Part 7

This exhortation to concrete advantages and to that form of soul which procures them, is expressed by the modern ‘clerk’ in another very remarkable teaching: By praise of the military life and the feelings which go with it, and by contempt for civil life and the morality it implies. We know the doctrine preached in Europe during the past fifty years by its most esteemed moralists, their apology for war ‘which purifies’, their veneration for the man of arms ‘the archtype of moral beauty’, their proclamation of the supreme morality of ‘violence’ or of those who settle their differences by duels and not before a jury, while they declare that respect for contracts is the ‘weapon of the weak’, the need for justice the ‘characteristic of slaves’. It is not betraying the disciples of Nietzsche or Sorel--that is, the great majority of contemporary men of letters who attempt to set up a scale of moral values for the world--to say that according to them Colleoni is a far superior specimen of humanity to l’Hôpital. The estimates of the _Voyage du Condottiere_ are not peculiar to the author of that work. Here is an idealization of practical activity, which humanity had never before heard from its educators, at least from those who speak dogmatically.

I shall be told that Nietzsche and his school do not extol the military life because it procures material advantages, but on the contrary, because it is the type of disinterested realism, and in opposition to the realism which in their opinion is the characteristic of civilian life. Yet it is none the less true that the way of life praised by these moralists is in fact that which pre-eminently brings material advantages. Whatever may be said by the author of _Reflections on Violence_ and his disciples, war is more profitable than the counting house; to take is more advantageous than to exchange; Colleoni possesses more than Franklin. (Naturally, I am speaking of the successful military man, since Nietzsche and Sorel never speak of the merchant who goes bankrupt.)

Moreover, no one will deny that the irrational activities, of which the military instinct is only one aspect, are extolled by their great modern apostles for their practical value. Their historian has put it admirably: The Romanticism of Nietzsche, Sorel, and Bergson is a _utilitarian_ Romanticism.

Let me insist that what I am pointing to here, is not the modern ‘clerk’s’ extolling of the military spirit, but of the warlike instinct. It is the cult of the warlike instinct, outside all social spirit of discipline or sacrifice which is meant by the following assertions of Nietzsche, glorified by a French moralist whom himself has numerous followers:--

‘The values of the warrior aristocracy are founded on a powerful bodily constitution, excellent health, without forgetting all that is necessary to the upkeep of that overflowing vigour--war, adventure, hunting, dancing, physical games and exercises, and in general everything which implies a robust, free and joyous activity.’

‘That audacity of noble races, a mad, absurd, spontaneous audacity ... their indifference and scorn for all safety of body, for life, comfort ...’

‘The superb blond beast wandering in search of prey and carnage ...’

‘The terrible gaiety and profound joy felt by heroes in all destruction, in all the pleasures of victory and cruelty.’

The moralist who quotes those remarks (Sorel, _Reflexions sur la Violence_, p. 360) adds, in order to leave no doubt about his recommendation of them to his fellow human beings: ‘It is quite evident that liberty would be seriously compromised if men came to look upon the Homeric values’ (which, for him, are the values just praised by Nietzsche) ‘as being characteristic of the barbarous peoples only.’

Is it necessary to observe how, here again, the moral presentation dominant among the world’s educators is essentially Germanic, and shows the bankruptcy of Graeco-Roman thought? Before our times you do not find in France a single serious moralist (including de Maistre) or even a poet (if you consider only the great ones) who praises the ‘pleasures of victory and cruelty’.[113] And it is the same for ancient Rome, among the nations to whom war had given world supremacy. I do not find a single passage which puts forward the instincts of prey as the supreme form of human morality in Cicero, Seneca, or Tacitus, or even in Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Claudian. On the other hand, I find a great many which attribute this rank to the instincts on which civil life is based.[114] Moreover, in primitive Greece, long before the philosophers, the myths very soon give an important place to civil morality. In a poem of Hesiod the tomb of Cycnus is engulfed in the waters by Apollo’s command, because Cycnus was a brigand. The defence of warlike instincts by Mediterranean moralists will be one of the amazements of history. Some of them, moreover, seem uneasy about it, and feel they ought to claim that the Homeric values (we have seen what they mean by that) ‘are very close to the values of Corneille’[115]--as if the French poet’s heroes, with all their sense of devotion to duty and the State, had anything in common with lovers of adventure, prey, and carnage!

It will be observed that these passages from Nietzsche praise the military life apart from any political aim.[116] And, in fact, the modern ‘clerks’ teach men that war implies a morality _in itself_ and should be exercised even apart from any utility. This thesis, so familiar in Barrès, has been defended in its full splendour by a young hero who is an educator of the soul for a whole French generation:

‘In my country we love war and secretly desire it. We have always made war. Not to conquer a province, not to exterminate a nation, not to settle a conflict of interests.... We make war for the sake of making war, with no other purpose.’[117]

The old French moralists, even the soldiers (Vauvenargues, Vigny), looked upon war as a sad necessity; their descendants recommend it as a noble inutility. Yet, here again, the cult preached as apart from the practical and as an art happens to be eminently favourable to the practical--useless war is the best preparation for useful war.

This teaching leads the modern ‘clerk’ (we have just seen it in Nietzsche) to confer a _moral_ value upon physical exercise and to proclaim _the morality of sport_--a most remarkable thing indeed among those who for twenty centuries have exhorted man to situate good in states of the mind. The moralists of sport, moreover, do not all shuffle over the practical essence of their doctrine. Young people, Barrès clearly teaches, should be trained in physical strength, for the greatness of the country. The modern educator goes for his inspiration, not to those who strolled in the Lyceum or to the solitaries of Clairvaux, but to the founder of a little town in the Peloponnesus. Moreover, our age has seen this new thing: Men who claim to belong to the spiritual life teaching that the Greece to venerate is Sparta with her gymnasiums, not the city of Plato or Praxiteles, while others maintain that in antiquity we should honour Rome and not Greece. All these things are perfectly consistent in those who desire to preach to humanity nothing but strong constitutions and solid ramparts.[118]

The preaching of realism leads the modern ‘Clerk’ to certain teachings, whose novelty in his history is not sufficiently noticed, nor what a break they form with the teaching which his class has given to men for the past two thousand years.

(_a_) _The extolling of courage_, or more precisely the exhortation to make the supreme virtue Man’s aptitude to face death, while all other virtues, however lofty, are placed below it. This teaching, openly the teaching of Nietzsche, Sorel, Péguy, Barrès, was always the teaching of poets and generals, but is entirely new among the ‘clerks’, I mean among men who put before the world a scale of values in the name of philosophical reflection, or who are willing to be considered as such. From Socrates to Renan they had considered courage as a virtue, but on a lower plane. All, more or less openly, teach with Plato: ‘In the first rank of virtue are wisdom and temperance; courage only comes afterwards.’[119] The impulses they exhort man to venerate are not those whereby he strives to quench his thirst for placing himself in the real, but those whereby he moderates it. It was reserved for our time to see the priests of the spiritual placing in the first rank of forms of soul that which is indispensable to man if he is to conquer and to lay foundations.[120] However, this practical value of courage, plainly expressed by Nietzsche and Sorel, is not equally so expressed by all the modern moralists who praise this virtue. This brings another of their teachings before us:--

(_b_) _The extolling of honour_, by which is meant all those impulses which cause a man to risk his life for no practical interest--to be precise, from desire of glory--_but which are an excellent school of practical courage_, and were always extolled by those who lead men to the conquest of material things. In this connection, let the reader think of the respect in which the institution of the duel has always been held in armies, in spite of certain repressions inspired solely by practical considerations.[121]

Here again, the position attributed to these impulses by so many modern moralists is something new among them, especially in the country of Montaigne, Pascal, La Bruyère, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Renan, who, when they extol honour, mean something very different from man’s cult of his own glory.[122] Nevertheless, the most remarkable thing about all this is that the cult of man for his own glory is currently preached by the Churchmen as a virtue which leads Man to God. Is it not amazing to hear words like the following from a Christian pulpit? ‘The love of grandeurs is the path to God, and the heroic impulse which fully coincides with the search for glories in their cause, permits him who had forgotten God or who thought he knew not God to re-invent Him, to discover this last summit after temporary ascents have rendered him accustomed to the dizziness and air of altitudes.’[123] One cannot forebear quoting the lesson given by a true disciple of Jesus to a Christian teacher who had also strangely forgotten his Master’s word:--

‘Have you noticed that the eight Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospels, the whole of primitive Christian literature, contain not one word which sets military virtues among those which lead to the Kingdom of Heaven?’ (Renan, _First Letter to Strauss_.)[124]

Let me observe that I am not reproaching the Christian preacher for giving their due to glory and other earthly passions, I am only reproaching him for trying to pretend that he is in harmony with his institution when he does so. We do not ask that the Christian shall not violate the Christian law; we only ask him to know that he is breaking it when he does break it. This seems to me admirably brought out by the remark of Cardinal Lavigerie who was asked: ‘What would you do, Eminence, if someone slapped your right cheek?’ and who replied, ‘I know what I ought to do, but I do not know what I should do.’ _I know what I ought to do_, and therefore what I ought to teach. A man who speaks in that way may give way to every species of violence, and yet maintain Christian morality. Here actions are nothing; the judgment on the actions is everything.

Must I repeat that I am not deploring the fact that the cults of honour and courage should be preached to human beings; I am deploring the fact that they are preached _by the ‘clerks’_. Civilization, I repeat, seems to me possible only if humanity consents to a division of functions, if side by side with those who carry out the lay passions and extol the virtues serviceable to them there exists a class of men who depreciate these passions and glorify the advantages which are beyond the material. What I think serious is that this class of men should cease to perform their office, and that those whose duty was to quench human pride should extol the same impulses of soul as the leaders of armies.

I shall be told that this preaching is imposed on the ‘clerks’, at least in war-time, by the laymen, by the States, who to-day intend to mobilize all the moral resources of the nation for their ends.[125] But what amazes me is not so much that I see the ‘clerks’ preaching in this manner, as to see them do it with such docility, such absence of disgust, such enthusiasm, such joy.... The truth is that the ‘clerks’ have become as much laymen as the laymen themselves.

(_c_) _The extolling of harshness_ and the scorn for human love--pity, charity, benevolence. Here again, the modern ‘clerks’ are the _moralists_ of realism. They are not content to remind the world that harshness is necessary in order ‘to succeed’ and that charity is an encumbrance, nor have they limited themselves to preaching to their nation or party what Zarathustra preached to his disciples: ‘Be hard, be pitiless, and in this way dominate.’ They proclaim the moral nobility of harshness and the ignominy of charity. This teaching, which is the foundation of Nietzsche’s work, need not surprise one in a country which has not provided the world with a single great apostle,[126] but it is very remarkable in the land of Vincent de Paul and the defender of the Calas. Lines like the following, which might be an extract from the _Genealogy of Morals_, seem to me something wholly new coming from the pen of a French moralist: ‘This perverted pity has degraded love.[127] It has been given the name of charity, and the weak have received its dew. Night after night the seed of this calamity has been scattered. It conquers the earth. It fills the solitary places. In whatever country you go, you cannot go about for a single day without meeting this withered face with its commonplace gestures, inspired by the sole desire of prolonging its shameful life.’[128] There again we can observe how the modern realists have advanced beyond their predecessors. When Machiavelli declares that ‘a Prince in order to maintain his power is forced to govern in a manner contrary to charity and humanity’, he is simply saying that to act contrary to charity may be a practical necessity, but he does not in the least vouch that charity is a degradation of the soul. This teaching is the contribution of the nineteenth century to the moral education of mankind.

Sometimes the modern ‘clerks’ claim that in preaching inhumanity they are only continuing the teaching of their great ancestors, particularly of Spinoza on account of his famous proposition: ‘Pity in itself is bad and useless in a soul which lives according to reason.’ Is it necessary to point out that here pity is depreciated, not to the benefit of inhumanity, but to the benefit of humanity _guided by reason_, because reason alone ‘enables us to give aid to others with certainty’. And Spinoza, determined to stress the fact that for him pity is only inferior to reasoned kindness, adds: ‘It must be fully understood that I am here speaking of the man who lives by reason. For if a man is never led by reason or by pity to go to the assistance of others, then assuredly he deserves the name of inhuman, since he retains no resemblance to a man.’ Let me add that the apostles of harshness cannot claim either that they are supported by the fanatics of justice (Michelet, Proudhon, Renouvier) who, by sacrificing love to justice, do perhaps end up in harshness, but not in a joyous harshness which is precisely the harshness preached by the modern realists, who say--perhaps rightly--that it is the only fertile kind.[129]

This extolling of harshness seems to me to have borne more fruit than any other preaching by the modern ‘clerks’. It is a commonplace that among the great majority of the (so-called) thinking young men, in France for instance, harshness is to-day an object of respect, while human love in all its forms is considered a rather laughable thing. These young men have a cult for doctrines which respect nothing but force, pay no attention to the lamentations of suffering and proclaim the inevitability of war and slavery, while they despise those who are revolted by such prospects and desire to alter them. I should like these cults to be compared with the literary aesthetics of these young men, their veneration for certain contemporary novelists and poets in whom the absence of human sympathy reaches a rare pitch of perfection, and whom they plainly venerate, especially for that characteristic. And I should like you to observe the gloomy gravity and arrogance with which these young men subscribe to these ‘iron’ doctrines. It seems to me that the modern ‘clerks’ have created in so-called cultivated society a positive _Romanticism of harshness_.

They have also created a _Romanticism of contempt_, at least in France, and notably with Barrès, and indeed since Flaubert and Baudelaire. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in recent times contempt has been practised in France for reasons quite other than aesthetic. These peoples have come to see that by feeling contempt for others they are not only obtaining the pleasure of a lofty attitude, but that when they are really expert in expressing contempt they harm what they despise, do it a real damage. And in fact the kind of contempt which Barrès expresses for the Jews and which certain royalist teachers have displayed for democratic institutions every morning for the past twenty years, do really harm their victims, at least among those very numerous artistic minds for whom a superbly executory gesture is as good as an argument. The modern ‘clerks’ deserve a place of honour in the history of realism; they have come to understand the practical value of contempt.

It may also be said that they have created a _cult for cruelty_. Nietzsche proclaims that ‘every superior culture is built up on cruelty’, a doctrine which is explicitly proclaimed in many places by Barrès, author of _Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort_. Nevertheless, the cult of cruelty, which may also be thought necessary ‘to succeed’[130] has remained limited to a few particularly artistic sensibilities, at least in France. It is very far from becoming the cult of a school, like harshness and contempt. Here again we may notice how new this cult is in the land of those who said ‘Cowardice, the mother of cruelty’ (Montaigne), or, to quote a military moralist, ‘a hero does not feel proud of carrying hunger and misery among foreigners, but of enduring them for the State; nor of giving death, but of risking it.’ (Vauvenargues).[131]

(_d_) _The cult of success_, I mean the teaching which says that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt. This philosophy which is professed by many a modern teacher in political life (it may be said, by all in Germany since Hegel, and by a large number in France since de Maistre) is also professed in private life, and has borne its fruits there. In the so-called thinking world to-day there are innumerable people who think they are demonstrating their aristocratic morality by declaring their systematic esteem for all who ‘succeed’ and their scorn for all who fail. One moralist places to the credit of Napoleon’s greatness of soul his contempt for ‘the unlucky’; others do the same thing in regard to Mazarin, Vauban, Mussolini. It cannot be denied that the ‘clerks’ are thereby keeping an excellent school of realism, since the cult of success and the contempt for misfortune are obviously admirable moral conditions for obtaining material advantages. Nor can it be denied that this teaching is entirely new among them, especially among the ‘clerks’ of the Latin races, I mean those whose ancestors had taught mankind to honour merit apart from its achievements, to honour Hector as much as Achilles, the Curiatii more than their successful rivals.[132]

We have just seen that the modern moralists extol the warrior at the expense of the man of justice. They also extol him at the expense of the man of learning and, there again, they preach to the world the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life. We all know Nietzsche’s hue and cry against the man of the study, the man of erudition, ‘the mirror man,’ whose only passion is to understand. And also Nietzsche’s esteem for the life of the mind solely insofar as it is emotion, lyricism, action, partiality; his derisive laughter at ‘objective’ methodical research devoted to ‘the horrible old woman known as truth’. And we know Sorel’s denunciations of societies which ‘give a privileged place to the amateurs of _purely intellectual things_’;[133] those of Barrès, Lemaître, Brunetière, thirty years ago, intimating to the ‘intellectuals’ that they are a type of humanity ‘inferior to the soldier’; those of Péguy, who admires philosophies to the extent that ‘they are good fighters’, and admires Descartes because he was in the army, and the dialecticians of French monarchism solely because they are ready to be killed for the sake of their views.[134] I shall be told that most often this is the mere wild talk of men of letters, the posturing of lyricists, to which it is unjust to attribute a dogmatic meaning; that Nietzsche, Barrès and Péguy denounce the life of study on account of their poetic temperaments, their aversion from everything lacking in picturesqueness and the spirit of adventure, and not their resolution to abase disinterestedness. To which I reply that these poets give themselves out as serious thinkers (notice their tone, _quite free from_ naiveté); that the immense majority of their readers accept them as such; that, even if it were true that in depreciating the man of study their motive is not to abase disinterestedness, it is none the less true in fact that the manner of living they hold up to the laughter of mankind happens to be the very type of the disinterested life, while the life they extol at its expense is the very type of practical activity (at least more practical than that of the man of study, for it will be admitted that the activity of du Guesclin and Napoleon is more likely to acquire material advantages than the activity of Spinoza and Mabillon); that, moreover, what these thinkers despise in the man of study is precisely the man who lays no foundations, who does not conquer, who does not predicate the capture of its environment by the species, or who, if he does predicate it, as the scientist does by his discoveries, retains for himself only the joy of knowledge and abandons the practical exploitation of his discoveries to others. In Nietzsche, the scorn for the man of study to the benefit of the warrior is only an episode in a desire which nobody will deny inspires the whole of his work as well as the work of Sorel, Barrès and Péguy: _The desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action._[135]