Part 2

It is impossible to over-stress the novelty of this form of patriotism in history. It is obviously bound up with the adoption of this passion by the masses of the populace, and seems to have been inaugurated in 1813 by Germany, who is apparently the real teacher of humanity in the matter of democratic patriotism, if by this word is meant the determination of a nation to oppose others in the name of its most fundamental characteristics.[16] (The France of the Revolution and the Empire never dreamed of setting itself up against other nations in the name of its language or of its literature.) This form of patriotism was so little known to preceding ages that there are countless examples of nations adopting the cultures of other nations, even of those with whom they were at war, and in addition reverencing the culture adopted. Shall I refer to the profound respect of Rome for the genius of Greece, though Rome had felt it necessary to crush Greece politically? To the respect of the conquerors of Rome, such as Ataulf and Theodoric, for Roman genius? And, nearer to ourselves, shall I mention Louis XIV annexing Alsace and not for one moment thinking of forbidding the German language?[17] In the past, nations displayed their sympathy for the culture of other nations with whom they were at war, or invited them to adopt their own. The Duke of Alba took measures to protect the learned men in the towns of Holland, against which he was directing his army; in the eighteenth century, the small German States, allied with Frederick the Great against the French, adopted more freely than ever French ideas, French fashions, French[18] literature; in the midst of the struggle with England, the Convention sent a deputation there to urge the English to adopt the French metric system.[19] The notion that political warfare involves a war of cultures is entirely an invention of modern times, and confers upon them a conspicuous place in the moral history of humanity.

Another strengthening of national passions comes from the determination of the peoples to be conscious of _their past_, more precisely to be conscious of their ambitions as going back to their ancestors, and to vibrate with ‘centuries-old’ aspirations, with attachments to ‘historical’ rights. This Romantic patriotism is also a characteristic of patriotism as practised by popular minds (by ‘popular’ I here mean all minds governed by the imagination, that is, in the first place, society people and men of letters). I have an idea that when Hugues de Lionne desired for the nation the conquest of Flanders or when Sieyès wanted the Low Countries, they did not think they felt the soul of ancient Gauls reviving in them, any more than Bismarck thought (I am not talking of what he said) of reviving the Teutonic Knights when he coveted the Danish Duchies.[20]

Those who wish to estimate the increase of violence given to national passion by this solemnizing of its desires have only to observe what has happened to this feeling among the Germans, with their claim to be carrying on the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire, and among the Italians since they have set up their aspirations as the revival of those of the Roman Empire.[21] There once again the leaders of the State find in popular sentimentality a new and excellent instrument for carrying out their practical designs, an instrument they well know how to use. To mention only one recent example--think of the result the Italian government was able to obtain from the amazing aptitude of its compatriots to wake up one fine morning and discover that the claim to Fiume was a ‘centuries-old’ claim.

Speaking generally, it may be said that national passions, owing to the fact that they are now exerted by plebeian minds, assume the character of _mysticism_, of a religious adoration almost unknown in these passions in the practical minds of the great nobles. It is unnecessary to add that this makes these passions deeper and stronger. Here once more this plebeian form of patriotism is adopted by all who practise this passion, even when they are the noisiest champions of the aristocracy of the mind. M. Maurras talks of the ‘goddess France’, just as Victor Hugo does. Let me add that this mystical adoration of the nation is not only to be explained by the nature of those who adore, but also by the changes which have taken place in the adored object. There is first of all the spectacle of the military force and organization of modern States, which is something far more imposing than of old. And when these States are seen to make war for an indefinite period after they have no more men, and go on subsisting for long years after they have no more money, it is easy to understand why a man who has some tincture of religion in his mind may be led to believe that these States are of an essence different from that of ordinary natural beings.

I shall point out another great increase of power in national sentiment which has occurred in the last half-century. I mean that several very powerful political passions, which were originally independent of nationalist feeling, have now become incorporated with it. These passions are: (_a_) The movement against the Jews; (_b_) the movement of the possessing classes against the proletariat; (_c_) the movement of the champions of authority against the democrats. To-day each one of these passions is identified with national feeling and declares that its adversary implies the negation of nationalism. I may add that when a person is affected by one of these passions he is generally affected by all three; consequently nationalist passion is usually swelled by the addition of all three. Moreover this increase is reciprocal, and it may be said that to-day capitalism, anti-semitism and the party of authority have all received new strength from their union with nationalism. (For additional proof of the strength of these unions, see Note C at the end of this book.)

I cannot drop the subject of the modern perfecting of political passions without mentioning one more characteristic: In all nations the number of persons who feel a direct interest in belonging to a powerful nation is incomparably greater now than in the past. In all the great States to-day I observe that not only the world of industry and big business but a considerable number of small tradesmen, small bourgeois, doctors, lawyers, and even writers and artists, and working men too, feel that for the sake of the prosperity of their own occupations it is essential for them to belong to a powerful group which can make itself feared. Those who are in a position to give an opinion on this sort of change agree that the feeling did not exist, at least in the same clearly defined way as to-day, thirty years ago among the small tradesmen of France, for instance. It seems an even newer thing among the men who belong to the so-called liberal professions; it is certainly something new to hear artists constantly girding at the government of their country because it ‘does not give the nation enough prestige to impose their art on foreigners’. The feeling that from a professional point of view they have an interest in belonging to a powerful nation is also very recent among the working classes. The party of ‘Nationalist Socialists’, which seems to exist everywhere except in France, is a quite modern political development. Among the masters of industry the new development is, not that they feel how much it is to their interest that their nation should be powerful, but that the feeling is to-day transformed into action, into formal pressure on their governments.[22] This extension of patriotism based on interest certainly does not prevent this sort of patriotism (as I said above) from being much less wide-spread than the patriotism[23] based on pride; nevertheless it brings another increase of strength to nationalist passions.

I shall now point out a last important perfecting of all political passions to-day, whether of race, class, party or nation. When I observe these passions in the past, I see them consisting in purely passionate impulses, natural explosions of instinct, devoid of all extension of themselves in ideas and systems--at least among the majority. The revolt of the workers in the fifteenth century against the possessing classes was apparently not accompanied by any sort of teaching about the origin of property or the nature of capital. Those who massacred the Ghettos seem to have had no views on the philosophical values of their action. And when the troops of Charles V attacked the defenders of Mezières, it does not appear that the assault was enlivened by a theory about the predestination of the Germanic race and the moral baseness of the Latin world. To-day I notice that every political passion is furnished with a whole network of strongly woven doctrines, the sole object of which is to show the supreme value of its action from every point of view, while the result is a redoubling of its strength as a passion. We must look at the system of ideology of German nationalism known as ‘Pangermanism’ and at the similar ideology of the French Monarchists, if we wish to realize the point of perfection to which our age has carried these systems, with what tenacity each passion has built up in every direction the theories apt to satisfy it, with what precision these theories have been adapted to this satisfaction, with what opulence of research, what labour, what profound investigation they have been carried on in all directions. Our age is indeed the age of the _intellectual organization of political hatreds_. It will be one of its chief claims to notice in the moral history of humanity.

Ever since these systems have been in existence, they have consisted in establishing for each passion that it is the agent of good in the world and that its enemy is the genius of evil. But to-day these passions desire to establish this not only politically, but morally, intellectually and aesthetically. Anti-semitism, Pangermanism, French Monarchism, Socialism are not only political manifestations; they defend a particular form of morality, of intelligence, of sensibility, of literature, of philosophy and of artistic conceptions. Our age has introduced two novelties into the theorizing of political passions, by which they have been remarkably intensified. The first is that everyone to-day claims that his movement is in line with ‘the development of evolution’ and ‘the profound unrolling of history’. All these passions of to-day, whether they derive from Marx, from M. Maurras or from Houston Chamberlain, have discovered a ‘historical law’, according to which their movement is merely carrying out the spirit of history and must therefore necessarily triumph, while the opposing party is running counter to this spirit and can enjoy only a transitory triumph. That is merely the old desire to have Fate on one’s side, but it is put forth in a scientific shape. And this brings us to the second novelty: To-day all political ideologies claim to be founded on science, to be the result of a ‘precise observation of facts’. We all know what self-assurance, what rigidity, what inhumanity (comparatively new traits in the history of political passions, of which modern French monarchism is a good example) are given to these passions to-day by this claim.

To summarize: To-day political passions show a degree of universality, of coherence, of homogeneousness, of precision, of continuity, of preponderance, in relation to other passions, unknown until our times. They have become conscious of themselves to an extent never seen before. Some of them, hitherto scarcely avowed, have awakened to consciousness and have joined the old passions. Others have become more purely passionate than ever, possess men’s hearts in moral regions they never before reached, and have acquired a mystic character which had disappeared for centuries. All are furnished with an apparatus of ideology whereby, in the name of science, they proclaim the supreme value of their action and its historical necessity. On the surface and in the depths, in spatial values and in inner strength, political passions have to-day reached a point of perfection never before known in history. The present age is essentially the age of politics.

II

_Significance of this Movement--Nature of Political Passions_

What is the significance of this movement? Of what simple and profound human tendency does it show the progress and triumph? The question comes down to inquiring what is the nature of political passions, of what more general and more essential state of mind are they the expression, what--as the schools say--is their psychological foundation?

It seems to me that these passions can be reduced to two fundamental desires: (_a_) The will of a group of men to get hold of (or to retain a hold on) some _material_ advantage, such as territories, comfort, political power and all its material advantages; and (_b_) the will of a group of men to become conscious of themselves as _individuals_, insofar as they are _distinct_ in relation to other men. It may also be said that these passions can be reduced to two desires, one of which seeks the satisfaction of an _interest_, the other of a _pride_ or self-esteem. These two desires enter into political passions in very different proportions, according to which passion is involved. It appears that racial passion, insofar as it is not one with national passion, is chiefly based on the will of a group of men to set themselves up as distinct from others; the same thing may be said of religious passion, if we consider it in its pure state. On the other hand, class passion, at least as we see it in the working classes, apparently consists solely in the will to obtain possession of material advantages. The desire to feel himself distinct, which George Sand and the apostles of 1848 had begun to inculcate in the working man, now seems to be abandoned by him, at least in his utterances. National passion contains both factors. The patriot wants to obtain material advantages and he wants to set himself up as distinct from others. This is the secret of the evident superiority in strength of this passion (when it is really a passion) over all other passions, especially over Socialism. A passion whose sole motive is interest is too weak to contend with another which combines interest and pride. This too is one of the weaknesses of Socialism when opposed to class passion as exerted by the bourgeoisie, for the bourgeois wants both to possess material advantages and to feel himself distinct from others. I shall add to this that in my opinion the relative strengths of these two passions (one based on interest and the other on pride or self-esteem) are very unequal, and that the more powerful of the two is not that which tries to satisfy interest.

Now, when I come to ask what is signified in their turn by these fundamental desires of political passions, I find they appear to me as the two essential composites of man’s will to situate himself _in real life_. To want real life is to want (_a_) To possess some material advantages, and (_b_) to be conscious of oneself as an individual. Every life which despises these two desires, every life which pursues only spiritual advantage or sincerely asserts itself in the universal, situates itself _outside the real_. Political passions, especially national passions insofar as they unite the two desires mentioned, seem to me essentially _realist_ passions.

Here many persons will protest: ‘Yes,’ they will say, ‘the desires which make up political passions are realist desires, but the individual shifts these desires from himself to the group of which he is a part. The working man wants to obtain possession of material advantages for his class, not for his own limited person. The patriot wants to possess territories for his nation, not for his own narrow ego; he wants to be distinct from other men through his nation. Do you apply the term “realist” to passions which imply such a transfer from the individual to the collective body?’ Is it necessary to reply that when the individual transfers these desires to the body of which he is a part, he does not thereby alter their nature? And that all he does is simply to increase their dimensions immeasureably? To wish to possess material advantages _in one’s nation_, to want to feel distinct from other men _in one’s nation_, is still the desire to possess material advantages, still the desire to feel distinct from other men. It only means that, if you are a Frenchman, you want to possess Brittany, Provence, Guyenne, Algeria, Indo-China; and you want to feel yourself distinct from other men in Jeanne d’Arc, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Racine, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Pasteur. Add to this that at the same time you attach these desires, not to a transitory and precarious single existence, but to an ‘eternal’ existence, and feel them in that way. Not only does national egotism not cease to be egotism because it is national, but it becomes ‘sacred’ egotism.[24] Let me complete my definition by saying that political passions are realism of a particular quality, which is an important element of strength in them: They are _divinized_ realism.[25]

If, therefore, we desire to express this perfecting of political passions which I have described, in terms of a more profound and essential order of things, we may say that men to-day are displaying, with a hitherto unknown knowledge and consciousness, the desire to situate themselves in the _real_ or practical manner of existence, in opposition to the _disinterested_ or _metaphysical_ manner. Moreover, it is remarkable to see how political passions to-day more and more expressly assert their derivation from this realism and from it alone. On the one hand we have a Socialism which constantly declares that it has no interest in universal man, no interest in procuring justice for him or any other ‘metaphysical phantom’, but solely desires to obtain possession of material advantages for the benefit of its class. On the other hand we have the nationalist mind which everywhere takes a pride in being purely realistic. The French people who fought in the past to carry to other nations a doctrine they believed would bring happiness (I say the people, for its rulers never shared in that simple-minded belief) would now blush to have it even suspected that they would fight ‘for principles’.[26] Is it not suggestive to observe that the only wars of the past which, to some extent, brought into play passions that were a little disinterested--the wars of religion--are the only wars from which humanity has freed itself?[27] And that immense idealistic upheavals like the crusades (idealistic at least with humble people) should now be something which makes the modern man smile, like the spectacle of children at play? Is it not also significant that the national passions (which I have shown are the most perfectly realist of all political passions) should be those which I have been able to point out have most absorbed all other passions?[28] Let me add to this, that these passions, insofar as they are the will of a group of men to set themselves up as distinct from others, have attained a hitherto unknown degree of consciousness.[29] Finally, the supreme attribute we have discovered in political passions, i.e. the divinization of their realism, is now openly admitted, with a plainness never seen before. The State, Country, Class, are now frankly God; we may even say that for many people (and some are proud of it) they alone are God.[30] Humanity, by its present practice of political passions, thereby declares that it has become more realist, more exclusively and more religiously realist than it has ever been.

III

_The ‘Clerks’--The Great Betrayal_

_‘I created him to be spiritual in his flesh; and now he has become carnal even in the spirit.’_--(Bossuet, _Élévations_, VII, 3.)

In all that I have said hitherto I have been considering only masses, whether bourgeois or proletarian, kings, ministers, political leaders, all that portion of the human species which I shall call ‘the laymen’, whose whole function consists essentially in the pursuit of material interests, and who, by becoming more and more solely and systematically realist, have in fact only done what might be expected of them.

Side by side with this humanity whom the poet has described in a phrase--‘O curvae in terram animae et celestium inanes’--there existed until the last half century another, essentially distinct humanity, which to a certain extent acted as a check upon the former. I mean that class of men whom I shall designate ‘_the clerks_’, by which term I mean all those whose activity essentially is _not_ the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science or metaphysical speculation, in short in the possession of non-material advantages, and hence in a certain manner say: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ Indeed, throughout history, for more than two thousand years until modern times, I see an uninterrupted series of philosophers, men of religion, men of literature, artists, men of learning (one might say almost all during this period), whose influence, whose life, were in direct opposition to the realism of the multitudes. To come down specifically to the political passions--the ‘clerks’ were in opposition to them in two ways. They were either entirely indifferent to these passions, and, like Leonardo da Vinci, Malebranche, Goethe, set an example of attachment to the purely disinterested activity of the mind and created a belief in the supreme value of this form of existence; or, gazing as moralists upon the conflict of human egotisms, like Erasmus, Kant, Renan, they preached, in the name of humanity or justice, the adoption of an abstract principle superior to and directly opposed to these passions. Although these ‘clerks’ founded the modern State to the extent that it dominates individual egotisms, their activity undoubtedly was chiefly theoretical, and they were unable to prevent the laymen from filling all history with the noise of their hatreds and their slaughters; _but the ‘clerks’ did prevent the laymen from setting up their actions as a religion, they did prevent them from thinking themselves great men as they carried out these activities_. It may be said that, thanks to the ‘clerks’, humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good. This contradiction was an honour to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.

Now, at the end of the nineteenth century a fundamental change occurred: _the ‘clerks’ began to play the game of political passions_. The men who had acted as a check on the realism of the people began to act as its stimulators. This upheaval in the moral behaviour of humanity operated in several ways.

_First: The ‘clerks’ have adopted political passions_