This grand and magnificent system of new truths resembles a tower of which the first story, quickly finished, at once becomes accessible to the public. The public ascends the structure and is requested by its constructors to look about, not at the sky and at surrounding space, but right before it, towards the ground, so that it may at last become familiar with the country in which it lives. Certainly, the point of view is good, and the advice is well thought-out. The conclusion that the public will have an accurate view is not warranted, for the state of its eyes must be examined, to ascertain whether it is near or far-sighted, or if the retina naturally, or through habit, is sensitive to certain colors. In the same way the French of the eighteenth century must be considered, the structure of their inward vision, that is to say, the fixed form of their intelligence which they are bringing with them, unknowingly and unwillingly, up upon their new tower.
Its signs, duration and power.—Its origin and publicsupporters.—Its vocabulary, grammar and style.—Itsmethod, merits and defects.
This fixed intelligence consists of the classic spirit, which applied to the scientific acquisitions of the period, produces the philosophy of the century and the doctrines of the Revolution. Various signs denote its presence, and notably its oratorical, regular and correct style, wholly consisting of ready-made phrases and contiguous ideas. It lasts two centuries, from Malherbe and Balzac to Delille and de Fontanes, and during this long period, no man of intellect, save two or three, and then only in private memoirs, as in the case of Saint-Simon, also in familiar letters like those of the marquis and bailly de Mirabeau, either dares or can withdraw himself from its empire. Far from disappearing with the ancient regime it forms the matrix out of which every discourse and document issues, even the phrases and vocabulary of the Revolution. Now, what is more effective than a ready-made mold, enforced, accepted, in which by virtue of natural tendency, of tradition and of education, everyone can enclose their thinking? This one, accordingly, is a historic force, and of the highest order; to understand it let us consider how it came into being.—It appeared together with the regular monarchy and polite conversation, and it accompanies these, not accidentally, but naturally and automatically. For it is product of the new society, of the new regime and its customs: I mean of an aristocracy left idle due the encroaching monarchy, of people well born and well educated who, withdrawn from public activity, fall back on conversation and pass their leisure sampling the different serious or refined pleasures of the intellect.3201Eventually, they have no other role nor interest than to talk, to listen, to entertain themselves agreeably and with ease, on all subjects, grave or gay, which may interest men or even women of society, that's their great affair. In the seventeenth century they are called "les honnêtes gens"3202and from now on a writer, even the most abstract, addresses himself to them. "A gentleman," says Descartes, "need not have read all books nor have studiously acquired all that is taught in the schools;" and he entitles his last treatise, "A search for Truth according to natural light, which alone, without aid of Religion or Philosophy, determines the truths a gentleman should possess on all matters forming the subjects of his thoughts."3203In short, from one end of his philosophy to the other, the only qualification he demands of his readers is "natural good sense" added to the common stock of experience acquired by contact with the world.—As these make up the audience they are likewise the judges. "One must study the taste of the court," says Molière,3204"for in no place are verdicts more just. . . With simple common sense and intercourse with people of refinement, a habit of mind is there obtained which, without comparison, forms a more accurate, judgment of things than the rusty attainments of the pedants." From this time forth, it may be said that the arbiter of truth and of taste is not, as before, an erudite Scaliger, but a man of the world, a La Rochefoucauld, or a Tréville.3205The pedant and, after him, the savant, the specialist, is set aside. "True honest people," says Nicole after Pascal, "require no sign. They need not be divined; they join in the conversation going on as they enter the room. They are not styled either poets or surveyors, but they are the judges of all these."3206In the eighteenth century they constitute the sovereign authority. In the great crowd of blockheads sprinkled with pedants, there is, says Voltaire, "a small group apart called good society, which, rich, educated and polished, forms, you might say, the flower of humanity; it is for this group that the greatest men have labored; it is this group which accords social recognition."3207Admiration, favor, importance, belong not to those who are worthy of it but to those who address themselves to this group. "In 1789," said the Abbé Maury, "the French Academy alone enjoyed any esteem in France, and it really bestowed a standing. That of the Sciences signified nothing in public opinion, any more than that of Inscriptions. . . The languages is considered a science for fools. D'Alembert was ashamed of belonging to the Academy of Sciences. Only a handful of people listen to a mathematician, a chemist, etc. but the man of letters, the lecturer, has the world at his feet."3208—Under such a strong pressure the mind necessarily follows a literary and verbal route in conformity with the exigencies, the proprieties, the tastes, and the degree of attention and of instruction of its public.3209Hence the classic mold,—formed out of the habit of speaking, writing and thinking for a drawing room audience.3210
This is immediately evident in its style and language. Between Amyot, Rabelais and Montaigne on the one hand, and Châteaubriand, Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac on the other, classic French comes into being and dies. From the very first it is described at the language of "honest people." It is fashioned not merely for them, but by them, and Vaugelas,3211their secretary, devotes himself for thirty years to the registry of decisions according to the usages only of good society. Hence, throughout, both in vocabulary and in grammar, the language is refashioned over and over again, according to the cast of their intellects, which is the prevailing intellect.—
In the first place the vocabulary is diminished:
* Most of the words specially employed on erudite and technical subjects, expressions that are too Greek or too Latin, terms peculiar to the schools, to science, to occupations, to the household, are excluded from discourse;
* those too closely denoting a particular occupation or profession are not considered proper in general conversation.
* A vast number of picturesque and expressive words are dropped, all that are crude, gaulois or naifs, all that are local and provincial, or personal and made-up, all familiar and proverbial locutions,3212many brusque, familiar and frank turns of thought, every haphazard, telling metaphor, almost every description of impulsive and dexterous utterance throwing a flash of light into the imagination and bringing into view the precise, colored and complete form, but of which a too vivid impression would run counter to the proprieties of polite conversation.
"One improper word," said Vaugelas, "is all that is necessary to bring a person in society into contempt,"
and, on the eve of the Revolution, an objectionable term denounced by Madame de Luxembourg still consigns a man to the rank of "espèces," because correct expression is ever an element of good manners.—Language, through this constant scratching, is attenuated and becomes colorless: Vaugelas estimates that one-half of the phrases and terms employed by Amyot are set aside.3213With the exception of La Fontaine, an isolated and spontaneous genius, who reopens the old sources, and La Bruyère, a bold seeker, who opens a fresh source, and Voltaire an incarnate demon who, in his anonymous and pseudonymous writings, gives the rein to the violent, crude expressions of his inspiration,3214the terms which are most appropriate fall into desuetude. One day, Gresset, in a discourse at the Academy, dares utter four or five of these,3215relating, I believe, to carriages and head-dresses, whereupon murmurs at once burst forth. During his long retreat he had become provincial and lost the touch.—By degrees, discourses are composed of "general expressions" only. These are even employed, in accordance with Buffon's precept, to designate concrete objects. They are more in conformity with the polished courtesy which smoothes over, appeases, and avoids rough or familiar expressions, to which some views appear gross or rude unless partly hidden by a veil. This makes it easier for the superficial listener; prevailing terms alone will immediately arouse current and common ideas; they are intelligible to every man from the single fact that he belongs to the drawing-room; special terms, on the contrary, demand an effort of the memory or of the imagination. Suppose that, in relation to Franks or to savages, I should mention "a battle-ax," which would be at once understood; should I mention a "tomahawk," or a "francisque,"3216many would imagine that I was speaking Teuton or Iroquois.3217In this respect the more fashionable and refined the style, the more punctilious the effort. Every appropriate term is banished from poetry; if one happens to enter the mind it must be evaded or replaced by a paraphrase. An eighteenth century poet can hardly permit himself to employ more than one-third of the dictionary, poetic language at last becomes so restricted as to compel a man with anything to say not to express himself in verse.3218
On the other hand the more you prune the more you thin out. Reduced to a select vocabulary the Frenchman deals with fewer subjects, but he describes them more agreeably and more clearly. "Courtesy, accuracy", (Urbanité, exactitude!), these two words, born at the same time with the French Academy, describes in a nutshell the reform of which it is the tool, and which the drawing-room, by it, and alongside of it, imposes on the public. Grand seigniors in retirement, and unoccupied fine ladies, enjoy the examination of the subtleties of words for the purpose of composing maxims, definitions and characters. With admirable scrupulousness and infinitely delicate tact, writers and people society apply themselves to weighing each word and each phrase in order to fix its sense, to measure its force and bearing, to determine its affinities, use and connections This work of precision is carried on from the earliest academicians, Vaugelas, Chapelain and Conrart, to the end of the classic epoch, in the Synonymes by Bauzée and by Girard, in the Remarque by Duclos, in the Commentaire by Voltaire on Corneille, in the Lycée by la Harpe,3219in the efforts, the example, the practice and the authority of the great and the inferior writers of which all are correct. Never did architects, obliged to use ordinary broken highway stones in building, better understand each piece, its dimensions, its shape, its resistance, its possible connections and suitable position.—Once this was learned, the task was to construct with the least trouble and with the utmost solidity; the grammar was consequently changed at the same time and in the same way as the dictionary. Hence no longer permitting the words to reflect the way impressions and emotions were felt; they now had to be regularly and rigorously assigned according to the invariable hierarchy of concepts. The writer may no longer begin his text with the leading figure or the main purpose of his story; the setting is given and the places assigned beforehand. Each part of the discourse has its own place; no omission or transposition is permitted, as was done in the sixteenth century3220. All parts must be included, each in its definite place: at first the subject of the sentence with its appendices, then the verb, then the object direct, and, finally, the indirect connections. In this way the sentence forms a graduated scaffolding, the substance coming foremost, then the quality, then the modes and varieties of the quality, just as a good architect in the first place poses his foundation, then the building, then the accessories, economically and prudently, with a view to adapt each section of the edifice to the support of the section following after it. No sentence demands any less attention than another, nor is there any in which one may not at every step verify the connection or incoherence of the parts.3221—The procedure used in arranging a simple sentence also governs that of the period, the paragraph and the series of paragraphs; it forms the style as it forms the syntax. Each small edifice occupies a distinct position, and but one, in the great total edifice. As the discourse advances, each section must in turn file in, never before, never after, no parasitic member being allowed to intrude, and no regular member being allowed to encroach on its neighbor, while all these members bound together by their very positions must move onward, combining all their forces on one single point. Finally, we have for the first time in a writing, natural and distinct groups, complete and compact harmonies, none of which infringe on the others or allow others to infringe on them. It is no longer allowable to write haphazard, according to the caprice of one's inspiration, to discharge one's ideas in bulk, to let oneself be interrupted by parentheses, to string along interminable rows of citations and enumerations. An end is proposed; some truth is to be demonstrated, some definition to be ascertained, some conviction to be brought about; to do this we must march, and ever directly onward. Order, sequence, progress, proper transitions, constant development constitute the characteristics of this style. To such an extent is this pushed, that from the very first, personal correspondence, romances, humorous pieces, and all ironical and gallant effusions, consist of morsels of systematic eloquence.3222At the Hôtel Rambouillet, the explanatory period is displayed with as much fullness and as rigorously as with Descartes himself. One of the words most frequently occurring with Mme. de Scudéry is the conjunction for (in French car). Passion is worked out through close-knit arguments. Drawing room compliments stretch along in sentences as finished as those of an academical dissertation. Scarcely completed, the instrument already discloses its aptitudes. We are aware of its being made to explain, to demonstrate, to persuade and to popularize. Condillac, a century later, is justified in saying that it is in itself a systematic means of decomposition and of recomposition, a scientific method analogous to arithmetic and algebra. At the very least it possesses the incontestable advantage of starting with a few ordinary terms, and of leading the reader along with facility and promptness, by a series of simple combinations, up to the loftiest.3223By virtue of this, in 1789, the French tongue ranks above every other. The Berlin Academy promises a prize to for anyone who best can explain its pre-eminence. It is spoken throughout Europe. No other language is used in diplomacy. As formerly with Latin, it is international, and appears that, from now on, it is to be the preferred tool whenever men are to reason.
It is the organ only of a certain kind of reasoning, la raison raisonnante, that requiring the least preparation for thought, giving itself as little trouble as possible, content with its acquisitions, taking no pains to increase or renew them, incapable of, or unwilling to embrace the plenitude and complexity of the facts of real life. In its purism, in its disdain of terms suited to the occasion, in its avoidance of lively sallies, in the extreme regularity of its developments, the classic style is powerless to fully portray or to record the infinite and varied details of experience. It rejects any description of the outward appearance of reality, the immediate impressions of the eyewitness, the heights and depths of passion, the physiognomy, at once so composite yet absolute personal, of the breathing individual, in short, that unique harmony of countless traits, blended together and animated, which compose not human character in general but one particular personality, and which a Saint-Simon, a Balzac, or a Shakespeare himself could not render if the rich language they used, and which was enhanced by their temerities, did not contribute its subtleties to the multiplied details of their observation.3224Neither the Bible, nor Homer, nor Dante, nor Shakespeare3225could be translated with this style. Read Hamlet's monologue in Voltaire and see what remains of it, an abstract piece of declamation, with about as much of the original in it as there is of Othello in his Orosmane. Look at Homer and then at Fenelon in the island of Calypso; the wild, rocky island, where "gulls and other sea-birds with long wings," build their nests, becomes in pure French prose an orderly park arranged "for the pleasure of the eye." In the eighteenth century, contemporary novelists, themselves belonging to the classic epoch, Fielding, Swift, Defoe, Sterne and Richardson, are admitted into France only after excisions and much weakening; their expressions are too free and their scenes are to impressive; their freedom, their coarseness, their peculiarities, would form blemishes; the translator abbreviates, softens, and sometimes, in his preface, apologizes for what he retains. Room is found, in this language, only for a partial lifelikeness, for some of the truth, a scanty portion, and which constant refining daily renders still more scanty. Considered in itself, the classic style is always tempted to accept slight, insubstantial commonplaces for its subject materials. It spins them out, mingles and weaves them together; only a fragile filigree, however, issues from its logical apparatus; we may admire the elegant workmanship; but in practice, the work is of little, none, or negative service.
From these characteristics of style we divine those of the mind for which it serves as a tool.—Two principal operations constitute the activity of the human understanding.—Observing things and events, it receives a more or less complete, profound and exact impression of these; and after this, turning away from them, it analyses its impressions, and classifies, distributes, and more or less skillfully expresses the ideas derived from them.—In the second of these operations the classicist is superior. Obliged to adapt himself to his audience, that is to say, to people of society who are not specialists and yet critical, he necessarily carries to perfection the art of exciting attention and of making himself heard; that is to say, the art of composition and of writing.—With patient industry, and multiplied precautions, he carries the reader along with him by a series of easy rectilinear conceptions, step by step, omitting none, beginning with the lowest and thus ascending to the highest, always progressing with steady and measured peace, securely and agreeably as on a promenade. No interruption or diversion is possible: on either side, along the road, balustrades keep him within bounds, each idea extending into the following one by such an insensible transition, that he involuntarily advances, without stopping or turning aside, until brought to the final truth where he is to be seated. Classic literature throughout bears the imprint of this talent; there is no branch of it into which the qualities of a good discourse do not enter and form a part.—They dominate those sort of works which, in themselves, are only half-literary, but which, by its help, become fully so, transforming manuscripts into fine works of art which their subject-matter would have classified as scientific works, as reports of action, as historical documents, as philosophical treatises, as doctrinal expositions, as sermons, polemics, dissertations and demonstrations. It transforms even dictionaries and operates from Descartes to Condillac, from Bossuet to Buffon and Voltaire, from Pascal to Rousseau and Beaumarchais, in short, becoming prose almost entirely, even in official dispatches, diplomatic and private correspondence, from Madame de Sévigné to Madame du Deffant; including so many perfect letters flowing from the pens of women who were unaware of it.—Such prose is paramount in those works which, in themselves, are literary, but which derive from it an oratorical turn. Not only does it impose a rigid plan, a regular distribution of parts3226in dramatic works, accurate proportions, suppressions and connections, a sequence and progress, as in a passage of eloquence, but again it tolerates only the most perfect discourse. There is no character that is not an accomplished orator; with Corneille and Racine, with Molière himself, the confidant, the barbarian king, the young cavalier, the drawing room coquette, the valet, all show themselves adepts in the use of language. Never have we encountered such adroit introductions, such well-arranged evidence, such just reflections, such delicate transitions, such conclusive summing ups. Never have dialogues borne such a strong resemblance to verbal sparring matches. Each narration, each portrait, each detail of action, might be detached and serve as a good example for schoolboys, along with the masterpieces of the ancient tribune. So strong is this tendency that, on the approach of the final moment, in the agony of death, alone and without witnesses, the character finds the means to plead his own frenzy and die eloquently.
Its original deficiency.—Signs of this in the 17thcentury.—It grows with time and success.—Proofs of thisgrowth in the 18th century.—Serious poetry, the drama,history and romances.—Short-sighted views of man and ofhuman existence.
This excess indicates a deficiency. In the two operations which the human mind performs, the classicist is more successful in the second than in the first. The second, indeed, stands in the way of the first, the obligation of always speaking correctly makes him refrain from saying all that ought to be said. With him the form is more important than abundant contents, the firsthand observations which serve as a living source losing, in the regulated channels to which they are confined, their force, depth and impetuosity. Real poetry, able to convey dream and illusion, cannot be brought forth. Lyric poetry proves abortive, and likewise the epic poem.3227Nothing sprouts on these distant fields, remote and sublime, where speech unites with music and painting. Never do we hear the involuntary scream of intense torment, the lonely confession of a distraught soul,3228pouring out his heart to relieve himself. When a creation of characters is imperative, as in dramatic poetry, the classic mold fashions but one kind, that which through education, birth, or impersonation, always speak correctly, in other words, like so many people of high society. No others are portrayed on the stage or elsewhere, from Corneille and Racine to Marivaux and Beaumarchais. So strong is the habit that it imposes itself even on La Fontaine's animals, on the servants of Molière, on Montesquieu's Persians, and on the Babylonians, the Indians and the Micromégas of Voltaire.—It must be stated, furthermore, that these characters are only partly real. In real persons two kinds of characteristics may be noted; the first, few in number, which he or she shares with others of their kind and which any reader readily may identify; and the other kind, of which there are a great many, describing only one particular person and these are much more difficult to discover. Classic art concerns itself only with the former; it purposely effaces, neglects or subordinates the latter. It does not build individual persons but generalized characters, a king, a queen, a young prince, a confidant, a high-priest, a captain of the guards, seized by some passion, habit or inclination, such as love, ambition, fidelity or perfidy, a despotic or a yielding temper, some species of wickedness or of native goodness. As to the circumstances of time and place, which, amongst others, exercise a most powerful influence in shaping and diversifying man, it hardly notes them, even setting them aside. In a tragedy the scene is set everywhere and any time, the contrary, that the action takes place nowhere in no specific epoch, is equally valid. It may take place in any palace or in any temple,3229in which, to get rid of all historic or personal impressions, habits and costumes are introduced conventionally, being neither French nor foreign, nor ancient, nor modern. In this abstract world the address is always "you"(as opposed to the familiar thou),3230"Seigneur" and "Madame," the noble style always clothing the most different characters in the same dress. When Corneille and Racine, through the stateliness and elegance of their verse, afford us a glimpse of contemporary figures they do it unconsciously, imagining that they are portraying man in himself; and, if we of the present time recognize in their pieces either the gentleman, the duelists, the bullies, the politicians or the heroines of the Fronde, or the courtiers, princes and bishops, the ladies and gentlemen in waiting of the regular monarchy, it is because they have inadvertently dipped their brush in their own experience, some of its color having fallen accidentally on the bare ideal outline which they wished to trace. We have simply a contour, a general sketch, filled up with the harmonious gray tone of correct diction.—Even in comedy, necessarily employing current habits, even with Molière, so frank and so bold, the model is unfinished, all individual peculiarities being suppressed, the face becoming for a moment a theatrical mask, and the personage, especially when talking in verse, sometimes losing its animation in becoming the mouth-piece for a monologue or a dissertation.3231The stamp of rank, condition or fortune, whether gentleman or bourgeois, provincial or Parisian, is frequently overlooked.3232We are rarely made to appreciate physical externals, as in Shakespeare, the temperament, the state of the nervous system, the bluff or drawling tone, the impulsive or restrained action, the emaciation or obesity of a character.3233Frequently no trouble is taken to find a suitable name, this being either Chrysale, Orgon, Damis, Dorante, or Valère. The name designates only a simple quality, that of a father, a youth, a valet, a grumbler, a gallant, and, like an ordinary cloak, fitting indifferently all forms alike, as it passes from the wardrobe of Molière to that of Regnard, Destouche, Lesage or Marivaux.3234The character lacks the personal badge, the unique, authentic appellation serving as the primary stamp of an individual. All these details and circumstances, all these aids and accompaniments of a man, remain outside of the classic theory. To secure the admission of some of them required the genius of Molière, the fullness of his conception, the wealth of his observation, the extreme freedom of his pen. It is equally true again that he often omits them, and that, in other cases, he introduces only a small number of them, because he avoids giving to these general characters a richness and complexity that might interfere with the story. The simpler the theme the clearer its development, the first duty of the author throughout this literature being to clearly develop the restricted theme of which he makes a selection.
There is, accordingly, a radical defect in the classic spirit, the defect of its qualities, and which, at first kept within proper bounds, contributes towards the production of its purest master-pieces, but which, in accordance with the universal law, goes on increasing and turns into a vice through the natural effect of age, use, and success. Contracted at the start, it is to become yet more so. In the eighteenth century the description of real life, of a specific person, just as he is in nature and in history, that is to say, an undefined unit, a rich plexus, a complete organism of peculiarities and traits, superposed, entangled and co-ordinated, is improper. The capacity to receive and contain all these is wanting. Whatever can be discarded is cast aside, and to such an extent that nothing is left at last but a condensed extract, an evaporated residuum, an almost empty name, in short, what is called a hollow abstraction. The only characters in the eighteenth century exhibiting any life are the off-hand sketches, made in passing and as if contraband, by Voltaire, Baron de Thundertentronk and Milord Watthen, the lesser figures in his stories, and five or six portraits of secondary rank, Turcaret, Gil Blas, Marianne, Manon Lescaut, Rameau, and Figaro, two or three of the rough sketches of Crébillon the younger and of Collé, all so many works in which sap flows through a familiar knowledge of things, comparable with those of the minor masters in painting, Watteau, Fragonard, Saint-Aubin, Moreau, Lancret, Pater, and Beaudouin, and which, accepted with difficulty, or as a surprise, by the official drawing room are still to subsist after the grander and soberer canvases shall have become moldy through their wearisome exhalations. Everywhere else the sap dries up, and, instead of blooming plants, we encounter only flowers of painted paper. What are all the serious poems, from the "la Henriade" of Voltaire to the "Mois" by Roucher or the "l'Imagination" by Delille, but so many pieces of rhetoric garnished with rhymes? Examine the innumerable tragedies and comedies of which Grimm and Collé gives us mortuary extracts, even the meritorious works of Voltaire and Crébillon, and later, those of authors of repute, Du Belloy, Laharpe, Ducis, and Marie Chénier? Eloquence, art, situations, correct verse, all exist in these except human nature; the personages are simply well-taught puppets, and generally mere mouthpieces by which the author makes his declamation public; Greeks, Romans, Medieval knights, Turks, Arabs, Peruvians, Giaours, or Byzantines, they have all the same declamatory mechanisms. The public, meanwhile, betrays no surprise. It is not aware of history. It assumes that humanity is everywhere the same. It establishes the success alike of the "Incas" by Marmontel, and of "Gonsalve" and the "Nouvelles" by Florian; also of the peasants, mechanics, Negroes, Brazilians, Parsees, and Malabarites that appear before it churning out their exaggerations. Man is simply regarded as a reasoning being, alike in all ages and alike in all places; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre endows his pariah with this habit, like Diderot, in his Tahitians. The one recognized principle is that every human being must think and talk like a book.—And how inadequate their historical background! With the exception of "Charles XII.," a contemporary on whom Voltaire, thanks to eye eye-witnesses, bestows fresh life, also his spirited sketches of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians and Germans, scattered through his stories, where are real persons to be found? With Hume, Gibbon and Robertson, belonging to the French school, and who are at once adopted in France, in the researches into our middle ages of Dubos and of Mably, in the "Louis XI" of Duclos, in the "Anarcharsis" of Barthélemy, even in the "Essai sur les Moeurs," and in the "Siecle de Louis XIV" of Voltaire, even in the "Grandeur des Romains," and the "Esprit des Lois" of Montesquieu, what peculiar deficiency! Erudition, criticism, common sense, an almost exact exposition of dogmas and of institutions, philosophic views of the relationships between events and on the general run of these, nothing is lacking but the people! On reading these it seems as if the climates, institutions and civilizations which so completely modifies the human intellect, are simply so many outworks, so many fortuitous exteriors, which, far from reflecting its depths scarcely penetrate beneath its surface. The vast differences separating the men of two centuries, or of two peoples, escape them entirely.3235The ancient Greek, the early Christian, the conquering Teuton, the feudal man, the Arab of Mahomet, the German, the Renaissance Englishman, the puritan, appear in their books as in engravings and frontispieces, with some difference in costume, but the same bodies, the same faces, the same countenances, toned down, obliterated, proper, adapted to the conventionalities of good manners. That sympathetic imagination by which the writer enters into the mind of another, and reproduces in himself a system of habits and feelings so different from his own, is the talent the most absent in the eighteenth century. With the exception of Diderot, who uses it badly and capriciously, it almost entirely disappears in the last half of the century. Consider in turn, during the same period, in France and in England, where it is most extensively used, the romance, a sort of mirror everywhere transportable, the best adapted to reflect all phrases of nature and of life. After reading the series of English novelists, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith down to Miss Burney and Miss Austen, I have become familiar with England in the eighteenth century; I have encountered clergymen, country gentlemen, farmers, innkeepers, sailors, people of every condition in life, high and low; I know the details of fortunes and of careers, how much is earned, how much is expended, how journeys are made and how people eat and drink: I have accumulated for myself a file of precise biographical events, a complete picture in a thousand scenes of an entire community, the amplest stock of information to guide me should I wish to frame a history of this vanished world. On reading a corresponding list of French novelists, the younger Crébillon, Rousseau, Marmontel, Laclos, Restif de la Breton, Louvet, Madame de Staël, Madame de Genlis and the rest, including Mercier and even Mme. Cottin, I scarcely take any notes; all precise and instructive little facts are left out; I find civilities, polite acts, gallantries, mischief-making, social dissertations and nothing else. They carefully abstain from mentioning money, from giving me figures, from describing a wedding, a trial, the administration of a piece of property; I am ignorant of the situation of a curate, of a rustic noble, of a resident prior, of a steward, of an intendant. Whatever relates to a province or to the rural districts, to the bourgeoisie or to the shop,3236to the army or to a soldier, to the clergy or to convents, to justice or to the police, to business or to housekeeping remains vaguely in my mind or is falsified; to clear up any point I am obliged to recur to that marvelous Voltaire who, on laying aside the great classic coat, finds plenty of elbow room and tells all. On the organs of society of vital importance, on the practices and regulations that provoke revolutions, on feudal rights and seigniorial justice, on the mode of recruiting and governing monastic bodies, on the revenue measures of the provinces, of corporations and of trade-unions, on the tithes and the corvées,3237literature provides me with scarcely any information. Drawing-rooms and men of letters are apparently its sole material. The rest is null and void. Outside the good society that is able to converse France appears perfectly empty.—On the approach of the Revolution the elimination increases. Look through the harangues of the clubs and of the tribune, through reports, legislative bills and pamphlets, and through the mass of writings prompted by passing and exciting events; in none of them do we see any sign of the human creature as we see him in the fields and in the street; he is always regarded as a simple robot, a well known mechanism. Among writers he was a moment ago a dispenser of commonplaces, among politicians he is now a pliable voter; touch him in the proper place and he responds in the desired manner. Facts are never apparent; only abstractions, long arrays of sentences on nature, Reason, and the people, on tyrants and liberty, like inflated balloons, uselessly conflicting with each other in space. Were we not aware that all this would terminate in terrible practical effects then we could regard it as competition in logic, as school exercises, academic parades, or ideological compositions. It is, in fact, Ideology, the last product of the century, which will stamp the classic spirit with its final formula and last word.
The philosophic method in conformity with the Classic Sprit.—Ideology.—Abuse of the mathematical process.—Condillac,Rousseau, Mably, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyès, Cabanis, and deTracy.—Excesses of simplification and boldness oforganization.
The natural process of the classic spirit is to pursue in every research, with the utmost confidence, without either reserve or precaution, the mathematical method: to derive, limit and isolate a few of the simplest generalized notions and then, setting experience aside, comparing them, combining them, and, from the artificial compound thus obtained, by pure reasoning, deduce all the consequences they involve. It is so deeply implanted as to be equally encountered in both centuries, as well with Descartes, Malebranche3238and the partisans of innate ideas as with the partisans of sensation, of physical needs and of primary instinct, Condillac, Rousseau, Helvétius, and later, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyès, Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy. In vain do the latter assert that they are the followers of Bacon and reject (the theory of) innate ideas; with another starting point than the Cartesians they pursue the same path, and, as with the Cartesians, after borrowing a little, they leave experience behind them. In this vast moral and social world, they only remove the superficial bark from the human tree with its innumerable roots and branches; they are unable to penetrate to or grasp at anything beyond it; their hands cannot contain more. They have no suspicion of anything outside of it; the classic spirit, with limited comprehension, is not far-reaching. To them the bark is the entire tree, and, the operation once completed, they retire, bearing along with them the dry, dead epidermis, never returning to the trunk itself. Through intellectual incapacity and literary pride they omit the characteristic detail, the animating fact, the specific circumstance, the significant, convincing and complete example. Scarcely one of these is found in the "Logique" and in the "Traité des Sensations" by Condillac, in the "Idéologie" by Destutt de Tracy, or in the "Rapports du Physique et du Morale" by Cabanis.3239Never, with them, are we on the solid and visible ground of personal observation and narration, but always in the air, in the empty space of pure generalities. Condillac declares that the arithmetical method is adapted to psychology and that the elements of our ideas can be defined by a process analogous "to the rule of three." Sieyès holds history in profound contempt, and believes that he had "perfected the science of politics"3240at one stroke, through an effort of the brain, in the style of Descartes, who thus discovers analytic geometry. Destutt de Tracy, in undertaking to comment on Montesquieu, finds that the great historian has too servilely confined himself to history, and attempts to do the work over again by organizing society as it should be, instead of studying society as it is.—Never were such systematic and superficial institutions built up with such a moderate extract of human nature.3241Condillac, employing sensation, animates a statue, and then, by a process of pure reasoning, following up its effects, as he supposes, on smell, taste, hearing, sight and touch, fashions a complete human soul. Rousseau, by means of a contract, founds political association, and, with this given idea, pulls down the constitution, government and laws of every balanced social system. In a book which serves as the philosophical testament of the century,3242Condorcet declares that this method is the "final step of philosophy, that which places a sort of eternal barrier between humanity and its ancient infantile errors." "By applying it to morals, politics and political economy the moral sciences have progressed nearly as much as the natural sciences. With its help we have been able to discover the rights of man." As in mathematics, they have been deduced from one primordial statement only, which statement, similar to a first principle in mathematics, becomes a fact of daily experience, seen by all and therefore self-evident.—This school of thought is to endure throughout the Revolution, the Empire and even into the Restoration,3243together with the tragedy of which it is the sister, with the classic spirit their common parent, a primordial, sovereign power, as dangerous as it is useful, as destructive as it is creative, as capable of propagating error as truth, as astonishing in the rigidity of its code, the narrow-mindedness of its yoke and in the uniformity of its works as in the duration of its reign and the universality of its ascendancy.3244
3201 (return)[ Voltaire, "Dict. Phil.," see the articles on Language. "Of all the languages in Europe the French is most generally used because it is the best adapted to conversation. Its character is derived from that of the people who speak it. For more than a hundred and fifty years past, the French have been the most familiar with (good) society and the first to avoid all embarrassment. . . It is a better currency than any other, even if it should lack weight."]
3202 (return)[ HIST: honnête homme means gentleman. (SR.)]
3203 (return)[ Descartes, ed. Cousin, XI. 333, I. 121,. . . Descartes depreciates "simple knowledge acquired without the aid of reflection, such as languages, history, geography, and, generally, whatever is not based on experience. . . . It is no more the duty of an honest man to know Greek or Latin than to know the Swiss or Breton languages, nor the history of the Romano-Germanic empire any more than of the smallest country in Europe."]
3204 (return)[ Molière, "Les Femmes Savantes," and "La Critique de l'école des femmes." The parts of Dorante with Lycidas and of Clitandre with Trissotin.]
3205 (return)[ The learned Huet, (1630-1721), true to the taste of the sixteenth century, describes this change very well from his point of view. "When I entered the world of letters these were still flourishing; great reputations maintained their supremacy. I have seen letters decline and finally reach an almost entire decay. For I scarcely know a person of the present time that one can truly call a savant." The few Benedictines like Ducange and Mabillon, and later, the academician Fréret, the president Bouhier of Dijon, in short, the veritable erudites exercise no influence.]
3206 (return)[ Nicole, "Oeuvres morales," in the second essay on Charity and Self-love, 142.]
3207 (return)[ Voltaire, "Dialogues," "L'intendant des menus et l'abbé Grizel," 129.]
3208 (return)[ Maury adds with his accustomed coarseness, "We, in the French Academy, looked upon the members of the Academy of Sciences as our valets."—These valets at that time consisted of Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Lagrange, Laplace, etc. (A narrative by Joseph de Maistre, quote by Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," IV. 283.)]
3209 (return)[ This description makes me think of the contemporary attitudes pejoratively called "politically correctness." Thus the drawings-room audience of the 18th century have today been replaced by the "political correct" elite holding sway in teacher training schools, schools of journalism, the media and hence among the television public. The same mechanism which moved the upper class in the 18th century moves it in the 20th century.. (S.R.)]
3210 (return)[ Today in 1999 we may speak of the TV mold forced by the measured popularity or "ratings" of the programs. (SR.]
3211 (return)[ Vaugelas, "Remarques sur la langue française:" "It is the mode of speech of the most sensible portion of the court, as well as the mode of writing of the most sensible authors of the day. It is better to consult women and those who have not studied than those who are very learned in Greek and in Latin."]
3212 (return)[ One of the causes of the fall and discredit of the Marquis d'Argenson in the eighteenth century, was his habit of using these.]
3213 (return)[ Vaugelas, ibid.. "Although we may have eliminated one-half of his phrases and terms we nevertheless obtain in the other half all the riches of which we boast and of which we make a display."—Compare together a lexicon of two or three writers of the sixteenth century and one of two or three writers of the seventeenth. A brief statement of the results of the comparison is here given. Let any one, with pen in hand, note the differences on a hundred pages of any of these texts, and he will be surprised at it. Take, for examples, two writers of the same category, and of secondary grade, Charron and Nicole.]
3214 (return)[ For instance, in the article "Ignorance," in the "Dict. Philosophique."]
3215 (return)[ La Harpe, "Cours de Littérature," ed. Didot. II. 142.]
3216 (return)[ A battle-axe used by the Franks.—TR.]
3217 (return)[ I cite an example haphazard from the "Optimiste" (1788), by Colin d'Harleville. In a certain description, "The scene represents a bosquet filled with odoriferous trees."—The classic spirit rebels against stating the species of tree, whether lilacs, lindens or hawthorns.—In paintings of landscapes of this era we have the same thing, the trees being generalized,—of no known species.]
3218 (return)[ This evolution is seen today as well, television having the same effect upon its actors as the 18th century drawing-room. (SR.)]
3219 (return)[ See in the "Lycée," by la Harpe, after the analysis of each piece, his remarks on detail in style.]
3220 (return)[ The omission of the pronouns, I, he, we, you, they, the article the, and of the verb, especially the verb to be.—Any page of Rabelais, Amyot or Montaigne, suffices to show how numerous and various were the transpositions.]
3221 (return)[ Vaugelas, ibid. "No language is more inimical to ambiguities and every species of obscurity."]
3222 (return)[ See the principal romances of the seventeenth century, the "Roman Bourgeois," by Furetière, the "Princess de Clèves," by Madame de Lafayette, the "Clélie," by Mme. de Scudéry, and even Scarron's "Roman Comique."—See Balzac's letters, and those of Voiture and their correspondents, the "Récit des grands jours d'Auvergne," by Fléchier, etc. On the oratorical peculiarities of this style cf. Sainte-Beuve, "Port-Royal," 2nd ed. I. 515.]
3223 (return)[ Voltaire, 'Esay sur le poème épique', "Our nation, regarded by strangers as superficial is, with the pen in its hand, the wisest of all. Method is the dominant quality of all our writers."]
3224 (return)[ Milton's works are built up with 8,000. "Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words and the Old Testament says all it has to say with 5,642 words." (Max Müller, "Lectures on the Science of language," I. 309.)—It would be interesting to place alongside of this Racine's restricted vocabulary. That of Mme. de Scudery is extremely limited. In the best romance of the XVIIth century, the "Princesse de Clèves," the number of words is reduced to the minimum. The Dictionary of the old French Academy contains 29,712 words; the Greek Thesaurus, by H. Estienne, contains about 150,000.]
3225 (return)[ Compare together the translations of the Bible made by de Sacy and Luther; those of Homer by Dacier, Bitaubé and Lecomte de Lisle; those of Herodotus, by Larcher and Courrier, the popular tales of Perrault and those by Grimm, etc.]
3226 (return)[ See the "Discours académique," by Racine, on the reception of Thomas Corneille: "In this chaos of dramatic poetry your illustrious brother brought Reason on the stage, but Reason associated with all the pomp and the ornamentation our language is capable of."]
3227 (return)[ Voltaire, "Essay sur le poème épique," 290. "It must be admitted that a Frenchman has more difficulty in writing an epic poem than anybody else. . . . Dare I confess it? Our own is the least poetic of all polished nations. The works in verse the most highly esteemed in France are those of the drama, which must be written in a familiar style approaching conversation."]
3228 (return)[ Except in "Pensées," by Pascal, a few notes dotted down by a morbidly exalted Christian, and which certainly, in the perfect work, would not have been allowed to remain as they are.]
3229 (return)[ See in the Cabinet of Engravings the theatrical costumes of the middle of the XVIIIth century.—Nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of the classic drama than the parts of Esther and Brittannicus, as they are played nowadays, in the accurate costumes and with scenery derived from late discoveries at Pompeii or Nineveh.]
3230 (return)[ The formality which this indicates will be understood by those familiar with the use of the pronoun thou in France, denoting intimacy and freedom from restraint in contrast with ceremonious and formal intercourse.—Tr.]
3231 (return)[ See the parts of the moralizers and reasoners like Cléante in "Tartuffe," Ariste in "Les Femmes Savantes," Chrysale in "L'Ecole des Femmes," etc. See the discussion between the two brothers in "Le Festin de Pierre," III. 5; the discourse of Ergaste in "L'Ecole des Maris"; that of Eliante, imitated from Lucretius in the "Misanthrope," II. 5; the portraiture, by Dorine in "Tartuffe," I. 1.—The portrait of the hypocrite, by Don Juan in "Le Festin de Pierre," V. 2.]
3232 (return)[ For instance the parts of Harpagon and Arnolphe.]
3233 (return)[ We see this in Tartuffe, but only through an expression of Dorine, and not directly. Cf. in Shakespeare, the parts of Coriolanus, Hotspur, Falstaff, Othello, Cleopatra, etc.]
3234 (return)[ Balzac passed entire days in reading the "Almanach des cent mille adresses," also in a cab in the streets during the afternoons, examining signs for the purpose of finding suitable names for his characters. This little circumstance shows the difference between two diverse conceptions of mankind.]
3235 (return)[ "At the present day, whatever may be said, there is no such thing as Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, and Englishmen, for all are Europeans. All have the same tastes, the same passions, the same habits, none having obtained a national form through any specific institution." Rousseau, "Sur le gouvernement de Pologne," 170.]
3236 (return)[ Previous to 1750 we find something about these in "Gil-Blas," and in "Marianne," (Mme. Dufour the sempstress and her shop).—Unfortunately the Spanish travesty prevents the novels of Lesage from being as instructive as they might be.]
3237 (return)[ Interesting details are found in the little stories by Diderot as, for instance, "Les deux amis de Bourbonne." But elsewhere he is a partisan, especially in the "Religieuse," and conveys a false impression of things.]
3238 (return)[ "To attain to the truth we have only to fix our attention on the ideas which each one finds within his own mind." (Malebranche, "Recherche de la Vérité," book I. ch. 1.)—"Those long chains of reasoning, all simple and easy, which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, suggested to me that all things which come within human knowledge must follow each other in a similar chain." (Descartes, "Discours de la Methode," I. 142).—In the seventeenth century In the 17th century constructions a priori were based on ideas, in the 18th century on sensations, but always following the same mathematical method fully displayed in the "Ethics" of Spinoza.]
3239 (return)[ See especially his memoir: "De l'influence du climat sur les habitudes morales," vague, and wholly barren of illustrations excepting one citation from Hippocrates.]
3240 (return)[ These are Sieyès own words.—He adds elsewhere, "There is no more reality in assumed historical truths than in assumed religious truths." ("Papiers de Sieyès," the year 1772, according to Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," V. 194).—Descartes and Malebranche already expressed this contempt for history.]
3241 (return)[ Today, in 1998, we know that Taine was right. The research on animal and human behavior, on animal and human brain circuitry, and the behavior of the cruel human animal during the 20th century, confirmed his views. Still mankind persists in preferring simple solutions and ideas to complex ones. This is the way our brains and our nature as gregarious animals make us think and feel. This our basic human nature make ambitious men able to appeal to and dominate the crowd. (SR.)]
3242 (return)[ Condorcet, "Esquisse d'un tableau historique de l'esprit humain," ninth epoch.]
3243 (return)[ See the "Tableau historique," presented to the Institute by Chénier in 1808, showing by its statements that the classic spirit still prevails in all branches of literature.—Cabanis died in 1818, Volney in 1820, de Tracy and Sieyès in 1836, Daunou in 1840. In May, 1845, Saphary and Valette are still professors of Condillac's philosophy in the two lycées in Paris.]
3244 (return)[ The world did not heed Taine's warnings. The leaders and the masses of the Western world were to be seduced by the terrible new ideologies of the 20th century. The ideology of socialism persists making good use of the revised 20th century editions of the Rights of Man, enlarged to cover the physical well-being and standard of living of man, woman, child and animal and in this manner allowing the state to replace all individual responsibility and authority, thus, as Taine saw, dealing a death blow to the family, to individual responsibility and enterprise and to effective local government. (SR.).]