The lost children of the philosophic party.—Naigeon,Sylvain Maréchal, Mably, Morelly.—The entire discredit oftraditions and institutions derived from it.
We stop here. It is pointless to follow the lost children of the party, Naigeon and Sylvain Maréchal, Mably and Morelly, the fanatics that set atheism up as an obligatory dogma and a superior duty; the socialists who, to suppress egoism, propose a community of property, and who found a republic in which any man that proposes to re-establish "detestable ownership" shall be declared an enemy of humanity, treated as a "raging maniac" and shut up in a dungeon for life. It is sufficient to have studied the operations of large armies and of great campaigns.—With different gadgets and opposite tactics, the various attacks have all had the same results, all the institutions have been undermined from below. The governing ideology has withdrawn all authority from custom, from religion, from the State. Not only is it assumed that tradition in itself is false, but again that it is harmful through its works, that it builds up injustice on error, and that by rendering man blind it leads him to oppress. Henceforth it is outlawed. Let this "loathsome thing" with its supporters be crushed out. It is the great evil of the human species, and, when suppressed, only goodness will remain.
"The time will then come3342when the sun will shine only on free men recognizing no other master than Reason; when tyrants and slaves, and priests with their senseless or hypocritical instruments will exist only in history and on the stage; when attention will no longer be bestowed on them except to pity their victims and their dupes, keeping oneself vigilant and useful through horror of their excesses, and able to recognize and extinguish by the force of Reason the first germs of superstition and of tyranny, should they ever venture to reappear."
The millennium is dawning and it is once more Reason, which should set it up. In this way we shall owe everything to its salutary authority, the foundation of the new order of things as well as the destruction of the old one.
3301 (return)[ "Discours de la Methode."]
3302 (return)[ This is evident with Descartes in the second step he takes. (The theory of pure spirit, the idea of God, the proof of his existence, the veracity of our intelligence demonstrated the veracity of God, etc.)]
3303 (return)[ See Pascal, "Pensées" (on the origin of property and rank). The "Provinciales" (on homicide and the right to kill).—Nicole, "Deuxième traité de la charité, et de l'amour-propre" (on the natural man and the object of society). Bossuet, "Politique tirée de l'Ecriture sainte." La Bruyère, "Des Esprits forts."]
3304 (return)[ Cf. Sir. John Lubbock, "Origine de la Civilisation."—Gerand-Teulon, "Les Origines de la famille."]
3305 (return)[ The principle of caste in India; we see this in the contrast between the Aryans and the aborigines, the Soudras and the Pariahs.]
3306 (return)[ In accordance with this principle the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands passed a law forbidding the sale of liquor to the natives and allowing it to Europeans. (De Varigny, "Quatorze ans aux iles Sandwich.")]
3307 (return)[ Cf. Le Play, "De l'Organization de la famille," (the history of a domain in the Pyrenees.)]
3308 (return)[ See, especially, in Brahmin literature the great metaphysical poems and the Puranas.]
3309 (return)[ Montaigne (1533-92) apparently also had 'sympathetic imagination' when he wrote: "I am most tenderly symphathetic towards the afflictions of others," ("On Cruelty"). (SR.)]
3310 (return)[ Voltaire, "Dic. Phil." the article on Punishments.]
3311 (return)[ "Resumé des cahiers," by Prud'homme, preface, 1789.]
3312 (return)[ Voltaire, Dialogues, Entretiens entre A. B. C.]
3313 (return)[ Voltaire, "Dict.Phil.," the article on Religion. "If there is a hamlet to be governed it must have a religion."]
3314 (return)[ "Le rêve de d'Alembert," by Diderot, passim.]
3315 (return)[ "If a misanthrope (a hater of mankind) had proposed to himself to injure humanity what could he have invented better than faith in an incomprehensible being, about which men never could come to any agreement, and to which they would attach more importance than to their own existence?" Diderot, "Entretien d'un philosophe avec la Maréchale de....." (And that is just what our Marxist sociologist, psychologists etc have done in inventing a human being bereft of those emotions which in other animals force them to give in to their maternal, paternal and leadership instincts thereby making them happy in the process.. SR.)]
3316 (return)[ Cf. "Catéchisme Universel," by Saint-Lambert, and the "Loi naturelle ou Catéchisme du citoyen français," by Volney.]
3317 (return)[ "Supplément au voyage de Bougainville."]
3318 (return)[ Cf. "Mémoires de Mm. D'Epinay," a conversation with Duclos and Saint-Lambert at the house of Mlle. Quinault.—Rousseau's "Confessions," part I, book V. These are the same principles taught by M. de la Tavel to Mme. De Warens.]
3319 (return)[ "Suite du rêve de d'Alembert." "Entretien entre Mlls. de Lespinasse et Bordeu."—"Mémoires de Diderot," a letter to Mlle. Volant, III. 66.]
3320 (return)[ Cf. his admirable tales, "Entretiens d'un père avec ses enfants," and "Le neveu de Rameau."]
3321 (return)[ Volney, ibid. "The natural law. . . consists wholly of events whose repetition may be observed through the senses and which create a science as precise and accurate as geometry and mathematics."]
3322 (return)[ Helvétius, "De l'Esprit." passim.]
3323 (return)[ Volney, ibid. Chap. III. Saint-Lambert, ibid. The first dialogue.]
3324 (return)[ D'Holbach, "Systeme de la Nature," II. 408 493.]
3325 (return)[ D'Holbach, "Système de la nature," I. 347.]
3326 (return)[ Diderot, "Supplément au voyage de Bougainville."]
3327 (return)[ Diderot, "Les Eleuthéromanes."
Et ses mains, ourdissant les entrailles du prêtre,En feraient un cordon pour le dernier des rois.
Brissot: "Necessity being the sole title to property the result is that when a want is satisfied man is no longer a property owner. . . . Two prime necessities are due to the animal constitution, food and waste . . . . May men nourish themselves on their fallen creatures? (Yes for) all beings may justly nourish themselves on any material calculated to supply their wants. . . Man of nature, fulfill your desire, give heed to your cravings, your sole masters and your only guide. Do you feel your veins throbbing with inward fires at the sight of a charming creature? She is yours, your caresses are innocent and your kisses pure. Love alone entitles to enjoyment as hunger is the warrant for property." (An essay published in 1780, and reprinted in 1782 in the "Bibliothèque du Législateur," quoted by Roux and Buchez "Histoire parlementaire," XIII, 431.]
3328 (return)[ The words of Rousseau himself ("Rousseau juge de Jan-Jacques," third dialogue, p 193): From whence may the painter and apologist of nature, now so disfigured and so calumniated, derive his model if not from his own heart?]
3329 (return)[ "Confessions," Book I. p.1, and the end of the fifth book.—First letter to M. de Malesherbes: "I know my great faults, and am profoundly sensible of my vices. Even so I shall die with the conviction that of all the men I have encountered no one was better than myself".—To Madame B—, March 16, 1770, he writes: "You have awarded me esteem for my writings; your esteem would be yet greater for my life if it were open to you inspection, and still greater for my heart if it were exposed to your view. Never was there a better one, a heart more tender or more just.... My misfortunes are all due to my virtues."—To Madame de la Tour, "Whoever is not enthusiastic in my behalf in unworthy of me."]
3330 (return)[ Letter to M. de Beaumont. p.24.—Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, troisième entretien, 193.]
3331 (return)[ "Emile," book I, and the letter to M. de Beaumont, passim.]
3332 (return)[ Article I. "All Frenchmen shall be virtuous." Article II. "All Frenchmen shall be happy." Draft of a constitution found among the papers of Sismondi, at that time in school. (My French dictionary writes: "SISMONDI, (Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de) Genève, 1773—id. 1842, Swiss historian and economist of Italian origin. He was a forerunner of dirigisme and had influenced Marx with his book: "Nouveaux principes d'économie politique.1819. SR.)]
3333 (return)[ "Confessions," part 2, book IX. 368. "I cannot comprehend how any one can converse in a circle. . . . I stammer out a few words, with no meaning in them, as quickly as I can, very glad if they convey no sense. . . . I should be as fond of society as anybody if I were not certain of appearing not merely to disadvantage but wholly different from what I really am."—Cf. in the "Nouvelle Héloise," 2nd part, the letter of Saint-Preux on Paris. Also in "Emilie," the end of book IV.]
3334 (return)[ "Confessions," part 2, IX. 361. "I was so weary of drawing-rooms, of jets of water, of bowers, of flower-beds and of those that showed them to me; I was so overwhelmed with pamphlets, harpsichords, games, knots, stupid witticisms, simpering looks, petty story-tellers and heavy suppers, that when I spied out a corner in a hedge, a bush, a barn, a meadow, or when, on passing through a hamlet, I caught the smell of a good parsley omelet. . I sent to the devil all the rouge, frills, flounces and perfumery, and, regretting a plain dinner and common wine, I would gladly have closed the mouth of both the head cook and the butler who forced me to dine when I generally sup, and to sup when a generally go to bed, but, especially the lackeys that envied me every morsel I ate and who, at the risk of my dying with thirst, sold me the drugged wine of their master at ten times the price I would have to pay for a better wine at a tavern."]
3335 (return)[ "Discours sur l'influence des sciences et des arts"—The letter to d'Alembert on theatrical performances.]
3336 (return)[ Does it not read like a declaration of intent for forming a Kibbutz? (SR.)]
3337 (return)[ "The high society (La societé) is as natural to the human species as decrepitude to the individual. The people require arts, laws, and governments, as old men require crutches." See the letter M. Philopolis, p. 248.]
3338 (return)[ See the discourse on the "Origine de l'Inégalite," passim.]
3339 (return)[ "Emile," book IV. Rousseau's narrative. P. 13.]
3340 (return)[ "Discours sur l'économie politique," 326.]
3341 (return)[ "Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inégalité," 178, "Contrat Social," I. ch. IV.]
3342 (return)[ Condorcet, "Tableau des progrès de l'esprit humain," the tenth epoch.]
The mathematical method.—Definition of man in theabstract.—The social contract.—Independence and equalityof the contractors.—All equal before the law and eachsharing in the sovereignty.
Consider future society as it appears at this moment to our legislators in their study, and bear in mind that it will soon appear under the same aspect to the legislators of the Assembly.—In their eyes the decisive moment has come. Henceforth two histories are to exist;3401one, that of the past, the other, that of the future, formerly a history of Man still deprived of his reason, and at present the history of the rational human being. The rule of right is at last to begin. Of all that the past generations have founded and transmitted nothing is legitimate. Overlaying the natural Man they created an artificial Man, either ecclesiastic or laic, noble or commoner, sovereign or subject, proprietor or proletary, ignorant or cultivated, peasant or citizen, slave or master, all being phony qualities which we are not to heed, as their origin is tainted with violence and robbery. Strip off these superfluous garments; let us take Man in himself, the same under all conditions, in all situations, in all countries, in all ages, and strive to ascertain what sort of association is the best adapted to him. The problem thus stated, the rest follows.—In accordance with the customs of the classic mentality, and with the precepts of the prevailing ideology, a political system is now constructed after a mathematical model.3402A simple statement is selected, and set apart, very general, familiar, readily apparent, and easily understood by the most ignorant and inattentive schoolboy. Reject every difference, which separates one man from other men; retain of him only the portion common to him and to others. The remainder constitutes Man in general, or in other words, "a sensitive and rational being who, thus endowed, avoids pain and seeks pleasure," and therefore aspiring to happiness, namely, a stable condition in which one enjoys greater pleasure than pain,"3403or, again, "a sensitive being capable of forming rational opinions and of acquiring moral ideas."3404
Anyone (they say) may by himself experience this elementary idea, and can verify it at the first glance. Such is the social unit; let several of these be combined, a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, twenty-six millions, and you have the French people. Men born at twenty-one years of age, without relations, without a past, without traditions, without a country, are supposed to be assembled for the first time and, for the first time, to treat with each other. In this position, at the moment of contracting together, all are equal: for, as the definition states, the extrinsic and spurious qualities through which alone all differ have been rejected. All are free; for, according to the definition, the unjust thralldom imposed on all by brute force and by hereditary prejudice has been suppressed.—But if all men are equal, no reason exists why, in this contract, any special advantage should be conceded to one more than to another. Accordingly all shall be equal before the law; no person, or family, or class, shall be allowed any privilege; no one shall claim a right of which another might be deprived; no one shall be subject to any duty from another is exempt.—On the other hand, all being free, each enters with a free will along with the group of wills constitute the new community; it is necessary that in the common resolutions he should fully concur. Only on these conditions does he bind himself; he is bound to respect laws only because he has assisted in making them, and to obey magistrates only because he has aided in electing them. Underneath all legitimate authority his consent or his vote must be apparent, while, in the humblest citizen, the most exalted of public powers must recognize a member of their own sovereignty. No one may alienate or lose this portion of his sovereignty; it is inseparable from his person, and, on delegating it to another, he reserves to himself full possession of it.—The liberty, equality and sovereignty of the people constitute the first articles of the social contract. These are rigorously deduced from a primary definition; other rights of the citizen are to be no less rigorously deduced from it, the main features of the constitution, the most important civil and political laws, in short, the order, the form and the spirit of the new state.
The first result.—The theory easily applied.—Confidence init due to belief in man's inherent goodness andreasonableness.
Hence, two consequences.—In the first place, a society thus organized is the only just one; for, the reverse of all others, it is not the result of a blind subjection to traditions, but of a contract concluded among equals, examined in open daylight, and assented to in full freedom.3405The social contract, composed of demonstrated theorems, has the authority of geometry; hence an equal value at all times, in every place, and for every people; it is accordingly rightfully established. Those who put an obstacle in its way are enemies of the human race; whether a government, an aristocracy or a clergy, they must be overthrown. Revolt is simply just defense; in withdrawing ourselves from their hands we only recover what is wrongfully held and which legitimately belongs to us.—In the second place, this social code, as just set forth, once promulgated, is applicable without misconception or resistance; for it is a species of moral geometry, simpler than any other, reduced to first principles, founded on the clearest and most popular notions, and, in four steps, leading to capital truths. The comprehension and application of these truths demand no preparatory study or profound reflection; Reason is enough, and even common sense. Prejudice and selfishness alone might impair the testimony; but never will testimony be wanting in a sound brain and in an upright heart. Explain the rights of man to a laborer or to a peasant and at once he becomes an able politician; teach children the citizen's catechism and, on leaving school, they comprehend duties and rights as well as the four fundamental principles.—Thereupon hope spreads her wings to the fullest extent, all obstacles seem removed. It is admitted that, of itself, and through its own force, the theory engenders its own application, and that it suffices for men to decree or accept the social compact to acquire suddenly by this act the capacity for comprehending it and the disposition to carry it out.
What a wonderful confidence, at first inexplicable, which assume with regard to man an idea which we no longer hold. Man, indeed, was regarded as essentially good and reasonable.—Rational, that is to say, capable of assenting to a plain obvious principle, of following an ulterior chain of argument, of understanding and accepting the final conclusion, of extracting for himself, on the occasion calling for it, the varied consequences to which it leads: such is the ordinary man in the eyes of the writers of the day; they judged him by themselves. To them the human intellect is their own, the classic intellect. For a hundred and fifty years it ruled in literature, in philosophy, in science, in education, in conversation, by virtue of tradition, of usage and of good taste. No other was tolerated and no other was imagined; and if, within this closed circle, a stranger succeeds in introducing himself, it is on condition of adopting the oratorical idiom which the raison raisonnante imposes on all its guests, on Greeks, Englishmen, barbarians, peasants and savages, however different from each other and however different they may be amongst themselves. In Buffon, the first man, on narrating the first hours of his being, analyses his sensations, emotions and impulses, with as much subtlety as Condillac himself. With Diderot, Otou the Tahitian, with Bernardin de St. Pierre, a semi-savage Hindu and an old colonist of the Ile-de-France, with Rousseau a country vicar, a gardener and a juggler, are all accomplished conversationalists and moralists. In Marmontel and in Florian, in all the literature of inferior rank preceding or accompanying the Revolution, also in the tragic or comic drama, the chief talent of the personage, whoever he may be, whether an uncultivated rustic, tattooed barbarian or naked savage, consists in being able to explain himself, in arguing and in following an abstract discourse with intelligence and attention, in tracing for himself, or in the footsteps of a guide, the rectilinear pathway of general ideas. Thus, to the spectators of the eighteenth century, Reason is everywhere and she stands alone in the world. A form of intellect so universal necessarily strikes them as natural, they resemble people who, speaking but one language, and one they have always spoken with facility, cannot imagine another language being spoken, or that they may be surrounded by the deaf and the dumb. And so much the more in as much as their theory authorizes this prejudice. According to the new ideology all minds are within reach of all truths. If the mind does not grasp them the fault is ours in not being properly prepared; it will comprehend if we take the trouble to guide it properly. For it has senses the same as our own; and sensations, revived, combined and noted by signs, suffice to form "not only all our conceptions but again all our faculties."3406An exact and constant relationship of ideas attaches our simplest perceptions to the most complex sciences, and, from the lowest to the highest degree, a scale is practicable; if the scholar stops on the way it is owing to our having left too great an interval between two degrees of the scale; let no intermediary degrees be omitted and he will mount to the top of it. To this exalted idea of the faculties of man is added a no less exalted idea of his heart. Rousseau having declared this to be naturally good, the refined class plunge into the belief with all the exaggerations of fashion and all the sentimentality of the drawing-room. The conviction is widespread that man, and especially the man of the people, is sensitive and affectionate by nature; that he is immediately impressed by benefactions and disposed to be grateful for them, that he softens at the slightest sign of interest in him, and that he is capable of every refinement. A series of engravings represents two children in a dilapidated cottage,3407one five and the other three years old, by the side of an infirm grandmother, one supporting her head and the other giving her drink; the father and mother enter and, on seeing this touching incident, "these good people find themselves so happy in possessing such children they forget they are poor." "Oh, my father," cries a shepherd youth of the Pyrénées,3408"accept this faithful dog, so true to me for seven years; in future let him follow and defend you, thus serving me better than in any other manner." It would require too much space to follow in the literature of the end of the century, from Marmontel to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and from Florian to Berquin and Bitaubé, the interminable repetition of these sweet insipidities. The illusion even reaches statesmen. "Sire," says Turgot, on presenting the king with a plan of political education,3409"I venture to assert that in ten years your nation will no longer be recognizable, and through enlightenment and good morals, in intelligent zeal for your service and for the country, it will rise above all other nations. Children who are now ten years of age will then be men prepared for the state, loving their country, submissive to authority, not through fear but through Reason, aiding their fellow-citizens, and accustomed to recognizing and respecting justice."—In the months of January, 1789,3410Necker, to whom M. de Bouillé pointed out the imminent danger arising from the unswerving efforts of the Third-Estate, "coldly replied, turning his eyes upward, 'reliance must be placed on the moral virtues of man.'"—In the main, on the imagination forming any conception of human society, this consists of a vague, semi-bucolic, semi-theatrical scene, somewhat resembling those displayed on the frontispieces of illustrated works on morals and politics. Half-naked men with others clothed in skins, assemble together under a large oak tree; in the center of the group a venerable old man arises and makes an address, using "the language of nature and Reason," proposing that all should be united, and explaining how men are bound together by mutual obligations; he shows them the harmony of private and of public interests, and ends by making them appreciate of the beauty of virtue.3411All utter shouts of joy, embrace each other, gather round the speaker and elect him chief magistrate; dancing is going on under the branches in the background, and henceforth happiness on earth is fully established.—This is no exaggeration. The National Assembly addresses the nation in harangues of this style. For many years the government speaks to the people as it would to one of Gessner's shepherds. The peasants are entreated not to burn castles because it is painful for their good king to see such sights. They are exhorted "to surprise him with their virtues in order that he may be the sooner rewarded for his own."3412At the height of the Jacquerie tumults the sages of the day seem to think they are living in a state of pastoral simplicity, and that with an air on the flute they may restore to its fold the howling pack of bestial animosities and unchained appetites.
The inadequacy and fragility of reason in man.—The rarityand inadequacy of reason in humanity.—Subordination ofreason in human conduct.—Brutal and dangerous forces.—Thenature and utility of government. Government impossibleunder the new theory.
It is a sad thing to fall asleep in a sheep-shed and, on awakening, to find the sheep transformed into wolves; and yet, in the event of a revolution that is what we may expect. What we call reason in Man is not an innate endowment, basic and enduring, but a tardy acquisition and a fragile composition. The slightest physiological knowledge will tell us that it is a precarious act of balance, dependent on the no less greater instability of the brain, nerves, circulation and digestion. Take women that are hungry and men that have been drinking; place a thousand of these together, and let them excite each other with their cries, their anxieties, and the contagious reaction of their ever-deepening emotions; it will not be long before you find them a crowd of dangerous maniacs. This becomes evident, and abundantly so, after 1789.—Now, consult psychology. The simplest mental operation, a sensuous perception, is an act of memory, the appliance of a name, an ordinary act of judgment is the play of complicated mechanism, the joint and final result of several millions of wheels which, like those of a clock,3413turn and propel blindly, each for itself, each through its own force, and each kept in place and in functional activity by a system of balance and compensation.3414If the hands mark the hour with any degree of accuracy it is due to a wonderful if not miraculous conjunction, while hallucination, delirium and monomania, ever at the door, are always ready to enter it. Properly speaking Man is mad, as the body is sick, by nature; the health of our mind, like the health of our organs, is simply a repeated achievement and a happy accident. If such happens to be the case with the coarse woof and canvas, with the large and approximately strong threads of our intellect, what are the chances for the ulterior and superadded embroidery, the subtle and complicated netting forming reason properly so called, and which is composed of general ideas? Formed by a slow and delicate process of weaving, through a long system of signs, amidst the agitation of pride, of enthusiasm and of dogmatic obstinacy, what risk, even in the most perfect brain, for these ideas only inadequately to correspond with outward reality! All that we require in this connection is to witness the operation of the idyll in vogue with the philosophers and politicians.—These being the superior minds, what can be said of the masses of the people, of the uncultivated or semi-cultivated brains? According as reason is crippled in man so is it rare in humanity. General ideas and accurate reasoning are found only in a select few. The comprehension of abstract terms and the habit of making accurate deductions requires previous and special preparation, a prolonged mental exercise and steady practice, and besides this, where political matters are concerned, a degree of composure which, affording every facility for reflection, enables a man to detach himself for a moment from himself for the consideration of his interests as a disinterested observer. If one of these conditions is wanting, reason, especially in relation to politics, is absent.—In a peasant or a villager, in any man brought up from infancy to manual labor, not only is the network of superior conceptions defective, but again the internal machinery by which they are woven is not perfected. Accustomed to the open air, to the exercise of his limbs, his attention flags if he stands inactive for a quarter of an hour; generalized expressions find their way into his mind only as sound; the mental combination they ought to excite cannot be produced. He becomes drowsy unless a powerful vibrating voice contagiously arouses in him the instincts of flesh and blood, the personal cravings, the secret enmities which, restrained by outward discipline, are always ready to be set free.—In the half-cultivated mind, even with the man who thinks himself cultivated and who reads the newspapers, principles are generally disproportionate guests; they are above his comprehension; he does not measure their bearings, he does not appreciate their limitations, he is insensible to their restrictions and he falsifies their application. They are like those preparations of the laboratory which, harmless in the chemist's hands, become destructive in the street under the feet of passing people.—Too soon will this be apparent when, in the name of popular sovereignty, each commune, each mob, shall regard itself as the nation and act accordingly; when Reason, in the hands of its new interpreters, shall inaugurate riots in the streets and peasant insurrections in the fields.3415
This is owing to the philosophers of the age having been mistaken in two ways. Not only is reason not natural to Man nor universal in humanity, but again, in the conduct of Man and of humanity, its influence is small. Except with a few cool and clear intellects, a Fontenelle, a Hume, a Gibbon, with whom it may prevail because it encounters no rivals, it is very far from playing a leading part; it belongs to other forces born within us, and which, by virtue of being the first comers, remain in possession of the field. The place obtained by reason is always restricted; the office it fulfills is generally secondary. Openly or secretly, it is only a convenient subaltern, a domestic advocate constantly suborned, employed by the proprietors to plead in their behalf; if they yield precedence in public it is only through decorum. Vainly do they proclaim it the recognized sovereign; they grant it only a passing authority, and, under its nominal control, they remain the inward masters. These masters of Man consists of physical temperament, bodily needs, animal instinct, hereditary prejudice, imagination, generally the dominant passion, and more particularly personal or family interest, also that of caste or party. We are making a big mistake were we assume men to be naturally good, generous, pleasant, or at any rate gentle, pliable, and ready to sacrifice themselves to social interests or to those of others. There are several, and among them the strongest, who, left to themselves, would only wreak havoc.—In the first place, if there is no certainty of Man being a remote blood cousin of the monkey, it is at least certain that, in his structure, he is an animal closely related to the monkey, provided with canine teeth, carnivorous, formerly cannibal and, therefore, a hunter and bellicose. Hence there is in him a steady substratum of brutality and ferocity, and of violent and destructive instincts, to which must be added, if he is French, gaiety, laughter, and a strange propensity to gambol and act insanely in the havoc he makes; we shall see him at work.—In the second place, at the outset, his condition casts him naked and destitute on an ungrateful soil, on which subsistence is difficult, where, at the risk of death, he is obliged to save and to economize. Hence a constant preoccupation and the rooted idea of acquiring, accumulating, and possessing, rapacity and avarice, more particularly in the class which, tied to the globe, fasts for sixty generations in order to support other classes, and whose crooked fingers are always outstretched to clutch the soil whose fruits they cause to grow;-we shall see this class at work.—Finally, his more delicate mental organization makes of him from the earliest days an imaginative being in which swarming fancies develop themselves into monstrous chimeras to expand his hopes, fears and desires beyond all bounds. Hence an excess of sensibility, sudden outbursts of emotion, contagious agitation, irresistible currents of passion, epidemics of credulity and suspicion, in short, enthusiasm and panic, especially if he is French, that is to say, excitable and communicative, easily thrown off his balance and prompt to accept foreign impulsion, deprived of the natural ballast which a phlegmatic temperament and concentration of lonely meditations secure to his German and Latin neighbors; and all this we shall see at work.—These constitute some of the brute forces that control human life. In ordinary times we pay no attention to them; being subordinated they do not seem to us formidable. We take it for granted that they are allayed and pacified; we flatter ourselves that the discipline imposed on them has made them natural, and that by dint of flowing between dikes they are settled down into their accustomed beds. The truth is that, like all brute forces, like a stream or a torrent, they only remain in these under constraint; it is the dike which, through its resistance, produces this moderation. Another force equal to their force had to be installed against their outbreaks and devastation, graduated according to their scale, all the firmer as they are more menacing, despotic if need be against their despotism, in any event constraining and repressive, at the outset a tribal chief, later an army general, all modes consisting in an elective or hereditary man-at-arms, possessing vigilant eyes and vigorous arms, and who, with blows, excites fear and, through fear, maintains order. In the regulation and limitation of his blows divers instrumentalities are employed, a pre-established constitution, a division of powers, a code of laws, tribunals, and legal formalities. At the bottom of all these wheels ever appears the principal lever, the efficacious instrument, namely, the policeman armed against the savage, brigand and madman each of us harbors, in repose or manacled, but always living, in the recesses of his own breast.3416
On the contrary, in the new theory, every principle promulgated, every precaution taken, every suspicion awaked is aimed against the policeman. In the name of the sovereignty of the people all authority is withdrawn from the government, every prerogative, every initiative, its continuance and its force. The people, being sovereign the government is simply its clerk, and less than its clerk, merely its domestic.—Between them "no contract" indefinite or at least enduring, "and which may be canceled only by mutual consent or the unfaithfulness of one of the two parties. It is against the nature of a political body for the sovereign to impose a law on himself which he cannot set aside."—There is no sacred and inviolable charter "binding a people to the forms of an established constitution. The right to change these is the first guarantee of all rights. There is not, and never can be, any fundamental, obligatory law for the entire body of a people, not even the social contract."—It is through usurpation and deception that a prince, an assembly, and a body of magistrates declare themselves representatives of the people. "Sovereignty is not to be represented for the same reason that it is not to be ceded. . . . The moment a people gives itself representatives it is no longer free, it exists no more. . . The English people think themselves free but they deceive themselves; they are free only during an election of members of parliament; on the election of these they become slaves and are null. . . the deputies of the people are not, nor can they be, its representatives; they are simply its commissioners and can sign no binding final agreement. Every law not ratified by the people themselves is null and is no law."3417—"A body of laws sanctioned by an assembly of the people through a fixed constitution of the State does not suffice; other fixed and periodical assemblies are necessary which cannot be abolished or extended, so arranged that on a given day the people may be legitimately convoked by the law, no other formal conviction being requisite. . . The moment the people are thus assembled the jurisdiction of the government is to cease, and the executive power is to be suspended," society commencing anew, while citizens, restored to their primitive independence, may reconstitute at will, for any period they determine, the provisional contract to which they have assented only for a determined time. "The opening of these assemblies, whose sole object is to maintain the social compact, should always take place with two propositions, never suppressed, and which are to be voted on separately; the first one, whether the sovereign( people) is willing to maintain the actual form of the government; the second, whether the people are willing to leave its administration in the hands of those actually performing its duties."—Thus, "the act by which a people is subject to its chiefs is absolutely only a commission, a service in which, as simple officers of their sovereign, they exercise in his name the power of which he has made them depositories, and which he may modify, limit and resume at pleasure."3418Not only does it always reserve to itself "the legislative power which belongs to it and which can belong only to it," but again, it delegates and withdraws the executive power according to its fancy. Those who exercise it are its employees. "It may establish and depose them when it pleases." In relation to it they have no rights. "It is not a matter of contract with them but one of obedience;" they have "no conditions" to prescribe; they cannot demand of it the fulfillment of any engagement.—It is useless to raise the objection that, according to this, every man of spirit or of culture will decline our offices, and that our chiefs will bear the character of lackeys. We will not leave them the freedom of accepting or declining office; we impose it on them authoritatively. "In every true democracy the magistrature is not an advantage but an onerous burden, not to be assigned to one more than to another." We can lay hands on our magistrates, take them by the collar and set them on their benches in spite of themselves. By fair means or foul they are the working subjects (corvéables) of the State, in a lower condition than a valet or a mechanic, since the mechanic does his work according to acceptable conditions, and the discharged valet can claim his eight days' notice to quit. As soon as the government throws off this humble attitude it usurps, while constitutions are to proclaim that, in such an event, insurrection is not only the most sacred right but the most imperative duty.—The new theory is now put into practice, and the dogma of the sovereignty of the people, interpreted by the crowd, is to result in a complete anarchy, up to the moment when, interpreted by its leaders, it produces perfect despotism.