Part 3

First of all the ‘clerks’ have adopted political passions. No one will deny that throughout Europe to-day the immense majority of men of letters and artists, a considerable number of scholars, philosophers, and ‘ministers’ of the divine, share in the chorus of hatreds among races and political factions. Still less will it be denied that they adopt national passions. Doubtless, the names of Dante, Petrarch, d’Aubigné, certain apologists of Caboche or preachers of the Ligue will suffice to show that certain ‘clerks’ did not wait for our era to indulge in these passions with all the strength of their souls. But, upon the whole, these ‘clerks’ of the forum were exceptions, at least among the great ones. If, in addition to the great masters named above, I evoke the phalanx of Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Galilei, Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Racine, Pascal, Leibniz, Kepler, Huyghens, Newton, and even Voltaire, Buffon and Montesquieu (to mention only a few) I think I may repeat that until our own days the men of thought or the honest men remained strangers to political passions, and said with Goethe: ‘Let us leave politics to the diplomats and the soldiers.’ Or if, like Voltaire, they took these passions into account, they adopted a critical attitude towards them, did not espouse them as passions. Or if, like Rousseau, Maistre, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, even Michelet, they did take these passions to heart, they did so with a generalizing of feeling, a disdain for immediate results, which in fact make the word ‘passions’ incorrect. To-day, if we mention Mommsen, Treitschke, Ostwald, Brunetière, Barrès, Lemaître, Péguy, Maurras, d’Annunzio, Kipling, we have to admit that the ‘clerks’ now exercise political passions with all the characteristics of passion--the tendency to action, the thirst for immediate results, the exclusive preoccupation with the desired end, the scorn for argument, the excess, the hatred, the fixed ideas. The modern ‘clerk’ has entirely ceased to let the layman alone descend to the market place. The modern clerk is determined to have the soul of a citizen and to make vigorous use of it; he is proud of that soul; his literature is filled with his contempt for the man who shuts himself up with art or science and takes no interest in the passions of the State.[31] He is violently on the side of Michaelangelo crying shame upon Leonardo da Vinci for his indifference to the misfortunes of Florence, and against the master of the Last Supper when he replied that indeed the study of beauty occupied his whole heart. The time has long past by since Plato demanded that the philosopher should be bound in chains in order to compel him to take an interest in the State. To have as his function the pursuit of eternal things and yet to believe that he becomes greater by concerning himself with the State--that is the view of the modern ‘clerk’. It is as natural as it is evident that this adhesion of the ‘clerks’ to the passions of the laymen fortifies these passions in the hearts of the latter. In the first place, it abolishes the suggestive spectacle (which I mentioned above) of a race of men whose interests are set outside the practical world. And then especially, the ‘clerk’ by adopting political passions, brings them the tremendous influence of his sensibility if he is an artist, of his persuasive power if he is a thinker, and in either case his moral prestige.[32]

Before proceeding any further, I feel I ought to make myself clear on certain points:--

(_a_) I have been talking of the _whole_ of the men of thought anterior to our own age. When I say that the ‘clerks’ in the past opposed the realism of the laymen and that the ‘clerks’ of to-day are in its service, I am considering each of these groups as a whole; I am contrasting one general characteristic with another. This means that I shall not feel myself contradicted by a reader who takes pains to point out to me that so-and-so in the former group was a realist, and that so-and-so in the second is not, so long as this reader is obliged to admit that as a whole each of these groups does manifest the characteristic I have indicated. And also, when I speak of a single ‘clerk’, I am thinking of his work in its chief characteristic, i.e. in that part of his teaching which dominates all the rest, even if the remainder sometimes contradicts this dominant teaching. This means that I do not consider that I ought to refrain from looking upon Malebranche as a master of liberal thought because a few lines of his ‘Morale’ seem to be a justification of slavery, or upon Nietzsche as a moralist of war because the end of ‘Zarathustra’ is a manifesto of fraternity which outdoes the Gospels. And I see the less reason for doing so, since Malebranche as a defender of slavery and Nietzsche as a humanitarian have had no influence at all, and my subject is the influence which the ‘clerks’ have had in the world, and not what they were in themselves.

(_b_) Some will object to me: ‘How can you treat men like Barrès and Péguy as “clerks” and blame them for lacking the true spirit of “clerks” when they are so openly men of action, with whom political thought is obviously occupied solely with the needs of the present hour, solely spurred on by the events of the day, while the former scarcely ever gave expression to his political thought except in newspaper articles?’ I reply, that this thought, which in truth is practically nothing but a form of immediate action, is given out by its authors as the fruits of the highest speculative intellectual activity, the result of the most truly philosophical meditation. Barrès and Péguy would never have consented to be looked upon as mere polemical writers, even in their polemical works.[33] These men, who indeed are not ‘clerks’, gave themselves out to be ‘clerks’ and were considered as such, (Barrès gave himself out to be a thinker who condescended to the arena), and it is precisely as such that they enjoy a particular prestige among men of action. In this study my subject is not the ‘clerk’ such as he is, but the ‘clerk’ such as he is considered to be and as he acts upon the world in that capacity.

I shall make the same answer with regard to M. Maurras and the other instructors of the _Action Française_, of whom it will be said even more truly that they are men of action and that it is indefensible to cite them as ‘clerks’. These men claim to carry out their action by virtue of a doctrine derived from a wholly objective study of history, from the exercise of the most purely scientific spirit. And they owe the special attention with which they are listened to by men of action entirely to this claim that they are _men of learning_, men who are fighting for a truth discovered in the austerity of the laboratory. They owe it to their pose as combative ‘clerks’, but essentially _as ‘clerks’_.

(_c_) Finally I should like to define my views on another point and to say that when the ‘clerk’ descends to the market place I only consider that he is failing to perform his functions when he does so, like those I have mentioned, for the purpose of securing the triumph of a realist passion, whether of class, race or nation. When Gerson entered the pulpit of Notre Dame to denounce the murderers of Louis d’Orléans; when Spinoza, at the peril of his life, went and wrote the words ‘Ultimi barbarorum’ on the gate of those who had murdered the de Witts; when Voltaire fought for the Calas family; when Zola and Duclaux came forward to take part in a celebrated lawsuit (Dreyfus affair); all these ‘clerks’ were carrying out their functions as ‘clerks’ in the fullest and noblest manner. They were the officiants of abstract justice and were sullied with no passion for a worldly object.[34] Moreover, there exists a certain criterion by which we may know whether the ‘clerk’ who takes public action does so in conformity with his true functions; and that is, that he is immediately reviled by the laymen, whose interests he thwarts (Socrates, Jesus). We may say beforehand that the ‘clerk’ who is praised by the laymen is a traitor to his office.

But let us return to the modern ‘clerk’s’ adhesion to political passions.

It is concerning national passions that this adhesion seems to me particularly novel and big with results. Once again, of course humanity did not have to wait for the present age to see the ‘clerks’ indulge in this passion. Without mentioning the poets, whose tender hearts have always sighed ‘Nescio qua natale dulcedine solum cunctos Ducit’; and, as regards the philosophers, without going back to antiquity when all, previous to the Stoics, were ardent patriots; we may yet observe in history (since the coming of Christianity and long before our own days) writers, men of learning, artists, moralists, even ministers of the ‘Universal’ Church, who more or less explicitly displayed a special attachment for the group to which they belonged. But this affection among these men was based on reason; it showed itself capable of judging its object, of denouncing its errors when they believed such errors had been committed. Need I recall how Fénelon and Massillon denounced certain wars of Louis XIV? How Voltaire condemned the destruction of the Palatinate? How Renan denounced the violences of Napoleon? Buckle, the intolerance of England towards the French Revolution? And, in our own times, Nietzsche, the brutalities of Germany towards France?[35] It was reserved for our own time to see men of thought, or men giving themselves out as such, professing openly that they would not submit their patriotism to any check on the part of their judgment, proclaiming (like Barrès) that ‘even if the country is wrong, we must think it in the right’, denouncing as ‘traitors to the nation’ those of their compatriots who retain their liberty of mind, or at least of speech, in regard to their country. In France we have not forgotten how, during the last war, so many ‘thinkers’ attacked Renan for the liberty of his judgments on the history of his country.[36] Nor have we forgotten how, a little before that, a whole set of young men (who claimed to share in the life of the spirit) bristled up against one of their masters (Jacob) who tried to teach them a patriotism which did not exclude all right of criticism. After the violation of Belgium and other excesses of the Germans, in October, 1914, a German teacher said: ‘There is nothing for which we need make excuses.’[37] Now, if their own countries had been in a similar position, the same thing would have been said by most of the spiritual leaders of that time; by Barrès in France, by d’Annunzio in Italy, by Kipling in England, if we may judge by his conduct during the attack of his nation upon the Boers, and by William James in the United States, if we recall his attitude when his compatriots seized the island of Cuba.[38] I am quite ready to agree that this sort of blind patriotism makes powerful nations, and that the patriotism of Fénelon or of Renan is not the sort which secures empires. It remains to determine whether the function of ‘clerks’ is to secure empires.

This adhesion of the ‘clerks’ to national passion is particularly remarkable among those whom I shall call ‘pre-eminently clerks’; I mean the Churchmen. In all European countries during the past fifty years, the immense majority of these men have not only given their adhesion to the national feeling[39] and therefore have ceased to provide the world with the spectacle of hearts solely occupied with God--but they seem to have adopted this feeling with the same passion as that I have pointed out as existing among men of letters, and they too appear to be ready to support their own countries in the most flagrant injustices. During the last war this could be most clearly seen in the German clergy, from whom no one could drag the shadow of a protest against the excesses committed by their nation, and whose silence does not appear to have been caused solely by prudence.[40] In contrast to this attitude I refer the reader to that of the Spanish theologians of the sixteenth century, to men like Bartholomew de las Casas and Vittoria, earnestly denouncing the cruelties committed by their compatriots in the conquest of America. I do not claim that similar behaviour was then the rule among Churchmen, but I should like to ask whether there is a single country to-day where they would do likewise, or where they would even wish to be permitted to do so?[41]

I shall point out another characteristic of patriotism in the modern ‘clerk’: xenophobia. The hatred of man for ‘the man from outside’ (the _horsain_), his rejection of and scorn for everything which is not ‘from his own home’, all these impulses, so constant among peoples and apparently necessary to their existence, have been adopted in our days by the so-called men of thought, and adopted with a seriousness of application, _an absence of simple-mindedness_, which go far towards making this adoption worthy of notice. We know how systematically the mass of German teachers in the past fifty years have announced the decline of every civilization but that of their own race, and how in France the admirers of Nietzsche or Wagner, even of Kant or Goethe, were treated by Frenchmen who claimed to share in the life of the spirit.[42] You may estimate how curiously new this form of patriotism is among the men of thought in France by thinking of Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Michelet, Proudhon, Renan, to name only patriotic ‘clerks’ in the age immediately preceding that we are considering. Is it necessary to say once again how much the ‘clerks’ have stimulated the passion of the laymen by adopting this xenophobia?

I shall be told that during the past fifty years, and especially during the twenty years before the war, the attitude of foreigners to France was such that the most violent national partiality was forced upon all Frenchmen who wished to safeguard the nation, and that the only true patriots were those who consented to this fanaticism. I say nothing to the contrary; I only say that the ‘clerks’ who indulged in this fanaticism betrayed their duty, which is precisely to set up a corporation whose sole cult is that of justice and of truth, in opposition to the peoples and the injustice to which they are condemned by their religions of this earth. It is true indeed that these new ‘clerks’ declare that they do not know what is meant by justice, truth, and other ‘metaphysical fogs’, that for them the true is determined by the useful, the just by circumstances. All these things were taught by Callicles, but with this difference; he revolted all the important thinkers of his time.

It must be admitted that the German ‘clerks’ led the way in this adhesion of the modern ‘clerk’ to patriotic fanaticism. The French ‘clerks’ were, and long remained, animated with the most perfect spirit of justice towards foreign cultures (think of the cosmopolitanism of the Romantics!), when already Lessing, Schlegel, Fichte, Goerres were organizing in their hearts a violent adoration for ‘everything German’, and a scorn for everything not German. The nationalist ‘clerk’ is essentially a German invention. This, moreover, is a theme which will frequently recur in this book, i.e. that most of the moral and political attitudes adopted by the ‘clerks’ of Europe in the past fifty years are of German origin, and that in the world of spiritual things the victory of Germany is now complete.

It may be said that Germany, by creating for herself the nationalist ‘clerk’ and thereby acquiring the additional strength we know she has acquired, made this species of ‘clerk’ necessary to all other countries. It is undeniable that from the moment when Germany had a Mommsen, France especially was bound to have a Barrès, under penalty of finding herself in a position of great inferiority in nationalist fanaticism, and of seeing her existence seriously menaced. Every Frenchman attached to the continuance of his nation must rejoice that in the last half century France has possessed a fanatically nationalist literature. Yet one would like this Frenchman to rise for a moment superior to his interest, and, faithful in this to the honour of his race, to think it sad that the course of events in the world should force him to rejoice in such a thing.

More generally, it may be admitted that a realist attitude has been imposed on the modern ‘clerks’, chiefly the French ‘clerks’, by exterior and interior political conditions which have arisen in their nations. However serious this may be, it would be much less serious if we found that the ‘clerks’ deplored it while they submitted to it, if they felt how much their own value is diminished by it, how greatly civilization is menaced by it, to what an extent the universe is rendered ugly by it. But this is exactly what we do not see. On the contrary, we see them joyfully carrying out this realism; we see them believing that they are rendered greater by their nationalist fury, that it is a service to civilization, an embellishment to humanity. Then one feels that one is confronted by something different from a function thwarted by the events of the moment, and faced with a cataclysm of moral notions in those who educate the world.

I should like to point out two other characteristics in the patriotism of the modern ‘clerks’ which seem new to me, the second of which has not failed to stimulate this passion greatly among the peoples.

The first can best be brought out by contrast with the lines written by an author of the fifteenth century, lines which are the more remarkable since he who wrote them proved by his deeds how deep was his love for his native country. ‘All cities,’ says Guicciardini, ‘all States, all Kingdoms, are mortal; everything comes to an end, either by accident or by the course of nature. That is why a citizen who witnesses the end of his country cannot feel so distressed at her misfortune with so much reason as he would lament his own ruin. His country has met the fate which in every way she was bound to meet; the misfortune is wholly for him whose unhappy lot has caused him to be born in a time when such a disaster had to occur.’ One wonders whether there is a single modern thinker, attached to his country as the author of that passage was to his, who would dare to form, still less to express, a judgment of her so extraordinarily free in its melancholy. And here we come upon one of the great impieties of the moderns: The refusal to believe that above their nations there exists a development of a superior kind, by which they will be swept away like all other things. The ancients, so completely the adorers of their States, nevertheless placed them beneath Fate. The ancient City was under divine protection, but in no wise believed that she herself was divine and necessarily eternal. All the literature of the ancients shows us that, in their opinion, the duration of their institutions was a precarious thing, solely due to the favour of the Gods, who at any time might withdraw that favour.[43] We have Thucydides contemplating the image of a world in which Athens should have ceased to exist; we have Polybius showing us the conqueror of Carthage meditating over the burning town: ‘And Rome too shall meet her fatal hour.’ We have Virgil praising the peasant of the fields for whom ‘res romanae et peritura regna’ are of no value.

It was reserved for the moderns to make of their City a tower which defies the heavens, and to do it with the aid of their ‘clerks’.

The second characteristic of the patriotism of the modern ‘clerks’ is a desire to relate the form of their own minds to a form of the _national_ mind, which they naturally brandish against other national forms of mind. We all know how, during the last fifty years, so many men of learning on both banks of the Rhine have asserted their views in the name of _French_ science, of _German_ science. We know how acridly so many of our writers in the same period have vibrated with _French_ sensibility, _French_ intelligence, _French_ philosophy. Some declare that they are the incarnation of Aryan thought, Aryan painting, Aryan music, to which others reply by discovering that a certain master had a Jewish grandmother, and so venerate Semitic genius in him. Here it is not a question of inquiring whether the form of mind of a scholar or an artist is the signature of his nationality or his race and to what extent, but of noting the desire of the modern ‘clerks’ that it should be so, and noting how new a thing this is. Racine and La Bruyère never dreamed of setting up their works before themselves and before the world as manifestation of the French mind, nor did Goethe and Wincklemann relate theirs to the genius of Germany.[44] Here, chiefly among the artists, is a very remarkable fact. It is very remarkable to see men whose activity consists, one might say professionally, in the assertion of individuality, men who became so violently conscious of this truth a century ago with the Romantic movement, now (as it were) abdicating this sort of consciousness and trying to feel themselves as the expression of some general existence, a manifestation of a collective mind. It is true that this abdication of the individual in favour of ‘a great impersonal and eternal Whole’ satisfies another sort of Romanticism. It is true that this impulse of the artist may also be explained by the desire (which Barrès does not conceal) to increase the enjoyment of himself by himself, since the consciousness of the individual ego is doubled in profundity by consciousness of the national ego, while at the same time the artist finds new lyrical themes in this second consciousness. It may also be admitted that the artist is not blind to his own interest in calling himself the expression of the genius of his nation, thereby inviting the whole race to applaud itself in the work he put before it.[45] Whatever their motives may have been, the great minds or the minds reputed such, by relating the whole of their value so noisily to their nation, have laboured in a direction contrary to that expected of them; they have flattered the vanity of nations, they have fed full the arrogance with which each nation flings its superiority in the face of its neighbours.[46]

I cannot better bring out all the novelty of this attitude of the ‘clerk’ than by quoting the remark of Renan, which would be signed by all men of thought from Socrates onwards: ‘Man belongs neither to his language nor to his race; he belongs only to himself, for he is a free being, that is, a moral being.’ To this Barrès replies, amid the applause of his compeers: ‘To be moral is _not to wish to be free from one’s race_.’ Here, obviously, is an exaltation of the gregarious spirit which the nations had heard little of before from the priests of the spirit.

The modern ‘clerks’ do better still. They declare that their thought cannot be good, that it cannot bear good fruit, unless they remain on their native soil, unless they are not ‘uprooted’ (‘_déracinés_’). They congratulate A on working in _his_ Bearn, B in _his_ Berry, C in _his_ Brittany. And they not only proclaim this law for the poets, but for critics, moralists, philosophers, the servants of purely intellectual activity. To declare the mind good to the extent of its refusal to liberate itself from the earth is something which will make the modern ‘clerks’ certain of a conspicuous place in the annals of the spiritual life. Obviously, the feelings of this class of men has changed since Plutarch taught: ‘Man is not a plant created to be immobile and to have his roots fixed in the soil where he was born,’ and since Antisthenes replied to his colleagues who boasted that they were native to the soil, that ‘they shared this honour with the slugs and grasshoppers’.