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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78218 ***
+
+                           The Great Betrayal
+
+                        (La Trahison des Clercs)
+
+
+                                   By
+                              Julien Benda
+
+
+                             Translated by
+                           Richard Aldington
+
+
+                                 London
+                     George Routledge & Sons, Ltd.
+                   Broadway House, Carter Lane, E.C.
+                                 1928.
+
+
+                      PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
+                STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, LTD., HERTFORD.
+
+
+
+
+                               _Contents_
+
+                           Translator’s Note
+                           Author’s Foreword
+            I - The Modern Perfecting of Political Passions
+    II - Significance of this Movement--Nature of Political Passions
+                 III - The ‘Clerks’--The Great Betrayal
+                       IV - Summary--Predictions
+                                 Notes
+                              [Footnotes]
+                         [Transcriber’s Notes]
+
+
+
+
+_Translator’s Note_
+
+
+The title of M. Benda’s book is _La Trahison des Clercs_. The word
+‘Clercs’, which occurs throughout the book, is defined by M. Benda’s
+as ‘all those who speak to the world in a transcendental manner’. I
+do not know the English word for ‘all those who speak to the world
+in a transcendental manner’. But in Chaucer’s time the word ‘clerk’
+(‘a clerke of Oxenforde’) meant anyone who was not a ‘layman’, a word
+employed by M. Benda as the antithesis to ‘clerk’. We still use the
+word in this sense when we speak of a ‘clerk in holy orders’ and retain
+its root in ‘cleric’. A ‘cleric’ is the person described by M. Benda as
+‘pre-eminently a clerk’. If the words ‘in holy orders’ are subtracted
+from ‘a clerk in holy orders’, the remaining ‘clerk’ is roughly what M.
+Benda means, though he also uses ‘clerk’ to include ‘a clerk in holy
+orders’. Nowadays a clerk is a person who performs sedentary labour in
+an office, and the word in England is pronounced ‘clark’. In America a
+clerk (pronounced ‘clurrk’) is what the English call a shop-assistant.
+In order to avoid a misleading title I have called this translation
+_The Great Betrayal_, giving M. Benda’s title in brackets afterwards.
+Where the word ‘clerk’ first occurs in the book, I have added the words
+‘in the medieval sense’, and throughout the text I have invariably
+written the word in inverted commas, ‘clerk’, to avoid any possible
+misunderstanding.
+
+I should add that the words ‘real’ and ‘realism’ are nearly always
+used in this book as the antithesis to ‘ideal’ and ‘idealism’. Other
+abstract words are used in a rather special sense which I hope will be
+plain from the context.
+
+                                                                R. A.
+
+
+
+
+            ‘The world is suffering from lack of faith
+                 in a transcendental truth.’
+
+                                             _Renouvier._
+
+
+
+
+_Author’s Foreword_
+
+
+Tolstoi relates that when he was in the Army he saw one of his brother
+officers strike a man who fell out from the ranks during a march.
+Tolstoi said to him:--
+
+‘Are you not ashamed to treat a fellow human being in this way? Have
+you not read the Gospels?’
+
+The other officer replied:--
+
+‘And have you not read Army Orders?’
+
+This retort will always be thrown back at the spiritual man who tries
+to take the direction of the material. To me it seems a very wise one.
+Those who lead men to the conquest of material things have no need of
+justice and charity.
+
+Nevertheless I think it important that there should be men--even if
+they are scorned--who urge their fellow beings to other religions than
+the religion of the material. Now, those who should play this part
+(to whom I have given the name of ‘clerks’ in the medieval sense of
+the word) have not only ceased to do so, but are playing an exactly
+contrary part. Most of the influential moralists of the past fifty
+years in Europe, particularly the men of letters in France, call upon
+mankind to sneer at the Gospel and to read Army Orders.
+
+This new teaching seems to me all the more deserving of serious
+attention because it is addressed to a humanity which of its own
+volition is now established in materialism with a decisiveness hitherto
+unknown. And I shall begin by showing this to be true.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+_The Modern Perfecting of Political Passions_
+
+
+We are to consider those passions termed political, owing to which men
+rise up against other men, the chief of which are racial passions,
+class passions and national passions. Those persons who are most
+determined to believe in the inevitable progress of the human species,
+especially in its indispensable movement towards more peace and
+love, cannot deny that during the past century these passions have
+attained--and day by day increasingly so--in several most important
+directions, a degree of perfection hitherto unknown in history.
+
+In the first place they affect a large number of men they never before
+affected. When, for example, we study the civil wars which convulsed
+France in the sixteenth century, and even those at the end of the
+eighteenth century, we are struck by the small number of persons
+whose minds were really disturbed by these events. While history, up
+to the nineteenth century, is filled with long European wars which
+left the great majority of people completely indifferent, apart from
+the material losses they themselves suffered,[1] it may be said that
+to-day there is scarcely a mind in Europe which is not affected--or
+thinks itself affected--by a racial or class or national passion, and
+most often by all three. The same progress seems to have taken place
+in the New World, while immense bodies of men in the Far East, who
+seemed to be free from these impulses, are awakening to social hatred,
+the party system, and the national spirit insofar as it implies the
+will to humiliate other men. To-day political passions have attained a
+_universality_ never before known.
+
+They have also attained _coherence_. Thanks to the progress of
+communication and, still more, to the group spirit, it is clear
+that the holders of the same political hatred now form a compact
+impassioned mass, every individual of which feels himself in touch
+with the infinite numbers of others, whereas a century ago such
+people were comparatively out of touch with each other and hated in
+a ‘scattered’ way. This is singularly striking with respect to the
+working classes who, even in the middle of the nineteenth century,
+felt only a scattered hostility for the opposing class, attempted only
+dispersed efforts at war (such as striking in one town, or one union),
+whereas to-day they form a closely-woven fabric of hatred from one
+end of Europe to the other. It may be asserted that these coherences
+will tend to develop still further, for the will to group is one of
+the most profound characteristics of the modern world, which even in
+the most unexpected domains (for instance, the domain of thought)
+is more and more becoming the world of leagues, of ‘unions’ and of
+‘groups’. Is it necessary to say that the passion of the individual
+is strengthened by feeling itself in proximity to these thousands
+of similar passions? Let me add that the individual bestows a mystic
+personality on the association of which he feels himself a member, and
+gives it a religious adoration, which is simply the deification of his
+own passion, and no small stimulus to its intensity.
+
+The coherence just described might be called a surface coherence,
+but there is added to it a coherence of essence. For the very reason
+that the holders of the same political passion form a more compact,
+impassioned group, they also form a more _homogeneous_, impassioned
+group, in which individual ways of feeling disappear and the zeal of
+each member more and more takes on the colour of the others. In France,
+for instance, one cannot but be struck by the fact that the enemies
+of the democratic system (I am speaking of the mass, not the highest
+points) display a passion which has little variety, shows very slight
+differences in different persons. How little this mass of hatred is
+weakened by personal and original manners of hating--one might almost
+say that this passion itself is obedient to ‘democratic levelling
+down’! How much more uniformity is shown now than a hundred years ago
+by the emotions known as anti-Semitism, anti-Clericalism and Socialism,
+in spite of the immense number of varieties in the last-named! And do
+not those who are subject to these emotions now all tend _to say the
+same thing_? Political passions, as passions, seem to have attained the
+habit of discipline; they seem to obey a word of command even in the
+manner they are felt. It is easy to see what increase of strength they
+acquire thereby.
+
+With some of these passions the increase in homogeneousness is
+accompanied by an increased _precision_. For instance, we all know that
+a hundred years ago Socialism was a strong but vague passion with the
+great mass of its supporters. But to-day Socialism has more closely
+defined the object it wishes to attain, has determined the exact point
+where it means to strike its adversary and the movement it intends to
+create in order to succeed. The same progress may be observed in the
+anti-democratic movement. And we all know that hatred becomes stronger
+by becoming more precise.
+
+There is another sort of perfecting of political passions. Throughout
+history until our own days I see these passions acting intermittently,
+blazing up and then subsiding. I see that the undoubtedly terrible and
+numerous explosions of class and race hatred were followed by long
+periods of calm, or at least of somnolence. Wars between nations lasted
+for years, but not hatred--even if we may say that it existed. To-day
+we have only to look every morning at any daily paper and we shall see
+that political hatreds do not cease for a single day. At best some
+of them are silent a moment for the benefit of one among them which
+suddenly claims all the subject’s strength. This is the period of
+‘national unions’, which do not in the very least herald in the reign
+of love, but merely of a general hatred which for the moment dominates
+partial hatreds. To-day political passions have acquired _continuity_,
+which is so rare a quality in all feelings.
+
+Let us consider a moment the impulse which causes partial hatreds to
+abdicate in favour of another, more general hatred, which derives a
+new religion of itself and hence a new strength, from the feeling of
+its generality. Perhaps it has not been sufficiently observed that
+this sort of impulse is one of the essential characteristics of the
+nineteenth century. Twice during the nineteenth century, in Germany and
+in Italy, the age-old hatreds of petty States disappeared in favour
+of a great national passion. In the same period (more precisely,
+at the end of the eighteenth century) in France, the mutual hatred
+of the Court nobles and the country nobles was extinguished in the
+greater hatred of both parties for all who were not nobles; the hatred
+between the military and legal nobles disappeared in the same impulse;
+the hatred between the upper and lower ranks of the clergy vanished
+in their common hatred of laicality; the hatred between clergy and
+nobility expired to the profit of their mutual hatred for the commons.
+And in our times the hatred between the three orders has melted into
+one hatred, that of the possessing classes for the working class. The
+condensation of political passions into a small number of very simple
+hatreds, springing from the deepest roots of the human heart, is a
+conquest of modern times.[2]
+
+I also believe that I see a great progress in political passions to-day
+in their relation to other passions in the same person. Political
+passions undoubtedly occupied more of the attention of a bourgeois
+of ancient France than is usually supposed, but less than the love
+of money and pleasure, family feeling and the calls of vanity; while
+the least we can say of his modern equivalent is that when political
+passions take possession of him, they do so to the same extent as
+the other passions. Compare, for instance, the tiny place occupied
+by political passions in the French bourgeois as he appears in the
+Fabliaux, in medieval drama, the novels of Scarron, Furetière and
+Charles Sorel,[3] with the same bourgeois as drawn by Balzac, Stendhal,
+Anatole France, Abel Hermant and Paul Bourget. (Of course, I am not
+speaking of times of crisis, like the Ligue and the Fronde, when
+political passions occupied the whole individual as soon as they
+touched him at all.) The truth is that to-day political passions are
+invading most of the other passions in the bourgeoisie, and weakening
+the latter to their own profit. Everyone knows that in our own days
+family rivalries, commercial enmities, ambitions and the competition
+for public honours are all tainted with political passion. An apostle
+of the modern mind clamours for ‘politics first’. He might have
+observed that nowadays it is politics everywhere, politics always and
+nothing but politics.[4] We have only to open our eyes to see when an
+increase of power is acquired by political passion when combined with
+other passions, so numerous, so constant and so strong themselves.
+Coming to the man of the people, we can measure the increase of his
+political passions in relation to his other passions in modern times
+by considering, as Stendhal puts it, how long his whole passion was
+limited to wishing (_a_) Not to be killed, (_b_) For a good warm coat.
+And then we may recollect that when a little less misery permitted him
+a few general ideas, how long it was before his vague desire for social
+changes were transformed into a passion, i.e. showing the two essential
+characteristics of passion: The fixed idea, and the need to put it
+into action.[5] I think it may be said that political passions in all
+classes to-day have attained a degree of _preponderance over all other
+passions_ in those affected such as hitherto had been unknown.
+
+The reader will already have perceived an all-important factor in
+the impulses I have been describing. Political passions rendered
+universal, coherent, homogeneous, permanent, preponderant--everyone can
+recognize there to a great extent the work of the cheap daily political
+newspaper. One cannot help reflecting and wondering whether it may not
+be that inter-human wars are only just beginning, when one thinks of
+this instrument for developing their own passions which men have just
+invented, or at least brought to a degree of power never seen before,
+to which they abandon themselves with all the expansion of their hearts
+every morning as soon as they are awake.
+
+I have now showed what might be called the perfecting of political
+passions on the surface, in their more or less exterior aspects. But
+they have also become strangely perfected in depth and inner strength.
+
+In the first place they have made an immense advance in consciousness
+of themselves. Here again, largely owing to the influence of the
+newspaper, it is clear that the mind affected by political hatred
+to-day becomes conscious of its own passion, formulates it, sees it,
+with an accuracy unknown to the same sort of mind fifty years ago.
+There is no need to say how much the passion is intensified by this.
+And while I am on this subject I should like to point to two passions,
+which have certainly not come to birth in our times but have attained
+consciousness of themselves, self-assertion, a pride in themselves.
+
+The first is what I shall call a certain _Jewish nationalism_. In the
+past, when the Jews were accused in various countries of forming an
+inferior race, or at any rate a peculiar people not to be assimilated,
+they replied by denying their peculiarity, by trying to get rid of all
+appearance of peculiarity, and by refusing to admit the reality of
+race. But in the last few years we see some of them labouring to assert
+this peculiarity, to define its characteristics--or what they think
+such--taking a pride in it, and condemning every effort at assimilation
+with their opponents (see the works of Israel Zangwill, of André Spire,
+and the _Revue Juive_). Here I am not trying to discover whether the
+impulse of these Jews is or is not nobler than the efforts of so many
+others to have their origin pardoned them; I am simply pointing out to
+those interested in the progress of peace in the world that our age has
+added one more arrogance to those which set men against each other, at
+least to the extent that it is conscious and proud of itself.[6]
+
+The other impulse I am thinking of is ‘_bourgeoisism_’, by which I
+mean the passion of the bourgeois class in asserting itself against
+the class by which it is threatened. It may be said that until our
+own times, ‘class hatred’, as a conscious hatred proud of itself, was
+chiefly the hatred of the labourer for the bourgeois. The reciprocal
+hatred was much less clearly confessed. Ashamed of an egotism they
+thought peculiar to their own caste, the bourgeois temporized with this
+egotism, would not admit even to themselves that it existed, tried to
+convince themselves and others that it was a form of interest in the
+common good.[7] The bourgeois replied to the dogma of the class war by
+denying that there really are any classes, thereby showing that while
+they felt an inalterable opposition to the adverse party, they were
+unwilling to admit that they felt it. To-day we have only to think of
+Italian ‘Fascism’, of a certain ‘Eloge du Bourgeois Français’, and
+numerous other manifestations of the same kind,[8] and we shall see
+that the bourgeoisie are becoming fully conscious of their specific
+egotisms, are proclaiming and venerating them as such and as though
+these egotisms were bound up with the supreme interests of the human
+race, that they are proud of this veneration and of setting up these
+egotisms against those which are trying to destroy the bourgeoisie. In
+our time there has been created the ‘mysticism’ of bourgeois passion in
+its opposition to the passions of the other class.[9] Here again our
+age enters in the balance-sheet of humanity the arrival of yet one more
+passion at full possession of itself.
+
+The progress of political passions in depth during the past century
+seems to me most remarkable in the case of national passions.
+
+First of all, owing to the fact that they are experienced to-day by
+large masses of men, these passions have become _far more purely
+passionate_. When the national feeling was practically confined to
+Kings or their Ministers, it consisted chiefly in attachment to some
+_interest_ (desire for territorial expansion, search for commercial
+advantages and profitable alliances), whereas to-day when this national
+feeling is continually experienced by common minds, it consists chiefly
+in the exercise of _pride_. Everyone will agree that nationalist
+passion in the modern citizen is far less founded on a comprehensive
+knowledge of the national interests (he has an imperfect perception
+of these interests, he lacks the information necessary and does not
+try to acquire it, for he is indifferent to questions of foreign
+policy) than on the pride he feels in his nation, on his will to feel
+himself one with the nation, to react to the honours and insults he
+thinks are bestowed on it. No doubt he wants his nation to acquire
+territories, to be prosperous and to have powerful allies; but he wants
+all this far less on account of the material results which will accrue
+to the nation (how much is he conscious of these results?) than on
+account of the glory, the prestige which the nation will acquire. By
+becoming popular, national feeling has become national pride, national
+susceptibility.[10] To measure how much more purely passionate it has
+become, how much more perfectly irrational (and therefore stronger)
+one has only to think of Jingoism, the form of patriotism specially
+invented by democracies. If, in accordance with current opinion, you
+think that pride is a weaker passion than self-interest, you may be
+convinced to the contrary by observing how commonly men let themselves
+be killed on account of a wound to their pride, and how infrequently
+for some infraction of their interests.
+
+The susceptibility developed by national sentiment as it has become
+popular makes the possibility of wars far greater to-day than in the
+past. Obviously, with the peoples and with the aptitude of these new
+‘sovereigns’ to rise up in a rage as soon as they think they are
+insulted, peace runs an additional danger which did not exist when it
+depended only upon Kings and their Ministers, who were far more purely
+practical persons, fully self-controlled, and quite willing to put up
+with insults when they did not think themselves the stronger party.[11]
+And, in fact, how many times during the last hundred years has the
+world almost flamed up in war solely because some nation thought its
+honour had been wounded?[12] To this must be added the fact that this
+national susceptibility provides the leaders of nations with a new and
+most effective method of starting the wars they need, whether it is
+employed at home or abroad. They have not failed to see this, which
+is amply proved by the example of Bismarck and the means by which he
+provoked war with Austria and with France. From this point of view
+it seems to me quite correct to say with the French monarchists that
+‘democracy is war’, provided that by democracy is meant the attainment
+of national susceptibility by the masses, and provided that it is
+recognized that no change in the system of government would destroy
+this phenomenon.[13]
+
+Another considerable deepening of national passions comes from the fact
+that the nations are now conscious of themselves not only as regards
+their material existence, their military power, their territorial
+possessions, and their economic wealth, but as regards their _moral_
+existence. With a hitherto unknown consciousness (prodigiously fanned
+by authors) every nation now hugs itself and sets itself up against all
+other nations as superior in language, art, literature, philosophy,
+civilization, ‘culture’. Patriotism to-day is the assertion of one
+form of mind against other forms of mind.[14] We know how much this
+passion increases its inner strength in this way and that the wars
+it determines are fiercer than those waged by the Kings, who merely
+desired the same piece of territory. The prophecy of the old Saxon bard
+is completely fulfilled: ‘In those days countries will be something
+they have not yet become--they will be persons. They will feel hatred,
+and these hatreds will cause wars more terrible than any that have yet
+been seen.’[15]
+
+It is impossible to over-stress the novelty of this form of patriotism
+in history. It is obviously bound up with the adoption of this passion
+by the masses of the populace, and seems to have been inaugurated
+in 1813 by Germany, who is apparently the real teacher of humanity
+in the matter of democratic patriotism, if by this word is meant the
+determination of a nation to oppose others in the name of its most
+fundamental characteristics.[16] (The France of the Revolution and the
+Empire never dreamed of setting itself up against other nations in the
+name of its language or of its literature.) This form of patriotism was
+so little known to preceding ages that there are countless examples
+of nations adopting the cultures of other nations, even of those with
+whom they were at war, and in addition reverencing the culture adopted.
+Shall I refer to the profound respect of Rome for the genius of Greece,
+though Rome had felt it necessary to crush Greece politically? To the
+respect of the conquerors of Rome, such as Ataulf and Theodoric, for
+Roman genius? And, nearer to ourselves, shall I mention Louis XIV
+annexing Alsace and not for one moment thinking of forbidding the
+German language?[17] In the past, nations displayed their sympathy for
+the culture of other nations with whom they were at war, or invited
+them to adopt their own. The Duke of Alba took measures to protect the
+learned men in the towns of Holland, against which he was directing his
+army; in the eighteenth century, the small German States, allied with
+Frederick the Great against the French, adopted more freely than ever
+French ideas, French fashions, French[18] literature; in the midst of
+the struggle with England, the Convention sent a deputation there to
+urge the English to adopt the French metric system.[19] The notion that
+political warfare involves a war of cultures is entirely an invention
+of modern times, and confers upon them a conspicuous place in the moral
+history of humanity.
+
+Another strengthening of national passions comes from the determination
+of the peoples to be conscious of _their past_, more precisely to
+be conscious of their ambitions as going back to their ancestors,
+and to vibrate with ‘centuries-old’ aspirations, with attachments to
+‘historical’ rights. This Romantic patriotism is also a characteristic
+of patriotism as practised by popular minds (by ‘popular’ I here mean
+all minds governed by the imagination, that is, in the first place,
+society people and men of letters). I have an idea that when Hugues de
+Lionne desired for the nation the conquest of Flanders or when Sieyès
+wanted the Low Countries, they did not think they felt the soul of
+ancient Gauls reviving in them, any more than Bismarck thought (I am
+not talking of what he said) of reviving the Teutonic Knights when he
+coveted the Danish Duchies.[20]
+
+Those who wish to estimate the increase of violence given to national
+passion by this solemnizing of its desires have only to observe what
+has happened to this feeling among the Germans, with their claim to
+be carrying on the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire, and among the
+Italians since they have set up their aspirations as the revival of
+those of the Roman Empire.[21] There once again the leaders of the
+State find in popular sentimentality a new and excellent instrument for
+carrying out their practical designs, an instrument they well know how
+to use. To mention only one recent example--think of the result the
+Italian government was able to obtain from the amazing aptitude of its
+compatriots to wake up one fine morning and discover that the claim to
+Fiume was a ‘centuries-old’ claim.
+
+Speaking generally, it may be said that national passions, owing to
+the fact that they are now exerted by plebeian minds, assume the
+character of _mysticism_, of a religious adoration almost unknown
+in these passions in the practical minds of the great nobles. It is
+unnecessary to add that this makes these passions deeper and stronger.
+Here once more this plebeian form of patriotism is adopted by all who
+practise this passion, even when they are the noisiest champions of
+the aristocracy of the mind. M. Maurras talks of the ‘goddess France’,
+just as Victor Hugo does. Let me add that this mystical adoration
+of the nation is not only to be explained by the nature of those who
+adore, but also by the changes which have taken place in the adored
+object. There is first of all the spectacle of the military force and
+organization of modern States, which is something far more imposing
+than of old. And when these States are seen to make war for an
+indefinite period after they have no more men, and go on subsisting
+for long years after they have no more money, it is easy to understand
+why a man who has some tincture of religion in his mind may be led to
+believe that these States are of an essence different from that of
+ordinary natural beings.
+
+I shall point out another great increase of power in national sentiment
+which has occurred in the last half-century. I mean that several
+very powerful political passions, which were originally independent
+of nationalist feeling, have now become incorporated with it. These
+passions are: (_a_) The movement against the Jews; (_b_) the movement
+of the possessing classes against the proletariat; (_c_) the movement
+of the champions of authority against the democrats. To-day each one of
+these passions is identified with national feeling and declares that
+its adversary implies the negation of nationalism. I may add that when
+a person is affected by one of these passions he is generally affected
+by all three; consequently nationalist passion is usually swelled by
+the addition of all three. Moreover this increase is reciprocal, and
+it may be said that to-day capitalism, anti-semitism and the party
+of authority have all received new strength from their union with
+nationalism. (For additional proof of the strength of these unions, see
+Note C at the end of this book.)
+
+I cannot drop the subject of the modern perfecting of political
+passions without mentioning one more characteristic: In all nations the
+number of persons who feel a direct interest in belonging to a powerful
+nation is incomparably greater now than in the past. In all the great
+States to-day I observe that not only the world of industry and big
+business but a considerable number of small tradesmen, small bourgeois,
+doctors, lawyers, and even writers and artists, and working men too,
+feel that for the sake of the prosperity of their own occupations it
+is essential for them to belong to a powerful group which can make
+itself feared. Those who are in a position to give an opinion on
+this sort of change agree that the feeling did not exist, at least
+in the same clearly defined way as to-day, thirty years ago among
+the small tradesmen of France, for instance. It seems an even newer
+thing among the men who belong to the so-called liberal professions;
+it is certainly something new to hear artists constantly girding at
+the government of their country because it ‘does not give the nation
+enough prestige to impose their art on foreigners’. The feeling that
+from a professional point of view they have an interest in belonging
+to a powerful nation is also very recent among the working classes.
+The party of ‘Nationalist Socialists’, which seems to exist everywhere
+except in France, is a quite modern political development. Among the
+masters of industry the new development is, not that they feel how
+much it is to their interest that their nation should be powerful,
+but that the feeling is to-day transformed into action, into formal
+pressure on their governments.[22] This extension of patriotism based
+on interest certainly does not prevent this sort of patriotism (as I
+said above) from being much less wide-spread than the patriotism[23]
+based on pride; nevertheless it brings another increase of strength to
+nationalist passions.
+
+I shall now point out a last important perfecting of all political
+passions to-day, whether of race, class, party or nation. When I
+observe these passions in the past, I see them consisting in purely
+passionate impulses, natural explosions of instinct, devoid of all
+extension of themselves in ideas and systems--at least among the
+majority. The revolt of the workers in the fifteenth century against
+the possessing classes was apparently not accompanied by any sort
+of teaching about the origin of property or the nature of capital.
+Those who massacred the Ghettos seem to have had no views on the
+philosophical values of their action. And when the troops of Charles V
+attacked the defenders of Mezières, it does not appear that the assault
+was enlivened by a theory about the predestination of the Germanic race
+and the moral baseness of the Latin world. To-day I notice that every
+political passion is furnished with a whole network of strongly woven
+doctrines, the sole object of which is to show the supreme value of
+its action from every point of view, while the result is a redoubling
+of its strength as a passion. We must look at the system of ideology
+of German nationalism known as ‘Pangermanism’ and at the similar
+ideology of the French Monarchists, if we wish to realize the point
+of perfection to which our age has carried these systems, with what
+tenacity each passion has built up in every direction the theories apt
+to satisfy it, with what precision these theories have been adapted to
+this satisfaction, with what opulence of research, what labour, what
+profound investigation they have been carried on in all directions. Our
+age is indeed the age of the _intellectual organization of political
+hatreds_. It will be one of its chief claims to notice in the moral
+history of humanity.
+
+Ever since these systems have been in existence, they have consisted
+in establishing for each passion that it is the agent of good in the
+world and that its enemy is the genius of evil. But to-day these
+passions desire to establish this not only politically, but morally,
+intellectually and aesthetically. Anti-semitism, Pangermanism, French
+Monarchism, Socialism are not only political manifestations; they
+defend a particular form of morality, of intelligence, of sensibility,
+of literature, of philosophy and of artistic conceptions. Our age has
+introduced two novelties into the theorizing of political passions, by
+which they have been remarkably intensified. The first is that everyone
+to-day claims that his movement is in line with ‘the development of
+evolution’ and ‘the profound unrolling of history’. All these passions
+of to-day, whether they derive from Marx, from M. Maurras or from
+Houston Chamberlain, have discovered a ‘historical law’, according to
+which their movement is merely carrying out the spirit of history and
+must therefore necessarily triumph, while the opposing party is running
+counter to this spirit and can enjoy only a transitory triumph. That
+is merely the old desire to have Fate on one’s side, but it is put
+forth in a scientific shape. And this brings us to the second novelty:
+To-day all political ideologies claim to be founded on science, to
+be the result of a ‘precise observation of facts’. We all know what
+self-assurance, what rigidity, what inhumanity (comparatively new
+traits in the history of political passions, of which modern French
+monarchism is a good example) are given to these passions to-day by
+this claim.
+
+To summarize: To-day political passions show a degree of universality,
+of coherence, of homogeneousness, of precision, of continuity, of
+preponderance, in relation to other passions, unknown until our
+times. They have become conscious of themselves to an extent never
+seen before. Some of them, hitherto scarcely avowed, have awakened to
+consciousness and have joined the old passions. Others have become more
+purely passionate than ever, possess men’s hearts in moral regions
+they never before reached, and have acquired a mystic character which
+had disappeared for centuries. All are furnished with an apparatus of
+ideology whereby, in the name of science, they proclaim the supreme
+value of their action and its historical necessity. On the surface
+and in the depths, in spatial values and in inner strength, political
+passions have to-day reached a point of perfection never before known
+in history. The present age is essentially the age of politics.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_Significance of this Movement--Nature of Political Passions_
+
+
+What is the significance of this movement? Of what simple and profound
+human tendency does it show the progress and triumph? The question
+comes down to inquiring what is the nature of political passions,
+of what more general and more essential state of mind are they the
+expression, what--as the schools say--is their psychological foundation?
+
+It seems to me that these passions can be reduced to two fundamental
+desires: (_a_) The will of a group of men to get hold of (or to retain
+a hold on) some _material_ advantage, such as territories, comfort,
+political power and all its material advantages; and (_b_) the will
+of a group of men to become conscious of themselves as _individuals_,
+insofar as they are _distinct_ in relation to other men. It may also
+be said that these passions can be reduced to two desires, one of
+which seeks the satisfaction of an _interest_, the other of a _pride_
+or self-esteem. These two desires enter into political passions in
+very different proportions, according to which passion is involved. It
+appears that racial passion, insofar as it is not one with national
+passion, is chiefly based on the will of a group of men to set
+themselves up as distinct from others; the same thing may be said of
+religious passion, if we consider it in its pure state. On the other
+hand, class passion, at least as we see it in the working classes,
+apparently consists solely in the will to obtain possession of material
+advantages. The desire to feel himself distinct, which George Sand and
+the apostles of 1848 had begun to inculcate in the working man, now
+seems to be abandoned by him, at least in his utterances. National
+passion contains both factors. The patriot wants to obtain material
+advantages and he wants to set himself up as distinct from others. This
+is the secret of the evident superiority in strength of this passion
+(when it is really a passion) over all other passions, especially over
+Socialism. A passion whose sole motive is interest is too weak to
+contend with another which combines interest and pride. This too is one
+of the weaknesses of Socialism when opposed to class passion as exerted
+by the bourgeoisie, for the bourgeois wants both to possess material
+advantages and to feel himself distinct from others. I shall add to
+this that in my opinion the relative strengths of these two passions
+(one based on interest and the other on pride or self-esteem) are very
+unequal, and that the more powerful of the two is not that which tries
+to satisfy interest.
+
+Now, when I come to ask what is signified in their turn by these
+fundamental desires of political passions, I find they appear to me
+as the two essential composites of man’s will to situate himself _in
+real life_. To want real life is to want (_a_) To possess some material
+advantages, and (_b_) to be conscious of oneself as an individual.
+Every life which despises these two desires, every life which pursues
+only spiritual advantage or sincerely asserts itself in the universal,
+situates itself _outside the real_. Political passions, especially
+national passions insofar as they unite the two desires mentioned, seem
+to me essentially _realist_ passions.
+
+Here many persons will protest: ‘Yes,’ they will say, ‘the desires
+which make up political passions are realist desires, but the
+individual shifts these desires from himself to the group of which
+he is a part. The working man wants to obtain possession of material
+advantages for his class, not for his own limited person. The patriot
+wants to possess territories for his nation, not for his own narrow
+ego; he wants to be distinct from other men through his nation. Do you
+apply the term “realist” to passions which imply such a transfer from
+the individual to the collective body?’ Is it necessary to reply that
+when the individual transfers these desires to the body of which he is
+a part, he does not thereby alter their nature? And that all he does is
+simply to increase their dimensions immeasureably? To wish to possess
+material advantages _in one’s nation_, to want to feel distinct from
+other men _in one’s nation_, is still the desire to possess material
+advantages, still the desire to feel distinct from other men. It only
+means that, if you are a Frenchman, you want to possess Brittany,
+Provence, Guyenne, Algeria, Indo-China; and you want to feel yourself
+distinct from other men in Jeanne d’Arc, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Racine,
+Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Pasteur. Add to this that at the same time
+you attach these desires, not to a transitory and precarious single
+existence, but to an ‘eternal’ existence, and feel them in that way.
+Not only does national egotism not cease to be egotism because it
+is national, but it becomes ‘sacred’ egotism.[24] Let me complete
+my definition by saying that political passions are realism of a
+particular quality, which is an important element of strength in them:
+They are _divinized_ realism.[25]
+
+If, therefore, we desire to express this perfecting of political
+passions which I have described, in terms of a more profound and
+essential order of things, we may say that men to-day are displaying,
+with a hitherto unknown knowledge and consciousness, the desire to
+situate themselves in the _real_ or practical manner of existence, in
+opposition to the _disinterested_ or _metaphysical_ manner. Moreover,
+it is remarkable to see how political passions to-day more and more
+expressly assert their derivation from this realism and from it alone.
+On the one hand we have a Socialism which constantly declares that it
+has no interest in universal man, no interest in procuring justice for
+him or any other ‘metaphysical phantom’, but solely desires to obtain
+possession of material advantages for the benefit of its class. On the
+other hand we have the nationalist mind which everywhere takes a pride
+in being purely realistic. The French people who fought in the past to
+carry to other nations a doctrine they believed would bring happiness
+(I say the people, for its rulers never shared in that simple-minded
+belief) would now blush to have it even suspected that they would fight
+‘for principles’.[26] Is it not suggestive to observe that the only
+wars of the past which, to some extent, brought into play passions
+that were a little disinterested--the wars of religion--are the only
+wars from which humanity has freed itself?[27] And that immense
+idealistic upheavals like the crusades (idealistic at least with humble
+people) should now be something which makes the modern man smile, like
+the spectacle of children at play? Is it not also significant that the
+national passions (which I have shown are the most perfectly realist of
+all political passions) should be those which I have been able to point
+out have most absorbed all other passions?[28] Let me add to this,
+that these passions, insofar as they are the will of a group of men to
+set themselves up as distinct from others, have attained a hitherto
+unknown degree of consciousness.[29] Finally, the supreme attribute we
+have discovered in political passions, i.e. the divinization of their
+realism, is now openly admitted, with a plainness never seen before.
+The State, Country, Class, are now frankly God; we may even say that
+for many people (and some are proud of it) they alone are God.[30]
+Humanity, by its present practice of political passions, thereby
+declares that it has become more realist, more exclusively and more
+religiously realist than it has ever been.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_The ‘Clerks’--The Great Betrayal_
+
+_‘I created him to be spiritual in his flesh; and now he has become
+carnal even in the spirit.’_--(Bossuet, _Élévations_, VII, 3.)
+
+
+In all that I have said hitherto I have been considering only masses,
+whether bourgeois or proletarian, kings, ministers, political leaders,
+all that portion of the human species which I shall call ‘the laymen’,
+whose whole function consists essentially in the pursuit of material
+interests, and who, by becoming more and more solely and systematically
+realist, have in fact only done what might be expected of them.
+
+Side by side with this humanity whom the poet has described in a
+phrase--‘O curvae in terram animae et celestium inanes’--there existed
+until the last half century another, essentially distinct humanity,
+which to a certain extent acted as a check upon the former. I mean
+that class of men whom I shall designate ‘_the clerks_’, by which term
+I mean all those whose activity essentially is _not_ the pursuit of
+practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art
+or a science or metaphysical speculation, in short in the possession
+of non-material advantages, and hence in a certain manner say: ‘My
+kingdom is not of this world.’ Indeed, throughout history, for more
+than two thousand years until modern times, I see an uninterrupted
+series of philosophers, men of religion, men of literature, artists,
+men of learning (one might say almost all during this period), whose
+influence, whose life, were in direct opposition to the realism of the
+multitudes. To come down specifically to the political passions--the
+‘clerks’ were in opposition to them in two ways. They were either
+entirely indifferent to these passions, and, like Leonardo da Vinci,
+Malebranche, Goethe, set an example of attachment to the purely
+disinterested activity of the mind and created a belief in the
+supreme value of this form of existence; or, gazing as moralists
+upon the conflict of human egotisms, like Erasmus, Kant, Renan, they
+preached, in the name of humanity or justice, the adoption of an
+abstract principle superior to and directly opposed to these passions.
+Although these ‘clerks’ founded the modern State to the extent that it
+dominates individual egotisms, their activity undoubtedly was chiefly
+theoretical, and they were unable to prevent the laymen from filling
+all history with the noise of their hatreds and their slaughters; _but
+the ‘clerks’ did prevent the laymen from setting up their actions as a
+religion, they did prevent them from thinking themselves great men as
+they carried out these activities_. It may be said that, thanks to the
+‘clerks’, humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good.
+This contradiction was an honour to the human species, and formed the
+rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.
+
+Now, at the end of the nineteenth century a fundamental change
+occurred: _the ‘clerks’ began to play the game of political passions_.
+The men who had acted as a check on the realism of the people began
+to act as its stimulators. This upheaval in the moral behaviour of
+humanity operated in several ways.
+
+
+_First: The ‘clerks’ have adopted political passions_
+
+First of all the ‘clerks’ have adopted political passions. No one will
+deny that throughout Europe to-day the immense majority of men of
+letters and artists, a considerable number of scholars, philosophers,
+and ‘ministers’ of the divine, share in the chorus of hatreds among
+races and political factions. Still less will it be denied that they
+adopt national passions. Doubtless, the names of Dante, Petrarch,
+d’Aubigné, certain apologists of Caboche or preachers of the Ligue
+will suffice to show that certain ‘clerks’ did not wait for our era
+to indulge in these passions with all the strength of their souls.
+But, upon the whole, these ‘clerks’ of the forum were exceptions, at
+least among the great ones. If, in addition to the great masters named
+above, I evoke the phalanx of Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Galilei,
+Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Racine, Pascal, Leibniz, Kepler,
+Huyghens, Newton, and even Voltaire, Buffon and Montesquieu (to mention
+only a few) I think I may repeat that until our own days the men of
+thought or the honest men remained strangers to political passions,
+and said with Goethe: ‘Let us leave politics to the diplomats and the
+soldiers.’ Or if, like Voltaire, they took these passions into account,
+they adopted a critical attitude towards them, did not espouse them
+as passions. Or if, like Rousseau, Maistre, Chateaubriand, Lamartine,
+even Michelet, they did take these passions to heart, they did so with
+a generalizing of feeling, a disdain for immediate results, which in
+fact make the word ‘passions’ incorrect. To-day, if we mention Mommsen,
+Treitschke, Ostwald, Brunetière, Barrès, Lemaître, Péguy, Maurras,
+d’Annunzio, Kipling, we have to admit that the ‘clerks’ now exercise
+political passions with all the characteristics of passion--the
+tendency to action, the thirst for immediate results, the exclusive
+preoccupation with the desired end, the scorn for argument, the excess,
+the hatred, the fixed ideas. The modern ‘clerk’ has entirely ceased
+to let the layman alone descend to the market place. The modern clerk
+is determined to have the soul of a citizen and to make vigorous use
+of it; he is proud of that soul; his literature is filled with his
+contempt for the man who shuts himself up with art or science and
+takes no interest in the passions of the State.[31] He is violently
+on the side of Michaelangelo crying shame upon Leonardo da Vinci for
+his indifference to the misfortunes of Florence, and against the
+master of the Last Supper when he replied that indeed the study of
+beauty occupied his whole heart. The time has long past by since Plato
+demanded that the philosopher should be bound in chains in order to
+compel him to take an interest in the State. To have as his function
+the pursuit of eternal things and yet to believe that he becomes
+greater by concerning himself with the State--that is the view of the
+modern ‘clerk’. It is as natural as it is evident that this adhesion
+of the ‘clerks’ to the passions of the laymen fortifies these passions
+in the hearts of the latter. In the first place, it abolishes the
+suggestive spectacle (which I mentioned above) of a race of men whose
+interests are set outside the practical world. And then especially,
+the ‘clerk’ by adopting political passions, brings them the tremendous
+influence of his sensibility if he is an artist, of his persuasive
+power if he is a thinker, and in either case his moral prestige.[32]
+
+Before proceeding any further, I feel I ought to make myself clear on
+certain points:--
+
+(_a_) I have been talking of the _whole_ of the men of thought anterior
+to our own age. When I say that the ‘clerks’ in the past opposed
+the realism of the laymen and that the ‘clerks’ of to-day are in
+its service, I am considering each of these groups as a whole; I am
+contrasting one general characteristic with another. This means that
+I shall not feel myself contradicted by a reader who takes pains to
+point out to me that so-and-so in the former group was a realist,
+and that so-and-so in the second is not, so long as this reader is
+obliged to admit that as a whole each of these groups does manifest the
+characteristic I have indicated. And also, when I speak of a single
+‘clerk’, I am thinking of his work in its chief characteristic, i.e.
+in that part of his teaching which dominates all the rest, even if the
+remainder sometimes contradicts this dominant teaching. This means that
+I do not consider that I ought to refrain from looking upon Malebranche
+as a master of liberal thought because a few lines of his ‘Morale’ seem
+to be a justification of slavery, or upon Nietzsche as a moralist of
+war because the end of ‘Zarathustra’ is a manifesto of fraternity which
+outdoes the Gospels. And I see the less reason for doing so, since
+Malebranche as a defender of slavery and Nietzsche as a humanitarian
+have had no influence at all, and my subject is the influence which the
+‘clerks’ have had in the world, and not what they were in themselves.
+
+(_b_) Some will object to me: ‘How can you treat men like Barrès
+and Péguy as “clerks” and blame them for lacking the true spirit of
+“clerks” when they are so openly men of action, with whom political
+thought is obviously occupied solely with the needs of the present
+hour, solely spurred on by the events of the day, while the former
+scarcely ever gave expression to his political thought except in
+newspaper articles?’ I reply, that this thought, which in truth is
+practically nothing but a form of immediate action, is given out by its
+authors as the fruits of the highest speculative intellectual activity,
+the result of the most truly philosophical meditation. Barrès and
+Péguy would never have consented to be looked upon as mere polemical
+writers, even in their polemical works.[33] These men, who indeed are
+not ‘clerks’, gave themselves out to be ‘clerks’ and were considered
+as such, (Barrès gave himself out to be a thinker who condescended to
+the arena), and it is precisely as such that they enjoy a particular
+prestige among men of action. In this study my subject is not the
+‘clerk’ such as he is, but the ‘clerk’ such as he is considered to be
+and as he acts upon the world in that capacity.
+
+I shall make the same answer with regard to M. Maurras and the other
+instructors of the _Action Française_, of whom it will be said even
+more truly that they are men of action and that it is indefensible to
+cite them as ‘clerks’. These men claim to carry out their action by
+virtue of a doctrine derived from a wholly objective study of history,
+from the exercise of the most purely scientific spirit. And they owe
+the special attention with which they are listened to by men of action
+entirely to this claim that they are _men of learning_, men who are
+fighting for a truth discovered in the austerity of the laboratory.
+They owe it to their pose as combative ‘clerks’, but essentially _as
+‘clerks’_.
+
+(_c_) Finally I should like to define my views on another point and
+to say that when the ‘clerk’ descends to the market place I only
+consider that he is failing to perform his functions when he does so,
+like those I have mentioned, for the purpose of securing the triumph
+of a realist passion, whether of class, race or nation. When Gerson
+entered the pulpit of Notre Dame to denounce the murderers of Louis
+d’Orléans; when Spinoza, at the peril of his life, went and wrote the
+words ‘Ultimi barbarorum’ on the gate of those who had murdered the de
+Witts; when Voltaire fought for the Calas family; when Zola and Duclaux
+came forward to take part in a celebrated lawsuit (Dreyfus affair);
+all these ‘clerks’ were carrying out their functions as ‘clerks’ in
+the fullest and noblest manner. They were the officiants of abstract
+justice and were sullied with no passion for a worldly object.[34]
+Moreover, there exists a certain criterion by which we may know whether
+the ‘clerk’ who takes public action does so in conformity with his true
+functions; and that is, that he is immediately reviled by the laymen,
+whose interests he thwarts (Socrates, Jesus). We may say beforehand
+that the ‘clerk’ who is praised by the laymen is a traitor to his
+office.
+
+But let us return to the modern ‘clerk’s’ adhesion to political
+passions.
+
+It is concerning national passions that this adhesion seems to me
+particularly novel and big with results. Once again, of course humanity
+did not have to wait for the present age to see the ‘clerks’ indulge
+in this passion. Without mentioning the poets, whose tender hearts
+have always sighed ‘Nescio qua natale dulcedine solum cunctos Ducit’;
+and, as regards the philosophers, without going back to antiquity when
+all, previous to the Stoics, were ardent patriots; we may yet observe
+in history (since the coming of Christianity and long before our own
+days) writers, men of learning, artists, moralists, even ministers
+of the ‘Universal’ Church, who more or less explicitly displayed a
+special attachment for the group to which they belonged. But this
+affection among these men was based on reason; it showed itself
+capable of judging its object, of denouncing its errors when they
+believed such errors had been committed. Need I recall how Fénelon and
+Massillon denounced certain wars of Louis XIV? How Voltaire condemned
+the destruction of the Palatinate? How Renan denounced the violences
+of Napoleon? Buckle, the intolerance of England towards the French
+Revolution? And, in our own times, Nietzsche, the brutalities of
+Germany towards France?[35] It was reserved for our own time to see men
+of thought, or men giving themselves out as such, professing openly
+that they would not submit their patriotism to any check on the part of
+their judgment, proclaiming (like Barrès) that ‘even if the country is
+wrong, we must think it in the right’, denouncing as ‘traitors to the
+nation’ those of their compatriots who retain their liberty of mind, or
+at least of speech, in regard to their country. In France we have not
+forgotten how, during the last war, so many ‘thinkers’ attacked Renan
+for the liberty of his judgments on the history of his country.[36] Nor
+have we forgotten how, a little before that, a whole set of young men
+(who claimed to share in the life of the spirit) bristled up against
+one of their masters (Jacob) who tried to teach them a patriotism which
+did not exclude all right of criticism. After the violation of Belgium
+and other excesses of the Germans, in October, 1914, a German teacher
+said: ‘There is nothing for which we need make excuses.’[37] Now, if
+their own countries had been in a similar position, the same thing
+would have been said by most of the spiritual leaders of that time;
+by Barrès in France, by d’Annunzio in Italy, by Kipling in England,
+if we may judge by his conduct during the attack of his nation upon
+the Boers, and by William James in the United States, if we recall
+his attitude when his compatriots seized the island of Cuba.[38] I am
+quite ready to agree that this sort of blind patriotism makes powerful
+nations, and that the patriotism of Fénelon or of Renan is not the sort
+which secures empires. It remains to determine whether the function of
+‘clerks’ is to secure empires.
+
+This adhesion of the ‘clerks’ to national passion is particularly
+remarkable among those whom I shall call ‘pre-eminently clerks’; I mean
+the Churchmen. In all European countries during the past fifty years,
+the immense majority of these men have not only given their adhesion to
+the national feeling[39] and therefore have ceased to provide the world
+with the spectacle of hearts solely occupied with God--but they seem to
+have adopted this feeling with the same passion as that I have pointed
+out as existing among men of letters, and they too appear to be ready
+to support their own countries in the most flagrant injustices. During
+the last war this could be most clearly seen in the German clergy, from
+whom no one could drag the shadow of a protest against the excesses
+committed by their nation, and whose silence does not appear to have
+been caused solely by prudence.[40] In contrast to this attitude I
+refer the reader to that of the Spanish theologians of the sixteenth
+century, to men like Bartholomew de las Casas and Vittoria, earnestly
+denouncing the cruelties committed by their compatriots in the conquest
+of America. I do not claim that similar behaviour was then the rule
+among Churchmen, but I should like to ask whether there is a single
+country to-day where they would do likewise, or where they would even
+wish to be permitted to do so?[41]
+
+I shall point out another characteristic of patriotism in the modern
+‘clerk’: xenophobia. The hatred of man for ‘the man from outside’ (the
+_horsain_), his rejection of and scorn for everything which is not
+‘from his own home’, all these impulses, so constant among peoples and
+apparently necessary to their existence, have been adopted in our days
+by the so-called men of thought, and adopted with a seriousness of
+application, _an absence of simple-mindedness_, which go far towards
+making this adoption worthy of notice. We know how systematically the
+mass of German teachers in the past fifty years have announced the
+decline of every civilization but that of their own race, and how in
+France the admirers of Nietzsche or Wagner, even of Kant or Goethe,
+were treated by Frenchmen who claimed to share in the life of the
+spirit.[42] You may estimate how curiously new this form of patriotism
+is among the men of thought in France by thinking of Lamartine, Victor
+Hugo, Michelet, Proudhon, Renan, to name only patriotic ‘clerks’ in the
+age immediately preceding that we are considering. Is it necessary to
+say once again how much the ‘clerks’ have stimulated the passion of the
+laymen by adopting this xenophobia?
+
+I shall be told that during the past fifty years, and especially
+during the twenty years before the war, the attitude of foreigners to
+France was such that the most violent national partiality was forced
+upon all Frenchmen who wished to safeguard the nation, and that the
+only true patriots were those who consented to this fanaticism. I say
+nothing to the contrary; I only say that the ‘clerks’ who indulged
+in this fanaticism betrayed their duty, which is precisely to set
+up a corporation whose sole cult is that of justice and of truth,
+in opposition to the peoples and the injustice to which they are
+condemned by their religions of this earth. It is true indeed that
+these new ‘clerks’ declare that they do not know what is meant by
+justice, truth, and other ‘metaphysical fogs’, that for them the true
+is determined by the useful, the just by circumstances. All these
+things were taught by Callicles, but with this difference; he revolted
+all the important thinkers of his time.
+
+It must be admitted that the German ‘clerks’ led the way in this
+adhesion of the modern ‘clerk’ to patriotic fanaticism. The French
+‘clerks’ were, and long remained, animated with the most perfect spirit
+of justice towards foreign cultures (think of the cosmopolitanism
+of the Romantics!), when already Lessing, Schlegel, Fichte, Goerres
+were organizing in their hearts a violent adoration for ‘everything
+German’, and a scorn for everything not German. The nationalist ‘clerk’
+is essentially a German invention. This, moreover, is a theme which
+will frequently recur in this book, i.e. that most of the moral and
+political attitudes adopted by the ‘clerks’ of Europe in the past fifty
+years are of German origin, and that in the world of spiritual things
+the victory of Germany is now complete.
+
+It may be said that Germany, by creating for herself the nationalist
+‘clerk’ and thereby acquiring the additional strength we know she
+has acquired, made this species of ‘clerk’ necessary to all other
+countries. It is undeniable that from the moment when Germany had a
+Mommsen, France especially was bound to have a Barrès, under penalty
+of finding herself in a position of great inferiority in nationalist
+fanaticism, and of seeing her existence seriously menaced. Every
+Frenchman attached to the continuance of his nation must rejoice that
+in the last half century France has possessed a fanatically nationalist
+literature. Yet one would like this Frenchman to rise for a moment
+superior to his interest, and, faithful in this to the honour of his
+race, to think it sad that the course of events in the world should
+force him to rejoice in such a thing.
+
+More generally, it may be admitted that a realist attitude has been
+imposed on the modern ‘clerks’, chiefly the French ‘clerks’, by
+exterior and interior political conditions which have arisen in their
+nations. However serious this may be, it would be much less serious
+if we found that the ‘clerks’ deplored it while they submitted to
+it, if they felt how much their own value is diminished by it, how
+greatly civilization is menaced by it, to what an extent the universe
+is rendered ugly by it. But this is exactly what we do not see. On the
+contrary, we see them joyfully carrying out this realism; we see them
+believing that they are rendered greater by their nationalist fury,
+that it is a service to civilization, an embellishment to humanity.
+Then one feels that one is confronted by something different from
+a function thwarted by the events of the moment, and faced with a
+cataclysm of moral notions in those who educate the world.
+
+I should like to point out two other characteristics in the patriotism
+of the modern ‘clerks’ which seem new to me, the second of which has
+not failed to stimulate this passion greatly among the peoples.
+
+The first can best be brought out by contrast with the lines written by
+an author of the fifteenth century, lines which are the more remarkable
+since he who wrote them proved by his deeds how deep was his love for
+his native country. ‘All cities,’ says Guicciardini, ‘all States, all
+Kingdoms, are mortal; everything comes to an end, either by accident or
+by the course of nature. That is why a citizen who witnesses the end of
+his country cannot feel so distressed at her misfortune with so much
+reason as he would lament his own ruin. His country has met the fate
+which in every way she was bound to meet; the misfortune is wholly for
+him whose unhappy lot has caused him to be born in a time when such a
+disaster had to occur.’ One wonders whether there is a single modern
+thinker, attached to his country as the author of that passage was to
+his, who would dare to form, still less to express, a judgment of her
+so extraordinarily free in its melancholy. And here we come upon one
+of the great impieties of the moderns: The refusal to believe that
+above their nations there exists a development of a superior kind, by
+which they will be swept away like all other things. The ancients,
+so completely the adorers of their States, nevertheless placed them
+beneath Fate. The ancient City was under divine protection, but in no
+wise believed that she herself was divine and necessarily eternal. All
+the literature of the ancients shows us that, in their opinion, the
+duration of their institutions was a precarious thing, solely due to
+the favour of the Gods, who at any time might withdraw that favour.[43]
+We have Thucydides contemplating the image of a world in which Athens
+should have ceased to exist; we have Polybius showing us the conqueror
+of Carthage meditating over the burning town: ‘And Rome too shall meet
+her fatal hour.’ We have Virgil praising the peasant of the fields for
+whom ‘res romanae et peritura regna’ are of no value.
+
+It was reserved for the moderns to make of their City a tower which
+defies the heavens, and to do it with the aid of their ‘clerks’.
+
+The second characteristic of the patriotism of the modern ‘clerks’
+is a desire to relate the form of their own minds to a form of the
+_national_ mind, which they naturally brandish against other national
+forms of mind. We all know how, during the last fifty years, so many
+men of learning on both banks of the Rhine have asserted their views in
+the name of _French_ science, of _German_ science. We know how acridly
+so many of our writers in the same period have vibrated with _French_
+sensibility, _French_ intelligence, _French_ philosophy. Some declare
+that they are the incarnation of Aryan thought, Aryan painting, Aryan
+music, to which others reply by discovering that a certain master had
+a Jewish grandmother, and so venerate Semitic genius in him. Here it
+is not a question of inquiring whether the form of mind of a scholar
+or an artist is the signature of his nationality or his race and to
+what extent, but of noting the desire of the modern ‘clerks’ that it
+should be so, and noting how new a thing this is. Racine and La Bruyère
+never dreamed of setting up their works before themselves and before
+the world as manifestation of the French mind, nor did Goethe and
+Wincklemann relate theirs to the genius of Germany.[44] Here, chiefly
+among the artists, is a very remarkable fact. It is very remarkable to
+see men whose activity consists, one might say professionally, in the
+assertion of individuality, men who became so violently conscious of
+this truth a century ago with the Romantic movement, now (as it were)
+abdicating this sort of consciousness and trying to feel themselves
+as the expression of some general existence, a manifestation of a
+collective mind. It is true that this abdication of the individual in
+favour of ‘a great impersonal and eternal Whole’ satisfies another
+sort of Romanticism. It is true that this impulse of the artist may
+also be explained by the desire (which Barrès does not conceal) to
+increase the enjoyment of himself by himself, since the consciousness
+of the individual ego is doubled in profundity by consciousness of
+the national ego, while at the same time the artist finds new lyrical
+themes in this second consciousness. It may also be admitted that
+the artist is not blind to his own interest in calling himself the
+expression of the genius of his nation, thereby inviting the whole race
+to applaud itself in the work he put before it.[45] Whatever their
+motives may have been, the great minds or the minds reputed such, by
+relating the whole of their value so noisily to their nation, have
+laboured in a direction contrary to that expected of them; they have
+flattered the vanity of nations, they have fed full the arrogance
+with which each nation flings its superiority in the face of its
+neighbours.[46]
+
+I cannot better bring out all the novelty of this attitude of the
+‘clerk’ than by quoting the remark of Renan, which would be signed
+by all men of thought from Socrates onwards: ‘Man belongs neither to
+his language nor to his race; he belongs only to himself, for he is
+a free being, that is, a moral being.’ To this Barrès replies, amid
+the applause of his compeers: ‘To be moral is _not to wish to be free
+from one’s race_.’ Here, obviously, is an exaltation of the gregarious
+spirit which the nations had heard little of before from the priests of
+the spirit.
+
+The modern ‘clerks’ do better still. They declare that their thought
+cannot be good, that it cannot bear good fruit, unless they remain on
+their native soil, unless they are not ‘uprooted’ (‘_déracinés_’). They
+congratulate A on working in _his_ Bearn, B in _his_ Berry, C in _his_
+Brittany. And they not only proclaim this law for the poets, but for
+critics, moralists, philosophers, the servants of purely intellectual
+activity. To declare the mind good to the extent of its refusal to
+liberate itself from the earth is something which will make the modern
+‘clerks’ certain of a conspicuous place in the annals of the spiritual
+life. Obviously, the feelings of this class of men has changed since
+Plutarch taught: ‘Man is not a plant created to be immobile and to have
+his roots fixed in the soil where he was born,’ and since Antisthenes
+replied to his colleagues who boasted that they were native to the
+soil, that ‘they shared this honour with the slugs and grasshoppers’.
+
+Need I say that I am only denouncing this desire of the ‘clerk’ to
+feel himself determined by his race and to remain fixed to his native
+soil to the extent that it becomes in him a political attitude, a
+nationalist provocation. The best way for me to define this is by
+quoting this hymn of a modern ‘clerk’ to ‘his soil and his dead’, a
+hymn completely void of political passion:
+
+‘And the old oak under which I am sitting speaks in its turn, and says
+to me:
+
+‘“Read, read in my shadow those Gothic songs whose refrains I heard
+in the past mingle with the rustling of my leaves. The souls of your
+ancestors are in these songs that are older than I am. Learn to know
+those humble ancestors, share their past joys and sorrows. Thus, O
+transitory creature, shalt thou live long ages in a few years. Be
+pious, venerate the soil of your country. Never take up a handful in
+your hand without remembering that it is sacred. Love all those far-off
+relatives whose dust mingled with earth has fed me for centuries,
+whose minds have passed into you, their Benjamin, the child of better
+days. Reproach not your ancestors with their ignorance, nor with the
+feebleness of their thought, nor even with the illusions of fear which
+sometimes rendered them cruel. As well reproach yourself for having
+been a child. Remember that they laboured, that they suffered, that
+they hoped for you, and that you owe everything to them!”’[47]
+
+
+_Second: They bring their political passions into their activities as
+‘clerks’._
+
+The ‘clerks’ have not been content simply to adopt political passions,
+if by this one means that they have made a place for these passions
+side by side with the activities they are bound to carry on as
+‘clerks’. They have introduced these passions into those activities.
+They permit, they desire them to be mingled with their work as artists,
+as men of learning, as philosophers, to colour the essence of their
+work and to mark all its productions. And indeed never were there so
+many political works among those which ought to be the mirror of the
+disinterested intelligence.
+
+You may refuse to be surprised by this in the case of poetry. We must
+not ask the poets to separate their works from their passions. The
+latter are the substance of the former, and the only question to ask
+is whether they write poems to express their passions or whether they
+hunt for passions in order to write poems. In either case one does
+not see why they should exclude national passion or the spirit of
+party from their vibrant material. Our political poets, who are not
+numerous however, have only followed the example of Virgil, Claudian,
+Lucan, Dante, d’Aubigné, Ronsard, and Hugo. Yet we cannot deny that
+political passion, as it is expressed by Claudel or d’Annunzio, a
+conscious and organized passion _lacking all simplicity_, coldly
+scornful of its adversary, a passion which in the second of these
+poets displays itself as so precisely political, so cunningly adapted
+to the profound cupidity of his compatriots and the exact point of
+weakness in the foreigner--we cannot deny, I say, that this political
+passion is something different from the eloquent generalities of the
+‘Tragiques of the Année Terrible.’ A work like _La Nave_, with its
+national plan as exact and practical as that of a Bismarck, wherein
+the lyric gift is used to extol this practical character, seems to me
+something new in the history of poetry, even of political poetry. The
+result of this new departure on the minds of laymen may be judged by
+the present state of mind of the Italian people.[48] But in our day
+the most remarkable example of the poets’ applying their art to the
+service of political passions is that literary form which may be called
+‘lyrical philosophy’, the most brilliant symbol of which is the work of
+Barrès. It begins by taking as its centres of vibration certain truly
+philosophical states of mind (such as pantheism, a loftily sceptical
+intellectualism) and then entirely devotes itself to serving racial
+passion and national feeling. Here the action of the lyric spirit is
+doubled by the prestige of the spirit of abstract thought (Barrès
+admirably caught the appearance of that spirit--he stole the tool, a
+philosopher has said of him), and in France as elsewhere the ‘clerks’
+have thereby stimulated political passions among the laymen, at least
+in that very important section of them who read and believe they think.
+Moreover, in regard to poets and especially the poet I have just named,
+it is difficult to know whether the lyrical impulse lends its aid to a
+genuine and pre-existing political passion, or whether on the contrary
+this passion puts itself at the service of a lyrical impulse which is
+seeking inspiration. Alius judex erit.
+
+But there are other ‘clerks’ who introduce political passion into
+their works with a remarkable consciousness of what they are doing, in
+whom this derogation seems more worthy of notice than in the poets. I
+mean the novelists and dramatists, i.e. ‘clerks’ whose function is to
+portray in as objective a manner as possible the emotions of the human
+soul and their conflicts--a function which, as Shakespeare, Molière,
+and Balzac have proved, may be carried out with all the purity I have
+here assigned to it. One may show how this function has been more than
+ever perverted by its subjection to political ends by the example of
+many contemporary novelists, not because they scatter ‘tendencious’
+reflections throughout their narratives (Balzac constantly does so),
+but because instead of making their heroes feel and act in conformity
+with a true observation of human nature, they make them do so as the
+passion of the authors requires. Shall I cite those novels where the
+traditionalist, whatever his errors, always finally displays a noble
+soul, whereas the character without religion inevitably, and in spite
+of all his efforts, is capable of none but vile actions?[49] Or the
+other novels where the man of the people possesses every virtue and
+vileness is the exclusive portion of the bourgeois?[50] Or the novels
+where the author displays his compatriots in contact with foreigners
+and, more or less frankly, gives all moral superiority to his own
+people?[51] There is a two-fold evil in this proceeding; not only does
+it considerably inflame political passion in the breast of the reader,
+but it deprives him of one of the most eminently civilizing effects of
+all works of art, i.e. that self-examination to which every spectator
+is impelled by a representation of human beings which he feels to be
+true and solely pre-occupied with truth.[52] From the point of view
+of the artist and of the value of his activity alone, this partiality
+indicates a great degradation. The value of the artist, the thing
+which makes him the world’s high ornament, is that he _plays_ human
+passions instead of living them, and that he discovers in this ‘play’
+emotion the same source of desires, joys and sufferings as ordinary
+men find in the pursuit of real things. Now, if this accomplished type
+of exuberant activity places itself at the service of the nation or of
+a class, if this fine flower of disinterestedness becomes utilitarian,
+then I say with the poet of the ‘Vierge aux Rochers’ when the author of
+_Siegfried_ exhales his last sigh: ‘The world has lost its import.’
+
+I have pointed out that certain ‘clerks’ have put their activities as
+‘clerks’ at the service of political passions. These are the poets,
+the novelists, the dramatists, the artists, i.e. they are men who may
+be permitted to give passion, even wilful passion, a predominant place
+in their works. But there are other ‘clerks’ in whom this derogation
+from the disinterested activity of the mind is far more shocking,
+‘clerks’ whose influence on the laymen is much more profound by reason
+of the prestige attached to their functions. I mean the historians.
+Here, as with the poets, the phenomenon is a new one on account of
+the point of perfection it has reached. Assuredly, humanity did not
+await our age to see History putting itself at the service of the
+spirit of party or of national passion. But I think I may assert that
+it has never seen this done with the same methodical spirit, the same
+intensity of consciousness which may be observed in German historians
+of the past half century and in the French Monarchists of the past
+twenty years. The case of the latter is the more remarkable since they
+belong to a nation which has acquired eternal honour in the history
+of human intelligence by explicitly condemning pragmatic history
+and formulating, as it were, the charter of disinterested history,
+through the works of Beaufort, Fréret, Voltaire, Thierry, Renan,
+Fustel de Coulanges.[53] Yet the true novelty here is the admission of
+this spirit of partiality, the expressed intention to employ it as a
+legitimate method. ‘A true German historian,’ declares a German master,
+‘should especially tell those facts which conduce to the grandeur of
+Germany.’ The same scholar praises Mommsen (who himself boasted of it)
+for having written a Roman history ‘which becomes a history of Germany
+with Roman names’. Another (Treitschke) prided himself on his lack of
+‘that anemic objectivity which is contrary to the historical sense’.
+Another (Guisebrecht) teaches that ‘Science must not soar beyond the
+frontiers, but be national, be German’. Our Monarchists do not lag
+behind. Recently one of them, the author of a _History of France_,
+which tried to show that the French Kings since Clovis were occupied in
+trying to prevent the war of 1914, defended the historian who presents
+the past from the point of view of the passions of his own time.[54] By
+his determination in bringing this partiality to historical narrative
+the modern ‘clerk’ most seriously derogates from his true function,
+if I am right in saying that his function is to restrain the passions
+of the laymen. Not only does he inflame the laymen’s passions more
+cunningly than ever, not only does he deprive them of the suggestive
+spectacle of a man solely occupied by the thirst for truth, but he
+prevents the laymen from hearing speech different from that of the
+market place, speech (Renan’s is perhaps the finest example) which,
+coming from the heights, shows that the most opposite passions are
+equally justified, equally necessary to the earthly State, and thereby
+incites every reader who has any capacity for getting outside himself
+to relax the severity of his passions, at least for a moment.
+
+Let me say, however, that indeed men like Treitschke and his French
+equivalents are not historians; they are men of politics who make use
+of history to support a cause whose triumph they desire. Hence, it
+is natural that the master of their method should not be Lenain de
+Tillemont but Louis XIV, who threatened to withdraw Mezeray’s pension
+if the historian persisted in pointing out the abuses of the old
+monarchy; or Napoleon, who ordered the chief of police to take measures
+for the history of France to be written in a manner favourable to his
+own throne. Nevertheless, the really cunning ones assume the mask of
+disinterestedness.[55]
+
+I believe that many of those whom I am here accusing of betraying their
+spiritual ministry, that disinterested activity which should be theirs
+by the mere fact of their being historians, psychologists, moralists,
+would reply to me as follows, if such a confession did not destroy
+their influence: ‘We are not in the least the servants of spiritual
+things; we are the servants of material things, of a political party,
+of a nation. Only, instead of serving it with the sword, we serve it
+with the pen. We are _the spiritual militia of the material_.’
+
+Among those who ought to show the world an example of disinterested
+intellectual activity and who nevertheless turn their function to
+practical ends, I shall also mention the critics. Everyone knows that
+innumerable critics to-day consider that a book is only good insofar
+as it serves the party which is dear to them, or as it manifests ‘the
+genius of the nation’, or as it illustrates a political doctrine in
+harmony with their own political system, or for other reasons of the
+like purity. The modern ‘clerks’, I said before, insist that the
+just shall be determined by the useful. They also want the useful to
+determine the beautiful, which is not one of their least originalities
+in history. Nevertheless, here again those who adopt such a form
+of criticism are not truly critics, but men of politics, who make
+criticism serve their practical designs. Here is a perfecting of
+political passion, the whole honour of which must be given to the
+moderns. Neither Pius XIV nor Napoleon apparently thought of using
+literary criticism in support of the social system in which they
+believed.[56] This new departure has brought forth its fruits. For
+instance, if you assert with the French Monarchists that the democratic
+ideal is inevitably bound up with bad literature, you are dealing that
+ideal a real blow in a country like France, which has a real devotion
+to literature, at least among those who will consent to believe that
+Victor Hugo and Lamartine were mere scribblers.[57]
+
+But the most remarkable thing about the modern ‘clerk’ in his desire
+to bring political passion into his work, is that he has done so in
+philosophy, more precisely, in metaphysics. It may be said that until
+the nineteenth century metaphysics remained the inviolate citadel
+of disinterested speculation. Among all forms of spiritual labour
+metaphysics best deserved the admirable tribute which a mathematician
+rendered the theory of numbers above all branches of mathematics, when
+he said: ‘This is the really pure branch of our science, by which I
+mean that it is unsullied by any contact with practical application.’
+In fact thinkers free from any sort of earthly preference, like
+Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, and even thinkers strongly
+imbued with the superiority of their class or nation (like Plato
+and Aristotle), never thought of directing their transcendental
+speculations towards a demonstration of this superiority or the
+necessity of this adoption by the whole world. It has been said
+that the morality of the Greeks was national, but their metaphysics
+were universal. The Church itself, so often favourable to class or
+national interests in its morality, thinks only of God and Man in its
+metaphysics. It was reserved for our own age to see metaphysicians of
+the greatest eminence turning their speculations to the exaltation
+of their own countries and to the depreciation of other countries,
+fortifying the will to power of their compatriots with all the power
+of abstractive genius. Fichte and Hegel made the triumph of the German
+world the supreme and necessary end of the development of Being,
+and history has showed whether the action of these ‘clerks’ had an
+effect on the hearts of their laymen. Let me hasten to add that this
+spectacle of patriotic metaphysics is provided by Germany alone. In
+France, even in this age of nationalist ‘clerks’, we have not yet
+seen any philosopher (at least one who is taken seriously) build up
+a metaphysical system to the glory of France. Neither Auguste Comte
+nor Renouvier nor Bergson ever thought of making a French hegemony
+the necessary result of the world’s development. Need I add what a
+degradation this has been for metaphysics, as it has been for art?
+It will be the eternal shame of the German philosophers to have
+transformed the patrician virgin who honoured the Gods into a harpy
+engaged in shrieking the glory of her children.
+
+
+_Third: The ‘clerks’ have played the game of political passions by
+their doctrines_
+
+But where the ‘clerks’ have most violently broken with their tradition
+and resolutely played the game of the laymen in their eagerness to
+place themselves in the real, is by their doctrines, by the scale
+of values they have set up for the world. Those whose preaching for
+twenty centuries had been to humiliate the realist passions in favour
+of something transcendental, have set themselves (with a science and a
+consciousness which will stupify history) to the task of making these
+passions, and the impulses which ensure them, the highest of virtues,
+while they cannot show too much scorn for the existence which in any
+respect raises itself beyond the material. I shall now describe the
+principal aspects of this phenomenon.
+
+
+_A. The ‘clerks’ praise attachment to the particular and denounce the
+feeling of the universal_
+
+In the first place, the ‘clerks’ have set out to exalt the will of
+men to feel conscious of themselves as distinct from others, and
+to proclaim as contemptible every tendency to establish oneself in
+a universal. With the exception of certain authors like Tolstoi
+and Anatole France, whose teaching moreover is now looked on with
+contempt by most of their colleagues, all the influential moralists of
+Europe during the past fifty years, Bourget, Barrès, Maurras, Péguy,
+d’Annunzio, Kipling, the immense majority of German thinkers, have
+praised the efforts of men to feel conscious of themselves in their
+nation and race, to the extent that this distinguishes them from
+others and opposes them to others, and have made them ashamed of every
+aspiration to feel conscious of themselves as men in the general
+sense and in the sense of rising above ethnical aims. Those whose
+activity since the time of the Stoics had been devoted to preaching
+the extinction of national egotism in the interest of an abstract and
+eternal entity, set out to denounce every feeling of this kind and to
+proclaim the lofty morality of that egotism. In our age the descendants
+of Erasmus, Montaigne, Voltaire, have denounced humanitarianism as a
+moral degeneration, nay, as an intellectual degeneration, in that it
+implies ‘a total absence of practical common sense’; for practical
+common sense has become the measure of intellectual values with these
+strange ‘clerks’.
+
+I should like to draw a distinction between humanitarianism as I mean
+it here--a sensitiveness to the abstract quality of what is human, to
+Montaigne’s ‘whole form of human condition’--and the feeling which is
+usually called humanitarianism, by which is meant the love for human
+beings existing in the concrete. The former impulse (which would more
+accurately be called humanism) is the attachment to a concept. It is a
+pure passion of the intelligence, implying no terrestrial love. It is
+quite easy to conceive of a person plunging into the concept of what
+is human without having the least desire even to see a man. This is
+the form assumed by love of humanity in the great patricians of the
+mind like Erasmus, Malebranche, Spinoza, Goethe, who all were men, it
+appears, not very anxious to throw themselves into the arms of their
+neighbours. The second humanitarianism is a state of the heart and
+therefore the portion of plebeian souls. It occurs among moralists
+in periods when lofty intellectual discipline disappears among them
+and gives way to sentimental exaltation, I mean in the eighteenth
+century (chiefly with Diderot) and above all in the nineteenth century,
+with Michelet, Quinet, Proudhon, Romain Rolland, Georges Duhamel.
+This sentimental form of humanitarianism and forgetfulness of its
+conceptual form explain the unpopularity of this doctrine with so many
+distinguished minds, who discover two equally repulsive commonplaces in
+the arsenal of political ideology. One of them is ‘the patriotic bore’
+and the other ‘the universal embrace’.[58]
+
+The humanitarianism which holds in honour the abstract quality of what
+is human, is the only one which allows us to love _all_ men. Obviously,
+as soon as we look at men in the concrete, we inevitably find that this
+quality is distributed in different quantities, and we have to say with
+Renan: ‘In reality one is _more or less_ a man, _more or less_ the son
+of God ... I see no reason why a Papuan should be immortal.’ Modern
+equalitarians, by failing to understand that there can be no equality
+except in the abstract and that inequality is the essence of the
+concrete, have merely displayed the extraordinary vulgarity of their
+minds as well as their amazing political clumsiness.[59]
+
+Humanism, as I have defined it, has nothing to do with
+internationalism. Internationalism is a protest against national
+egotism, not on behalf of a spiritual passion, but on behalf of another
+egotism, another earthly passion. It is the impulse of a certain
+category of men--labourers, bankers, industrialists--who unite across
+frontiers in the name of private and practical interests, and who only
+oppose the national spirit because it thwarts them in satisfying those
+interests.[60]
+
+In comparison with such impulses, national passion appears an
+idealistic and disinterested impulse. In short, humanism is also
+something entirely different from cosmopolitanism, which is the simple
+desire to enjoy the advantages of all nations and all their cultures,
+and is generally exempt from all moral dogmatism.[61] But let us come
+back to this movement of the ‘clerks’ exhorting the peoples to feel
+conscious of themselves in what makes them distinct from others.
+
+What will especially amaze history in this movement of the ‘clerks’
+is the perfection with which they have carried it out. They have
+exhorted the peoples to feel conscious of themselves in what makes them
+_the most distinct_ from others, in their poets rather than in their
+scientists, in their legends rather than in their philosophies, since
+poetry (as they perfectly well perceived) is infinitely more national,
+more separating than the products of pure intelligence.[62] They have
+exhorted the peoples to honour their poets’ characteristics insofar
+as they are peculiar to them and are not universal. Recently a young
+Italian writer praised his language because it is only used in Italy,
+and poured scorn on French because it is employed universally.[63]
+They have exhorted the peoples to feel conscious of themselves in
+_everything_ which makes them distinct from others, not only in their
+language, art, and literature, but in their dress, houses, furniture,
+and food. During the past half century it has been a common experience
+to see serious writers (to go no further than France) exhorting
+their compatriots to remain faithful to French fashions, French
+hair-dressing, French dining rooms, French cooking, French cars. They
+have exhorted the peoples to feel themselves distinct even in their
+vices. The German historians, says Fustel de Coulanges, urge their
+nation to be intoxicated with its personality, even to its barbarity.
+The French moralist does not lag behind and desires his compatriots
+to accept their ‘national determinism’ in its ‘indivisible totality’,
+with its injustices as well as its wisdom, with its fanaticism as
+well as its enlightenment, its pettiness as well as its grandeur.
+Another, (Maurras) declares: ‘Good or bad, our tastes are ours and
+it is always permissible to take ourselves as the sole judges and
+models of our lives’. Once again, the remarkable thing here is not
+that such things should be said, but that they should be said by the
+‘clerks’, by a class of men whose purpose hitherto has been to urge
+their fellow-citizens to feel conscious of themselves in what is common
+to all men, that they should be said in France by the descendants of
+Montaigne, Pascal, Voltaire, and Renan.
+
+This glorifying of national particularism, so unexpected among
+all ‘clerks’ is especially so among those whom I described as
+‘pre-eminently clerks’--the Churchmen. Those who for centuries have
+exhorted men, at least theoretically, to deaden the feeling of their
+differences in order to take cognizance of each other in the divine
+essence which brings all men together, have now come to praise them,
+according to where the sermon is given, for their ‘fidelity to the
+French soul’, for ‘the immutability of their German consciousness’,
+for the ‘fervour of their Italian hearts’.[64] The sight is indeed
+surprising and remarkable! What would be thought by him who, by the
+mouth of his apostle, declared: ‘There is neither Greek nor Jew nor
+barbarian, but Christ is in all things,’ if to-day he entered one of
+his churches and saw offered to the veneration of his faithful, a
+national heroine with a sword on her thigh and a flag in her hand?[65]
+
+This glorification of national particularisms, at least with the
+precision observable to-day, is undoubtedly something new in the
+history of the Church. It is not necessary to go back as far as
+Saint Augustine, who preached the extinction of all patriotisms in
+the embrace of ‘the City of God’; nor even to Bossuet, who shows us
+the indignation of Jesus at observing ‘that because we are separated
+by a few rivers or mountains, we seem to have forgotten that we are
+all of one nature’. So recently as 1849 a lofty assembly of prelates
+asserted that ‘this movement of nationalities is a relic of paganism,
+differences of language are a consequence of sin and the fall of man’.
+Certainly this declaration was an interested one, since it was provoked
+by the Most Catholic Francis Joseph to check the separatist tendencies
+among the peoples of his Empire; but I dare to assert that the Church
+would no longer make such a declaration, even for motives of interest.
+I shall be told that even if the Church wished to do so, she could
+only do it under penalty of delivering up her ministers to a terrible
+unpopularity among their respective peoples. As if the ‘clerk’s’
+function were not to tell the laymen truths which are displeasing to
+them, and to pay the price at the expense of his own peace!
+
+I do not ask so much. Is there a single prelate in any pulpit of Europe
+who would now dare to pronounce: ‘The Christian is both a cosmopolitan
+and a patriot. These two qualities are not incompatible. The world
+indeed is one common fatherland, or, to speak in more Christian terms,
+one common exile.’ (Pastoral letter ‘On the pretended philosophy of
+modern infidels,’ by Le Franc de Pompignon, Bishop of Puy, 1763.
+The ‘infidels’ here are those who refuse the Church the right to be
+cosmopolitan.)
+
+Some ‘clerks’ do better, and assert that by extolling national
+particularisms they are in complete harmony with the fundamental spirit
+of the Church, especially with the teaching of the great Doctors of
+the Middle Ages. (This is the thesis which opposes Catholicism to
+Christianity.) Need I recall the fact that the most national of these
+Doctors limited themselves to considering national particularisms as an
+inevitable condition of an earthly and inferior world, which must be
+respected like everything else which is the will of God? Or that they
+never exhorted men to intensify this feeling in their hearts, still
+less did they ever think of putting this intensification before them as
+an exercise in moral self-perfection?
+
+When the Church in past times did approve of something in patriotism,
+it was fraternity among fellow-citizens, like love of man for other
+men, but not his opposition to other men. She approved of patriotism as
+an extension of human love, and not as a limitation of it.[66]
+
+But the most remarkable thing in all this is that recently--precisely
+since the time when Benedict XV was reproached during the last war for
+not having denounced the arrogance of German nationalism--there has
+arisen a school in the bosom of the Church which tries to prove that
+by acting in this way the Holy Father had simply obeyed the teaching
+of his Divine Master, who is supposed to have preached explicitly the
+love of a man for his own nation. Could anything better symbolize the
+determination of the modern ‘clerks’ to place their credit and their
+activities at the service of lay passions than these Churchmen making
+Jesus an apostle of nationalism?
+
+These strange Christians express themselves thus:
+
+‘Jesus does not look beyond the frontiers of his own country with the
+idea of bestowing his benefactions upon other nations. He declares to
+the Canaanitish woman, whose daughter he heals against his own wish,
+that “his mission is only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”
+(Matt. xv, 24). He sent his first disciples among the Israelites. And
+notice how he insists that they shall not go elsewhere. “Go not on the
+paths of the Gentiles, and enter not the cities of the Samaritans, but
+go first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matt. x, 6.) Later
+on, it will be time enough to announce the good news to foreigners,
+but first of all we must bring it to our own people. This is what he
+means by the words, so full of patriotic meaning and love: “the house
+of Israel.” A group of human beings possessing the same blood, the same
+language, the same religion, the same tradition, form “a house”. These
+particularities are so many dividing walls.’[67]
+
+They also say:
+
+‘The most striking thing about Jesus when he consents to pay tribute
+to Caesar and refuses the crown which the people offer him in the
+desert, is not so much his prudence and his disinterestedness, as his
+patriotism ... One of the most important characteristics of Jesus’s
+teaching is its absolutely national character....’[68]
+
+If the reader desires, he will himself go and find out the solidity
+of the proofs on which these teachers base their thesis (one of these
+proofs is that Jesus was strongly attached to the institutions of his
+nation, which he showed by accepting circumcision eight days after he
+was born). The point I wish to insist on is the eagerness of these
+Christians to make their Master a supporter of national egotism, at
+least at one period of his life.
+
+These views on the attitude of the Church towards nationalism seem to
+me to remain unmodified by the recent declarations of the Holy See
+concerning a certain type of French nationalism, for these declarations
+only condemn an openly anti-Christian nationalism (hence a very
+exceptional form of nationalism) and do not utter a word of blame for
+the desire of the peoples to set themselves up as distinct from others
+and to reject universalism. Moreover, this is how a universalist is
+answered by a publication which is to some extent the official organ of
+Pontifical views:
+
+‘Yes, all men are sons of one Father; but they were divided in the
+beginning and have never been brought together again. The family was
+broken up and never joined up again. On the contrary. Certainly, I am
+glad to recognize the fraternity of all living beings; but are all
+the dead our fathers? Have they all loved us? Have they all suffered
+and laboured for us? Some lived on the other side of the globe, and,
+so to speak, in another world. Some laboured against us, or, if
+they supported our ancestors, it was in the hope of safeguarding or
+enriching their own bequest to others, not to us. Where is the debt?
+If the home is open to all comers, it is no longer a home but an
+inn.’[69]
+
+It appears that we must look among those who have left the Church,
+to find Christian ministers who proclaim the true teaching of their
+Master, and who declare with no beating about the bush: ‘The Gospel of
+Jesus does not imply any country, but obliterates the fatherland.’[70]
+
+The modern ‘clerk’ denounces the feeling of universalism, not only
+for the profit of the nation, but for that of a class. Our age has
+beheld moralists who have declared to the bourgeois world (or to the
+working classes) that, far from trying to check the feeling of their
+differences from others and to feel conscious of their common human
+nature, they should on the contrary try to feel conscious of this
+difference in all its profundity and irreducibleness, and that this
+effort is fine and noble, whereas every desire for union is here a
+sign of baseness and cowardice, and also of weakness of mind. This,
+as everyone knows, is the thesis of the ‘Reflections on Violence’,
+which has been praised by a whole galaxy of apostles of the modern
+soul. There is certainly something more novel in this attitude of
+the ‘clerks’ to class differences than in their attitude towards
+national differences. To discover the results of this teaching and the
+additional hatred (hitherto unknown) which it has given to either class
+in doing violence to its adversary, you have only to look at Italian
+Fascism for the bourgeois class, and at Russian Bolshevism for the
+working class.[71]
+
+Here again we see realism trying to shelter under cover of the Church.
+We see certain Catholic teachers striving to prove that, by encouraging
+the bourgeois class, _in the name of morality_, to feel conscious of
+themselves as distinct from the opposing class, to plunge religiously
+into consciousness of the characteristics which are proper to their
+own class, and especially (Johannet) to _intensify their feeling of
+property_, these teachers are merely acting in conformity with the
+teaching of the Church.[72]
+
+It is easy to point out the equivocation upon which this claim is
+based. The Church does indeed admit class distinctions. She exhorts the
+faithful to recognize and even to respect them, as something imposed
+by God upon a fallen world. She also exhorts the privileged to accept
+their situation, to carry out the activities it implies, and to
+perform ‘the duties of their state of life’. She even tells them that
+by performing these duties they are pleasing God and ‘making an act of
+prayer’. But the Church never exhorted them to glorify in themselves
+the feeling of this distinction, still less did she ever do so in the
+name of morality. On the contrary, she exhorted them in the name of
+morality to extinguish (beneath this privileged life) all belief in
+a particularity of essence in their persons, and told them to feel
+conscious of themselves in that humanity which is common to all men
+beneath the inequality of ranks and states of life.[73] Jesus Christ,
+the Church states explicitly and constantly, _only accepts the man who
+is reconciled_, i.e. the man who has obliterated from his heart every
+feeling of difference between himself and other men. (See Bossuet’s
+_Sermon on Reconciliation_.) It seems unnecessary to insist further on
+the unimpeachable character of this Christian teaching--I am speaking
+of teaching, not of practice. But one cannot meditate too much on the
+eagerness of so many modern Church teachers to try to find some means
+of sanctifying bourgeois egotism through the words of the Gospels.[74]
+
+Let me point out another and remarkable form of this extolling of
+particularism by the ‘clerks’: the extolling of particular systems
+of morality and the scorn for universal morality. During the past
+half century a whole school, not only of men of action but of serious
+philosophers, has taught that a people should form a conception of its
+rights and duties from a study of its particular genius, its history,
+its geographical position, the particular circumstances in which it
+happens to be, and not from the commands of a so-called conscience of
+man in all times and places. Moreover, this same school teaches that
+a class should construct a scale of good and evil, determined by an
+inquiry into its particular needs, its particular aims, the particular
+conditions surrounding it, and should cease to encumber itself with
+such sensibilities as ‘justice in itself’, ‘humanity in itself’ and
+other ‘rags and tatters’ of general morality. To-day with Barrès,
+Maurras, Sorel, even Durckheim[75] we are witnessing the complete
+bankruptcy among the ‘clerks’ of that form of soul which, from Plato
+to Kant, looked for the notion of good in the heart of eternal and
+disinterested man. The example of Germany in 1914 shows the results of
+this teaching which exhorts a group of men to set themselves up as the
+sole judges of the morality of their actions, shows what deification of
+their appetites it leads to, what codification of their violence, what
+tranquillity in carrying out their plans. One day perhaps we shall see
+the same thing throughout Europe exemplified by the bourgeois class,
+unless the doctrines of that class are turned against itself and we see
+it exemplified by the working classes.[76]
+
+I dare to say that the indignation of certain French moralists at
+the action of Germany in 1914 surprises me, when I reflect that some
+sixteen years earlier, during the famous ‘affair’ which I have already
+mentioned, these moralists preached to their compatriots exactly the
+same doctrines, urging them to reject the concept of absolute justice,
+and to desire only a form of justice ‘adapted to France’, to its
+particular genius, its particular history, its particular, eternal, and
+present needs.[77] For the honour of these thinkers--I mean for the
+honour of their consistency--one likes to think that their indignation
+in 1914 was not the result of any moral conviction, but only of the
+desire to place the enemy of their nation in the wrong with a naïve
+universe.
+
+This last-named activity of the ‘clerks’ seems to me one of those
+which best display their determination and skill in serving the
+passions of the laymen. If a man exhorts his compatriots to recognize
+only a personal morality and to reject all universal morality, he is
+showing himself a master of the art of encouraging them to want to be
+distinct from all other men, i.e. of the art of perfecting national
+passion in them, at least in one of its aspects. The desire to take
+none but oneself as a judge of one’s actions and to scorn every opinion
+of other people is undoubtedly a source of strength to a nation, as
+every exertion of pride is a source of strength to an institution,
+whose fundamental principle--whatever may be said to the contrary--is
+the assertion of an ego against a non-ego. What ruined Germany in the
+last war was not its ‘irritating arrogance’, as is asserted by certain
+visionaries who have made up their minds that malevolence of soul
+must be an element of weakness in practical life, but the fact that
+its material strength was not equal to its arrogance. When arrogance
+finds an equivalent material power at its disposal, it is very far from
+ruining nations; witness Rome and the Prussia of Bismarck. The ‘clerks’
+who, thirty years ago, exhorted France to make herself the sole judge
+of her own actions and to despise eternal morality, showed that
+they possessed in the highest degree the perception of the national
+interest, insofar as that interest is wholly realist and has nothing
+to do with disinterested passion. It remains to be seen, once more,
+whether the function of the ‘clerks’ is to serve this sort of interests.
+
+But the modern ‘clerks’ have held up universal truth to the scorn
+of mankind, as well as universal morality. Here the ‘clerks’ have
+positively shown genius in their effort to serve the passions of the
+laymen. It is obvious that truth is a great impediment to those who
+wish to set themselves up as distinct; from the very moment when they
+accept truth, it condemns them to be conscious of themselves in a
+universal. What a joy for them to learn that this universal is a mere
+phantom, that there exist only particular truths, ‘Lorrain truths,
+Provençal truths, Britanny truths, the harmony of which in the course
+of centuries constitutes what is beneficial, respectable, _true in
+France_’[78] (the neighbour similarly speaks of what is _true in
+Germany_), that in other words Pascal had the mind of a clown, and that
+what is true on one side of the Pyrenees may perfectly well be error
+on the other side! Humanity hears the same teaching about the classes
+and learns that there is a bourgeois truth and a working-class truth;
+better still, that the functioning of our minds should be different
+according to whether we are working men or bourgeois. The source of
+your troubles (Sorel teaches the working classes) is that you do not
+think in the mental way suited to your class. His disciple, Johannet,
+says the same thing to the capitalist class. Perhaps we shall soon see
+the results of this truly supreme art of the ‘clerks’ in exasperating
+the feeling in their differences among the classes.
+
+The cult for the particular and the scorn for the universal is a
+reversal of values quite generally characteristic of the teaching
+of the modern ‘clerks’, who proclaim them in a far higher sphere of
+thought than politics. The metaphysics adopted in the last twenty
+years by almost all those who think or pretend to think, set up as the
+supreme state of human consciousness that state--‘duration’--where we
+succeed in taking cognizance of ourselves in what is most individual,
+most distinct from everything not ourselves, and in freeing ourselves
+from those forms of thought (concept, reason, habits of speech) through
+which we can only become conscious of ourselves in what is common to
+us and others. These metaphysics put forward as a superior form of
+cognizance of the world that which grasps each thing by what is unique
+in it, distinct from every other, and is full of scorn for the mind
+which seeks to discover general states of being. Our age has seen a
+fact hitherto unknown, at least from my point of view; and this in
+metaphysics preaching adoration for the contingent, and scorn for the
+eternal.[79] Nothing could show better how profound is the modern
+‘clerk’s’ desire to exalt the real, the practical side of existence,
+and to degrade the ideal, the truly metaphysical side. In the history
+of philosophy this veneration for the individual comes from the German
+thinkers (Schlegel, Nietzsche, Lotze), while the metaphysical cult of
+the universal (added to a certain contempt for the experimental) is
+pre-eminently a legacy of Greece to the human mind. So here again, and
+moreover in its profoundest part, the teaching of the modern ‘clerks’
+shows the triumph of Germanic values and the bankruptcy of Hellenism.
+
+I should like to point out another form, not the least remarkable,
+which this preaching of particularism assumes among the ‘clerks’. I
+mean their exhortations to consider everything only as it exists _in
+time_, that is as it constitutes a succession of particular states, a
+‘becoming’, a ‘history’, and never as it presents a state of permanence
+beyond time under this succession of distinct cases. I mean especially
+their assertion that this view of things in their historical aspect is
+the only serious and philosophical view, and that the need to look at
+them in their eternal aspect is a form of the child’s taste for ghosts,
+and should be merely smiled at. Need I point out that this conception
+inspires the whole of modern thought? It exists among a whole group
+of literary critics, who, on their own showing, inquire far less
+whether a work is beautiful than whether it expresses ‘the present’
+aspirations of ‘the contemporary soul’.[80] It may be seen in a whole
+school of moralist-historians who admire a doctrine, not because it
+is just or good, but because it embodies the morality _of its time_,
+the scientific spirit _of its time_. (This is the principal reason why
+Sorel admires Bergsonism and why Nietzsche admires the philosophy of
+Nicolas de Cuse.) It may be seen especially in all our metaphysicians.
+Whether they put forward _Entwickelung_ or _Duration_ or _Creative
+Evolution_ or _Pluralism_ or _Integral Experience_ or the _Concrete
+Universal_, they all teach that the absolute is developed _in time_,
+in the circumstantial, and proclaim the decadence of that form of
+mind which, from Plato to Kant, hallows existence as conceived beyond
+change.[81] If, with Pythagoras, we assume that the Cosmos is the place
+of regulated and uniform existence, and the Ouranos the place of the
+becoming and the moving, we may say that all modern metaphysics place
+the Ouranos at the top of their scale of values and hold the Cosmos in
+very slight esteem. Is it not remarkable to see the ‘clerks’, even in
+the lofty function of metaphysicians, teaching the laymen that the real
+alone is worthy of consideration, and that the supersensible is only
+worthy of derisive laughter?[82]
+
+
+(_B_) _The ‘clerks’ praise attachment to the practical, and denounce
+love of the spiritual_
+
+But the ‘clerks’ with their doctrines have inflamed the realism of the
+laymen in other ways besides praising the particular and denouncing the
+universal. At the very top of the scale of moral values they place the
+possession of concrete advantages, of material power and the means by
+which they are procured; and they hold up to scorn the pursuit of truly
+spiritual advantages, of non-practical or disinterested values.
+
+This they have done, first of all, as regards the State. For twenty
+centuries the ‘clerks’ preached to the world that the State should be
+just; now they proclaim that the State should be strong and should
+care nothing about being just. (Remember the attitude of the chief
+French teachers during the Dreyfus affair.) Convinced that the strength
+of the State depends upon authority, they defend autocratic systems,
+arbitrary government, the reason of State, the religions which teach
+blind submission to authority, and they cannot sufficiently denounce
+all institutions based on liberty and discussion.[83] This denunciation
+of liberalism, notably by the vast majority of contemporary men of
+letters, will be one of the things in this age most astonishing to
+History, especially on the part of the French. With their eyes fixed
+on the powerful State, they have praised the State disciplined in the
+Prussian manner, where everyone has his post, and under orders from
+above, labours for the greatness of the nation, without there being
+any place left for particular wills.[84] Owing to their cult of the
+powerful State (and also for other reasons I shall mention later),
+they want the military element to preponderate in the State, they want
+it to have a right to privileges and they want the civil element to
+agree to this right. (See _L’Appel au Soldat_, and the declarations of
+numerous writers during the Dreyfus affair.) It is certainly something
+new to see men of thought preaching the abasement of the toga before
+the sword, especially in the country of Montesquieu and Renan. And
+then they preach that the State should be strong and contemptuous of
+justice, above all in its relations with other States. To this end
+they praise in the head of the State the will to aggrandisement, the
+desire for ‘strong frontiers’, the effort to keep his neighbours under
+his domination. And they glorify those means which to them seem likely
+to attain these ends, i.e. sudden aggression, trickery, bad faith,
+contempt for treaties. This apology for Machiavellianism has inspired
+all the German historians for the past fifty years, and in France it is
+professed by very influential teachers, who exhort France to venerate
+her Kings because they are supposed to have been models of the purely
+practical spirit, exempt from all respect for any silly justice in
+their relations with their neighbours.
+
+The novelty of this attitude among the ‘clerks’ can best be displayed
+by quoting the famous answer of Socrates to the realist in the
+_Georgias_:
+
+‘In the persons of Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles, you praise men who
+made their fellow citizens good cheer, by serving them with everything
+they desired without caring to teach them what is good and right in
+food. They have enlarged the State, cry the Athenians, but they do not
+see that this enlargement is nothing but a swelling, a tumour filled
+with corruption. This is all that has been achieved by these former
+politicians by filling the city with ports, arsenals, walls, tributes,
+and the like follies, and by not adding Temperance and Justice.’
+
+Up to our own times, in theory at least (but it is with theories I
+am dealing here) the supremacy of the spiritual proclaimed in those
+words has been adopted by all those who, explicitly or otherwise,
+have proposed a scale of values to the world, whether through the
+Church, or the Renaissance, or the eighteenth century. One can guess
+the derisive laughter of a Barrès or any Italian moralist (to speak
+only of the Latin races) at this disdain of power for the benefit of
+justice, and their severity for the manner in which this son of Athens
+judges those who made his city materially powerful. For Socrates, in
+this respect the perfect model of the ‘clerk’ who is faithful to his
+essential function, ports, arsenals, walls are ‘follies’, and the
+serious things are justice and temperance. Those who to-day should
+perform the duties of a Socrates consider that it is justice which is a
+folly--‘a cloud’--and the serious things are the arsenals, the walls.
+To-day the ‘clerk’ has made himself Minister of War. Moreover, one of
+the most revered modern moralists definitely approves of the judges who
+condemned Socrates, as good guardians of worldly interests.[85] And
+that is something which has not been seen among the educators of the
+human soul since the evening when Crito closed his master’s eyelids.
+
+I say that the modern ‘clerks’ have _preached_ that the State should be
+strong and care nothing about being just; and in fact the ‘clerks’ do
+give this assertion the characteristic of preaching, of moral teaching.
+I cannot insist too often that in this lies their great originality.
+When Machiavelli advises the Prince to carry out the Machiavellian
+scheme of action, he invests those actions with no sort of morality
+or beauty. For him morality remains what it is for everyone else,
+and does not cease to remain so because he observes (not without
+melancholy) that it is incompatible with politics. ‘The Prince,’ says
+Machiavelli, ‘must have an understanding always ready to do good,
+but he must be able to enter into evil when he is forced to do so’;
+thereby showing that for him evil, even if it aids politics, still
+remains evil. The modern realists are the _moralists_ of realism. For
+them, the act which makes the State strong is invested with a moral
+character by the fact that it does so, and this whatever the act may
+be. The evil which serves politics ceases to be evil and becomes
+good. This position is evident in Hegel, in the Pangermanists and in
+Barrès; it is no less evident among realists like M. Maurras and his
+disciples, in spite of their insistence in declaring that they profess
+no morality. Perhaps these teachers do not profess any morality, at
+least expressly, in what concerns private life, but they very clearly
+profess a morality in the political order of things, if by morality is
+meant everything which puts forward a scale of good and evil. For them
+as for Hegel, the practical in politics _is the moral_, and if what
+the rest of the world calls moral is in opposition to the practical,
+then _it is the immoral_. Such precisely is the perfectly moralist
+meaning of the famous campaign of ‘false patriotism’. It seems as if
+we might say that for M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and that
+his ‘atheism’ consists less in denying God than in shifting Him to man
+and his political work. I think I can describe the work of this writer
+accurately by saying that it is the _divinizing of politics_.[86] This
+displacement of morality is undoubtedly the most important achievement
+of the modern ‘clerks’, and the most deserving of the historian’s
+attention. It is a great turning-point in the history of man when those
+who speak in the name of pondered thought come and tell him that his
+political egotisms are divine, and that everything which labours to
+relax them is degrading. The results of this teaching were shown by the
+example of Germany a decade ago.[87]
+
+The extent to which the modern ‘clerks’ have made innovations may be
+judged by the fact that up till our own times men had only received two
+sorts of teaching in what concerns the relations between politics and
+morality. One was Plato’s, and it said: ‘Morality decides politics’;
+the other was Machiavelli’s, and it said: ‘Politics have nothing to
+do with morality.’ To-day they receive a third. M. Maurras teaches:
+‘Politics decide morality.’[88] However, the real departure is not
+that this doctrine should be put before them, but that they should
+accept it. Callicles asserted that force is the only morality; but the
+thinking world despised him. Let me also mention that Machiavelli was
+covered with insults by most of the moralists of his time, at least in
+France.
+
+The modern world also hearkens to other moralists of realism, who are
+not lacking in influence as such; I mean the statesmen. Here I shall
+point to the same sort of change as above. Formerly, leaders of States
+practised realism, but did not honour it; Louis XI, Charles the Fifth
+of Spain, Richelieu, Louis XIV, did not claim that their actions were
+moral. They saw morality where the Gospel had showed it to them, and
+they did not attempt to displace it because they did not apply it.[89]
+With them morality was violated, but moral notions remain intact; _and
+that is why, in spite of all their violence, they did not disturb
+civilization_. Signor Mussolini proclaims the morality of his politics
+of force and the immorality of everything which opposes it. Like the
+writer, the man of government, who formerly was merely a realist, is
+now the _apostle_ of realism; and the majesty of his function--if not
+of his person--gives weight to his apostleship.
+
+The modern governor, owing to the fact that he addresses crowds, is
+compelled to be a moralist, and to present his acts as bound up with
+a system of morality, a metaphysics, a mysticism. Richelieu, who need
+account only to his King, is able to talk only of the practical, and
+leaves visions of the eternal to others. Mussolini, Bethmann-Hollweg,
+Herriot, are condemned to these heights.[90] Moreover, this shows how
+great to-day is the number of those whom I can call ‘clerks’, since by
+that word I mean all those who speak to the world in a transcendental
+manner. Consequently, I have a right to demand that they give an
+account of their acts _as ‘clerks’_.
+
+The preachers of political realism often claim to base themselves
+on the teaching of the Church, and call her a hypocrite when she
+condemns their theses. This claim has little foundation as regards the
+teaching of the Church before the nineteenth century, but has much more
+foundation if we consider the present age. I doubt whether one could
+now find from the pen of a modern theologian any passage so brutally
+denunciatory of a war of aggression as the following:--
+
+‘Glaringly unjust is the war of him who declares war only from ambition
+and from the desire to extend his dominions beyond their legitimate
+boundaries, from the desire to possess a more commodious country
+in which to establish himself, from the fear of the great power of
+a neighbouring prince with whom he is at peace, or from the desire
+to despoil a rival solely because he is thought unworthy of the
+possessions or States he holds or of a right which legitimately belongs
+to him, because a ruler is inconvenienced by him and wants to get rid
+of this inconvenience by force of arms.’[91] On the other hand, there
+are an immense number of works to-day which need only a little twisting
+to make them justify every attempt at conquest. For instance, the view
+that a war is just ‘if it can invoke the necessity of safeguarding
+the common good and public tranquillity, the recapture of things
+unjustly carried off, the repression of rebels, the defence of the
+innocent’.[92] And the view which asserts that ‘war is just when it
+is necessary to a nation either to defend itself against invasion, or
+_to overthrow the obstacles thwarting the exercise of its rights_.’[93]
+At the beginning of the last century the Church still taught that war
+could only be just for one of the two belligerents.[94] It is heavy
+with consequences that she has now abandoned this position and to-day
+asserts that war may be just on both sides at once, ‘from the moment
+when each of the two adversaries, without being certain of its right,
+considers it as simply probable after having taken the opinion of its
+counsellors’.[95] Here is another serious thing: In the past, war
+would only be declared just when it was against an adversary who had
+committed an injury _accompanied by a moral intention_, whereas to-day
+it may be declared just if it is directed against a material injury
+caused without any malice,[96] for instance, an accidental violation of
+frontier. It is certain that to-day Napoleon and Bismarck could find
+in the teaching of the Church more justification than ever for their
+incursions.[97]
+
+The modern ‘clerks’ have preached this realism to the classes as well
+as to the nations. They say to the working class as well as to the
+bourgeois class: ‘Organize yourselves, become the stronger, seize
+on power or exert yourself to retain it if you already possess it;
+laugh at all efforts to bring more charity, more justice or any other
+“rot”[98] into your relations with the other class, you have been
+cheated long enough by that sort of thing.’ And here again they do not
+say: ‘Become so, because necessity demands it,’ they say, and that is
+the novelty of it: ‘Become so, because morality, aesthetics demand it;
+to wish to be powerful is the sign of an elevated soul, to wish to be
+just the sign of a base soul.’ This is the teaching of Nietzsche,[99]
+of Sorel, applauded by a whole thinking (so-called) Europe; this is
+the enthusiasm of Europe, when it is attracted by Socialism, for the
+doctrines of Marx, its scorn for the doctrines of Proudhon.[100] The
+‘clerks’ have said the same thing to the parties contending within the
+same nation. ‘Make yourself the stronger,’ they say to one or other,
+according to their own passion, ‘and do away with everything which
+obstructs you; free yourself from the foolish prejudice which exhorts
+you to make allowances for your adversary, to establish with him a
+system of justice and harmony.’ We all know the admiration professed by
+a whole army of ‘thinkers’ in all countries for the Italian government,
+which simply outlaws all citizens who do not approve of it. Until our
+own times the educators of the human soul, disciples of Aristotle,
+urged mankind to denounce as infamous any State which was an organized
+faction. The pupils of Signor Mussolini and M. Maurras learn to
+reverence such a State.[101]
+
+This extolling of the ‘strong State’ by the modern ‘clerks’ appears
+also in certain teachings which, it may be asserted, would greatly have
+amazed their ancestors, at least the great ones:--
+
+(_a_) _The affirmation of the rights of custom, history, the past_ (to
+the extent, be it understood, that they support the systems of force)
+in opposition to the rights of reason. I say the affirmation of the
+_rights_ of custom. The modern traditionalists do not simply teach,
+like Descartes or Malebranche, that custom is upon the whole quite a
+good thing, and that there is more wisdom in submitting to it than
+opposing it. They teach that custom has a right, _the_ right, and
+consequently that custom should be respected not only from the point
+of view of interest, but of justice. The arguments in favour of the
+‘historical right’ of Germany to Alsace, the ‘historical right’ of the
+French monarchy, are not purely political positions, they are moral
+positions. They claim to be accepted in the name of ‘true justice’,
+of which (they say) their adversaries have a false conception.[102]
+To determine what is just by the ‘accomplished fact’ is certainly a
+new sort of teaching, especially among the peoples who for twenty
+centuries derived their conception of what is just from the companions
+of Socrates. Here again, the soul of Greece has given place to the soul
+of Prussia among the educators of mankind. The spirit which speaks
+here--and from all the teachers of Europe, Mediterranean as well as
+Germanic--is the spirit of Hegel: ‘The history of the world is the
+justice of the world.’ (_Weltgeschichte ist Weltgericht._)
+
+(_b_) The extolling of _policy founded on experience_--by which is
+meant that a society should be governed on principles which have proved
+that they can make it strong, and by ‘illusions’ which would tend to
+make it just. It is in this narrowly practical sense that the cult
+of experimental politics is a new thing among the ‘clerks’. For if
+we mean by the phrase the respect for principles which have showed
+that they are fitted to make a society not only strong but just, the
+recommendation of such a policy in opposition to a purely rational
+policy appeared in the thinking world long before the disciples of
+Taine or Auguste Comte.[103] Long before our ‘organizing empiricists’
+Spinoza wanted political science to be an experimental science, and
+desired that the conditions under which States endure should be sought
+from observation at least as much as from reason. (See his attack
+on the Utopians, _Treatise_, I, i.) But he believed he learned from
+observation that these conditions do not solely consist in States
+possessing good armies and obedient peoples, but in their respecting
+the rights of citizens and even of neighbouring peoples.[104] The
+cult of experimental politics to-day is accompanied in those who
+adopt it by a posture which they evidently mean to be striking, and
+which in fact is so. We all know with what fatalistic visages, what
+scornful inflexibility, what dark certainty of grasping the absolute,
+they declare that in matters of politics ‘they consider only the
+facts’. Here, especially among the French thinkers, is a new kind of
+Romanticism, which I shall call the _Romanticism of Positivism_, the
+chief representatives of which will rise up in the imagination of my
+readers without its being necessary for me to name them. Moreover,
+this cult brings out a silliness of mind which to me seems wholly an
+acquisition of the nineteenth century,[105] i.e. the belief that the
+teachings to be drawn from the past (supposing that they exist) will
+come straight out of an examination of the _facts_, viz. desires which
+have been realized. As if the desires which have not been realized were
+not as important, and perhaps more important, if you reflect that they
+may quite well come to fill the world’s stage now.[106] Let me add that
+this cult of fact also claims to be the sole discoverer of ‘the meaning
+of history’ and ‘the philosophy of history’, which there again shows
+a weakness of mind from which the preceding ages seem to have been
+free. When Bossuet and Hegel built up philosophies of history they were
+certainly no more metaphysicians than Taine or Comte or any of their
+noisy disciples, but at least they knew that they were so, that they
+could not be otherwise, and were not so naïve as to think themselves
+‘pure scientists’.
+
+(_c_) The assertion that political forms should be adapted to ‘man
+as he is and always will be’ (viz. unsocial and bloody, therefore
+eternally needing systems of coercion and military institutions).
+This effort of so many modern teachers to assert the imperfectability
+of human nature appears as one of their strangest attitudes, if you
+realize that it tends towards nothing less than asserting the complete
+uselessness of their function, and proving that they have completely
+ceased to realize its very essence. When we see moralists, educators,
+professional providers of spiritual guidance, assert at the spectacle
+of human barbarism that ‘man is thus’, that ‘he must be taken thus’,
+that ‘you will never change him’, we are tempted to ask them what is
+their reason for existing. And when we hear them reply that ‘they are
+positive minds and not Utopians’, ‘that they are concerned with what
+is, not with what might be’, we are staggered to see that they do not
+know that the moralist is essentially a Utopian, and that the nature
+of moral action is precisely that it creates its object by affirming
+it. But we recover when we notice that they are in no wise ignorant
+of this, and know perfectly well that by affirming it they will
+create that eternity of barbarism necessary to the maintenance of the
+institutions which are dear to them.[107]
+
+The dogma of the incurable wickedness of man has another root among
+some who profess it. This is a Romantic pleasure in picturing the human
+race as walled in by an inevitable and eternal woe. From this point
+of view we may say that there has grown up among certain political
+writers of our time a real _Romanticism of Pessimism_, as false in its
+absoluteness as the Optimism of Rousseau and Michelet, in hatred of
+whom it has arisen, while its haughty and so-called scientific attitude
+is most impressive to simple souls.[108] This doctrine has undoubtedly
+borne fruits outside the world of literature, and at its voice there
+has arisen a humanity which believes in nothing but its egotisms and
+merely laughs at the naïve persons who still think that it might become
+better. The modern ‘clerk’ has accomplished a truly new work--he has
+taught man to deny his divinity. The import of such a work is obvious.
+The Stoics claimed that pain is abolished if it is denied; the thing
+is disputable in the matter of pain, but it is absolutely true in the
+matter of moral perfectability.
+
+I shall point out two more teachings inspired in the modern ‘clerks’,
+by their preaching of the ‘strong State’, and it will not be necessary
+to add that they are new in the ministers of the spiritual:--
+
+The first is the teaching whereby they declare to Man that he is great
+to the extent that he strives to act and to think as his ancestors,
+his race, his environment thought, and ignores ‘individualism’. Thirty
+years ago many of the French teachers hurled anathemas against the man
+who ‘claimed to seek truth for himself’, to arrive at his own opinion,
+instead of adopting the opinion of his nation which had been told what
+it ought to think by its vigilant leaders. Our age has seen priests
+of the mind teaching that the gregarious is the praiseworthy form of
+thought, and that independent thought is contemptible. It is moreover
+certain that a group which desires to be strong has no use for the man
+who claims to think for himself.[109]
+
+The second is the teaching whereby they declare to men that the fact
+that a group is numerous constitutes a right. This is the morality
+which the over-populated nations hear from many of their thinkers,
+while the other nations hear from many of theirs that if their low
+birth-rate continues they will become the objects of a ‘legitimate’
+extermination. The rights of numerousness admitted by men who claim to
+belong to the life of the mind--that is what modern humanity sees. But
+it is certain that if a nation is to be strong, it must be numerous.
+
+This cult of the strong State and the moral methods which ensure it
+have been preached to mankind by the ‘clerks’ far beyond the domain
+of politics, and on a wholly general plane. This is the preaching of
+_Pragmatism_ whose teaching during the past fifty years by nearly
+all the influential moralists of Europe is one of the most remarkable
+turning points in the moral history of the human species. It is
+impossible to exaggerate the importance of a movement whereby those who
+for twenty centuries taught Man that the criterion of the morality of
+an act is its disinterestedness, that good is a decree of his reason
+insofar as it is universal, that his will is only moral if it seeks
+its law outside its objects, should begin to teach him that the moral
+act is the act whereby he secures his existence against an environment
+which disputes it, that his will is moral insofar as it is a will ‘to
+power’, that the part of his soul which determines what is good is
+its ‘will to live’ wherein it is most ‘hostile to all reason’, that
+the morality of an act is measured by its adaptation to its end, and
+that the only morality is the morality of circumstances. The educators
+of the human mind now take sides with Callicles against Socrates, a
+revolution which I dare to say seems to me more important than all
+political upheavals.[110]
+
+I should like to point out certain particularly remarkable aspects of
+this preaching, which are probably not sufficiently realized.
+
+I said that the modern ‘clerks’ teach man that his desires are moral
+insofar as they tend to secure his existence at the expense of an
+environment which disputes it. In particular they teach him that his
+species is sacred insofar as it is able to assert its existence at the
+expense of the surrounding world.[111] In other words, the old morality
+told Man that he is divine to the extent that he becomes one with the
+universe; the new morality tells him that he is divine to the extent
+that he is in opposition to it. The former exhorted him not to set
+himself in Nature ‘like an empire within an empire’; the latter exhorts
+him to say with the fallen angels of Holy Writ, ‘We desire now to feel
+conscious of ourselves in ourselves, and not in God.’ The former,
+like the master of the _Contemplations_, said: ‘Believe, but not in
+ourselves’; the latter replies with Nietzsche and Maurras: ‘Believe,
+and believe in ourselves, only ourselves.’
+
+Nevertheless, the real originality of Pragmatism is not in that.
+Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so
+in the name of his spiritual and disinterested attributes: Pragmatism
+exhorts him to do so in the name of his practical attributes. Formerly
+man was divine because he had been able to acquire the concept of
+justice, the idea of law, the sense of God; to-day he is divine because
+he has been able to create an equipment which makes him the master of
+matter. (See the glorifications of the _homo faber_ by Nietzsche,
+Sorel, Bergson.)
+
+Moreover, the modern ‘clerks’ extol Christianity insofar as it is
+supposed to have been pre-eminently a school of practical, creative
+virtues, adjusted to the support of the great human institutions. This
+amazing deformation of a doctrine which in its precepts is so obviously
+devoted to the love of the spiritual alone, is not only taught by
+laymen, who are quite within their rights in trying to place their
+practical desires under the patronage of the highest moral authorities;
+it is also professed by the ministers of Jesus themselves. Pragmatist
+Christianity, as I mean it here, is preached to-day from all Christian
+pulpits.[112]
+
+This exhortation to concrete advantages and to that form of soul which
+procures them, is expressed by the modern ‘clerk’ in another very
+remarkable teaching: By praise of the military life and the feelings
+which go with it, and by contempt for civil life and the morality it
+implies. We know the doctrine preached in Europe during the past fifty
+years by its most esteemed moralists, their apology for war ‘which
+purifies’, their veneration for the man of arms ‘the archtype of moral
+beauty’, their proclamation of the supreme morality of ‘violence’ or
+of those who settle their differences by duels and not before a jury,
+while they declare that respect for contracts is the ‘weapon of the
+weak’, the need for justice the ‘characteristic of slaves’. It is
+not betraying the disciples of Nietzsche or Sorel--that is, the great
+majority of contemporary men of letters who attempt to set up a scale
+of moral values for the world--to say that according to them Colleoni
+is a far superior specimen of humanity to l’Hôpital. The estimates of
+the _Voyage du Condottiere_ are not peculiar to the author of that
+work. Here is an idealization of practical activity, which humanity had
+never before heard from its educators, at least from those who speak
+dogmatically.
+
+I shall be told that Nietzsche and his school do not extol the military
+life because it procures material advantages, but on the contrary,
+because it is the type of disinterested realism, and in opposition to
+the realism which in their opinion is the characteristic of civilian
+life. Yet it is none the less true that the way of life praised by
+these moralists is in fact that which pre-eminently brings material
+advantages. Whatever may be said by the author of _Reflections on
+Violence_ and his disciples, war is more profitable than the counting
+house; to take is more advantageous than to exchange; Colleoni
+possesses more than Franklin. (Naturally, I am speaking of the
+successful military man, since Nietzsche and Sorel never speak of the
+merchant who goes bankrupt.)
+
+Moreover, no one will deny that the irrational activities, of which
+the military instinct is only one aspect, are extolled by their great
+modern apostles for their practical value. Their historian has put
+it admirably: The Romanticism of Nietzsche, Sorel, and Bergson is a
+_utilitarian_ Romanticism.
+
+Let me insist that what I am pointing to here, is not the modern
+‘clerk’s’ extolling of the military spirit, but of the warlike
+instinct. It is the cult of the warlike instinct, outside all social
+spirit of discipline or sacrifice which is meant by the following
+assertions of Nietzsche, glorified by a French moralist whom himself
+has numerous followers:--
+
+‘The values of the warrior aristocracy are founded on a powerful
+bodily constitution, excellent health, without forgetting all that is
+necessary to the upkeep of that overflowing vigour--war, adventure,
+hunting, dancing, physical games and exercises, and in general
+everything which implies a robust, free and joyous activity.’
+
+‘That audacity of noble races, a mad, absurd, spontaneous audacity ...
+their indifference and scorn for all safety of body, for life, comfort
+...’
+
+‘The superb blond beast wandering in search of prey and carnage ...’
+
+‘The terrible gaiety and profound joy felt by heroes in all
+destruction, in all the pleasures of victory and cruelty.’
+
+The moralist who quotes those remarks (Sorel, _Reflexions sur la
+Violence_, p. 360) adds, in order to leave no doubt about his
+recommendation of them to his fellow human beings: ‘It is quite evident
+that liberty would be seriously compromised if men came to look upon
+the Homeric values’ (which, for him, are the values just praised by
+Nietzsche) ‘as being characteristic of the barbarous peoples only.’
+
+Is it necessary to observe how, here again, the moral presentation
+dominant among the world’s educators is essentially Germanic, and
+shows the bankruptcy of Graeco-Roman thought? Before our times you do
+not find in France a single serious moralist (including de Maistre)
+or even a poet (if you consider only the great ones) who praises the
+‘pleasures of victory and cruelty’.[113] And it is the same for ancient
+Rome, among the nations to whom war had given world supremacy. I do
+not find a single passage which puts forward the instincts of prey
+as the supreme form of human morality in Cicero, Seneca, or Tacitus,
+or even in Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Claudian. On the other hand, I
+find a great many which attribute this rank to the instincts on which
+civil life is based.[114] Moreover, in primitive Greece, long before
+the philosophers, the myths very soon give an important place to
+civil morality. In a poem of Hesiod the tomb of Cycnus is engulfed
+in the waters by Apollo’s command, because Cycnus was a brigand. The
+defence of warlike instincts by Mediterranean moralists will be one
+of the amazements of history. Some of them, moreover, seem uneasy
+about it, and feel they ought to claim that the Homeric values (we
+have seen what they mean by that) ‘are very close to the values of
+Corneille’[115]--as if the French poet’s heroes, with all their sense
+of devotion to duty and the State, had anything in common with lovers
+of adventure, prey, and carnage!
+
+It will be observed that these passages from Nietzsche praise the
+military life apart from any political aim.[116] And, in fact, the
+modern ‘clerks’ teach men that war implies a morality _in itself_
+and should be exercised even apart from any utility. This thesis, so
+familiar in Barrès, has been defended in its full splendour by a young
+hero who is an educator of the soul for a whole French generation:
+
+‘In my country we love war and secretly desire it. We have always made
+war. Not to conquer a province, not to exterminate a nation, not to
+settle a conflict of interests.... We make war for the sake of making
+war, with no other purpose.’[117]
+
+The old French moralists, even the soldiers (Vauvenargues, Vigny),
+looked upon war as a sad necessity; their descendants recommend it as
+a noble inutility. Yet, here again, the cult preached as apart from
+the practical and as an art happens to be eminently favourable to the
+practical--useless war is the best preparation for useful war.
+
+This teaching leads the modern ‘clerk’ (we have just seen it in
+Nietzsche) to confer a _moral_ value upon physical exercise and to
+proclaim _the morality of sport_--a most remarkable thing indeed among
+those who for twenty centuries have exhorted man to situate good in
+states of the mind. The moralists of sport, moreover, do not all
+shuffle over the practical essence of their doctrine. Young people,
+Barrès clearly teaches, should be trained in physical strength, for the
+greatness of the country. The modern educator goes for his inspiration,
+not to those who strolled in the Lyceum or to the solitaries of
+Clairvaux, but to the founder of a little town in the Peloponnesus.
+Moreover, our age has seen this new thing: Men who claim to belong
+to the spiritual life teaching that the Greece to venerate is Sparta
+with her gymnasiums, not the city of Plato or Praxiteles, while others
+maintain that in antiquity we should honour Rome and not Greece. All
+these things are perfectly consistent in those who desire to preach to
+humanity nothing but strong constitutions and solid ramparts.[118]
+
+The preaching of realism leads the modern ‘Clerk’ to certain teachings,
+whose novelty in his history is not sufficiently noticed, nor what a
+break they form with the teaching which his class has given to men for
+the past two thousand years.
+
+(_a_) _The extolling of courage_, or more precisely the exhortation to
+make the supreme virtue Man’s aptitude to face death, while all other
+virtues, however lofty, are placed below it. This teaching, openly the
+teaching of Nietzsche, Sorel, Péguy, Barrès, was always the teaching
+of poets and generals, but is entirely new among the ‘clerks’, I mean
+among men who put before the world a scale of values in the name of
+philosophical reflection, or who are willing to be considered as such.
+From Socrates to Renan they had considered courage as a virtue, but
+on a lower plane. All, more or less openly, teach with Plato: ‘In the
+first rank of virtue are wisdom and temperance; courage only comes
+afterwards.’[119] The impulses they exhort man to venerate are not
+those whereby he strives to quench his thirst for placing himself in
+the real, but those whereby he moderates it. It was reserved for our
+time to see the priests of the spiritual placing in the first rank of
+forms of soul that which is indispensable to man if he is to conquer
+and to lay foundations.[120] However, this practical value of courage,
+plainly expressed by Nietzsche and Sorel, is not equally so expressed
+by all the modern moralists who praise this virtue. This brings another
+of their teachings before us:--
+
+(_b_) _The extolling of honour_, by which is meant all those impulses
+which cause a man to risk his life for no practical interest--to be
+precise, from desire of glory--_but which are an excellent school of
+practical courage_, and were always extolled by those who lead men to
+the conquest of material things. In this connection, let the reader
+think of the respect in which the institution of the duel has always
+been held in armies, in spite of certain repressions inspired solely by
+practical considerations.[121]
+
+Here again, the position attributed to these impulses by so many modern
+moralists is something new among them, especially in the country of
+Montaigne, Pascal, La Bruyère, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Renan, who,
+when they extol honour, mean something very different from man’s
+cult of his own glory.[122] Nevertheless, the most remarkable thing
+about all this is that the cult of man for his own glory is currently
+preached by the Churchmen as a virtue which leads Man to God. Is it
+not amazing to hear words like the following from a Christian pulpit?
+‘The love of grandeurs is the path to God, and the heroic impulse which
+fully coincides with the search for glories in their cause, permits
+him who had forgotten God or who thought he knew not God to re-invent
+Him, to discover this last summit after temporary ascents have rendered
+him accustomed to the dizziness and air of altitudes.’[123] One cannot
+forebear quoting the lesson given by a true disciple of Jesus to a
+Christian teacher who had also strangely forgotten his Master’s word:--
+
+‘Have you noticed that the eight Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount,
+the Gospels, the whole of primitive Christian literature, contain not
+one word which sets military virtues among those which lead to the
+Kingdom of Heaven?’ (Renan, _First Letter to Strauss_.)[124]
+
+Let me observe that I am not reproaching the Christian preacher for
+giving their due to glory and other earthly passions, I am only
+reproaching him for trying to pretend that he is in harmony with his
+institution when he does so. We do not ask that the Christian shall not
+violate the Christian law; we only ask him to know that he is breaking
+it when he does break it. This seems to me admirably brought out by
+the remark of Cardinal Lavigerie who was asked: ‘What would you do,
+Eminence, if someone slapped your right cheek?’ and who replied, ‘I
+know what I ought to do, but I do not know what I should do.’ _I know
+what I ought to do_, and therefore what I ought to teach. A man who
+speaks in that way may give way to every species of violence, and yet
+maintain Christian morality. Here actions are nothing; the judgment on
+the actions is everything.
+
+Must I repeat that I am not deploring the fact that the cults of honour
+and courage should be preached to human beings; I am deploring the fact
+that they are preached _by the ‘clerks’_. Civilization, I repeat, seems
+to me possible only if humanity consents to a division of functions, if
+side by side with those who carry out the lay passions and extol the
+virtues serviceable to them there exists a class of men who depreciate
+these passions and glorify the advantages which are beyond the
+material. What I think serious is that this class of men should cease
+to perform their office, and that those whose duty was to quench human
+pride should extol the same impulses of soul as the leaders of armies.
+
+I shall be told that this preaching is imposed on the ‘clerks’, at
+least in war-time, by the laymen, by the States, who to-day intend to
+mobilize all the moral resources of the nation for their ends.[125]
+But what amazes me is not so much that I see the ‘clerks’ preaching in
+this manner, as to see them do it with such docility, such absence of
+disgust, such enthusiasm, such joy.... The truth is that the ‘clerks’
+have become as much laymen as the laymen themselves.
+
+(_c_) _The extolling of harshness_ and the scorn for human love--pity,
+charity, benevolence. Here again, the modern ‘clerks’ are the
+_moralists_ of realism. They are not content to remind the world
+that harshness is necessary in order ‘to succeed’ and that charity
+is an encumbrance, nor have they limited themselves to preaching to
+their nation or party what Zarathustra preached to his disciples: ‘Be
+hard, be pitiless, and in this way dominate.’ They proclaim the moral
+nobility of harshness and the ignominy of charity. This teaching,
+which is the foundation of Nietzsche’s work, need not surprise one
+in a country which has not provided the world with a single great
+apostle,[126] but it is very remarkable in the land of Vincent de Paul
+and the defender of the Calas. Lines like the following, which might be
+an extract from the _Genealogy of Morals_, seem to me something wholly
+new coming from the pen of a French moralist: ‘This perverted pity has
+degraded love.[127] It has been given the name of charity, and the weak
+have received its dew. Night after night the seed of this calamity has
+been scattered. It conquers the earth. It fills the solitary places. In
+whatever country you go, you cannot go about for a single day without
+meeting this withered face with its commonplace gestures, inspired by
+the sole desire of prolonging its shameful life.’[128] There again
+we can observe how the modern realists have advanced beyond their
+predecessors. When Machiavelli declares that ‘a Prince in order to
+maintain his power is forced to govern in a manner contrary to charity
+and humanity’, he is simply saying that to act contrary to charity
+may be a practical necessity, but he does not in the least vouch that
+charity is a degradation of the soul. This teaching is the contribution
+of the nineteenth century to the moral education of mankind.
+
+Sometimes the modern ‘clerks’ claim that in preaching inhumanity
+they are only continuing the teaching of their great ancestors,
+particularly of Spinoza on account of his famous proposition: ‘Pity in
+itself is bad and useless in a soul which lives according to reason.’
+Is it necessary to point out that here pity is depreciated, not to
+the benefit of inhumanity, but to the benefit of humanity _guided by
+reason_, because reason alone ‘enables us to give aid to others with
+certainty’. And Spinoza, determined to stress the fact that for him
+pity is only inferior to reasoned kindness, adds: ‘It must be fully
+understood that I am here speaking of the man who lives by reason. For
+if a man is never led by reason or by pity to go to the assistance
+of others, then assuredly he deserves the name of inhuman, since he
+retains no resemblance to a man.’ Let me add that the apostles of
+harshness cannot claim either that they are supported by the fanatics
+of justice (Michelet, Proudhon, Renouvier) who, by sacrificing love to
+justice, do perhaps end up in harshness, but not in a joyous harshness
+which is precisely the harshness preached by the modern realists, who
+say--perhaps rightly--that it is the only fertile kind.[129]
+
+This extolling of harshness seems to me to have borne more fruit than
+any other preaching by the modern ‘clerks’. It is a commonplace that
+among the great majority of the (so-called) thinking young men, in
+France for instance, harshness is to-day an object of respect, while
+human love in all its forms is considered a rather laughable thing.
+These young men have a cult for doctrines which respect nothing but
+force, pay no attention to the lamentations of suffering and proclaim
+the inevitability of war and slavery, while they despise those who are
+revolted by such prospects and desire to alter them. I should like
+these cults to be compared with the literary aesthetics of these young
+men, their veneration for certain contemporary novelists and poets in
+whom the absence of human sympathy reaches a rare pitch of perfection,
+and whom they plainly venerate, especially for that characteristic.
+And I should like you to observe the gloomy gravity and arrogance with
+which these young men subscribe to these ‘iron’ doctrines. It seems
+to me that the modern ‘clerks’ have created in so-called cultivated
+society a positive _Romanticism of harshness_.
+
+They have also created a _Romanticism of contempt_, at least in France,
+and notably with Barrès, and indeed since Flaubert and Baudelaire.
+Nevertheless, it seems to me that in recent times contempt has been
+practised in France for reasons quite other than aesthetic. These
+peoples have come to see that by feeling contempt for others they are
+not only obtaining the pleasure of a lofty attitude, but that when
+they are really expert in expressing contempt they harm what they
+despise, do it a real damage. And in fact the kind of contempt which
+Barrès expresses for the Jews and which certain royalist teachers have
+displayed for democratic institutions every morning for the past twenty
+years, do really harm their victims, at least among those very numerous
+artistic minds for whom a superbly executory gesture is as good as
+an argument. The modern ‘clerks’ deserve a place of honour in the
+history of realism; they have come to understand the practical value of
+contempt.
+
+It may also be said that they have created a _cult for cruelty_.
+Nietzsche proclaims that ‘every superior culture is built up on
+cruelty’, a doctrine which is explicitly proclaimed in many places
+by Barrès, author of _Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort_.
+Nevertheless, the cult of cruelty, which may also be thought necessary
+‘to succeed’[130] has remained limited to a few particularly artistic
+sensibilities, at least in France. It is very far from becoming the
+cult of a school, like harshness and contempt. Here again we may
+notice how new this cult is in the land of those who said ‘Cowardice,
+the mother of cruelty’ (Montaigne), or, to quote a military moralist,
+‘a hero does not feel proud of carrying hunger and misery among
+foreigners, but of enduring them for the State; nor of giving death,
+but of risking it.’ (Vauvenargues).[131]
+
+(_d_) _The cult of success_, I mean the teaching which says that when a
+will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the
+will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt. This
+philosophy which is professed by many a modern teacher in political
+life (it may be said, by all in Germany since Hegel, and by a large
+number in France since de Maistre) is also professed in private life,
+and has borne its fruits there. In the so-called thinking world to-day
+there are innumerable people who think they are demonstrating their
+aristocratic morality by declaring their systematic esteem for all
+who ‘succeed’ and their scorn for all who fail. One moralist places
+to the credit of Napoleon’s greatness of soul his contempt for ‘the
+unlucky’; others do the same thing in regard to Mazarin, Vauban,
+Mussolini. It cannot be denied that the ‘clerks’ are thereby keeping
+an excellent school of realism, since the cult of success and the
+contempt for misfortune are obviously admirable moral conditions for
+obtaining material advantages. Nor can it be denied that this teaching
+is entirely new among them, especially among the ‘clerks’ of the Latin
+races, I mean those whose ancestors had taught mankind to honour merit
+apart from its achievements, to honour Hector as much as Achilles, the
+Curiatii more than their successful rivals.[132]
+
+We have just seen that the modern moralists extol the warrior at the
+expense of the man of justice. They also extol him at the expense of
+the man of learning and, there again, they preach to the world the
+cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life. We
+all know Nietzsche’s hue and cry against the man of the study, the man
+of erudition, ‘the mirror man,’ whose only passion is to understand.
+And also Nietzsche’s esteem for the life of the mind solely insofar
+as it is emotion, lyricism, action, partiality; his derisive laughter
+at ‘objective’ methodical research devoted to ‘the horrible old woman
+known as truth’. And we know Sorel’s denunciations of societies which
+‘give a privileged place to the amateurs of _purely intellectual
+things_’;[133] those of Barrès, Lemaître, Brunetière, thirty years ago,
+intimating to the ‘intellectuals’ that they are a type of humanity
+‘inferior to the soldier’; those of Péguy, who admires philosophies to
+the extent that ‘they are good fighters’, and admires Descartes because
+he was in the army, and the dialecticians of French monarchism solely
+because they are ready to be killed for the sake of their views.[134]
+I shall be told that most often this is the mere wild talk of men of
+letters, the posturing of lyricists, to which it is unjust to attribute
+a dogmatic meaning; that Nietzsche, Barrès and Péguy denounce the life
+of study on account of their poetic temperaments, their aversion from
+everything lacking in picturesqueness and the spirit of adventure, and
+not their resolution to abase disinterestedness. To which I reply that
+these poets give themselves out as serious thinkers (notice their tone,
+_quite free from_ naiveté); that the immense majority of their readers
+accept them as such; that, even if it were true that in depreciating
+the man of study their motive is not to abase disinterestedness, it
+is none the less true in fact that the manner of living they hold
+up to the laughter of mankind happens to be the very type of the
+disinterested life, while the life they extol at its expense is the
+very type of practical activity (at least more practical than that
+of the man of study, for it will be admitted that the activity of du
+Guesclin and Napoleon is more likely to acquire material advantages
+than the activity of Spinoza and Mabillon); that, moreover, what these
+thinkers despise in the man of study is precisely the man who lays no
+foundations, who does not conquer, who does not predicate the capture
+of its environment by the species, or who, if he does predicate it,
+as the scientist does by his discoveries, retains for himself only
+the joy of knowledge and abandons the practical exploitation of his
+discoveries to others. In Nietzsche, the scorn for the man of study to
+the benefit of the warrior is only an episode in a desire which nobody
+will deny inspires the whole of his work as well as the work of Sorel,
+Barrès and Péguy: _The desire to abase the values of knowledge before
+the values of action._[135]
+
+To-day this desire inspires not only the moralist, but another kind
+of ‘clerk’ who speaks from much higher ground. I am referring to that
+teaching of modern metaphysics which exhorts man to feel comparatively
+little esteem for the truly thinking portion of himself and to honour
+the active and _willing_ part of himself with all his devotion. The
+theory of knowledge from which humanity has taken its values during
+the past half century assigns a secondary rank to the mind which
+proceeds by clear and distinct ideas, by categories, by words, and
+places in the highest rank the mind which succeeds in liberating itself
+from these intellectual habits and in becoming conscious of itself
+insofar as it is a ‘pure tendency’, a ‘pure will’, a ‘pure activity’.
+Philosophy which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself
+because he was a thinking being and to say, ‘I think, therefore I am’,
+now raises him to say, ‘I am, therefore I think’, ‘I think, therefore
+I am not’ (unless he takes thought into consideration only in that
+humble region where it is confused with action). Formerly philosophy
+taught him that his soul is divine insofar as it resembles the soul of
+Pythagoras linking up concepts; now she informs him that his soul is
+divine insofar as it resembles that of the small chicken breaking its
+eggshell.[136] From his loftiest pulpit the modern ‘clerk’ assures man
+that he is great in proportion as he is practical.
+
+During fifty years, especially in France (see Barrès and Bourget)
+a whole literature has assiduously proclaimed the superiority of
+instinct, the unconscious, intuition, the will (in the German sense,
+i.e. as opposed to the intelligence) and has proclaimed it in the name
+of the practical spirit, because the instinct and not the intelligence
+knows what we ought to do--as individuals, as a nation, as a class--to
+secure our own advantage. These writers have eagerly expatiated on
+the example of the insect whose ‘instinct’ (it appears) teaches it
+to strike its prey precisely in the spot which will paralyse it
+without killing it, so that its offspring may feed on the living prey
+and develop better.[137] Other teachers denounce this ‘barbarous’
+extolling of instinct in the name of ‘the French tradition’ and preach
+‘the superiority of the intelligence’; but they preach it because
+in their opinion it is the intelligence which shows us the actions
+required by our interests, i.e. from exactly the same passion for the
+practical. This brings us to one of the most remarkable and certainly
+the most novel forms of this preaching of the practical by the modern
+‘clerks’.
+
+I mean that teaching according to which _intellectual activity is
+worthy of esteem to the extent that it is practical and to that extent
+alone_. It may be said that since the Greeks the predominant attitude
+of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as
+(like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart
+from any attention to the advantages it may procure. Most thinkers
+would have agreed with Plato’s famous hymn to geometry, where that
+discipline is venerated more than all others because for him it
+represents the type of speculative thought which brings in nothing
+material; and with Renan’s verdict which declares that the man who
+loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against
+that divinity.[138] By this standard of values the ‘clerks’ put before
+the laymen the spectacle of a class of men for whom the value of life
+lies in its disinterestedness, and they acted as a check on--or at
+least shamed--the laymen’s practical passions. The modern ‘clerks’
+have violently torn up this charter. They proclaim that intellectual
+functions are only respectable to the extent that they are bound up
+with the pursuit of a concrete advantage, and that the intelligence
+which takes no interest in its objects is a contemptible activity.
+They teach that the superior form of the intelligence is that which
+thrusts its roots into ‘the vital urge’, occupied in discovering
+what is most valuable in securing our existence. In historical[139]
+science especially, they honour the intelligence which labours under
+the guidance of political interests,[140] and they are completely
+disdainful of all efforts towards ‘objectivity’. Elsewhere they
+assert that the intelligence to be venerated is that which limits its
+activities within the bounds of national interests and social order,
+while the intelligence which allows itself to be guided by the desire
+for truth alone, apart from any concern with the demands of society, is
+merely a ‘savage and brutal’ activity, which ‘dishonours the highest
+of human faculties.’[141] Let me also point out their devotion to
+the doctrine (Bergson, Sorel) which says that science has a purely
+utilitarian origin--the necessity of man to dominate matter, ‘knowledge
+is adaptation’; and their scorn for the beautiful Greek conception
+which made science bloom from the desire to play, the perfect type of
+disinterested activity. And then they teach men that to accept an error
+which is of service to them (the ‘myth’) is an undertaking which does
+them honour, while it is shameful to admit a truth which harms them. In
+other words, as Nietzsche, Barrès and Sorel plainly put it, sensibility
+to truth in itself apart from any practical aim is a somewhat
+contemptible form of mind.[142] Here the modern ‘clerk’ positively
+displays genius in his defence of the material, since the material has
+nothing to do with the truth, or rather to speak more truly--has no
+worse enemy. The genius of Callicles in all its profundity lives again
+in the great masters of the modern soul.[143]
+
+Then the modern ‘clerks’ have preached to men the religion of the
+practical _by means of their theology_, through the image of God they
+have set before them. First, they determined that God, who since the
+Stoics has been infinite, should once more become finite, distinct,
+endowed with a personality, that He should be the affirmation of a
+_physical_ and not a _metaphysical_ existence. Anthropomorphism, which
+in the poets from Prudentius to Victor Hugo existed mingled with
+pantheism without troubling to define the frontiers between them,
+since God was personal or indeterminate according to the direction of
+the emotion and the needs of the lyric impulse, rose up in Péguy and
+Claudel with the most violent consciousness of itself, the clearest
+desire to be distinguished from its acolyte and to express contempt
+for him. At the same time the political teachers attacked the religion
+of the Infinite with a precision of hatred, a skill in depreciation,
+unparalleled even in the Church, which consisted in denouncing this
+religion precisely because it is not practical, because it saps away
+the feelings which found the great earthly realities: the City and the
+State.[144] But the modern ‘clerks’ have above all endowed God with
+the attributes which secure practical advantages. It may be said that,
+since the Old Testament, God was far more just than strong, or rather
+that, as Plato thought, His strength was only a form of His justice;
+and His power, as Malebranche and Spinoza put it, had nothing in common
+with the power of kings and Empire-builders. The desire to increase was
+implicitly excluded from His nature, as well as the moral attributes
+necessary to the satisfaction of that desire--energy, will, the love
+of effort, the attraction of triumph. This was an inevitable result
+of His perfect and infinite state of being, which at once constituted
+the whole of possible reality. Even in creation, the idea of which is
+essentially inseparable from the ideas of power and increase, these
+ideas were avoided--the world was far less a result of God’s power than
+of His love; it came out of God as a ray comes out of the sun, without
+God feeling any increase of Himself at the expense of anything else.
+God, to speak in terms of the schools, was far less the transcendent
+cause of the world than its immanent cause.[145] On the other hand,
+for the modern teachers (Hegel, Schelling, Bergson, Péguy), God is
+essentially something which increases; His law is ‘incessant change’,
+‘incessant novelty’, ‘incessant[146] creation’; His principle is
+essentially a principle of growth--Will, Tension, Vital Urge. If He is
+Intelligence, as with Hegel, He is an intelligence which ‘develops’,
+which ‘realizes itself’ more and more. The Being situated immediately
+in all His perfection and knowing nothing of conquest is an object of
+contempt; He represents (Bergson) an ‘eternity of death’.[147] So the
+believers in an initial and single creation to-day strive to present
+this act in its purely practical aspect. The Church condemns with a
+hitherto unknown clearness every doctrine of immanence and preaches
+transcendence in all its strictness.[148] God, in creating the world,
+no longer witnesses an inevitable expansion of His nature; through
+His power (some, to diminish the arbitrariness, say ‘through His
+benevolence’) he sees the arising of something clearly distinct from
+Himself, something on which He sets His hand. His act, whatever may be
+said to the contrary, is the perfect model of material aggrandisement.
+Like the prophet of Israel of old, the modern ‘clerk’ says to mankind:
+‘Display your zeal for the Eternal, the God of battles.’
+
+For half a century, such has been the attitude of men whose function is
+to thwart the realism of nations, and who have laboured to excite it
+with all their power and with complete decision of purpose. For this
+reason I dare to call this attitude ‘The Great Betrayal’. If I look
+for its causes, I see profound causes which forbid me to look upon
+this movement as a mere fashion, to which the contrary movement might
+succeed to-morrow.
+
+One of the principal causes is that the modern world has made the
+‘clerk’ into a citizen, subject to all the responsibilities of a
+citizen, and consequently to despise lay passions is far more difficult
+for him than for his predecessors. If he is reproached for not looking
+upon national quarrels with the noble serenity of Descartes and Goethe,
+the ‘clerk’ may well retort that his nation claps a soldier’s pack
+on his back if she is insulted, and crushes him with taxes even if
+she is victorious. If shame is cried upon him because he does not
+rise superior to social hatreds, he will point out that the day of
+enlightened patronage is over, that to-day he has to earn his living,
+and that it is not his fault if he is eager to support the class which
+takes a pleasure in his productions. No doubt this explanation is
+not valid for the true ‘clerk’, who submits to the laws of his State
+without allowing them to injure his soul. He renders unto Caesar the
+things that are Caesar’s, i.e. his life perhaps, but nothing more.
+The true ‘clerk’ is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, who never imbibed
+national patriotism although they perfectly performed their patriotic
+duty; he is Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never
+diverted from single-hearted adoration of the Beautiful and the Divine
+by the necessity of earning their daily bread. But such ‘clerks’ are
+inevitably rare. So much contempt for suffering is not the law of human
+nature even among the ‘clerks’; the law is that the living creature
+condemned to struggle for life turns to practical passions, and
+thence to the sanctifying of those passions. The ‘clerk’s’ new faith
+is to a great extent a result of the social conditions imposed upon
+him, and the real evil to deplore is perhaps not so much the ‘great
+betrayal’ of the ‘clerks’ as the disappearance of the ‘clerks’, the
+impossibility of leading the life of a ‘clerk’ in the world of to-day.
+One of the gravest responsibilities of the modern State is that it has
+not maintained (but could it do so?) a class of men exempt from civic
+duties, men whose sole function is to maintain non-practical values.
+Renan’s prophecy is verified; he foretold the inevitable degradation
+of a society where every member was forced to discharge worldly tasks,
+although Renan himself was the very type of those whom such servitude
+would never have prevented--in the phrase of one of his peers--‘from
+breathing only in the direction of Heaven’.
+
+It would be very unjust to explain the existence of national passion
+in the modern ‘clerk’ by self-interest alone. This is also to be
+explained, and in a more simple manner, by the love, the impulse which
+naturally inspires every man to love the group from which he derives,
+more than the other groups which share the earth. There again, it may
+be argued that the ‘clerk’s’ new faith is caused by the changes of
+the nineteenth century, which by giving national groups a consistency
+hitherto unknown furnishes food to a passion which in many countries
+before that period could have been little more than potential.
+Obviously, attachment to the world of the spirit alone was easier for
+those who were capable of it when there were no nations to love. And,
+in fact, it is most suggestive to notice that the true appearance of
+the ‘clerk’ coincides with the fall of the Roman Empire, i.e. with the
+time when the great nation collapsed and the little nations had not yet
+come into existence. It is equally suggestive to notice that the age of
+the great lovers of spiritual things, the age of Thomas Aquinas, Roger
+Bacon, Galilei, Erasmus, was the age when most of Europe was in a state
+of chaos and the nations were unknown; that the regions where pure
+speculation endured longest seem to be Germany and Italy,[149] i.e.
+the regions which were the last to be nationalized; and practically
+ceased to produce pure speculation from the moment when they became
+nations. Of course, here again the vicissitudes of the world of sense
+do not affect the true ‘clerk’. The misfortunes of their country, and
+even its triumphs, did not prevent Einstein and Nietzsche from feeling
+no passion but the passion for thought. When Jules Lemaître exclaimed
+that the wound of Sedan made him lose his reason, Renan replied that he
+perfectly retained his, and that a true priest of the mind could only
+be wounded in other than earthly interests.[150]
+
+In the cases I have just mentioned, the ‘clerk’s’ devotion to his
+nation or class is sincere, whether it is from interest or from love.
+I admit I think this sincerity is infrequent. The practice of the life
+of the spirit seems to me to lead inevitably to universalism, to the
+feeling of the eternal, to a lack of vigour in the belief in worldly
+conventions. The sincerity of national passion especially, in men of
+letters particularly, seems to me to assume the virtue of naiveté,
+which everyone will admit is not characteristic of this body of men,
+apart from their own self-esteem. It will also be hard to convince
+me that the motives of their public attitudes in artists are such
+simple things as the desire to live and to eat. I therefore seek--and
+find--other reasons for the realism of the modern ‘clerk’, and these,
+although less natural, are none the less profound. They seem to me
+particularly valid for men of letters, especially in France, the
+country where the attitude of writers in the past half century differs
+most from that of their fathers.
+
+First of all, I see the interests of their careers. It is an obvious
+fact that during the past two centuries most of the men of letters who
+have attained wide fame in France assumed a political attitude--for
+instance, Voltaire, Diderot, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo,
+Anatole France, Barrès. With some of them, real fame dates from the
+moment when they assumed that attitude. This law has not escaped the
+attention of their descendants, and it may be said to-day that every
+French writer who desires wide fame (which means every writer endowed
+with the real temperament of a man of letters) also desires inevitably
+to play a political part. This desire may arise from other motives. For
+instance, in Barrès and d’Annunzio, from the desire ‘to act’, to be
+something more than ‘men at a desk’, to lead a life like that of the
+‘heroes’ and not like that of ‘scribes’; or, more ingenuously, as no
+doubt happened with Renan when he stood as a Parliamentary candidate,
+from the idea that he could perform a public service. Let me add that
+the modern writer’s desire to be a political man is excused by the fact
+that the position is to some extent offered him by public opinion,
+whereas the compatriots of Racine and La Bruyère would have laughed
+in their faces if they had thought of publishing their views on the
+advisability of the war with Holland or the legality of Chambres de
+réunion. There again, it was easier to be a true ‘clerk’ in the past
+than to-day.
+
+These observations explain why the contemporary French writer so
+frequently desires to assume a political attitude, but they do not
+explain why this attitude is so inevitably in support of arbitrary
+authority. Liberalism is also a political attitude; and the least
+which can be said is that the modern French ‘clerk’ has very seldom
+adopted it in the past twenty years. Another factor comes in here. That
+is the practical writer’s desire to please the bourgeoisie, who are the
+creators of fame and the source of honours. It may even be argued that
+for this sort of writer the necessity to treat the passions of this
+class with deference is greater than ever, if I may judge by the fate
+of those who in recent times have dared to defy them, i.e. Zola, Romain
+Rolland. Now, the bourgeoisie of to-day, terrified by the progress
+of the opposing class, solely anxious to retain the privileges which
+are left them, feel nothing but aversion from liberal dogmas; and the
+man of letters who displays any political flag is bound to wave the
+flag of ‘Order’ if he wishes to obtain favours. The case of Barrès
+is particularly instructive from this point of view. He began as a
+great intellectual sceptic, and his material star waxed a hundredfold
+greater, at least in his own country, on the day when he made himself
+the apostle of ‘necessary prejudices’. This sort of thing makes me
+believe that the present political fashion of French writers is going
+to last a long time. A phenomenon which is caused by the uneasiness of
+the French bourgeoisie does not seem likely to disappear quickly.[151]
+
+I have mentioned the lot of those writers who in quite recent times
+have dared to thwart the passions of the bourgeoisie. This is only one
+aspect of a very general novelty, of supreme interest to the subject
+I am discussing. I mean the consciousness of their sovereignty felt
+by the herd of laymen, and the resolution they display to bring to
+his senses any writer who dares to say anything but what they wish to
+hear. This propensity of the layman appears not only in his relations
+with his writers (and with his press--a newspaper which does not
+supply its readers with the exact errors they cherish is immediately
+dropped), but, which is far more remarkable, in his relations with
+his truly ‘clerical’ teachers, whose voice speaks to him in the name
+of the Divine. The pulpit-orator who really presumed to censure
+nationalist passion, who really mortified bourgeois arrogance, would
+soon (particularly in France) see his flock disperse. He can no
+longer terrify such a gathering with the fear of punishment, and they
+no longer believe in anything but the real; consequently they feel
+stronger and more important than he, and only consent to listen to
+his preaching on condition that he treats with deference--not to say
+sanctifies--the egotisms they venerate.[152] Modern humanity is fully
+determined that those who call themselves its teachers, shall be its
+servants and not its guides. And most of the teachers understand this
+admirably.[153]
+
+To come back to the modern writer and the causes for his political
+attitude--I shall add that he is not only in the service of a
+bourgeoisie which is in a state of anxiety, but that he himself has
+become more and more of a bourgeois, endowed with all the social
+position and respect which belong to that caste. The Bohemian man of
+letters has practically disappeared, at least among those who engage
+public interest. Consequently, he has more and more come to possess the
+bourgeois form of soul, one of those most conspicuous characteristics
+is an affectation of the political feelings of the aristocracy--an
+attachment to systems of arbitrary authority, to military and priestly
+institutions, a scorn for societies founded upon justice, upon civic
+equality, a cult for the past, etc.... How many writers in France
+during the past fifty years, men whose names are on everyone’s lips,
+obviously think they are ennobling themselves by expressing disgust for
+democratic institutions![154] In the same way I explain the adoption
+by many of them of harshness and cruelty, which they think are also
+attributes of the souls of the nobility.
+
+The reasons I have just mentioned for the new political attitude of
+men of letters arise from the changes in their social status. Those I
+am about to mention arise from changes in the structure of their minds,
+in their literary desires, in their aesthetic cults, in their morality.
+These reasons seem to me even more worthy of the historian’s attention
+than those which have gone before.
+
+First of all, we have their Romanticism, taking that word to mean the
+desire which arose in the writers of the nineteenth century (but which
+has become greatly perfected in the last thirty years) to treat themes
+which lend themselves in a literary manner to striking attitudes. About
+1890 the men of letters, especially in France and Italy, realized with
+astonishing astuteness that the doctrines of arbitrary authority,
+discipline, tradition, contempt for the spirit of liberty, assertion
+of the morality of war and slavery, were opportunities for haughty and
+rigid poses infinitely more likely to strike the imagination of simple
+souls than the sentimentalities of Liberalism and Humanitarianism.
+And as a matter of fact, the so-called reactionary doctrines do lend
+themselves to a pessimistic and contemptuous Romanticism which makes
+a far deeper impression on the common herd than enthusiastic and
+optimistic Romanticism. The pose of a Barrès or a d’Annunzio strikes
+naïve persons far more than that of a Michelet or a Proudhon. Moreover,
+these doctrines are to-day given forth as founded upon science, upon
+‘pure experience’, and thereby permit a tone of calm inhumanity (the
+Romanticism of Positivism) whose effect on the herd has not escaped
+the sagacious eye of the man of letters. (Of course, I am only speaking
+of the elegant herd; Romantic pessimism has no value whatsoever for the
+people.)
+
+There is another transformation of the literary soul in men of letters,
+wherein I think I see a cause of their new political creed. This is,
+that recently the only one of their faculties they venerate is their
+artistic sensibility, on which to some extent they base all their
+judgments. Until the last thirty years it may be said that men of
+letters, at least in Latin Europe, disciples in this of the Greeks,
+were determined in their judgments--even their literary judgments--far
+more by their sensibility to reason than by their artistic sensibility,
+whereof moreover they were scarcely conscious as something distinct
+from the former. This remark is true for the men of the Renaissance
+and their direct descendants (the French writers of the seventeenth
+and succeeding century) and, despite appearances, it is also true
+of those who lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century. If
+the weakening of sensibility to reason and, more generally, of lofty
+intellectual discipline, is indisputably one of the characteristics of
+the Romanticism of 1830, the contempt for this sensibility makes no
+appearance. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Michelet never prided themselves
+on despising the values of reason in things in order to esteem only
+their art values. Now, towards 1890, there occurred a revolution whose
+influence cannot be exaggerated. Enlightened by philosophical analysis
+(Bergsonism), the men of letters became conscious of the fundamental
+difference between intellectual sensibility and artistic sensibility;
+and ardently chose the latter. This is the epoch when they were heard
+to assert that a book is great as soon as it achieves a literary and
+artistic success, that its intellectual content is of no interest,
+that all arguments are equally defensible, that error is no more false
+than truth, etc.[155] This great change affected their political
+attitudes. Obviously, as soon as we think things are good only
+insofar as they content our artistic needs, the only good political
+systems are those of arbitrary authority. Artistic sensibility is far
+more gratified by a system which tends to the realization of force
+and grandeur than by a system which tends to the establishment of
+justice, for the characteristic of artistic sensibility is the love
+of concrete realities and the repugnance for abstract conceptions and
+conceptions of pure reason, the model of which is the idea of justice.
+Artistic sensibility is especially flattered by the spectacle of a
+mass of units which are subordinated to each other up to the final
+head who dominates them all, whereas the spectacle of a democracy,
+which is a mass of units _where no one is first_, deprives this
+sensibility of one of its fundamental needs.[156] Add to this that
+every doctrine which honours Man in the universal, in what is common
+to all men, is a personal injury to the artist, whose characteristic
+(at least since Romanticism)[157] is precisely to set himself up as an
+exceptional being. Add also the sovereignty the artist now attributes
+to his desires and their satisfaction (the ‘rights of genius’) and,
+consequently, his natural hatred for systems which limit each person’s
+liberty of action by that of others. And finally add the artist’s
+aversion from everything which is general, everything which is only
+the object of conception, not of sensation.[158] The determination of
+men of letters to pass judgment only in accordance with their artistic
+sensibility is only one aspect of their desire (since Romanticism) to
+exalt feeling at the expense of thought, a desire which itself is one
+among the thousand results of the decline of intellectual discipline
+among them. The new political attitude of the ‘clerks’ seems to me to
+be here the result of a serious modification of their state of mind.
+
+This attitude also seems to me to result from the decline of the
+study of classical literature in the formation of their minds. The
+humanities, as the word implies, have always taught the cult of
+humanity in its universal aspect, at least since the time of the
+Portico.[159] The decline of Graeco-Roman culture in Barrès and his
+literary generation, in comparison with that of Taine, Renan, Hugo,
+Michelet, even Anatole France and Bourget, is undeniable. Still less
+will it be denied that this decline is considerably more noticeable
+in Barrès’s successors. However, this decline does not prevent these
+writers from extolling classical studies, but they do not do this
+with the idea of reviving the cult for what is human in its universal
+aspect, but on the contrary to strengthen the ‘French’ mind, or at
+least the ‘Latin’ mind, in the grasp of its own roots, in consciousness
+of itself as distinct from other minds. Notice that this decline of
+classical culture in the French writers coincides with the discovery of
+the great German realists, Hegel and especially Nietzsche, whose genius
+had the more effect on these Frenchmen because their lack of classical
+discipline deprived them of the one real barrier which can be opposed
+to that genius.[160]
+
+Among the causes of this new attitude among men of letters I must point
+to their thirst for sensations, their need to experience things, which
+in recent times have grown stronger and have caused them to adopt a
+political attitude which gave them emotions and sensations. Belphegor
+is not the only star in the literary heavens. A French writer, who
+was taken seriously as a thinker as early as 1890, was reproached for
+having joined a party whose inconsistency will long be an amazement to
+History; and he replied, ‘I followed Boulangism, as a man follows a
+fanfare of trumpets.’ The same thinker gives us to understand that his
+chief motive in ‘seeking contact with national minds’ was to ‘throw
+more fuel under his sensibility, which was beginning to run down’.[161]
+I do not think I am mistaken when I say that numbers of our moralists
+who sneer at pacific civilization and extol a warlike life, do so
+because the former seems a dull sort of a life to them and the latter
+an opportunity for sensations.[162] You will recollect the remark of a
+young thinker, quoted by Agathon in 1913: ‘Why not a war? It will be
+amusing.’ I shall be told that this is the mere extravagant saying of
+a young man. But what of this remark from a man of fifty, and what is
+more, a scientist (R. Quinton), who saw the tragedy of 1914 coming,
+and exclaimed: ‘We shall picnic on the grass!’? This scientist was
+certainly a good soldier, but no more so than Fresnel and Lamarck, of
+whom I dare to say that they may have approved of war, but not because
+it satisfied their taste for the picturesque. All who frequented the
+author of _Reflexions sur la Violence_ know that one of the greatest
+attractions of any idea for him was that it was ‘amusing’ and likely
+to exasperate so-called reasonable people. There are many thinkers of
+the past fifty years whose ‘philosophy’ has one fundamental motive--the
+pleasure of throwing off irritating paradoxes; while they are only
+too happy if their rockets fall like swords and satisfy that need for
+cruelty which they profess as the sign of noble minds. This prodigious
+decline of morality, this sort of (very Germanic) intellectual sadism,
+is usually and quite openly accompanied by a huge contempt for the true
+‘clerk’, whose joy comes from the exercise of thought and who disdains
+sensation, particularly the sensations of action. Here again the new
+political cult of the men of letters is the result of a modification
+in the most intimate part of their mind, the very same modification we
+have been discussing, i.e. a decline of intellectual discipline, which
+does not mean a decline in intelligence.[163]
+
+On their own showing, many modern ‘clerks’ have adopted these realist
+doctrines because they want to have done with the moral disarray into
+which they are thrown by the spectacle of philosophies, ‘none of which
+bring certainty,’ and which all collapse upon each other as they cry
+to heaven their contradictory absolutes. There again the ‘clerk’s’
+political attitude is the result of a great decline in his intellectual
+discipline, whether we consider that this decline is shown by his
+belief that any philosophy can bring certainty, or whether we think
+that it lies in his inability to stand upright on the ruins of the
+schools, devoting himself to reason, which is above all the schools,
+and is their judge.
+
+I shall also admit as one other cause of realism in the modern ‘clerks’
+the irritation produced in them by the teaching of some of their
+predecessors--I mean certain masters of the year 1848, with their
+visionary idealism, their belief that justice and love were suddenly
+about to become the essence of the soul of nations, an irritation
+greatly increased by seeing the dreadful contrast between these idyllic
+prophecies and the events which followed them. Nevertheless, the point
+to remember is that the modern ‘clerks’ replied to these errors by
+hurling anathemas at every sort of idealism, whether visionary or not,
+thereby showing incapacity to distinguish between species, inability
+to rise above passion to judgment. And this is but one other aspect of
+their loss of the good manners of the mind.
+
+Let me recapitulate the causes for this change in the ‘clerks’: The
+imposition of political interests on all men without any exception;
+the growth of consistency in matters apt to feed realist passions;
+the desire and the possibility for men of letters to play a political
+part; the need in the interests of their own fame for them to play
+the game of a class which is daily becoming more anxious; the
+increasing tendency of the ‘clerks’ to become bourgeois and to take
+on the vanities of that class; the perfecting of their Romanticism;
+the decline of their knowledge of antiquity and of their intellectual
+discipline. It will be seen that these causes arise from certain
+phenomena which are most profoundly and generally characteristic of
+the present age. The political realism of the ‘clerks’, far from being
+a superficial fact due to the caprice of an order of men, seems to me
+bound up with the very essence of the modern world.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_Summary--Predictions_
+
+
+To sum up: If I look at contemporary humanity from the point of
+view of its moral state as revealed by its political life, I see
+(_a_) A mass in whom realist passions in its two chief forms--class
+passion, national passion--has attained a degree of consciousness and
+organization hitherto unknown; (_b_) A body of men who used to be in
+opposition to the realism of the masses, but who now, not only do not
+oppose it, but adopt it, proclaim its grandeur and morality; in short,
+a humanity which has abandoned itself to realism with a unanimity,
+an absence of reserve, a sanctification of its passion unexampled in
+history.
+
+This remark may be put in another form. Imagine an observer of the
+twelfth century taking a bird’s-eye view of the Europe of his time. He
+would see men groping in the obscurity of their minds and striving to
+form themselves into nations (to mention only the most striking aspect
+of the realist will); he would see them beginning to succeed; he would
+see groups of men attaining consistency, determined to seize a portion
+of the earth and tending to feel conscious of themselves as distinct
+from the groups surrounding them. But at the same time he would see a
+whole class of men, regarded with the greatest reverence, labouring
+to thwart this movement. He would see men of learning, artists and
+philosophers, displaying to the world a spirit which cared nothing for
+nations, using a universal language among themselves. He would see
+those who gave Europe its moral values preaching the cult of the human,
+or at least of the Christian, and not of the national, he would see
+them striving to found, in opposition to the nations, a great universal
+empire on spiritual foundations. And so he might say to himself:
+‘Which of these two currents will triumph? Will humanity be national
+or spiritual? Will it depend on the will of the laymen or of the
+“clerks”?’ And for long ages the realist cause will not be completely
+victorious; the spiritual body will remain faithful to itself long
+enough to our observer to be uncertain of the result. To-day the game
+is over. Humanity is national. The layman has won. But his triumph
+has gone beyond anything he could have expected. The ‘clerk’ is not
+only conquered, he is assimilated. The man of science, the artist, the
+philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-labourer
+and the merchant. Those who make the world’s values, make them for
+a nation; the Ministers of Jesus defend the national. All humanity
+including the ‘clerks’, have become laymen. All Europe, including
+Erasmus, has followed Luther.
+
+I said above that the humanity of the past, more precisely the humanity
+of Europe in the Middle Ages, with the values imposed upon it by the
+‘clerks’, acted ill but honoured the good. It may be said that modern
+Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are
+beautiful, acts ill and honours what is ill. Modern Europe is like
+the brigand in one of Tolstoi’s stories, who made his confession to a
+hermit, and the hermit said in amazement: ‘Others were at least ashamed
+of being brigands; but what is to be done with this man, who is proud
+of it?’
+
+Indeed, if we ask ourselves what will happen to a humanity where
+every group is striving more eagerly than ever to feel conscious of
+its own particular interests, and makes its moralists tell it that it
+is sublime to the extent that it knows no law but this interest--a
+child can give the answer. This humanity is heading for the greatest
+and most perfect war ever seen in the world, whether it is a war of
+nations, or a war of classes. A race of which one group exalts one of
+its masters (Barrès) to the skies because he teaches: ‘We must defend
+the essential part of ourselves as sectarians,’ while a neighbouring
+group acclaims a leader because, when he attacks a defenceless small
+nation, he says, ‘Necessity knows no law’--such a race is ripe for the
+zoological wars Renan talks about, which, he said, would be like the
+life and death wars which occur among rodents and among the carnivora.
+As regards the nation, think of Italy; as regards class, think of
+Russia; and you will see the hitherto unknown point of perfection
+attained by the spirit of hatred against what is ‘different’ among
+a group of men, consciously realist and at last liberated from all
+non-practical morality. And my predictions are not rendered less
+probable by the fact that these two nations are hailed as models
+throughout the world by those who desire either the grandeur of their
+nation or the triumph of their class.
+
+These dark predictions do not seem to me to need as much modification
+as some people think, on account of certain actions resolutely directed
+against war, such as the setting up of a supernational institution
+and the agreements recently made by the rival nations. Imposed upon
+the nations by their Ministers rather than desired by them, dictated
+solely by interest (the fear of war and its ravages) and not at all
+by a change in public morality, these new institutions may perhaps
+be opposed to war but leave intact the _spirit of war_, and nothing
+leads us to suppose that a nation which only respects a contract for
+practical reasons, will not break it as soon as breaking it appears
+more profitable. Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the
+fear of war but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining
+from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.[164] In this sense
+the most insignificant writer can serve peace where the most powerful
+tribunals can do nothing. And moreover these tribunals leave untouched
+the economic war between the nations and the class wars.
+
+Peace, it must be repeated after so many others have said this, is
+only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession
+of things ‘which cannot be shared’, and if they raise themselves to
+a point where they adopt an abstract principle superior to their
+egotisms. In other words, it can only be obtained by a betterment of
+human morality. But, as I have pointed out above, not only do men
+to-day steel themselves entirely against this, but the very first
+condition of peace, which is to recognize the necessity for this
+progress of the soul, is seriously menaced. A school arose in the
+nineteenth century which told men to expect peace from enlightened
+self-interest, from the belief that a war, even when victorious, is
+disastrous, especially to economic transformations, to ‘the evolution
+of production’, in a phrase, to factors totally foreign to their moral
+improvement, from which, these thinkers say, it would be frivolous to
+expect anything. So that humanity, even if it had any desire for peace,
+is exhorted to neglect the one effort which might procure it, an effort
+it is delighted not to make. The cause of peace, which is always
+surrounded with adverse factors, in our days has one more against
+it--the pacifism which pretends to be scientific.[165]
+
+I can point to other sorts of pacifism, whose chief result I dare to
+say is to weaken the cause of peace, at least among serious-minded
+persons:--
+
+(_a_) First, there is the pacifism I shall call ‘vulgar’, meaning
+thereby the pacifism which does nothing but denounce ‘the man who
+kills’, and sneer at the prejudices of patriotism. When I see certain
+teachers, even if they are Montaigne, Voltaire, and Anatole France,
+whose whole case against war consists in saying that highwaymen are no
+more criminal than leaders of armies, and in laughing at people who
+kill each other because one party is dressed in yellow and the other in
+blue, I feel inclined to desert a cause whose champions over-simplify
+things to this extent, and I begin to feel some sympathy for the
+impulses of profound humanity which created the nations and which are
+thereby so grossly insulted.[166]
+
+(_b_) _Mystic pacifism_, by which I mean the pacifism which is solely
+animated by a blind hatred of war and refuses to inquire whether
+a war is just or not, whether those fighting are the attackers or
+the defenders, whether they wanted war or only submit to it. This
+pacifism is essentially the pacifism of the people (and that of all the
+so-called pacifist newspapers) and was strikingly embodied in 1914 by
+a French writer who, having to judge between two fighting nations one
+of which had attacked the other contrary to all its pledges while the
+other was only defending itself, could do nothing but intone ‘I have
+a horror of war’ and condemned them both equally. It is impossible to
+exaggerate the consequences of this behaviour, which showed mankind
+that mystic pacifism, just like mystic militarism, may entirely
+obliterate the feeling of justice in those who are smitten with it.
+
+I think I see another motive in the French writers who in 1914 adopted
+the attitude of M. Romain Rolland--the fear that they would fall into
+national partiality if they admitted that their nation was in the
+right. It may be asserted that these writers would have warmly taken up
+the cause of France, if France had not been their own country. Whereas
+Barrès said, ‘I always maintain my country is right even if it is in
+the wrong,’ these strange friends of justice are not unwilling to say:
+‘I always maintain my country is in the wrong, even if it is right.’
+There again we see that the frenzy of impartiality, like any other
+frenzy, leads to injustice.
+
+I have also a word to say about the severities of these ‘justiciaries’
+towards France’s attitude immediately after her victory, towards her
+desire to force the enemy to make good the damage done to her, and to
+seize on pledges if he refused. The motive which here animated these
+moralists without their perceiving it, seems to me very remarkable;
+it was the thought that the just person must inevitably be weak and
+suffer, that he must be a victim. If the just man becomes strong and
+comes to possess the means of enforcing justice towards himself, then
+he ceases to be just to these thinkers. If Socrates and Jesus make
+their persecutors disgorge, then they cease to embody justice; one step
+more and the persecutors, having become victims, would embody right.
+In this the cult of justice is replaced by the cult of misfortune,
+a Christian Romanticism which is somewhat unexpected in a man like
+Anatole France. No doubt the events of 1918 upset all the habits of the
+advocates of right. Outraged right became the stronger, the assailed
+toga triumphed over the sword, the Curiatii were victorious. Perhaps
+some coolness of mind was needed to recognize that right remained
+right, even when thus invested with force. The French pacifists failed
+to remain cool. In short, their attitude in the past ten years has been
+inspired by sentiment alone, and nothing could show better the degree
+of weakness to which intellectual discipline has now fallen among our
+‘princes of the mind’.[167]
+
+(_c_) _Pacifism claiming to be patriotic_, by which I mean the pacifism
+which claims to exalt humanitarianism, to preach the abatement of the
+militarist spirit and of national passion, and yet not to harm the
+interests of the nation nor to compromise its power of resistance to
+foreign nations. This attitude--which is that of all Parliamentary
+pacifists--is the more antipathetic to upright minds in that it is
+inevitably accompanied by the assertion (which is also nearly always
+contrary to the truth) that the nation is not in the least threatened
+and that the malevolence of neighbouring nations is a pure invention
+of people who want war. But that is merely an aspect of a very general
+fact, which is of supreme importance to the matter under discussion.
+
+By this I mean the ‘clerk’s’ determination to put forth his principles
+as valid in the practical order of things, as reconcilable with the
+safeguarding of the sword’s conquests. This determination, which has
+affected the Church for twenty centuries and almost all the idealists
+(give me the names of those since Jesus who have declared themselves
+incompetent in the practical order of things), is the source of all the
+‘clerk’s failures’. It may be said that the ‘clerk’s’ defeat begins
+from the very moment when he claims to be practical. As soon as the
+‘clerk’ claims that he does not disregard the interests of the nation
+or of the established classes, he is inevitably beaten, for the very
+good reason that it is impossible to preach the spiritual and the
+universal without undermining the institutions whose foundations are
+the possession of the material and the desire to feel distinct from
+others. A true ‘clerk’ (Renan) says excellently: ‘The mother-country
+is a worldly thing; the man who wants to play the angel will always
+be a bad patriot.’ Thus we see that the ‘clerk’ who claims to secure
+the works of the world has a choice between two consequences. Either
+he secures them and transgresses all his principles, which is the case
+with the Church supporting the nation and property; or he maintains
+his principles and causes the ruin of the institutions he claimed he
+was supporting, which is the case with the humanitarian who claims to
+safeguard what is national. In the first case the ‘clerk’ is despised
+by the just man, who denounces him as cunning and strikes him out of
+the rank of ‘clerk’; and in the second case he collapses under the
+hooting of the nations who call him inefficient, while he provokes a
+violent and loudly acclaimed reaction on the part of the realist, which
+is what is now happening in Italy. From all this it follows that the
+‘clerk’ is only strong if he is clearly conscious of his essential
+qualities and his true function, and shows mankind that he is clearly
+conscious of them. In other words he declares to them that his kingdom
+is not of this world, that _the grandeur of his teaching lies precisely
+in this absence of practical value, and that the right morality for
+the prosperity of the kingdoms which are of this world, is not his, but
+Caesar’s_. When he takes up this position, the ‘clerk’ is crucified,
+but he is respected, and his words haunt the memory of mankind.[168]
+The need to remind the modern ‘clerks’ of these truths (for everyone of
+them is angry at being called Utopian) is one of the most suggestive
+observations in connection with our subject. It shows that the desire
+to be practical has become general, that the claim to be so has now
+become necessary in order to obtain an audience, and that the very
+notion of ‘clerkdom’ has become obscured even in those who still tend
+to exercise that function.
+
+It will be seen that I entirely dissociate myself from those who want
+the ‘clerk’ to govern the world, and who wish with Renan for the ‘reign
+of the philosophers’; for it seems to me that human affairs can only
+adopt the religions of the true ‘clerk’ under penalty of becoming
+divine, i.e. of perishing as human. This has been clearly seen by all
+lovers of the divine who did not desire the destruction of what is
+human. This is marvellously expressed by one of them when he makes
+Jesus say so profoundly to His disciple: ‘My son, I must not give you a
+clear idea of your substance ... for if you saw clearly what you are,
+you could no longer remain so closely united to your body. You would
+no longer watch over the preservation of your life.’[169] But though
+I think it a bad thing that the ‘clerk’s’ religion should possess the
+lay world, I think it still more to be dreaded that it should not be
+preached to the layman at all, and that he should thus be allowed to
+yield to his practical passions without the least shame or the least,
+even hypocritical, desire to raise himself however slightly above them.
+‘There are a few just men who prevent me from sleeping’--that was what
+the realist said of the teachers of old. Nietzsche, Barrès, and Sorel
+do not prevent any realist from sleeping; on the contrary. This is the
+novelty I want to point out, which to me seems so serious. It seems to
+me serious that a humanity, which is more than ever obsessed by the
+passions of the world, should receive from its spiritual leaders the
+command: ‘remain faithful to the earth.’
+
+Is this adoption of ‘integral realism’ by the human species permanent,
+or merely temporary? Are we, as some people think, witnessing the
+beginning of a new Middle Ages (and one far more barbarous than the
+former, for though it practised realism, it did not extol realism),
+from which, however, will arise a new Renaissance, a new return to
+the religion of disinterestedness? The elements we have discovered
+as forming the new realism scarcely allow us to hope so. It is hard
+to imagine the nations sincerely striving not to feel conscious of
+themselves as distinct from others, or, if they do so, having any
+other motive than that of concentrating inter-human hatred into that
+of class. It is hard to imagine the clergy regaining a real moral sway
+over the faithful and being able (supposing they desired to do so) to
+tell them with impunity unpleasant truths. It is hard to imagine a
+body of men of letters (for corporative action becomes more and more
+important) attempting to withstand the bourgeois classes instead of
+flattering them. It is still harder to imagine them turning against the
+tide of their intellectual decadence and ceasing to think that they
+display a lofty culture when they sneer at rational morality and fall
+on their knees before history. Nevertheless one thinks of a humanity
+of the future, weary of its ‘sacred egotisms’ and the slaughterings to
+which they inevitably lead, coming as humanity came two thousand years
+ago, to the acceptance of a good situated beyond itself, accepting it
+even more ardently than before, with the knowledge of all the tears and
+blood that have been shed through departing from that doctrine. Once
+more Vauvenargues’ admirable saying would be verified. ‘The passions
+have taught men reason.’ But such a thing only seems to me possible
+after a long lapse of time, when war has caused far more woes than
+have yet been endured. Men will not revise their values for wars which
+only last fifty months and only kill a couple of million men in each
+nation. One may even doubt whether war will ever become so terrible as
+to discourage those who love it, the more so since they are not always
+the men who have to fight.
+
+When I set this limit to my pessimistic outlook and admit that such
+a Renaissance is possible, I mean no more than that it is just
+possible. I cannot agree with those who say it is certain, either
+because it happened once before, or because ‘civilization is due to
+the human race’. Civilization as I understand it here--moral supremacy
+conferred on the cult of the spiritual and on the feeling of the
+universal--appears to me as a lucky accident in man’s development. It
+blossomed three thousand years ago under a set of circumstances whose
+contingent character was perfectly perceived by the historian who
+called it ‘the Greek miracle’. It does not appear to me in the least to
+be a thing due to the human race by virtue of the data of its nature.
+It seems to me so little such a thing that I observe large portions
+of the species (the Asiatic world in antiquity, the Germanic world in
+modern times) who showed themselves incapable of it and quite likely
+to remain so. And this means that if humanity loses this jewel, there
+is not much chance of finding it again. On the contrary there is every
+chance that humanity will not find it again, just as a man who should
+find a precious stone in the sea and then drop it back in the water
+would have little chance of ever seeing it again. Nothing seems to me
+more doubtful than Aristotle’s remark that it is probable the arts
+and philosophy have several times been discovered and several times
+lost. The other position which maintains that civilization, despite
+partial eclipses, is something which humanity cannot lose, seems to
+me quite worthless except as an act of faith--though it is valuable
+as a means of preserving the good we wish to keep. I should not think
+it a serious objection to what I have said if someone should point
+out that civilization, lost once with the fall of the ancient world,
+nevertheless had its Renaissance. Everyone knows that the Graeco-Roman
+form of mind was far from being wholly extinguished during the Middle
+Ages and that the sixteenth century only brought to life what was not
+dead; to which I add that even if that form of mind had been ‘reborn’
+_ex nihilo_, the fact that this is the only instance would make it
+insufficient to reassure me, although the fact that it had occurred
+would disturb me.
+
+Let me point out in this respect that insufficient attention is perhaps
+paid to the fact that there are always only a very tiny number of
+instances in history on which are built up a ‘law’, which claims to be
+valid for the whole past and future evolution of humanity. Vico says
+that history is a series of alternations between periods of progress
+and periods of retrogression; and he gives _two_ examples. Saint-Simon
+says history is a series of oscillations between organic epochs and
+critical epochs; and he gives _two_ examples. Marx says history is a
+series of economic systems, each of which casts out its predecessor by
+means of violence; and he gives _one_ example! I shall be told that
+these examples could not be more numerous, owing to the fact that
+history, at least known history, is so short. The truth, implied by
+this very reply, is that history has lasted too short a time for us
+to be able to deduce laws from it to enable us to infer the future
+from the past. Those who do so are like a mathematician who should
+decide the nature of a curve from the form he finds it has at its
+very beginning. True, a somewhat uncommon turn of mind is required to
+confess that human history, after several thousands of years, is only
+beginning. I cannot sufficiently admire the rare mental value displayed
+by La Bruyère (in my opinion) when he wrote the following lines in a
+century which was strongly inclined to think it was the topmost summit
+of human development: ‘If the world lasts only a hundred million years,
+it will still be in all its freshness and only beginning; we ourselves
+are almost contemporary with the first men and the patriarchs, and who,
+in those far-off ages, will be able to avoid confusing us with them?
+But if we judge of the future from the past, what new things are we
+ignorant of in the arts, in the sciences, in Nature, and, I dare say,
+in history? What discoveries will be made! What different revolutions
+will occur in our Empires all over the world! How ignorant we are! And
+how slight is an experience of six or seven thousand years!’
+
+I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past
+could lead to any valid prediction concerning man’s future, that
+prediction would be the contrary of reassuring. People forget that
+Hellenic rationalism only really enlightened the world during seven
+hundred years, that it was then hidden (this _a minima_ verdict will
+be granted me) for twelve centuries, and has begun to shine again for
+barely four centuries; so that _the longest period of consecutive time
+in human history on which we can found inductions is, upon the whole,
+a period of intellectual and moral darkness_. Looking at history, we
+may say in a more synthetic manner that, with the exception of two or
+three very short, luminous epochs whose light, like that of certain
+stars, lightens the world long after they are extinct, humanity lives
+generally in darkness; while literatures live generally in a state of
+decadence and the organism in disorder. And the disturbing thing is
+that humanity does not seem to mind these long periods of cave-dwelling.
+
+To come back to the realism of my contemporaries and their contempt
+for a disinterested existence, I must add that my mind is sometimes
+haunted by a dreadful question. I wonder whether humanity, by adopting
+this system to-day, has not discovered its true law of existence and
+adopted the true scale of values demanded by its essence? The religion
+of the spiritual, I said just now, seems to me a lucky accident in
+man’s history. I shall go further, and say it seems to me a paradox.
+The obvious law of human substance is the conquest of things and the
+exaltation of the impulses which secure this conquest. Only through an
+amazing abuse were a handful of men at desks able to succeed in making
+humanity believe that the supreme values are the good things of the
+spirit. To-day humanity has awakened from this dream, knows its true
+nature and its real desires, and utters its war-cry against those who
+for centuries have robbed it of itself. Instead of waxing indignant at
+the ruin of their domination, would it not be more reasonable for these
+usurpers (if there are any left) to wonder that it lasted so long?
+Orpheus could not aspire to charm the wild beasts with his music until
+the end of time. However, one could have hoped that Orpheus himself
+would not become a wild beast.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say my remarks on realist desires and
+their violent perfecting do not blind me to the immense growth of
+gentleness, justice, and love written to-day in our customs and laws,
+which would certainly have amazed our most optimistic ancestors.
+There is an immense improvement in the relations between man and man
+within the groups which fight each other--especially within the nation
+where security is the rule and injustice is a scandal. But to keep
+more closely to our subject, perhaps we do not sufficiently realize
+the incredible degree of civilization implied by the good treatment
+of prisoners, and the care of enemy wounded in wars between nations,
+and by the institution of public and private charity in the relations
+between the classes. The denial of progress, the assertion that
+barbarity of heart has never been worse, are natural themes for poets
+and those who are discontented, and perhaps they are even necessary
+to progress. But the historian, whether he looks at national or class
+warfare, is amazed at the transformation of a species which only four
+centuries ago roasted prisoners of war in baker’s ovens, and, only two
+centuries ago forbade the workers to establish a pension fund for their
+aged members. Nevertheless I must point out that these improvements
+cannot be credited to the present age. They are the results of the
+teaching of the eighteenth century, against which the ‘masters of
+modern thought’ are in complete revolt. The establishment of war
+ambulances, the wide development of State charities are the work of the
+Second Empire, are connected with the ‘humanitarian clichés’ of Victor
+Hugo and Michelet, which are immeasureably despised by the moralists
+of the past half century. They exist to some extent _despite of_ these
+moralists, not one of whom has conducted a truly humane campaign, while
+the chief of them--Nietzsche, Barrès, Sorel--would blush to be able
+to say like Voltaire: ‘I have done a little good, ’tis my best work.’
+I must add that these good works are now merely customs, i.e. actions
+performed from habit, without the will taking any part in them, without
+the mind reflecting on their meaning. And if the mind of our realists
+ever came to think of them, I think there is every possibility that
+it might prohibit them. I can well imagine a future war when a nation
+would decide not to look after the enemy wounded, a strike where the
+bourgeoisie would make up its mind not to support hospitals for the
+benefit of a class which was ruining it and anxious to destroy it. I
+can imagine both priding themselves on getting free from a ‘stupid
+humanitarianism’, and finding disciples of Nietzsche and Sorel to
+praise them for it. The attitude of the Italian Fascists and the
+Russian Bolshevists towards their enemies is not calculated to give me
+the lie here. The modern world still displays certain failures in pure
+practicality, a few stains of idealism from which it might well cleanse
+itself.
+
+I said above that the logical end of the ‘integral realism’ professed
+by humanity to-day is the organized slaughter of nations or classes.
+It is possible to conceive of a third, which would be their
+reconciliation. The thing to possess would be the whole earth, and they
+would finally come to realize that the only way to exploit it properly
+is by union, while the desire to set themselves up as distinct from
+others would be transferred from the nation to the species, arrogantly
+drawn up against everything which is not itself. And, as a matter of
+fact, such a movement does exist. Above classes and nations there
+does exist a desire of the species to become the master of things,
+and, when a human being flies from one end of the world to the other
+in a few hours, the whole human race quivers with pride and adores
+itself as distinct from all the rest of creation. At bottom, this
+imperialism of the species is preached by all the great directors of
+the modern conscience. It is Man, and not the nation or the class,
+whom Nietzsche, Sorel, Bergson extoll in his genius for making himself
+master of the world. It is humanity, and not any one section of it,
+whom Auguste Comte exhorts to plunge into consciousness of itself
+and to make itself the object of its adoration. Sometimes one may
+feel that such an impulse will grow ever stronger, and that in this
+way inter-human wars will come to an end. In this way humanity would
+attain ‘universal fraternity’. But, far from being the abolition of the
+national spirit with its appetites and its arrogance, this would simply
+be its supreme form, the nation being called Man and the enemy God.
+Thereafter, humanity would be unified in one immense army, one immense
+factory, would be aware only of heroisms, disciplines, inventions,
+would denounce all free and disinterested activity, would long cease
+to situate the good outside the real world, would have no God but
+itself and its desires, and would achieve great things; by which I mean
+that it would attain to a really grandiose control over the matter
+surrounding it, to a really joyous consciousness of its power and its
+grandeur. And History will smile to think that this is the species for
+which Socrates and Jesus Christ died.
+
+1924-1927.
+
+
+
+
+_Notes_
+
+
+Note A (Page 1)
+
+_That political passions affect a large number of men they never before
+affected ..._
+
+It is very difficult to know to what extent crowds are moved by the
+political events of their time (of course, I am leaving on one side all
+truly popular movements). Crowds do not write their memoirs, and those
+who write memoirs scarcely ever speak of the crowds. However, I do not
+think my proposition will be seriously disputed. To limit ourselves to
+France and the two examples I quoted--suppose we had another upheaval
+like the Religious Wars, I do not think we should see the immense
+majority of country districts possessed by no other passion than a
+hatred for soldiers, whatever party they belonged to.[170] Nor should
+we see cultivated bourgeois who keep diaries giving a couple of lines
+to such events as Luther’s preaching, along with the thousand little
+facts they relate.[171] Nor do I think that a month after an event like
+the taking of the Bastille we should find a foreigner on his travels
+in France, writing: ‘13th August, 1789. Before I leave Clermont I must
+remark that I have dined or supped five times at the table d’hôte with
+some twenty to thirty merchants and tradesmen, officers, etc.; and it
+is not easy for me to express the insignificance--the inanity of the
+conversation. Scarcely any politics, at a moment when every bosom ought
+to beat with none but political sensations.’ (Arthur Young.)[172]
+
+The attitude of populations towards wars between States long seems to
+have been that described by Voltaire in the following lines: ‘It is
+indeed a deplorable evil that this multitude of soldiers should always
+be kept up by all Princes. But, as we have pointed out, this evil
+produces a good. The peoples take no part in the wars carried on by
+their masters; the citizens of besieged towns often pass from the power
+of one to another without having cost the life of a single inhabitant;
+they are simply the prize of the King who possesses most soldiers,
+cannons and money.’ (_Essai sur les Moeurs_, towards the end.) Again,
+in 1870, a Prussian servant girl said to a French prisoner employed
+on the farm where she was working: ‘When the war is over I will marry
+you. Don’t be surprised at what I say, patriotism doesn’t mean much to
+us, you know.’ I imagine that in 1914, many servant girls, Prussian or
+otherwise, felt in their hearts and put into practice, this absence of
+patriotism; but I dare to assert that very few would have formulated
+it, even to themselves. The really new fact to-day is not perhaps that
+the peoples feel political passions, but that they claim the right to
+feel them. This claim is sufficient to make them act and therefore
+furnishes a magnificent opportunity for their leaders to exploit them.
+
+
+Note B (Page 15)
+
+_Louis XIV annexing Alsace and not for one moment thinking of
+forbidding the German language ..._
+
+It was not until 1768 that the Monarchy thought of setting up schools
+in Alsace, ‘where French is to be taught’. Vidal de la Blanche, who
+relates this (_La France de l’Est_, 1, vi) adds: ‘This indifference
+(to the language question) must not shock us too much. Let us rather
+learn a lesson from it. It raises us above the narrowly jealous
+conceptions which since then have set nation against nation, under this
+language pretext. It takes us into an age when another spirit presided
+over human relations. There was then no language question. Fortunate
+eighteenth century, when war bred no lasting hatred, when the poison of
+national animosities was not inoculated and fostered by all the means
+now at the disposal of the State, including the schools.’ The eminent
+historian forgets that the State has these means at its disposal, _with
+the consent of the peoples_. The peoples, or at least the cultivated
+classes among them, at the bidding of their men of letters, during the
+past century have set themselves up arrogantly against one another in
+their languages and cultures, even though they one day come face to
+face with the unexpected results of this attitude, as is happening
+to-day to France in its difficulties with Alsace.
+
+
+Note C (Page 19)
+
+_The Union of capitalism, anti-semitism, anti-democracy with
+nationalism._
+
+I am under no illusion concerning the solidity of certain among these
+unions. Although the conservative passions fully comprehend their
+immense interest in identifying themselves with national passion and
+thereby benefiting by its popularity, although one may even admit
+that they have been caught in their own net and have become sincere
+in this feeling, yet it is none the less true that conservatism
+(chiefly capitalism) is essentially something entirely different
+from patriotism, and that this difference, whose manifestations in
+the course of history have been innumerable (how many times have the
+bourgeoisie treated with foreigners when they thought it was to their
+interests!) may once again display itself. It is easy to imagine that
+the French bourgeoisie would turn against France if they thought their
+patrimony was being too seriously threatened by the legislation of
+the Republic. This may already be seen in the case of families who,
+in recent years, have exported their capital abroad. I may say the
+same thing of monarchist passion. It is easy to imagine that certain
+followers of that passion might one day decide to work against a nation
+which decisively and finally rejects the system they propose. I think
+I observe this when I see monarchist writers publishing that ‘from the
+Spree to the Mekong, the whole world knows that France is in a state of
+weakness bordering upon disintegration’. However, such things are still
+exceptional, and those who are responsible for them would refuse to
+admit--perhaps sincerely--that they meant to harm their nation.
+
+Moreover, the bourgeoisie have another interest in keeping up
+nationalism and the fear of war. These feelings create a sort of
+permanent military spirit in a nation. More precisely, they create in
+the people a disposition to accept the existing hierarchy, to obey
+orders, to recognize superiors, i.e. the very things required of
+them by those who wish them to continue in a state of service. The
+confused perception of this truth inspires the bourgeoisie with that
+curious ill-humour they display towards every attempt at international
+agreement, in whatever form this may be presented by the governments.
+This ill-humour (they declare) arises from the fact that they consider
+it simple-minded and imprudent to believe in the extinction of national
+hatreds. At bottom, it arises from the fact that _they do not want this
+extinction to occur_. They know that the maintenance of these hatreds
+will cost the lives of their children, but they do not hesitate to
+make the sacrifice, if by doing so they retain possession of their
+property[173] and their power over their servants. Here is a grandeur
+of egotism which is perhaps insufficiently appreciated.
+
+
+Note D (Page 28)
+
+_On the attitude of the modern Catholics towards Catholicism when it is
+in opposition to their nationalism._
+
+A good example is the attitude of the German Catholics in the past
+twenty years. It has been described with all desirable detail by
+M. Edmond Bloud in his great study: _Le nouveau Centre et le
+catholicisme_.[174] It will be seen that it strangely resembles the
+attitude of many a non-German Catholic.
+
+The ‘Centre’ began by declaring itself ‘a political party which has
+assumed as its duty the representation of the interests of the whole
+nation in all domains of public life, in accordance with the principles
+of Christian doctrine.’ (_Katholische Weltanschauung_: Catholic
+conception of the world.) Soon they announced political action founded
+on ‘a Christian basis’ (christliche Basis), the spirit of which is thus
+defined by one of its apostles (Doctor Brauweiler, April, 1913): ‘In
+the domain of practical action, _concepts are determined by the end
+in view_. The formation of political concepts is comparable with the
+formation of juridical concepts. The jurist forms his concepts _with
+no other consideration than that of what is needed, in relation solely
+to the required end_. But no one can say that the juridical concept
+thus formed is a false one. In the same way, one may speak in politics
+of Christianity or Christian doctrine.’ In 1914, Doctor Karl Bachem of
+Cologne, published a pamphlet entitled: _Centre, Catholic Doctrine,
+Practical Politics_, where he declares that the doctrine of ‘universal
+Christianity’ is only a political formula intended to render possible
+the collaboration of Catholics and Protestants, chiefly in Parliament;
+that from the religious point of view this formula has only a negative
+meaning, and only means the determination to struggle against
+materialism, atheism and nihilism; that its positive content is defined
+by the Prussian Constitution which in paragraphs 14 and 18 lays down
+that ‘the Christian religion’ is the ‘foundation of the institutions of
+the State’.
+
+Thus, as M. Edmond Bloud justly remarks, Doctor Bachem makes the
+Prussian Constitution the Rule of Faith. Put ‘national interest’ in
+place of ‘Prussian Constitution’ and you will have the state of mind of
+many a modern French Catholic.
+
+The attitude of the German Catholics seems to me also representative of
+a certain Catholicism common to-day to other nations, in declarations
+of this sort:
+
+‘The Catholic members of the “Centre” remain Catholics individually,
+_but the party, as a party, does not necessarily accept the Catholic
+conception of the world_.’
+
+And again:
+
+‘The Pope and the Bishops have authority in matters of religion, but
+wherever political matters are concerned we shall not allow ourselves
+to be influenced by the authority of the Pope or by that of the
+Bishops.’ (M. Edmond Bloud alludes to a conversation reported in the
+_Frankfurter Zeitung_, April, 1914, where one of the chief of the
+‘syndicats mixtes’ declared that, ‘The German Catholics have had enough
+of the Pope.’)
+
+What M. Bloud calls the ‘declericalization of the Centre’ is not a
+thing peculiar to our neighbours, nor is the joy of the great German
+nationalist organ (the Prussian Annals) when it observes that ‘the
+Catholic idea of the State is ceasing to be ultramontain and is
+becoming nationalist’.[175]
+
+The attitude common to German Catholics and to certain Catholics of
+other nations seems to me well brought out by two protests which M.
+Bloud quotes.
+
+The first is from Father Weiss:
+
+‘There exist,’ says the eminent theologian, ‘several kinds of political
+Catholicism.... The worst of all consists in looking upon pure
+politics, social politics, national politics, not only as something
+wholly independent of religion, but _as being the standard by which we
+should determine the degree to which Catholicism or Christianity may be
+utilized in public life_.’
+
+The other is from Cardinal Kopp (then Bishop of Fulda) in a letter
+written in 1887:
+
+‘Unhappily a gust of madness is blowing over us. Formerly we held
+to the principle: Faith first, politics afterwards. Now they say:
+_Politics first!_ The Church and the Faith afterwards.’
+
+Our Catholics of the _Action Française_ have not invented much.
+
+
+Note E (Page 33)
+
+_The ‘clerk’, by adopting political passions, brings them the
+tremendous influence of his sensibility if he is an artist, of his
+persuasive power if he is a thinker, and in either case his moral
+prestige._
+
+This prestige itself is something new in history, at least from my
+point of view. The results produced in France by the intervention
+of the ‘intellectuals’ in the Dreyfus affair, and those produced by
+the manifesto of the German Intellectuals in 1914, not only in their
+own country but throughout the world, are things to which I find no
+equivalent in the past. One cannot imagine the Roman Republic feeling
+that the moral support of Terence and Varro was of value to it during
+the war with Carthage, or the government of Louis XIV finding that
+the approbation of Racine and Fermat, gave it additional strength in
+the war with Holland. This increase of strength which a cause to-day
+receives from the approbation of the men of thought (or those who are
+considered such) does great honour to the modern world. It is an homage
+to the mind hitherto unexampled in humanity.
+
+Naturally, this prestige has a double result. Though the modern ‘clerk’
+fortifies a cause by giving it his approbation he can also seriously
+harm it by refusing his approbation. If in 1915 men like Ostwald and
+Mach had refused to approve the acts of their nation, they would have
+seriously harmed it. The ‘clerk’ who to-day condemns the realism of
+the State to which he belongs does really harm that State.[176] Hence
+it follows that the State, in the name of its practical interests, to
+defend which is its function, has a right--perhaps a duty--to punish
+them. This appears to me to be the true order of things: The ‘clerk’,
+faithful to his essential duty, denounces the realism of States;
+whereupon, the States, no less faithful to their duty, made him drink
+the hemlock. The serious disorganization in the modern world is that
+the ‘clerks’ do not denounce the realism of States, but on the contrary
+approve of it; they no longer drink the hemlock.[177]
+
+Let me point to another disorganization. That is when the State does
+not punish the ‘clerk’ for denouncing its realism. This occurred
+in France during the Dreyfus affair. The order of things demanded
+that the ‘clerks’ should demand abstract justice, as they did; but
+perhaps it also demanded that the State, weakened in strength by their
+idealism, should throw them into prison. When the ‘clerk’ performs the
+layman’s task, the result is anarchy; but there is also anarchy when
+the layman acts and speaks as a ‘clerk’, when those whose duty is to
+defend the nation display their cult for the abolition of frontiers,
+universal love, or other spiritual things.[178] When I see philosophers
+concerning themselves with the safety of the State and Ministers
+striving to bring about love among mankind, I think of what Dante says:
+‘You turn to religion him who was born to wear the sword, you make a
+King of one who was born to preach. Thus all your steps are out of the
+true way.’ However, this second disorganization of orders has been
+denounced by others, and it is not my function to combat it.
+
+
+Note F (Page 37)
+
+_Think how willingly the ecclesiastics now accept military service._
+
+I think this willingness is worthy of the historian’s attention.
+Obviously, it implies some sincere attachment to their country in those
+who display this willingness, although their law is to be dead to all
+worldly attachments. Moreover, it appears that in the last war most of
+the ministers of Jesus Christ able to bear arms were glad to defend
+their country, whatever that country was, and whatever notion they
+may have had of the justice of its cause. Here is a most suggestive
+fact: Certain Belgian monastic orders (and others as well, I am told)
+established abroad at the declaration of war, and authorized by the
+government to remain abroad, insisted upon returning to the capital to
+perform their military duties. True, the behaviour of these monks may
+be explained, not on grounds of patriotism, but from the fear that they
+would be severely criticized by their fellow-citizens if they acted
+otherwise; for the modern ‘clerks’ have ceased to understand that the
+sign of an attitude truly in harmony with their function is that it
+should be unpopular with the laymen.
+
+But the most remarkable thing here for the historian, is that the
+imposition of military service on ecclesiastics does not appear to
+arouse any protest from the Church. Certain Church teachers even assert
+(Mgr Battifol, _L’Eglise et le Droit de la guerre_): ‘There is no
+further doubt about the legality of military service.’[179] It is also
+curious to see in the _Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique_
+(Art. ‘Paix et Guerre’) the strenuous efforts of the author (Father de
+la Brière) to prove that bearing arms, even by ‘clerks’ in holy orders,
+is in no sense contrary to Christian law. However, the opinion of these
+theologians does not seem to be shared, at least publicly, by the
+higher ecclesiastical authorities; for every ‘clerk’ who bears arms is
+laid under an interdict, as he was in the past--only the interdict is
+taken off a few minutes after it has been declared.
+
+The modern laymen (Barrès for example) praise this patriotism of the
+ecclesiastic and his willingness to fight. The laymen of the past tried
+to make him ashamed of it, and liked to exhort him to sentiments which
+they considered more in harmony with his sacred ministry. The warlike
+ardours of John XII and Julius II were severely condemned by their
+contemporaries. Apart from Erasmus--the type of the man of letters
+fully aware of the ‘clerk’s’ high function, who was continually saying:
+‘Their tonsure does not warn them that they ought to be free from all
+the passions of this world and think only of the things of Heaven’--the
+Italian Tizio wrote: ‘It is astonishing that the Pontiffs, whose part
+is to be pacific and independent, should take part in the shedding of
+Christian blood.’ The French poet Jean Bouchet shows the weeping Church
+imploring Julius II to end the war (though it is true that Julius II
+was fighting France):
+
+  ‘Your patron is my Lord Saint Peter,
+  Who never warred for worldly goods.’
+
+In _Le Songe du Verger_, a kind of summary of moral doctrines current
+in France in the fourteenth century, there is a dialogue between a
+Knight and a Clerk, when the Clerk claims for his caste the right to
+make war, and the Knight tells him that ‘the arms of the “clerks” are
+prayers and tears’. It is suggestive to see a soldier urging a minister
+of the spiritual to perform his true function and seeming to think that
+the performance of this function is necessary to the good order of the
+world. Here is a feeling for ‘clerkdom’ and its social value which is
+very seldom to be found among the modern laymen, even the non-military
+ones--I nearly said, especially the non-military ones.[180]
+
+
+Note G (Page 53)
+
+_That self-examination to which every spectator is impelled by a
+representation of human beings which he feels to be true and solely
+pre-occupied with truth._
+
+Let me quote the following passage concerning the civilizing effects of
+such representation:--
+
+‘This spectacle of man offered to man has considerable moral effects.
+First, a valuable exercise of the intelligence, an increase of
+reflection, a widening of the view in every direction, result from the
+habit thus set up of getting out of oneself and entering into others,
+to understand their actions, to share in their passions, sympathize
+with their sufferings, appreciate their motives. This faculty of the
+artist communicated to the spectator or the listener, this faculty of
+participation and assimilation, is something set up in opposition to
+egotism and is a condition of tolerance and benevolence, frequently
+even of justice. Then, lessons of virtue, frequently not the least
+effective, are given to the spectator, from the very fact that he
+is placed in a position to praise or condemn acts or thoughts which
+are set before him relative to cases where his own interests are not
+involved. He recognizes his own image in the actor of the epic, a man
+like himself, a voluntary and impassioned agent, whose dangers though
+perhaps magnified are not foreign to his own experience. Then the
+essential phenomena which characterize conscious humanity and morality
+occur in him who thus witnesses himself in the person of another,
+i.e. disinterested objectivity of himself to himself, generalization
+of passion, motive and maxim, judgment founded on the universal,
+self-examination to arrive at what is duty, clear and defined sentiment
+of the direction of the will.
+
+‘_But this must not lead us to think that the poet’s object is utility
+or morality. If it were, he would be lacking in the true feeling of
+art._ Teaching, moralizing--this object of the artist is indirect, i.e.
+does not exist systematically for him. He must only attain it without
+having sought it, and sometimes he attains it when he seems to have
+departed from it. What he desires to do, is to touch the feelings,
+to arouse emotions. But it happens that by doing so he elevates,
+purifies, moralizes. The poet (I am especially speaking of him) does
+indeed address himself to everyone. _That means he can only sing the
+universal_, however curious such an assembly of words may appear. He
+may indeed sing it under the form of the particular, without which
+his fictions would be lacking in life, he none the less excludes the
+pure, incomprehensible, inexplicable individual, shorn of all truth
+if he does not express a relationship.[181] He generalizes passion,
+therefore ennobles it and renders it at once the object of observation,
+reflection and disinterested emotion. The listener, carried away from
+his own relatively base private preoccupations and transported without
+hope or fear (at least, too personal and too present hope and fear)
+into the superior sphere of humanity’s common passion, feels the
+benefit of an elevation of soul; his consciousness is temporarily freed
+from egotism.’ (Renouvier, _Introduction à la philosophie analytique de
+l’Histoire_, p. 354.)
+
+
+Note H (Page 56)
+
+_... Napoleon, who ordered the chief of police to take measures for
+the history of France to be written in a manner favourable to his own
+throne._
+
+Here are some portions of a note on this subject dictated by Napoleon
+at Bordeaux in 1808. It promulgates the conception of history as
+practised, mutatis mutandis, by many of our historians of the past:--
+
+‘I do not approve the principles laid down in his note by the Minister
+of the Interior. They were true twenty years ago, they will be true
+sixty years hence, but they are not true to-day. Velly is the one
+fairly detailed author who has written on the history of France. The
+abridged chronology of the President Hénault is a good classical book.
+It is useful to have them both continued. _It is of the greatest
+importance to make certain of the spirit in which these continuations
+are written._ I ordered the Minister of Police to look after the
+continuation of Millot, and I desire the two Ministers will consult
+over the continuation of Velly and the President Hénault....
+
+‘They are to be just to Henri IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV and Louis XV,
+but without adulation. The September Massacres and the horrors of the
+Revolution must be painted in the same colours as the Inquisition
+and the massacres of the Sixteen. They must take care to avoid all
+reaction in speaking of the Revolution, no man could have opposed it
+successfully. No blame attaches either to those who perished or to
+those who survived. There was no individual power capable of changing
+the elements and foreseeing the events which arose from the nature of
+things and circumstances.
+
+‘They are to point out the perpetual disorganization of the national
+finances, the chaos of the provincial assemblies, the claims of the
+Parlements, the lack of regulation and resort in the administration.
+This checkered France, without unity of laws and administration, was
+rather a union of twenty Kingdoms than a single State, so that one
+breathes freely on coming to the period when the benefits of unity
+of laws, administration and territory are enjoyed.... The opinion
+expressed by the Minister, which, if followed, would result in
+abandoning this task to private enterprise and the speculation of some
+publisher, is wrong and could only produce regrettable results.’
+
+Of course, the champions of authority are not the only persons who make
+history serve their own interests. Condorcet (_Tableau historique_,
+10^e Epoque) says that history should serve ‘to maintain an active
+vigilance in recognizing and crushing under the weight of Reason the
+first germs of superstition and tyranny, if they ever dare to appear
+again.’
+
+
+Note I (Page 62)
+
+_Humanitarianism and Humanism._
+
+Here, on this subject, is a curious passage from one of the ancients:--
+
+‘Those who created the Latin language and those who spoke it well
+do not give the word _humanitas_ the vulgar meaning which is
+synonymous with the Greek word _philanthropia_, which means an
+active kindness, a tender benevolence for all men. But they give
+the word the meaning which the Greeks attach to _paideia_, which we
+call education, knowledge of the fine arts. Those who show the most
+taste and disposition for these studies are the most worthy to be
+called _humanissimi_. For man alone among all living beings is able
+to devote himself to cultivating a study which for that reason has
+been called _humanitas_. Such is the meaning given to this by the
+ancients, particularly by Varro and Cicero. Almost all their works
+show examples, so I shall content myself with quoting one only. I
+have chosen the opening of the first book of Varro “Concerning human
+things”: “Praxiteles, qui propter artificium egregium nemini est paulum
+modo humaniori ignotus (Praxiteles, whose excellent talent as an
+artist has made him known to every man at all skilled in the arts)”.
+Here _humanior_ does not bear the vulgar meaning of easy, tractable,
+benevolent even though lacking in knowledge of letters. That meaning
+would not express the author’s thought. It means an educated, a learned
+man, one who is acquainted with Praxiteles through books and history.’
+(Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticae_, Book XIII, XVI.)
+
+
+Note J (Page 82)
+
+_... they cannot sufficiently denounce all institutions based on
+liberty and discussion._
+
+Note that the novelty here lies in the passion, the fury with which
+they condemn liberty of discussion. Otherwise, we see most of the
+so-called liberal thinkers in history themselves recognize the
+necessity for submission to the sovereign’s judgment. Spinoza declares
+that ‘there is no possible government if every man makes himself the
+defender of his own rights and the rights of others.’ The _Letters of
+Descartes_ contain passages in favour of the ‘reason of State.’
+
+It is perhaps not sufficiently noticed how frequently the old French
+absolute monarchists say that justice is the chief function of the
+sovereign. ‘The most important of the King’s rights,’ says one of
+these theorists (Guy Coquille, _Institution du droit des Français_,
+1608) ‘is to make _the laws and general statutes for the good order of
+his Kingdom_.’ Another (Loyseau, _Des Seigneuries_, 1608) says: ‘The
+usage of public _lordship must be regulated by justice_ ...’ Bossuet
+(_Instruction à Louis XIV_) says: ‘When the King administers justice or
+has it exactly administered in accordance with the laws, _which is his
+principal function_ ...’ The modern absolute monarchists, even French,
+seem to be inspired by the German theorist, who says: ‘The State has
+two functions to perform: the administration of justice and the waging
+of war. _But war is by far the principal._’ (Treitschke.)
+
+Note this famous passage from Bossuet (_Pol._, Book VIII, art. II, par.
+I):
+
+‘It is one thing for it (the government) to be absolute, another for
+it to be arbitrary. It is absolute in relation to constraint, there
+being no power which is capable of compelling the sovereign, who in
+this sense is independent of all human authority. But it does not
+follow that government is arbitrary; because, apart from the fact that
+all things are subject to God’s judgment (which applies also to the
+government we have called arbitrary), there are laws in empires, and
+everything which is done contrary to them is void of right.’
+
+It will be seen that the defence of arbitrary government is a new thing
+among French teachers, even in regard to Bossuet. (I am speaking of
+Bossuet’s _doctrines_, not of his practical advice.)
+
+
+Note K (Page 91)
+
+_This is the teaching of Nietzsche._
+
+I must repeat that throughout this work I am considering the teaching
+of Nietzsche (and Hegel’s too) insofar as it has become the pretext
+for a great moral preaching, though I know perfectly well that in
+reality this teaching is something far more complex. I shall quote
+the following judicious observation, in connection with the fact
+that certain philosophers have only themselves to blame for ‘the
+misunderstanding of their true thought’:
+
+‘Nietzscheism has been subjected to the same test as Hegelianism. And
+no doubt here and there philosophical themes have served especially as
+pretexts to cover up a new offensive on the part of barbarism. _But
+the fact that they have been utilized, the manner in which they have
+been utilized, have a significance which must not be overlooked._ Is
+it not the criterion of a philosophy which may be called rational
+without reserve and equivocation, that it should remain incorruptibly
+faithful to itself? On the other hand, _the systems which begin by
+accepting contradictions, reserving the right to add that they are
+capable of surmounting them or of “living” them, lodge their enemy in
+their midst_. Their punishment is that their antithesis still resembles
+them; and that is what has happened to Nietzsche.’ (L. Brunschvicg, _Le
+Progrès de la Conscience dans la philosophie occidentale_, p. 431.)
+This book contains an excellent exposition of ‘Hegelian themes’ and
+‘Nietzschean themes’, precisely insofar as they have become political
+breviaries.
+
+
+Note L (Page 94)
+
+_Long before the disciples of Taine and Auguste Comte._
+
+When this book appeared in a periodical, certain persons declared
+that the whole of my attack on the modern ‘clerk’ went astray because
+I did not give more space to the author of _Origines de la France
+Contemporaine_. He, they said, was the ‘great realist “clerk” of the
+past fifty years, while those I attacked were only his small change.’
+(This sudden contempt for the thought of Barrès and Maurras of the part
+of certain people is certainly surprising.)
+
+There is here a manifest abuse of the word _realism_. Taine threw
+light on the true nature of the real, or rather the political real,
+and reminded the universalist that this domain is not under his
+jurisdiction. He never _exalted_ this real at the expense of the
+universal, which is the realism I am denouncing here. He plainly
+taught, on the contrary, that the universalist who stays in his own
+domain (see his admiration for Spinoza and Goethe) is the great human
+model. Compare this with Maurras for whom the universalist, even
+when non-political (the infinitist, the pantheist) is profoundly
+contemptible. It is also difficult for me to see Taine as the godfather
+of those who glorify the soldier at the expense of the man of justice
+and the man of study,[182] who exhort the nations to cultivate their
+prejudices where they are ‘totally foreign to reason’ (Barrès) and who
+declare that the intelligence which cares nothing about what is social
+is the activity of a savage. I think Taine would cheerfully say of
+those who claim to derive from him the same thing that M. Bergson is
+reported to have said of some of his ‘disciples’: ‘These gentlemen are
+most original.’
+
+Nevertheless, Taine seems to me to be the initiator of the modern
+realists in two points. The first is his condemnation of individualism,
+more exactly, of the moral liberty of the citizen (for this, at
+bottom, is the meaning of his regret for the old corporations, and,
+more generally, of his exhortation to form groups, which shape the
+individual’s soul, instead of allowing it to be autonomous as against
+the State); and the second, which is far more novel than the first
+among French teachers, is his condemnation of idealist education. The
+peroration of the ‘_Régime moderne_’ obviously establishes the whole
+educational argument of the _Déracines_ and _L’Étape_:--
+
+‘Sometimes when he is with his intimates, as bitter and as overfatigued
+as he is, the young man is tempted to say to us: “By your education
+you induced us to believe that the world is made in a certain way.
+You deceived us. It is much uglier, stupider, dirtier, gloomier and
+harsher, at least to our sensibility and our imagination. You think
+they are over-excited and out of gear; well, if they are, it is your
+fault. That is why we curse and despise the whole of your world, and
+reject your pretended truths, which for us are lies, including those
+elementary and primary truths which you say are evident to common
+sense, and upon which you build your laws, your institutions, your
+society, your philosophy, your sciences and your arts.” That is what
+contemporary youth have been telling us aloud for fifteen years by
+their tastes, their opinions, their inclinations in literature, the
+arts and life.’
+
+Against this manifesto in favour of a practical education, let me set
+this protest of a true descendant of Montaigne, Pascal and Montesquieu:
+
+‘In his diatribe for the classical spirit and the primary truths of
+reason and philosophy which direct literary education of all kinds,
+Taine comes to use words similar to those of the adversaries of ancient
+literature,[183] of the general ideas which are inseparable from them,
+and of disinterested culture even. The only object would then be to
+prepare persons for an empirical world,[184] people taught to know the
+world as it is, and trained to make it continue as it now is. However,
+the school laws are too recent for one to be able decently to blame
+them for the evils of the age, and make them the cause of the hatred
+and scorn poured on society by those who are bored, enervate and out of
+their class. However, even if it were true that the comparison between
+the general principles of reason, morality and beauty, and empirical
+life engendered more disgust with the realities than it has done in
+the past, it would be a sad paradox to ask that this danger should
+be averted by banishing from education all elevated views and all
+idealism.’ (Renouvier, _Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire_, tome iv,
+p. 541.)
+
+
+Note M (Page 95)
+
+_This cult brings out a silliness of mind which to me seems wholly an
+acquisition of the nineteenth century._
+
+This silliness of mind assumes another form, i.e. the belief (rigidly
+formulated by Maurras) that in politics you can find laws of cause
+and effect as certainly valid as those of weight or electricity.
+(‘Politics are a _science_.’) This is the superstition of science,
+held to be competent in all domains, including that of morality; a
+superstition which, I repeat, is an acquisition of the nineteenth
+century. It remains to discover whether those who brandish this
+doctrine believe in it or whether they simply want to give the prestige
+of a scientific appearance to the passions of their hearts, which they
+perfectly well know are nothing but passions. It is to be noted that
+the dogma that history is obedient to scientific laws is preached
+especially by partisans of arbitrary authority. This is quite natural,
+since it eliminates the two realities they most hate, i.e. human
+liberty and the historical action of the individual.
+
+
+Note N (Page 98)
+
+_Our age has seen priests of the mind teaching that the gregarious
+is the praiseworthy form of thought, and that independent thought is
+contemptible._
+
+Note that what is new in this crusade against individualism (the great
+apostle of which is M. Maurras) is not the recognition that ‘the
+individual is only an abstraction’, that to a great extent, he is
+formed by his race, his surroundings, his nation, a thousand things
+which are not himself. The novelty is the cult for this servitude, the
+order given to mankind to submit entirely to it, the contempt shown
+for any attempt to get free from it. Once again this is the cult (so
+strange in French thinkers) for the _inevitable_ part of the human
+being, the hatred for its free part.
+
+Note that those who to-day preach obedience of the mind, not only
+demand it from the uncultured masses but from the men of thought,
+_especially_ from the men of thought. The anti-individualists of the
+Dreyfus affair particularly opposed the independence of scientists,
+writers, and philosophers--‘the mad vanity of a few intellectuals’.
+Nevertheless, the most curious thing is not that they require this
+obedience, but that they obtain it. When M. Maritain declares that
+‘everyone cannot philosophize and that, for men, the essential thing
+is to choose a master’, and when M. Maurras asserts that the function
+of most minds is to be ‘servants’ and to reflect the thought of some
+leader, these teachers find a number of men of thought to applaud and
+abdicate their liberty of mind in their favour. The thinkers of the
+eighteenth century said: ‘A religion is needed for the people.’ Those
+of our age say: ‘A religion is needed for ourselves.’ What Barrès
+wrote: ‘The part of the masters is to justify the habits and prejudices
+of France, so as best to prepare our children to take their place in
+the national procession,’ he certainly meant that he and his colleagues
+were to walk in this procession. Here we again come upon that thirst
+for discipline which I spoke of above and which seemed to me so worthy
+of remark in the descendants of Montaigne and Renan. The cause, I said,
+was their desire to belong to a ‘strong group’. In them it also arises
+from a feeling for the artistic value of regimenting a collection of
+men in a beautiful ‘procession’, and also from the joy felt by so many
+souls in being governed, if not having to make the effort to think for
+themselves--a most curious joy in so-called men of thought.
+
+The cult for the collective soul, with all its violation of human
+consciousness, seems to me admirably denounced by a passage of Maine
+de Biran, quoted by M. L. Brunschvicg (op. cit., _La Sociologie de
+l’ordre_, p. 526):--
+
+‘... According to M. Bonald, it is not the human mind, it is not
+the individual understanding which is the seat, the true subject of
+inherence of the nations or (universal) truths under discussion; but
+it is society, which, gifted with a kind of collective understanding
+different from that of individuals, was from its origin imbued with
+them through the gift of speech and by virtue of a miraculous influence
+exerted on the mass alone, independent of its parts. The individual,
+the man, is nothing; society alone exists; society is the soul of
+the moral world, it alone exists, while individual persons are only
+phenomena. Let those who can, understand this social metaphysics. If
+the author himself understands it clearly, then I am in the wrong.
+Then we must cease to talk of philosophy and recognize the nothingness
+of the science of intellectual and moral man, we must admit that all
+psychology based on the primitive fact of consciousness is simply
+false, and we must consider science itself as an illusion which
+perpetually deceives and misleads us by showing us everything, even our
+own existence, in a false and fantastic light.’
+
+M. Brunschvicg very rightly adds: ‘The antithesis could not be stated
+more clearly. Either the primary fact of consciousness, or the primary
+fact of language; either Socrates or Bonald.’
+
+Either Socrates or Bonald. Barrès and Maurras made their choice.
+
+
+Note O (Page 118)
+
+_... Péguy who admires philosophies to the extent that ‘they are good
+fighters.’_[185]
+
+This determination to praise philosophers for their virtues of action
+rather than for their intellectual virtues is very frequent among
+men of thought to-day. In his _Souvenirs concernant Lagneau_, Alain,
+wishing to give as favourable a picture of his master as possible,
+praises his energy and his resolution at least as much as his
+intelligence. It is also very remarkable--although here literature
+only is in question--to see a professor of moral science (M. Jacques
+Bardoux) setting a special value on those French literary men who were
+soldiers, i.e. Vauvenargues, Vigny, Péguy. As to the men of letters
+themselves, I shall content myself with pointing out that one of
+them who is most applauded by his own colleagues recently declared
+that he chiefly admired d’Annunzio for his attitude as an officer,
+and expressed regret that he had returned to literature.[186] The
+Emperor Julian praised Aristotle for having said that he felt prouder
+of being the author of his _Treatise on Theology_ than he would have
+felt if he had destroyed the power of the Persians. One might still
+find soldiers in France who would agree with this judgment, but very
+few men of letters. Elsewhere (_Les Sentiments de Critias_, p. 206)
+I have attempted to give the history and the explanation of this
+desire (so curious in men of the pen) to exalt a warlike life and to
+scorn a sedentary life. Note that this characteristic is to be seen in
+contemporary writers long before the war of 1914, and that those who
+talk most about a warlike life are not always those who lead it.
+
+The new thing, I repeat, is not that we see men of letters praising
+an active life and scorning a sedentary life; it is _the absence of
+naiveté, the dogmatic tone_. When Ronsard exclaims: ‘Good Gods, who
+would praise those who let life go by bent over books’;[187] when
+Bertrand de Born wishes that ‘no man of high lineage should have any
+thought but cutting off heads and arms’; when Froissart sings the
+glories of chivalry and casts his scorn in the faces of the bourgeois,
+no one will take these candid lyre-players, who like noble poses and
+do not even know that the word doctrine exists, for the ancestors of
+our grave professors of belligerent aesthetics. Moreover, I doubt
+whether the author of _Scenes and Doctrines of Nationalism_ would have
+condescended to be a descendant of these simple-minded persons.
+
+I find scorn for the life of the mind clearly professed in a dogmatic
+tone, in a writer of the seventeenth century who frequently reminds one
+of certain modern authors by his efforts to humiliate the toga before
+the sword. (It is true that this writer was a gentleman of the very
+minor nobility.)
+
+‘Certainly, there is no better way of relaxing the vigour of men’s
+courage than to occupy their minds with peaceful and sedentary
+exercises, and idleness cannot enter civilized States in a more subtle
+or dangerous disguise than that of literature. Lazy and idle persons
+have in part ruined commerce and agriculture, which are the cause
+of the weakness of our condition and the cowardice of our age.’ (J.
+L. de Balzac, _Le Prince_, 1631. He then admits literature and the
+sciences to the State insofar as ‘they strengthen and embellish the
+Mother-country’.)
+
+On the other hand, a master from the great period of French literature
+writes a eulogy of the life of the mind at the expense of the active
+mind, which I hardly think would be accepted by many of the moderns who
+venerate that period (I am especially thinking of those who admire the
+thought of Georges Sorel).
+
+‘In France great strength of character and width of mind are needed if
+a man is to reject offices and employments and thus consent to remain
+at home and do nothing. Scarcely anyone possesses sufficient merit to
+play this part with dignity, nor sufficient resources to fill up the
+void of time without what the vulgar call “business”. But the wise
+man’s idleness needs only a better name, and we ought to say that one
+who meditates, talks, reads and is calm, is working.’ (La Bruyère, _Du
+Mérite personnel_.)
+
+
+Note P (Page 122)
+
+_The ‘Manifesto of the Party of Intelligence’ (Figaro, 19th July,
+1919)._
+
+This manifesto, signed by fifty-four French writers, several of whom
+are among the teachers most respected by their fellow-citizens, is
+of the greatest importance to the present inquiry. In addition to
+the strange passage on the Church’s mission which I quoted above, it
+contains things like this:--
+
+‘Nationalism, which the conceptions of the intelligence impose
+on political conduct as well as on the order of the world, is a
+reasonable, humane system, and French in addition.’
+
+And further on:--
+
+‘When a literature becomes national does it not acquire a more
+universal significance, a more humanly general interest?’
+
+And again:--
+
+‘We believe--and the world believes with us--that it is part of the
+destiny of our race to defend the spiritual interests of humanity....
+We are solicitous for Europe and all the humanity remaining in the
+world. French humanity is the sovereign protector of this.’
+
+And above all:--
+
+‘Victorious France means to take her place again in the order of the
+mind, the only order whereby a legitimate domination may be exercised.’
+
+Hence the desire to found (the manifesto itself underlines the words):
+‘_The intellectual Federation of Europe and the world under the aegis
+of victorious France, the guardian of civilization._’
+
+Victory under arms conferring the right to command in the intellectual
+order--that is professed to-day by French thinkers! One remembers the
+Roman writers, from whom these thinkers claim descent, who took as the
+leader of their minds Greece, which had been conquered by force of
+arms; one also remembers the German teachers of 1871 who also claimed
+intellectual hegemony for their ‘victorious’ nation, which they too
+claimed as ‘the guardian of civilization’.[188]
+
+When this manifesto was published, somewhat similar reflections seem
+to have occurred to the mind of one of our great writers. In a letter
+concerning this document,[189] Marcel Proust deplores the proclamation
+of ‘a kind of “Frankreich ueber alles”, the policeman of the literature
+of all nations.’ As a true priest of the mind, he goes on: ‘Why take
+this peremptory attitude towards other countries in such matters as
+literature, where a man only reigns by persuasion?’ I am happy to take
+this opportunity to do homage to this true ‘clerk’, and to say that I
+know that there are still other writers in France beside those who only
+believe in the virtue of cold steel.
+
+
+Note Q (Page 138)
+
+_Those who base their judgments on their artistic sensibilities._
+
+This artistic origin of the political attitudes of so many men of
+letters has been pointed out with great ability by M. Daniel Halévy in
+the case of M. Maurras. In an old article (_La Grande France_, 1902) M.
+Halévy quotes this beautiful passage from M. Maurras’s _Anthinéa_ on
+the walk of women carrying a clay pot balanced on their heads:--
+
+‘The bosom swells and is modelled like a vase, it opens like a flower.
+The neck settles, the loins strain nervously. Their walk becomes
+graver and more supple, is measured with an inestimable sobriety; it
+unrolls in the mind like a piece of music. This living pillar moves,
+glides, advances, without being interrupted by any sudden jerk or any
+break. It follows the undulations of the ground, adapts itself to the
+slightest rises, and thus resembles the stem of a beautiful young tree
+set free from its roots, moving over the ground without leaving it for
+a fraction of an inch. An infinite multitude of half-pauses make the
+jerks imperceptible, or one is only conscious of their succession, a
+continual harmony which leaves its curves in the air....’
+
+M. Daniel Halévy adds:--
+
+‘I quote the whole passage because it gives the very idea of Charles
+Maurras. For his classical way of thought, things are beautiful, not
+from the shocks of feeling and passion, but from the form and rhythm
+which give them continuity, or rather existence in the human sense of
+the word. M. Charles Maurras applies this taste for form to the study
+of history, and that is the whole of his “sociology”.’
+
+There could be no better definition of the type of man for whom things
+are good insofar as they satisfy his artistic sensibility. Let me place
+in opposition to him the exactly contrary type, leaving the reader to
+judge which of the two may claim to belong to ‘the intelligence’:--
+
+‘... For the perfection of things should be measured by their nature
+alone, and things are not more or less perfect because they flatter or
+wound our senses.’ (Spinoza.)
+
+
+
+
+_Footnotes_
+
+
+[1] See Note A at the end of this book.
+
+[2] It is to be noted that a little more than a century ago French
+working-men from different provinces frequently engaged in desperate
+fights among themselves. (See Martin Nadaud, _Mémoires de Léonard_, p.
+93.)
+
+[3] See Petit de Julleville, _La Comédie et les Moeurs en France au
+moyen age_, and André Le Breton, _Le Roman au XVIIe Siècle_.
+
+[4] The great novelty is that to-day people accept the position that
+everything should be political, that they should proclaim it and take a
+pride in it. Otherwise it is perfectly obvious that men, shopkeepers,
+or poets, have not waited for the present time to try to get rid of a
+rival by political means. Remember how La Fontaine’s rivals kept him
+out of the Académie for ten years.
+
+[5] As de Tocqueville profoundly remarks, these only occurred when a
+first improvement in his condition encouraged the man of the people to
+want more; i.e. towards the end of the eighteenth century.
+
+[6] I am here speaking of Western Jews of the bourgeois class. The
+Jewish proletariat did not await our time to plunge into the feeling of
+its racial peculiarity. However, it does so without giving provocation.
+
+[7] This was the notion expressed by Benedict XV when he told the poor
+‘to take delight in the prosperity of elevated persons and to expect
+confidently their assistance’.
+
+[8] For example, M. Paul Bourget’s _La Barricade_, where the author, a
+disciple of Georges Sorel, exhorts the bourgeoise not to leave to the
+proletariat the monopoly of class passion and violence. See also André
+Beaunier, _Les Devoirs de la Violence_ (quoted by Halperine-Kaminski
+in the preface to Tolstoi’s book, _The Law of Love and the Law of
+Violence_).
+
+[9] ‘The phrase, _the sublime bourgeois_, which would have caused
+so much laughter twenty years ago, has now acquired for the French
+bourgeoisie a mystic plenitude owing to its fusion with the highest
+social and national values.’ (_Eloge du Bourgeois Français_, p. 284.)
+
+[10] Let me define more precisely what is new here. In the seventeenth
+century the citizen already had the notion of national honour; Racine’s
+Letters would be sufficient to prove it (see a significant page in
+the _Mémoires_ of de Pontis, Book XIV); but he left it to the King to
+decide what this honour demanded; indignation like Vauban’s against the
+peace of Ryswick ‘which dishonours the King and the whole nation’, is
+a very exceptional emotion under the old _régime_. The modern citizen
+claims to feel for himself what is demanded by the national honour, and
+he is ready to rise up against his leaders if they have a different
+conception of it. This new development is not peculiar to the nations
+living under democratic systems; in 1911 the citizens of the German
+monarchy thought that the concessions made to their country by France
+in exchange for German abstention in Morocco were insufficient, and
+they were extremely angry with their Sovereign who had accepted these
+conditions which, in their opinion, were an insult to German honour. It
+may be asserted that the same thing would be true of France if she ever
+became a monarchy again and if the King took it upon himself to feel
+the interest of national honour in a different manner to his subjects.
+Moreover, this actually happened throughout the reign of Louis-Philippe.
+
+[11] For example, the humiliation of Olmüts in 1805. It may be asserted
+that no democracy would have endured it, at least with the philosophy
+displayed by the King of Prussia and his government. On the other hand,
+is it necessary to stress the other dangers to peace which existed
+under the Kings? It is sufficient to quote Montesquieu’s remark: ‘The
+spirit of the Monarchy is war and aggrandisement.’
+
+[12] In 1886, the Schnaebele affair; in 1890, the incident in Paris
+where the King of Spain in the uniform of a Colonel of Uhlans was
+hooted; in 1891, the incident of the Empress of Germany passing through
+Paris; in 1897, Fashoda; in 1904, the incident of the British trawlers
+sunk by the Russian Fleet, etc. Of course, I do not claim that the
+Kings only waged practical wars, although with them the allegation of
+‘wounded honour’ was very often a mere pretext. Louis XIV obviously
+did not make war on Holland because the Dutch struck a medal insulting
+him. Moreover, I shall grant that from time to time the Kings indulged
+in military invasions, a type of elegance which appears to be less and
+less tempting to the democracies; one cannot now imagine the peace of
+the world disturbed by excursions like those of Charles VIII into Italy
+or Charles XII into the Ukraine.
+
+[13] Is it necessary to point out that wars started by public
+passion against the will of the government have often occurred under
+monarchies? And not only under constitutional monarchies, like the
+war of France with Spain in 1823 and with Turkey in 1826, but under
+absolute monarchies. For instance, the War of the Austrian Succession
+imposed on Fleury by an uprising of public opinion; the War of American
+Independence under Louis XVI; in 1806 the war of Prussia against
+Napoleon. In 1813 the war of Saxony. It seems probable that in 1914 war
+was imposed on absolute sovereigns like Nicholas II and Wilhelm II by
+popular passions which they had been exciting for years and then found
+themselves unable to restrain.
+
+[14] ‘But what is much more important than material facts is the soul
+of nations. Among all races a kind of effervescence it to be noticed;
+some defend certain principles, others the opposing principles. By
+becoming members of the League of Nations, the different peoples do
+not abandon their _national morality_.’ (Speech of the German Minister
+for Foreign Affairs at Geneva, on the occasion of the entry of Germany
+into the League of Nations, 10th September, 1926.) The orator went on:
+‘Yet this should not result in raising up nation against nation.’ One
+is surprised that he did not add: ‘On the contrary.’ How much nobler,
+and at the same time more respectful of the truth, is the language
+of Treitschke: ‘This consciousness of themselves which the nations
+are acquiring and which can only be strengthened by culture, this
+consciousness means that war will never disappear from the earth, in
+spite of the closer linking up of interests, in spite of the growing
+uniformity of customs and the exterior forms of life.’ (Quoted by
+Charles Andler in _Les Origines du Pangermanisme_, p. 223.)
+
+[15] This is what Mirabeau seems to have foreseen when he announced
+to the Constituent Assembly that the wars of the ‘free nations’ would
+cause the wars of the Kings to be regretted.
+
+[16] The religion of the ‘national soul’ is obviously and logically
+an emanation of the popular soul. Moreover, it has been sung by an
+eminently democratic literature: Romanticism. It is to be observed that
+the worst enemies of Romanticism and of Democracy have adopted it; it
+is constantly to be found in the Action Française. To such an extent
+is it now impossible to be a patriot without flattering democratic
+passions.
+
+[17] See Note B at the end of the book.
+
+[18] See Brunot, _Histoire de la Langue Française_, t. v, liv. iii.
+
+[19] On this topic see some excellent remarks of Auguste Comte, _Cours
+de Philosophie Positive_, 57^e leçon.
+
+[20] As a matter of fact, the peoples do not believe either that their
+ambitions go back to their ancestors; they are ignorant of history and
+do not believe it to be so even when it is true; they believe they
+believe, or, more exactly, they want to believe that they believe.
+However, that is enough to make them ferocious, perhaps more so than if
+they really believed it.
+
+[21] France is here in a position of manifest inferiority in regard
+to her neighbours. The modern French feel very slight inclinations to
+claim that they reincarnate the ambitions of Charlemagne or even of
+Louis XIV, despite the proclamations of certain men of letters.
+
+[22] For instance, the address of the ‘six great industrial and
+agricultural associations of Germany’ to Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg in
+May, 1914, which was not very different from that drawn up in 1815
+by the Prussian metallurgists to point out to their government what
+annexations should be made in the interests of their industry. (See
+Vidal de La Blache, _La France de l’Est_, chap. xix.) Moreover, some
+Germans are urgent in boldly proclaiming the economic character of
+their nationalism. ‘Let us not forget,’ says a well-known Pangermanist,
+‘that the German Empire, which is generally considered abroad as a
+purely military State, is in its origin (Zollverein) chiefly economic.’
+And again: ‘For us war is only the continuation of our commercial
+activity in times of peace, with other means but the same methods.’
+(Naumann, _L’Europe Centrale_, pp. 112, 247; see the whole book.)
+Germany seems to be not indeed the only country to practise commercial
+patriotism (England has done so just as much and for a much longer
+time) but the only country to boast of it.
+
+[23] And to build up a much less passionate patriotism. Think, for
+instance, of the agreements with foreigners accepted by patriotism
+based on interest (such as the Franco-German iron cartel), against
+which the patriotism based on pride rises up in revolt.
+
+[24] ‘Love of country is a real love of oneself.’ (Saint-Evremond.)
+
+[25] The divinizing of realism, of which patriotism specially consists,
+is expressed with all desirable candour in the ‘Addresses to the German
+People’ (Eighth Address); Fichte attacks religion for its claim to
+situate the superior life outside all interest in earthly matters: ‘It
+is an abuse of religion to force it, as Christianity has so often done,
+to extol complete indifference to the business of the State and the
+nation as the true religious spirit. Men,’ he declares, ‘are determined
+to find heaven on earth and to impregnate their earthly labours with
+something durable.’ He then shows, with great warmth, that this desire
+is the essence of patriotism, and it is evident that for him earthly
+labours become divine by becoming durable. This, indeed, is the only
+means men have discovered for divinizing their institutions.
+
+[26] It is necessary to recall that the United States did not enter the
+last war ‘in defence of principles’, but with the very practical object
+of safeguarding their prestige, which had been lowered by the facts
+that the Germans had torpedoed three of their ships? Nevertheless,
+their desire to pose as having been purely idealistic in this affair is
+noteworthy.
+
+[27] It may be said that religious passions, at least in the West, only
+exist as a reinforcement to national passions; in France, a man sets up
+as a Catholic in order to pose as being ‘more French’; in Germany as a
+Protestant in order to declare himself ‘more German’.
+
+[28] Here are two remarkable cases of idealistic passions which in the
+past successfully opposed national passion and are now submissive to
+it: (_a_) In France, the monarchic passion, which in 1792 was stronger
+than national feeling in many people, whereas in 1914 it was completely
+effaced by national feeling. (Everyone will agree that attachment to a
+certain form of government, i.e. at bottom, the attachment to a certain
+metaphysical conception, is an infinitely more idealistic passion than
+nationalist passion; however, I do not claim that all the Emigrés were
+inspired by this idealism.) (_b_) In Germany, the religious passion,
+which only fifty years ago was stronger than national feeling in more
+than fifty per cent of Germans, and to-day is entirely subject to
+national feeling (in 1866 the German Catholics desired the defeat of
+Germany; in 1914 they ardently desired it to be victorious). The Europe
+of to-day, compared with the Europe of the past, seems to contain many
+less chances of civil wars and many more chances of national wars;
+nothing could show better how much Europe has lost in idealism. (See
+Note D at the end of this book for additional matter on the attitude of
+the modern Catholics towards Catholicism when it is in opposition to
+their nationalism.)
+
+[29] For example, in words like the following, uttered at Venice on
+the 11th December, 1926, by the Italian Minister of Education and
+Fine Arts: ‘Artists must prepare themselves for the new imperialist
+function which must be carried out by our art. Above everything, we
+must categorically impose a principle of _Italianita_. Whoever copies
+a foreigner is guilty of _lèse-nation_ (an insult to the nation) like
+a spy who admits an enemy by a secret doorway.’ These words have to be
+approved by every adept of ‘_integral_ nationalism’. Moreover, we hear
+much the same thing in France from certain adversaries of Romanticism.
+
+[30] ‘Discipline from the lowest to the highest must be essential and
+of a religious type.’ (Mussolini, 25th October, 1925.) This is new
+language in the mouth of a statesman, even of the most realist kind;
+it may be asserted that neither Richelieu nor Bismarck would have
+applied the word ‘religious’ to an activity whose object is exclusively
+materialistic.
+
+[31] Notably for Renan and ‘speculative a-moralism’. (H. Massis,
+_Judgments_, i.)
+
+[32] See Note E at the end of this book for further information on this
+prestige, and what is new about it in history.
+
+[33] In 1891 Barrès wrote to the editor of _La Plume_: ‘If these
+books have any value, it is from the logic, the continuity of thought
+I have put into them during five years.’ (‘These books’ included
+his Boulangiste campaign.) And, in the preface to his collection of
+articles entitled ‘Scènes et Documents du nationalisme’, he says: ‘I
+think that if Doumic will examine it from a greater distance he will
+find a development, and not contradictions, in my work.’
+
+[34] I shall be told of ‘clerks’ who, apparently without degradation,
+have at some time or other taken the part of a race or a nation, even
+of their own race or nation. That is because they believed that the
+cause of that race or nation coincided at that time with the cause of
+abstract justice.
+
+[35] Similar occurrences may be observed among the ancients. For
+instance, Cicero denounced his fellow-citizens for having destroyed
+Corinth merely to avenge an insult to their ambassador (De off., I, xi).
+
+[36] Already in 1911, when a writer quoted this sentence: ‘It is
+impossible to accept the situation that humanity should be bound
+for indefinite centuries by the marriages, battles, treaties of the
+narrow-minded, ignorant, egotistic creatures who during the middle
+ages were at the head of affairs in this world,’ he felt it necessary
+to add: ‘Fortunately these lines were written by Renan; one could not
+write them to-day without being called an unpatriotic Frenchman.’ (G.
+Guy-Grand, _La Philosophie Nationaliste_, p. 165.) Without being called
+so _by the men of thought_--that is the curious part of it.
+
+[37] Quoted by Mgr. Chapon in his admirable study, ‘La France et
+l’Allemagne devant la doctrine chrétienne.’ (_Correspondant_, of 15th
+August, 1915.)
+
+[38] See his _Letters_, ii, p. 31.
+
+[39] Consider how willingly they now accept military service. See Note
+F at the end of this book.
+
+[40] Here are the reasons given by a German Catholic for this attitude
+among those of his religion: ‘(_a_) Their incomplete knowledge of the
+facts and opinions in the belligerent and neutral countries; (_b_)
+_Their patriotism, which could not be allowed to separate itself from
+the union binding together the German people_; (_c_) The fear of a
+second Kulturkampf, which would be doubly dangerous if the German
+Catholics had even appeared to agree with the campaign carried on in
+France against German methods of waging war.’ The second reason will
+be noted, i.e. the desire to be at unity with the nation, whatever the
+moral aspect of its cause. Here, at least, is one reason which Bossuet
+did not allege when he screened the violences of Louis XIV.
+
+Let me recall that when, in 1914, the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg in
+the Reichstag hinted at a sort of apology for the violation of Belgian
+neutrality, he was sharply reproved by the Christian minister von
+Harnack ‘for having tried to excuse what did not need excusing’. (See
+A. Loisy, _Guerre et Religion_, p. 14.)
+
+[41] The clergy of the allied nations are eager to throw in the faces
+of the German clergy their union with injustice in 1914. They abuse
+their own good fortune in belonging to nations whose cause happened
+to be just. When Italy, in 1923, at the time of the Corfu incident,
+adopted towards Greece an attitude as unjust as that of Austria towards
+Serbia in 1914, I am not aware that the Italian clergy expressed
+indignation. Nor do I remember that in 1900, when a European army
+intervened in Chinese affairs (the Boxer affair) and excesses were
+committed by the soldiers, any strong protests were uttered by the
+clergies of the respective nations.
+
+[42] A particularly remarkable attitude was that of the philosopher
+Boutroux. You will find an admirable denunciation of it from the pen of
+Charles Andler, _Les Origines du Pangermanisme_, p. viii.
+
+[43] This may be seen especially in the chorus of the Seven against
+Thebes: ‘Gods of our City, let it not be destroyed with our houses and
+our hearths.... O ye who have dwelt therein so long, will ye betray
+this land?’ Six centuries later this may be seen in the ‘Aeneid’, where
+the preservation of the Trojan City across the seas is plainly due
+solely to the protection of Juno, and in no wise to any inward notion
+of Trojan blood giving it an assurance of eternal duration.
+
+[44] Although the Germans appear to have been the inventors of the
+passion I am denouncing, Lessing and Schlegel seem to have been the
+first to brandish their poets as the expression of the national
+soul, from a feeling of exasperation with the universalism of French
+literature. The men of the French Pléiade (who will certainly be
+brought up against me) wished to give their sensibility a national
+mode of expression, a national language; they never claimed to give
+a national character to that sensibility, to oppose it to other
+national sensibilities. The systematic nationalization of the mind
+is undoubtedly an invention of modern times. As regards the men of
+learning, this nationalizing has undoubtedly been favoured by the
+disappearance of Latin as the scientific language; and no one will ever
+be able to say to what an extent this disappearance was an element of
+arrest in civilisation.
+
+[45] In Nietzsche’s opinion, this was the case with Wagner, who, when
+he gave himself out to his compatriots as the Messiah of German art,
+saw that there was ‘a good vacant place to take’, while the whole
+of his artistic formation as well as his profound philosophy, was
+essentially universalist. (See _Ecce Homo_, p. 58. ‘What I have never
+forgiven Wagner is his condescending to Germany.’) One wonders whether
+the same might not be said of a certain apostle of ‘Lorrain genius’ or
+of ‘Provençal genius’.
+
+[46] The nationalization of the mind sometimes has results whose savour
+is not sufficiently enjoyed. In 1904, during the centenary celebrations
+of Petrarch, the nations of Goethe and Shakespeare were not invited,
+because they are not Latins; but the Roumanians were invited. We do not
+know whether Uruguay was invited.
+
+[47] Anatole France, _La Vie Littéraire_, tome ii, p. 274. The
+nationalist desires in French writers which I have been pointing out
+have had other than political results; no one will ever be able to
+say how many among them in the past fifty years have falsified their
+talents, mistaken their true gifts in their endeavours to ‘feel in the
+French manner’. A good example is the _Voyage de Sparte_, where so
+many pages show what a beautiful piece of work it might have been if
+the author had not _forced_ himself to feel his Lorrain soul under a
+Greek sky. Here we come upon one of the most curious characteristics
+in the writers of this age; the rejection of freedom of mind _for
+themselves_, the thirst for ‘a discipline’ (the whole fortune of MM.
+Maurras and Maritain comes from this), a thirst which in most of them
+is the result of a fundamental intellectual nihilism. (On this nihilism
+in Barrès, see Curtius, ‘Barrès and the intellectual foundations of
+French nationalism,’ extracts in _Union pour la Vérité_, May, 1925;
+in Maurras, see Guy-Grand, op. cit., p. 19; and L. Dimier, _Vingt Ans
+d’Action Française_, p. 330: ‘I have never seen a more unhappy soul
+than his.’) But the psychology of contemporary writers in itself and
+apart from its political action is not my subject here.
+
+[48] I think it novel that a poet should give rise to a demonstration
+so essentially practical as the address of the Naval League of Venice
+to d’Annunzio after the publication of _La Nave_. ‘On the day when your
+genius radiates with new splendour over the ancient ruler of “our sea”,
+over Venice, to-day disarmed against Pola, the Naval League of Venice
+thanks you with emotion, hoping that the third Italy may at last arm
+the prow and set sail towards the world.’ (_Translator’s Note._--I have
+rendered the French version as quoted; its meaning or lack of meaning
+is no doubt inherent in the genius of the original, which I have not
+before me.)
+
+[49] Compare with Balzac, who, though a Conservative, never hesitates
+to show his Conservatives and particularly his Catholics in an
+unfavourable light, if he thinks that the true light. See the examples
+quoted by E. Seillière (_Balzac et la morale romantique_, pp. 27
+onwards, and 84 onwards), who sharply reproaches Balzac.
+
+[50] ‘_Resurrection_,’ ‘_Jean-Christophe_’ (derived in this respect
+from the procedure of George Sand). On the other hand, I seem to find a
+great deal of justice done the bourgeois in _Les Miserables_, which is
+nevertheless a most ‘tendencious’ novel.
+
+[51] For instance, pre-war French novels showing the French in
+Alsace-Lorraine. We may be quite certain that since 1918 the Germans
+have written novels which are the exact counterpart to these.
+
+[52] See Note G at the end of this book.
+
+[53] See, for instance, Fustel de Coulanges’s study _De la manière
+d’écrire l’histoire en France et en Allemagne_. It will be observed
+that this author’s denunciation of the German historians exactly
+applies to certain French historians of recent years, with this
+difference: That the German alters history to exalt his nation and the
+Frenchman to exalt a political system. In general it may be said that
+the ‘tendencious’ philosophies of the Germans lead to national war, and
+those of the French to civil war. Is it necessary to repeat, after so
+many others, how much this proves the moral superiority of the latter?
+
+[54] _Revue Universelle_, 15th April, 1924. Here is that very curious
+desire of the moderns to yield to subjectivism, whereas their elders
+made every effort to combat it.
+
+[55] See Note H at the end of this book.
+
+[56] Yet the Jesuits thought of doing so to combat the Jansenists. (See
+Racine, _Port-Royal_, pt. i.)
+
+[57] On the matter of the lack of literary sensibility which
+accompanies this political criticism among its adepts, see a paragraph
+of L. Dimier, _Vingt Ans d’Action Française_, p. 334.
+
+[58] The distinction between these two humanitarianisms is well
+expressed by Goethe when he relates (Dichtung und Wahrheit) the
+indifference of himself and his friends to the events of 1789. ‘In our
+little circle, we took no notice of news and newspapers; our object
+was to know Man; as for men, we left them to do as they chose.’ Need
+I recall that the ‘humanities’, as instituted by the Jesuits in the
+seventeenth century, the ‘studia humanitatis’, are ‘the study of what
+is most essentially human’, in no sense altruistic exercises. See
+further Note I at the end of this book for a curious quotation from one
+of the ancients.
+
+[59] This the Church has understood so well, and the corollary to
+this truth: That love between men can only be created by developing
+in them the sensibility for abstract man, and by combatting in them
+the interest for concrete man; by turning them towards metaphysical
+meditation and away from the study of history (see Malebranche). This
+is exactly the contrary direction to that of the modern ‘clerks’ but,
+once again, these ‘clerks’ have not the slightest desire to create love
+among men.
+
+[60] Thus they adopt the national spirit if it seems to serve their
+interests; for instance, the party of ‘nationalist-socialists’.
+
+[61] Certain nationalists, desirous of honouring cosmopolitanism,
+whose full value their intelligence perceives, and yet not wishing
+to sacrifice nationalism, declare that cosmopolitanism represents
+‘enlightened nationalism’. M. Paul Bourget, who gives this definition
+(_Paris-Times_, June, 1924), quotes Goethe and Stendhal as examples,
+‘the former of whom remained so profoundly German while striving
+to understand the whole movement of French thought, and the
+latter remained so profoundly French while he devoted himself to
+understanding Italy.’ One wonders how these two masters showed the
+least, even enlightened, ‘nationalism’ by remaining profoundly German
+and profoundly French. Obviously M. Bourget confuses national and
+nationalist.
+
+[62] Almost all works of national propaganda among the small nations
+of Eastern Europe are anthologies of poetry. Very few are works of
+thought. See the words uttered by E. Boutroux in August, 1915, to the
+Committee of the Entente Cordiale, against the peoples who attach too
+much importance to the intelligence, which ‘of itself tends to be one
+and common to all beings capable of knowledge’.
+
+[63] _Les Nouvelles Littéraires_, 25th September, 1926.
+
+[64] Here is a specimen of the acrobatics which these teachers are
+compelled to perform in order to conciliate Christian doctrine with
+the preaching of national particularisms: ‘We wish to set the ideal of
+universalism in positive relation to the contemporary reality of the
+national form, which is that of all life, even the Christian life.’
+(Pastor Witte, quoted by A. Loisy, _Guerre et Religion_, p. 18.) Here
+are minds for whom the squaring of the circle is obviously mere child’s
+play.
+
+[65] Is it not suggestive to note that the Church in the last twenty
+years has replaced the commandment ‘Homicide shalt thou not be, in fact
+or by assent’ with ‘Homicide shalt thou not be, without right, nor
+voluntarily’?
+
+[66] For example in this passage of Bossuet: ‘Since we are obliged to
+love all men and since in truth no man is a foreigner to a Christian,
+there is all the more reason for loving our fellow citizens. All the
+love a man feels for himself, for his family, and for his friends is
+united in the love he feels for his country....’ (_Politique tirée de
+l’Ecriture Sainte_, I, vi. Notice the phrase ‘All the love a man feels
+for himself....’ It wholly justifies Saint Evremond’s phrase: ‘Love
+of country is really love of oneself.’) It appears that the Church
+would prefer to go on presenting patriotism under this one aspect of
+love (see the inquiry of ‘les Lettres’ on the Church and Nationalism,
+1922-3), which would allow her to exalt this passion (as its
+popularity requires) without violating the principles of Christianity.
+Unfortunately for the Church, positive men come along and remind her
+that patriotism is something more than love, and includes ‘hatred for
+the foreigner’. (Maurras, _Dilemme de Marc Sangnier_.) Who will deliver
+us from the truth-tellers?
+
+[67] A. Lugan, _La grande loi sociale de l’amour des hommes_, liv. ii,
+chap. iii.
+
+[68] Père Ollivier, _Les Amitiés de Jesus_, p. 142.
+
+[69] _Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique_ (1919), in
+the article headed ‘Patrie’. The reader will note the extraordinary
+practical spirit of this article, and the desire to love only those who
+have done something for us.
+
+[70] Loisy’s _Guerre et Religion_, p. 60. Nevertheless, a certain
+number of practising clergy speak in the same way; see Guillot de
+Givry, _Le Christ et la Patrie_, towards the end.
+
+[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.
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78218 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78218 ***</div>
+
+<div class="chapter center">
+
+<h1>
+<i>The Great Betrayal</i>
+</h1>
+<i>(La Trahison des Clercs)</i><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>By</i><br>
+<span style="font-size:x-large;">Julien Benda</span><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<i>Translated by</i><br>
+<span style="font-size:larger;">Richard Aldington</span>
+<br>
+<br>
+London<br>
+George Routledge &amp; Sons, Ltd.<br>
+Broadway House, Carter Lane, E.C.<br>
+1928.
+
+<hr class="front x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<p class="center" style="font-size:smaller;">
+PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY<br>
+STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, LTD., HERTFORD.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="front x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter center">
+<h2><i>Contents</i></h2>
+
+<a href="#Translators_Note">Translator’s Note</a><br>
+<a href="#Authors_Foreword">Author’s Foreword</a><br>
+<a href="#I">I – The Modern Perfecting of Political Passions</a><br>
+<a href="#II">II –  Significance of this Movement—Nature of Political Passions</a><br>
+<a href="#III">III –  The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal</a><br>
+<a href="#IV">IV –  Summary—Predictions</a><br>
+<a href="#NOTES">Notes</a><br>
+[<a href="#FOOTNOTES">Footnotes</a>]<br>
+[<a href="#tn">Transcriber’s Notes</a>]
+</div>
+
+<hr class="front x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_v">[v]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Translators_Note">
+    <i>Translator’s Note</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The title of M. Benda’s book is <i>La Trahison des
+Clercs</i>. The word ‘Clercs’, which occurs throughout
+the book, is defined by M. Benda’s as ‘all those
+who speak to the world in a transcendental manner’.
+I do not know the English word for ‘all those who
+speak to the world in a transcendental manner’. But
+in Chaucer’s time the word ‘clerk’ (‘a clerke of
+Oxenforde’) meant anyone who was not a ‘layman’,
+a word employed by M. Benda as the antithesis to
+‘clerk’. We still use the word in this sense when we
+speak of a ‘clerk in holy orders’ and retain its root in
+‘cleric’. A ‘cleric’ is the person described by M. Benda
+as ‘pre-eminently a clerk’. If the words ‘in holy
+orders’ are subtracted from ‘a clerk in holy orders’, the
+remaining ‘clerk’ is roughly what M. Benda means,
+though he also uses ‘clerk’ to include ‘a clerk in holy
+orders’. Nowadays a clerk is a person who performs
+sedentary labour in an office, and the word in England
+is pronounced ‘clark’. In America a clerk (pronounced
+‘clurrk’) is what the English call a shop-assistant.
+In order to avoid a misleading title I have called this
+translation <i>The Great Betrayal</i>, giving M. Benda’s title
+in brackets afterwards. Where the word ‘clerk’ first
+occurs in the book, I have added the words ‘in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_vi">[vi]</span>medieval sense’, and throughout the text I have invariably
+written the word in inverted commas, ‘clerk’, to avoid
+any possible misunderstanding.</p>
+
+<p>I should add that the words ‘real’ and ‘realism’
+are nearly always used in this book as the antithesis to
+‘ideal’ and ‘idealism’. Other abstract words are
+used in a rather special sense which I hope will be plain
+from the context.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  R. A.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="front x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_vii">[vii]</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container center" style="font-size:larger; margin:4em 0 4em 0;">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">‘The world is suffering from lack of faith</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">in a transcendental truth.’</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0 right"><i>Renouvier.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="front x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="p_viii"></a><a id="p_ix"></a>[ix]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Authors_Foreword">
+    <i>Author’s Foreword</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Tolstoi relates that when he was in the Army he
+saw one of his brother officers strike a man who
+fell out from the ranks during a march. Tolstoi said
+to him:—</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you not ashamed to treat a fellow human being
+in this way? Have you not read the Gospels?’</p>
+
+<p>The other officer replied:—</p>
+
+<p>‘And have you not read Army Orders?’</p>
+
+<p>This retort will always be thrown back at the spiritual
+man who tries to take the direction of the material.
+To me it seems a very wise one. Those who lead men
+to the conquest of material things have no need of
+justice and charity.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless I think it important that there should
+be men—even if they are scorned—who urge their
+fellow beings to other religions than the religion of the
+material. Now, those who should play this part (to whom
+I have given the name of ‘clerks’ in the medieval sense
+of the word) have not only ceased to do so, but are playing
+an exactly contrary part. Most of the influential
+moralists of the past fifty years in Europe, particularly
+the men of letters in France, call upon mankind to sneer
+at the Gospel and to read Army Orders.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_x">[x]</span></p>
+
+<p>This new teaching seems to me all the more deserving
+of serious attention because it is addressed to a humanity
+which of its own volition is now established in materialism
+with a decisiveness hitherto unknown. And I shall begin
+by showing this to be true.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_1">[1]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="I">
+    I
+    <br>
+    <i>The Modern Perfecting of Political Passions</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>We are to consider those passions termed political,
+owing to which men rise up against other men, the chief
+of which are racial passions, class passions and national
+passions. Those persons who are most determined to
+believe in the inevitable progress of the human species,
+especially in its indispensable movement towards more
+peace and love, cannot deny that during the past century
+these passions have attained—and day by day increasingly
+so—in several most important directions, a degree of
+perfection hitherto unknown in history.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place they affect a large number of men
+they never before affected. When, for example, we
+study the civil wars which convulsed France in the
+sixteenth century, and even those at the end of the
+eighteenth century, we are struck by the small number
+of persons whose minds were really disturbed by these
+events. While history, up to the nineteenth century,
+is filled with long European wars which left the great
+majority of people completely indifferent, apart from the
+material losses they themselves suffered,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> it may be said
+that to-day there is scarcely a mind in Europe which is
+not affected—or thinks itself affected—by a racial or
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_2">[2]</span>class or national passion, and most often by all three.
+The same progress seems to have taken place in the New
+World, while immense bodies of men in the Far East,
+who seemed to be free from these impulses, are awakening
+to social hatred, the party system, and the national spirit
+insofar as it implies the will to humiliate other men.
+To-day political passions have attained a <i>universality</i>
+never before known.</p>
+
+<p>They have also attained <i>coherence</i>. Thanks to the
+progress of communication and, still more, to the group
+spirit, it is clear that the holders of the same political
+hatred now form a compact impassioned mass, every
+individual of which feels himself in touch with the
+infinite numbers of others, whereas a century ago such
+people were comparatively out of touch with each other
+and hated in a ‘scattered’ way. This is singularly
+striking with respect to the working classes who, even
+in the middle of the nineteenth century, felt only a
+scattered hostility for the opposing class, attempted
+only dispersed efforts at war (such as striking in one town,
+or one union), whereas to-day they form a closely-woven
+fabric of hatred from one end of Europe to the other.
+It may be asserted that these coherences will tend to
+develop still further, for the will to group is one of the
+most profound characteristics of the modern world,
+which even in the most unexpected domains (for instance,
+the domain of thought) is more and more becoming
+the world of leagues, of ‘unions’ and of ‘groups’.
+Is it necessary to say that the passion of the individual
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_3">[3]</span>is strengthened by feeling itself in proximity to these
+thousands of similar passions? Let me add that the
+individual bestows a mystic personality on the association
+of which he feels himself a member, and gives it a religious
+adoration, which is simply the deification of his own
+passion, and no small stimulus to its intensity.</p>
+
+<p>The coherence just described might be called a surface
+coherence, but there is added to it a coherence of essence.
+For the very reason that the holders of the same political
+passion form a more compact, impassioned group,
+they also form a more <i>homogeneous</i>, impassioned group,
+in which individual ways of feeling disappear and the
+zeal of each member more and more takes on the colour
+of the others. In France, for instance, one cannot but
+be struck by the fact that the enemies of the democratic
+system (I am speaking of the mass, not the highest
+points) display a passion which has little variety, shows
+very slight differences in different persons. How little
+this mass of hatred is weakened by personal and original
+manners of hating—one might almost say that this passion
+itself is obedient to ‘democratic levelling down’! How
+much more uniformity is shown now than a hundred
+years ago by the emotions known as anti-Semitism, anti-Clericalism
+and Socialism, in spite of the immense
+number of varieties in the last-named! And do not those
+who are subject to these emotions now all tend <i>to say
+the same thing</i>? Political passions, as passions, seem
+to have attained the habit of discipline; they seem to
+obey a word of command even in the manner they are
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_4">[4]</span>felt. It is easy to see what increase of strength they
+acquire thereby.</p>
+
+<p>With some of these passions the increase in homogeneousness
+is accompanied by an increased <i>precision</i>.
+For instance, we all know that a hundred years ago
+Socialism was a strong but vague passion with the great
+mass of its supporters. But to-day Socialism has more
+closely defined the object it wishes to attain, has determined
+the exact point where it means to strike its
+adversary and the movement it intends to create in
+order to succeed. The same progress may be observed
+in the anti-democratic movement. And we all know
+that hatred becomes stronger by becoming more precise.</p>
+
+<p>There is another sort of perfecting of political passions.
+Throughout history until our own days I see these
+passions acting intermittently, blazing up and then
+subsiding. I see that the undoubtedly terrible and
+numerous explosions of class and race hatred were
+followed by long periods of calm, or at least of somnolence.
+Wars between nations lasted for years, but not hatred—even
+if we may say that it existed. To-day we have only
+to look every morning at any daily paper and we shall see
+that political hatreds do not cease for a single day. At
+best some of them are silent a moment for the benefit
+of one among them which suddenly claims all the subject’s
+strength. This is the period of ‘national unions’,
+which do not in the very least herald in the reign of
+love, but merely of a general hatred which for the moment
+dominates partial hatreds. To-day political passions
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_5">[5]</span>have acquired <i>continuity</i>, which is so rare a quality in
+all feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider a moment the impulse which causes
+partial hatreds to abdicate in favour of another, more
+general hatred, which derives a new religion of itself
+and hence a new strength, from the feeling of its
+generality. Perhaps it has not been sufficiently observed
+that this sort of impulse is one of the essential characteristics
+of the nineteenth century. Twice during the
+nineteenth century, in Germany and in Italy, the age-old
+hatreds of petty States disappeared in favour of a great
+national passion. In the same period (more precisely,
+at the end of the eighteenth century) in France, the
+mutual hatred of the Court nobles and the country
+nobles was extinguished in the greater hatred of both
+parties for all who were not nobles; the hatred between
+the military and legal nobles disappeared in the same
+impulse; the hatred between the upper and lower
+ranks of the clergy vanished in their common hatred of
+laicality; the hatred between clergy and nobility expired
+to the profit of their mutual hatred for the commons.
+And in our times the hatred between the three orders
+has melted into one hatred, that of the possessing
+classes for the working class. The condensation of
+political passions into a small number of very simple
+hatreds, springing from the deepest roots of the human
+heart, is a conquest of modern times.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_6">[6]</span></p>
+
+<p>I also believe that I see a great progress in political
+passions to-day in their relation to other passions in
+the same person. Political passions undoubtedly occupied
+more of the attention of a bourgeois of ancient France
+than is usually supposed, but less than the love of money
+and pleasure, family feeling and the calls of vanity;
+while the least we can say of his modern equivalent
+is that when political passions take possession of him,
+they do so to the same extent as the other passions.
+Compare, for instance, the tiny place occupied by political
+passions in the French bourgeois as he appears in the
+Fabliaux, in medieval drama, the novels of Scarron,
+Furetière and Charles Sorel,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> with the same bourgeois
+as drawn by Balzac, Stendhal, Anatole France, Abel
+Hermant and Paul Bourget. (Of course, I am not speaking
+of times of crisis, like the Ligue and the Fronde, when
+political passions occupied the whole individual as soon
+as they touched him at all.) The truth is that to-day
+political passions are invading most of the other passions
+in the bourgeoisie, and weakening the latter to their
+own profit. Everyone knows that in our own days
+family rivalries, commercial enmities, ambitions and the
+competition for public honours are all tainted with
+political passion. An apostle of the modern mind
+clamours for ‘politics first’. He might have observed
+that nowadays it is politics everywhere, politics always
+and nothing but politics.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> We have only to open our
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_7">[7]</span>eyes to see when an increase of power is acquired by
+political passion when combined with other passions,
+so numerous, so constant and so strong themselves.
+Coming to the man of the people, we can measure the
+increase of his political passions in relation to his other
+passions in modern times by considering, as Stendhal
+puts it, how long his whole passion was limited to
+wishing (<i>a</i>) Not to be killed, (<i>b</i>) For a good warm coat.
+And then we may recollect that when a little less misery
+permitted him a few general ideas, how long it was before
+his vague desire for social changes were transformed
+into a passion, i.e. showing the two essential characteristics
+of passion: The fixed idea, and the need to put
+it into action.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> I think it may be said that political
+passions in all classes to-day have attained a degree
+of <i>preponderance over all other passions</i> in those affected
+such as hitherto had been unknown.</p>
+
+<p>The reader will already have perceived an all-important
+factor in the impulses I have been describing.
+Political passions rendered universal, coherent, homogeneous,
+permanent, preponderant—everyone can
+recognize there to a great extent the work of the cheap
+daily political newspaper. One cannot help reflecting
+and wondering whether it may not be that inter-human
+wars are only just beginning, when one thinks of this
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_8">[8]</span>instrument for developing their own passions which
+men have just invented, or at least brought to a degree
+of power never seen before, to which they abandon
+themselves with all the expansion of their hearts every
+morning as soon as they are awake.</p>
+
+<p>I have now showed what might be called the perfecting
+of political passions on the surface, in their more or less
+exterior aspects. But they have also become strangely
+perfected in depth and inner strength.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place they have made an immense advance
+in consciousness of themselves. Here again, largely
+owing to the influence of the newspaper, it is clear that
+the mind affected by political hatred to-day becomes
+conscious of its own passion, formulates it, sees it, with
+an accuracy unknown to the same sort of mind fifty
+years ago. There is no need to say how much the passion
+is intensified by this. And while I am on this subject
+I should like to point to two passions, which have
+certainly not come to birth in our times but have attained
+consciousness of themselves, self-assertion, a pride in
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The first is what I shall call a certain <i>Jewish nationalism</i>.
+In the past, when the Jews were accused in various
+countries of forming an inferior race, or at any rate a
+peculiar people not to be assimilated, they replied by
+denying their peculiarity, by trying to get rid of all
+appearance of peculiarity, and by refusing to admit the
+reality of race. But in the last few years we see some of
+them labouring to assert this peculiarity, to define its
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_9">[9]</span>characteristics—or what they think such—taking a
+pride in it, and condemning every effort at assimilation
+with their opponents (see the works of Israel Zangwill,
+of André Spire, and the <i>Revue Juive</i>). Here I am not
+trying to discover whether the impulse of these Jews
+is or is not nobler than the efforts of so many others
+to have their origin pardoned them; I am simply pointing
+out to those interested in the progress of peace in the
+world that our age has added one more arrogance
+to those which set men against each other, at least to the
+extent that it is conscious and proud of itself.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>The other impulse I am thinking of is ‘<i>bourgeoisism</i>’,
+by which I mean the passion of the bourgeois class in
+asserting itself against the class by which it is threatened.
+It may be said that until our own times, ‘class hatred’,
+as a conscious hatred proud of itself, was chiefly the
+hatred of the labourer for the bourgeois. The reciprocal
+hatred was much less clearly confessed. Ashamed of
+an egotism they thought peculiar to their own caste,
+the bourgeois temporized with this egotism, would
+not admit even to themselves that it existed, tried to
+convince themselves and others that it was a form of
+interest in the common good.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The bourgeois replied
+to the dogma of the class war by denying that there
+really are any classes, thereby showing that while they
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_10">[10]</span>felt an inalterable opposition to the adverse party, they
+were unwilling to admit that they felt it. To-day we
+have only to think of Italian ‘Fascism’, of a certain
+‘Eloge du Bourgeois Français’, and numerous other
+manifestations of the same kind,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> and we shall see that
+the bourgeoisie are becoming fully conscious of their
+specific egotisms, are proclaiming and venerating them
+as such and as though these egotisms were bound
+up with the supreme interests of the human race, that
+they are proud of this veneration and of setting up
+these egotisms against those which are trying to destroy
+the bourgeoisie. In our time there has been created
+the ‘mysticism’ of bourgeois passion in its opposition
+to the passions of the other class.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_9_9" href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Here again our age
+enters in the balance-sheet of humanity the arrival of
+yet one more passion at full possession of itself.</p>
+
+<p>The progress of political passions in depth during
+the past century seems to me most remarkable in the
+case of national passions.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, owing to the fact that they are experienced
+to-day by large masses of men, these passions have become
+<i>far more purely passionate</i>. When the national feeling
+was practically confined to Kings or their Ministers,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_11">[11]</span>it consisted chiefly in attachment to some <i>interest</i> (desire
+for territorial expansion, search for commercial advantages
+and profitable alliances), whereas to-day when this
+national feeling is continually experienced by common
+minds, it consists chiefly in the exercise of <i>pride</i>. Everyone
+will agree that nationalist passion in the modern
+citizen is far less founded on a comprehensive knowledge
+of the national interests (he has an imperfect perception
+of these interests, he lacks the information necessary
+and does not try to acquire it, for he is indifferent to
+questions of foreign policy) than on the pride he feels
+in his nation, on his will to feel himself one with the
+nation, to react to the honours and insults he thinks
+are bestowed on it. No doubt he wants his nation to
+acquire territories, to be prosperous and to have powerful
+allies; but he wants all this far less on account of the
+material results which will accrue to the nation (how
+much is he conscious of these results?) than on account
+of the glory, the prestige which the nation will acquire.
+By becoming popular, national feeling has become
+national pride, national susceptibility.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_10_10" href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> To measure
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_12">[12]</span>how much more purely passionate it has become, how
+much more perfectly irrational (and therefore stronger)
+one has only to think of Jingoism, the form of patriotism
+specially invented by democracies. If, in accordance
+with current opinion, you think that pride is a weaker
+passion than self-interest, you may be convinced to
+the contrary by observing how commonly men let
+themselves be killed on account of a wound to their
+pride, and how infrequently for some infraction of their
+interests.</p>
+
+<p>The susceptibility developed by national sentiment
+as it has become popular makes the possibility of wars
+far greater to-day than in the past. Obviously, with the
+peoples and with the aptitude of these new ‘sovereigns’
+to rise up in a rage as soon as they think they are insulted,
+peace runs an additional danger which did not exist
+when it depended only upon Kings and their Ministers,
+who were far more purely practical persons, fully self-controlled,
+and quite willing to put up with insults
+when they did not think themselves the stronger party.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_11_11" href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+And, in fact, how many times during the last hundred
+years has the world almost flamed up in war solely
+because some nation thought its honour had been
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_13">[13]</span>wounded?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_12_12" href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> To this must be added the fact that this
+national susceptibility provides the leaders of nations
+with a new and most effective method of starting the
+wars they need, whether it is employed at home or
+abroad. They have not failed to see this, which is
+amply proved by the example of Bismarck and the means
+by which he provoked war with Austria and with France.
+From this point of view it seems to me quite correct
+to say with the French monarchists that ‘democracy
+is war’, provided that by democracy is meant the
+attainment of national susceptibility by the masses,
+and provided that it is recognized that no change in the
+system of government would destroy this phenomenon.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_13_13" href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another considerable deepening of national passions
+comes from the fact that the nations are now conscious
+of themselves not only as regards their material existence,
+their military power, their territorial possessions, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_14">[14]</span>their economic wealth, but as regards their <i>moral</i>
+existence. With a hitherto unknown consciousness
+(prodigiously fanned by authors) every nation now
+hugs itself and sets itself up against all other nations
+as superior in language, art, literature, philosophy,
+civilization, ‘culture’. Patriotism to-day is the assertion
+of one form of mind against other forms of mind.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_14_14" href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>
+We know how much this passion increases its inner
+strength in this way and that the wars it determines are
+fiercer than those waged by the Kings, who merely
+desired the same piece of territory. The prophecy
+of the old Saxon bard is completely fulfilled: ‘In those
+days countries will be something they have not yet
+become—they will be persons. They will feel hatred,
+and these hatreds will cause wars more terrible than any
+that have yet been seen.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_15_15" href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to over-stress the novelty of this
+form of patriotism in history. It is obviously bound up
+with the adoption of this passion by the masses of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_15">[15]</span>populace, and seems to have been inaugurated in 1813
+by Germany, who is apparently the real teacher of
+humanity in the matter of democratic patriotism, if
+by this word is meant the determination of a nation
+to oppose others in the name of its most fundamental
+characteristics.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_16_16" href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> (The France of the Revolution and the
+Empire never dreamed of setting itself up against other
+nations in the name of its language or of its literature.)
+This form of patriotism was so little known to preceding
+ages that there are countless examples of nations adopting
+the cultures of other nations, even of those with whom
+they were at war, and in addition reverencing the culture
+adopted. Shall I refer to the profound respect of Rome
+for the genius of Greece, though Rome had felt it necessary
+to crush Greece politically? To the respect of the
+conquerors of Rome, such as Ataulf and Theodoric,
+for Roman genius? And, nearer to ourselves, shall
+I mention Louis XIV annexing Alsace and not for one
+moment thinking of forbidding the German language?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_17_17" href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>
+In the past, nations displayed their sympathy for the
+culture of other nations with whom they were at war,
+or invited them to adopt their own. The Duke of Alba
+took measures to protect the learned men in the towns of
+Holland, against which he was directing his army;
+in the eighteenth century, the small German States,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_16">[16]</span>allied with Frederick the Great against the French,
+adopted more freely than ever French ideas, French
+fashions, French&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_18_18" href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> literature; in the midst of the struggle
+with England, the Convention sent a deputation there
+to urge the English to adopt the French metric system.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_19_19" href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
+The notion that political warfare involves a war of
+cultures is entirely an invention of modern times, and
+confers upon them a conspicuous place in the moral
+history of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Another strengthening of national passions comes
+from the determination of the peoples to be conscious
+of <i>their past</i>, more precisely to be conscious of their
+ambitions as going back to their ancestors, and to vibrate
+with ‘centuries-old’ aspirations, with attachments to
+‘historical’ rights. This Romantic patriotism is also
+a characteristic of patriotism as practised by popular
+minds (by ‘popular’ I here mean all minds governed
+by the imagination, that is, in the first place, society
+people and men of letters). I have an idea that when
+Hugues de Lionne desired for the nation the conquest
+of Flanders or when Sieyès wanted the Low Countries,
+they did not think they felt the soul of ancient Gauls
+reviving in them, any more than Bismarck thought
+(I am not talking of what he said) of reviving the Teutonic
+Knights when he coveted the Danish Duchies.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_20_20" href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_17">[17]</span></p>
+
+<p>Those who wish to estimate the increase of violence
+given to national passion by this solemnizing of its
+desires have only to observe what has happened to this
+feeling among the Germans, with their claim to be carrying
+on the spirit of the Holy Roman Empire, and among
+the Italians since they have set up their aspirations as the
+revival of those of the Roman Empire.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_21_21" href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> There once
+again the leaders of the State find in popular sentimentality
+a new and excellent instrument for carrying out their
+practical designs, an instrument they well know how to
+use. To mention only one recent example—think of
+the result the Italian government was able to obtain
+from the amazing aptitude of its compatriots to wake
+up one fine morning and discover that the claim to Fiume
+was a ‘centuries-old’ claim.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking generally, it may be said that national passions,
+owing to the fact that they are now exerted by plebeian
+minds, assume the character of <i>mysticism</i>, of a religious
+adoration almost unknown in these passions in the
+practical minds of the great nobles. It is unnecessary
+to add that this makes these passions deeper and stronger.
+Here once more this plebeian form of patriotism is
+adopted by all who practise this passion, even when they
+are the noisiest champions of the aristocracy of the mind.
+M. Maurras talks of the ‘goddess France’, just as
+Victor Hugo does. Let me add that this mystical
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_18">[18]</span>adoration of the nation is not only to be explained by the
+nature of those who adore, but also by the changes which
+have taken place in the adored object. There is first
+of all the spectacle of the military force and organization
+of modern States, which is something far more imposing
+than of old. And when these States are seen to make
+war for an indefinite period after they have no more
+men, and go on subsisting for long years after they
+have no more money, it is easy to understand why a man
+who has some tincture of religion in his mind may be
+led to believe that these States are of an essence different
+from that of ordinary natural beings.</p>
+
+<p>I shall point out another great increase of power in
+national sentiment which has occurred in the last half-century.
+I mean that several very powerful political
+passions, which were originally independent of nationalist
+feeling, have now become incorporated with it. These
+passions are: (<i>a</i>) The movement against the Jews;
+(<i>b</i>) the movement of the possessing classes against the
+proletariat; (<i>c</i>) the movement of the champions of
+authority against the democrats. To-day each one of
+these passions is identified with national feeling and
+declares that its adversary implies the negation of
+nationalism. I may add that when a person is affected
+by one of these passions he is generally affected by all
+three; consequently nationalist passion is usually
+swelled by the addition of all three. Moreover this
+increase is reciprocal, and it may be said that to-day
+capitalism, anti-semitism and the party of authority
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_19">[19]</span>have all received new strength from their union with
+nationalism. (For additional proof of the strength of
+these unions, see <a href="#Note_C">Note C</a> at the end of this book.)</p>
+
+<p>I cannot drop the subject of the modern perfecting
+of political passions without mentioning one more
+characteristic: In all nations the number of persons
+who feel a direct interest in belonging to a powerful
+nation is incomparably greater now than in the past.
+In all the great States to-day I observe that not only
+the world of industry and big business but a considerable
+number of small tradesmen, small bourgeois, doctors,
+lawyers, and even writers and artists, and working men
+too, feel that for the sake of the prosperity of their own
+occupations it is essential for them to belong to a powerful
+group which can make itself feared. Those who are in
+a position to give an opinion on this sort of change agree
+that the feeling did not exist, at least in the same clearly
+defined way as to-day, thirty years ago among the small
+tradesmen of France, for instance. It seems an even
+newer thing among the men who belong to the so-called
+liberal professions; it is certainly something new to
+hear artists constantly girding at the government of their
+country because it ‘does not give the nation enough
+prestige to impose their art on foreigners’. The feeling
+that from a professional point of view they have an
+interest in belonging to a powerful nation is also very
+recent among the working classes. The party of
+‘Nationalist Socialists’, which seems to exist everywhere
+except in France, is a quite modern political
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_20">[20]</span>development. Among the masters of industry the new
+development is, not that they feel how much it is to
+their interest that their nation should be powerful, but
+that the feeling is to-day transformed into action, into
+formal pressure on their governments.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_22_22" href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> This extension
+of patriotism based on interest certainly does not prevent
+this sort of patriotism (as I said above) from being much
+less wide-spread than the patriotism&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_23_23" href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> based on pride;
+nevertheless it brings another increase of strength to
+nationalist passions.</p>
+
+<p>I shall now point out a last important perfecting of
+all political passions to-day, whether of race, class, party
+or nation. When I observe these passions in the past,
+I see them consisting in purely passionate impulses,
+natural explosions of instinct, devoid of all extension
+of themselves in ideas and systems—at least among
+the majority. The revolt of the workers in the fifteenth
+century against the possessing classes was apparently
+not accompanied by any sort of teaching about the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_21">[21]</span>origin of property or the nature of capital. Those who
+massacred the Ghettos seem to have had no views on the
+philosophical values of their action. And when the
+troops of Charles V attacked the defenders of Mezières,
+it does not appear that the assault was enlivened by a
+theory about the predestination of the Germanic race
+and the moral baseness of the Latin world. To-day I
+notice that every political passion is furnished with a
+whole network of strongly woven doctrines, the sole
+object of which is to show the supreme value of its
+action from every point of view, while the result is a
+redoubling of its strength as a passion. We must look
+at the system of ideology of German nationalism known
+as ‘Pangermanism’ and at the similar ideology of the
+French Monarchists, if we wish to realize the point of
+perfection to which our age has carried these systems,
+with what tenacity each passion has built up in every
+direction the theories apt to satisfy it, with what precision
+these theories have been adapted to this satisfaction,
+with what opulence of research, what labour, what
+profound investigation they have been carried on in all
+directions. Our age is indeed the age of the <i>intellectual
+organization of political hatreds</i>. It will be one of its
+chief claims to notice in the moral history of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since these systems have been in existence,
+they have consisted in establishing for each passion
+that it is the agent of good in the world and that its
+enemy is the genius of evil. But to-day these passions
+desire to establish this not only politically, but morally,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_22">[22]</span>intellectually and aesthetically. Anti-semitism, Pangermanism,
+French Monarchism, Socialism are not only
+political manifestations; they defend a particular form
+of morality, of intelligence, of sensibility, of literature,
+of philosophy and of artistic conceptions. Our age has
+introduced two novelties into the theorizing of political
+passions, by which they have been remarkably intensified.
+The first is that everyone to-day claims that his movement
+is in line with ‘the development of evolution’
+and ‘the profound unrolling of history’. All these
+passions of to-day, whether they derive from Marx,
+from M. Maurras or from Houston Chamberlain, have
+discovered a ‘historical law’, according to which their
+movement is merely carrying out the spirit of history
+and must therefore necessarily triumph, while the
+opposing party is running counter to this spirit and can
+enjoy only a transitory triumph. That is merely the
+old desire to have Fate on one’s side, but it is put forth
+in a scientific shape. And this brings us to the second
+novelty: To-day all political ideologies claim to be
+founded on science, to be the result of a ‘precise observation
+of facts’. We all know what self-assurance, what
+rigidity, what inhumanity (comparatively new traits
+in the history of political passions, of which modern
+French monarchism is a good example) are given to
+these passions to-day by this claim.</p>
+
+<p>To summarize: To-day political passions show a
+degree of universality, of coherence, of homogeneousness,
+of precision, of continuity, of preponderance, in
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_23">[23]</span>relation to other passions, unknown until our times.
+They have become conscious of themselves to an extent
+never seen before. Some of them, hitherto scarcely
+avowed, have awakened to consciousness and have
+joined the old passions. Others have become more
+purely passionate than ever, possess men’s hearts in
+moral regions they never before reached, and have
+acquired a mystic character which had disappeared for
+centuries. All are furnished with an apparatus of
+ideology whereby, in the name of science, they proclaim
+the supreme value of their action and its historical
+necessity. On the surface and in the depths, in spatial
+values and in inner strength, political passions have
+to-day reached a point of perfection never before known
+in history. The present age is essentially the age of
+politics.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="II">
+    II
+    <br>
+    <i>Significance of this Movement—Nature of Political Passions</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>What is the significance of this movement? Of what
+simple and profound human tendency does it show the
+progress and triumph? The question comes down to
+inquiring what is the nature of political passions, of
+what more general and more essential state of mind are
+they the expression, what—as the schools say—is their
+psychological foundation?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_24">[24]</span></p>
+
+<p>It seems to me that these passions can be reduced to
+two fundamental desires: (<i>a</i>) The will of a group of
+men to get hold of (or to retain a hold on) some <i>material</i>
+advantage, such as territories, comfort, political power
+and all its material advantages; and (<i>b</i>) the will of a
+group of men to become conscious of themselves as
+<i>individuals</i>, insofar as they are <i>distinct</i> in relation to
+other men. It may also be said that these passions can
+be reduced to two desires, one of which seeks the satisfaction
+of an <i>interest</i>, the other of a <i>pride</i> or self-esteem.
+These two desires enter into political passions in very
+different proportions, according to which passion is
+involved. It appears that racial passion, insofar as it
+is not one with national passion, is chiefly based on the
+will of a group of men to set themselves up as distinct
+from others; the same thing may be said of religious
+passion, if we consider it in its pure state. On the
+other hand, class passion, at least as we see it in the
+working classes, apparently consists solely in the will
+to obtain possession of material advantages. The desire
+to feel himself distinct, which George Sand and the
+apostles of 1848 had begun to inculcate in the working
+man, now seems to be abandoned by him, at least in his
+utterances. National passion contains both factors.
+The patriot wants to obtain material advantages and he
+wants to set himself up as distinct from others. This
+is the secret of the evident superiority in strength of
+this passion (when it is really a passion) over all other
+passions, especially over Socialism. A passion whose
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_25">[25]</span>sole motive is interest is too weak to contend with another
+which combines interest and pride. This too is one of
+the weaknesses of Socialism when opposed to class
+passion as exerted by the bourgeoisie, for the bourgeois
+wants both to possess material advantages and to feel
+himself distinct from others. I shall add to this that
+in my opinion the relative strengths of these two passions
+(one based on interest and the other on pride or self-esteem)
+are very unequal, and that the more powerful
+of the two is not that which tries to satisfy interest.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when I come to ask what is signified in their
+turn by these fundamental desires of political passions,
+I find they appear to me as the two essential composites
+of man’s will to situate himself <i>in real life</i>. To want
+real life is to want (<i>a</i>) To possess some material advantages,
+and (<i>b</i>) to be conscious of oneself as an individual.
+Every life which despises these two desires, every life
+which pursues only spiritual advantage or sincerely
+asserts itself in the universal, situates itself <i>outside the
+real</i>. Political passions, especially national passions
+insofar as they unite the two desires mentioned, seem to
+me essentially <i>realist</i> passions.</p>
+
+<p>Here many persons will protest: ‘Yes,’ they will
+say, ‘the desires which make up political passions are
+realist desires, but the individual shifts these desires
+from himself to the group of which he is a part. The
+working man wants to obtain possession of material
+advantages for his class, not for his own limited person.
+The patriot wants to possess territories for his nation,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_26">[26]</span>not for his own narrow ego; he wants to be distinct
+from other men through his nation. Do you apply the term
+“realist” to passions which imply such a transfer from
+the individual to the collective body?’ Is it necessary
+to reply that when the individual transfers these desires
+to the body of which he is a part, he does not thereby
+alter their nature? And that all he does is simply to
+increase their dimensions immeasureably? To wish
+to possess material advantages <i>in one’s nation</i>, to want to
+feel distinct from other men <i>in one’s nation</i>, is still the
+desire to possess material advantages, still the desire
+to feel distinct from other men. It only means that,
+if you are a Frenchman, you want to possess Brittany,
+Provence, Guyenne, Algeria, Indo-China; and you want
+to feel yourself distinct from other men in Jeanne d’Arc,
+Louis XIV, Napoleon, Racine, Voltaire, Victor Hugo,
+Pasteur. Add to this that at the same time you attach
+these desires, not to a transitory and precarious single
+existence, but to an ‘eternal’ existence, and feel them
+in that way. Not only does national egotism not cease
+to be egotism because it is national, but it becomes
+‘sacred’ egotism.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_24_24" href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Let me complete my definition by
+saying that political passions are realism of a particular
+quality, which is an important element of strength
+in them: They are <i>divinized</i> realism.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_25_25" href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_27">[27]</span></p>
+
+<p>If, therefore, we desire to express this perfecting of
+political passions which I have described, in terms of a
+more profound and essential order of things, we may
+say that men to-day are displaying, with a hitherto
+unknown knowledge and consciousness, the desire to
+situate themselves in the <i>real</i> or practical manner of
+existence, in opposition to the <i>disinterested</i> or <i>metaphysical</i>
+manner. Moreover, it is remarkable to see how political
+passions to-day more and more expressly assert their
+derivation from this realism and from it alone. On the
+one hand we have a Socialism which constantly declares
+that it has no interest in universal man, no interest in
+procuring justice for him or any other ‘metaphysical
+phantom’, but solely desires to obtain possession of
+material advantages for the benefit of its class. On
+the other hand we have the nationalist mind which
+everywhere takes a pride in being purely realistic. The
+French people who fought in the past to carry to other
+nations a doctrine they believed would bring happiness
+(I say the people, for its rulers never shared in that
+simple-minded belief) would now blush to have it even
+suspected that they would fight ‘for principles’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_26_26" href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> Is
+it not suggestive to observe that the only wars of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_28">[28]</span>past which, to some extent, brought into play passions
+that were a little disinterested—the wars of religion—are
+the only wars from which humanity has freed itself?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_27_27" href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>
+And that immense idealistic upheavals like the crusades
+(idealistic at least with humble people) should now be
+something which makes the modern man smile, like
+the spectacle of children at play? Is it not also significant
+that the national passions (which I have shown are
+the most perfectly realist of all political passions) should
+be those which I have been able to point out have most
+absorbed all other passions?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_28_28" href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Let me add to this, that
+these passions, insofar as they are the will of a group
+of men to set themselves up as distinct from others,
+have attained a hitherto unknown degree of consciousness.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_29_29" href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a>
+Finally, the supreme attribute we have discovered
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_29">[29]</span>in political passions, i.e. the divinization of their realism,
+is now openly admitted, with a plainness never seen
+before. The State, Country, Class, are now frankly
+God; we may even say that for many people (and some
+are proud of it) they alone are God.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_30_30" href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> Humanity, by
+its present practice of political passions, thereby declares
+that it has become more realist, more exclusively and
+more religiously realist than it has ever been.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="III">
+    III
+    <br>
+    <i>The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal</i>  </h2>
+
+    <p class="center"><i>‘I created him to be spiritual in his flesh; and now he has become
+    carnal even in the spirit.’</i>—(Bossuet, <i>Élévations</i>, VII, 3.)</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In all that I have said hitherto I have been considering
+only masses, whether bourgeois or proletarian, kings,
+ministers, political leaders, all that portion of the human
+species which I shall call ‘the laymen’, whose whole
+function consists essentially in the pursuit of material
+interests, and who, by becoming more and more solely
+and systematically realist, have in fact only done what
+might be expected of them.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with this humanity whom the poet has
+described in a phrase—‘O curvae in terram animae et
+celestium inanes’—there existed until the last half
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_30">[30]</span>century another, essentially distinct humanity, which to
+a certain extent acted as a check upon the former. I mean
+that class of men whom I shall designate ‘<i>the clerks</i>’,
+by which term I mean all those whose activity essentially
+is <i>not</i> the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek
+their joy in the practice of an art or a science or metaphysical
+speculation, in short in the possession of non-material
+advantages, and hence in a certain manner say:
+‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ Indeed, throughout
+history, for more than two thousand years until modern
+times, I see an uninterrupted series of philosophers,
+men of religion, men of literature, artists, men of learning
+(one might say almost all during this period), whose
+influence, whose life, were in direct opposition to the
+realism of the multitudes. To come down specifically
+to the political passions—the ‘clerks’ were in opposition
+to them in two ways. They were either entirely
+indifferent to these passions, and, like Leonardo da
+Vinci, Malebranche, Goethe, set an example of attachment
+to the purely disinterested activity of the mind
+and created a belief in the supreme value of this form
+of existence; or, gazing as moralists upon the conflict
+of human egotisms, like Erasmus, Kant, Renan, they
+preached, in the name of humanity or justice, the
+adoption of an abstract principle superior to and directly
+opposed to these passions. Although these ‘clerks’
+founded the modern State to the extent that it dominates
+individual egotisms, their activity undoubtedly was
+chiefly theoretical, and they were unable to prevent the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_31">[31]</span>laymen from filling all history with the noise of their
+hatreds and their slaughters; <i>but the ‘clerks’ did prevent
+the laymen from setting up their actions as a religion, they
+did prevent them from thinking themselves great men as
+they carried out these activities</i>. It may be said that,
+thanks to the ‘clerks’, humanity did evil for two thousand
+years, but honoured good. This contradiction was an
+honour to the human species, and formed the rift
+whereby civilization slipped into the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now, at the end of the nineteenth century a fundamental
+change occurred: <i>the ‘clerks’ began to play the
+game of political passions</i>. The men who had acted
+as a check on the realism of the people began to act
+as its stimulators. This upheaval in the moral behaviour
+of humanity operated in several ways.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="First_The_clerks_have_adopted_political_passions">
+  <i>First: The ‘clerks’ have adopted political passions</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>First of all the ‘clerks’ have adopted political passions.
+No one will deny that throughout Europe to-day the
+immense majority of men of letters and artists, a considerable
+number of scholars, philosophers, and
+‘ministers’ of the divine, share in the chorus of hatreds
+among races and political factions. Still less will it be
+denied that they adopt national passions. Doubtless,
+the names of Dante, Petrarch, d’Aubigné, certain
+apologists of Caboche or preachers of the Ligue will
+suffice to show that certain ‘clerks’ did not wait for
+our era to indulge in these passions with all the strength
+of their souls. But, upon the whole, these ‘clerks’
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_32">[32]</span>of the forum were exceptions, at least among the
+great ones. If, in addition to the great masters named
+above, I evoke the phalanx of Thomas Aquinas, Roger
+Bacon, Galilei, Rabelais, Montaigne, Descartes, Racine,
+Pascal, Leibniz, Kepler, Huyghens, Newton, and even
+Voltaire, Buffon and Montesquieu (to mention only
+a few) I think I may repeat that until our own days the
+men of thought or the honest men remained strangers
+to political passions, and said with Goethe: ‘Let us
+leave politics to the diplomats and the soldiers.’ Or if,
+like Voltaire, they took these passions into account,
+they adopted a critical attitude towards them, did not
+espouse them as passions. Or if, like Rousseau, Maistre,
+Chateaubriand, Lamartine, even Michelet, they did
+take these passions to heart, they did so with a generalizing
+of feeling, a disdain for immediate results, which in fact
+make the word ‘passions’ incorrect. To-day, if we
+mention Mommsen, Treitschke, Ostwald, Brunetière,
+Barrès, Lemaître, Péguy, Maurras, d’Annunzio,
+Kipling, we have to admit that the ‘clerks’ now
+exercise political passions with all the characteristics of
+passion—the tendency to action, the thirst for immediate
+results, the exclusive preoccupation with the desired
+end, the scorn for argument, the excess, the hatred, the
+fixed ideas. The modern ‘clerk’ has entirely ceased
+to let the layman alone descend to the market place.
+The modern clerk is determined to have the soul of a
+citizen and to make vigorous use of it; he is proud of
+that soul; his literature is filled with his contempt for
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_33">[33]</span>the man who shuts himself up with art or science and
+takes no interest in the passions of the State.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_31_31" href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> He is
+violently on the side of Michaelangelo crying shame
+upon Leonardo da Vinci for his indifference to the
+misfortunes of Florence, and against the master of the
+Last Supper when he replied that indeed the study of
+beauty occupied his whole heart. The time has long past
+by since Plato demanded that the philosopher should
+be bound in chains in order to compel him to take
+an interest in the State. To have as his function the
+pursuit of eternal things and yet to believe that he
+becomes greater by concerning himself with the State—that
+is the view of the modern ‘clerk’. It is as natural
+as it is evident that this adhesion of the ‘clerks’ to the
+passions of the laymen fortifies these passions in the
+hearts of the latter. In the first place, it abolishes the
+suggestive spectacle (which I mentioned above) of a
+race of men whose interests are set outside the practical
+world. And then especially, the ‘clerk’ by adopting
+political passions, brings them the tremendous influence
+of his sensibility if he is an artist, of his persuasive power
+if he is a thinker, and in either case his moral prestige.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_32_32" href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>Before proceeding any further, I feel I ought to make
+myself clear on certain points:—</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) I have been talking of the <i>whole</i> of the men of
+thought anterior to our own age. When I say that
+the ‘clerks’ in the past opposed the realism of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_34">[34]</span>laymen and that the ‘clerks’ of to-day are in its service,
+I am considering each of these groups as a whole; I am
+contrasting one general characteristic with another.
+This means that I shall not feel myself contradicted by
+a reader who takes pains to point out to me that so-and-so
+in the former group was a realist, and that so-and-so
+in the second is not, so long as this reader is obliged to
+admit that as a whole each of these groups does manifest
+the characteristic I have indicated. And also, when I
+speak of a single ‘clerk’, I am thinking of his work
+in its chief characteristic, i.e. in that part of his teaching
+which dominates all the rest, even if the remainder
+sometimes contradicts this dominant teaching. This
+means that I do not consider that I ought to refrain from
+looking upon Malebranche as a master of liberal thought
+because a few lines of his ‘Morale’ seem to be a justification
+of slavery, or upon Nietzsche as a moralist of war
+because the end of ‘Zarathustra’ is a manifesto of
+fraternity which outdoes the Gospels. And I see the
+less reason for doing so, since Malebranche as a defender
+of slavery and Nietzsche as a humanitarian have had no
+influence at all, and my subject is the influence which
+the ‘clerks’ have had in the world, and not what
+they were in themselves.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) Some will object to me: ‘How can you treat
+men like Barrès and Péguy as “clerks” and blame them
+for lacking the true spirit of “clerks” when they are
+so openly men of action, with whom political thought
+is obviously occupied solely with the needs of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_35">[35]</span>present hour, solely spurred on by the events of the
+day, while the former scarcely ever gave expression to
+his political thought except in newspaper articles?’
+I reply, that this thought, which in truth is practically
+nothing but a form of immediate action, is given out
+by its authors as the fruits of the highest speculative
+intellectual activity, the result of the most truly philosophical
+meditation. Barrès and Péguy would never
+have consented to be looked upon as mere polemical
+writers, even in their polemical works.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_33_33" href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> These men,
+who indeed are not ‘clerks’, gave themselves out to
+be ‘clerks’ and were considered as such, (Barrès
+gave himself out to be a thinker who condescended to
+the arena), and it is precisely as such that they enjoy a
+particular prestige among men of action. In this study
+my subject is not the ‘clerk’ such as he is, but the
+‘clerk’ such as he is considered to be and as he acts
+upon the world in that capacity.</p>
+
+<p>I shall make the same answer with regard to
+M. Maurras and the other instructors of the <i>Action
+Française</i>, of whom it will be said even more truly
+that they are men of action and that it is indefensible to
+cite them as ‘clerks’. These men claim to carry out
+their action by virtue of a doctrine derived from a wholly
+objective study of history, from the exercise of the most
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_36">[36]</span>purely scientific spirit. And they owe the special attention
+with which they are listened to by men of action
+entirely to this claim that they are <i>men of learning</i>, men
+who are fighting for a truth discovered in the austerity
+of the laboratory. They owe it to their pose as combative
+‘clerks’, but essentially <i>as ‘clerks’</i>.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) Finally I should like to define my views on another
+point and to say that when the ‘clerk’ descends to the
+market place I only consider that he is failing to perform
+his functions when he does so, like those I have
+mentioned, for the purpose of securing the triumph of
+a realist passion, whether of class, race or nation. When
+Gerson entered the pulpit of Notre Dame to denounce
+the murderers of Louis d’Orléans; when Spinoza, at
+the peril of his life, went and wrote the words ‘Ultimi
+barbarorum’ on the gate of those who had murdered the
+de Witts; when Voltaire fought for the Calas family;
+when Zola and Duclaux came forward to take part in a
+celebrated lawsuit (Dreyfus affair); all these ‘clerks’
+were carrying out their functions as ‘clerks’ in the fullest
+and noblest manner. They were the officiants of abstract
+justice and were sullied with no passion for a worldly
+object.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_34_34" href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Moreover, there exists a certain criterion by
+which we may know whether the ‘clerk’ who takes
+public action does so in conformity with his true functions;
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_37">[37]</span>and that is, that he is immediately reviled by the laymen,
+whose interests he thwarts (Socrates, Jesus). We may
+say beforehand that the ‘clerk’ who is praised by the
+laymen is a traitor to his office.</p>
+
+<p>But let us return to the modern ‘clerk’s’ adhesion
+to political passions.</p>
+
+<p>It is concerning national passions that this adhesion
+seems to me particularly novel and big with results.
+Once again, of course humanity did not have to wait
+for the present age to see the ‘clerks’ indulge in this
+passion. Without mentioning the poets, whose tender
+hearts have always sighed ‘Nescio qua natale dulcedine
+solum cunctos Ducit’; and, as regards the philosophers,
+without going back to antiquity when all, previous to
+the Stoics, were ardent patriots; we may yet observe
+in history (since the coming of Christianity and long
+before our own days) writers, men of learning, artists,
+moralists, even ministers of the ‘Universal’ Church,
+who more or less explicitly displayed a special attachment
+for the group to which they belonged. But this
+affection among these men was based on reason; it
+showed itself capable of judging its object, of denouncing
+its errors when they believed such errors had been committed.
+Need I recall how Fénelon and Massillon
+denounced certain wars of Louis XIV? How Voltaire
+condemned the destruction of the Palatinate? How
+Renan denounced the violences of Napoleon? Buckle,
+the intolerance of England towards the French Revolution?
+And, in our own times, Nietzsche, the brutalities
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_38">[38]</span>of Germany towards France?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_35_35" href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> It was reserved for
+our own time to see men of thought, or men giving themselves
+out as such, professing openly that they would
+not submit their patriotism to any check on the part
+of their judgment, proclaiming (like Barrès) that ‘even
+if the country is wrong, we must think it in the right’,
+denouncing as ‘traitors to the nation’ those of their
+compatriots who retain their liberty of mind, or at least
+of speech, in regard to their country. In France we have
+not forgotten how, during the last war, so many ‘thinkers’
+attacked Renan for the liberty of his judgments on the
+history of his country.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_36_36" href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Nor have we forgotten how, a
+little before that, a whole set of young men (who claimed
+to share in the life of the spirit) bristled up against one
+of their masters (Jacob) who tried to teach them a
+patriotism which did not exclude all right of criticism.
+After the violation of Belgium and other excesses of the
+Germans, in October, 1914, a German teacher said:
+‘There is nothing for which we need make excuses.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_37_37" href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>
+Now, if their own countries had been in a similar position,
+the same thing would have been said by most of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_39">[39]</span>spiritual leaders of that time; by Barrès in France, by
+d’Annunzio in Italy, by Kipling in England, if we may
+judge by his conduct during the attack of his nation
+upon the Boers, and by William James in the United
+States, if we recall his attitude when his compatriots
+seized the island of Cuba.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_38_38" href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> I am quite ready to agree
+that this sort of blind patriotism makes powerful nations,
+and that the patriotism of Fénelon or of Renan is not the
+sort which secures empires. It remains to determine
+whether the function of ‘clerks’ is to secure
+empires.</p>
+
+<p>This adhesion of the ‘clerks’ to national passion is
+particularly remarkable among those whom I shall call
+‘pre-eminently clerks’; I mean the Churchmen. In all
+European countries during the past fifty years, the
+immense majority of these men have not only given
+their adhesion to the national feeling&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_39_39" href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> and therefore
+have ceased to provide the world with the spectacle of
+hearts solely occupied with God—but they seem to
+have adopted this feeling with the same passion as that
+I have pointed out as existing among men of letters,
+and they too appear to be ready to support their own
+countries in the most flagrant injustices. During the
+last war this could be most clearly seen in the German
+clergy, from whom no one could drag the shadow of a
+protest against the excesses committed by their nation,
+and whose silence does not appear to have been caused
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_40">[40]</span>solely by prudence.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_40_40" href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> In contrast to this attitude I refer
+the reader to that of the Spanish theologians of the
+sixteenth century, to men like Bartholomew de las Casas
+and Vittoria, earnestly denouncing the cruelties committed
+by their compatriots in the conquest of America.
+I do not claim that similar behaviour was then the rule
+among Churchmen, but I should like to ask whether
+there is a single country to-day where they would do
+likewise, or where they would even wish to be permitted
+to do so?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_41_41" href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>I shall point out another characteristic of patriotism
+in the modern ‘clerk’: xenophobia. The hatred of man
+for ‘the man from outside’ (the <i>horsain</i>), his rejection
+of and scorn for everything which is not ‘from his own
+home’, all these impulses, so constant among peoples
+and apparently necessary to their existence, have been
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_41">[41]</span>adopted in our days by the so-called men of thought,
+and adopted with a seriousness of application, <i>an absence
+of simple-mindedness</i>, which go far towards making this
+adoption worthy of notice. We know how systematically
+the mass of German teachers in the past fifty years have
+announced the decline of every civilization but that of
+their own race, and how in France the admirers of
+Nietzsche or Wagner, even of Kant or Goethe, were
+treated by Frenchmen who claimed to share in the life
+of the spirit.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_42_42" href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> You may estimate how curiously new
+this form of patriotism is among the men of thought in
+France by thinking of Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Michelet,
+Proudhon, Renan, to name only patriotic ‘clerks’ in
+the age immediately preceding that we are considering.
+Is it necessary to say once again how much the ‘clerks’
+have stimulated the passion of the laymen by adopting
+this xenophobia?</p>
+
+<p>I shall be told that during the past fifty years, and
+especially during the twenty years before the war, the
+attitude of foreigners to France was such that the most
+violent national partiality was forced upon all Frenchmen
+who wished to safeguard the nation, and that the
+only true patriots were those who consented to this
+fanaticism. I say nothing to the contrary; I only
+say that the ‘clerks’ who indulged in this fanaticism
+betrayed their duty, which is precisely to set up a corporation
+whose sole cult is that of justice and of truth, in
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_42">[42]</span>opposition to the peoples and the injustice to which
+they are condemned by their religions of this earth.
+It is true indeed that these new ‘clerks’ declare that
+they do not know what is meant by justice, truth, and
+other ‘metaphysical fogs’, that for them the true is
+determined by the useful, the just by circumstances.
+All these things were taught by Callicles, but with this
+difference; he revolted all the important thinkers
+of his time.</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that the German ‘clerks’ led
+the way in this adhesion of the modern ‘clerk’ to patriotic
+fanaticism. The French ‘clerks’ were, and long
+remained, animated with the most perfect spirit of justice
+towards foreign cultures (think of the cosmopolitanism
+of the Romantics!), when already Lessing, Schlegel,
+Fichte, Goerres were organizing in their hearts a violent
+adoration for ‘everything German’, and a scorn for
+everything not German. The nationalist ‘clerk’ is
+essentially a German invention. This, moreover, is a
+theme which will frequently recur in this book, i.e. that
+most of the moral and political attitudes adopted by the
+‘clerks’ of Europe in the past fifty years are of German
+origin, and that in the world of spiritual things the
+victory of Germany is now complete.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that Germany, by creating for herself
+the nationalist ‘clerk’ and thereby acquiring the
+additional strength we know she has acquired, made
+this species of ‘clerk’ necessary to all other countries.
+It is undeniable that from the moment when Germany
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_43">[43]</span>had a Mommsen, France especially was bound to have a
+Barrès, under penalty of finding herself in a position of
+great inferiority in nationalist fanaticism, and of seeing
+her existence seriously menaced. Every Frenchman
+attached to the continuance of his nation must rejoice
+that in the last half century France has possessed a
+fanatically nationalist literature. Yet one would like
+this Frenchman to rise for a moment superior to his
+interest, and, faithful in this to the honour of his race,
+to think it sad that the course of events in the world should
+force him to rejoice in such a thing.</p>
+
+<p>More generally, it may be admitted that a realist
+attitude has been imposed on the modern ‘clerks’,
+chiefly the French ‘clerks’, by exterior and interior
+political conditions which have arisen in their nations.
+However serious this may be, it would be much less
+serious if we found that the ‘clerks’ deplored it while
+they submitted to it, if they felt how much their own
+value is diminished by it, how greatly civilization is
+menaced by it, to what an extent the universe is rendered
+ugly by it. But this is exactly what we do not see. On
+the contrary, we see them joyfully carrying out this
+realism; we see them believing that they are rendered
+greater by their nationalist fury, that it is a service to
+civilization, an embellishment to humanity. Then one
+feels that one is confronted by something different from
+a function thwarted by the events of the moment, and
+faced with a cataclysm of moral notions in those who
+educate the world.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_44">[44]</span></p>
+
+<p>I should like to point out two other characteristics
+in the patriotism of the modern ‘clerks’ which seem
+new to me, the second of which has not failed to stimulate
+this passion greatly among the peoples.</p>
+
+<p>The first can best be brought out by contrast with
+the lines written by an author of the fifteenth century,
+lines which are the more remarkable since he who wrote
+them proved by his deeds how deep was his love for his
+native country. ‘All cities,’ says Guicciardini, ‘all
+States, all Kingdoms, are mortal; everything comes to
+an end, either by accident or by the course of nature.
+That is why a citizen who witnesses the end of his
+country cannot feel so distressed at her misfortune with
+so much reason as he would lament his own ruin. His
+country has met the fate which in every way she was
+bound to meet; the misfortune is wholly for him whose
+unhappy lot has caused him to be born in a time when
+such a disaster had to occur.’ One wonders whether there is
+a single modern thinker, attached to his country as the
+author of that passage was to his, who would dare to
+form, still less to express, a judgment of her so extraordinarily
+free in its melancholy. And here we come
+upon one of the great impieties of the moderns: The
+refusal to believe that above their nations there exists
+a development of a superior kind, by which they will
+be swept away like all other things. The ancients, so
+completely the adorers of their States, nevertheless
+placed them beneath Fate. The ancient City was under
+divine protection, but in no wise believed that she herself
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_45">[45]</span>was divine and necessarily eternal. All the literature
+of the ancients shows us that, in their opinion, the
+duration of their institutions was a precarious thing, solely
+due to the favour of the Gods, who at any time might
+withdraw that favour.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_43_43" href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> We have Thucydides contemplating
+the image of a world in which Athens should
+have ceased to exist; we have Polybius showing us the
+conqueror of Carthage meditating over the burning town:
+‘And Rome too shall meet her fatal hour.’ We have
+Virgil praising the peasant of the fields for whom ‘res
+romanae et peritura regna’ are of no value.</p>
+
+<p>It was reserved for the moderns to make of their City
+a tower which defies the heavens, and to do it with the
+aid of their ‘clerks’.</p>
+
+<p>The second characteristic of the patriotism of the
+modern ‘clerks’ is a desire to relate the form of their
+own minds to a form of the <i>national</i> mind, which they
+naturally brandish against other national forms of mind.
+We all know how, during the last fifty years, so many
+men of learning on both banks of the Rhine have asserted
+their views in the name of <i>French</i> science, of <i>German</i>
+science. We know how acridly so many of our writers
+in the same period have vibrated with <i>French</i> sensibility,
+<i>French</i> intelligence, <i>French</i> philosophy. Some declare
+that they are the incarnation of Aryan thought,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_46">[46]</span>Aryan painting, Aryan music, to which others reply by
+discovering that a certain master had a Jewish grandmother,
+and so venerate Semitic genius in him. Here it
+is not a question of inquiring whether the form of mind
+of a scholar or an artist is the signature of his nationality
+or his race and to what extent, but of noting the desire
+of the modern ‘clerks’ that it should be so, and noting
+how new a thing this is. Racine and La Bruyère never
+dreamed of setting up their works before themselves and
+before the world as manifestation of the French mind, nor
+did Goethe and Wincklemann relate theirs to the genius
+of Germany.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_44_44" href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> Here, chiefly among the artists, is a very
+remarkable fact. It is very remarkable to see men whose
+activity consists, one might say professionally, in the
+assertion of individuality, men who became so violently
+conscious of this truth a century ago with the Romantic
+movement, now (as it were) abdicating this sort of
+consciousness and trying to feel themselves as the
+expression of some general existence, a manifestation
+of a collective mind. It is true that this abdication of
+the individual in favour of ‘a great impersonal and
+eternal Whole’ satisfies another sort of Romanticism.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_47">[47]</span>It is true that this impulse of the artist may also be
+explained by the desire (which Barrès does not conceal)
+to increase the enjoyment of himself by himself, since
+the consciousness of the individual ego is doubled in
+profundity by consciousness of the national ego, while at
+the same time the artist finds new lyrical themes in this
+second consciousness. It may also be admitted that the
+artist is not blind to his own interest in calling himself the
+expression of the genius of his nation, thereby inviting
+the whole race to applaud itself in the work he put before
+it.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_45_45" href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> Whatever their motives may have been, the great
+minds or the minds reputed such, by relating the whole
+of their value so noisily to their nation, have laboured
+in a direction contrary to that expected of them; they
+have flattered the vanity of nations, they have fed full
+the arrogance with which each nation flings its superiority
+in the face of its neighbours.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_46_46" href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>I cannot better bring out all the novelty of this attitude
+of the ‘clerk’ than by quoting the remark of Renan,
+which would be signed by all men of thought from
+Socrates onwards: ‘Man belongs neither to his
+language nor to his race; he belongs only to himself,
+for he is a free being, that is, a moral being.’ To this
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_48">[48]</span>Barrès replies, amid the applause of his compeers: ‘To
+be moral is <i>not to wish to be free from one’s race</i>.’ Here,
+obviously, is an exaltation of the gregarious spirit which
+the nations had heard little of before from the priests
+of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The modern ‘clerks’ do better still. They declare
+that their thought cannot be good, that it cannot bear
+good fruit, unless they remain on their native soil, unless
+they are not ‘uprooted’ (‘<i>déracinés</i>’). They congratulate
+A on working in <i>his</i> Bearn, B in <i>his</i> Berry,
+C in <i>his</i> Brittany. And they not only proclaim this
+law for the poets, but for critics, moralists, philosophers,
+the servants of purely intellectual activity. To declare
+the mind good to the extent of its refusal to liberate
+itself from the earth is something which will make the
+modern ‘clerks’ certain of a conspicuous place in the
+annals of the spiritual life. Obviously, the feelings of
+this class of men has changed since Plutarch taught:
+‘Man is not a plant created to be immobile and to have
+his roots fixed in the soil where he was born,’ and since
+Antisthenes replied to his colleagues who boasted that
+they were native to the soil, that ‘they shared this
+honour with the slugs and grasshoppers’.</p>
+
+<p>Need I say that I am only denouncing this desire
+of the ‘clerk’ to feel himself determined by his race
+and to remain fixed to his native soil to the extent that
+it becomes in him a political attitude, a nationalist
+provocation. The best way for me to define this is by
+quoting this hymn of a modern ‘clerk’ to ‘his soil
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_49">[49]</span>and his dead’, a hymn completely void of political
+passion:</p>
+
+<p>‘And the old oak under which I am sitting speaks
+in its turn, and says to me:</p>
+
+<p>‘“Read, read in my shadow those Gothic songs whose
+refrains I heard in the past mingle with the rustling of
+my leaves. The souls of your ancestors are in these
+songs that are older than I am. Learn to know those
+humble ancestors, share their past joys and sorrows.
+Thus, O transitory creature, shalt thou live long ages
+in a few years. Be pious, venerate the soil of your
+country. Never take up a handful in your hand without
+remembering that it is sacred. Love all those far-off
+relatives whose dust mingled with earth has fed me for
+centuries, whose minds have passed into you, their
+Benjamin, the child of better days. Reproach not your
+ancestors with their ignorance, nor with the feebleness
+of their thought, nor even with the illusions of fear which
+sometimes rendered them cruel. As well reproach yourself
+for having been a child. Remember that they
+laboured, that they suffered, that they hoped for you,
+and that you owe everything to them!”’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_47_47" href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_50">[50]</span></p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Second_They_bring_their_political_passions_into_their_activities_as_clerks">
+  <i>Second: They bring their political passions into their activities as ‘clerks’.</i>
+</h3>
+
+<p>The ‘clerks’ have not been content simply to adopt
+political passions, if by this one means that they have
+made a place for these passions side by side with the
+activities they are bound to carry on as ‘clerks’. They
+have introduced these passions into those activities.
+They permit, they desire them to be mingled with their
+work as artists, as men of learning, as philosophers, to
+colour the essence of their work and to mark all its
+productions. And indeed never were there so many
+political works among those which ought to be the
+mirror of the disinterested intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>You may refuse to be surprised by this in the case
+of poetry. We must not ask the poets to separate their
+works from their passions. The latter are the substance
+of the former, and the only question to ask is whether
+they write poems to express their passions or whether
+they hunt for passions in order to write poems. In either
+case one does not see why they should exclude national
+passion or the spirit of party from their vibrant material.
+Our political poets, who are not numerous however,
+have only followed the example of Virgil, Claudian,
+Lucan, Dante, d’Aubigné, Ronsard, and Hugo. Yet
+we cannot deny that political passion, as it is expressed
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_51">[51]</span>by Claudel or d’Annunzio, a conscious and organized
+passion <i>lacking all simplicity</i>, coldly scornful of its
+adversary, a passion which in the second of these poets
+displays itself as so precisely political, so cunningly
+adapted to the profound cupidity of his compatriots and
+the exact point of weakness in the foreigner—we cannot
+deny, I say, that this political passion is something
+different from the eloquent generalities of the ‘Tragiques
+of the Année Terrible.’ A work like <i>La Nave</i>, with its
+national plan as exact and practical as that of a Bismarck,
+wherein the lyric gift is used to extol this practical
+character, seems to me something new in the history
+of poetry, even of political poetry. The result of this
+new departure on the minds of laymen may be judged
+by the present state of mind of the Italian people.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_48_48" href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
+But in our day the most remarkable example of the poets’
+applying their art to the service of political passions
+is that literary form which may be called ‘lyrical
+philosophy’, the most brilliant symbol of which is the
+work of Barrès. It begins by taking as its centres of
+vibration certain truly philosophical states of mind (such
+as pantheism, a loftily sceptical intellectualism) and then
+entirely devotes itself to serving racial passion and
+national feeling. Here the action of the lyric spirit is
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_52">[52]</span>doubled by the prestige of the spirit of abstract thought
+(Barrès admirably caught the appearance of that spirit—he
+stole the tool, a philosopher has said of him), and in
+France as elsewhere the ‘clerks’ have thereby stimulated
+political passions among the laymen, at least in that
+very important section of them who read and believe
+they think. Moreover, in regard to poets and especially
+the poet I have just named, it is difficult to know whether
+the lyrical impulse lends its aid to a genuine and pre-existing
+political passion, or whether on the contrary
+this passion puts itself at the service of a lyrical impulse
+which is seeking inspiration. Alius judex erit.</p>
+
+<p>But there are other ‘clerks’ who introduce political
+passion into their works with a remarkable consciousness
+of what they are doing, in whom this derogation
+seems more worthy of notice than in the poets. I mean
+the novelists and dramatists, i.e. ‘clerks’ whose function
+is to portray in as objective a manner as possible the
+emotions of the human soul and their conflicts—a
+function which, as Shakespeare, Molière, and Balzac
+have proved, may be carried out with all the purity I
+have here assigned to it. One may show how this
+function has been more than ever perverted by its subjection
+to political ends by the example of many contemporary
+novelists, not because they scatter
+‘tendencious’ reflections throughout their narratives
+(Balzac constantly does so), but because instead of making
+their heroes feel and act in conformity with a true observation
+of human nature, they make them do so as the passion
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_53">[53]</span>of the authors requires. Shall I cite those novels where
+the traditionalist, whatever his errors, always finally
+displays a noble soul, whereas the character without
+religion inevitably, and in spite of all his efforts, is
+capable of none but vile actions?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_49_49" href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> Or the other novels
+where the man of the people possesses every virtue and
+vileness is the exclusive portion of the bourgeois?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_50_50" href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a>
+Or the novels where the author displays his compatriots
+in contact with foreigners and, more or less
+frankly, gives all moral superiority to his own people?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_51_51" href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>
+There is a two-fold evil in this proceeding; not only
+does it considerably inflame political passion in the
+breast of the reader, but it deprives him of one of the
+most eminently civilizing effects of all works of art, i.e.
+that self-examination to which every spectator is impelled
+by a representation of human beings which he feels to
+be true and solely pre-occupied with truth.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_52_52" href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> From the
+point of view of the artist and of the value of his activity
+alone, this partiality indicates a great degradation. The
+value of the artist, the thing which makes him the world’s
+high ornament, is that he <i>plays</i> human passions instead
+of living them, and that he discovers in this ‘play’
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_54">[54]</span>emotion the same source of desires, joys and sufferings
+as ordinary men find in the pursuit of real things. Now,
+if this accomplished type of exuberant activity places
+itself at the service of the nation or of a class, if this fine
+flower of disinterestedness becomes utilitarian, then I
+say with the poet of the ‘Vierge aux Rochers’ when the
+author of <i>Siegfried</i> exhales his last sigh: ‘The world
+has lost its import.’</p>
+
+<p>I have pointed out that certain ‘clerks’ have put their
+activities as ‘clerks’ at the service of political passions.
+These are the poets, the novelists, the dramatists, the
+artists, i.e. they are men who may be permitted to give
+passion, even wilful passion, a predominant place in
+their works. But there are other ‘clerks’ in whom this
+derogation from the disinterested activity of the mind
+is far more shocking, ‘clerks’ whose influence on the
+laymen is much more profound by reason of the prestige
+attached to their functions. I mean the historians. Here,
+as with the poets, the phenomenon is a new one on
+account of the point of perfection it has reached.
+Assuredly, humanity did not await our age to see History
+putting itself at the service of the spirit of party or of
+national passion. But I think I may assert that it has
+never seen this done with the same methodical spirit,
+the same intensity of consciousness which may be
+observed in German historians of the past half century
+and in the French Monarchists of the past twenty
+years. The case of the latter is the more remarkable
+since they belong to a nation which has acquired eternal
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_55">[55]</span>honour in the history of human intelligence by explicitly
+condemning pragmatic history and formulating, as it
+were, the charter of disinterested history, through the
+works of Beaufort, Fréret, Voltaire, Thierry, Renan,
+Fustel de Coulanges.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_53_53" href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> Yet the true novelty here is the
+admission of this spirit of partiality, the expressed
+intention to employ it as a legitimate method. ‘A true
+German historian,’ declares a German master, ‘should
+especially tell those facts which conduce to the grandeur
+of Germany.’ The same scholar praises Mommsen
+(who himself boasted of it) for having written a Roman
+history ‘which becomes a history of Germany with
+Roman names’. Another (Treitschke) prided himself
+on his lack of ‘that anemic objectivity which is contrary
+to the historical sense’. Another (Guisebrecht) teaches
+that ‘Science must not soar beyond the frontiers, but
+be national, be German’. Our Monarchists do not
+lag behind. Recently one of them, the author of a
+<i>History of France</i>, which tried to show that the French
+Kings since Clovis were occupied in trying to prevent
+the war of 1914, defended the historian who presents
+the past from the point of view of the passions of his
+own time.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_54_54" href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> By his determination in bringing this
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_56">[56]</span>partiality to historical narrative the modern ‘clerk’ most
+seriously derogates from his true function, if I am right
+in saying that his function is to restrain the passions of
+the laymen. Not only does he inflame the laymen’s
+passions more cunningly than ever, not only does he
+deprive them of the suggestive spectacle of a man solely
+occupied by the thirst for truth, but he prevents the
+laymen from hearing speech different from that of the
+market place, speech (Renan’s is perhaps the finest
+example) which, coming from the heights, shows that
+the most opposite passions are equally justified, equally
+necessary to the earthly State, and thereby incites every
+reader who has any capacity for getting outside himself
+to relax the severity of his passions, at least for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Let me say, however, that indeed men like Treitschke
+and his French equivalents are not historians; they
+are men of politics who make use of history to support
+a cause whose triumph they desire. Hence, it is natural
+that the master of their method should not be Lenain de
+Tillemont but Louis XIV, who threatened to withdraw
+Mezeray’s pension if the historian persisted in pointing
+out the abuses of the old monarchy; or Napoleon, who
+ordered the chief of police to take measures for the history
+of France to be written in a manner favourable to his
+own throne. Nevertheless, the really cunning ones
+assume the mask of disinterestedness.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_55_55" href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<p>I believe that many of those whom I am here accusing
+of betraying their spiritual ministry, that disinterested
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_57">[57]</span>activity which should be theirs by the mere fact of their
+being historians, psychologists, moralists, would reply
+to me as follows, if such a confession did not destroy
+their influence: ‘We are not in the least the servants
+of spiritual things; we are the servants of material
+things, of a political party, of a nation. Only, instead
+of serving it with the sword, we serve it with the pen.
+We are <i>the spiritual militia of the material</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>Among those who ought to show the world an example
+of disinterested intellectual activity and who nevertheless
+turn their function to practical ends, I shall also mention
+the critics. Everyone knows that innumerable critics
+to-day consider that a book is only good insofar as it
+serves the party which is dear to them, or as it manifests
+‘the genius of the nation’, or as it illustrates a political
+doctrine in harmony with their own political system,
+or for other reasons of the like purity. The modern
+‘clerks’, I said before, insist that the just shall be
+determined by the useful. They also want the useful
+to determine the beautiful, which is not one of their
+least originalities in history. Nevertheless, here again
+those who adopt such a form of criticism are not truly
+critics, but men of politics, who make criticism serve
+their practical designs. Here is a perfecting of political
+passion, the whole honour of which must be given to
+the moderns. Neither Pius XIV nor Napoleon apparently
+thought of using literary criticism in support of the
+social system in which they believed.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_56_56" href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> This new
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_58">[58]</span>departure has brought forth its fruits. For instance,
+if you assert with the French Monarchists that the
+democratic ideal is inevitably bound up with bad literature,
+you are dealing that ideal a real blow in a country
+like France, which has a real devotion to literature, at
+least among those who will consent to believe that Victor
+Hugo and Lamartine were mere scribblers.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_57_57" href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the most remarkable thing about the modern
+‘clerk’ in his desire to bring political passion into his
+work, is that he has done so in philosophy, more precisely,
+in metaphysics. It may be said that until the nineteenth
+century metaphysics remained the inviolate citadel of
+disinterested speculation. Among all forms of spiritual
+labour metaphysics best deserved the admirable tribute
+which a mathematician rendered the theory of numbers
+above all branches of mathematics, when he said:
+‘This is the really pure branch of our science, by which
+I mean that it is unsullied by any contact with practical
+application.’ In fact thinkers free from any sort of
+earthly preference, like Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas,
+Descartes, Kant, and even thinkers strongly imbued
+with the superiority of their class or nation (like Plato
+and Aristotle), never thought of directing their transcendental
+speculations towards a demonstration of this
+superiority or the necessity of this adoption by the
+whole world. It has been said that the morality of the
+Greeks was national, but their metaphysics were universal.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_59">[59]</span>The Church itself, so often favourable to class or national
+interests in its morality, thinks only of God and Man in
+its metaphysics. It was reserved for our own age to see
+metaphysicians of the greatest eminence turning their
+speculations to the exaltation of their own countries
+and to the depreciation of other countries, fortifying the
+will to power of their compatriots with all the power of
+abstractive genius. Fichte and Hegel made the triumph
+of the German world the supreme and necessary end of
+the development of Being, and history has showed whether
+the action of these ‘clerks’ had an effect on the hearts
+of their laymen. Let me hasten to add that this spectacle
+of patriotic metaphysics is provided by Germany alone.
+In France, even in this age of nationalist ‘clerks’, we
+have not yet seen any philosopher (at least one who is
+taken seriously) build up a metaphysical system to the
+glory of France. Neither Auguste Comte nor Renouvier
+nor Bergson ever thought of making a French hegemony
+the necessary result of the world’s development. Need
+I add what a degradation this has been for metaphysics,
+as it has been for art? It will be the eternal shame of
+the German philosophers to have transformed the patrician
+virgin who honoured the Gods into a harpy engaged
+in shrieking the glory of her children.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Third: The ‘clerks’ have played the game of political
+passions by their doctrines</i></p>
+
+<p>But where the ‘clerks’ have most violently broken
+with their tradition and resolutely played the game of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_60">[60]</span>the laymen in their eagerness to place themselves in the
+real, is by their doctrines, by the scale of values they
+have set up for the world. Those whose preaching for
+twenty centuries had been to humiliate the realist
+passions in favour of something transcendental, have
+set themselves (with a science and a consciousness
+which will stupify history) to the task of making these
+passions, and the impulses which ensure them, the highest
+of virtues, while they cannot show too much scorn for
+the existence which in any respect raises itself beyond
+the material. I shall now describe the principal aspects
+of this phenomenon.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>A. The ‘clerks’ praise attachment to the particular and
+denounce the feeling of the universal</i></p>
+
+<p>In the first place, the ‘clerks’ have set out to exalt
+the will of men to feel conscious of themselves as distinct
+from others, and to proclaim as contemptible every
+tendency to establish oneself in a universal. With the
+exception of certain authors like Tolstoi and Anatole
+France, whose teaching moreover is now looked on
+with contempt by most of their colleagues, all the
+influential moralists of Europe during the past fifty
+years, Bourget, Barrès, Maurras, Péguy, d’Annunzio,
+Kipling, the immense majority of German thinkers,
+have praised the efforts of men to feel conscious of themselves
+in their nation and race, to the extent that this
+distinguishes them from others and opposes them to
+others, and have made them ashamed of every aspiration
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_61">[61]</span>to feel conscious of themselves as men in the general
+sense and in the sense of rising above ethnical aims.
+Those whose activity since the time of the Stoics had been
+devoted to preaching the extinction of national egotism
+in the interest of an abstract and eternal entity, set out
+to denounce every feeling of this kind and to proclaim
+the lofty morality of that egotism. In our age the
+descendants of Erasmus, Montaigne, Voltaire, have
+denounced humanitarianism as a moral degeneration,
+nay, as an intellectual degeneration, in that it implies
+‘a total absence of practical common sense’; for
+practical common sense has become the measure of
+intellectual values with these strange ‘clerks’.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to draw a distinction between
+humanitarianism as I mean it here—a sensitiveness to
+the abstract quality of what is human, to Montaigne’s
+‘whole form of human condition’—and the feeling which
+is usually called humanitarianism, by which is meant the
+love for human beings existing in the concrete. The
+former impulse (which would more accurately be called
+humanism) is the attachment to a concept. It is a pure
+passion of the intelligence, implying no terrestrial love.
+It is quite easy to conceive of a person plunging into
+the concept of what is human without having the least
+desire even to see a man. This is the form assumed by
+love of humanity in the great patricians of the mind
+like Erasmus, Malebranche, Spinoza, Goethe, who all
+were men, it appears, not very anxious to throw themselves
+into the arms of their neighbours. The second
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_62">[62]</span>humanitarianism is a state of the heart and therefore the
+portion of plebeian souls. It occurs among moralists
+in periods when lofty intellectual discipline disappears
+among them and gives way to sentimental exaltation,
+I mean in the eighteenth century (chiefly with Diderot)
+and above all in the nineteenth century, with Michelet,
+Quinet, Proudhon, Romain Rolland, Georges Duhamel.
+This sentimental form of humanitarianism and forgetfulness
+of its conceptual form explain the unpopularity
+of this doctrine with so many distinguished minds, who
+discover two equally repulsive commonplaces in the
+arsenal of political ideology. One of them is ‘the
+patriotic bore’ and the other ‘the universal embrace’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_58_58" href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p>The humanitarianism which holds in honour the
+abstract quality of what is human, is the only one which
+allows us to love <i>all</i> men. Obviously, as soon as we
+look at men in the concrete, we inevitably find that
+this quality is distributed in different quantities, and
+we have to say with Renan: ‘In reality one is <i>more or
+less</i> a man, <i>more or less</i> the son of God ... I see no
+reason why a Papuan should be immortal.’ Modern
+equalitarians, by failing to understand that there can
+be no equality except in the abstract and that inequality
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_63">[63]</span>is the essence of the concrete, have merely displayed the
+extraordinary vulgarity of their minds as well as their
+amazing political clumsiness.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_59_59" href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<p>Humanism, as I have defined it, has nothing to do
+with internationalism. Internationalism is a protest
+against national egotism, not on behalf of a spiritual
+passion, but on behalf of another egotism, another
+earthly passion. It is the impulse of a certain category
+of men—labourers, bankers, industrialists—who unite
+across frontiers in the name of private and practical
+interests, and who only oppose the national spirit because
+it thwarts them in satisfying those interests.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_60_60" href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p>In comparison with such impulses, national passion
+appears an idealistic and disinterested impulse. In short,
+humanism is also something entirely different from
+cosmopolitanism, which is the simple desire to enjoy the
+advantages of all nations and all their cultures, and is
+generally exempt from all moral dogmatism.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_61_61" href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> But let
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_64">[64]</span>us come back to this movement of the ‘clerks’ exhorting
+the peoples to feel conscious of themselves in what
+makes them distinct from others.</p>
+
+<p>What will especially amaze history in this movement
+of the ‘clerks’ is the perfection with which they
+have carried it out. They have exhorted the peoples
+to feel conscious of themselves in what makes them <i>the
+most distinct</i> from others, in their poets rather than in
+their scientists, in their legends rather than in their
+philosophies, since poetry (as they perfectly well perceived)
+is infinitely more national, more separating than the
+products of pure intelligence.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_62_62" href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> They have exhorted the
+peoples to honour their poets’ characteristics insofar as
+they are peculiar to them and are not universal. Recently
+a young Italian writer praised his language because it is
+only used in Italy, and poured scorn on French because
+it is employed universally.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_63_63" href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> They have exhorted the
+peoples to feel conscious of themselves in <i>everything</i>
+which makes them distinct from others, not only in their
+language, art, and literature, but in their dress, houses,
+furniture, and food. During the past half century it
+has been a common experience to see serious writers
+(to go no further than France) exhorting their compatriots
+to remain faithful to French fashions, French
+hair-dressing, French dining rooms, French cooking,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_65">[65]</span>French cars. They have exhorted the peoples to feel
+themselves distinct even in their vices. The German
+historians, says Fustel de Coulanges, urge their nation
+to be intoxicated with its personality, even to its barbarity.
+The French moralist does not lag behind and desires
+his compatriots to accept their ‘national determinism’
+in its ‘indivisible totality’, with its injustices as well as
+its wisdom, with its fanaticism as well as its enlightenment,
+its pettiness as well as its grandeur. Another,
+(Maurras) declares: ‘Good or bad, our tastes are ours
+and it is always permissible to take ourselves as the sole
+judges and models of our lives’. Once again, the
+remarkable thing here is not that such things should
+be said, but that they should be said by the ‘clerks’, by
+a class of men whose purpose hitherto has been to urge
+their fellow-citizens to feel conscious of themselves in
+what is common to all men, that they should be said in
+France by the descendants of Montaigne, Pascal,
+Voltaire, and Renan.</p>
+
+<p>This glorifying of national particularism, so unexpected
+among all ‘clerks’ is especially so among those whom
+I described as ‘pre-eminently clerks’—the Churchmen.
+Those who for centuries have exhorted men, at least
+theoretically, to deaden the feeling of their differences
+in order to take cognizance of each other in the divine
+essence which brings all men together, have now come
+to praise them, according to where the sermon is given,
+for their ‘fidelity to the French soul’, for ‘the immutability
+of their German consciousness’, for the ‘fervour
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_66">[66]</span>of their Italian hearts’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_64_64" href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> The sight is indeed surprising
+and remarkable! What would be thought by him who,
+by the mouth of his apostle, declared: ‘There is neither
+Greek nor Jew nor barbarian, but Christ is in all things,’
+if to-day he entered one of his churches and saw offered
+to the veneration of his faithful, a national heroine with
+a sword on her thigh and a flag in her hand?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_65_65" href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>
+
+<p>This glorification of national particularisms, at least
+with the precision observable to-day, is undoubtedly
+something new in the history of the Church. It is not
+necessary to go back as far as Saint Augustine, who
+preached the extinction of all patriotisms in the embrace
+of ‘the City of God’; nor even to Bossuet, who shows
+us the indignation of Jesus at observing ‘that because
+we are separated by a few rivers or mountains, we seem
+to have forgotten that we are all of one nature’. So
+recently as 1849 a lofty assembly of prelates asserted
+that ‘this movement of nationalities is a relic of paganism,
+differences of language are a consequence of sin and the
+fall of man’. Certainly this declaration was an interested
+one, since it was provoked by the Most Catholic Francis
+Joseph to check the separatist tendencies among the
+peoples of his Empire; but I dare to assert that the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_67">[67]</span>Church would no longer make such a declaration, even
+for motives of interest. I shall be told that even if the
+Church wished to do so, she could only do it under
+penalty of delivering up her ministers to a terrible
+unpopularity among their respective peoples. As if the
+‘clerk’s’ function were not to tell the laymen truths
+which are displeasing to them, and to pay the price at
+the expense of his own peace!</p>
+
+<p>I do not ask so much. Is there a single prelate in any
+pulpit of Europe who would now dare to pronounce:
+‘The Christian is both a cosmopolitan and a patriot.
+These two qualities are not incompatible. The world
+indeed is one common fatherland, or, to speak in more
+Christian terms, one common exile.’ (Pastoral letter
+‘On the pretended philosophy of modern infidels,’ by
+Le Franc de Pompignon, Bishop of Puy, 1763. The
+‘infidels’ here are those who refuse the Church the
+right to be cosmopolitan.)</p>
+
+<p>Some ‘clerks’ do better, and assert that by extolling
+national particularisms they are in complete harmony
+with the fundamental spirit of the Church, especially
+with the teaching of the great Doctors of the Middle
+Ages. (This is the thesis which opposes Catholicism
+to Christianity.) Need I recall the fact that the most
+national of these Doctors limited themselves to considering
+national particularisms as an inevitable condition
+of an earthly and inferior world, which must be respected
+like everything else which is the will of God? Or that
+they never exhorted men to intensify this feeling in their
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_68">[68]</span>hearts, still less did they ever think of putting this
+intensification before them as an exercise in moral
+self-perfection?</p>
+
+<p>When the Church in past times did approve of something
+in patriotism, it was fraternity among fellow-citizens,
+like love of man for other men, but not his
+opposition to other men. She approved of patriotism
+as an extension of human love, and not as a limitation
+of it.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_66_66" href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the most remarkable thing in all this is that
+recently—precisely since the time when Benedict XV
+was reproached during the last war for not having
+denounced the arrogance of German nationalism—there
+has arisen a school in the bosom of the Church which
+tries to prove that by acting in this way the Holy Father
+had simply obeyed the teaching of his Divine Master,
+who is supposed to have preached explicitly the love of a
+man for his own nation. Could anything better symbolize
+the determination of the modern ‘clerks’ to place their
+credit and their activities at the service of lay passions
+than these Churchmen making Jesus an apostle of
+nationalism?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_69">[69]</span></p>
+
+<p>These strange Christians express themselves thus:</p>
+
+<p>‘Jesus does not look beyond the frontiers of his own
+country with the idea of bestowing his benefactions
+upon other nations. He declares to the Canaanitish
+woman, whose daughter he heals against his own wish,
+that “his mission is only to the lost sheep of the house
+of Israel” (Matt. xv, 24). He sent his first disciples
+among the Israelites. And notice how he insists that
+they shall not go elsewhere. “Go not on the paths of
+the Gentiles, and enter not the cities of the Samaritans,
+but go first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
+(Matt. x, 6.) Later on, it will be time enough to announce
+the good news to foreigners, but first of all we must
+bring it to our own people. This is what he means
+by the words, so full of patriotic meaning and love:
+“the house of Israel.” A group of human beings
+possessing the same blood, the same language, the same
+religion, the same tradition, form “a house”. These
+particularities are so many dividing walls.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_67_67" href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>They also say:</p>
+
+<p>‘The most striking thing about Jesus when he consents
+to pay tribute to Caesar and refuses the crown which
+the people offer him in the desert, is not so much his
+prudence and his disinterestedness, as his patriotism ...
+One of the most important characteristics of Jesus’s
+teaching is its absolutely national character....’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_68_68" href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
+
+<p>If the reader desires, he will himself go and find out
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_70">[70]</span>the solidity of the proofs on which these teachers base
+their thesis (one of these proofs is that Jesus was strongly
+attached to the institutions of his nation, which he
+showed by accepting circumcision eight days after
+he was born). The point I wish to insist on is the eagerness
+of these Christians to make their Master a supporter
+of national egotism, at least at one period of his life.</p>
+
+<p>These views on the attitude of the Church towards
+nationalism seem to me to remain unmodified by the
+recent declarations of the Holy See concerning a certain
+type of French nationalism, for these declarations only
+condemn an openly anti-Christian nationalism (hence a
+very exceptional form of nationalism) and do not utter
+a word of blame for the desire of the peoples to set
+themselves up as distinct from others and to reject
+universalism. Moreover, this is how a universalist is
+answered by a publication which is to some extent the
+official organ of Pontifical views:</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, all men are sons of one Father; but they
+were divided in the beginning and have never been
+brought together again. The family was broken up
+and never joined up again. On the contrary. Certainly,
+I am glad to recognize the fraternity of all living beings;
+but are all the dead our fathers? Have they all loved
+us? Have they all suffered and laboured for us? Some
+lived on the other side of the globe, and, so to speak, in
+another world. Some laboured against us, or, if they
+supported our ancestors, it was in the hope of safeguarding
+or enriching their own bequest to others, not to us.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_71">[71]</span>Where is the debt? If the home is open to all comers,
+it is no longer a home but an inn.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_69_69" href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
+
+<p>It appears that we must look among those who have
+left the Church, to find Christian ministers who proclaim
+the true teaching of their Master, and who declare with
+no beating about the bush: ‘The Gospel of Jesus
+does not imply any country, but obliterates the fatherland.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_70_70" href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>The modern ‘clerk’ denounces the feeling of
+universalism, not only for the profit of the nation, but
+for that of a class. Our age has beheld moralists who
+have declared to the bourgeois world (or to the working
+classes) that, far from trying to check the feeling of their
+differences from others and to feel conscious of their
+common human nature, they should on the contrary try
+to feel conscious of this difference in all its profundity
+and irreducibleness, and that this effort is fine and noble,
+whereas every desire for union is here a sign of baseness
+and cowardice, and also of weakness of mind. This,
+as everyone knows, is the thesis of the ‘Reflections
+on Violence’, which has been praised by a whole galaxy
+of apostles of the modern soul. There is certainly something
+more novel in this attitude of the ‘clerks’ to
+class differences than in their attitude towards national
+differences. To discover the results of this teaching
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_72">[72]</span>and the additional hatred (hitherto unknown) which
+it has given to either class in doing violence to its
+adversary, you have only to look at Italian Fascism for
+the bourgeois class, and at Russian Bolshevism for the
+working class.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_71_71" href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here again we see realism trying to shelter under
+cover of the Church. We see certain Catholic teachers
+striving to prove that, by encouraging the bourgeois
+class, <i>in the name of morality</i>, to feel conscious of themselves
+as distinct from the opposing class, to plunge
+religiously into consciousness of the characteristics which
+are proper to their own class, and especially (Johannet)
+to <i>intensify their feeling of property</i>, these teachers are
+merely acting in conformity with the teaching of the
+Church.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_72_72" href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is easy to point out the equivocation upon which
+this claim is based. The Church does indeed admit class
+distinctions. She exhorts the faithful to recognize and
+even to respect them, as something imposed by God upon
+a fallen world. She also exhorts the privileged to accept
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_73">[73]</span>their situation, to carry out the activities it implies, and
+to perform ‘the duties of their state of life’. She even
+tells them that by performing these duties they are
+pleasing God and ‘making an act of prayer’. But the
+Church never exhorted them to glorify in themselves
+the feeling of this distinction, still less did she ever do so
+in the name of morality. On the contrary, she exhorted
+them in the name of morality to extinguish (beneath this
+privileged life) all belief in a particularity of essence in
+their persons, and told them to feel conscious of themselves
+in that humanity which is common to all men beneath
+the inequality of ranks and states of life.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_73_73" href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> Jesus Christ,
+the Church states explicitly and constantly, <i>only accepts
+the man who is reconciled</i>, i.e. the man who has obliterated
+from his heart every feeling of difference between
+himself and other men. (See Bossuet’s <i>Sermon on
+Reconciliation</i>.) It seems unnecessary to insist further
+on the unimpeachable character of this Christian
+teaching—I am speaking of teaching, not of practice.
+But one cannot meditate too much on the eagerness of
+so many modern Church teachers to try to find some
+means of sanctifying bourgeois egotism through the
+words of the Gospels.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_74_74" href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_74">[74]</span></p>
+
+<p>Let me point out another and remarkable form of this
+extolling of particularism by the ‘clerks’: the extolling
+of particular systems of morality and the scorn for
+universal morality. During the past half century a whole
+school, not only of men of action but of serious philosophers,
+has taught that a people should form a conception
+of its rights and duties from a study of its particular
+genius, its history, its geographical position, the particular
+circumstances in which it happens to be, and not from
+the commands of a so-called conscience of man in all
+times and places. Moreover, this same school teaches
+that a class should construct a scale of good and evil,
+determined by an inquiry into its particular needs, its
+particular aims, the particular conditions surrounding
+it, and should cease to encumber itself with such sensibilities
+as ‘justice in itself’, ‘humanity in itself’ and
+other ‘rags and tatters’ of general morality. To-day
+with Barrès, Maurras, Sorel, even Durckheim&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_75_75" href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> we are
+witnessing the complete bankruptcy among the ‘clerks’
+of that form of soul which, from Plato to Kant, looked
+for the notion of good in the heart of eternal and disinterested
+man. The example of Germany in 1914 shows
+the results of this teaching which exhorts a group of
+men to set themselves up as the sole judges of the
+morality of their actions, shows what deification of their
+appetites it leads to, what codification of their violence,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_75">[75]</span>what tranquillity in carrying out their plans. One day
+perhaps we shall see the same thing throughout Europe
+exemplified by the bourgeois class, unless the doctrines
+of that class are turned against itself and we see it
+exemplified by the working classes.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_76_76" href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a></p>
+
+<p>I dare to say that the indignation of certain French
+moralists at the action of Germany in 1914 surprises
+me, when I reflect that some sixteen years earlier, during
+the famous ‘affair’ which I have already mentioned,
+these moralists preached to their compatriots exactly
+the same doctrines, urging them to reject the concept
+of absolute justice, and to desire only a form of justice
+‘adapted to France’, to its particular genius, its particular
+history, its particular, eternal, and present needs.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_77_77" href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a>
+For the honour of these thinkers—I mean for the
+honour of their consistency—one likes to think that
+their indignation in 1914 was not the result of any moral
+conviction, but only of the desire to place the enemy of
+their nation in the wrong with a naïve universe.</p>
+
+<p>This last-named activity of the ‘clerks’ seems to
+me one of those which best display their determination
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_76">[76]</span>and skill in serving the passions of the laymen. If a
+man exhorts his compatriots to recognize only a personal
+morality and to reject all universal morality, he is showing
+himself a master of the art of encouraging them to want
+to be distinct from all other men, i.e. of the art of perfecting
+national passion in them, at least in one of its aspects.
+The desire to take none but oneself as a judge of one’s
+actions and to scorn every opinion of other people is
+undoubtedly a source of strength to a nation, as every
+exertion of pride is a source of strength to an institution,
+whose fundamental principle—whatever may be said
+to the contrary—is the assertion of an ego against a
+non-ego. What ruined Germany in the last war was
+not its ‘irritating arrogance’, as is asserted by certain
+visionaries who have made up their minds that
+malevolence of soul must be an element of weakness
+in practical life, but the fact that its material strength
+was not equal to its arrogance. When arrogance finds
+an equivalent material power at its disposal, it is very
+far from ruining nations; witness Rome and the Prussia
+of Bismarck. The ‘clerks’ who, thirty years ago,
+exhorted France to make herself the sole judge of her
+own actions and to despise eternal morality, showed
+that they possessed in the highest degree the perception
+of the national interest, insofar as that interest is wholly
+realist and has nothing to do with disinterested passion.
+It remains to be seen, once more, whether the function
+of the ‘clerks’ is to serve this sort of interests.</p>
+
+<p>But the modern ‘clerks’ have held up universal
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_77">[77]</span>truth to the scorn of mankind, as well as universal
+morality. Here the ‘clerks’ have positively shown
+genius in their effort to serve the passions of the laymen.
+It is obvious that truth is a great impediment to those
+who wish to set themselves up as distinct; from the
+very moment when they accept truth, it condemns them
+to be conscious of themselves in a universal. What a
+joy for them to learn that this universal is a mere phantom,
+that there exist only particular truths, ‘Lorrain truths,
+Provençal truths, Britanny truths, the harmony of
+which in the course of centuries constitutes what is
+beneficial, respectable, <i>true in France</i>’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_78_78" href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> (the neighbour
+similarly speaks of what is <i>true in Germany</i>), that in
+other words Pascal had the mind of a clown, and that
+what is true on one side of the Pyrenees may perfectly
+well be error on the other side! Humanity hears the
+same teaching about the classes and learns that there
+is a bourgeois truth and a working-class truth; better
+still, that the functioning of our minds should be different
+according to whether we are working men or bourgeois.
+The source of your troubles (Sorel teaches the working
+classes) is that you do not think in the mental way
+suited to your class. His disciple, Johannet, says the
+same thing to the capitalist class. Perhaps we shall
+soon see the results of this truly supreme art of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_78">[78]</span>‘clerks’ in exasperating the feeling in their differences
+among the classes.</p>
+
+<p>The cult for the particular and the scorn for the
+universal is a reversal of values quite generally characteristic
+of the teaching of the modern ‘clerks’, who proclaim
+them in a far higher sphere of thought than politics.
+The metaphysics adopted in the last twenty years by
+almost all those who think or pretend to think, set up
+as the supreme state of human consciousness that state—‘duration’—where
+we succeed in taking cognizance
+of ourselves in what is most individual, most distinct
+from everything not ourselves, and in freeing ourselves
+from those forms of thought (concept, reason, habits of
+speech) through which we can only become conscious
+of ourselves in what is common to us and others. These
+metaphysics put forward as a superior form of cognizance
+of the world that which grasps each thing by what is
+unique in it, distinct from every other, and is full of
+scorn for the mind which seeks to discover general
+states of being. Our age has seen a fact hitherto unknown,
+at least from my point of view; and this in metaphysics
+preaching adoration for the contingent, and scorn for
+the eternal.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_79_79" href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> Nothing could show better how profound
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_79">[79]</span>is the modern ‘clerk’s’ desire to exalt the real, the
+practical side of existence, and to degrade the ideal,
+the truly metaphysical side. In the history of philosophy
+this veneration for the individual comes from the German
+thinkers (Schlegel, Nietzsche, Lotze), while the metaphysical
+cult of the universal (added to a certain contempt
+for the experimental) is pre-eminently a legacy of Greece
+to the human mind. So here again, and moreover in
+its profoundest part, the teaching of the modern ‘clerks’
+shows the triumph of Germanic values and the bankruptcy
+of Hellenism.</p>
+
+<p>I should like to point out another form, not the least
+remarkable, which this preaching of particularism
+assumes among the ‘clerks’. I mean their exhortations
+to consider everything only as it exists <i>in time</i>, that is
+as it constitutes a succession of particular states, a
+‘becoming’, a ‘history’, and never as it presents a
+state of permanence beyond time under this succession
+of distinct cases. I mean especially their assertion that
+this view of things in their historical aspect is the only
+serious and philosophical view, and that the need to
+look at them in their eternal aspect is a form of the child’s
+taste for ghosts, and should be merely smiled at. Need
+I point out that this conception inspires the whole of
+modern thought? It exists among a whole group of
+literary critics, who, on their own showing, inquire far
+less whether a work is beautiful than whether it expresses
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_80">[80]</span>‘the present’ aspirations of ‘the contemporary soul’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_80_80" href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a>
+It may be seen in a whole school of moralist-historians
+who admire a doctrine, not because it is just or good, but
+because it embodies the morality <i>of its time</i>, the scientific
+spirit <i>of its time</i>. (This is the principal reason why Sorel
+admires Bergsonism and why Nietzsche admires the
+philosophy of Nicolas de Cuse.) It may be seen especially
+in all our metaphysicians. Whether they put forward
+<i>Entwickelung</i> or <i>Duration</i> or <i>Creative Evolution</i> or
+<i>Pluralism</i> or <i>Integral Experience</i> or the <i>Concrete Universal</i>,
+they all teach that the absolute is developed <i>in time</i>,
+in the circumstantial, and proclaim the decadence of
+that form of mind which, from Plato to Kant, hallows
+existence as conceived beyond change.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_81_81" href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> If, with
+Pythagoras, we assume that the Cosmos is the place of
+regulated and uniform existence, and the Ouranos the
+place of the becoming and the moving, we may say that
+all modern metaphysics place the Ouranos at the top
+of their scale of values and hold the Cosmos in very
+slight esteem. Is it not remarkable to see the ‘clerks’,
+even in the lofty function of metaphysicians, teaching
+the laymen that the real alone is worthy of consideration,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_81">[81]</span>and that the supersensible is only worthy of derisive
+laughter?&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_82_82" href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>(<i>B</i>) <i>The ‘clerks’ praise attachment to the practical, and
+denounce love of the spiritual</i></p>
+
+<p>But the ‘clerks’ with their doctrines have inflamed
+the realism of the laymen in other ways besides praising
+the particular and denouncing the universal. At the
+very top of the scale of moral values they place the
+possession of concrete advantages, of material power
+and the means by which they are procured; and they
+hold up to scorn the pursuit of truly spiritual advantages,
+of non-practical or disinterested values.</p>
+
+<p>This they have done, first of all, as regards the State.
+For twenty centuries the ‘clerks’ preached to the
+world that the State should be just; now they proclaim
+that the State should be strong and should care nothing
+about being just. (Remember the attitude of the chief
+French teachers during the Dreyfus affair.) Convinced
+that the strength of the State depends upon authority,
+they defend autocratic systems, arbitrary government,
+the reason of State, the religions which teach blind
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_82">[82]</span>submission to authority, and they cannot sufficiently
+denounce all institutions based on liberty and discussion.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_83_83" href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a>
+This denunciation of liberalism, notably by the vast
+majority of contemporary men of letters, will be one
+of the things in this age most astonishing to History,
+especially on the part of the French. With their eyes
+fixed on the powerful State, they have praised the State
+disciplined in the Prussian manner, where everyone has
+his post, and under orders from above, labours for the
+greatness of the nation, without there being any place
+left for particular wills.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_84_84" href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> Owing to their cult of the
+powerful State (and also for other reasons I shall mention
+later), they want the military element to preponderate
+in the State, they want it to have a right to privileges
+and they want the civil element to agree to this right.
+(See <i>L’Appel au Soldat</i>, and the declarations of numerous
+writers during the Dreyfus affair.) It is certainly something
+new to see men of thought preaching the abasement
+of the toga before the sword, especially in the country
+of Montesquieu and Renan. And then they preach
+that the State should be strong and contemptuous of
+justice, above all in its relations with other States. To
+this end they praise in the head of the State the will to
+aggrandisement, the desire for ‘strong frontiers’, the
+effort to keep his neighbours under his domination.
+And they glorify those means which to them seem likely
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_83">[83]</span>to attain these ends, i.e. sudden aggression, trickery,
+bad faith, contempt for treaties. This apology for
+Machiavellianism has inspired all the German historians
+for the past fifty years, and in France it is professed by
+very influential teachers, who exhort France to venerate
+her Kings because they are supposed to have been models
+of the purely practical spirit, exempt from all respect
+for any silly justice in their relations with their neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>The novelty of this attitude among the ‘clerks’
+can best be displayed by quoting the famous answer of
+Socrates to the realist in the <i>Georgias</i>:</p>
+
+<p>‘In the persons of Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles,
+you praise men who made their fellow citizens good
+cheer, by serving them with everything they desired
+without caring to teach them what is good and right
+in food. They have enlarged the State, cry the Athenians,
+but they do not see that this enlargement is nothing but
+a swelling, a tumour filled with corruption. This is all
+that has been achieved by these former politicians by
+filling the city with ports, arsenals, walls, tributes, and
+the like follies, and by not adding Temperance and
+Justice.’</p>
+
+<p>Up to our own times, in theory at least (but it is
+with theories I am dealing here) the supremacy of the
+spiritual proclaimed in those words has been adopted by
+all those who, explicitly or otherwise, have proposed a
+scale of values to the world, whether through the Church,
+or the Renaissance, or the eighteenth century. One can
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_84">[84]</span>guess the derisive laughter of a Barrès or any Italian
+moralist (to speak only of the Latin races) at this disdain
+of power for the benefit of justice, and their severity for
+the manner in which this son of Athens judges those
+who made his city materially powerful. For Socrates,
+in this respect the perfect model of the ‘clerk’ who is
+faithful to his essential function, ports, arsenals, walls
+are ‘follies’, and the serious things are justice and
+temperance. Those who to-day should perform the
+duties of a Socrates consider that it is justice which is a
+folly—‘a cloud’—and the serious things are the
+arsenals, the walls. To-day the ‘clerk’ has made himself
+Minister of War. Moreover, one of the most revered
+modern moralists definitely approves of the judges who
+condemned Socrates, as good guardians of worldly
+interests.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_85_85" href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> And that is something which has not
+been seen among the educators of the human soul
+since the evening when Crito closed his master’s
+eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>I say that the modern ‘clerks’ have <i>preached</i> that the
+State should be strong and care nothing about being
+just; and in fact the ‘clerks’ do give this assertion
+the characteristic of preaching, of moral teaching.
+I cannot insist too often that in this lies their great
+originality. When Machiavelli advises the Prince to
+carry out the Machiavellian scheme of action, he invests
+those actions with no sort of morality or beauty. For
+him morality remains what it is for everyone else, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_85">[85]</span>does not cease to remain so because he observes (not
+without melancholy) that it is incompatible with politics.
+‘The Prince,’ says Machiavelli, ‘must have an understanding
+always ready to do good, but he must be able
+to enter into evil when he is forced to do so’; thereby
+showing that for him evil, even if it aids politics, still
+remains evil. The modern realists are the <i>moralists</i> of
+realism. For them, the act which makes the State strong
+is invested with a moral character by the fact that it
+does so, and this whatever the act may be. The evil
+which serves politics ceases to be evil and becomes good.
+This position is evident in Hegel, in the Pangermanists
+and in Barrès; it is no less evident among realists like
+M. Maurras and his disciples, in spite of their insistence
+in declaring that they profess no morality. Perhaps
+these teachers do not profess any morality, at least
+expressly, in what concerns private life, but they very
+clearly profess a morality in the political order of things,
+if by morality is meant everything which puts forward
+a scale of good and evil. For them as for Hegel, the
+practical in politics <i>is the moral</i>, and if what the rest of
+the world calls moral is in opposition to the practical,
+then <i>it is the immoral</i>. Such precisely is the perfectly
+moralist meaning of the famous campaign of ‘false
+patriotism’. It seems as if we might say that for
+M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and that his
+‘atheism’ consists less in denying God than in shifting
+Him to man and his political work. I think I can
+describe the work of this writer accurately by saying
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_86">[86]</span>that it is the <i>divinizing of politics</i>.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_86_86" href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> This displacement
+of morality is undoubtedly the most important achievement
+of the modern ‘clerks’, and the most deserving
+of the historian’s attention. It is a great turning-point
+in the history of man when those who speak in the name
+of pondered thought come and tell him that his political
+egotisms are divine, and that everything which labours
+to relax them is degrading. The results of this teaching
+were shown by the example of Germany a decade ago.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_87_87" href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p>
+
+<p>The extent to which the modern ‘clerks’ have made
+innovations may be judged by the fact that up till our
+own times men had only received two sorts of teaching
+in what concerns the relations between politics and
+morality. One was Plato’s, and it said: ‘Morality
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_87">[87]</span>decides politics’; the other was Machiavelli’s, and it
+said: ‘Politics have nothing to do with morality.’
+To-day they receive a third. M. Maurras teaches:
+‘Politics decide morality.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_88_88" href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> However, the real departure
+is not that this doctrine should be put before them, but
+that they should accept it. Callicles asserted that force
+is the only morality; but the thinking world despised
+him. Let me also mention that Machiavelli was covered
+with insults by most of the moralists of his time, at least
+in France.</p>
+
+<p>The modern world also hearkens to other moralists
+of realism, who are not lacking in influence as such;
+I mean the statesmen. Here I shall point to the same
+sort of change as above. Formerly, leaders of States
+practised realism, but did not honour it; Louis XI,
+Charles the Fifth of Spain, Richelieu, Louis XIV, did
+not claim that their actions were moral. They saw
+morality where the Gospel had showed it to them, and
+they did not attempt to displace it because they did
+not apply it.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_89_89" href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> With them morality was violated, but
+moral notions remain intact; <i>and that is why, in spite of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_88">[88]</span>all their violence, they did not disturb civilization</i>. Signor
+Mussolini proclaims the morality of his politics of force
+and the immorality of everything which opposes it.
+Like the writer, the man of government, who formerly
+was merely a realist, is now the <i>apostle</i> of realism; and
+the majesty of his function—if not of his person—gives
+weight to his apostleship.</p>
+
+<p>The modern governor, owing to the fact that he
+addresses crowds, is compelled to be a moralist, and to
+present his acts as bound up with a system of morality,
+a metaphysics, a mysticism. Richelieu, who need
+account only to his King, is able to talk only of the
+practical, and leaves visions of the eternal to others.
+Mussolini, Bethmann-Hollweg, Herriot, are condemned
+to these heights.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_90_90" href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> Moreover, this shows how great
+to-day is the number of those whom I can call ‘clerks’,
+since by that word I mean all those who speak to the
+world in a transcendental manner. Consequently, I
+have a right to demand that they give an account of their
+acts <i>as ‘clerks’</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The preachers of political realism often claim to base
+themselves on the teaching of the Church, and call
+her a hypocrite when she condemns their theses. This
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_89">[89]</span>claim has little foundation as regards the teaching of
+the Church before the nineteenth century, but has
+much more foundation if we consider the present age.
+I doubt whether one could now find from the pen of
+a modern theologian any passage so brutally denunciatory
+of a war of aggression as the following:—</p>
+
+<p>‘Glaringly unjust is the war of him who declares
+war only from ambition and from the desire to extend
+his dominions beyond their legitimate boundaries, from
+the desire to possess a more commodious country in
+which to establish himself, from the fear of the great
+power of a neighbouring prince with whom he is at peace,
+or from the desire to despoil a rival solely because he
+is thought unworthy of the possessions or States he holds
+or of a right which legitimately belongs to him, because
+a ruler is inconvenienced by him and wants to get rid
+of this inconvenience by force of arms.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_91_91" href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> On the other
+hand, there are an immense number of works to-day
+which need only a little twisting to make them justify
+every attempt at conquest. For instance, the view that
+a war is just ‘if it can invoke the necessity of safeguarding
+the common good and public tranquillity, the recapture
+of things unjustly carried off, the repression of rebels,
+the defence of the innocent’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_92_92" href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> And the view which
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_90">[90]</span>asserts that ‘war is just when it is necessary to a nation
+either to defend itself against invasion, or <i>to overthrow
+the obstacles thwarting the exercise of its rights</i>.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_93_93" href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> At the
+beginning of the last century the Church still taught
+that war could only be just for one of the two belligerents.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_94_94" href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>
+It is heavy with consequences that she has now abandoned
+this position and to-day asserts that war may be just on
+both sides at once, ‘from the moment when each of
+the two adversaries, without being certain of its right,
+considers it as simply probable after having taken the
+opinion of its counsellors’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_95_95" href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> Here is another serious
+thing: In the past, war would only be declared just
+when it was against an adversary who had committed
+an injury <i>accompanied by a moral intention</i>, whereas
+to-day it may be declared just if it is directed against
+a material injury caused without any malice,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_96_96" href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> for
+instance, an accidental violation of frontier. It is
+certain that to-day Napoleon and Bismarck could find
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_91">[91]</span>in the teaching of the Church more justification than
+ever for their incursions.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_97_97" href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></p>
+
+<p>The modern ‘clerks’ have preached this realism
+to the classes as well as to the nations. They say to the
+working class as well as to the bourgeois class: ‘Organize
+yourselves, become the stronger, seize on power or exert
+yourself to retain it if you already possess it; laugh at
+all efforts to bring more charity, more justice or any other
+“rot”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_98_98" href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> into your relations with the other class, you
+have been cheated long enough by that sort of thing.’
+And here again they do not say: ‘Become so, because
+necessity demands it,’ they say, and that is the novelty
+of it: ‘Become so, because morality, aesthetics demand
+it; to wish to be powerful is the sign of an elevated soul,
+to wish to be just the sign of a base soul.’ This is the
+teaching of Nietzsche,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_99_99" href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> of Sorel, applauded by a whole
+thinking (so-called) Europe; this is the enthusiasm of
+Europe, when it is attracted by Socialism, for the doctrines
+of Marx, its scorn for the doctrines of Proudhon.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_100_100" href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> The
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_92">[92]</span>‘clerks’ have said the same thing to the parties contending
+within the same nation. ‘Make yourself the
+stronger,’ they say to one or other, according to their
+own passion, ‘and do away with everything which
+obstructs you; free yourself from the foolish prejudice
+which exhorts you to make allowances for your adversary,
+to establish with him a system of justice and harmony.’
+We all know the admiration professed by a whole army
+of ‘thinkers’ in all countries for the Italian government,
+which simply outlaws all citizens who do not approve
+of it. Until our own times the educators of the human
+soul, disciples of Aristotle, urged mankind to denounce
+as infamous any State which was an organized faction.
+The pupils of Signor Mussolini and M. Maurras learn
+to reverence such a State.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_101_101" href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a></p>
+
+<p>This extolling of the ‘strong State’ by the modern
+‘clerks’ appears also in certain teachings which, it
+may be asserted, would greatly have amazed their
+ancestors, at least the great ones:—</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) <i>The affirmation of the rights of custom, history, the
+past</i> (to the extent, be it understood, that they support
+the systems of force) in opposition to the rights of reason.
+I say the affirmation of the <i>rights</i> of custom. The modern
+traditionalists do not simply teach, like Descartes or
+Malebranche, that custom is upon the whole quite a
+good thing, and that there is more wisdom in submitting
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_93">[93]</span>to it than opposing it. They teach that custom has a
+right, <i>the</i> right, and consequently that custom should
+be respected not only from the point of view of interest,
+but of justice. The arguments in favour of the ‘historical
+right’ of Germany to Alsace, the ‘historical right’
+of the French monarchy, are not purely political positions,
+they are moral positions. They claim to be accepted
+in the name of ‘true justice’, of which (they say) their
+adversaries have a false conception.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_102_102" href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> To determine
+what is just by the ‘accomplished fact’ is certainly a
+new sort of teaching, especially among the peoples who
+for twenty centuries derived their conception of what is
+just from the companions of Socrates. Here again, the
+soul of Greece has given place to the soul of Prussia
+among the educators of mankind. The spirit which
+speaks here—and from all the teachers of Europe,
+Mediterranean as well as Germanic—is the spirit of
+Hegel: ‘The history of the world is the justice of the
+world.’ (<i>Weltgeschichte ist Weltgericht.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) The extolling of <i>policy founded on experience</i>—by
+which is meant that a society should be governed on
+principles which have proved that they can make it
+strong, and by ‘illusions’ which would tend to make it
+just. It is in this narrowly practical sense that the cult
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_94">[94]</span>of experimental politics is a new thing among the
+‘clerks’. For if we mean by the phrase the respect
+for principles which have showed that they are fitted
+to make a society not only strong but just, the recommendation
+of such a policy in opposition to a purely
+rational policy appeared in the thinking world long
+before the disciples of Taine or Auguste Comte.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_103_103" href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> Long
+before our ‘organizing empiricists’ Spinoza wanted
+political science to be an experimental science, and desired
+that the conditions under which States endure should
+be sought from observation at least as much as from
+reason. (See his attack on the Utopians, <i>Treatise</i>, I, i.)
+But he believed he learned from observation that these
+conditions do not solely consist in States possessing
+good armies and obedient peoples, but in their respecting
+the rights of citizens and even of neighbouring peoples.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_104_104" href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>
+The cult of experimental politics to-day is accompanied
+in those who adopt it by a posture which they evidently
+mean to be striking, and which in fact is so. We all
+know with what fatalistic visages, what scornful inflexibility,
+what dark certainty of grasping the absolute, they
+declare that in matters of politics ‘they consider only
+the facts’. Here, especially among the French thinkers,
+is a new kind of Romanticism, which I shall call the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_95">[95]</span><i>Romanticism of Positivism</i>, the chief representatives of
+which will rise up in the imagination of my readers without
+its being necessary for me to name them. Moreover,
+this cult brings out a silliness of mind which to me seems
+wholly an acquisition of the nineteenth century,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_105_105" href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> i.e. the
+belief that the teachings to be drawn from the past
+(supposing that they exist) will come straight out of an
+examination of the <i>facts</i>, viz. desires which have been
+realized. As if the desires which have not been realized
+were not as important, and perhaps more important, if
+you reflect that they may quite well come to fill the
+world’s stage now.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_106_106" href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> Let me add that this cult of fact
+also claims to be the sole discoverer of ‘the meaning
+of history’ and ‘the philosophy of history’, which
+there again shows a weakness of mind from which the
+preceding ages seem to have been free. When Bossuet
+and Hegel built up philosophies of history they were
+certainly no more metaphysicians than Taine or Comte
+or any of their noisy disciples, but at least they knew
+that they were so, that they could not be otherwise, and
+were not so naïve as to think themselves ‘pure scientists’.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_96">[96]</span></p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) The assertion that political forms should be
+adapted to ‘man as he is and always will be’ (viz.
+unsocial and bloody, therefore eternally needing
+systems of coercion and military institutions). This
+effort of so many modern teachers to assert the imperfectability
+of human nature appears as one of their strangest
+attitudes, if you realize that it tends towards nothing
+less than asserting the complete uselessness of their
+function, and proving that they have completely ceased
+to realize its very essence. When we see moralists,
+educators, professional providers of spiritual guidance,
+assert at the spectacle of human barbarism that ‘man
+is thus’, that ‘he must be taken thus’, that ‘you will
+never change him’, we are tempted to ask them what
+is their reason for existing. And when we hear them
+reply that ‘they are positive minds and not Utopians’,
+‘that they are concerned with what is, not with what
+might be’, we are staggered to see that they do not
+know that the moralist is essentially a Utopian, and that
+the nature of moral action is precisely that it creates its
+object by affirming it. But we recover when we notice
+that they are in no wise ignorant of this, and know
+perfectly well that by affirming it they will create that
+eternity of barbarism necessary to the maintenance of
+the institutions which are dear to them.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_107_107" href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a></p>
+
+<p>The dogma of the incurable wickedness of man has
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_97">[97]</span>another root among some who profess it. This is a
+Romantic pleasure in picturing the human race as walled
+in by an inevitable and eternal woe. From this point
+of view we may say that there has grown up among
+certain political writers of our time a real <i>Romanticism of
+Pessimism</i>, as false in its absoluteness as the Optimism
+of Rousseau and Michelet, in hatred of whom it has
+arisen, while its haughty and so-called scientific attitude
+is most impressive to simple souls.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_108_108" href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> This doctrine has
+undoubtedly borne fruits outside the world of literature,
+and at its voice there has arisen a humanity which
+believes in nothing but its egotisms and merely laughs
+at the naïve persons who still think that it might become
+better. The modern ‘clerk’ has accomplished a truly
+new work—he has taught man to deny his divinity.
+The import of such a work is obvious. The Stoics
+claimed that pain is abolished if it is denied; the thing
+is disputable in the matter of pain, but it is absolutely
+true in the matter of moral perfectability.</p>
+
+<p>I shall point out two more teachings inspired in the
+modern ‘clerks’, by their preaching of the ‘strong
+State’, and it will not be necessary to add that they
+are new in the ministers of the spiritual:—</p>
+
+<p>The first is the teaching whereby they declare to Man
+that he is great to the extent that he strives to act and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_98">[98]</span>to think as his ancestors, his race, his environment
+thought, and ignores ‘individualism’. Thirty years
+ago many of the French teachers hurled anathemas
+against the man who ‘claimed to seek truth for himself’,
+to arrive at his own opinion, instead of adopting the
+opinion of his nation which had been told what it ought
+to think by its vigilant leaders. Our age has seen priests
+of the mind teaching that the gregarious is the praiseworthy
+form of thought, and that independent thought
+is contemptible. It is moreover certain that a group
+which desires to be strong has no use for the man who
+claims to think for himself.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_109_109" href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p>
+
+<p>The second is the teaching whereby they declare to
+men that the fact that a group is numerous constitutes
+a right. This is the morality which the over-populated
+nations hear from many of their thinkers, while the
+other nations hear from many of theirs that if their low
+birth-rate continues they will become the objects of a
+‘legitimate’ extermination. The rights of numerousness
+admitted by men who claim to belong to the life of the
+mind—that is what modern humanity sees. But it is
+certain that if a nation is to be strong, it must be numerous.</p>
+
+<p>This cult of the strong State and the moral methods
+which ensure it have been preached to mankind by the
+‘clerks’ far beyond the domain of politics, and on a
+wholly general plane. This is the preaching of <i>Pragmatism</i>
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_99">[99]</span>whose teaching during the past fifty years by
+nearly all the influential moralists of Europe is one of the
+most remarkable turning points in the moral history
+of the human species. It is impossible to exaggerate
+the importance of a movement whereby those who for
+twenty centuries taught Man that the criterion of the
+morality of an act is its disinterestedness, that good is a
+decree of his reason insofar as it is universal, that his
+will is only moral if it seeks its law outside its objects,
+should begin to teach him that the moral act is the act
+whereby he secures his existence against an environment
+which disputes it, that his will is moral insofar as it is a will
+‘to power’, that the part of his soul which determines
+what is good is its ‘will to live’ wherein it is most
+‘hostile to all reason’, that the morality of an act is
+measured by its adaptation to its end, and that the only
+morality is the morality of circumstances. The
+educators of the human mind now take sides with
+Callicles against Socrates, a revolution which I dare
+to say seems to me more important than all political
+upheavals.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_110_110" href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a></p>
+
+<p>I should like to point out certain particularly remarkable
+aspects of this preaching, which are probably not
+sufficiently realized.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_100">[100]</span></p>
+
+<p>I said that the modern ‘clerks’ teach man that his
+desires are moral insofar as they tend to secure his
+existence at the expense of an environment which
+disputes it. In particular they teach him that his species
+is sacred insofar as it is able to assert its existence at the
+expense of the surrounding world.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_111_111" href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> In other words,
+the old morality told Man that he is divine to the extent
+that he becomes one with the universe; the new morality
+tells him that he is divine to the extent that he is in
+opposition to it. The former exhorted him not to set
+himself in Nature ‘like an empire within an empire’;
+the latter exhorts him to say with the fallen angels of
+Holy Writ, ‘We desire now to feel conscious of ourselves
+in ourselves, and not in God.’ The former, like
+the master of the <i>Contemplations</i>, said: ‘Believe, but
+not in ourselves’; the latter replies with Nietzsche
+and Maurras: ‘Believe, and believe in ourselves, only
+ourselves.’</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the real originality of Pragmatism is not
+in that. Christianity exhorted man to set himself up
+against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual
+and disinterested attributes: Pragmatism exhorts him
+to do so in the name of his practical attributes. Formerly
+man was divine because he had been able to acquire
+the concept of justice, the idea of law, the sense of God;
+to-day he is divine because he has been able to create an
+equipment which makes him the master of matter. (See
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_101">[101]</span>the glorifications of the <i>homo faber</i> by Nietzsche, Sorel,
+Bergson.)</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the modern ‘clerks’ extol Christianity
+insofar as it is supposed to have been pre-eminently a
+school of practical, creative virtues, adjusted to the
+support of the great human institutions. This amazing
+deformation of a doctrine which in its precepts is so
+obviously devoted to the love of the spiritual alone,
+is not only taught by laymen, who are quite within their
+rights in trying to place their practical desires under
+the patronage of the highest moral authorities; it is
+also professed by the ministers of Jesus themselves.
+Pragmatist Christianity, as I mean it here, is preached
+to-day from all Christian pulpits.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_112_112" href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p>
+
+<p>This exhortation to concrete advantages and to that
+form of soul which procures them, is expressed by the
+modern ‘clerk’ in another very remarkable teaching:
+By praise of the military life and the feelings which go
+with it, and by contempt for civil life and the morality
+it implies. We know the doctrine preached in Europe
+during the past fifty years by its most esteemed moralists,
+their apology for war ‘which purifies’, their veneration
+for the man of arms ‘the archtype of moral beauty’,
+their proclamation of the supreme morality of ‘violence’
+or of those who settle their differences by duels and
+not before a jury, while they declare that respect for
+contracts is the ‘weapon of the weak’, the need for
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_102">[102]</span>justice the ‘characteristic of slaves’. It is not betraying
+the disciples of Nietzsche or Sorel—that is, the great
+majority of contemporary men of letters who attempt to
+set up a scale of moral values for the world—to say that
+according to them Colleoni is a far superior specimen
+of humanity to l’Hôpital. The estimates of the <i>Voyage
+du Condottiere</i> are not peculiar to the author of that
+work. Here is an idealization of practical activity,
+which humanity had never before heard from its educators,
+at least from those who speak dogmatically.</p>
+
+<p>I shall be told that Nietzsche and his school do not
+extol the military life because it procures material
+advantages, but on the contrary, because it is the type
+of disinterested realism, and in opposition to the realism
+which in their opinion is the characteristic of civilian
+life. Yet it is none the less true that the way of life
+praised by these moralists is in fact that which pre-eminently
+brings material advantages. Whatever may
+be said by the author of <i>Reflections on Violence</i> and his
+disciples, war is more profitable than the counting house;
+to take is more advantageous than to exchange; Colleoni
+possesses more than Franklin. (Naturally, I am speaking
+of the successful military man, since Nietzsche and
+Sorel never speak of the merchant who goes bankrupt.)</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, no one will deny that the irrational activities,
+of which the military instinct is only one aspect, are
+extolled by their great modern apostles for their practical
+value. Their historian has put it admirably: The
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_103">[103]</span>Romanticism of Nietzsche, Sorel, and Bergson is a
+<i>utilitarian</i> Romanticism.</p>
+
+<p>Let me insist that what I am pointing to here, is not
+the modern ‘clerk’s’ extolling of the military spirit,
+but of the warlike instinct. It is the cult of the warlike
+instinct, outside all social spirit of discipline or sacrifice
+which is meant by the following assertions of Nietzsche,
+glorified by a French moralist whom himself has numerous
+followers:—</p>
+
+<p>‘The values of the warrior aristocracy are founded
+on a powerful bodily constitution, excellent health,
+without forgetting all that is necessary to the upkeep
+of that overflowing vigour—war, adventure, hunting,
+dancing, physical games and exercises, and in general
+everything which implies a robust, free and joyous
+activity.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That audacity of noble races, a mad, absurd, spontaneous
+audacity ... their indifference and scorn for
+all safety of body, for life, comfort ...’</p>
+
+<p>‘The superb blond beast wandering in search of
+prey and carnage ...’</p>
+
+<p>‘The terrible gaiety and profound joy felt by heroes
+in all destruction, in all the pleasures of victory and
+cruelty.’</p>
+
+<p>The moralist who quotes those remarks (Sorel,
+<i>Reflexions sur la Violence</i>, p. 360) adds, in order to leave
+no doubt about his recommendation of them to his fellow
+human beings: ‘It is quite evident that liberty would
+be seriously compromised if men came to look upon the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_104">[104]</span>Homeric values’ (which, for him, are the values just
+praised by Nietzsche) ‘as being characteristic of the
+barbarous peoples only.’</p>
+
+<p>Is it necessary to observe how, here again, the moral
+presentation dominant among the world’s educators is
+essentially Germanic, and shows the bankruptcy of Graeco-Roman
+thought? Before our times you do not find in
+France a single serious moralist (including de Maistre)
+or even a poet (if you consider only the great ones) who
+praises the ‘pleasures of victory and cruelty’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_113_113" href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> And it
+is the same for ancient Rome, among the nations to whom
+war had given world supremacy. I do not find a single
+passage which puts forward the instincts of prey as the
+supreme form of human morality in Cicero, Seneca, or
+Tacitus, or even in Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Claudian.
+On the other hand, I find a great many which attribute
+this rank to the instincts on which civil life is based.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_114_114" href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a>
+Moreover, in primitive Greece, long before the
+philosophers, the myths very soon give an important
+place to civil morality. In a poem of Hesiod the tomb
+of Cycnus is engulfed in the waters by Apollo’s command,
+because Cycnus was a brigand. The defence of warlike
+instincts by Mediterranean moralists will be one of
+the amazements of history. Some of them, moreover,
+seem uneasy about it, and feel they ought to claim that
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_105">[105]</span>the Homeric values (we have seen what they mean by
+that) ‘are very close to the values of Corneille’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_115_115" href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a>—as
+if the French poet’s heroes, with all their sense of
+devotion to duty and the State, had anything in common
+with lovers of adventure, prey, and carnage!</p>
+
+<p>It will be observed that these passages from Nietzsche
+praise the military life apart from any political aim.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_116_116" href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a>
+And, in fact, the modern ‘clerks’ teach men that war
+implies a morality <i>in itself</i> and should be exercised even
+apart from any utility. This thesis, so familiar in Barrès,
+has been defended in its full splendour by a young hero
+who is an educator of the soul for a whole French
+generation:</p>
+
+<p>‘In my country we love war and secretly desire it.
+We have always made war. Not to conquer a province,
+not to exterminate a nation, not to settle a conflict of
+interests.... We make war for the sake of making
+war, with no other purpose.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_117_117" href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a></p>
+
+<p>The old French moralists, even the soldiers (Vauvenargues,
+Vigny), looked upon war as a sad necessity;
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_106">[106]</span>their descendants recommend it as a noble inutility.
+Yet, here again, the cult preached as apart from the
+practical and as an art happens to be eminently favourable
+to the practical—useless war is the best preparation for
+useful war.</p>
+
+<p>This teaching leads the modern ‘clerk’ (we have
+just seen it in Nietzsche) to confer a <i>moral</i> value upon
+physical exercise and to proclaim <i>the morality of sport</i>—a
+most remarkable thing indeed among those who for
+twenty centuries have exhorted man to situate good in
+states of the mind. The moralists of sport, moreover,
+do not all shuffle over the practical essence of their
+doctrine. Young people, Barrès clearly teaches, should
+be trained in physical strength, for the greatness of the
+country. The modern educator goes for his inspiration,
+not to those who strolled in the Lyceum or to the solitaries
+of Clairvaux, but to the founder of a little town in the
+Peloponnesus. Moreover, our age has seen this new thing:
+Men who claim to belong to the spiritual life teaching
+that the Greece to venerate is Sparta with her gymnasiums,
+not the city of Plato or Praxiteles, while others maintain
+that in antiquity we should honour Rome and not Greece.
+All these things are perfectly consistent in those who
+desire to preach to humanity nothing but strong constitutions
+and solid ramparts.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_118_118" href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_107">[107]</span></p>
+
+<p>The preaching of realism leads the modern ‘Clerk’
+to certain teachings, whose novelty in his history is not
+sufficiently noticed, nor what a break they form with the
+teaching which his class has given to men for the past
+two thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) <i>The extolling of courage</i>, or more precisely the
+exhortation to make the supreme virtue Man’s aptitude
+to face death, while all other virtues, however lofty, are
+placed below it. This teaching, openly the teaching of
+Nietzsche, Sorel, Péguy, Barrès, was always the teaching
+of poets and generals, but is entirely new among the
+‘clerks’, I mean among men who put before the world
+a scale of values in the name of philosophical reflection,
+or who are willing to be considered as such. From
+Socrates to Renan they had considered courage as a
+virtue, but on a lower plane. All, more or less openly,
+teach with Plato: ‘In the first rank of virtue are wisdom
+and temperance; courage only comes afterwards.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_119_119" href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a>
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_108">[108]</span>The impulses they exhort man to venerate are not those
+whereby he strives to quench his thirst for placing himself
+in the real, but those whereby he moderates it. It was
+reserved for our time to see the priests of the spiritual
+placing in the first rank of forms of soul that which is
+indispensable to man if he is to conquer and to lay
+foundations.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_120_120" href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> However, this practical value of courage,
+plainly expressed by Nietzsche and Sorel, is not equally
+so expressed by all the modern moralists who praise
+this virtue. This brings another of their teachings
+before us:—</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) <i>The extolling of honour</i>, by which is meant all
+those impulses which cause a man to risk his life for no
+practical interest—to be precise, from desire of glory—<i>but
+which are an excellent school of practical courage</i>, and
+were always extolled by those who lead men to the
+conquest of material things. In this connection, let the
+reader think of the respect in which the institution of
+the duel has always been held in armies, in spite of
+certain repressions inspired solely by practical
+considerations.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_121_121" href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_109">[109]</span></p>
+
+<p>Here again, the position attributed to these impulses
+by so many modern moralists is something new among
+them, especially in the country of Montaigne, Pascal,
+La Bruyère, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Renan, who,
+when they extol honour, mean something very different
+from man’s cult of his own glory.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_122_122" href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> Nevertheless, the
+most remarkable thing about all this is that the cult
+of man for his own glory is currently preached by the
+Churchmen as a virtue which leads Man to God. Is it
+not amazing to hear words like the following from a
+Christian pulpit? ‘The love of grandeurs is the path
+to God, and the heroic impulse which fully coincides
+with the search for glories in their cause, permits him
+who had forgotten God or who thought he knew not
+God to re-invent Him, to discover this last summit
+after temporary ascents have rendered him accustomed
+to the dizziness and air of altitudes.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_123_123" href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> One cannot
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_110">[110]</span>forebear quoting the lesson given by a true disciple of
+Jesus to a Christian teacher who had also strangely
+forgotten his Master’s word:—</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you noticed that the eight Beatitudes, the
+Sermon on the Mount, the Gospels, the whole of
+primitive Christian literature, contain not one word
+which sets military virtues among those which lead to
+the Kingdom of Heaven?’ (Renan, <i>First Letter to
+Strauss</i>.)&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_124_124" href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a></p>
+
+<p>Let me observe that I am not reproaching the Christian
+preacher for giving their due to glory and other earthly
+passions, I am only reproaching him for trying to pretend
+that he is in harmony with his institution when he does
+so. We do not ask that the Christian shall not violate
+the Christian law; we only ask him to know that he is
+breaking it when he does break it. This seems to me
+admirably brought out by the remark of Cardinal
+Lavigerie who was asked: ‘What would you do,
+Eminence, if someone slapped your right cheek?’ and
+who replied, ‘I know what I ought to do, but I do
+not know what I should do.’ <i>I know what I ought to do</i>,
+and therefore what I ought to teach. A man who speaks
+in that way may give way to every species of violence,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_111">[111]</span>and yet maintain Christian morality. Here actions
+are nothing; the judgment on the actions is everything.</p>
+
+<p>Must I repeat that I am not deploring the fact that
+the cults of honour and courage should be preached to
+human beings; I am deploring the fact that they are
+preached <i>by the ‘clerks’</i>. Civilization, I repeat, seems
+to me possible only if humanity consents to a division
+of functions, if side by side with those who carry out the
+lay passions and extol the virtues serviceable to them
+there exists a class of men who depreciate these passions
+and glorify the advantages which are beyond the material.
+What I think serious is that this class of men should
+cease to perform their office, and that those whose duty
+was to quench human pride should extol the same
+impulses of soul as the leaders of armies.</p>
+
+<p>I shall be told that this preaching is imposed on the
+‘clerks’, at least in war-time, by the laymen, by the
+States, who to-day intend to mobilize all the moral
+resources of the nation for their ends.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_125_125" href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> But what amazes
+me is not so much that I see the ‘clerks’ preaching in
+this manner, as to see them do it with such docility,
+such absence of disgust, such enthusiasm, such joy....
+The truth is that the ‘clerks’ have become as much
+laymen as the laymen themselves.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) <i>The extolling of harshness</i> and the scorn for human
+love—pity, charity, benevolence. Here again, the
+modern ‘clerks’ are the <i>moralists</i> of realism. They are
+not content to remind the world that harshness is
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_112">[112]</span>necessary in order ‘to succeed’ and that charity is an
+encumbrance, nor have they limited themselves to
+preaching to their nation or party what Zarathustra
+preached to his disciples: ‘Be hard, be pitiless, and in
+this way dominate.’ They proclaim the moral nobility
+of harshness and the ignominy of charity. This teaching,
+which is the foundation of Nietzsche’s work, need not
+surprise one in a country which has not provided the
+world with a single great apostle,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_126_126" href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> but it is very remarkable
+in the land of Vincent de Paul and the defender of
+the Calas. Lines like the following, which might be an
+extract from the <i>Genealogy of Morals</i>, seem to me something
+wholly new coming from the pen of a French
+moralist: ‘This perverted pity has degraded love.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_127_127" href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a>
+It has been given the name of charity, and the weak
+have received its dew. Night after night the seed of
+this calamity has been scattered. It conquers the earth.
+It fills the solitary places. In whatever country you go,
+you cannot go about for a single day without meeting
+this withered face with its commonplace gestures, inspired
+by the sole desire of prolonging its shameful life.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_128_128" href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> There
+again we can observe how the modern realists have
+advanced beyond their predecessors. When Machiavelli
+declares that ‘a Prince in order to maintain his power
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_113">[113]</span>is forced to govern in a manner contrary to charity and
+humanity’, he is simply saying that to act contrary
+to charity may be a practical necessity, but he does not
+in the least vouch that charity is a degradation of the
+soul. This teaching is the contribution of the nineteenth
+century to the moral education of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the modern ‘clerks’ claim that in preaching
+inhumanity they are only continuing the teaching of
+their great ancestors, particularly of Spinoza on account
+of his famous proposition: ‘Pity in itself is bad and
+useless in a soul which lives according to reason.’ Is it
+necessary to point out that here pity is depreciated, not
+to the benefit of inhumanity, but to the benefit of
+humanity <i>guided by reason</i>, because reason alone ‘enables
+us to give aid to others with certainty’. And Spinoza,
+determined to stress the fact that for him pity is only
+inferior to reasoned kindness, adds: ‘It must be fully
+understood that I am here speaking of the man who
+lives by reason. For if a man is never led by reason
+or by pity to go to the assistance of others, then assuredly
+he deserves the name of inhuman, since he retains no
+resemblance to a man.’ Let me add that the apostles of
+harshness cannot claim either that they are supported
+by the fanatics of justice (Michelet, Proudhon, Renouvier)
+who, by sacrificing love to justice, do perhaps end up
+in harshness, but not in a joyous harshness which is
+precisely the harshness preached by the modern realists,
+who say—perhaps rightly—that it is the only fertile kind.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_129_129" href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_114">[114]</span></p>
+
+<p>This extolling of harshness seems to me to have borne
+more fruit than any other preaching by the modern
+‘clerks’. It is a commonplace that among the great
+majority of the (so-called) thinking young men, in
+France for instance, harshness is to-day an object of
+respect, while human love in all its forms is considered
+a rather laughable thing. These young men have a cult
+for doctrines which respect nothing but force, pay no
+attention to the lamentations of suffering and proclaim
+the inevitability of war and slavery, while they despise
+those who are revolted by such prospects and desire to
+alter them. I should like these cults to be compared with
+the literary aesthetics of these young men, their veneration
+for certain contemporary novelists and poets in
+whom the absence of human sympathy reaches a rare
+pitch of perfection, and whom they plainly venerate,
+especially for that characteristic. And I should like
+you to observe the gloomy gravity and arrogance with
+which these young men subscribe to these ‘iron’
+doctrines. It seems to me that the modern ‘clerks’
+have created in so-called cultivated society a positive
+<i>Romanticism of harshness</i>.</p>
+
+<p>They have also created a <i>Romanticism of contempt</i>, at
+least in France, and notably with Barrès, and indeed
+since Flaubert and Baudelaire. Nevertheless, it seems
+to me that in recent times contempt has been practised
+in France for reasons quite other than aesthetic. These
+peoples have come to see that by feeling contempt for
+others they are not only obtaining the pleasure of a lofty
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_115">[115]</span>attitude, but that when they are really expert in expressing
+contempt they harm what they despise, do it a real
+damage. And in fact the kind of contempt which
+Barrès expresses for the Jews and which certain royalist
+teachers have displayed for democratic institutions every
+morning for the past twenty years, do really harm their
+victims, at least among those very numerous artistic
+minds for whom a superbly executory gesture is as good
+as an argument. The modern ‘clerks’ deserve a place
+of honour in the history of realism; they have come to
+understand the practical value of contempt.</p>
+
+<p>It may also be said that they have created a <i>cult for
+cruelty</i>. Nietzsche proclaims that ‘every superior
+culture is built up on cruelty’, a doctrine which is
+explicitly proclaimed in many places by Barrès, author
+of <i>Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort</i>. Nevertheless,
+the cult of cruelty, which may also be thought necessary
+‘to succeed’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_130_130" href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> has remained limited to a few particularly
+artistic sensibilities, at least in France. It is very far
+from becoming the cult of a school, like harshness and
+contempt. Here again we may notice how new this
+cult is in the land of those who said ‘Cowardice, the
+mother of cruelty’ (Montaigne), or, to quote a military
+moralist, ‘a hero does not feel proud of carrying hunger
+and misery among foreigners, but of enduring them for
+the State; nor of giving death, but of risking it.’
+(Vauvenargues).&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_131_131" href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_116">[116]</span></p>
+
+<p>(<i>d</i>) <i>The cult of success</i>, I mean the teaching which says
+that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a
+moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason
+alone deserving of contempt. This philosophy which
+is professed by many a modern teacher in political life
+(it may be said, by all in Germany since Hegel, and by a
+large number in France since de Maistre) is also professed
+in private life, and has borne its fruits there. In the
+so-called thinking world to-day there are innumerable
+people who think they are demonstrating their aristocratic
+morality by declaring their systematic esteem for all
+who ‘succeed’ and their scorn for all who fail. One
+moralist places to the credit of Napoleon’s greatness of
+soul his contempt for ‘the unlucky’; others do the
+same thing in regard to Mazarin, Vauban, Mussolini.
+It cannot be denied that the ‘clerks’ are thereby keeping
+an excellent school of realism, since the cult of success
+and the contempt for misfortune are obviously admirable
+moral conditions for obtaining material advantages.
+Nor can it be denied that this teaching is entirely new
+among them, especially among the ‘clerks’ of the Latin
+races, I mean those whose ancestors had taught mankind
+to honour merit apart from its achievements, to honour
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_117">[117]</span>Hector as much as Achilles, the Curiatii more than
+their successful rivals.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_132_132" href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a></p>
+
+<p>We have just seen that the modern moralists extol
+the warrior at the expense of the man of justice. They
+also extol him at the expense of the man of learning and,
+there again, they preach to the world the cult of practical
+activity in defiance of the disinterested life. We all
+know Nietzsche’s hue and cry against the man of the
+study, the man of erudition, ‘the mirror man,’ whose
+only passion is to understand. And also Nietzsche’s
+esteem for the life of the mind solely insofar as it is
+emotion, lyricism, action, partiality; his derisive laughter
+at ‘objective’ methodical research devoted to ‘the
+horrible old woman known as truth’. And we know
+Sorel’s denunciations of societies which ‘give a privileged
+place to the amateurs of <i>purely intellectual things</i>’;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_133_133" href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> those of
+Barrès, Lemaître, Brunetière, thirty years ago, intimating
+to the ‘intellectuals’ that they are a type of humanity
+‘inferior to the soldier’; those of Péguy, who admires
+philosophies to the extent that ‘they are good fighters’,
+and admires Descartes because he was in the army, and
+the dialecticians of French monarchism solely because
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_118">[118]</span>they are ready to be killed for the sake of their views.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_134_134" href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a>
+I shall be told that most often this is the mere wild talk
+of men of letters, the posturing of lyricists, to which it
+is unjust to attribute a dogmatic meaning; that Nietzsche,
+Barrès and Péguy denounce the life of study on account
+of their poetic temperaments, their aversion from
+everything lacking in picturesqueness and the spirit
+of adventure, and not their resolution to abase disinterestedness.
+To which I reply that these poets
+give themselves out as serious thinkers (notice their
+tone, <i>quite free from</i> naiveté); that the immense majority
+of their readers accept them as such; that, even if it
+were true that in depreciating the man of study their
+motive is not to abase disinterestedness, it is none the
+less true in fact that the manner of living they hold up
+to the laughter of mankind happens to be the very type
+of the disinterested life, while the life they extol at its
+expense is the very type of practical activity (at least
+more practical than that of the man of study, for it will
+be admitted that the activity of du Guesclin and Napoleon
+is more likely to acquire material advantages than the
+activity of Spinoza and Mabillon); that, moreover,
+what these thinkers despise in the man of study is
+precisely the man who lays no foundations, who does
+not conquer, who does not predicate the capture of its
+environment by the species, or who, if he does predicate
+it, as the scientist does by his discoveries, retains for
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_119">[119]</span>himself only the joy of knowledge and abandons the
+practical exploitation of his discoveries to others. In
+Nietzsche, the scorn for the man of study to the benefit
+of the warrior is only an episode in a desire which
+nobody will deny inspires the whole of his work as well
+as the work of Sorel, Barrès and Péguy: <i>The desire to
+abase the values of knowledge before the values of action.</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_135_135" href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a></p>
+
+<p>To-day this desire inspires not only the moralist,
+but another kind of ‘clerk’ who speaks from much
+higher ground. I am referring to that teaching of
+modern metaphysics which exhorts man to feel comparatively
+little esteem for the truly thinking portion
+of himself and to honour the active and <i>willing</i> part of
+himself with all his devotion. The theory of knowledge
+from which humanity has taken its values during the
+past half century assigns a secondary rank to the mind
+which proceeds by clear and distinct ideas, by categories,
+by words, and places in the highest rank the mind which
+succeeds in liberating itself from these intellectual habits
+and in becoming conscious of itself insofar as it is a
+‘pure tendency’, a ‘pure will’, a ‘pure activity’.
+Philosophy which formerly raised man to feel conscious
+of himself because he was a thinking being and to say,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_120">[120]</span>‘I think, therefore I am’, now raises him to say, ‘I am,
+therefore I think’, ‘I think, therefore I am not’ (unless
+he takes thought into consideration only in that humble
+region where it is confused with action). Formerly
+philosophy taught him that his soul is divine insofar as
+it resembles the soul of Pythagoras linking up concepts;
+now she informs him that his soul is divine insofar as it
+resembles that of the small chicken breaking its eggshell.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_136_136" href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a>
+From his loftiest pulpit the modern ‘clerk’
+assures man that he is great in proportion as he is practical.</p>
+
+<p>During fifty years, especially in France (see Barrès
+and Bourget) a whole literature has assiduously proclaimed
+the superiority of instinct, the unconscious,
+intuition, the will (in the German sense, i.e. as opposed
+to the intelligence) and has proclaimed it in the name
+of the practical spirit, because the instinct and not the
+intelligence knows what we ought to do—as individuals,
+as a nation, as a class—to secure our own advantage.
+These writers have eagerly expatiated on the example
+of the insect whose ‘instinct’ (it appears) teaches it to
+strike its prey precisely in the spot which will paralyse
+it without killing it, so that its offspring may feed on the
+living prey and develop better.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_137_137" href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> Other teachers denounce
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_121">[121]</span>this ‘barbarous’ extolling of instinct in the name of
+‘the French tradition’ and preach ‘the superiority
+of the intelligence’; but they preach it because in their
+opinion it is the intelligence which shows us the actions
+required by our interests, i.e. from exactly the same
+passion for the practical. This brings us to one of the
+most remarkable and certainly the most novel forms
+of this preaching of the practical by the modern ‘clerks’.</p>
+
+<p>I mean that teaching according to which <i>intellectual
+activity is worthy of esteem to the extent that it is practical
+and to that extent alone</i>. It may be said that since the
+Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards
+intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like
+aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart
+from any attention to the advantages it may procure.
+Most thinkers would have agreed with Plato’s famous
+hymn to geometry, where that discipline is venerated
+more than all others because for him it represents the
+type of speculative thought which brings in nothing
+material; and with Renan’s verdict which declares that
+the man who loves science for its fruits commits the
+worst of blasphemies against that divinity.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_138_138" href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> By this
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_122">[122]</span>standard of values the ‘clerks’ put before the laymen
+the spectacle of a class of men for whom the value of
+life lies in its disinterestedness, and they acted as a check
+on—or at least shamed—the laymen’s practical passions.
+The modern ‘clerks’ have violently torn up this charter.
+They proclaim that intellectual functions are only
+respectable to the extent that they are bound up with
+the pursuit of a concrete advantage, and that the
+intelligence which takes no interest in its objects is a
+contemptible activity. They teach that the superior
+form of the intelligence is that which thrusts its roots
+into ‘the vital urge’, occupied in discovering what is
+most valuable in securing our existence. In historical&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_139_139" href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a>
+science especially, they honour the intelligence which
+labours under the guidance of political interests,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_140_140" href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> and
+they are completely disdainful of all efforts towards
+‘objectivity’. Elsewhere they assert that the intelligence
+to be venerated is that which limits its activities within
+the bounds of national interests and social order, while
+the intelligence which allows itself to be guided by
+the desire for truth alone, apart from any concern with
+the demands of society, is merely a ‘savage and brutal’
+activity, which ‘dishonours the highest of human
+faculties.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_141_141" href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> Let me also point out their devotion to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_123">[123]</span>doctrine (Bergson, Sorel) which says that science has
+a purely utilitarian origin—the necessity of man to
+dominate matter, ‘knowledge is adaptation’; and their
+scorn for the beautiful Greek conception which made
+science bloom from the desire to play, the perfect type
+of disinterested activity. And then they teach men that
+to accept an error which is of service to them (the ‘myth’)
+is an undertaking which does them honour, while it is
+shameful to admit a truth which harms them. In other
+words, as Nietzsche, Barrès and Sorel plainly put it,
+sensibility to truth in itself apart from any practical
+aim is a somewhat contemptible form of mind.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_142_142" href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> Here
+the modern ‘clerk’ positively displays genius in his
+defence of the material, since the material has nothing
+to do with the truth, or rather to speak more truly—has
+no worse enemy. The genius of Callicles in all its
+profundity lives again in the great masters of the modern
+soul.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_143_143" href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_124">[124]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then the modern ‘clerks’ have preached to men the
+religion of the practical <i>by means of their theology</i>, through
+the image of God they have set before them. First,
+they determined that God, who since the Stoics has been
+infinite, should once more become finite, distinct,
+endowed with a personality, that He should be the
+affirmation of a <i>physical</i> and not a <i>metaphysical</i> existence.
+Anthropomorphism, which in the poets from Prudentius
+to Victor Hugo existed mingled with pantheism without
+troubling to define the frontiers between them, since
+God was personal or indeterminate according to the
+direction of the emotion and the needs of the lyric
+impulse, rose up in Péguy and Claudel with the most
+violent consciousness of itself, the clearest desire to be
+distinguished from its acolyte and to express contempt
+for him. At the same time the political teachers attacked
+the religion of the Infinite with a precision of hatred,
+a skill in depreciation, unparalleled even in the Church,
+which consisted in denouncing this religion precisely
+because it is not practical, because it saps away the
+feelings which found the great earthly realities: the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_125">[125]</span>City and the State.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_144_144" href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> But the modern ‘clerks’ have
+above all endowed God with the attributes which secure
+practical advantages. It may be said that, since the
+Old Testament, God was far more just than strong,
+or rather that, as Plato thought, His strength was only
+a form of His justice; and His power, as Malebranche
+and Spinoza put it, had nothing in common with the
+power of kings and Empire-builders. The desire to
+increase was implicitly excluded from His nature, as
+well as the moral attributes necessary to the satisfaction
+of that desire—energy, will, the love of effort, the
+attraction of triumph. This was an inevitable result
+of His perfect and infinite state of being, which at once
+constituted the whole of possible reality. Even in creation,
+the idea of which is essentially inseparable from the ideas
+of power and increase, these ideas were avoided—the
+world was far less a result of God’s power than of His
+love; it came out of God as a ray comes out of the sun,
+without God feeling any increase of Himself at the expense
+of anything else. God, to speak in terms of the schools,
+was far less the transcendent cause of the world than
+its immanent cause.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_145_145" href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> On the other hand, for the modern
+teachers (Hegel, Schelling, Bergson, Péguy), God is
+essentially something which increases; His law is
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_126">[126]</span>‘incessant change’, ‘incessant novelty’, ‘incessant&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_146_146" href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a>
+creation’; His principle is essentially a principle of
+growth—Will, Tension, Vital Urge. If He is Intelligence,
+as with Hegel, He is an intelligence which
+‘develops’, which ‘realizes itself’ more and more.
+The Being situated immediately in all His perfection
+and knowing nothing of conquest is an object of contempt;
+He represents (Bergson) an ‘eternity of death’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_147_147" href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> So
+the believers in an initial and single creation to-day
+strive to present this act in its purely practical aspect.
+The Church condemns with a hitherto unknown clearness
+every doctrine of immanence and preaches transcendence
+in all its strictness.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_148_148" href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> God, in creating the world, no
+longer witnesses an inevitable expansion of His nature;
+through His power (some, to diminish the arbitrariness,
+say ‘through His benevolence’) he sees the arising of
+something clearly distinct from Himself, something on
+which He sets His hand. His act, whatever may be
+said to the contrary, is the perfect model of material
+aggrandisement. Like the prophet of Israel of old,
+the modern ‘clerk’ says to mankind: ‘Display your
+zeal for the Eternal, the God of battles.’</p>
+
+<p>For half a century, such has been the attitude of
+men whose function is to thwart the realism of nations,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_127">[127]</span>and who have laboured to excite it with all their power
+and with complete decision of purpose. For this reason
+I dare to call this attitude ‘The Great Betrayal’. If
+I look for its causes, I see profound causes which forbid
+me to look upon this movement as a mere fashion, to
+which the contrary movement might succeed to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>One of the principal causes is that the modern world
+has made the ‘clerk’ into a citizen, subject to all the
+responsibilities of a citizen, and consequently to despise
+lay passions is far more difficult for him than for his
+predecessors. If he is reproached for not looking upon
+national quarrels with the noble serenity of Descartes
+and Goethe, the ‘clerk’ may well retort that his nation
+claps a soldier’s pack on his back if she is insulted, and
+crushes him with taxes even if she is victorious. If
+shame is cried upon him because he does not rise superior
+to social hatreds, he will point out that the day of
+enlightened patronage is over, that to-day he has to earn
+his living, and that it is not his fault if he is eager to
+support the class which takes a pleasure in his productions.
+No doubt this explanation is not valid for the true ‘clerk’,
+who submits to the laws of his State without allowing them
+to injure his soul. He renders unto Caesar the things
+that are Caesar’s, i.e. his life perhaps, but nothing more.
+The true ‘clerk’ is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel,
+who never imbibed national patriotism although they
+perfectly performed their patriotic duty; he is Spinoza,
+Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never
+diverted from single-hearted adoration of the Beautiful
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_128">[128]</span>and the Divine by the necessity of earning their daily
+bread. But such ‘clerks’ are inevitably rare. So much
+contempt for suffering is not the law of human nature
+even among the ‘clerks’; the law is that the living
+creature condemned to struggle for life turns to practical
+passions, and thence to the sanctifying of those passions.
+The ‘clerk’s’ new faith is to a great extent a result of
+the social conditions imposed upon him, and the real evil
+to deplore is perhaps not so much the ‘great betrayal’
+of the ‘clerks’ as the disappearance of the ‘clerks’,
+the impossibility of leading the life of a ‘clerk’ in the
+world of to-day. One of the gravest responsibilities
+of the modern State is that it has not maintained (but
+could it do so?) a class of men exempt from civic duties,
+men whose sole function is to maintain non-practical
+values. Renan’s prophecy is verified; he foretold
+the inevitable degradation of a society where every
+member was forced to discharge worldly tasks, although
+Renan himself was the very type of those whom such
+servitude would never have prevented—in the phrase
+of one of his peers—‘from breathing only in the
+direction of Heaven’.</p>
+
+<p>It would be very unjust to explain the existence of
+national passion in the modern ‘clerk’ by self-interest
+alone. This is also to be explained, and in a more
+simple manner, by the love, the impulse which naturally
+inspires every man to love the group from which he
+derives, more than the other groups which share the
+earth. There again, it may be argued that the ‘clerk’s’
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_129">[129]</span>new faith is caused by the changes of the nineteenth
+century, which by giving national groups a consistency
+hitherto unknown furnishes food to a passion which in
+many countries before that period could have been little
+more than potential. Obviously, attachment to the
+world of the spirit alone was easier for those who were
+capable of it when there were no nations to love. And,
+in fact, it is most suggestive to notice that the true appearance
+of the ‘clerk’ coincides with the fall of the Roman
+Empire, i.e. with the time when the great nation collapsed
+and the little nations had not yet come into existence.
+It is equally suggestive to notice that the age of the great
+lovers of spiritual things, the age of Thomas Aquinas,
+Roger Bacon, Galilei, Erasmus, was the age when most
+of Europe was in a state of chaos and the nations were
+unknown; that the regions where pure speculation
+endured longest seem to be Germany and Italy,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_149_149" href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> i.e.
+the regions which were the last to be nationalized;
+and practically ceased to produce pure speculation from
+the moment when they became nations. Of course,
+here again the vicissitudes of the world of sense do not
+affect the true ‘clerk’. The misfortunes of their
+country, and even its triumphs, did not prevent Einstein
+and Nietzsche from feeling no passion but the passion
+for thought. When Jules Lemaître exclaimed that the
+wound of Sedan made him lose his reason, Renan replied
+that he perfectly retained his, and that a true priest of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_130">[130]</span>the mind could only be wounded in other than earthly
+interests.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_150_150" href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the cases I have just mentioned, the ‘clerk’s’
+devotion to his nation or class is sincere, whether it is
+from interest or from love. I admit I think this sincerity
+is infrequent. The practice of the life of the spirit seems
+to me to lead inevitably to universalism, to the feeling
+of the eternal, to a lack of vigour in the belief in worldly
+conventions. The sincerity of national passion especially,
+in men of letters particularly, seems to me to assume the
+virtue of naiveté, which everyone will admit is not
+characteristic of this body of men, apart from their own
+self-esteem. It will also be hard to convince me that the
+motives of their public attitudes in artists are such simple
+things as the desire to live and to eat. I therefore seek—and
+find—other reasons for the realism of the modern
+‘clerk’, and these, although less natural, are none the
+less profound. They seem to me particularly valid
+for men of letters, especially in France, the country
+where the attitude of writers in the past half century
+differs most from that of their fathers.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, I see the interests of their careers. It is
+an obvious fact that during the past two centuries most
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_131">[131]</span>of the men of letters who have attained wide fame in
+France assumed a political attitude—for instance,
+Voltaire, Diderot, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor
+Hugo, Anatole France, Barrès. With some of them,
+real fame dates from the moment when they assumed
+that attitude. This law has not escaped the attention
+of their descendants, and it may be said to-day that every
+French writer who desires wide fame (which means
+every writer endowed with the real temperament of a
+man of letters) also desires inevitably to play a political
+part. This desire may arise from other motives. For
+instance, in Barrès and d’Annunzio, from the desire
+‘to act’, to be something more than ‘men at a desk’,
+to lead a life like that of the ‘heroes’ and not like that
+of ‘scribes’; or, more ingenuously, as no doubt happened
+with Renan when he stood as a Parliamentary candidate,
+from the idea that he could perform a public service.
+Let me add that the modern writer’s desire to be a
+political man is excused by the fact that the position
+is to some extent offered him by public opinion, whereas
+the compatriots of Racine and La Bruyère would have
+laughed in their faces if they had thought of publishing
+their views on the advisability of the war with Holland
+or the legality of Chambres de réunion. There again,
+it was easier to be a true ‘clerk’ in the past than to-day.</p>
+
+<p>These observations explain why the contemporary
+French writer so frequently desires to assume a political
+attitude, but they do not explain why this attitude is
+so inevitably in support of arbitrary authority.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_132">[132]</span>Liberalism is also a political attitude; and the least which
+can be said is that the modern French ‘clerk’ has very
+seldom adopted it in the past twenty years. Another
+factor comes in here. That is the practical writer’s
+desire to please the bourgeoisie, who are the creators
+of fame and the source of honours. It may even be
+argued that for this sort of writer the necessity to treat
+the passions of this class with deference is greater than
+ever, if I may judge by the fate of those who in recent
+times have dared to defy them, i.e. Zola, Romain Rolland.
+Now, the bourgeoisie of to-day, terrified by the progress
+of the opposing class, solely anxious to retain the privileges
+which are left them, feel nothing but aversion from
+liberal dogmas; and the man of letters who displays
+any political flag is bound to wave the flag of ‘Order’
+if he wishes to obtain favours. The case of Barrès
+is particularly instructive from this point of view. He
+began as a great intellectual sceptic, and his material
+star waxed a hundredfold greater, at least in his own
+country, on the day when he made himself the apostle
+of ‘necessary prejudices’. This sort of thing makes me
+believe that the present political fashion of French
+writers is going to last a long time. A phenomenon
+which is caused by the uneasiness of the French
+bourgeoisie does not seem likely to disappear quickly.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_151_151" href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned the lot of those writers who in
+quite recent times have dared to thwart the passions of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_133">[133]</span>the bourgeoisie. This is only one aspect of a very
+general novelty, of supreme interest to the subject I am
+discussing. I mean the consciousness of their sovereignty
+felt by the herd of laymen, and the resolution they
+display to bring to his senses any writer who dares to
+say anything but what they wish to hear. This propensity
+of the layman appears not only in his relations
+with his writers (and with his press—a newspaper which
+does not supply its readers with the exact errors they
+cherish is immediately dropped), but, which is far more
+remarkable, in his relations with his truly ‘clerical’
+teachers, whose voice speaks to him in the name of the
+Divine. The pulpit-orator who really presumed to
+censure nationalist passion, who really mortified bourgeois
+arrogance, would soon (particularly in France) see his
+flock disperse. He can no longer terrify such a gathering
+with the fear of punishment, and they no longer believe
+in anything but the real; consequently they feel stronger
+and more important than he, and only consent to listen
+to his preaching on condition that he treats with deference—not
+to say sanctifies—the egotisms they venerate.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_152_152" href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a>
+Modern humanity is fully determined that those who
+call themselves its teachers, shall be its servants and not
+its guides. And most of the teachers understand this
+admirably.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_153_153" href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_134">[134]</span></p>
+
+<p>To come back to the modern writer and the causes
+for his political attitude—I shall add that he is not only
+in the service of a bourgeoisie which is in a state of
+anxiety, but that he himself has become more and more
+of a bourgeois, endowed with all the social position and
+respect which belong to that caste. The Bohemian
+man of letters has practically disappeared, at least among
+those who engage public interest. Consequently, he
+has more and more come to possess the bourgeois form
+of soul, one of those most conspicuous characteristics
+is an affectation of the political feelings of the aristocracy—an
+attachment to systems of arbitrary authority, to
+military and priestly institutions, a scorn for societies
+founded upon justice, upon civic equality, a cult for the
+past, etc.... How many writers in France during
+the past fifty years, men whose names are on everyone’s
+lips, obviously think they are ennobling themselves
+by expressing disgust for democratic institutions!&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_154_154" href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> In
+the same way I explain the adoption by many of them
+of harshness and cruelty, which they think are also
+attributes of the souls of the nobility.</p>
+
+<p>The reasons I have just mentioned for the new
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_135">[135]</span>political attitude of men of letters arise from the changes
+in their social status. Those I am about to mention arise
+from changes in the structure of their minds, in their
+literary desires, in their aesthetic cults, in their morality.
+These reasons seem to me even more worthy of the
+historian’s attention than those which have gone before.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, we have their Romanticism, taking that
+word to mean the desire which arose in the writers of
+the nineteenth century (but which has become greatly
+perfected in the last thirty years) to treat themes which
+lend themselves in a literary manner to striking attitudes.
+About 1890 the men of letters, especially in France and
+Italy, realized with astonishing astuteness that the
+doctrines of arbitrary authority, discipline, tradition,
+contempt for the spirit of liberty, assertion of the
+morality of war and slavery, were opportunities for
+haughty and rigid poses infinitely more likely to strike
+the imagination of simple souls than the sentimentalities
+of Liberalism and Humanitarianism. And as a matter
+of fact, the so-called reactionary doctrines do lend
+themselves to a pessimistic and contemptuous Romanticism
+which makes a far deeper impression on the
+common herd than enthusiastic and optimistic Romanticism.
+The pose of a Barrès or a d’Annunzio strikes
+naïve persons far more than that of a Michelet or a
+Proudhon. Moreover, these doctrines are to-day given
+forth as founded upon science, upon ‘pure experience’,
+and thereby permit a tone of calm inhumanity (the
+Romanticism of Positivism) whose effect on the herd
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_136">[136]</span>has not escaped the sagacious eye of the man of letters.
+(Of course, I am only speaking of the elegant herd;
+Romantic pessimism has no value whatsoever for the
+people.)</p>
+
+<p>There is another transformation of the literary soul
+in men of letters, wherein I think I see a cause of their
+new political creed. This is, that recently the only one
+of their faculties they venerate is their artistic sensibility,
+on which to some extent they base all their judgments.
+Until the last thirty years it may be said that men of
+letters, at least in Latin Europe, disciples in this of
+the Greeks, were determined in their judgments—even
+their literary judgments—far more by their sensibility
+to reason than by their artistic sensibility, whereof
+moreover they were scarcely conscious as something
+distinct from the former. This remark is true for the
+men of the Renaissance and their direct descendants
+(the French writers of the seventeenth and succeeding
+century) and, despite appearances, it is also true of those
+who lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
+If the weakening of sensibility to reason and, more
+generally, of lofty intellectual discipline, is indisputably
+one of the characteristics of the Romanticism of 1830,
+the contempt for this sensibility makes no appearance.
+Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Michelet never prided themselves
+on despising the values of reason in things in
+order to esteem only their art values. Now, towards
+1890, there occurred a revolution whose influence cannot
+be exaggerated. Enlightened by philosophical analysis
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_137">[137]</span>(Bergsonism), the men of letters became conscious of
+the fundamental difference between intellectual sensibility
+and artistic sensibility; and ardently chose the
+latter. This is the epoch when they were heard to assert
+that a book is great as soon as it achieves a literary and
+artistic success, that its intellectual content is of no
+interest, that all arguments are equally defensible, that
+error is no more false than truth, etc.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_155_155" href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> This great change
+affected their political attitudes. Obviously, as soon as
+we think things are good only insofar as they content
+our artistic needs, the only good political systems are
+those of arbitrary authority. Artistic sensibility is far
+more gratified by a system which tends to the realization
+of force and grandeur than by a system which tends to
+the establishment of justice, for the characteristic of
+artistic sensibility is the love of concrete realities and the
+repugnance for abstract conceptions and conceptions of
+pure reason, the model of which is the idea of justice.
+Artistic sensibility is especially flattered by the spectacle
+of a mass of units which are subordinated to each other
+up to the final head who dominates them all, whereas
+the spectacle of a democracy, which is a mass of units
+<i>where no one is first</i>, deprives this sensibility of one of its
+fundamental needs.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_156_156" href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> Add to this that every doctrine
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_138">[138]</span>which honours Man in the universal, in what is common
+to all men, is a personal injury to the artist, whose
+characteristic (at least since Romanticism)&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_157_157" href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> is precisely
+to set himself up as an exceptional being. Add also the
+sovereignty the artist now attributes to his desires and
+their satisfaction (the ‘rights of genius’) and, consequently,
+his natural hatred for systems which limit each
+person’s liberty of action by that of others. And finally
+add the artist’s aversion from everything which is general,
+everything which is only the object of conception, not
+of sensation.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_158_158" href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a> The determination of men of letters to
+pass judgment only in accordance with their artistic
+sensibility is only one aspect of their desire (since
+Romanticism) to exalt feeling at the expense of thought,
+a desire which itself is one among the thousand results
+of the decline of intellectual discipline among them.
+The new political attitude of the ‘clerks’ seems to me
+to be here the result of a serious modification of their
+state of mind.</p>
+
+<p>This attitude also seems to me to result from the
+decline of the study of classical literature in the formation
+of their minds. The humanities, as the word implies,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_139">[139]</span>have always taught the cult of humanity in its universal
+aspect, at least since the time of the Portico.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_159_159" href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> The decline
+of Graeco-Roman culture in Barrès and his literary
+generation, in comparison with that of Taine, Renan,
+Hugo, Michelet, even Anatole France and Bourget,
+is undeniable. Still less will it be denied that this
+decline is considerably more noticeable in Barrès’s
+successors. However, this decline does not prevent
+these writers from extolling classical studies, but they
+do not do this with the idea of reviving the cult for what
+is human in its universal aspect, but on the contrary
+to strengthen the ‘French’ mind, or at least the ‘Latin’
+mind, in the grasp of its own roots, in consciousness
+of itself as distinct from other minds. Notice that this
+decline of classical culture in the French writers coincides
+with the discovery of the great German realists, Hegel
+and especially Nietzsche, whose genius had the more
+effect on these Frenchmen because their lack of classical
+discipline deprived them of the one real barrier which
+can be opposed to that genius.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_160_160" href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p>
+
+<p>Among the causes of this new attitude among men
+of letters I must point to their thirst for sensations, their
+need to experience things, which in recent times have
+grown stronger and have caused them to adopt a political
+attitude which gave them emotions and sensations.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_140">[140]</span>Belphegor is not the only star in the literary heavens.
+A French writer, who was taken seriously as a thinker
+as early as 1890, was reproached for having joined a
+party whose inconsistency will long be an amazement
+to History; and he replied, ‘I followed Boulangism,
+as a man follows a fanfare of trumpets.’ The same
+thinker gives us to understand that his chief motive in
+‘seeking contact with national minds’ was to ‘throw
+more fuel under his sensibility, which was beginning
+to run down’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_161_161" href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> I do not think I am mistaken when I say
+that numbers of our moralists who sneer at pacific
+civilization and extol a warlike life, do so because the
+former seems a dull sort of a life to them and the latter
+an opportunity for sensations.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_162_162" href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> You will recollect the
+remark of a young thinker, quoted by Agathon in 1913:
+‘Why not a war? It will be amusing.’ I shall be told
+that this is the mere extravagant saying of a young man.
+But what of this remark from a man of fifty, and what
+is more, a scientist (R. Quinton), who saw the tragedy
+of 1914 coming, and exclaimed: ‘We shall picnic
+on the grass!’? This scientist was certainly a good
+soldier, but no more so than Fresnel and Lamarck,
+of whom I dare to say that they may have approved of
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_141">[141]</span>war, but not because it satisfied their taste for the
+picturesque. All who frequented the author of <i>Reflexions
+sur la Violence</i> know that one of the greatest attractions
+of any idea for him was that it was ‘amusing’ and likely
+to exasperate so-called reasonable people. There are
+many thinkers of the past fifty years whose ‘philosophy’
+has one fundamental motive—the pleasure of throwing
+off irritating paradoxes; while they are only too happy
+if their rockets fall like swords and satisfy that need for
+cruelty which they profess as the sign of noble minds.
+This prodigious decline of morality, this sort of (very
+Germanic) intellectual sadism, is usually and quite openly
+accompanied by a huge contempt for the true ‘clerk’,
+whose joy comes from the exercise of thought and who
+disdains sensation, particularly the sensations of action.
+Here again the new political cult of the men of letters
+is the result of a modification in the most intimate part
+of their mind, the very same modification we have been
+discussing, i.e. a decline of intellectual discipline, which
+does not mean a decline in intelligence.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_163_163" href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a></p>
+
+<p>On their own showing, many modern ‘clerks’ have
+adopted these realist doctrines because they want to have
+done with the moral disarray into which they are thrown
+by the spectacle of philosophies, ‘none of which bring
+certainty,’ and which all collapse upon each other as
+they cry to heaven their contradictory absolutes. There
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_142">[142]</span>again the ‘clerk’s’ political attitude is the result of a
+great decline in his intellectual discipline, whether we
+consider that this decline is shown by his belief that any
+philosophy can bring certainty, or whether we think that
+it lies in his inability to stand upright on the ruins of the
+schools, devoting himself to reason, which is above all
+the schools, and is their judge.</p>
+
+<p>I shall also admit as one other cause of realism in
+the modern ‘clerks’ the irritation produced in them by
+the teaching of some of their predecessors—I mean
+certain masters of the year 1848, with their visionary
+idealism, their belief that justice and love were suddenly
+about to become the essence of the soul of nations, an
+irritation greatly increased by seeing the dreadful
+contrast between these idyllic prophecies and the events
+which followed them. Nevertheless, the point to
+remember is that the modern ‘clerks’ replied to these
+errors by hurling anathemas at every sort of idealism,
+whether visionary or not, thereby showing incapacity
+to distinguish between species, inability to rise above
+passion to judgment. And this is but one other aspect
+of their loss of the good manners of the mind.</p>
+
+<p>Let me recapitulate the causes for this change in the
+‘clerks’: The imposition of political interests on all
+men without any exception; the growth of consistency
+in matters apt to feed realist passions; the desire and the
+possibility for men of letters to play a political part; the
+need in the interests of their own fame for them to play
+the game of a class which is daily becoming more
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_143">[143]</span>anxious; the increasing tendency of the ‘clerks’ to
+become bourgeois and to take on the vanities of that
+class; the perfecting of their Romanticism; the decline
+of their knowledge of antiquity and of their intellectual
+discipline. It will be seen that these causes arise from
+certain phenomena which are most profoundly and
+generally characteristic of the present age. The political
+realism of the ‘clerks’, far from being a superficial
+fact due to the caprice of an order of men, seems to me
+bound up with the very essence of the modern world.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">
+    IV
+    <br>
+    <i>Summary—Predictions</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>To sum up: If I look at contemporary humanity
+from the point of view of its moral state as revealed by
+its political life, I see (<i>a</i>) A mass in whom realist passions
+in its two chief forms—class passion, national passion—has
+attained a degree of consciousness and organization
+hitherto unknown; (<i>b</i>) A body of men who used
+to be in opposition to the realism of the masses, but
+who now, not only do not oppose it, but adopt it, proclaim
+its grandeur and morality; in short, a humanity which
+has abandoned itself to realism with a unanimity, an
+absence of reserve, a sanctification of its passion
+unexampled in history.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_144">[144]</span></p>
+
+<p>This remark may be put in another form. Imagine
+an observer of the twelfth century taking a bird’s-eye
+view of the Europe of his time. He would see men
+groping in the obscurity of their minds and striving
+to form themselves into nations (to mention only the
+most striking aspect of the realist will); he would see
+them beginning to succeed; he would see groups of
+men attaining consistency, determined to seize a portion
+of the earth and tending to feel conscious of themselves
+as distinct from the groups surrounding them. But at
+the same time he would see a whole class of men,
+regarded with the greatest reverence, labouring to
+thwart this movement. He would see men of learning,
+artists and philosophers, displaying to the world a
+spirit which cared nothing for nations, using a universal
+language among themselves. He would see those who
+gave Europe its moral values preaching the cult of the
+human, or at least of the Christian, and not of the
+national, he would see them striving to found, in opposition
+to the nations, a great universal empire on spiritual
+foundations. And so he might say to himself: ‘Which
+of these two currents will triumph? Will humanity be
+national or spiritual? Will it depend on the will of the
+laymen or of the “clerks”?’ And for long ages the
+realist cause will not be completely victorious; the
+spiritual body will remain faithful to itself long enough
+to our observer to be uncertain of the result. To-day
+the game is over. Humanity is national. The layman
+has won. But his triumph has gone beyond anything
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_145">[145]</span>he could have expected. The ‘clerk’ is not only
+conquered, he is assimilated. The man of science, the
+artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as
+much as the day-labourer and the merchant. Those
+who make the world’s values, make them for a nation;
+the Ministers of Jesus defend the national. All humanity
+including the ‘clerks’, have become laymen. All
+Europe, including Erasmus, has followed Luther.</p>
+
+<p>I said above that the humanity of the past, more
+precisely the humanity of Europe in the Middle Ages,
+with the values imposed upon it by the ‘clerks’, acted
+ill but honoured the good. It may be said that modern
+Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist
+instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honours what is ill.
+Modern Europe is like the brigand in one of Tolstoi’s
+stories, who made his confession to a hermit, and the
+hermit said in amazement: ‘Others were at least
+ashamed of being brigands; but what is to be done
+with this man, who is proud of it?’</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, if we ask ourselves what will happen to a
+humanity where every group is striving more eagerly
+than ever to feel conscious of its own particular interests,
+and makes its moralists tell it that it is sublime to the
+extent that it knows no law but this interest—a child
+can give the answer. This humanity is heading for the
+greatest and most perfect war ever seen in the world,
+whether it is a war of nations, or a war of classes. A race
+of which one group exalts one of its masters (Barrès)
+to the skies because he teaches: ‘We must defend the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_146">[146]</span>essential part of ourselves as sectarians,’ while a neighbouring
+group acclaims a leader because, when he attacks a
+defenceless small nation, he says, ‘Necessity knows no
+law’—such a race is ripe for the zoological wars Renan
+talks about, which, he said, would be like the life and
+death wars which occur among rodents and among the
+carnivora. As regards the nation, think of Italy; as
+regards class, think of Russia; and you will see the
+hitherto unknown point of perfection attained by the
+spirit of hatred against what is ‘different’ among a
+group of men, consciously realist and at last liberated
+from all non-practical morality. And my predictions
+are not rendered less probable by the fact that these
+two nations are hailed as models throughout the world
+by those who desire either the grandeur of their nation
+or the triumph of their class.</p>
+
+<p>These dark predictions do not seem to me to need
+as much modification as some people think, on account
+of certain actions resolutely directed against war, such
+as the setting up of a supernational institution and the
+agreements recently made by the rival nations. Imposed
+upon the nations by their Ministers rather than desired
+by them, dictated solely by interest (the fear of war
+and its ravages) and not at all by a change in public
+morality, these new institutions may perhaps be opposed
+to war but leave intact the <i>spirit of war</i>, and nothing
+leads us to suppose that a nation which only respects
+a contract for practical reasons, will not break it as soon
+as breaking it appears more profitable. Peace, if it ever
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_147">[147]</span>exists, will not be based on the fear of war but on the
+love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act,
+but the coming of a state of mind.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_164_164" href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a> In this sense the
+most insignificant writer can serve peace where the most
+powerful tribunals can do nothing. And moreover
+these tribunals leave untouched the economic war
+between the nations and the class wars.</p>
+
+<p>Peace, it must be repeated after so many others have
+said this, is only possible if men cease to place their
+happiness in the possession of things ‘which cannot
+be shared’, and if they raise themselves to a point where
+they adopt an abstract principle superior to their
+egotisms. In other words, it can only be obtained by a
+betterment of human morality. But, as I have pointed
+out above, not only do men to-day steel themselves
+entirely against this, but the very first condition of peace,
+which is to recognize the necessity for this progress of
+the soul, is seriously menaced. A school arose in the
+nineteenth century which told men to expect peace from
+enlightened self-interest, from the belief that a war,
+even when victorious, is disastrous, especially to economic
+transformations, to ‘the evolution of production’, in a
+phrase, to factors totally foreign to their moral improvement,
+from which, these thinkers say, it would be
+frivolous to expect anything. So that humanity, even
+if it had any desire for peace, is exhorted to neglect the
+one effort which might procure it, an effort it is delighted
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_148">[148]</span>not to make. The cause of peace, which is always
+surrounded with adverse factors, in our days has one
+more against it—the pacifism which pretends to be
+scientific.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_165_165" href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a></p>
+
+<p>I can point to other sorts of pacifism, whose chief
+result I dare to say is to weaken the cause of peace, at
+least among serious-minded persons:—</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) First, there is the pacifism I shall call ‘vulgar’,
+meaning thereby the pacifism which does nothing but
+denounce ‘the man who kills’, and sneer at the prejudices
+of patriotism. When I see certain teachers, even if
+they are Montaigne, Voltaire, and Anatole France,
+whose whole case against war consists in saying that
+highwaymen are no more criminal than leaders of armies,
+and in laughing at people who kill each other because
+one party is dressed in yellow and the other in blue, I
+feel inclined to desert a cause whose champions over-simplify
+things to this extent, and I begin to feel some
+sympathy for the impulses of profound humanity which
+created the nations and which are thereby so grossly
+insulted.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_166_166" href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) <i>Mystic pacifism</i>, by which I mean the pacifism
+which is solely animated by a blind hatred of war and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_149">[149]</span>refuses to inquire whether a war is just or not, whether
+those fighting are the attackers or the defenders, whether
+they wanted war or only submit to it. This pacifism is
+essentially the pacifism of the people (and that of all
+the so-called pacifist newspapers) and was strikingly
+embodied in 1914 by a French writer who, having to
+judge between two fighting nations one of which had
+attacked the other contrary to all its pledges while the
+other was only defending itself, could do nothing but
+intone ‘I have a horror of war’ and condemned them
+both equally. It is impossible to exaggerate the consequences
+of this behaviour, which showed mankind that
+mystic pacifism, just like mystic militarism, may entirely
+obliterate the feeling of justice in those who are smitten
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>I think I see another motive in the French writers
+who in 1914 adopted the attitude of M. Romain Rolland—the
+fear that they would fall into national partiality
+if they admitted that their nation was in the right. It
+may be asserted that these writers would have warmly
+taken up the cause of France, if France had not been
+their own country. Whereas Barrès said, ‘I always
+maintain my country is right even if it is in the wrong,’
+these strange friends of justice are not unwilling to say:
+‘I always maintain my country is in the wrong, even
+if it is right.’ There again we see that the frenzy of
+impartiality, like any other frenzy, leads to injustice.</p>
+
+<p>I have also a word to say about the severities of these
+‘justiciaries’ towards France’s attitude immediately
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_150">[150]</span>after her victory, towards her desire to force the enemy to
+make good the damage done to her, and to seize on pledges
+if he refused. The motive which here animated these
+moralists without their perceiving it, seems to me very
+remarkable; it was the thought that the just person
+must inevitably be weak and suffer, that he must be a
+victim. If the just man becomes strong and comes to
+possess the means of enforcing justice towards himself,
+then he ceases to be just to these thinkers. If Socrates
+and Jesus make their persecutors disgorge, then they
+cease to embody justice; one step more and the persecutors,
+having become victims, would embody right.
+In this the cult of justice is replaced by the cult of
+misfortune, a Christian Romanticism which is somewhat
+unexpected in a man like Anatole France. No
+doubt the events of 1918 upset all the habits of the
+advocates of right. Outraged right became the stronger,
+the assailed toga triumphed over the sword, the Curiatii
+were victorious. Perhaps some coolness of mind was
+needed to recognize that right remained right, even
+when thus invested with force. The French pacifists
+failed to remain cool. In short, their attitude in the
+past ten years has been inspired by sentiment alone,
+and nothing could show better the degree of weakness
+to which intellectual discipline has now fallen among
+our ‘princes of the mind’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_167_167" href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_151">[151]</span></p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) <i>Pacifism claiming to be patriotic</i>, by which I mean
+the pacifism which claims to exalt humanitarianism, to
+preach the abatement of the militarist spirit and of national
+passion, and yet not to harm the interests of the nation
+nor to compromise its power of resistance to foreign
+nations. This attitude—which is that of all Parliamentary
+pacifists—is the more antipathetic to upright
+minds in that it is inevitably accompanied by the assertion
+(which is also nearly always contrary to the truth) that
+the nation is not in the least threatened and that the
+malevolence of neighbouring nations is a pure invention
+of people who want war. But that is merely an aspect
+of a very general fact, which is of supreme importance
+to the matter under discussion.</p>
+
+<p>By this I mean the ‘clerk’s’ determination to put
+forth his principles as valid in the practical order of
+things, as reconcilable with the safeguarding of the
+sword’s conquests. This determination, which has
+affected the Church for twenty centuries and almost
+all the idealists (give me the names of those since Jesus
+who have declared themselves incompetent in the practical
+order of things), is the source of all the ‘clerk’s failures’.
+It may be said that the ‘clerk’s’ defeat begins from the
+very moment when he claims to be practical. As soon
+as the ‘clerk’ claims that he does not disregard the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_152">[152]</span>interests of the nation or of the established classes, he
+is inevitably beaten, for the very good reason that it
+is impossible to preach the spiritual and the universal
+without undermining the institutions whose foundations
+are the possession of the material and the desire to feel
+distinct from others. A true ‘clerk’ (Renan) says
+excellently: ‘The mother-country is a worldly thing;
+the man who wants to play the angel will always be a
+bad patriot.’ Thus we see that the ‘clerk’ who claims
+to secure the works of the world has a choice between
+two consequences. Either he secures them and transgresses
+all his principles, which is the case with the
+Church supporting the nation and property; or he
+maintains his principles and causes the ruin of the
+institutions he claimed he was supporting, which is the
+case with the humanitarian who claims to safeguard
+what is national. In the first case the ‘clerk’ is despised
+by the just man, who denounces him as cunning and
+strikes him out of the rank of ‘clerk’; and in the
+second case he collapses under the hooting of the nations
+who call him inefficient, while he provokes a violent and
+loudly acclaimed reaction on the part of the realist,
+which is what is now happening in Italy. From all
+this it follows that the ‘clerk’ is only strong if he is
+clearly conscious of his essential qualities and his true
+function, and shows mankind that he is clearly conscious
+of them. In other words he declares to them that his
+kingdom is not of this world, that <i>the grandeur of his
+teaching lies precisely in this absence of practical value,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_153">[153]</span>and that the right morality for the prosperity of the kingdoms
+which are of this world, is not his, but Caesar’s</i>. When
+he takes up this position, the ‘clerk’ is crucified, but he is
+respected, and his words haunt the memory of mankind.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_168_168" href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a>
+The need to remind the modern ‘clerks’ of these
+truths (for everyone of them is angry at being called
+Utopian) is one of the most suggestive observations in
+connection with our subject. It shows that the desire
+to be practical has become general, that the claim to be
+so has now become necessary in order to obtain an
+audience, and that the very notion of ‘clerkdom’ has
+become obscured even in those who still tend to exercise
+that function.</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen that I entirely dissociate myself from
+those who want the ‘clerk’ to govern the world, and
+who wish with Renan for the ‘reign of the philosophers’;
+for it seems to me that human affairs can only adopt the
+religions of the true ‘clerk’ under penalty of becoming
+divine, i.e. of perishing as human. This has been clearly
+seen by all lovers of the divine who did not desire the
+destruction of what is human. This is marvellously
+expressed by one of them when he makes Jesus say so
+profoundly to His disciple: ‘My son, I must not give
+you a clear idea of your substance ... for if you saw
+clearly what you are, you could no longer remain so
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_154">[154]</span>closely united to your body. You would no longer
+watch over the preservation of your life.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_169_169" href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> But though
+I think it a bad thing that the ‘clerk’s’ religion should
+possess the lay world, I think it still more to be dreaded
+that it should not be preached to the layman at all, and
+that he should thus be allowed to yield to his practical
+passions without the least shame or the least, even
+hypocritical, desire to raise himself however slightly
+above them. ‘There are a few just men who prevent
+me from sleeping’—that was what the realist said of
+the teachers of old. Nietzsche, Barrès, and Sorel do not
+prevent any realist from sleeping; on the contrary.
+This is the novelty I want to point out, which to me
+seems so serious. It seems to me serious that a
+humanity, which is more than ever obsessed by the
+passions of the world, should receive from its
+spiritual leaders the command: ‘remain faithful to
+the earth.’</p>
+
+<p>Is this adoption of ‘integral realism’ by the human
+species permanent, or merely temporary? Are we,
+as some people think, witnessing the beginning of a
+new Middle Ages (and one far more barbarous than the
+former, for though it practised realism, it did not extol
+realism), from which, however, will arise a new
+Renaissance, a new return to the religion of disinterestedness?
+The elements we have discovered as forming
+the new realism scarcely allow us to hope so. It is hard
+to imagine the nations sincerely striving not to feel
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_155">[155]</span>conscious of themselves as distinct from others, or, if
+they do so, having any other motive than that of concentrating
+inter-human hatred into that of class. It is
+hard to imagine the clergy regaining a real moral sway
+over the faithful and being able (supposing they desired
+to do so) to tell them with impunity unpleasant truths.
+It is hard to imagine a body of men of letters (for
+corporative action becomes more and more important)
+attempting to withstand the bourgeois classes instead
+of flattering them. It is still harder to imagine them
+turning against the tide of their intellectual decadence
+and ceasing to think that they display a lofty culture
+when they sneer at rational morality and fall on their
+knees before history. Nevertheless one thinks of a
+humanity of the future, weary of its ‘sacred egotisms’
+and the slaughterings to which they inevitably lead,
+coming as humanity came two thousand years ago, to
+the acceptance of a good situated beyond itself, accepting
+it even more ardently than before, with the knowledge
+of all the tears and blood that have been shed through
+departing from that doctrine. Once more Vauvenargues’
+admirable saying would be verified. ‘The passions
+have taught men reason.’ But such a thing only seems
+to me possible after a long lapse of time, when war has
+caused far more woes than have yet been endured.
+Men will not revise their values for wars which only last
+fifty months and only kill a couple of million men in
+each nation. One may even doubt whether war will
+ever become so terrible as to discourage those who
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_156">[156]</span>love it, the more so since they are not always the men
+who have to fight.</p>
+
+<p>When I set this limit to my pessimistic outlook and
+admit that such a Renaissance is possible, I mean no
+more than that it is just possible. I cannot agree with
+those who say it is certain, either because it happened
+once before, or because ‘civilization is due to the
+human race’. Civilization as I understand it here—moral
+supremacy conferred on the cult of the spiritual
+and on the feeling of the universal—appears to me as a
+lucky accident in man’s development. It blossomed
+three thousand years ago under a set of circumstances
+whose contingent character was perfectly perceived by
+the historian who called it ‘the Greek miracle’. It does
+not appear to me in the least to be a thing due to the
+human race by virtue of the data of its nature. It seems
+to me so little such a thing that I observe large portions
+of the species (the Asiatic world in antiquity, the
+Germanic world in modern times) who showed themselves
+incapable of it and quite likely to remain so.
+And this means that if humanity loses this jewel, there
+is not much chance of finding it again. On the contrary
+there is every chance that humanity will not find it again,
+just as a man who should find a precious stone in the
+sea and then drop it back in the water would have little
+chance of ever seeing it again. Nothing seems to me
+more doubtful than Aristotle’s remark that it is probable
+the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered
+and several times lost. The other position which
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_157">[157]</span>maintains that civilization, despite partial eclipses, is
+something which humanity cannot lose, seems to me
+quite worthless except as an act of faith—though it is
+valuable as a means of preserving the good we wish to
+keep. I should not think it a serious objection to what
+I have said if someone should point out that civilization,
+lost once with the fall of the ancient world, nevertheless
+had its Renaissance. Everyone knows that the Graeco-Roman
+form of mind was far from being wholly extinguished
+during the Middle Ages and that the sixteenth
+century only brought to life what was not dead; to which
+I add that even if that form of mind had been ‘reborn’
+<i>ex nihilo</i>, the fact that this is the only instance would
+make it insufficient to reassure me, although the fact
+that it had occurred would disturb me.</p>
+
+<p>Let me point out in this respect that insufficient
+attention is perhaps paid to the fact that there are always
+only a very tiny number of instances in history on which
+are built up a ‘law’, which claims to be valid for the
+whole past and future evolution of humanity. Vico
+says that history is a series of alternations between periods
+of progress and periods of retrogression; and he gives
+<i>two</i> examples. Saint-Simon says history is a series of
+oscillations between organic epochs and critical epochs;
+and he gives <i>two</i> examples. Marx says history is a
+series of economic systems, each of which casts out its
+predecessor by means of violence; and he gives <i>one</i>
+example! I shall be told that these examples could
+not be more numerous, owing to the fact that history,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_158">[158]</span>at least known history, is so short. The truth, implied
+by this very reply, is that history has lasted too short a
+time for us to be able to deduce laws from it to enable
+us to infer the future from the past. Those who do so
+are like a mathematician who should decide the nature
+of a curve from the form he finds it has at its very
+beginning. True, a somewhat uncommon turn of
+mind is required to confess that human history, after
+several thousands of years, is only beginning. I cannot
+sufficiently admire the rare mental value displayed by
+La Bruyère (in my opinion) when he wrote the following
+lines in a century which was strongly inclined to think
+it was the topmost summit of human development:
+‘If the world lasts only a hundred million years, it will
+still be in all its freshness and only beginning; we
+ourselves are almost contemporary with the first men
+and the patriarchs, and who, in those far-off ages, will
+be able to avoid confusing us with them? But if we
+judge of the future from the past, what new things are
+we ignorant of in the arts, in the sciences, in Nature, and,
+I dare say, in history? What discoveries will be made!
+What different revolutions will occur in our Empires
+all over the world! How ignorant we are! And how
+slight is an experience of six or seven thousand years!’</p>
+
+<p>I shall go further and say that even if an examination
+of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning
+man’s future, that prediction would be the contrary of
+reassuring. People forget that Hellenic rationalism
+only really enlightened the world during seven hundred
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_159">[159]</span>years, that it was then hidden (this <i>a minima</i> verdict
+will be granted me) for twelve centuries, and has begun
+to shine again for barely four centuries; so that <i>the
+longest period of consecutive time in human history on which
+we can found inductions is, upon the whole, a period of
+intellectual and moral darkness</i>. Looking at history, we
+may say in a more synthetic manner that, with the
+exception of two or three very short, luminous epochs
+whose light, like that of certain stars, lightens the world
+long after they are extinct, humanity lives generally in
+darkness; while literatures live generally in a state of
+decadence and the organism in disorder. And the
+disturbing thing is that humanity does not seem to
+mind these long periods of cave-dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>To come back to the realism of my contemporaries
+and their contempt for a disinterested existence, I must
+add that my mind is sometimes haunted by a dreadful
+question. I wonder whether humanity, by adopting
+this system to-day, has not discovered its true law of
+existence and adopted the true scale of values demanded
+by its essence? The religion of the spiritual, I said
+just now, seems to me a lucky accident in man’s history.
+I shall go further, and say it seems to me a paradox.
+The obvious law of human substance is the conquest
+of things and the exaltation of the impulses which
+secure this conquest. Only through an amazing abuse
+were a handful of men at desks able to succeed in making
+humanity believe that the supreme values are the good
+things of the spirit. To-day humanity has awakened
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_160">[160]</span>from this dream, knows its true nature and its real
+desires, and utters its war-cry against those who for
+centuries have robbed it of itself. Instead of waxing
+indignant at the ruin of their domination, would it
+not be more reasonable for these usurpers (if there are
+any left) to wonder that it lasted so long? Orpheus
+could not aspire to charm the wild beasts with his music
+until the end of time. However, one could have hoped
+that Orpheus himself would not become a wild beast.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely necessary to say my remarks on realist
+desires and their violent perfecting do not blind me
+to the immense growth of gentleness, justice, and love
+written to-day in our customs and laws, which would
+certainly have amazed our most optimistic ancestors.
+There is an immense improvement in the relations
+between man and man within the groups which fight
+each other—especially within the nation where security
+is the rule and injustice is a scandal. But to keep more
+closely to our subject, perhaps we do not sufficiently
+realize the incredible degree of civilization implied by
+the good treatment of prisoners, and the care of enemy
+wounded in wars between nations, and by the institution
+of public and private charity in the relations between
+the classes. The denial of progress, the assertion that
+barbarity of heart has never been worse, are natural
+themes for poets and those who are discontented, and
+perhaps they are even necessary to progress. But the
+historian, whether he looks at national or class warfare,
+is amazed at the transformation of a species which only
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_161">[161]</span>four centuries ago roasted prisoners of war in baker’s
+ovens, and, only two centuries ago forbade the workers
+to establish a pension fund for their aged members.
+Nevertheless I must point out that these improvements
+cannot be credited to the present age. They are the
+results of the teaching of the eighteenth century, against
+which the ‘masters of modern thought’ are in complete
+revolt. The establishment of war ambulances, the wide
+development of State charities are the work of the Second
+Empire, are connected with the ‘humanitarian clichés’
+of Victor Hugo and Michelet, which are immeasureably
+despised by the moralists of the past half century. They
+exist to some extent <i>despite of</i> these moralists, not one of
+whom has conducted a truly humane campaign, while
+the chief of them—Nietzsche, Barrès, Sorel—would
+blush to be able to say like Voltaire: ‘I have done a
+little good, ’tis my best work.’ I must add that these
+good works are now merely customs, i.e. actions performed
+from habit, without the will taking any part in them,
+without the mind reflecting on their meaning. And if
+the mind of our realists ever came to think of them,
+I think there is every possibility that it might prohibit
+them. I can well imagine a future war when a nation
+would decide not to look after the enemy wounded, a
+strike where the bourgeoisie would make up its mind
+not to support hospitals for the benefit of a class which
+was ruining it and anxious to destroy it. I can imagine
+both priding themselves on getting free from a ‘stupid
+humanitarianism’, and finding disciples of Nietzsche
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_162">[162]</span>and Sorel to praise them for it. The attitude of the
+Italian Fascists and the Russian Bolshevists towards their
+enemies is not calculated to give me the lie here. The
+modern world still displays certain failures in pure
+practicality, a few stains of idealism from which it might
+well cleanse itself.</p>
+
+<p>I said above that the logical end of the ‘integral
+realism’ professed by humanity to-day is the organized
+slaughter of nations or classes. It is possible to conceive
+of a third, which would be their reconciliation. The
+thing to possess would be the whole earth, and they
+would finally come to realize that the only way to
+exploit it properly is by union, while the desire to set
+themselves up as distinct from others would be transferred
+from the nation to the species, arrogantly drawn
+up against everything which is not itself. And, as a
+matter of fact, such a movement does exist. Above
+classes and nations there does exist a desire of the
+species to become the master of things, and, when a
+human being flies from one end of the world to the
+other in a few hours, the whole human race quivers with
+pride and adores itself as distinct from all the rest of
+creation. At bottom, this imperialism of the species is
+preached by all the great directors of the modern
+conscience. It is Man, and not the nation or the class,
+whom Nietzsche, Sorel, Bergson extoll in his genius
+for making himself master of the world. It is humanity,
+and not any one section of it, whom Auguste Comte
+exhorts to plunge into consciousness of itself and to
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_163">[163]</span>make itself the object of its adoration. Sometimes one
+may feel that such an impulse will grow ever stronger,
+and that in this way inter-human wars will come to an
+end. In this way humanity would attain ‘universal
+fraternity’. But, far from being the abolition of the
+national spirit with its appetites and its arrogance, this
+would simply be its supreme form, the nation being
+called Man and the enemy God. Thereafter, humanity
+would be unified in one immense army, one immense
+factory, would be aware only of heroisms, disciplines,
+inventions, would denounce all free and disinterested
+activity, would long cease to situate the good outside
+the real world, would have no God but itself and its
+desires, and would achieve great things; by which I
+mean that it would attain to a really grandiose control
+over the matter surrounding it, to a really joyous
+consciousness of its power and its grandeur. And
+History will smile to think that this is the species for
+which Socrates and Jesus Christ died.</p>
+
+<p>1924–1927.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="p_164"></a><a id="p_165"></a>[165]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="NOTES">
+    <i>Notes</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_A"><span class="smcap">Note A</span> (<a href="#p_1">Page 1</a>)</h3>
+
+<p><i>That political passions affect a large number of men they never before
+affected ...</i></p>
+
+<p>It is very difficult to know to what extent crowds are moved by the
+political events of their time (of course, I am leaving on one side all truly
+popular movements). Crowds do not write their memoirs, and those
+who write memoirs scarcely ever speak of the crowds. However, I do
+not think my proposition will be seriously disputed. To limit ourselves
+to France and the two examples I quoted—suppose we had another
+upheaval like the Religious Wars, I do not think we should see the
+immense majority of country districts possessed by no other passion than
+a hatred for soldiers, whatever party they belonged to.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_170_170" href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a> Nor should
+we see cultivated bourgeois who keep diaries giving a couple of lines to
+such events as Luther’s preaching, along with the thousand little facts
+they relate.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_171_171" href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> Nor do I think that a month after an event like the taking
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_166">[166]</span>of the Bastille we should find a foreigner on his travels in France, writing:
+‘13th August, 1789. Before I leave Clermont I must remark that I
+have dined or supped five times at the table d’hôte with some twenty
+to thirty merchants and tradesmen, officers, etc.; and it is not easy for
+me to express the insignificance—the inanity of the conversation. Scarcely
+any politics, at a moment when every bosom ought to beat with none
+but political sensations.’ (Arthur Young.)&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_172_172" href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p>
+
+<p>The attitude of populations towards wars between States long seems
+to have been that described by Voltaire in the following lines: ‘It is
+indeed a deplorable evil that this multitude of soldiers should always be
+kept up by all Princes. But, as we have pointed out, this evil produces
+a good. The peoples take no part in the wars carried on by their masters;
+the citizens of besieged towns often pass from the power of one to another
+without having cost the life of a single inhabitant; they are simply the
+prize of the King who possesses most soldiers, cannons and money.’
+(<i>Essai sur les Moeurs</i>, towards the end.) Again, in 1870, a Prussian
+servant girl said to a French prisoner employed on the farm where she
+was working: ‘When the war is over I will marry you. Don’t be
+surprised at what I say, patriotism doesn’t mean much to us, you know.’
+I imagine that in 1914, many servant girls, Prussian or otherwise, felt
+in their hearts and put into practice, this absence of patriotism; but
+I dare to assert that very few would have formulated it, even to themselves.
+The really new fact to-day is not perhaps that the peoples feel
+political passions, but that they claim the right to feel them. This claim
+is sufficient to make them act and therefore furnishes a magnificent
+opportunity for their leaders to exploit them.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_B">
+  <span class="smcap">Note B</span> (<a href="#p_15">Page 15</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>Louis XIV annexing Alsace and not for one moment thinking of forbidding
+the German language ...</i></p>
+
+<p>It was not until 1768 that the Monarchy thought of setting up schools
+in Alsace, ‘where French is to be taught’. Vidal de la Blanche, who
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_167">[167]</span>relates this (<i>La France de l’Est</i>, 1, vi) adds: ‘This indifference (to the
+language question) must not shock us too much. Let us rather learn a
+lesson from it. It raises us above the narrowly jealous conceptions which
+since then have set nation against nation, under this language pretext.
+It takes us into an age when another spirit presided over human relations.
+There was then no language question. Fortunate eighteenth century,
+when war bred no lasting hatred, when the poison of national animosities
+was not inoculated and fostered by all the means now at the disposal
+of the State, including the schools.’ The eminent historian forgets that
+the State has these means at its disposal, <i>with the consent of the peoples</i>.
+The peoples, or at least the cultivated classes among them, at the bidding
+of their men of letters, during the past century have set themselves up
+arrogantly against one another in their languages and cultures, even
+though they one day come face to face with the unexpected results of
+this attitude, as is happening to-day to France in its difficulties with
+Alsace.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_C">
+  <span class="smcap">Note C</span> (<a href="#p_19">Page 19</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Union of capitalism, anti-semitism, anti-democracy with nationalism.</i></p>
+
+<p>I am under no illusion concerning the solidity of certain among these
+unions. Although the conservative passions fully comprehend their
+immense interest in identifying themselves with national passion and
+thereby benefiting by its popularity, although one may even admit that
+they have been caught in their own net and have become sincere in this
+feeling, yet it is none the less true that conservatism (chiefly capitalism)
+is essentially something entirely different from patriotism, and that this
+difference, whose manifestations in the course of history have been
+innumerable (how many times have the bourgeoisie treated with foreigners
+when they thought it was to their interests!) may once again display itself.
+It is easy to imagine that the French bourgeoisie would turn against
+France if they thought their patrimony was being too seriously threatened
+by the legislation of the Republic. This may already be seen in the
+case of families who, in recent years, have exported their capital abroad.
+I may say the same thing of monarchist passion. It is easy to imagine
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_168">[168]</span>that certain followers of that passion might one day decide to work against
+a nation which decisively and finally rejects the system they propose.
+I think I observe this when I see monarchist writers publishing that
+‘from the Spree to the Mekong, the whole world knows that France is
+in a state of weakness bordering upon disintegration’. However, such
+things are still exceptional, and those who are responsible for them would
+refuse to admit—perhaps sincerely—that they meant to harm their
+nation.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the bourgeoisie have another interest in keeping up
+nationalism and the fear of war. These feelings create a sort of permanent
+military spirit in a nation. More precisely, they create in the people a
+disposition to accept the existing hierarchy, to obey orders, to recognize
+superiors, i.e. the very things required of them by those who wish them
+to continue in a state of service. The confused perception of this truth
+inspires the bourgeoisie with that curious ill-humour they display towards
+every attempt at international agreement, in whatever form this may be
+presented by the governments. This ill-humour (they declare) arises
+from the fact that they consider it simple-minded and imprudent to
+believe in the extinction of national hatreds. At bottom, it arises from the
+fact that <i>they do not want this extinction to occur</i>. They know that the
+maintenance of these hatreds will cost the lives of their children, but they
+do not hesitate to make the sacrifice, if by doing so they retain possession
+of their property&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_173_173" href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> and their power over their servants. Here is a
+grandeur of egotism which is perhaps insufficiently appreciated.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_D">
+  <span class="smcap">Note D</span> (<a href="#p_28">Page 28</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>On the attitude of the modern Catholics towards Catholicism when it
+is in opposition to their nationalism.</i></p>
+
+<p>A good example is the attitude of the German Catholics in the past
+twenty years. It has been described with all desirable detail by
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_169">[169]</span>M.
+    Edmond Bloud in his great study: <i>Le nouveau Centre et le catholicisme</i>.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_174_174" href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a>
+It will be seen that it strangely resembles the attitude of many a non-German
+Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>The ‘Centre’ began by declaring itself ‘a political party which has
+assumed as its duty the representation of the interests of the whole nation
+in all domains of public life, in accordance with the principles of Christian
+doctrine.’ (<i>Katholische Weltanschauung</i>: Catholic conception of the
+world.) Soon they announced political action founded on ‘a Christian
+basis’ (christliche Basis), the spirit of which is thus defined by one of
+its apostles (Doctor Brauweiler, April, 1913): ‘In the domain of practical
+action, <i>concepts are determined by the end in view</i>. The formation of
+political concepts is comparable with the formation of juridical concepts.
+The jurist forms his concepts <i>with no other consideration than that of what
+is needed, in relation solely to the required end</i>. But no one can say that
+the juridical concept thus formed is a false one. In the same way, one
+may speak in politics of Christianity or Christian doctrine.’ In 1914,
+Doctor Karl Bachem of Cologne, published a pamphlet entitled: <i>Centre,
+Catholic Doctrine, Practical Politics</i>, where he declares that the doctrine
+of ‘universal Christianity’ is only a political formula intended to render
+possible the collaboration of Catholics and Protestants, chiefly in Parliament;
+that from the religious point of view this formula has only a
+negative meaning, and only means the determination to struggle against
+materialism, atheism and nihilism; that its positive content is defined by
+the Prussian Constitution which in paragraphs 14 and 18 lays down
+that ‘the Christian religion’ is the ‘foundation of the institutions of
+the State’.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, as M. Edmond Bloud justly remarks, Doctor Bachem makes
+the Prussian Constitution the Rule of Faith. Put ‘national interest’
+in place of ‘Prussian Constitution’ and you will have the state of mind
+of many a modern French Catholic.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of the German Catholics seems to me also representative
+of a certain Catholicism common to-day to other nations, in declarations
+of this sort:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_170">[170]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘The Catholic members of the “Centre” remain Catholics individually,
+<i>but the party, as a party, does not necessarily accept the Catholic conception
+of the world</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>And again:</p>
+
+<p>‘The Pope and the Bishops have authority in matters of religion,
+but wherever political matters are concerned we shall not allow ourselves
+to be influenced by the authority of the Pope or by that of the Bishops.’
+(M. Edmond Bloud alludes to a conversation reported in the <i>Frankfurter
+Zeitung</i>, April, 1914, where one of the chief of the ‘syndicats mixtes’
+declared that, ‘The German Catholics have had enough of the Pope.’)</p>
+
+<p>What M. Bloud calls the ‘declericalization of the Centre’ is not a
+thing peculiar to our neighbours, nor is the joy of the great German
+nationalist organ (the Prussian Annals) when it observes that ‘the Catholic
+idea of the State is ceasing to be ultramontain and is becoming nationalist’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_175_175" href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a></p>
+
+<p>The attitude common to German Catholics and to certain Catholics
+of other nations seems to me well brought out by two protests which
+M. Bloud quotes.</p>
+
+<p>The first is from Father Weiss:</p>
+
+<p>‘There exist,’ says the eminent theologian, ‘several kinds of political
+Catholicism.... The worst of all consists in looking upon pure
+politics, social politics, national politics, not only as something wholly
+independent of religion, but <i>as being the standard by which we should
+determine the degree to which Catholicism or Christianity may be utilized
+in public life</i>.’</p>
+
+<p>The other is from Cardinal Kopp (then Bishop of Fulda) in a letter
+written in 1887:</p>
+
+<p>‘Unhappily a gust of madness is blowing over us. Formerly we held
+to the principle: Faith first, politics afterwards. Now they say: <i>Politics
+first!</i> The Church and the Faith afterwards.’</p>
+
+<p>Our Catholics of the <i>Action Française</i> have not invented much.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_171">[171]</span></p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_E">
+  <span class="smcap">Note E</span> (<a href="#p_33">Page 33</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>The ‘clerk’, by adopting political passions, brings them the tremendous
+influence of his sensibility if he is an artist, of his persuasive power if he is a
+thinker, and in either case his moral prestige.</i></p>
+
+<p>This prestige itself is something new in history, at least from my point
+of view. The results produced in France by the intervention of the
+‘intellectuals’ in the Dreyfus affair, and those produced by the manifesto
+of the German Intellectuals in 1914, not only in their own country but
+throughout the world, are things to which I find no equivalent in the past.
+One cannot imagine the Roman Republic feeling that the moral support
+of Terence and Varro was of value to it during the war with Carthage,
+or the government of Louis XIV finding that the approbation of Racine
+and Fermat, gave it additional strength in the war with Holland. This
+increase of strength which a cause to-day receives from the approbation
+of the men of thought (or those who are considered such) does great
+honour to the modern world. It is an homage to the mind hitherto
+unexampled in humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, this prestige has a double result. Though the modern
+‘clerk’ fortifies a cause by giving it his approbation he can also seriously
+harm it by refusing his approbation. If in 1915 men like Ostwald and
+Mach had refused to approve the acts of their nation, they would have
+seriously harmed it. The ‘clerk’ who to-day condemns the realism of
+the State to which he belongs does really harm that State.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_176_176" href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> Hence it
+follows that the State, in the name of its practical interests, to defend which
+is its function, has a right—perhaps a duty—to punish them. This
+appears to me to be the true order of things: The ‘clerk’, faithful to
+his essential duty, denounces the realism of States; whereupon, the
+States, no less faithful to their duty, made him drink the hemlock. The
+serious disorganization in the modern world is that the ‘clerks’ do not
+denounce the realism of States, but on the contrary approve of it; they
+no longer drink the hemlock.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_177_177" href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_172">[172]</span></p>
+
+<p>Let me point to another disorganization. That is when the State
+does not punish the ‘clerk’ for denouncing its realism. This occurred
+in France during the Dreyfus affair. The order of things demanded that
+the ‘clerks’ should demand abstract justice, as they did; but perhaps it
+also demanded that the State, weakened in strength by their idealism,
+should throw them into prison. When the ‘clerk’ performs the layman’s
+task, the result is anarchy; but there is also anarchy when the layman
+acts and speaks as a ‘clerk’, when those whose duty is to defend the nation
+display their cult for the abolition of frontiers, universal love, or other
+spiritual things.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_178_178" href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a> When I see philosophers concerning themselves with
+the safety of the State and Ministers striving to bring about love among
+mankind, I think of what Dante says: ‘You turn to religion him who was
+born to wear the sword, you make a King of one who was born to preach.
+Thus all your steps are out of the true way.’ However, this second
+disorganization of orders has been denounced by others, and it is not my
+function to combat it.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_F">
+  <span class="smcap">Note F</span> (<a href="#p_37">Page 37</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>Think how willingly the ecclesiastics now accept military service.</i></p>
+
+<p>I think this willingness is worthy of the historian’s attention. Obviously,
+it implies some sincere attachment to their country in those who display
+this willingness, although their law is to be dead to all worldly attachments.
+Moreover, it appears that in the last war most of the ministers of Jesus
+Christ able to bear arms were glad to defend their country, whatever that
+country was, and whatever notion they may have had of the justice of
+its cause. Here is a most suggestive fact: Certain Belgian monastic
+orders (and others as well, I am told) established abroad at the declaration
+of war, and authorized by the government to remain abroad, insisted
+upon returning to the capital to perform their military duties. True,
+the behaviour of these monks may be explained, not on grounds of
+patriotism, but from the fear that they would be severely criticized by
+their fellow-citizens if they acted otherwise; for the modern ‘clerks’
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_173">[173]</span>have ceased to understand that the sign of an attitude truly in harmony
+with their function is that it should be unpopular with the laymen.</p>
+
+<p>But the most remarkable thing here for the historian, is that the imposition
+of military service on ecclesiastics does not appear to arouse any protest
+from the Church. Certain Church teachers even assert (Mgr Battifol,
+<i>L’Eglise et le Droit de la guerre</i>): ‘There is no further doubt about the
+legality of military service.’&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_179_179" href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> It is also curious to see in the <i>Dictionnaire
+apologétique de la foi catholique</i> (Art. ‘Paix et Guerre’) the strenuous
+efforts of the author (Father de la Brière) to prove that bearing arms, even
+by ‘clerks’ in holy orders, is in no sense contrary to Christian law. However,
+the opinion of these theologians does not seem to be shared, at least
+publicly, by the higher ecclesiastical authorities; for every ‘clerk’ who
+bears arms is laid under an interdict, as he was in the past—only the interdict
+is taken off a few minutes after it has been declared.</p>
+
+<p>The modern laymen (Barrès for example) praise this patriotism of the
+ecclesiastic and his willingness to fight. The laymen of the past tried to
+make him ashamed of it, and liked to exhort him to sentiments which they
+considered more in harmony with his sacred ministry. The warlike
+ardours of John XII and Julius II were severely condemned by their
+contemporaries. Apart from Erasmus—the type of the man of letters
+fully aware of the ‘clerk’s’ high function, who was continually saying:
+‘Their tonsure does not warn them that they ought to be free from all
+the passions of this world and think only of the things of Heaven’—the
+Italian Tizio wrote: ‘It is astonishing that the Pontiffs, whose part is
+to be pacific and independent, should take part in the shedding of Christian
+blood.’ The French poet Jean Bouchet shows the weeping Church
+imploring Julius II to end the war (though it is true that Julius II was
+fighting France):</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">‘Your patron is my Lord Saint Peter,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Who never warred for worldly goods.’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In <i>Le Songe du Verger</i>, a kind of summary of moral doctrines current
+in France in the fourteenth century, there is a dialogue between
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_174">[174]</span>a Knight and a Clerk, when the Clerk claims for his caste the right to make
+war, and the Knight tells him that ‘the arms of the “clerks” are prayers
+and tears’. It is suggestive to see a soldier urging a minister of the spiritual
+to perform his true function and seeming to think that the performance
+of this function is necessary to the good order of the world. Here is a
+feeling for ‘clerkdom’ and its social value which is very seldom to be
+found among the modern laymen, even the non-military ones—I nearly
+said, especially the non-military ones.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_180_180" href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_G">
+  <span class="smcap">Note G</span> (<a href="#p_53">Page 53</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>That self-examination to which every spectator is impelled by a representation
+of human beings which he feels to be true and solely pre-occupied
+with truth.</i></p>
+
+<p>Let me quote the following passage concerning the civilizing effects
+of such representation:—</p>
+
+<p>‘This spectacle of man offered to man has considerable moral effects.
+First, a valuable exercise of the intelligence, an increase of reflection,
+a widening of the view in every direction, result from the habit thus set
+up of getting out of oneself and entering into others, to understand their
+actions, to share in their passions, sympathize with their sufferings, appreciate
+their motives. This faculty of the artist communicated to the
+spectator or the listener, this faculty of participation and assimilation,
+is something set up in opposition to egotism and is a condition of tolerance
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_175">[175]</span>and benevolence, frequently even of justice. Then, lessons of virtue,
+frequently not the least effective, are given to the spectator, from the very
+fact that he is placed in a position to praise or condemn acts or thoughts
+which are set before him relative to cases where his own interests are not
+involved. He recognizes his own image in the actor of the epic, a man
+like himself, a voluntary and impassioned agent, whose dangers though
+perhaps magnified are not foreign to his own experience. Then the
+essential phenomena which characterize conscious humanity and morality
+occur in him who thus witnesses himself in the person of another, i.e.
+disinterested objectivity of himself to himself, generalization of passion,
+motive and maxim, judgment founded on the universal, self-examination
+to arrive at what is duty, clear and defined sentiment of the direction of
+the will.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>But this must not lead us to think that the poet’s object is utility or
+morality. If it were, he would be lacking in the true feeling of art.</i>
+Teaching, moralizing—this object of the artist is indirect, i.e. does not
+exist systematically for him. He must only attain it without having sought
+it, and sometimes he attains it when he seems to have departed from it.
+What he desires to do, is to touch the feelings, to arouse emotions. But
+it happens that by doing so he elevates, purifies, moralizes. The poet
+(I am especially speaking of him) does indeed address himself to everyone.
+<i>That means he can only sing the universal</i>, however curious such an assembly
+of words may appear. He may indeed sing it under the form of the
+particular, without which his fictions would be lacking in life, he none the
+less excludes the pure, incomprehensible, inexplicable individual, shorn
+of all truth if he does not express a relationship.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_181_181" href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> He generalizes passion,
+therefore ennobles it and renders it at once the object of observation,
+reflection and disinterested emotion. The listener, carried away from his
+own relatively base private preoccupations and transported without
+hope or fear (at least, too personal and too present hope and fear) into
+the superior sphere of humanity’s common passion, feels the benefit of an
+elevation of soul; his consciousness is temporarily freed from egotism.’
+(Renouvier, <i>Introduction à la philosophie analytique de l’Histoire</i>, p. 354.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_176">[176]</span></p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_H">
+  <span class="smcap">Note H</span> (<a href="#p_56">Page 56</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>... Napoleon, who ordered the chief of police to take measures for the
+history of France to be written in a manner favourable to his own throne.</i></p>
+
+<p>Here are some portions of a note on this subject dictated by Napoleon
+at Bordeaux in 1808. It promulgates the conception of history as practised,
+mutatis mutandis, by many of our historians of the past:—</p>
+
+<p>‘I do not approve the principles laid down in his note by the Minister
+of the Interior. They were true twenty years ago, they will be true
+sixty years hence, but they are not true to-day. Velly is the one fairly
+detailed author who has written on the history of France. The abridged
+chronology of the President Hénault is a good classical book. It is useful
+to have them both continued. <i>It is of the greatest importance to make
+certain of the spirit in which these continuations are written.</i> I ordered
+the Minister of Police to look after the continuation of Millot, and I
+desire the two Ministers will consult over the continuation of Velly and
+the President Hénault....</p>
+
+<p>‘They are to be just to Henri IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV and Louis
+XV, but without adulation. The September Massacres and the horrors
+of the Revolution must be painted in the same colours as the Inquisition
+and the massacres of the Sixteen. They must take care to avoid all reaction
+in speaking of the Revolution, no man could have opposed it successfully.
+No blame attaches either to those who perished or to those who survived.
+There was no individual power capable of changing the elements and
+foreseeing the events which arose from the nature of things and circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>‘They are to point out the perpetual disorganization of the national
+finances, the chaos of the provincial assemblies, the claims of the Parlements,
+the lack of regulation and resort in the administration. This
+checkered France, without unity of laws and administration, was rather
+a union of twenty Kingdoms than a single State, so that one breathes
+freely on coming to the period when the benefits of unity of laws, administration
+and territory are enjoyed.... The opinion expressed by the
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_177">[177]</span>Minister, which, if followed, would result in abandoning this task to
+private enterprise and the speculation of some publisher, is wrong and
+could only produce regrettable results.’</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the champions of authority are not the only persons who
+make history serve their own interests. Condorcet (<i>Tableau historique</i>,
+10<sup>e</sup> Epoque) says that history should serve ‘to maintain an active vigilance
+in recognizing and crushing under the weight of Reason the first germs
+of superstition and tyranny, if they ever dare to appear again.’</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_I">
+  <span class="smcap">Note I</span> (<a href="#p_62">Page 62</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>Humanitarianism and Humanism.</i></p>
+
+<p>Here, on this subject, is a curious passage from one of the ancients:—</p>
+
+<p>‘Those who created the Latin language and those who spoke it well
+do not give the word <i>humanitas</i> the vulgar meaning which is synonymous
+with the Greek word <i>philanthropia</i>, which means an active kindness, a
+tender benevolence for all men. But they give the word the meaning
+which the Greeks attach to <i>paideia</i>, which we call education, knowledge
+of the fine arts. Those who show the most taste and disposition for these
+studies are the most worthy to be called <i>humanissimi</i>. For man alone
+among all living beings is able to devote himself to cultivating a study
+which for that reason has been called <i>humanitas</i>. Such is the meaning
+given to this by the ancients, particularly by Varro and Cicero. Almost
+all their works show examples, so I shall content myself with quoting
+one only. I have chosen the opening of the first book of Varro “Concerning
+human things”: “Praxiteles, qui propter artificium egregium
+nemini est paulum modo humaniori ignotus (Praxiteles, whose excellent
+talent as an artist has made him known to every man at all skilled in the
+arts)”. Here <i>humanior</i> does not bear the vulgar meaning of easy, tractable,
+benevolent even though lacking in knowledge of letters. That
+meaning would not express the author’s thought. It means an educated,
+a learned man, one who is acquainted with Praxiteles through books and
+history.’ (Aulus Gellius, <i>Noctes Atticae</i>, Book XIII, XVI.)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_178">[178]</span></p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_J">
+  <span class="smcap">Note J</span> (<a href="#p_82">Page 82</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>... they cannot sufficiently denounce all institutions based on liberty
+and discussion.</i></p>
+
+<p>Note that the novelty here lies in the passion, the fury with which
+they condemn liberty of discussion. Otherwise, we see most of the
+so-called liberal thinkers in history themselves recognize the necessity
+for submission to the sovereign’s judgment. Spinoza declares that ‘there
+is no possible government if every man makes himself the defender of
+his own rights and the rights of others.’ The <i>Letters of Descartes</i> contain
+passages in favour of the ‘reason of State.’</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps not sufficiently noticed how frequently the old French
+absolute monarchists say that justice is the chief function of the sovereign.
+‘The most important of the King’s rights,’ says one of these theorists
+(Guy Coquille, <i>Institution du droit des Français</i>, 1608) ‘is to make <i>the
+laws and general statutes for the good order of his Kingdom</i>.’ Another
+(Loyseau, <i>Des Seigneuries</i>, 1608) says: ‘The usage of public <i>lordship
+must be regulated by justice</i> ...’ Bossuet (<i>Instruction à Louis XIV</i>)
+says: ‘When the King administers justice or has it exactly administered
+in accordance with the laws, <i>which is his principal function</i> ...’ The
+modern absolute monarchists, even French, seem to be inspired by the
+German theorist, who says: ‘The State has two functions to perform:
+the administration of justice and the waging of war. <i>But war is by far
+the principal.</i>’ (Treitschke.)</p>
+
+<p>Note this famous passage from Bossuet (<i>Pol.</i>, Book VIII, art. II, par. I):</p>
+
+<p>‘It is one thing for it (the government) to be absolute, another for it
+to be arbitrary. It is absolute in relation to constraint, there being no
+power which is capable of compelling the sovereign, who in this sense is
+independent of all human authority. But it does not follow that government
+is arbitrary; because, apart from the fact that all things are subject
+to God’s judgment (which applies also to the government we have called
+arbitrary), there are laws in empires, and everything which is done
+contrary to them is void of right.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_179">[179]</span></p>
+
+<p>It will be seen that the defence of arbitrary government is a new thing
+among French teachers, even in regard to Bossuet. (I am speaking of
+Bossuet’s <i>doctrines</i>, not of his practical advice.)</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_K">
+  <span class="smcap">Note K</span> (<a href="#p_91">Page 91</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>This is the teaching of Nietzsche.</i></p>
+
+<p>I must repeat that throughout this work I am considering the teaching
+of Nietzsche (and Hegel’s too) insofar as it has become the pretext for
+a great moral preaching, though I know perfectly well that in reality this
+teaching is something far more complex. I shall quote the following
+judicious observation, in connection with the fact that certain philosophers
+have only themselves to blame for ‘the misunderstanding of their true
+thought’:</p>
+
+<p>‘Nietzscheism has been subjected to the same test as Hegelianism.
+And no doubt here and there philosophical themes have served especially
+as pretexts to cover up a new offensive on the part of barbarism. <i>But
+the fact that they have been utilized, the manner in which they have been
+utilized, have a significance which must not be overlooked.</i> Is it not the
+criterion of a philosophy which may be called rational without reserve
+and equivocation, that it should remain incorruptibly faithful to itself?
+On the other hand, <i>the systems which begin by accepting contradictions,
+reserving the right to add that they are capable of surmounting them or of
+“living” them, lodge their enemy in their midst</i>. Their punishment is
+that their antithesis still resembles them; and that is what has happened
+to Nietzsche.’ (L. Brunschvicg, <i>Le Progrès de la Conscience dans la philosophie
+occidentale</i>, p. 431.) This book contains an excellent exposition of
+‘Hegelian themes’ and ‘Nietzschean themes’, precisely insofar as they
+have become political breviaries.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_L">
+  <span class="smcap">Note L</span> (<a href="#p_94">Page 94</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>Long before the disciples of Taine and Auguste Comte.</i></p>
+
+<p>When this book appeared in a periodical, certain persons declared
+that the whole of my attack on the modern ‘clerk’ went astray because
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_180">[180]</span>I did not give more space to the author of <i>Origines de la France Contemporaine</i>.
+He, they said, was the ‘great realist “clerk” of the past fifty
+years, while those I attacked were only his small change.’ (This sudden
+contempt for the thought of Barrès and Maurras of the part of certain
+people is certainly surprising.)</p>
+
+<p>There is here a manifest abuse of the word <i>realism</i>. Taine threw light
+on the true nature of the real, or rather the political real, and reminded
+the universalist that this domain is not under his jurisdiction. He never
+<i>exalted</i> this real at the expense of the universal, which is the realism I am
+denouncing here. He plainly taught, on the contrary, that the universalist
+who stays in his own domain (see his admiration for Spinoza and Goethe)
+is the great human model. Compare this with Maurras for whom the
+universalist, even when non-political (the infinitist, the pantheist) is
+profoundly contemptible. It is also difficult for me to see Taine as the
+godfather of those who glorify the soldier at the expense of the man of
+justice and the man of study,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_182_182" href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> who exhort the nations to cultivate their
+prejudices where they are ‘totally foreign to reason’ (Barrès) and who
+declare that the intelligence which cares nothing about what is social is
+the activity of a savage. I think Taine would cheerfully say of those who
+claim to derive from him the same thing that M. Bergson is reported to
+have said of some of his ‘disciples’: ‘These gentlemen are most original.’</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Taine seems to me to be the initiator of the modern
+realists in two points. The first is his condemnation of individualism,
+more exactly, of the moral liberty of the citizen (for this, at bottom, is the
+meaning of his regret for the old corporations, and, more generally,
+of his exhortation to form groups, which shape the individual’s soul,
+instead of allowing it to be autonomous as against the State); and the
+second, which is far more novel than the first among French teachers,
+is his condemnation of idealist education. The peroration of the ‘<i>Régime
+moderne</i>’ obviously establishes the whole educational argument of the
+<i>Déracines</i> and <i>L’Étape</i>:—</p>
+
+<p>‘Sometimes when he is with his intimates, as bitter and as overfatigued
+as he is, the young man is tempted to say to us: “By your education you
+induced us to believe that the world is made in a certain way. You deceived
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_181">[181]</span>us. It is much uglier, stupider, dirtier, gloomier and harsher, at least
+to our sensibility and our imagination. You think they are over-excited
+and out of gear; well, if they are, it is your fault. That is why we curse
+and despise the whole of your world, and reject your pretended truths,
+which for us are lies, including those elementary and primary truths
+which you say are evident to common sense, and upon which you build
+your laws, your institutions, your society, your philosophy, your sciences
+and your arts.” That is what contemporary youth have been telling us
+aloud for fifteen years by their tastes, their opinions, their inclinations
+in literature, the arts and life.’</p>
+
+<p>Against this manifesto in favour of a practical education, let me set
+this protest of a true descendant of Montaigne, Pascal and Montesquieu:</p>
+
+<p>‘In his diatribe for the classical spirit and the primary truths of reason
+and philosophy which direct literary education of all kinds, Taine comes
+to use words similar to those of the adversaries of ancient literature,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_183_183" href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a>
+of the general ideas which are inseparable from them, and of disinterested
+culture even. The only object would then be to prepare persons for an
+empirical world,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_184_184" href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> people taught to know the world as it is, and trained to
+make it continue as it now is. However, the school laws are too recent
+for one to be able decently to blame them for the evils of the age, and make
+them the cause of the hatred and scorn poured on society by those who are
+bored, enervate and out of their class. However, even if it were true that
+the comparison between the general principles of reason, morality and
+beauty, and empirical life engendered more disgust with the realities than
+it has done in the past, it would be a sad paradox to ask that this danger
+should be averted by banishing from education all elevated views and all
+idealism.’ (Renouvier, <i>Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire</i>, tome iv,
+p. 541.)</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_M">
+  <span class="smcap">Note M</span> (<a href="#p_95">Page 95</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>This cult brings out a silliness of mind which to me seems wholly an
+acquisition of the nineteenth century.</i></p>
+
+<p>This silliness of mind assumes another form, i.e. the belief (rigidly
+formulated by Maurras) that in politics you can find laws of cause and
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_182">[182]</span>effect as certainly valid as those of weight or electricity. (‘Politics are a
+<i>science</i>.’) This is the superstition of science, held to be competent in
+all domains, including that of morality; a superstition which, I repeat,
+is an acquisition of the nineteenth century. It remains to discover whether
+those who brandish this doctrine believe in it or whether they simply
+want to give the prestige of a scientific appearance to the passions of their
+hearts, which they perfectly well know are nothing but passions. It is
+to be noted that the dogma that history is obedient to scientific laws is
+preached especially by partisans of arbitrary authority. This is quite
+natural, since it eliminates the two realities they most hate, i.e. human
+liberty and the historical action of the individual.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_N">
+  <span class="smcap">Note N</span> (<a href="#p_98">Page 98</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>Our age has seen priests of the mind teaching that the gregarious is the
+praiseworthy form of thought, and that independent thought is contemptible.</i></p>
+
+<p>Note that what is new in this crusade against individualism (the great
+apostle of which is M. Maurras) is not the recognition that ‘the individual
+is only an abstraction’, that to a great extent, he is formed by his race,
+his surroundings, his nation, a thousand things which are not himself.
+The novelty is the cult for this servitude, the order given to mankind to
+submit entirely to it, the contempt shown for any attempt to get free
+from it. Once again this is the cult (so strange in French thinkers) for
+the <i>inevitable</i> part of the human being, the hatred for its free part.</p>
+
+<p>Note that those who to-day preach obedience of the mind, not only
+demand it from the uncultured masses but from the men of thought,
+<i>especially</i> from the men of thought. The anti-individualists of the
+Dreyfus affair particularly opposed the independence of scientists, writers,
+and philosophers—‘the mad vanity of a few intellectuals’. Nevertheless,
+the most curious thing is not that they require this obedience, but that
+they obtain it. When M. Maritain declares that ‘everyone cannot
+philosophize and that, for men, the essential thing is to choose a master’,
+and when M. Maurras asserts that the function of most minds is to be
+‘servants’ and to reflect the thought of some leader, these teachers find
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_183">[183]</span>a number of men of thought to applaud and abdicate their liberty of
+mind in their favour. The thinkers of the eighteenth century said:
+‘A religion is needed for the people.’ Those of our age say: ‘A religion
+is needed for ourselves.’ What Barrès wrote: ‘The part of the masters
+is to justify the habits and prejudices of France, so as best to prepare
+our children to take their place in the national procession,’ he certainly
+meant that he and his colleagues were to walk in this procession. Here
+we again come upon that thirst for discipline which I spoke of above
+and which seemed to me so worthy of remark in the descendants of
+Montaigne and Renan. The cause, I said, was their desire to belong
+to a ‘strong group’. In them it also arises from a feeling for the artistic
+value of regimenting a collection of men in a beautiful ‘procession’,
+and also from the joy felt by so many souls in being governed, if not
+having to make the effort to think for themselves—a most curious joy
+in so-called men of thought.</p>
+
+<p>The cult for the collective soul, with all its violation of human consciousness,
+seems to me admirably denounced by a passage of Maine de
+Biran, quoted by M. L. Brunschvicg (op. cit., <i>La Sociologie de l’ordre</i>,
+p. 526):—</p>
+
+<p>‘... According to M. Bonald, it is not the human mind, it is not the
+individual understanding which is the seat, the true subject of inherence
+of the nations or (universal) truths under discussion; but it is society,
+which, gifted with a kind of collective understanding different from
+that of individuals, was from its origin imbued with them through the
+gift of speech and by virtue of a miraculous influence exerted on the mass
+alone, independent of its parts. The individual, the man, is nothing;
+society alone exists; society is the soul of the moral world, it alone exists,
+while individual persons are only phenomena. Let those who can,
+understand this social metaphysics. If the author himself understands
+it clearly, then I am in the wrong. Then we must cease to talk of
+philosophy and recognize the nothingness of the science of intellectual
+and moral man, we must admit that all psychology based on the primitive
+fact of consciousness is simply false, and we must consider science itself
+as an illusion which perpetually deceives and misleads us by showing us
+everything, even our own existence, in a false and fantastic light.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_184">[184]</span></p>
+
+<p>M. Brunschvicg very rightly adds: ‘The antithesis could not be stated
+more clearly. Either the primary fact of consciousness, or the primary
+fact of language; either Socrates or Bonald.’</p>
+
+<p>Either Socrates or Bonald. Barrès and Maurras made their choice.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_O">
+  <span class="smcap">Note O</span> (<a href="#p_118">Page 118</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>... Péguy who admires philosophies to the extent that ‘they are good
+fighters.’</i>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_185_185" href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a></p>
+
+<p>This determination to praise philosophers for their virtues of action
+rather than for their intellectual virtues is very frequent among men of
+thought to-day. In his <i>Souvenirs concernant Lagneau</i>, Alain, wishing to
+give as favourable a picture of his master as possible, praises his energy
+and his resolution at least as much as his intelligence. It is also very
+remarkable—although here literature only is in question—to see a professor
+of moral science (M. Jacques Bardoux) setting a special value on those
+French literary men who were soldiers, i.e. Vauvenargues, Vigny, Péguy.
+As to the men of letters themselves, I shall content myself with pointing
+out that one of them who is most applauded by his own colleagues recently
+declared that he chiefly admired d’Annunzio for his attitude as an officer,
+and expressed regret that he had returned to literature.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_186_186" href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> The Emperor
+Julian praised Aristotle for having said that he felt prouder of being the
+author of his <i>Treatise on Theology</i> than he would have felt if he had
+destroyed the power of the Persians. One might still find soldiers in
+France who would agree with this judgment, but very few men of letters.
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_185">[185]</span>Elsewhere (<i>Les Sentiments de Critias</i>, p. 206) I have attempted to give
+the history and the explanation of this desire (so curious in men of the
+pen) to exalt a warlike life and to scorn a sedentary life. Note that this
+characteristic is to be seen in contemporary writers long before the war
+of 1914, and that those who talk most about a warlike life are not always
+those who lead it.</p>
+
+<p>The new thing, I repeat, is not that we see men of letters praising
+an active life and scorning a sedentary life; it is <i>the absence of naiveté,
+the dogmatic tone</i>. When Ronsard exclaims: ‘Good Gods, who would
+praise those who let life go by bent over books’;&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_187_187" href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> when Bertrand de
+Born wishes that ‘no man of high lineage should have any thought but
+cutting off heads and arms’; when Froissart sings the glories of chivalry
+and casts his scorn in the faces of the bourgeois, no one will take these
+candid lyre-players, who like noble poses and do not even know that the
+word doctrine exists, for the ancestors of our grave professors of belligerent
+aesthetics. Moreover, I doubt whether the author of <i>Scenes and Doctrines
+of Nationalism</i> would have condescended to be a descendant of these
+simple-minded persons.</p>
+
+<p>I find scorn for the life of the mind clearly professed in a dogmatic
+tone, in a writer of the seventeenth century who frequently reminds one
+of certain modern authors by his efforts to humiliate the toga before the
+sword. (It is true that this writer was a gentleman of the very minor
+nobility.)</p>
+
+<p>‘Certainly, there is no better way of relaxing the vigour of men’s
+courage than to occupy their minds with peaceful and sedentary exercises,
+and idleness cannot enter civilized States in a more subtle or dangerous
+disguise than that of literature. Lazy and idle persons have in part ruined
+commerce and agriculture, which are the cause of the weakness of our
+condition and the cowardice of our age.’ (J. L. de Balzac, <i>Le Prince</i>,
+1631. He then admits literature and the sciences to the State insofar
+as ‘they strengthen and embellish the Mother-country’.)</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, a master from the great period of French literature
+writes a eulogy of the life of the mind at the expense of the active mind,
+which I hardly think would be accepted by many of the moderns who
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_186">[186]</span>venerate that period (I am especially thinking of those who admire the
+thought of Georges Sorel).</p>
+
+<p>‘In France great strength of character and width of mind are needed
+if a man is to reject offices and employments and thus consent to remain
+at home and do nothing. Scarcely anyone possesses sufficient merit to
+play this part with dignity, nor sufficient resources to fill up the void of
+time without what the vulgar call “business”. But the wise man’s
+idleness needs only a better name, and we ought to say that one who
+meditates, talks, reads and is calm, is working.’ (La Bruyère, <i>Du Mérite
+personnel</i>.)</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_P">
+  <span class="smcap">Note P</span> (<a href="#p_122">Page 122</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>The ‘Manifesto of the Party of Intelligence’ (Figaro, 19th July, 1919).</i></p>
+
+<p>This manifesto, signed by fifty-four French writers, several of whom
+are among the teachers most respected by their fellow-citizens, is of the
+greatest importance to the present inquiry. In addition to the strange
+passage on the Church’s mission which I quoted above, it contains things
+like this:—</p>
+
+<p>‘Nationalism, which the conceptions of the intelligence impose on
+political conduct as well as on the order of the world, is a reasonable,
+humane system, and French in addition.’</p>
+
+<p>And further on:—</p>
+
+<p>‘When a literature becomes national does it not acquire a more
+universal significance, a more humanly general interest?’</p>
+
+<p>And again:—</p>
+
+<p>‘We believe—and the world believes with us—that it is part of the
+destiny of our race to defend the spiritual interests of humanity.... We
+are solicitous for Europe and all the humanity remaining in the world.
+French humanity is the sovereign protector of this.’</p>
+
+<p>And above all:—</p>
+
+<p>‘Victorious France means to take her place again in the order of the
+mind, the only order whereby a legitimate domination may be exercised.’</p>
+
+<p>Hence the desire to found (the manifesto itself underlines the words):
+‘<i>The intellectual Federation of Europe and the world under the aegis of
+victorious France, the guardian of civilization.</i>’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="p_187">[187]</span></p>
+
+<p>Victory under arms conferring the right to command in the intellectual
+order—that is professed to-day by French thinkers! One remembers
+the Roman writers, from whom these thinkers claim descent, who took as
+the leader of their minds Greece, which had been conquered by force of
+arms; one also remembers the German teachers of 1871 who also
+claimed intellectual hegemony for their ‘victorious’ nation, which they
+too claimed as ‘the guardian of civilization’.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_188_188" href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a></p>
+
+<p>When this manifesto was published, somewhat similar reflections
+seem to have occurred to the mind of one of our great writers. In a letter
+concerning this document,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_189_189" href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> Marcel Proust deplores the proclamation
+of ‘a kind of “Frankreich ueber alles”, the policeman of the literature
+of all nations.’ As a true priest of the mind, he goes on: ‘Why take
+this peremptory attitude towards other countries in such matters as
+literature, where a man only reigns by persuasion?’ I am happy to
+take this opportunity to do homage to this true ‘clerk’, and to say that
+I know that there are still other writers in France beside those who only
+believe in the virtue of cold steel.</p>
+
+
+<h3 id="Note_Q">
+  <span class="smcap">Note Q</span> (<a href="#p_138">Page 138</a>)
+</h3>
+
+<p><i>Those who base their judgments on their artistic sensibilities.</i></p>
+
+<p>This artistic origin of the political attitudes of so many men of letters
+has been pointed out with great ability by M. Daniel Halévy in the case
+of M. Maurras. In an old article (<i>La Grande France</i>, 1902) M. Halévy
+quotes this beautiful passage from M. Maurras’s <i>Anthinéa</i> on the walk
+of women carrying a clay pot balanced on their heads:—</p>
+
+<p>‘The bosom swells and is modelled like a vase, it opens like a flower.
+The neck settles, the loins strain nervously. Their walk becomes graver
+and more supple, is measured with an inestimable sobriety; it unrolls
+in the mind like a piece of music. This living pillar moves, glides, advances,
+<span class="pagenum" id="p_188">[188]</span>without being interrupted by any sudden jerk or any break. It follows
+the undulations of the ground, adapts itself to the slightest rises, and thus
+resembles the stem of a beautiful young tree set free from its roots, moving
+over the ground without leaving it for a fraction of an inch. An infinite
+multitude of half-pauses make the jerks imperceptible, or one
+is only conscious of their succession, a continual harmony which leaves
+its curves in the air....’</p>
+
+<p>M. Daniel Halévy adds:—</p>
+
+<p>‘I quote the whole passage because it gives the very idea of Charles
+Maurras. For his classical way of thought, things are beautiful, not
+from the shocks of feeling and passion, but from the form and rhythm
+which give them continuity, or rather existence in the human sense of the
+word. M. Charles Maurras applies this taste for form to the study of
+history, and that is the whole of his “sociology”.’</p>
+
+<p>There could be no better definition of the type of man for whom
+things are good insofar as they satisfy his artistic sensibility. Let me place
+in opposition to him the exactly contrary type, leaving the reader to judge
+which of the two may claim to belong to ‘the intelligence’:—</p>
+
+<p>‘... For the perfection of things should be measured by their
+nature alone, and things are not more or less perfect because they flatter
+or wound our senses.’ (Spinoza.)</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">
+  <i>Footnotes</i>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> See <a href="#Note_A">Note A</a> at the end of this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> It is to be noted that a little more than a century ago French working-men from
+different provinces frequently engaged in desperate fights among themselves. (See
+Martin Nadaud, <i>Mémoires de Léonard</i>, p. 93.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> See Petit de Julleville, <i>La Comédie et les Moeurs en France au moyen age</i>, and André
+Le Breton, <i>Le Roman au XVIIe Siècle</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4" class="label">[4]</a> The great novelty is that to-day people accept the position that everything should
+be political, that they should proclaim it and take a pride in it. Otherwise it is perfectly
+obvious that men, shopkeepers, or poets, have not waited for the present time to try
+to get rid of a rival by political means. Remember how La Fontaine’s rivals kept him
+out of the Académie for ten years.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">[5]</a> As de Tocqueville profoundly remarks, these only occurred when a first improvement
+in his condition encouraged the man of the people to want more; i.e. towards
+the end of the eighteenth century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6" class="label">[6]</a> I am here speaking of Western Jews of the bourgeois class. The Jewish proletariat
+did not await our time to plunge into the feeling of its racial peculiarity.
+However, it does so without giving provocation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7" class="label">[7]</a> This was the notion expressed by Benedict XV when he told the poor ‘to take
+delight in the prosperity of elevated persons and to expect confidently their assistance’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8" class="label">[8]</a> For example, M. Paul Bourget’s <i>La Barricade</i>, where the author, a disciple of
+Georges Sorel, exhorts the bourgeoise not to leave to the proletariat the monopoly of
+class passion and violence. See also André Beaunier, <i>Les Devoirs de la Violence</i> (quoted
+by Halperine-Kaminski in the preface to Tolstoi’s book, <i>The Law of Love and the
+Law of Violence</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9" href="#FNanchor_9_9" class="label">[9]</a> ‘The phrase, <i>the sublime bourgeois</i>, which would have caused so much laughter
+twenty years ago, has now acquired for the French bourgeoisie a mystic plenitude
+owing to its fusion with the highest social and national values.’ (<i>Eloge du Bourgeois
+Français</i>, p. 284.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10" href="#FNanchor_10_10" class="label">[10]</a> Let me define more precisely what is new here. In the seventeenth century the
+citizen already had the notion of national honour; Racine’s Letters would be sufficient
+to prove it (see a significant page in the <i>Mémoires</i> of de Pontis, Book XIV); but he
+left it to the King to decide what this honour demanded; indignation like Vauban’s
+against the peace of Ryswick ‘which dishonours the King and the whole nation’,
+is a very exceptional emotion under the old <i>régime</i>. The modern citizen claims to feel
+for himself what is demanded by the national honour, and he is ready to rise up against
+his leaders if they have a different conception of it. This new development is not
+peculiar to the nations living under democratic systems; in 1911 the citizens of the
+German monarchy thought that the concessions made to their country by France in
+exchange for German abstention in Morocco were insufficient, and they were extremely
+angry with their Sovereign who had accepted these conditions which, in their opinion,
+were an insult to German honour. It may be asserted that the same thing would be
+true of France if she ever became a monarchy again and if the King took it upon himself
+to feel the interest of national honour in a different manner to his subjects. Moreover,
+this actually happened throughout the reign of Louis-Philippe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11" href="#FNanchor_11_11" class="label">[11]</a> For example, the humiliation of Olmüts in 1805. It may be asserted that no
+democracy would have endured it, at least with the philosophy displayed by the King
+of Prussia and his government. On the other hand, is it necessary to stress the other
+dangers to peace which existed under the Kings? It is sufficient to quote
+Montesquieu’s remark: ‘The spirit of the Monarchy is war and aggrandisement.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12" href="#FNanchor_12_12" class="label">[12]</a> In 1886, the Schnaebele affair; in 1890, the incident in Paris where the King of
+Spain in the uniform of a Colonel of Uhlans was hooted; in 1891, the incident of
+the Empress of Germany passing through Paris; in 1897, Fashoda; in 1904, the
+incident of the British trawlers sunk by the Russian Fleet, etc. Of course, I do not
+claim that the Kings only waged practical wars, although with them the allegation of
+‘wounded honour’ was very often a mere pretext. Louis XIV obviously did not make
+war on Holland because the Dutch struck a medal insulting him. Moreover, I shall
+grant that from time to time the Kings indulged in military invasions, a type of
+elegance which appears to be less and less tempting to the democracies; one cannot
+now imagine the peace of the world disturbed by excursions like those of Charles VIII
+into Italy or Charles XII into the Ukraine.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13_13" href="#FNanchor_13_13" class="label">[13]</a> Is it necessary to point out that wars started by public passion against the will
+of the government have often occurred under monarchies? And not only under
+constitutional monarchies, like the war of France with Spain in 1823 and with Turkey
+in 1826, but under absolute monarchies. For instance, the War of the Austrian
+Succession imposed on Fleury by an uprising of public opinion; the War of
+American Independence under Louis XVI; in 1806 the war of Prussia against Napoleon.
+In 1813 the war of Saxony. It seems probable that in 1914 war was imposed on absolute
+sovereigns like Nicholas II and Wilhelm II by popular passions which they had been
+exciting for years and then found themselves unable to restrain.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14_14" href="#FNanchor_14_14" class="label">[14]</a> ‘But what is much more important than material facts is the soul of nations.
+Among all races a kind of effervescence it to be noticed; some defend certain principles,
+others the opposing principles. By becoming members of the League of Nations, the
+different peoples do not abandon their <i>national morality</i>.’ (Speech of the German
+Minister for Foreign Affairs at Geneva, on the occasion of the entry of Germany into
+the League of Nations, 10th September, 1926.) The orator went on: ‘Yet this should
+not result in raising up nation against nation.’ One is surprised that he did not add:
+‘On the contrary.’ How much nobler, and at the same time more respectful of the
+truth, is the language of Treitschke: ‘This consciousness of themselves which the
+nations are acquiring and which can only be strengthened by culture, this consciousness
+means that war will never disappear from the earth, in spite of the closer linking up
+of interests, in spite of the growing uniformity of customs and the exterior forms of
+life.’ (Quoted by Charles Andler in <i>Les Origines du Pangermanisme</i>, p. 223.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15_15" href="#FNanchor_15_15" class="label">[15]</a> This is what Mirabeau seems to have foreseen when he announced to the
+Constituent Assembly that the wars of the ‘free nations’ would cause the wars of the
+Kings to be regretted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_16_16" href="#FNanchor_16_16" class="label">[16]</a> The religion of the ‘national soul’ is obviously and logically an emanation of the
+popular soul. Moreover, it has been sung by an eminently democratic literature:
+Romanticism. It is to be observed that the worst enemies of Romanticism and of
+Democracy have adopted it; it is constantly to be found in the Action Française. To
+such an extent is it now impossible to be a patriot without flattering democratic passions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_17_17" href="#FNanchor_17_17" class="label">[17]</a> See <a href="#Note_B">Note B</a> at the end of the book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_18_18" href="#FNanchor_18_18" class="label">[18]</a> See Brunot, <i>Histoire de la Langue Française</i>, t. v, liv. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_19_19" href="#FNanchor_19_19" class="label">[19]</a> On this topic see some excellent remarks of Auguste Comte, <i>Cours de
+Philosophie Positive</i>, 57<sup>e</sup> leçon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_20_20" href="#FNanchor_20_20" class="label">[20]</a> As a matter of fact, the peoples do not believe either that their ambitions go back
+to their ancestors; they are ignorant of history and do not believe it to be so even when
+it is true; they believe they believe, or, more exactly, they want to believe that they
+believe. However, that is enough to make them ferocious, perhaps more so than if
+they really believed it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_21_21" href="#FNanchor_21_21" class="label">[21]</a> France is here in a position of manifest inferiority in regard to her neighbours.
+The modern French feel very slight inclinations to claim that they reincarnate the
+ambitions of Charlemagne or even of Louis XIV, despite the proclamations of certain
+men of letters.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_22_22" href="#FNanchor_22_22" class="label">[22]</a> For instance, the address of the ‘six great industrial and agricultural associations
+of Germany’ to Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg in May, 1914, which was not very
+different from that drawn up in 1815 by the Prussian metallurgists to point out to
+their government what annexations should be made in the interests of their industry.
+(See Vidal de La Blache, <i>La France de l’Est</i>, chap. xix.) Moreover, some Germans
+are urgent in boldly proclaiming the economic character of their nationalism. ‘Let
+us not forget,’ says a well-known Pangermanist, ‘that the German Empire, which is
+generally considered abroad as a purely military State, is in its origin (Zollverein) chiefly
+economic.’ And again: ‘For us war is only the continuation of our commercial
+activity in times of peace, with other means but the same methods.’ (Naumann,
+<i>L’Europe Centrale</i>, pp. 112, 247; see the whole book.) Germany seems to be not
+indeed the only country to practise commercial patriotism (England has done so just
+as much and for a much longer time) but the only country to boast of it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_23_23" href="#FNanchor_23_23" class="label">[23]</a> And to build up a much less passionate patriotism. Think, for instance, of the
+agreements with foreigners accepted by patriotism based on interest (such as the
+Franco-German iron cartel), against which the patriotism based on pride rises up in
+revolt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_24_24" href="#FNanchor_24_24" class="label">[24]</a> ‘Love of country is a real love of oneself.’ (Saint-Evremond.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_25_25" href="#FNanchor_25_25" class="label">[25]</a> The divinizing of realism, of which patriotism specially consists, is expressed
+with all desirable candour in the ‘Addresses to the German People’ (Eighth Address);
+Fichte attacks religion for its claim to situate the superior life outside all interest in
+earthly matters: ‘It is an abuse of religion to force it, as Christianity has so often
+done, to extol complete indifference to the business of the State and the nation as the
+true religious spirit. Men,’ he declares, ‘are determined to find heaven on earth and
+to impregnate their earthly labours with something durable.’ He then shows, with
+great warmth, that this desire is the essence of patriotism, and it is evident that for
+him earthly labours become divine by becoming durable. This, indeed, is the only means
+men have discovered for divinizing their institutions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_26_26" href="#FNanchor_26_26" class="label">[26]</a> It is necessary to recall that the United States did not enter the last war ‘in
+defence of principles’, but with the very practical object of safeguarding their prestige,
+which had been lowered by the facts that the Germans had torpedoed three of their
+ships? Nevertheless, their desire to pose as having been purely idealistic in this affair
+is noteworthy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_27_27" href="#FNanchor_27_27" class="label">[27]</a> It may be said that religious passions, at least in the West, only exist as a reinforcement
+to national passions; in France, a man sets up as a Catholic in order to
+pose as being ‘more French’; in Germany as a Protestant in order to declare himself
+‘more German’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_28_28" href="#FNanchor_28_28" class="label">[28]</a> Here are two remarkable cases of idealistic passions which in the past successfully
+opposed national passion and are now submissive to it: (<i>a</i>) In France, the monarchic
+passion, which in 1792 was stronger than national feeling in many people, whereas in
+1914 it was completely effaced by national feeling. (Everyone will agree that attachment
+to a certain form of government, i.e. at bottom, the attachment to a certain
+metaphysical conception, is an infinitely more idealistic passion than nationalist passion;
+however, I do not claim that all the Emigrés were inspired by this idealism.) (<i>b</i>) In
+Germany, the religious passion, which only fifty years ago was stronger than national
+feeling in more than fifty per cent of Germans, and to-day is entirely subject to
+national feeling (in 1866 the German Catholics desired the defeat of Germany; in 1914
+they ardently desired it to be victorious). The Europe of to-day, compared with the
+Europe of the past, seems to contain many less chances of civil wars and many more
+chances of national wars; nothing could show better how much Europe has lost in
+idealism. (See <a href="#Note_D">Note D</a> at the end of this book for additional matter on the attitude of
+the modern Catholics towards Catholicism when it is in opposition to their nationalism.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_29_29" href="#FNanchor_29_29" class="label">[29]</a> For example, in words like the following, uttered at Venice on the 11th December,
+1926, by the Italian Minister of Education and Fine Arts: ‘Artists must prepare
+themselves for the new imperialist function which must be carried out by our art.
+Above everything, we must categorically impose a principle of <i>Italianita</i>. Whoever
+copies a foreigner is guilty of <i>lèse-nation</i> (an insult to the nation) like a spy who admits
+an enemy by a secret doorway.’ These words have to be approved by every adept of
+‘<i>integral</i> nationalism’. Moreover, we hear much the same thing in France from certain
+adversaries of Romanticism.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_30_30" href="#FNanchor_30_30" class="label">[30]</a> ‘Discipline from the lowest to the highest must be essential and of a religious type.’
+(Mussolini, 25th October, 1925.) This is new language in the mouth of a statesman,
+even of the most realist kind; it may be asserted that neither Richelieu nor Bismarck
+would have applied the word ‘religious’ to an activity whose object is exclusively
+materialistic.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_31_31" href="#FNanchor_31_31" class="label">[31]</a> Notably for Renan and ‘speculative a-moralism’. (H. Massis, <i>Judgments</i>, i.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_32_32" href="#FNanchor_32_32" class="label">[32]</a> See <a href="#Note_E">Note E</a> at the end of this book for further information on this prestige, and
+what is new about it in history.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_33_33" href="#FNanchor_33_33" class="label">[33]</a> In 1891 Barrès wrote to the editor of <i>La Plume</i>: ‘If these books have any value,
+it is from the logic, the continuity of thought I have put into them during five years.’
+(‘These books’ included his Boulangiste campaign.) And, in the preface to his collection
+of articles entitled ‘Scènes et Documents du nationalisme’, he says: ‘I think that
+if Doumic will examine it from a greater distance he will find a development, and not
+contradictions, in my work.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_34_34" href="#FNanchor_34_34" class="label">[34]</a> I shall be told of ‘clerks’ who, apparently without degradation, have at some time
+or other taken the part of a race or a nation, even of their own race or nation. That
+is because they believed that the cause of that race or nation coincided at that time
+with the cause of abstract justice.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_35_35" href="#FNanchor_35_35" class="label">[35]</a> Similar occurrences may be observed among the ancients. For instance, Cicero
+denounced his fellow-citizens for having destroyed Corinth merely to avenge an insult
+to their ambassador (De off., I, xi).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_36_36" href="#FNanchor_36_36" class="label">[36]</a> Already in 1911, when a writer quoted this sentence: ‘It is impossible to accept
+the situation that humanity should be bound for indefinite centuries by the marriages,
+battles, treaties of the narrow-minded, ignorant, egotistic creatures who during the
+middle ages were at the head of affairs in this world,’ he felt it necessary to add:
+‘Fortunately these lines were written by Renan; one could not write them to-day
+without being called an unpatriotic Frenchman.’ (G. Guy-Grand, <i>La Philosophie
+Nationaliste</i>, p. 165.) Without being called so <i>by the men of thought</i>—that is the curious
+part of it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_37_37" href="#FNanchor_37_37" class="label">[37]</a> Quoted by Mgr. Chapon in his admirable study, ‘La France et l’Allemagne devant
+la doctrine chrétienne.’ (<i>Correspondant</i>, of 15th August, 1915.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_38_38" href="#FNanchor_38_38" class="label">[38]</a> See his <i>Letters</i>, ii, p. 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_39_39" href="#FNanchor_39_39" class="label">[39]</a> Consider how willingly they now accept military service. See <a href="#Note_F">Note F</a> at the
+end of this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_40_40" href="#FNanchor_40_40" class="label">[40]</a> Here are the reasons given by a German Catholic for this attitude among those
+of his religion: ‘(<i>a</i>) Their incomplete knowledge of the facts and opinions in the
+belligerent and neutral countries; (<i>b</i>) <i>Their patriotism, which could not be allowed to
+separate itself from the union binding together the German people</i>; (<i>c</i>) The fear of a second
+Kulturkampf, which would be doubly dangerous if the German Catholics had even
+appeared to agree with the campaign carried on in France against German methods
+of waging war.’ The second reason will be noted, i.e. the desire to be at unity with
+the nation, whatever the moral aspect of its cause. Here, at least, is one reason which
+Bossuet did not allege when he screened the violences of Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>Let me recall that when, in 1914, the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg in the
+Reichstag hinted at a sort of apology for the violation of Belgian neutrality, he was
+sharply reproved by the Christian minister von Harnack ‘for having tried to excuse
+what did not need excusing’. (See A. Loisy, <i>Guerre et Religion</i>, p. 14.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_41_41" href="#FNanchor_41_41" class="label">[41]</a> The clergy of the allied nations are eager to throw in the faces of the German
+clergy their union with injustice in 1914. They abuse their own good fortune in
+belonging to nations whose cause happened to be just. When Italy, in 1923, at the time
+of the Corfu incident, adopted towards Greece an attitude as unjust as that of Austria
+towards Serbia in 1914, I am not aware that the Italian clergy expressed indignation.
+Nor do I remember that in 1900, when a European army intervened in Chinese affairs
+(the Boxer affair) and excesses were committed by the soldiers, any strong protests were
+uttered by the clergies of the respective nations.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_42_42" href="#FNanchor_42_42" class="label">[42]</a> A particularly remarkable attitude was that of the philosopher Boutroux. You
+will find an admirable denunciation of it from the pen of Charles Andler, <i>Les Origines
+du Pangermanisme</i>, p. viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_43_43" href="#FNanchor_43_43" class="label">[43]</a> This may be seen especially in the chorus of the Seven against Thebes: ‘Gods of our
+City, let it not be destroyed with our houses and our hearths.... O ye who have
+dwelt therein so long, will ye betray this land?’ Six centuries later this may be seen
+in the ‘Aeneid’, where the preservation of the Trojan City across the seas is plainly
+due solely to the protection of Juno, and in no wise to any inward notion of Trojan
+blood giving it an assurance of eternal duration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_44_44" href="#FNanchor_44_44" class="label">[44]</a> Although the Germans appear to have been the inventors of the passion I am
+denouncing, Lessing and Schlegel seem to have been the first to brandish their poets
+as the expression of the national soul, from a feeling of exasperation with the universalism
+of French literature. The men of the French Pléiade (who will certainly be brought
+up against me) wished to give their sensibility a national mode of expression, a national
+language; they never claimed to give a national character to that sensibility, to oppose
+it to other national sensibilities. The systematic nationalization of the mind is
+undoubtedly an invention of modern times. As regards the men of learning, this
+nationalizing has undoubtedly been favoured by the disappearance of Latin as the scientific
+language; and no one will ever be able to say to what an extent this disappearance was
+an element of arrest in civilisation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_45_45" href="#FNanchor_45_45" class="label">[45]</a> In Nietzsche’s opinion, this was the case with Wagner, who, when he gave himself
+out to his compatriots as the Messiah of German art, saw that there was ‘a good
+vacant place to take’, while the whole of his artistic formation as well as his profound
+philosophy, was essentially universalist. (See <i>Ecce Homo</i>, p. 58. ‘What I have never
+forgiven Wagner is his condescending to Germany.’) One wonders whether the same
+might not be said of a certain apostle of ‘Lorrain genius’ or of ‘Provençal genius’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_46_46" href="#FNanchor_46_46" class="label">[46]</a> The nationalization of the mind sometimes has results whose savour is not
+sufficiently enjoyed. In 1904, during the centenary celebrations of Petrarch, the
+nations of Goethe and Shakespeare were not invited, because they are not Latins;
+but the Roumanians were invited. We do not know whether Uruguay was invited.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_47_47" href="#FNanchor_47_47" class="label">[47]</a> Anatole France, <i>La Vie Littéraire</i>, tome ii, p. 274. The nationalist desires in
+French writers which I have been pointing out have had other than political results;
+no one will ever be able to say how many among them in the past fifty years have
+falsified their talents, mistaken their true gifts in their endeavours to ‘feel in the French
+manner’. A good example is the <i>Voyage de Sparte</i>, where so many pages show what
+a beautiful piece of work it might have been if the author had not <i>forced</i> himself to
+feel his Lorrain soul under a Greek sky. Here we come upon one of the most curious
+characteristics in the writers of this age; the rejection of freedom of mind <i>for themselves</i>,
+the thirst for ‘a discipline’ (the whole fortune of MM. Maurras and Maritain
+comes from this), a thirst which in most of them is the result of a fundamental intellectual
+nihilism. (On this nihilism in Barrès, see Curtius, ‘Barrès and the intellectual foundations
+of French nationalism,’ extracts in <i>Union pour la Vérité</i>, May, 1925; in Maurras,
+see Guy-Grand, op. cit., p. 19; and L. Dimier, <i>Vingt Ans d’Action Française</i>, p. 330:
+‘I have never seen a more unhappy soul than his.’) But the psychology of contemporary
+writers in itself and apart from its political action is not my subject here.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_48_48" href="#FNanchor_48_48" class="label">[48]</a> I think it novel that a poet should give rise to a demonstration so essentially
+practical as the address of the Naval League of Venice to d’Annunzio after the publication
+of <i>La Nave</i>. ‘On the day when your genius radiates with new splendour over the
+ancient ruler of “our sea”, over Venice, to-day disarmed against Pola, the Naval League
+of Venice thanks you with emotion, hoping that the third Italy may at last arm the
+prow and set sail towards the world.’ (<i>Translator’s Note.</i>—I have rendered the French
+version as quoted; its meaning or lack of meaning is no doubt inherent in the genius
+of the original, which I have not before me.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_49_49" href="#FNanchor_49_49" class="label">[49]</a> Compare with Balzac, who, though a Conservative, never hesitates to show his
+Conservatives and particularly his Catholics in an unfavourable light, if he thinks that
+the true light. See the examples quoted by E. Seillière (<i>Balzac et la morale romantique</i>,
+pp. 27 onwards, and 84 onwards), who sharply reproaches Balzac.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_50_50" href="#FNanchor_50_50" class="label">[50]</a> ‘<i>Resurrection</i>,’ ‘<i>Jean-Christophe</i>’ (derived in this respect from the procedure of
+George Sand). On the other hand, I seem to find a great deal of justice done the
+bourgeois in <i>Les Miserables</i>, which is nevertheless a most ‘tendencious’ novel.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_51_51" href="#FNanchor_51_51" class="label">[51]</a> For instance, pre-war French novels showing the French in Alsace-Lorraine.
+We may be quite certain that since 1918 the Germans have written novels which are
+the exact counterpart to these.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_52_52" href="#FNanchor_52_52" class="label">[52]</a> See <a href="#Note_G">Note G</a> at the end of this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_53_53" href="#FNanchor_53_53" class="label">[53]</a> See, for instance, Fustel de Coulanges’s study <i>De la manière d’écrire l’histoire en
+France et en Allemagne</i>. It will be observed that this author’s denunciation of the
+German historians exactly applies to certain French historians of recent years, with
+this difference: That the German alters history to exalt his nation and the Frenchman
+to exalt a political system. In general it may be said that the ‘tendencious’ philosophies
+of the Germans lead to national war, and those of the French to civil war. Is it necessary
+to repeat, after so many others, how much this proves the moral superiority of the
+latter?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_54_54" href="#FNanchor_54_54" class="label">[54]</a> <i>Revue Universelle</i>, 15th April, 1924. Here is that very curious desire of the
+moderns to yield to subjectivism, whereas their elders made every effort to combat it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_55_55" href="#FNanchor_55_55" class="label">[55]</a> See <a href="#Note_H">Note H</a> at the end of this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_56_56" href="#FNanchor_56_56" class="label">[56]</a> Yet the Jesuits thought of doing so to combat the Jansenists. (See Racine,
+<i>Port-Royal</i>, pt. i.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_57_57" href="#FNanchor_57_57" class="label">[57]</a> On the matter of the lack of literary sensibility which accompanies this political
+criticism among its adepts, see a paragraph of L. Dimier, <i>Vingt Ans d’Action Française</i>,
+p. 334.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_58_58" href="#FNanchor_58_58" class="label">[58]</a> The distinction between these two humanitarianisms is well expressed by Goethe
+when he relates (Dichtung und Wahrheit) the indifference of himself and his friends
+to the events of 1789. ‘In our little circle, we took no notice of news and newspapers;
+our object was to know Man; as for men, we left them to do as they chose.’
+Need I recall that the ‘humanities’, as instituted by the Jesuits in the seventeenth
+century, the ‘studia humanitatis’, are ‘the study of what is most essentially human’,
+in no sense altruistic exercises. See further <a href="#Note_I">Note I</a> at the end of this book for a curious
+quotation from one of the ancients.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_59_59" href="#FNanchor_59_59" class="label">[59]</a> This the Church has understood so well, and the corollary to this truth: That
+love between men can only be created by developing in them the sensibility for abstract
+man, and by combatting in them the interest for concrete man; by turning them
+towards metaphysical meditation and away from the study of history (see Malebranche).
+This is exactly the contrary direction to that of the modern ‘clerks’ but, once again,
+these ‘clerks’ have not the slightest desire to create love among men.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_60_60" href="#FNanchor_60_60" class="label">[60]</a> Thus they adopt the national spirit if it seems to serve their interests; for instance,
+the party of ‘nationalist-socialists’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_61_61" href="#FNanchor_61_61" class="label">[61]</a> Certain nationalists, desirous of honouring cosmopolitanism, whose full value
+their intelligence perceives, and yet not wishing to sacrifice nationalism, declare that
+cosmopolitanism represents ‘enlightened nationalism’. M. Paul Bourget, who gives
+this definition (<i>Paris-Times</i>, June, 1924), quotes Goethe and Stendhal as examples,
+‘the former of whom remained so profoundly German while striving to understand
+the whole movement of French thought, and the latter remained so profoundly French
+while he devoted himself to understanding Italy.’ One wonders how these two masters
+showed the least, even enlightened, ‘nationalism’ by remaining profoundly German
+and profoundly French. Obviously M. Bourget confuses national and nationalist.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_62_62" href="#FNanchor_62_62" class="label">[62]</a> Almost all works of national propaganda among the small nations of Eastern Europe
+are anthologies of poetry. Very few are works of thought. See the words uttered by
+E. Boutroux in August, 1915, to the Committee of the Entente Cordiale, against the
+peoples who attach too much importance to the intelligence, which ‘of itself tends to
+be one and common to all beings capable of knowledge’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_63_63" href="#FNanchor_63_63" class="label">[63]</a> <i>Les Nouvelles Littéraires</i>, 25th September, 1926.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_64_64" href="#FNanchor_64_64" class="label">[64]</a> Here is a specimen of the acrobatics which these teachers are compelled to perform
+in order to conciliate Christian doctrine with the preaching of national particularisms:
+‘We wish to set the ideal of universalism in positive relation to the contemporary
+reality of the national form, which is that of all life, even the Christian life.’ (Pastor
+Witte, quoted by A. Loisy, <i>Guerre et Religion</i>, p. 18.) Here are minds for whom the
+squaring of the circle is obviously mere child’s play.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_65_65" href="#FNanchor_65_65" class="label">[65]</a> Is it not suggestive to note that the Church in the last twenty years has replaced
+the commandment ‘Homicide shalt thou not be, in fact or by assent’ with ‘Homicide
+shalt thou not be, without right, nor voluntarily’?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_66_66" href="#FNanchor_66_66" class="label">[66]</a> For example in this passage of Bossuet: ‘Since we are obliged to love all men and
+since in truth no man is a foreigner to a Christian, there is all the more reason for loving
+our fellow citizens. All the love a man feels for himself, for his family, and for his
+friends is united in the love he feels for his country....’ (<i>Politique tirée de l’Ecriture
+Sainte</i>, I, vi. Notice the phrase ‘All the love a man feels for himself....’ It wholly
+justifies Saint Evremond’s phrase: ‘Love of country is really love of oneself.’) It
+appears that the Church would prefer to go on presenting patriotism under this one
+aspect of love (see the inquiry of ‘les Lettres’ on the Church and Nationalism, 1922–3),
+which would allow her to exalt this passion (as its popularity requires) without violating
+the principles of Christianity. Unfortunately for the Church, positive men come along
+and remind her that patriotism is something more than love, and includes ‘hatred for
+the foreigner’. (Maurras, <i>Dilemme de Marc Sangnier</i>.) Who will deliver us from
+the truth-tellers?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_67_67" href="#FNanchor_67_67" class="label">[67]</a> A. Lugan, <i>La grande loi sociale de l’amour des hommes</i>, liv. ii, chap. iii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_68_68" href="#FNanchor_68_68" class="label">[68]</a> Père Ollivier, <i>Les Amitiés de Jesus</i>, p. 142.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_69_69" href="#FNanchor_69_69" class="label">[69]</a> <i>Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique</i> (1919), in the article headed ‘Patrie’.
+The reader will note the extraordinary practical spirit of this article, and the desire to
+love only those who have done something for us.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_70_70" href="#FNanchor_70_70" class="label">[70]</a> Loisy’s <i>Guerre et Religion</i>, p. 60. Nevertheless, a certain number of practising
+clergy speak in the same way; see Guillot de Givry, <i>Le Christ et la Patrie</i>, towards
+the end.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_71_71" href="#FNanchor_71_71" class="label">[71]</a> It is current knowledge that Italian Fascism and Russian Bolshevism both derive
+from the author of <i>Reflections on Violence</i>. 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_72_72" href="#FNanchor_72_72" class="label">[72]</a> 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, <i>Traité de l’aumône</i>.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_73_73" href="#FNanchor_73_73" class="label">[73]</a> It might be said that in Christian theology the bourgeois state is a <i>function</i>, and
+not a rank.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_74_74" href="#FNanchor_74_74" class="label">[74]</a> 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,
+<i>we should not in our own souls attach any sort of importance to these circumstances and
+conditions, for the true life is not there</i>’ (H. Joly, <i>Malebranche</i>, p. 262).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_75_75" href="#FNanchor_75_75" class="label">[75]</a> On the relation between Durckheim’s theses and those of the French traditionalists,
+see D. Parodi, <i>La Philosophie contemporaine en France</i>, p. 148.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_76_76" href="#FNanchor_76_76" class="label">[76]</a> ‘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
+<i>Republic</i> defined a state of good which was only valid for the Greeks, and not for all
+peoples? (See P. Janet, <i>Histoire des idées politiques</i>, tome 1, p. 140.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_77_77" href="#FNanchor_77_77" class="label">[77]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_78_78" href="#FNanchor_78_78" class="label">[78]</a> <i>L’Appel au Soldat.</i> 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.’ (<i>Logique de
+Port-Royal</i>, 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_79_79" href="#FNanchor_79_79" class="label">[79]</a> The adoration of the contingent <i>for its own sake</i>; 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,’ <i>Revue de Métaphysique et
+de Morale</i>, 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.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_80_80" href="#FNanchor_80_80" class="label">[80]</a> An important literary review recently reproached a critic (M. Pierre Lasserre)
+for his supposed inaptitude to understand ‘contemporary literature’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_81_81" href="#FNanchor_81_81" class="label">[81]</a> 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 <i>relative to a time</i>. 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, <i>le Problème moral et la Pensée contemporaine</i>, p. 255.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_82_82" href="#FNanchor_82_82" class="label">[82]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_83_83" href="#FNanchor_83_83" class="label">[83]</a> See <a href="#Note_J">Note J</a> at the end of this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_84_84" href="#FNanchor_84_84" class="label">[84]</a> On the cult of the ‘Prussian model’ even among the English ‘clerks’, see Elie
+Halévy, <i>Histoire du Peuple anglais</i>, Epilogue, livre ii, ch. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_85_85" href="#FNanchor_85_85" class="label">[85]</a> Sorel, <i>Le procès de Socrate</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_86_86" href="#FNanchor_86_86" class="label">[86]</a> 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 <i>secularizing of the divine</i> may be compared with the
+work of Luther.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_87_87" href="#FNanchor_87_87" class="label">[87]</a> Machiavellian morality is plainly proclaimed in the following lines, where every
+open-minded person will recognize, except for the tone, the teaching of <i>all</i> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_88_88" href="#FNanchor_88_88" class="label">[88]</a> The teaching of this writer may be put in this form: ‘All that is good from the
+point of view of politics is good; <i>and I know no other criterion of good</i>.’ This enables
+him to say that he makes no pronouncement in matters of private morality.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_89_89" href="#FNanchor_89_89" class="label">[89]</a> In Richelieu’s <i>Testament politique</i> and the <i>Mémoires de Louis XIV pour l’Instruction
+du Dauphin</i>, 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, <i>they must observe them religiously</i>. 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 <i>even the interest of his
+State rather than break his word</i>, which he cannot violate without losing his reputation,
+and consequently <i>the greatest strength</i> of a Sovereign.’ (<i>Testament Politique</i>, part 2, ch. vi.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_90_90" href="#FNanchor_90_90" class="label">[90]</a> 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 <i>Action Française</i> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_91_91" href="#FNanchor_91_91" class="label">[91]</a> <i>Dictionnaire des Cas de Conscience</i> (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 <a href="#Note_F">Note F</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_92_92" href="#FNanchor_92_92" class="label">[92]</a> This is the thesis of Alfonso Liguori which to-day prevails in the Church’s teaching
+over that of Vittoria.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_93_93" href="#FNanchor_93_93" class="label">[93]</a> Cardinal Gousset (<i>Théologie morale</i>, 1845).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_94_94" href="#FNanchor_94_94" class="label">[94]</a> 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, <i>La
+Guerre devant le Christianisme</i>, titre ix.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_95_95" href="#FNanchor_95_95" class="label">[95]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_96_96" href="#FNanchor_96_96" class="label">[96]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_97_97" href="#FNanchor_97_97" class="label">[97]</a> In the <i>Dictionnaire théologique</i> 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: <i>the white man’s burden</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_98_98" href="#FNanchor_98_98" class="label">[98]</a> This expression (i.e. ‘la blague’) is Sorel’s (see Julien Benda, <i>Les Sentiments de
+Critias</i>, p. 258); and again (<i>Reflexions sur la Violence</i>, 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_99_99" href="#FNanchor_99_99" class="label">[99]</a> See <a href="#Note_K">Note K</a> at the end of the book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_100_100" href="#FNanchor_100_100" class="label">[100]</a> See <i>Reflexions sur la Violence</i>, 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_101_101" href="#FNanchor_101_101" class="label">[101]</a> 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 (<i>La Philosophie nationaliste</i>, p. 47). See also one of these
+defences in L. Romier, <i>Nation et Civilisation</i>, p. 180.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_102_102" href="#FNanchor_102_102" class="label">[102]</a> ‘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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_103_103" href="#FNanchor_103_103" class="label">[103]</a> See <a href="#Note_L">Note L</a> at the end of this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_104_104" href="#FNanchor_104_104" class="label">[104]</a> 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.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_105_105" href="#FNanchor_105_105" class="label">[105]</a> See <a href="#Note_M">Note M</a> at the end of this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_106_106" href="#FNanchor_106_106" class="label">[106]</a> ‘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 <i>insurrection</i>
+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 <i>independent of the passionate</i>, 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 <i>in itself</i> accuse their adversaries of
+dealing in abstractions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_107_107" href="#FNanchor_107_107" class="label">[107]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_108_108" href="#FNanchor_108_108" class="label">[108]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_109_109" href="#FNanchor_109_109" class="label">[109]</a> 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 <a href="#Note_N">Note N</a> at the end of this volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_110_110" href="#FNanchor_110_110" class="label">[110]</a> 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, <i>Un Romantisme Utilitaire</i>, 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 <i>fatal stupidity by which we shall one day perish</i>’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_111_111" href="#FNanchor_111_111" class="label">[111]</a> That it why Pragmatism is also called Humanism. (See F. Schiller, <i>Protagoras
+or Plato</i>.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_112_112" href="#FNanchor_112_112" class="label">[112]</a> 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!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_113_113" href="#FNanchor_113_113" class="label">[113]</a> ‘The true warrior remains human in the midst of the blood he sheds.’ (De
+Maistre.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_114_114" href="#FNanchor_114_114" class="label">[114]</a> 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, <i>Scipio’s Dream</i>.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_115_115" href="#FNanchor_115_115" class="label">[115]</a> Sorel, loc. cit.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_116_116" href="#FNanchor_116_116" class="label">[116]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_117_117" href="#FNanchor_117_117" class="label">[117]</a> Ernest Psichari, <i>Terres de Soleil et de Sommeil</i>. And, in <i>L’Appel des armes</i>,
+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, <i>integral militarism</i>. ‘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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_118_118" href="#FNanchor_118_118" class="label">[118]</a> This depreciation of Greece, to be seen in many French traditionalists since
+de Maistre, is constant among the Pangermanists. (See notably Houston Chamberlain,
+<i>Genesis of the Nineteenth Century</i>, tome i, page 57.) In a periodical with dogmatic
+claims (<i>Notre Temps</i>, August, 1927), under the suggestive title ‘Towards a Practical
+Idealism’, I read: ‘A young generation trained in this way, <i>more sporting than ideological</i>,
+supports those who ask whether we are not at the dawn of a great age.’ Here
+again the Churchmen do not lag behind. In <i>La Vie Catholique</i> (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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_119_119" href="#FNanchor_119_119" class="label">[119]</a> 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.)</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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’, <i>Mémoires</i>,
+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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_120_120" href="#FNanchor_120_120" class="label">[120]</a> And to hold.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_121_121" href="#FNanchor_121_121" class="label">[121]</a> There will be found in Barrès (<i>Une Enquête aux pays du Levant</i>, 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_122_122" href="#FNanchor_122_122" class="label">[122]</a> 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,
+<i>L’Honneur au miroir de nos lettres</i>, especially on Montesquieu.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_123_123" href="#FNanchor_123_123" class="label">[123]</a> The Abbé Sertillanges, <i>L’Héroisme et la Gloire</i>. 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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_124_124" href="#FNanchor_124_124" class="label">[124]</a> 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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_125_125" href="#FNanchor_125_125" class="label">[125]</a> See the recent Bill to amend Martial Law, known as the Paul Boncour Bill.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_126_126" href="#FNanchor_126_126" class="label">[126]</a> This suggestive remark is Lavisse’s, <i>Etudes d’Histoire de Prusse</i>, page 30. See
+the whole passage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_127_127" href="#FNanchor_127_127" class="label">[127]</a> 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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_128_128" href="#FNanchor_128_128" class="label">[128]</a> Charles Maurras, <i>Action Française</i>, 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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_129_129" href="#FNanchor_129_129" class="label">[129]</a> 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).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_130_130" href="#FNanchor_130_130" class="label">[130]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_131_131" href="#FNanchor_131_131" class="label">[131]</a> I find this from the pen of a hero of the First Empire: ‘I was afraid of feeling
+<i>pleasure</i>’ (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.’ (<i>Memoirs of General Marbot</i>, 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_132_132" href="#FNanchor_132_132" class="label">[132]</a> ‘And the honour of virtue consists in contending, not in winning’ (Montaigne).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_133_133" href="#FNanchor_133_133" class="label">[133]</a> <i>La Ruine du monde antique</i>, page 76. See also in <i>Les Illusions du progrès</i> (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 <i>sword-intelligence</i> at the expense of
+<i>mirror-intelligence</i>. On their own showing it is the former they admire in Nietzsche,
+Sorel, Péguy, and Maurras. (See R. Gillouin, <i>Esquisses littéraires et morales</i>, 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’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_134_134" href="#FNanchor_134_134" class="label">[134]</a> <i>Victor Marie, Comte Hugo</i>, towards the end. See <a href="#Note_O">Note O</a> at the end of this
+volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_135_135" href="#FNanchor_135_135" class="label">[135]</a> 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, <i>that divine man</i>.’ (C. Schuwer, <i>Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale</i>,
+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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_136_136" href="#FNanchor_136_136" class="label">[136]</a> <i>Evolution Créatrice</i>, 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, <i>Leçons de Psychologie</i>, page 73.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_137_137" href="#FNanchor_137_137" class="label">[137]</a> The Sphex. The example is given in <i>L’Evolution Créatrice</i>, and has had an immense
+success in the literary world. (It is, moreover, imaginary. See Marie Goldsmith,
+<i>Psychologie Comparée</i>, 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.’ (<i>Confession de foi du vicaire savoyard.</i>)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_138_138" href="#FNanchor_138_138" class="label">[138]</a> ‘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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_139_139" href="#FNanchor_139_139" class="label">[139]</a> See above, page 54.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_140_140" href="#FNanchor_140_140" class="label">[140]</a> 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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_141_141" href="#FNanchor_141_141" class="label">[141]</a> As is well known, this is the argument of the ‘Avenir de l’intelligence’. It
+allows followers to say (‘Manifeste de l’Intelligence,’ <i>Figaro</i>, 19th July, 1919; on
+this manifesto, see <a href="#Note_P">Note P</a> 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.’ (<i>Logique de Port-Royal.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>The wish to esteem intelligence according to its practical results appears again in this
+astounding formula: ‘A critical mind is of value <i>through the influence it exerts</i> by means
+of the enlightenment it bestows.’ (Maurras.) See also how severe is M. Massis
+(<i>Jugements</i>, i, 87) for Renan when he says: ‘The useful is what I abhor.’ Elsewhere
+(<i>Jugements</i>, 107) the same thinker speaks of a spiritual freedom ‘whose disinterestedness
+is merely a refusal of the conditions of life, of action, <i>and of thought</i>!’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_142_142" href="#FNanchor_142_142" class="label">[142]</a> 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’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_143_143" href="#FNanchor_143_143" class="label">[143]</a> The French traditionalists condemn the truth in itself in the name of ‘social’
+truth. This is the <i>glorification of prejudices</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Speeches to the German
+Nation</i>, page xix). For the cult of the ‘useful error’, see an amazing page in the <i>Jardin
+de Bérénice</i>, quoted and commented on by Parodi. (<i>Traditionalisme et Democratie</i>,
+page 136.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_144_144" href="#FNanchor_144_144" class="label">[144]</a> 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 <i>Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg</i> quickly adds: ‘But I refrain from touching
+on personality, without which immortality is nothing.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_145_145" href="#FNanchor_145_145" class="label">[145]</a> On the existence of this doctrine of immanence among almost all Christian teachers
+until our own times, see Renouvier: ‘l’Idée de Dieu’ (<i>Année Philosophique</i>, 1897),
+and also <i>Essai d’une Classification des doctrines</i>, 3: <i>l’évolution</i>; <i>la création</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_146_146" href="#FNanchor_146_146" class="label">[146]</a> According to Hegel, God constantly grows at the expense of His opposite; His
+activity is essentially that of war and victory.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_147_147" href="#FNanchor_147_147" class="label">[147]</a> Let me note a keen protest against this conception in ‘Neo-Thomism’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_148_148" href="#FNanchor_148_148" class="label">[148]</a> 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’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_149_149" href="#FNanchor_149_149" class="label">[149]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_150_150" href="#FNanchor_150_150" class="label">[150]</a> ‘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.)</p>
+
+<p>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?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_151_151" href="#FNanchor_151_151" class="label">[151]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_152_152" href="#FNanchor_152_152" class="label">[152]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_153_153" href="#FNanchor_153_153" class="label">[153]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_154_154" href="#FNanchor_154_154" class="label">[154]</a> 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: <i>Sur
+le Succès du Bergsonisme</i>, page 207.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_155_155" href="#FNanchor_155_155" class="label">[155]</a> 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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_156_156" href="#FNanchor_156_156" class="label">[156]</a> 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, <i>Principes de droit public</i>, chap. i.) Nevertheless, a sensibility
+to equilibrium is far more intellectual than truly artistic. See <a href="#Note_Q">Note Q</a> at the end of
+this book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_157_157" href="#FNanchor_157_157" class="label">[157]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_158_158" href="#FNanchor_158_158" class="label">[158]</a> This aversion is particularly strong in Nietzsche. (See <i>Le Gai sçavoir</i>, 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_159_159" href="#FNanchor_159_159" class="label">[159]</a> So much so that the true champions of ‘sacred egoism’ definitely condemn them.
+Bismarck, Wilhelm II, Naumann, Houston Chamberlain, all argue against classical
+teaching.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_160_160" href="#FNanchor_160_160" class="label">[160]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_161_161" href="#FNanchor_161_161" class="label">[161]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_162_162" href="#FNanchor_162_162" class="label">[162]</a> It seems to me difficult to deny that pacifism, humanitarianism, and altruism are
+<i>boring</i>. 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_163_163" href="#FNanchor_163_163" class="label">[163]</a> 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.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_164_164" href="#FNanchor_164_164" class="label">[164]</a> ‘Peace it not the absence of war, but a virtue born from strength of soul.’
+(Spinoza.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_165_165" href="#FNanchor_165_165" class="label">[165]</a> 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, <i>Sur la Pierre blanche</i>.) Note the refusal, mentioned above, to believe
+in any possible betterment of the human soul.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_166_166" href="#FNanchor_166_166" class="label">[166]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_167_167" href="#FNanchor_167_167" class="label">[167]</a> I am not to say whether the claims of France after her victory might have been
+<i>impolitic</i>, for the thinkers I am discussing here only speak of what they consider their
+<i>immorality</i>. 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 <i>Summum</i>, 2, 2, xl, art. 1.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_168_168" href="#FNanchor_168_168" class="label">[168]</a> 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 <i>insofar
+as he finds satisfaction in the practice of science and not in its results</i>. 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_169_169" href="#FNanchor_169_169" class="label">[169]</a> Malebranche, <i>Méditations chrétiennes</i> (ix, 19).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_170_170" href="#FNanchor_170_170" class="label">[170]</a> See Babeau, <i>Le village sous l’ancien régime</i>, iv, iii; L. Gregoire, <i>La Ligue en
+Bretagne</i>, chap, vi; Roupnel, <i>La Ville et la Campagne au xvii siècle</i>, 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’ (<i>La Royaume de Catherine de Médicis</i>, 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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_171_171" href="#FNanchor_171_171" class="label">[171]</a> ‘Le livre de raison de M. Nicolas Versoris’ (<i>Mémoires de la Société de l’Histoire de
+Paris</i>, 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 <i>Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris</i>, 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, <i>Histoire de France</i>, 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.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_172_172" href="#FNanchor_172_172" class="label">[172]</a> 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.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_173_173" href="#FNanchor_173_173" class="label">[173]</a> Admire the profundity of Machiavelli, when he advises his Prince: ‘Above everything,
+avoid taking your subjects’ property; <i>for men will more easily forget the deaths
+of their fathers than the loss of their patrimony</i>.’</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_174_174" href="#FNanchor_174_174" class="label">[174]</a> Inserted in the collection of studies entitled ‘L’Allemagne et les Alliés devant la
+conscience chrétienne’. (Bloud et Gay, 1915.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_175_175" href="#FNanchor_175_175" class="label">[175]</a> 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_176_176" href="#FNanchor_176_176" class="label">[176]</a> And therefore it requires much more courage to do so now than in the past.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_177_177" href="#FNanchor_177_177" class="label">[177]</a> Nevertheless, Zola, Romain Rolland, and Einstein have drunk the hemlock.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_178_178" href="#FNanchor_178_178" class="label">[178]</a> When they allow themselves to be told, as Louis XVI was told by Turgot: ‘Sire,
+your kingdom <i>is of this world</i>.’ There also exists ‘<i>a betrayal of the laymen</i>’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_179_179" href="#FNanchor_179_179" class="label">[179]</a> 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’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_180_180" href="#FNanchor_180_180" class="label">[180]</a> 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, <i>Le Christ et la Patrie</i>, page 12.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_181_181" href="#FNanchor_181_181" class="label">[181]</a> This clearly shows in what sense Renouvier is an ‘individualist’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_182_182" href="#FNanchor_182_182" class="label">[182]</a> See his hymn to the mathematician Franz Woepfke.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_183_183" href="#FNanchor_183_183" class="label">[183]</a> Jules Lemaître was explicitly this adversary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_184_184" href="#FNanchor_184_184" class="label">[184]</a> ‘For an empirical France,’ say Barrès and Bourget.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_185_185" href="#FNanchor_185_185" class="label">[185]</a> ‘Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne,’ Cahiers de la Quinzaine.
+See my book, <i>Sur le Succès du Bergsonisme</i>, page 158.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_186_186" href="#FNanchor_186_186" class="label">[186]</a> 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.’ (<i>Commentaire de la 2e Meditation.</i>) 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.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_187_187" href="#FNanchor_187_187" class="label">[187]</a> Note that Ronsard is the very type of the man ‘bent over books’.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_188_188" href="#FNanchor_188_188" class="label">[188]</a> ‘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, <i>Temps</i>, 14th September,
+1915.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_189_189" href="#FNanchor_189_189" class="label">[189]</a> See Robert Dreyfus, <i>Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust</i>, page 336.</p></div>
+
+<div class="transnote chapter" id="tn">
+<h2><i>Transcriber’s Notes</i></h2>
+
+<p>This transcription is based on the English edition of Aldington’s translation.
+Some corrections have been applied in consultation with
+both the French original (<i>La trahison des clercs</i>, B. Grasset, 1927) and the American
+edition of the same translation (<i>The treason of the intellectuals</i>, William Morrow &amp; Company, 1928).
+Here are the main revisions.
+<ul>
+<li>A text comparison with the American edition incorporated these changes from that edition:<ul>
+
+<li>page 28, footnote <a href="#Footnote_28_28">28</a>: ‘more idealistic passion than national[+ist] passion’;</li>
+<li>page <a href="#p_44">44</a>: ‘One wonders whether [+there is] a single modern thinker’ (grammatically necessary);</li>
+<li>the fourth section, ‘<a href="#IV">Summary—Predictions</a>’, is now correctly numbered ‘IV’, not a duplicated ‘III’;</li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li>
+The following changes were made with reference to the original French:
+<ul>
+<li>numerous instances of unbalanced quotation marks have been fixed;</li>
+<li>page <a href="#p_117">117</a>: removed an unclosed parenthesis beginning ‘(those of’ in favor of
+parallel phrases with semi-colons, as in the original French;</li>
+<li>page <a href="#p_173">173</a>: added balanced em-dashes after ‘Apart from Erasmus’ as in the original, to clarify sentence structure;</li>
+<li>page <a href="#p_176">176</a>: ‘the chaos of the provincial assembles → assemblies’ (original: ‘le chaos des assemblées provinciales’);</li>
+<li>page 181, note <a href="#Footnote_179_179">179</a>: ‘with contradicting → without contradicting’
+(‘a abouti sans se déjuger à une doctrine de la moralité de la guerre’);</li></ul>
+<li>A simple table of contents has been added.</li>
+<li>The book cover image accompanying some versions of this text is original and placed in the public domain.</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78218 ***</div>
+</body>
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