates from Flaubert. Hugo and Lamartine never expressed it.

[158] This aversion is particularly strong in Nietzsche. (See _Le Gai sçavoir_, loc. cit., where generalization becomes a synonym for platitude, superficiality, stupidity.) Like a true artist, Nietzsche is incapable of understanding that the apperception of a common characteristic may be an act of genius--for instance, the apperception of the common characteristic between the movement of the planets and the fall of an apple.

[159] So much so that the true champions of ‘sacred egoism’ definitely condemn them. Bismarck, Wilhelm II, Naumann, Houston Chamberlain, all argue against classical teaching.

[160] Remember that Nietzsche only truly esteems the thought of the ancients up to Socrates, i.e. up to the time when it begins to teach the universal.

[161] This same Barrès is quoted as having said to a ‘Dreyfusist’ in 1898: ‘Why do you talk of justice and humanity to me! What do I care for? A few pictures in Europe and a few cemeteries!’ Another of our great political realists confessed one day to his fundamental necessity to ‘enjoy’. Socrates long ago told Protagoras that the basis of his doctrine was a thirst for sensation.

[162] It seems to me difficult to deny that pacifism, humanitarianism, and altruism are _boring_. No doubt, art, science, and philosophy offer sufficient opportunities for ‘amusement’ without one asking of it doctrines which set the world on fire. But that is the view of a man who is not wildly eager for sensation.

[163] The realists are not the only people to-day who find opportunities for sensation in their political attitudes. It is certain that the humanitarianism of Victor Hugo and Michelet is far from having the pure intellectual resonance it had in Spinoza and Malebranche. (See above, my distinction between humanitarianism and humanism.)

[164] ‘Peace it not the absence of war, but a virtue born from strength of soul.’ (Spinoza.)

[165] Here is an example: ‘Universal peace will come about one day, not because men will become better (one cannot hope for that) but because a new order of things, new science, new economic needs, will impose a state of peace on them, just as the very conditions of their existence formerly placed and maintained them in a state of war.’ (Anatole France, _Sur la Pierre blanche_.) Note the refusal, mentioned above, to believe in any possible betterment of the human soul.

[166] This observation applied to nearly all anti-militarist literature up to our own times. We have to come to Renan and Renouvier (at least among writers not of the Church) to find authors who speak of war and national passions with the seriousness and respect due to such dramas.

[167] I am not to say whether the claims of France after her victory might have been _impolitic_, for the thinkers I am discussing here only speak of what they consider their _immorality_. Notice that the pacifism of the Church, at least among the great teachers, is not at all inspired by sentimental considerations, but by pure moral education. ‘What do we condemn in war?’ says Saint Augustin. ‘Is it the fact that they kill men who have all one day to die? Only cowards, not religious men, would bring this accusation against war. What we condemn in war is the desire to do harm, an implacable soul, the fury of reprisals, the passion for dominion.’ (This is taken up by Thomas Aquinas in the _Summum_, 2, 2, xl, art. 1.)

[168] I consider that ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ may be said by all whose activity is not directed to practical ends: the artist, the metaphysician, the scientist _insofar as he finds satisfaction in the practice of science and not in its results_. Many will tell me that they and not the Christians are the true ‘clerks’, for the Christian accepts the ideas of justice and charity only for the sake of his salvation. No one will deny, however, that men, even Christians, exist, who accept this idea with no practical end in view.

[169] Malebranche, _Méditations chrétiennes_ (ix, 19).

[170] See Babeau, _Le village sous l’ancien régime_, iv, iii; L. Gregoire, _La Ligue en Bretagne_, chap, vi; Roupnel, _La Ville et la Campagne au xvii siècle_, i, 1. ‘The peasants,’ says M. Roumier, ‘were only really converted where it was to their interests to be so, and especially where the local landlords put their influence at the service of the new religion, and where the Catholic clergy had completely deserted the parishes. We must be careful not to consider as Protestants all the “rustics” who took part in pillaging the abbeys and castles during the civil war’ (_La Royaume de Catherine de Médicis_, tome ii, page 294). M. Romier quotes the remark of a contemporary: ‘The whole of the Low Countries scarcely knows what this new doctrine is.’

[171] ‘Le livre de raison de M. Nicolas Versoris’ (_Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris_, tome xii). The author, avocat au Parlement de Paris, similarly gives two lines to events like the Connétable de Bourbon’s treachery, and the signing of the treaty of Madrid. The same attitude exists in the _Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris_, 1515-1536; the public misfortunes sketched by the author leave him completely indifferent. He makes no comment on the disaster of Pavia. Apropos the treaty of Madrid, ‘it is to be noted,’ writes a contemporary, ‘that there were no bonfires or rejoicings when the news of the peace was published, because no one understood anything about it.’ (Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, v, 49.) Contemporaries mention the indifference of the people of Paris to the Peace of Westphalia, the battle of Rossbach, even the battles of Valmy and Navarino. ‘The affair at Valmy made very little stir at first.’ (Kellerman.)

[172] Michelet relates that in his youth he questioned an old man on the impressions left upon him by 1793, and the only answer he got was: ‘It was the bad paper year.’

[173] Admire the profundity of Machiavelli, when he advises his Prince: ‘Above everything, avoid taking your subjects’ property; _for men will more easily forget the deaths of their fathers than the loss of their patrimony_.’

[174] Inserted in the collection of studies entitled ‘L’Allemagne et les Alliés devant la conscience chrétienne’. (Bloud et Gay, 1915.)

[175] M. Edmond Bloud quotes this remark of a German nationalist, which might have been made on the French side of the Rhine: ‘The Catholic world must be nationalized to re-Catholicize it.’ He adds that in Germany it is common to hear ‘German Catholicism’ spoken of in opposition to Roman Catholicism.

[176] And therefore it requires much more courage to do so now than in the past.

[177] Nevertheless, Zola, Romain Rolland, and Einstein have drunk the hemlock.

[178] When they allow themselves to be told, as Louis XVI was told by Turgot: ‘Sire, your kingdom _is of this world_.’ There also exists ‘_a betrayal of the laymen_’.

[179] Mgr Battifol’s writings support my argument so beautifully that I hesitate to quote an author who plays so perfectly into my hands. For example, he spends much time in proving that the spirit of Christianity ‘has resulted, without contradicting itself, in a doctrine of the morality of war’.

[180] Here is a passage which, except for its violence, seems to me to express the feelings of most modern laymen on the subject of the patriotic loyalty of the priests: ‘The clergy of France is ardently patriotic; it serves gallantly under fire; it absolves and glorifies every action of the soldier; it regards the accusation of having deserted military duty as infamous, and does it justice. It is not for me to say whether it is in accord with the Gospels. We are simply Frenchmen and patriots; we can only approve and admire the French patriotic monks and priests. The French priest has no pardon for a German, the German priest and pastor have no pardon for a Frenchman. Mother-country first! Kill! Kill! In the name of the God of the Christians, we absolve you, we glorify you for killing Christians!’ (Urbain Gohier, ‘La Vieille France,’ quoted by Grillot de Givry, _Le Christ et la Patrie_, page 12.)

[181] This clearly shows in what sense Renouvier is an ‘individualist’.

[182] See his hymn to the mathematician Franz Woepfke.

[183] Jules Lemaître was explicitly this adversary.

[184] ‘For an empirical France,’ say Barrès and Bourget.

[185] ‘Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne,’ Cahiers de la Quinzaine. See my book, _Sur le Succès du Bergsonisme_, page 158.

[186] The same thing is to be found in Lamartine when he says of Byron: ‘There is more true, imperishable poetry in the tent at Missolonghi where he lies prostrate with fever, under arms, than in all his works.’ (_Commentaire de la 2e Meditation._) This is precisely the teaching adopted by Barrès, Suarès, Péguy (the last preached it by his example, however), which comes down to saying: ‘There is more poetry in a heroic death than in all the activities of the mind.’ Note that this position is by no means common to all the Romantics. Hugo, Vigny, Michelet, felt all the poetry of action, but they never appear to think it superior to the poetry of the lofty forms of intellectual life. Hugo never thought of sacrificing Homer or Galilei to Napoleon, or even to Hoche--to take a disinterested hero such as Lamartine praises in Byron.

[187] Note that Ronsard is the very type of the man ‘bent over books’.

[188] ‘Germany is the protector and the support of European civilization’ (Lamprecht.) ‘After the war Germany will again take up her historic task, which is to be the heart of Europe and to prepare European humanity.’ (Wilhelm II, _Temps_, 14th September, 1915.)

[189] See Robert Dreyfus, _Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust_, page 336.

_Transcriber’s Notes_