The Ancient Regime Part 23

or, 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 a.s.sembled 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 cla.s.s, 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 const.i.tute 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 a.s.sisted 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 const.i.tute 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 const.i.tution, the most important civil and political laws, in short, the order, the form and the spirit of the new state.

II. Naive Convictions

The first result.--The theory easily applied.--Confidence in it due to belief in man's inherent goodness and reasonableness.

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 a.s.sented to in full freedom.[3405] The 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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.senting 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 cla.s.sic 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, a.n.a.lyses 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."[3406] An exact and constant relations.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s plunge into the belief with all the exaggerations of fas.h.i.+on 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,[3407]

one 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 Pyrenees,[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 s.p.a.ce to follow in the literature of the end of the century, from Marmontel to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and from Florian to Berquin and Bitaube, the interminable repet.i.tion 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 a.s.sert 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,[3410] Necker, to whom M.

de Bouille 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 ill.u.s.trated works on morals and politics. Half-naked men with others clothed in skins, a.s.semble 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.[3411] All 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 a.s.sembly 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."[3412] At 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l animosities and unchained appet.i.tes.

III. Our True Human Nature.

The inadequacy and fragility of reason in man.--The rarity and inadequacy of reason in humanity.--Subordination of reason in human conduct.--Brutal and dangerous forces.--The nature and utility of government. Government impossible under 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,[3413] turn 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.[3414] If 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 coa.r.s.e 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion, and more particularly personal or family interest, also that of caste or party. We are making a big mistake were we a.s.sume 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 dest.i.tute 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, acc.u.mulating, and possessing, rapacity and avarice, more particularly in the cla.s.s which, tied to the globe, fasts for sixty generations in order to support other cla.s.ses, and whose crooked fingers are always outstretched to clutch the soil whose fruits they cause to grow;-we shall see this cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sion, 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 const.i.tute 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 const.i.tution, a division of powers, a code of laws, tribunals, and legal formalities. At the bottom of all these wheels ever appears the princ.i.p.al 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 const.i.tution. 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 a.s.sembly, 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 a.s.sembly of the people through a fixed const.i.tution of the State does not suffice; other fixed and periodical a.s.semblies 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 a.s.sembled 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 reconst.i.tute at will, for any period they determine, the provisional contract to which they have a.s.sented only for a determined time. "The opening of these a.s.semblies, 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."[3418] Not 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 a.s.signed 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 (corveables) 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 att.i.tude it usurps, while const.i.tutions 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.

IV. Birth Of Socialist Theory, Its Two Sides.

The second result.--The new theory leads to despotism.-- Precedents for this theory.--Administrative centralization.-- The Utopia of the Economists.--Invalidity of preceding rights.--Collateral a.s.sociations not tolerated.--Complete alienation of the individual from the community.--Rights of the State in relation to property, education and religion.-- The State a Spartan convent.

For this theory has two aspects; whereas one side leads towards the perpetual demolition of government, the other results in the unlimited dictators.h.i.+p of the State. The new social contract is not a historic pact, like the English Declaration of Rights in 1688, or the Dutch federation in 1579, entered into by actual and living individuals, admitting acquired situations, groups already formed, established positions, and drawn up to recognize, define, guarantee and complete anterior rights. Antecedent to the social contract no veritable right exist; for veritable rights are born solely out of the social contract, the only valid one, since it is the only one agreed upon between beings perfectly equal and perfectly free, so many abstract creatures, so many species of mathematical units, all of the same value, all playing the same part and whose inequality or constraint never disturbs the common understanding. Hence at the moment of its completion, all other facts are nullified. Property, family, church, no ancient inst.i.tution may invoke any right against the new State. The area on which it is built up must be considered vacant; if old structures are partly allowed to remain it is only in its name and for its benefit, to be enclosed within its barriers and appropriated to its use; the entire soil of humanity is its property. On the other hand it is not, according to the American doctrine, an a.s.sociation for mutual protection, a society like other societies, circ.u.mscribed in its purpose, restricted to its office, limited in its powers, and by which individuals reserving to themselves the better portion of their property and persons, a.s.sess each other for the maintenance of an army, a police, tribunals, highways, schools, in short, the major instruments of public safety and utility, at the same time withholding the remainder of local, general, spiritual and material services in favor of private initiative and of spontaneous a.s.sociations that may arise as occasion or necessity calls for them. Our State is not to be a simple utilitarian machine, a convenient, handy implement, of which the workman avails himself without abandoning the free use of his hand, or the simultaneous use of other implements. Being elder born, the only son and sole representative of Reason it must, to ensure its sway, leave nothing beyond its grasp.--In this respect the old regime paves the way for the new one, while the established system inclines minds beforehand to the budding theory. Through administrative centralization the State already, for a long time, has its hands everywhere.[3419]

"You must know," says Law to the Marquis d'Argenson, "that the kingdom of France is governed by thirty intendants. You have neither parliaments, a.s.semblies or governors, simply thirty masters of requests, provincial clerks, on whom depends the happiness or misery, the fruitfulness or sterility of these provinces."

The king, in fact, sovereign, father, and universal guardian, manages local affairs through his delegates, and intervenes in private affairs through his favors or lettres-de-cachet (royal orders of imprisonment).

Such an example and such a course followed for fifty years excites the imagination. No other instrument is more useful for carrying large reforms out at one time. Hence, far from restricting the central power the economists are desirous of extending its action. Instead of setting up new dikes against it they interest themselves only in destroying what is left of the old dikes still interfering with it. "The system of counter-forces in a government," says Quesnay and his disciples, "is a fatal idea. . . The speculations on which the system of counter-balance is founded are chimerical. . . . Let the government have a full comprehension of its duties and be left free. . . The State must govern according to the essential laws of order, and in this case unlimited power is requisite." On the approach of the Revolution the same doctrine reappears, except in the subst.i.tution of one term for another term.

In the place of the sovereignty of the king the "Contrat social"

subst.i.tutes the sovereignty of the people. The latter, however, is much more absolute than the former, and, in the democratic convent which Rousseau constructs, on Spartan and Roman model, the individual is nothing and the State everything.

In effect, "the clauses of the social contract reduce themselves to one, namely, the total transfer of each a.s.sociate with all his rights to the community."[3420] Every one surrenders himself entirely, "just as he stands, he and all his forces, of which his property forms a portion."

There is no exception nor reservation; whatever he may have been previously and whatever may have belonged to him is no longer his own.

Henceforth whatever he becomes or whatever he may possess devolves on him only through the delegation of the social body, the universal proprietor and absolute master. All rights must be vested in the State and none in the individual; otherwise there would be litigation between them, and, "as there is no common superior to decide between them"

their litigation would never end. One the contrary, through the complete donation which each one makes of himself, "the unity is as perfect as possible;" having renounced himself "he has no further claim to make."

This being admitted let us trace the consequences.--

In the first place, I enjoy my property only through tolerance and at second-hand; for, according to the social contract, I have surrendered it;[3421] "it now forms a portion of the national estate;" If I retain the use of its for the time being it is through a concession of the State which makes me a "depositary" of it. And this favor must not be considered as rest.i.tution. "Far from accepting the property of individuals society despoils them of it, simply converting the usurpation into a veritable right, the enjoyment of it into proprietors.h.i.+p." Previous to the social contract I was possessor not by right but in fact and even unjustly if I had large possessions; for, "every man has naturally a right to whatever he needs," and I have robbed other men of all that I possessed beyond my subsistence.

Hence, so far from the State being under obligation to me, I am under obligation to it, the property which it returns to me not being mine but that with which the State favors me. It follows, accordingly, that the State may impose conditions on its gift, limit the use I may make of it, according to its fancy, restrict and regulate my disposition of it, my right to bequeath it. "According to nature,[3422] the right of property does not extend beyond the life of its owner; the moment he dies his possessions are no longer his own. Thus, to prescribe the conditions on which he may dispose of it is really less to change his right in appearance than to extend it in effect." In any event as my t.i.tle is an effect of the social contract it is precarious like the contract itself; a new stipulation suffices to limit it or to destroy it. "The sovereign[3423] may legitimately appropriate to himself all property, as was done in Sparta in the time of Lycurgus." In our lay convent whatever each monk possesses is only a revocable gift by the convent.

In the second place, this convent is a seminary. I have no right to bring up my children in my own house and in my own way.

"As the reason of each man[3424] must not be the sole arbiter of his rights, so much less should the education of children, which is of more consequence to the State than to fathers, be left to the intelligence and prejudice of their fathers." "If public authority, by taking the place of fathers, by a.s.suming this important function, then acquires their rights through fulfilling their duties, they have so much the less reason to complain inasmuch as they merely undergo a change of name, and, under the t.i.tle of citizens, exercise in common the same authority over their children that they have separately exercised under the t.i.tle of fathers."

In other words you cease to be a father, but, in exchange, become a school inspector; one is as good as the other, and what complaint have you to make? Such was the case in that perpetual army called Sparta; there, the children, genuine regimental children, equally obeyed all properly formed men.

"Thus public education, within laws prescribed by the government and under magistrates appointed by sovereign will, is one of the fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government."

Through this the citizen is formed in Advance.

"The government gives the national form to souls.[3425] Nations, in the long run, are what the government makes them--soldiers, citizens, men when so disposed, a populace, canaille if it pleases," being fas.h.i.+oned by their education. "Would you obtain an idea of public education? Read Plato's 'Republic.'[3426].... The best social inst.i.tutions are those the best qualified to change man's nature, to destroy his absolute being, to give him a relative being, and to convert self into the common unity, so that each individual may not regard himself as one by himself, but a part of the unity, and no longer sensitive but through the whole. An infant, on opening its eyes, must behold the common patrimony and, to the day of its death, behold that only.... He should be disciplined so as never to contemplate the individual except in his relations with the body of the State."

Such was the practice of Sparta, and the sole aim of the "great Lycurgus." "All being equal through the law, they must be brought up together and in the same manner." "The law must regulate the subjects, the order and the form of their studies." They must, at the very least, take part in public exercises, in horse-races, in the games of strength and of agility inst.i.tuted "to accustom them to law, equality, fraternity, and compet.i.tion;" to teach them how "to live under the eyes of their fellow-citizens and to crave public applause."

Through these games they become democrats from their early youth, since, the prizes being awarded, not through the arbitrariness of masters, but through the cheers of spectators, they accustom themselves to recognizing as sovereign the legitimate sovereignty, consisting of the verdict of the a.s.sembled people. The foremost interest of the State is, always, to form the wills of those by which it lasts, to prepare the votes that are to maintain it, to uproot pa.s.sions in the soul that might be opposed to it, to implant pa.s.sions that will prove favorable to it, to fix firmly with the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of its future citizens the sentiments and prejudices it will at some time need.[3427] If it does not secure the children it will not possess the adults, Novices in a convent must be as monks, otherwise, when they grow up, the convent will no longer exist.

Finally, our lay convent has its own religion, a lay religion. If I possess any other it is through its condescension and under restrictions. It is, by nature, hostile to other a.s.sociations than its own; they are rivals, they annoy it, they absorb the will and pervert the votes of its members.

"To ensure a full declaration of the general will it is an important matter not to allow any special society in the State, and that each citizen should p.r.o.nounce according to it alone."[3428] "Whatever breaks up social unity is worthless," and it would be better for the State if there were no Church.--

Not only is every church suspicious but, if I am a Christian, my belief is regarded unfavorably. According to this new legislator "nothing is more opposed to the social spirits than Christianity. . . . A society of true Christians would no longer form a society of men." For, "the Christian patrimony is not of this world." It cannot zealously serve the State, being bound by its conscience to support tyrants. Its law "preaches only servitude and dependence. . . it is made for a slave,"

and never will a citizen be made out of a slave. "Christian Republic, each of these two words excludes the other." Therefore, if the future Republic a.s.sents to my profession of Christianity, it is on the understood condition that my doctrine shall be shut up in my mind, without even affecting my heart. If I am a Catholic, (and twenty-five out of twenty-six million Frenchmen are like me), my condition is worse.

For the social pact does not tolerate an intolerant religion; any sect that condemns other sects is a public enemy; "whoever presumes to say that there is no salvation outside the church, must be driven out of the State."

Should I be, finally, a free-thinker, a positivist or skeptic, my situation is little better.

"There is a civil religion," a catechism, "a profession of faith, of which the sovereign has the right to dictate the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas but as sentiments of social import without which we cannot be a good citizen or a loyal subject." These articles embrace "the existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent, foreseeing and provident divinity, the future life, the happiness of the righteous, the punishment of the wicked, the sacredness of the social contract and of the laws.[3429] Without forcing anyone to believe in this creed, whoever does not believe in it must be expelled from the State; it is necessary to banish such persons not on account of impiety, but as unsociable beings, incapable of sincerely loving law and justice and, if need be, of giving up life for duty."

Take heed that this profession of faith be not a vain one, for a new inquisition is to test its sincerity.