Chapter IV: Summary--Predictions (3)

[71] It is current knowledge that Italian Fascism and Russian Bolshevism both derive from the author of _Reflections on Violence_. He did, indeed, preach class egotism to some extent in a universal manner, but without any explicit preference for the interest of one class rather than that of another. In his preaching of egotism there is a kind of impartiality which does not lack grandeur, a quality not inherited by his disciples.

[72] And even the teaching of Jesus Christ. R. Johannet says (op. cit., p. 153), ‘I have tried to show what a vast amount of Christianity is contained in the bourgeois type, when it is pure. To condemn the bourgeois, because he is a bourgeois, in the name of Christ, seems to me a somewhat daring paradox.’ But this author does not quote a single text of the Gospels. He only quotes a few interpreters of Saint Thomas Aquinas, whom he praises for their ‘extra-realist sense of affairs’, and who apparently for him incarnate the thinking of Jesus Christ. This work is one of the most perfect examples of the modern ‘clerk’s’ desire to idealize the practical spirit. (On the subject of Christian doctrine in the matter of property, see Father Thomassin, _Traité de l’aumône_.)

[73] It might be said that in Christian theology the bourgeois state is a _function_, and not a rank.

[74] The essential position of the Church on this point (I say essential; for, by close search, one can find texts supporting the opposite thesis, but once more the curious thing is the fact that this search should be made) seems to me defined in these lines: ‘Malebranche inclines, like Bossuet, to look upon social inequalities and injustices as the results of sin, which must be endured as such, and to which exterior conduct must conform.... We must not even attempt to remedy these injustices except by charity, for we should simply disturb the peace of the world, probably without any result. Only, _we should not in our own souls attach any sort of importance to these circumstances and conditions, for the true life is not there_’ (H. Joly, _Malebranche_, p. 262).

[75] On the relation between Durckheim’s theses and those of the French traditionalists, see D. Parodi, _La Philosophie contemporaine en France_, p. 148.

[76] ‘Germany is the sole judge of her methods.’ (Major von Disfurth, November, 1914.) The philosophy of national moralities seems essentially German. Is it not very remarkable to see Hegel and Zeller desiring at all costs to prove that Plato in his _Republic_ defined a state of good which was only valid for the Greeks, and not for all peoples? (See P. Janet, _Histoire des idées politiques_, tome 1, p. 140.)

[77] Barrès wrote in 1898: ‘The professors are still arguing about justice and truth, when every self-respecting man knows that he must limit himself to inquiring if there is justice in the relations between two given men, at a given time, under specified circumstances.’ That is exactly what the Germany of 1914 said in answer to those who brought accusations against her. Not a single moralist in France before Barrès--not even de Maistre or Bonald--would have asserted that ‘every self-respecting man’ can conceive of no justice but one specially arranged for the circumstances.

[78] _L’Appel au Soldat._ Compare this with the traditional French teaching, of which Barrès claims to be the heir: ‘Whatever your country may be, you should only believe what you would be disposed to believe if you were in another country.’ (_Logique de Port-Royal_, iii, xx.) It must not be thought that dogma of national truths aims only at moral truth. Recently certain French thinkers waxed indignant that the doctrines of Einstein were accepted by their compatriots without more resistance.

[79] The adoration of the contingent _for its own sake_; otherwise, and as a step towards the eternal, the knowledge of ‘strange things’ is highly recommended by Leibniz, and even by Spinoza. Renouvier, so hostile to a certain kind of universalism, never bestows philosophical value on a knowledge of what is ‘unique and inexpressible’ in the object. (See G. Séailles, ‘Le Pluralisme de Renouvier,’ _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, 1925.) He would never have signed this charter of modern metaphysics: ‘That the philosophers since Socrates should have contended as to which should most scorn the knowledge of the particular and should most adore knowledge of the general, is something which passes understanding. For, after all, must not the most honourable knowledge be the knowledge of the most valuable realities! And is there a valuable reality which is not concrete and individual?’ (William James.)

[80] An important literary review recently reproached a critic (M. Pierre Lasserre) for his supposed inaptitude to understand ‘contemporary literature’.

[81] Curiously enough, these metaphysics of the historic may also be found among the poets. We all know Claudel’s cult of ‘the present minute’ (because it differs from all other minutes in that it is not the extremity of the same quantity of the past); Rimbaud before this said: ‘One must be absolutely modern.’ Moreover, for certain Christians dogma is only valid _relative to a time_. There again particularism seems to have been started by the Germans: ‘No exposition of morality can be the same for all periods of the Christian Church; each possesses full and complete value for a certain period only.’ (Scheiermacher.) On the Germanism in this desire to see everything in its ‘becoming’, see Parodi, _le Problème moral et la Pensée contemporaine_, p. 255.

[82] These views on the modern cult of the particular do not seem to me to be invalidated by the arrival of a recent school (Neo-Thomism) which opposes the cult of Being to that of Becoming. According to the leaders of this school, it is clear that, despite certain universalist declarations, human Being really belongs only to them and their group, although in this case the group is wider than the nation. One of them would quite willingly say with a Christian of the second century: ‘We are men; the rest are pigs and dogs.’ Nor do I think I need take into account those particularisms which claim that by working for themselves they are working for the universal, seeing that for them their own group represents the universal. ‘I am Roman, I am human’ (Maurras). ‘I am German, I am human’ (Fichte) and so on.... However, these claims show the prestige of the universal in despite of doctrines.

[83] See Note J at the end of this book.

[84] On the cult of the ‘Prussian model’ even among the English ‘clerks’, see Elie Halévy, _Histoire du Peuple anglais_, Epilogue, livre ii, ch. i.

[85] Sorel, _Le procès de Socrate_.

[86] This has been perfectly obvious to all those guardians of the spiritual who have condemned it, whatever their motives may have been. More precisely, Maurras’s work makes the passion of man to found the State (or to strengthen it) an object of religious adoration; it is really the worldly made transcendental. This displacing of the transcendental is the secret of the great influence exerted by Maurras on his contemporaries. These persons, especially in irreligious France, were plainly eager for such a doctrine, if one may judge by the outburst of gratitude with which they greeted it, and which seems to say: ‘At last we are delivered from God; at last we are allowed to adore ourselves in our will to be great, not in our will to be good; we are shown the ideal in the real, on earth and not in heaven.’ In this sense, Maurras’s work is the same as Nietzsche’s (‘be faithful to the earth’), with this difference, that the German thinker deifies man in his anarchic passions, and the Frenchman in his organising passions. It is also the same as the work of Bergson and James, inasmuch as it says like them: the real is the only ideal. This _secularizing of the divine_ may be compared with the work of Luther.

[87] Machiavellian morality is plainly proclaimed in the following lines, where every open-minded person will recognize, except for the tone, the teaching of _all_ the present teachers of realism, whatever their nationality: ‘In his relations with other States, the Prince should know neither law nor right, except the right of the strongest. These relations place in his hands, under his responsibility, the divine rights of the Destiny and government of the world, and raise him above the precepts of individual morality into a higher moral order, whose content is enshrined in the words: Salus populi suprema lex esto.’ (Fichte, quoted by Andler, op. cit., p. 33.) The advance on Machiavelli is obvious.

[88] The teaching of this writer may be put in this form: ‘All that is good from the point of view of politics is good; _and I know no other criterion of good_.’ This enables him to say that he makes no pronouncement in matters of private morality.

[89] In Richelieu’s _Testament politique_ and the _Mémoires de Louis XIV pour l’Instruction du Dauphin_, the catalogue of good and ill might be signed by Saint Vincent de Paul. We read in them: ‘Kings should take care in making treaties, but once the treaties are made, _they must observe them religiously_. I know that many politicians teach the contrary; but, without taking into consideration all that the Christian Faith provides us with against these maxims, I maintain that since the loss of honour is greater than the loss of life itself, a great Prince should hazard his person and _even the interest of his State rather than break his word_, which he cannot violate without losing his reputation, and consequently _the greatest strength_ of a Sovereign.’ (_Testament Politique_, part 2, ch. vi.)

[90] Similarly with the writer--Machiavelli, who writes for his peers, can allow himself the luxury of not being a moralist; Maurras who writes for crowds cannot do so. No one writes with impunity in a democracy. Moreover, a political activity which is supported by moral activity proves that it understands the true conditions of its success. A master in these matters says: ‘There can be no profound political reform unless religion and morality are also reformed.’ (Hegel.) Clearly the particular influence of the _Action Française_ among all other conservative organs is due to the fact that its political movement is supported by a moral teaching, although other interests oblige it to deny this.

[91] _Dictionnaire des Cas de Conscience_ (ed. 1712), article ‘Guerre’. With such a morality the territorial formation of any European State would become impossible. This is the type of non-practical teaching, i.e. of what I mean by the true ‘clerk’. (See Note F at the end of this book on the subject of the welcome given to this teaching by the material world.) In the opinion of Vittoria as well, the extension of empire is not a just cause.

[92] This is the thesis of Alfonso Liguori which to-day prevails in the Church’s teaching over that of Vittoria.

[93] Cardinal Gousset (_Théologie morale_, 1845).

[94] This is the Scholastic doctrine of war, formulated in all its rigidity by Thomas Aquinas. According to this doctrine, the Prince (or the people) who declares war, acts as a magistrate (minister Dei) under whose jurisdiction a foreign nation falls, owing to an injustice it has committed and which it refuses to repair. From this it follows, in particular, that the Prince who has declared war ought solely to punish the guilty, if he is victorious, and not to acquire any personal benefit from his victory. This high moral doctrine is entirely abandoned by the Church to-day. (See Vanderpol, _La Guerre devant le Christianisme_, titre ix.)

[95] Apparently this was the view adopted by the Holy See in 1914 towards the Franco-German war, Germany benefiting by what theology calls ‘invincible’ ignorance, i.e. implying that one has used all the diligence of which a man is capable in trying to understand the explanations of an adversary. Obviously, one may feel that some goodwill was needed to think that Germany had a right to this benefit.

[96] Like the thesis of war being just on both sides, this is the doctrine of Molina, which in matters of law in war has entirely replaced Scholastic doctrine in ecclesiastic teaching.

[97] In the _Dictionnaire théologique_ of Vacant-Mangenot (1922, article ‘Guerre’), I find the following passage, which I recommend to all aggressors desirous of sheltering under a high moral authority: ‘It is not only the right but the duty of the leader of a nation to adopt this method (i.e. war) to safeguard the general interests committed to his care. This right and duty apply not only to a strictly defensive war, but also to an offensive war rendered necessary by the actions of a neighbouring State whose ambitious intrigues constitute a real danger.’ In the same article will be found a theory of colonial wars identical to Kipling’s when he calls them: _the white man’s burden_.

[98] This expression (i.e. ‘la blague’) is Sorel’s (see Julien Benda, _Les Sentiments de Critias_, p. 258); and again (_Reflexions sur la Violence_, ch. ii): ‘You cannot sufficiently execrate those who teach the people that they should carry out some alleged superlatively idealistic injunction of a justice moving towards the future.’ Moreover, Sorel professes a similar hatred for those who preach this injunction to the bourgeoisie.

[99] See Note K at the end of the book.

[100] See _Reflexions sur la Violence_, ch. vi: ‘The morality of Violence.’ We shall be told that the justice denounced by Sorel is the justice of tribunals, which according to him is a false justice, a ‘violence with a judicial mask’. There is no indication that a justice which was a true justice would receive any more respect from him.

[101] In this respect one cannot stress too much in certain political teachers a defence of intolerance, carried out with a consciousness and arrogance which hitherto had only appeared sometimes in the mandatories of a revealed religion. A specimen is quoted by G. Guy-Grand (_La Philosophie nationaliste_, p. 47). See also one of these defences in L. Romier, _Nation et Civilisation_, p. 180.

[102] ‘Modern science has established as the measure of truth, not the deductive demands of its understanding, but the observed existence of the fact.’ (Paul Bourget.) The ‘truth’ here is evidently moral truth; for scientific truth the phrase would be a tautology. Once more, here the ‘fact’ is solely the fact which happens to suit the author’s passions. When M. d’Haussonville points out to M. Bourget that democracy is a fact, and an unavoidable fact, he is told that this belief is a ‘prejudice’ and one suddenly learns that ‘boats are made to row against the stream’. This is exactly what revolutionaries say.

[103] See Note L at the end of this book.

[104] Another thinker to whom our empiricists are strangely ungrateful is the author of these words: ‘Consider the danger of one stirring up the enormous masses which form the French nation. Who could restrain the disturbance set up, or foresee all the results it might produce? Even if all the advantages of the new scheme should be indisputable, what man of good sense would dare to undertake to abolish old customs, to change old maxims, and to give a new form to a State other than that it has reached after an existence of 1,300 years?’ (J. J. Rousseau.)

[105] See Note M at the end of this book.

[106] ‘A truly scientific mind,’ says one of these devotees of fact, ‘feels no need to justify a privilege which appears as an elementary and irreducible datum of the social world.’ (Paul Bourget.) But this same ‘truly scientific’ mind is scandalised at an _insurrection_ against this privilege, which is also an ‘elementary and irreducible datum of the social world’. I shall be told this that insurrection is not a datum of the social world, but of the world of passion where it is most anti-social. And that indeed is the position of this dogmatism: It considers the social _independent of the passionate_, whether the latter has been made social (by Catholic education), or has been reduced to silence by force (school of Maurras) or by skill (school of Bainville). The strangest part of it all is that those who argue in this way about the social _in itself_ accuse their adversaries of dealing in abstractions.

[107] The position I am here denouncing has nothing in common with that of a recent school of moralists (Rauh, Lévy-Bruhl) who also desire ‘to take man as he is’, but in order to discover how he may be made better.

[108] This pessimism, whatever some of its heralds may say, has nothing in common with the pessimism of the masters of the seventeenth century. La Fontaine and La Bruyère attribute nothing inevitable or eternal to the ills they portray. Let me also point out that in their efforts to discourage hope, the Romantics of Pessimism cannot claim (as M. Georges Goyau has pointed out to them) that they are based on Catholic tradition.

[109] Such a group logically comes to declarations like the following, which every supporter of ‘integral nationalism’ is bound to admire: ‘From to-night onwards let there be an end to the silly Utopia where everyone thinks with his own head.’ (Impero, 4th November, 1926.) See Note N at the end of this volume.

[110] On Pragmatism, especially Nietzschean pragmatism, and the place it holds (whether they confess it or not) in almost all the moral and political teachings really characteristic of this time, see R. Berthelot, _Un Romantisme Utilitaire_, tome i, page 28 onwards. I can best show the novelty of the pragmatist attitude, especially among the French moralists, by quoting a remark of Montaigne which they all, before Barrès, would have ratified: ‘The honour and beauty of an action cannot be argued from its utility.’ Let us not forget, however, that Nietzsche, always unfaithful to his disciples, declares that ‘in the long run, utility, like everything else, is simply a figment of our imagination, and may well be the _fatal stupidity by which we shall one day perish_’.

[111] That it why Pragmatism is also called Humanism. (See F. Schiller, _Protagoras or Plato_.)

[112] We know how the two are reconciled. Jesus, they say, preached the spirit of sacrifice, which is the basis of all human institutions. As if Jesus preached the spirit of sacrifice which wins battles and secures empires!

[113] ‘The true warrior remains human in the midst of the blood he sheds.’ (De Maistre.)

[114] For example, when they make a soldier say in heaven: ‘You must know, my friends, that among all things done upon earth, nothing is more agreeable to the eyes of those who rule the universe than societies of men founded upon respect for laws, which we call cities.’ (Cicero, _Scipio’s Dream_.)

[115] Sorel, loc. cit.

[116] And from any patriotism. Nietzsche and Sorel prove that love of war is something totally distinct from love of country, although most often they coincide.

[117] Ernest Psichari, _Terres de Soleil et de Sommeil_. And, in _L’Appel des armes_, through the mouth of a character who obviously has all the author’s sympathies; ‘I think it necessary that there should be in the world a certain number of the men who are called soldiers and who place their ideal in fighting, who have a taste for battle, not for victory but for the contest, as hunters have a taste for hunting, not for game!... The part we have to play, or otherwise we lose our reason for existing and have no more meaning, is to maintain a military ideal, not a nationally military ideal, but a militarily military ideal, if I may so express it.’ The religion of this moralist is, according to his own expression, _integral militarism_. ‘Big guns,’ he says, ‘are the most real realities which exist, the sole realities of the modern world.’ And obviously these realities are divinities for this ‘spiritual’ person and his followers.

[118] This depreciation of Greece, to be seen in many French traditionalists since de Maistre, is constant among the Pangermanists. (See notably Houston Chamberlain, _Genesis of the Nineteenth Century_, tome i, page 57.) In a periodical with dogmatic claims (_Notre Temps_, August, 1927), under the suggestive title ‘Towards a Practical Idealism’, I read: ‘A young generation trained in this way, _more sporting than ideological_, supports those who ask whether we are not at the dawn of a great age.’ Here again the Churchmen do not lag behind. In _La Vie Catholique_ (24th September, 1927) I find a warm eulogy of a champion boxer. It is true that this eulogy ends up with the words: ‘Finally, let us add that Tunney is a convinced and practising Catholic, and that two of his sisters are nuns.’

[119] Laws, Book I. The exact text of Plato is: ‘In the order of virtues, wisdom is first, temperance comes next, courage occupies the last place.’ Plato here means by courage (see the context, notably the passage about those soldiers who ‘though insolent, unjust, immoral, know how to fight’) Man’s aptitude for facing death. It seems that he would not have given the first place to the courage which is strength of mind, a resistance to misfortune, as the Stoics afterwards did. With him strength of mind always comes after justice--according to his doctrine, it is a consequence of justice. Moreover, the courage placed in the supreme rank by Barrès is not Stoic patience but the active defiance of death. For Nietzsche and Sorel it is essential audacity, where audacity is irrational--a form of courage depreciated by all ancient moralists and their disciples. (See Plato, Laches; Aristotle, Ethics, VIII; Spinoza, Ethics, IV, 69; even the poets--‘Our reason which commands our fire,’ Ronsard.)

It seems that facing death, even on behalf of justice, was not so much the object of praise among the ancient philosophers as it is among the moderns. In the Phaedo, Socrates is praised for his justice; he is not very loudly praised because he died for justice. Moreover, the views of the ancients on this point seem to me well expressed by Spinoza: ‘Death is a thing of which the free man thinks least of all,’ a thought which does not imply much admiration for those who face death bravely. One wonders whether the veneration of courage, at least among the moralists, has not been created by Christianity, with the importance it attaches to death, and the subsequent appearance before God.

I cannot leave this point without recalling a passage where Saint-Simon speaks of a nobility ‘accustomed to be good for nothing except to get itself killed’, _Mémoires_, t. xi, page 427, ed. Cheruel. It may be asserted that there is not one modern writer, even a Duke of France, who would speak of courage in such a tone.

[120] And to hold.

[121] There will be found in Barrès (_Une Enquête aux pays du Levant_, chap. vii: ‘Les derniers fidèles du Vieux de la Montagne’) a striking example of admiration for the cult of honour inasmuch as this cult, when ably exploited by an intelligent leader, gives practical results.

[122] This is especially the case with Montaigne who, as everyone knows, extols honour insofar as it is man’s sensitiveness to the judgment of his conscience, but very little insofar as it is a desire for glory--‘put off with other pleasures that which comes from the approbation of others.’ Barrès believes he sees in that ‘a foreigner who does not share our prejudices’. Barrès confuses the moralists and the poets. Before him I do not know one French author with dogmatic claims who has attributed a high moral value to the love of glory; the French moralists before 1890 are very unmilitary, even the soldiers like Vauvenargues and Vigny. (See the excellent study of G. Le Bidois, _L’Honneur au miroir de nos lettres_, especially on Montesquieu.)

[123] The Abbé Sertillanges, _L’Héroisme et la Gloire_. Compare this with Bossuet’s two sermons on ‘The Honour of the World’. You can measure the advance made by the Church during three centuries in its concessions to lay passions. See also Nicole: ‘On the true idea of valour.’ The sermons of the Abbé Sertillanges (‘la Vie Héroïque’) should be read entire, as a monument of a Churchman’s enthusiasm for warlike instincts. It is positively the manifesto of a helmed ‘clerk’. You can find in them such emotions as the following which, mutatis mutandis, might be an extract from the Regimental Orders of a Colonel of the Death’s Head Hussars: ‘Behold Guynemer, the young hero, the simple soul with the eagle glance, the slim Hercules, the Achilles who does not retire to his tent, the Roland of the clouds and the Cid of the French sky: was there ever a wilder and more furious paladin, more careless of death, whether his own or that of an enemy? This “kid”, as his comrades called him, only enjoyed the savage pleasure of attack, of the hard fight, of the clear victory, and in him the arrogance of the conqueror was at once charming and terrible.’

[124] Let me recall Thomas Aquinas’s definition of honour, which is not exactly the definition of the honour extolled by the Abbé Sertillanges: ‘Honour is good (like the love of human glory) on condition that charity is its principle, and the love of God or the good of one’s neighbour as its object.’

[125] See the recent Bill to amend Martial Law, known as the Paul Boncour Bill.

[126] This suggestive remark is Lavisse’s, _Etudes d’Histoire de Prusse_, page 30. See the whole passage.

[127] Love here is obviously love for the superior species--to which the preacher naturally belongs. Doubtless it is this love also which permits of a pity which is not ‘perverted.’

[128] Charles Maurras, _Action Française_, tome iv, page 596. One thinks of Nietzsche’s exclamation: ‘Humanity! Was there ever a more horrible old woman among all horrible old women!’ and the German master adds, always in agreement with many a French master as we shall see later, ‘unless perhaps it is truth.’

[129] Their harshness has obviously nothing in common with the harshness implied by these fine words: ‘The man of justice subordinates passion to reason, which seems regrettable if his heart is cold, but will appear sublime if he is capable of love’ (Renouvier).

[130] This is the opinion of Machiavelli (chap. xviii) who, there again, does not therefore consider cruelty as a proof of a high state of culture.

[131] I find this from the pen of a hero of the First Empire: ‘I was afraid of feeling _pleasure_’ (the author himself underlines the word) ‘in killing with my own hand some of these scoundrels’ (he is speaking of some Germans who murdered French prisoners after the battle of Leipzic). ‘I therefore sheathed my sabre and left the extermination of these assassins to the troopers.’ (_Memoirs of General Marbot_, tome iii, page 344.) There is a condemnation of the joy of killing which would be scorned by many a contemporary writer. In France the glorification of warlike instincts is much less common among the soldiers than among the authors. Marbot is far less bloody-minded than Barrès.

[132] ‘And the honour of virtue consists in contending, not in winning’ (Montaigne).

[133] _La Ruine du monde antique_, page 76. See also in _Les Illusions du progrès_ (page 259) Sorel’s derisive amusement at a thinker who said that the preponderance of intellectual emotions is the sign of superior societies. We may take up Sainte-Beuve’s famous distinction and say that modern thinkers extol _sword-intelligence_ at the expense of _mirror-intelligence_. On their own showing it is the former they admire in Nietzsche, Sorel, Péguy, and Maurras. (See R. Gillouin, _Esquisses littéraires et morales_, page 52.) Let me observe that contempt for ‘mirror-intelligence’ implies contempt for Aristotle, Spinoza, Bacon, Goethe, and Renan. Nor does it seem to me that M. Paul Valéry is exactly a ‘sword-intelligence’.

[134] _Victor Marie, Comte Hugo_, towards the end. See Note O at the end of this volume.

[135] This it the only reason why Nietzsche extols art, and declares (along with all modern moralism) the supremacy of the artist over the philosopher, because art seems to him to possess the value of action. Apart from this point of view, it seems just to say with one of his critics: ‘At bottom Nietzsche despised art and artists.... In art he condemns a feminine principle, the mimicry of the actor, the love of dress and all that glitters.... Remember the eloquent page where he praises Shakespeare, the greatest of poets, for having abased the figure of the poet, whom he treats as a stage-player, before Caesar, _that divine man_.’ (C. Schuwer, _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, April, 1926.) For Sorel art is great because it is an anticipation of intense production, as it tends to manifest itself more and more in our society.

[136] _Evolution Créatrice_, page 216. The true formula of Bergsonism should be, ‘I grow, therefore I am.’ Notice also the tendency of modern philosophy to make the practical character of thought its essential characteristic and to make its consciousness of itself a secondary characteristic: ‘Perhaps thought must be defined as the faculty of combining means towards certain ends rather than by the sole property of being clear to itself.’ (D. Roustan, _Leçons de Psychologie_, page 73.)

[137] The Sphex. The example is given in _L’Evolution Créatrice_, and has had an immense success in the literary world. (It is, moreover, imaginary. See Marie Goldsmith, _Psychologie Comparée_, page 211.) The defence of the practical value of instinct, with the same Romantic contempt of the rationalist as in Barrès, existed with J. J. Rousseau: ‘Conscience never deceives us; it is to the soul what instinct is to the body.... Modern philosophy, which only admits what can be explained, takes care not to admit the obscure faculty called instinct which, without acquired knowledge, seems to guide animals towards some end.’ (_Confession de foi du vicaire savoyard._)

[138] ‘If the utility which results from a man’s occupations determined our praise, the inventor of the plough would deserve the praise of being a great mind far more than Aristotle, Galilei, and M. Descartes.’ (Bayle.) Fontenelle and Voltaire have pointed out the utility of certain studies which were considered useless; they never meant that those who cultivated these studies while they thought them useless were therefore contemptible.

[139] See above, page 54.

[140] Or moral. Barrès denounces the ‘immorality’ of the scholar who shows the part played by chance in history. Compare Michelet’s remark, ‘respect kills history.’

[141] As is well known, this is the argument of the ‘Avenir de l’intelligence’. It allows followers to say (‘Manifeste de l’Intelligence,’ _Figaro_, 19th July, 1919; on this manifesto, see Note P at the end of this volume) that ‘one of the most obvious missions of the Church during the ages has been to protect the intelligence against its own errors’--an irrefutable saying from the moment that the errors of the intelligence are everything it says without reference to social order (whose basis is to be the teaching of the Church). This practical conception of the intelligence leads to definitions of this sort: ‘True logic is to be defined as the normal union of feelings, images and signs, to inspire in us the conceptions suited to our moral, intellectual and physical needs.’ (Maurras.) Compare this with the tradition teaching of the French masters: ‘Logic is the art of guiding reason properly in the knowledge of things.’ (_Logique de Port-Royal._)

The wish to esteem intelligence according to its practical results appears again in this astounding formula: ‘A critical mind is of value _through the influence it exerts_ by means of the enlightenment it bestows.’ (Maurras.) See also how severe is M. Massis (_Jugements_, i, 87) for Renan when he says: ‘The useful is what I abhor.’ Elsewhere (_Jugements_, 107) the same thinker speaks of a spiritual freedom ‘whose disinterestedness is merely a refusal of the conditions of life, of action, _and of thought_!’

[142] They add ‘and unscientific’, which is irrefutable as soon as science means ‘practical’. ‘Bringing up children religiously,’ says M. Paul Bourget, ‘is bringing them up scientifically’--a very defensible saying as soon as ‘scientifically’ means (as the author here wants it to mean) ‘in conformity with the national interest’.

[143] The French traditionalists condemn the truth in itself in the name of ‘social’ truth. This is the _glorification of prejudices_, a new thing indeed in the descendants of Montaigne and Voltaire. It may be said that certain contemporary French masters show a zeal in defending the interests of society never seen before in those whose business was to defend the interests of the mind.

The condemnation of disinterested intellectual activity is plainly laid down in this command of Barrès: ‘All questions must be solved in relation to France,’ to which a German thinker replies in 1920, ‘All the conquests of ancient and modern culture and of science are looked at by us from the German point of view before everything.’ (Quoted by C. Chabot, Preface to the French translation of _Speeches to the German Nation_, page xix). For the cult of the ‘useful error’, see an amazing page in the _Jardin de Bérénice_, quoted and commented on by Parodi. (_Traditionalisme et Democratie_, page 136.)

[144] Here M. Maurras separates from his Master, de Maistre, who speaks of ‘the ocean which will one day welcome everything and everyone to its bosom’. However, the author of the _Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg_ quickly adds: ‘But I refrain from touching on personality, without which immortality is nothing.’

[145] On the existence of this doctrine of immanence among almost all Christian teachers until our own times, see Renouvier: ‘l’Idée de Dieu’ (_Année Philosophique_, 1897), and also _Essai d’une Classification des doctrines_, 3: _l’évolution_; _la création_.

[146] According to Hegel, God constantly grows at the expense of His opposite; His activity is essentially that of war and victory.

[147] Let me note a keen protest against this conception in ‘Neo-Thomism’.

[148] Compare, for instance, the condemnation of Rosmini with that of Maître Eckart, where such propositions as ‘Nulla in Deo distinctio esse aut intelligi potest’ and ‘Omnes creaturae sunt purum nihil’ are declared to be, not heretical, but only ‘ill-sounding, rash and suspected of heresy’.

[149] Remember that in 1806, immediately after Jena, Hegel’s one thought was to find a corner in which to philosophize. In 1813 Schopenhauer was completely indifferent to the up-rising of Germany against Napoleon.

[150] ‘No one has the right to be indifferent to the disasters of his country; but the philosopher, like the Christian, always has reasons for living. The Kingdom of God knows neither conquerors nor conquered; that Kingdom resides in the joys of the heart, the mind, and the imagination, which the conquered enjoys more than the conqueror if he is morally on a higher plane and has more mind. Your great Goethe, your admirable Fichte have taught us, have they not, how to lead a noble and consequently happy life, when our country is humiliated abroad.’ (First Letter to Strauss.)

Need I say that Nietzsche, who seems to me a bad ‘clerk’ from the nature of his teaching, seems to me one of the finest from his entire devotion to the passions of the spirit alone?

[151] Of course, I am not doubting the sincerity of all the ‘right-thinking’ men of letters. Some persons are so fortunate that the most profitable attitudes are precisely those which they adopt sincerely.

[152] This may be clearly seen by the ill-will displayed by the French bourgeoisie towards the order of their ‘spiritual leader’ forbidding them to read a publication whose doctrines they like. The change may be estimated if you remember that when, a century ago, the Pope ordered the French Catholics to accept the law against the Jesuits voted by the government of Charles X, they all bowed to his will.

[153] At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession when the north of France was invaded, Fénelon delivered several sermons in which he told the invaded population that their sufferings were the just punishment for their sins. Imagine the reception of anyone who dared to preach such a sermon to the French in August, 1914! For the manner in which the ‘taught’ Church to-day treats the ‘teaching’ Church if the latter does not say what it wants to hear, think of the reception thirty years ago of Father Ollivier’s sermon on the victims of the fire at the charity bazaar.

[154] Similar observations may be made about the philosophers, most of whom--and not the least famous--do not live to-day like Descartes and Spinoza, but are married, have children, occupy posts, are ‘in daily life’. All of which seems to me to have a relation with the ‘pragmatic’ character of their teaching. (On this point, see my book: _Sur le Succès du Bergsonisme_, page 207.)

[155] This is the reign (which seems eternal in France) of the ‘wit’, with his attribute so admirably denounced by Malebranche in this delicious phrase: ‘The stupid person and the wit are equally blind to truth; with this difference, that the stupid person respects truth while the wit despises it.’

[156] The spectacle of democracies may satisfy another sort of artistic sensibility, i.e. the sort which is moved, not by the spectacle of order, but by the spectacle of an equilibrium between forces which are naturally in opposition. (On this distinction, see the great book by M. Hauriou, _Principes de droit public_, chap. i.) Nevertheless, a sensibility to equilibrium is far more intellectual than truly artistic. See Note Q at the end of this book.

[157] More precisely, since the haughty Romanticism I mentioned above. The artist’s desire to set himself up as an exceptional being dates from Flaubert. Hugo and Lamartine never expressed it.

[158] This aversion is particularly strong in Nietzsche. (See _Le Gai sçavoir_, loc. cit., where generalization becomes a synonym for platitude, superficiality, stupidity.) Like a true artist, Nietzsche is incapable of understanding that the apperception of a common characteristic may be an act of genius--for instance, the apperception of the common characteristic between the movement of the planets and the fall of an apple.

[159] So much so that the true champions of ‘sacred egoism’ definitely condemn them. Bismarck, Wilhelm II, Naumann, Houston Chamberlain, all argue against classical teaching.

[160] Remember that Nietzsche only truly esteems the thought of the ancients up to Socrates, i.e. up to the time when it begins to teach the universal.

[161] This same Barrès is quoted as having said to a ‘Dreyfusist’ in 1898: ‘Why do you talk of justice and humanity to me! What do I care for? A few pictures in Europe and a few cemeteries!’ Another of our great political realists confessed one day to his fundamental necessity to ‘enjoy’. Socrates long ago told Protagoras that the basis of his doctrine was a thirst for sensation.

[162] It seems to me difficult to deny that pacifism, humanitarianism, and altruism are _boring_. No doubt, art, science, and philosophy offer sufficient opportunities for ‘amusement’ without one asking of it doctrines which set the world on fire. But that is the view of a man who is not wildly eager for sensation.

[163] The realists are not the only people to-day who find opportunities for sensation in their political attitudes. It is certain that the humanitarianism of Victor Hugo and Michelet is far from having the pure intellectual resonance it had in Spinoza and Malebranche. (See above, my distinction between humanitarianism and humanism.)

[164] ‘Peace it not the absence of war, but a virtue born from strength of soul.’ (Spinoza.)

[165] Here is an example: ‘Universal peace will come about one day, not because men will become better (one cannot hope for that) but because a new order of things, new science, new economic needs, will impose a state of peace on them, just as the very conditions of their existence formerly placed and maintained them in a state of war.’ (Anatole France, _Sur la Pierre blanche_.) Note the refusal, mentioned above, to believe in any possible betterment of the human soul.

[166] This observation applied to nearly all anti-militarist literature up to our own times. We have to come to Renan and Renouvier (at least among writers not of the Church) to find authors who speak of war and national passions with the seriousness and respect due to such dramas.

[167] I am not to say whether the claims of France after her victory might have been _impolitic_, for the thinkers I am discussing here only speak of what they consider their _immorality_. Notice that the pacifism of the Church, at least among the great teachers, is not at all inspired by sentimental considerations, but by pure moral education. ‘What do we condemn in war?’ says Saint Augustin. ‘Is it the fact that they kill men who have all one day to die? Only cowards, not religious men, would bring this accusation against war. What we condemn in war is the desire to do harm, an implacable soul, the fury of reprisals, the passion for dominion.’ (This is taken up by Thomas Aquinas in the _Summum_, 2, 2, xl, art. 1.)

[168] I consider that ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ may be said by all whose activity is not directed to practical ends: the artist, the metaphysician, the scientist _insofar as he finds satisfaction in the practice of science and not in its results_. Many will tell me that they and not the Christians are the true ‘clerks’, for the Christian accepts the ideas of justice and charity only for the sake of his salvation. No one will deny, however, that men, even Christians, exist, who accept this idea with no practical end in view.

[169] Malebranche, _Méditations chrétiennes_ (ix, 19).

[170] See Babeau, _Le village sous l’ancien régime_, iv, iii; L. Gregoire, _La Ligue en Bretagne_, chap, vi; Roupnel, _La Ville et la Campagne au xvii siècle_, i, 1. ‘The peasants,’ says M. Roumier, ‘were only really converted where it was to their interests to be so, and especially where the local landlords put their influence at the service of the new religion, and where the Catholic clergy had completely deserted the parishes. We must be careful not to consider as Protestants all the “rustics” who took part in pillaging the abbeys and castles during the civil war’ (_La Royaume de Catherine de Médicis_, tome ii, page 294). M. Romier quotes the remark of a contemporary: ‘The whole of the Low Countries scarcely knows what this new doctrine is.’

[171] ‘Le livre de raison de M. Nicolas Versoris’ (_Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris_, tome xii). The author, avocat au Parlement de Paris, similarly gives two lines to events like the Connétable de Bourbon’s treachery, and the signing of the treaty of Madrid. The same attitude exists in the _Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris_, 1515-1536; the public misfortunes sketched by the author leave him completely indifferent. He makes no comment on the disaster of Pavia. Apropos the treaty of Madrid, ‘it is to be noted,’ writes a contemporary, ‘that there were no bonfires or rejoicings when the news of the peace was published, because no one understood anything about it.’ (Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, v, 49.) Contemporaries mention the indifference of the people of Paris to the Peace of Westphalia, the battle of Rossbach, even the battles of Valmy and Navarino. ‘The affair at Valmy made very little stir at first.’ (Kellerman.)

[172] Michelet relates that in his youth he questioned an old man on the impressions left upon him by 1793, and the only answer he got was: ‘It was the bad paper year.’

[173] Admire the profundity of Machiavelli, when he advises his Prince: ‘Above everything, avoid taking your subjects’ property; _for men will more easily forget the deaths of their fathers than the loss of their patrimony_.’

[174] Inserted in the collection of studies entitled ‘L’Allemagne et les Alliés devant la conscience chrétienne’. (Bloud et Gay, 1915.)

[175] M. Edmond Bloud quotes this remark of a German nationalist, which might have been made on the French side of the Rhine: ‘The Catholic world must be nationalized to re-Catholicize it.’ He adds that in Germany it is common to hear ‘German Catholicism’ spoken of in opposition to Roman Catholicism.

[176] And therefore it requires much more courage to do so now than in the past.

[177] Nevertheless, Zola, Romain Rolland, and Einstein have drunk the hemlock.

[178] When they allow themselves to be told, as Louis XVI was told by Turgot: ‘Sire, your kingdom _is of this world_.’ There also exists ‘_a betrayal of the laymen_’.

[179] Mgr Battifol’s writings support my argument so beautifully that I hesitate to quote an author who plays so perfectly into my hands. For example, he spends much time in proving that the spirit of Christianity ‘has resulted, without contradicting itself, in a doctrine of the morality of war’.

[180] Here is a passage which, except for its violence, seems to me to express the feelings of most modern laymen on the subject of the patriotic loyalty of the priests: ‘The clergy of France is ardently patriotic; it serves gallantly under fire; it absolves and glorifies every action of the soldier; it regards the accusation of having deserted military duty as infamous, and does it justice. It is not for me to say whether it is in accord with the Gospels. We are simply Frenchmen and patriots; we can only approve and admire the French patriotic monks and priests. The French priest has no pardon for a German, the German priest and pastor have no pardon for a Frenchman. Mother-country first! Kill! Kill! In the name of the God of the Christians, we absolve you, we glorify you for killing Christians!’ (Urbain Gohier, ‘La Vieille France,’ quoted by Grillot de Givry, _Le Christ et la Patrie_, page 12.)

[181] This clearly shows in what sense Renouvier is an ‘individualist’.

[182] See his hymn to the mathematician Franz Woepfke.

[183] Jules Lemaître was explicitly this adversary.

[184] ‘For an empirical France,’ say Barrès and Bourget.

[185] ‘Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne,’ Cahiers de la Quinzaine. See my book, _Sur le Succès du Bergsonisme_, page 158.

[186] The same thing is to be found in Lamartine when he says of Byron: ‘There is more true, imperishable poetry in the tent at Missolonghi where he lies prostrate with fever, under arms, than in all his works.’ (_Commentaire de la 2e Meditation._) This is precisely the teaching adopted by Barrès, Suarès, Péguy (the last preached it by his example, however), which comes down to saying: ‘There is more poetry in a heroic death than in all the activities of the mind.’ Note that this position is by no means common to all the Romantics. Hugo, Vigny, Michelet, felt all the poetry of action, but they never appear to think it superior to the poetry of the lofty forms of intellectual life. Hugo never thought of sacrificing Homer or Galilei to Napoleon, or even to Hoche--to take a disinterested hero such as Lamartine praises in Byron.

[187] Note that Ronsard is the very type of the man ‘bent over books’.

[188] ‘Germany is the protector and the support of European civilization’ (Lamprecht.) ‘After the war Germany will again take up her historic task, which is to be the heart of Europe and to prepare European humanity.’ (Wilhelm II, _Temps_, 14th September, 1915.)

[189] See Robert Dreyfus, _Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust_, page 336.

_Transcriber’s Notes_

This transcription is based on the English edition of Aldington’s translation. Some corrections have been applied in consultation with both the French original (‘La trahison des clercs’, B. Grasset, 1927) and the American edition of the same translation (‘The treason of the intellectuals’, William Morrow & Company, 1928). Here are the main revisions.

• A text comparison with the American edition incorporated these
changes from that edition:
• page 28, footnote 28: ‘more idealistic passion than national[+ist]
passion’;
• page 44: ‘One wonders whether [+there is] a single modern
thinker’ (grammatically necessary);
• the fourth section, ‘Summary--Predictions’, is now correctly
numbered ‘IV’, not a duplicated ‘III’;
• The following changes were made with reference to the original
French:
• numerous instances of unbalanced quotation marks have been fixed;
• page 117: removed an unclosed parenthesis beginning ‘(those of’
in favor of parallel phrases with semi-colons, as in the original
French;
• page 173: added balanced em-dashes after ‘Apart from Erasmus’ as
in the original, to clarify sentence structure;
• page 176: ‘the chaos of the provincial assembles → assemblies’
(original: ‘le chaos des assemblées provinciales’);
• page 181, note 179: ‘with contradicting → without contradicting’
(‘a abouti sans se déjuger à une doctrine de la moralité de la
guerre’);
• A simple table of contents has been added.
• The book cover image accompanying some versions of this text is
original and placed in the public domain.