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'"^ I, « o x^'^ A ■^oo"^ A^-^ ^*. :< /p^U^^^p^^^^' .,;.-%jif% v^i^ ,5^"\ - - 233 XX. — Of the division of earthly duties between man and woman ------ 234 XXI. — Of the civilization of countries by women - 237 XXII. — Reaction equal to action - - - - 247 XXIII. — Man always inclines to the great and beautifiil 252 XXIV.— Of the perfectibility of the human race - 257 XXV. — First appearance of political liberty on the earth - 262 XXVI. — First prevalence of the idea of unity - - 264 XXVII. — Of labour— a law which establishes the right of pro- perty ----- 265 XXVIII.— Of life and death - - - - - 268 XXIX. — Death not a punishment - - - 272 XXX. — Application of the laws of nature to the laws of man 278 ^^^^ CONTENTS. XXXI.— Continuation of the same subject, and of America and Poland - - - . . 282 XXXII. — Of war according to the laws of nature - 285 XXXIII.— Appreciation of the laws of Crete, Sparta, Athens, and Rome, and the laws of nature - - 290 XXXIV. — Of the hopes of the future - - . 293 ■^^XXV. — Of the study of God in the gospel - - - 297 XXXVI. — Recapitulation ----- 300 PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. " Train up a child in the way he should go ; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." PROV. " I think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts out of ten, are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education." Locke. The following admirable treatise, which has justly re- ceived the highest commendations in France and England, is destined, it is hoped, to meet a still more favourable re- ception in this country, where, amongst the intelligent classes of society, the subject of national education con- stantly excites such earnest attention. Originally addressed to the French people, it is full of allusions to the habits and modes of thought peculiar to that nation. Its principles are^nevertheless of universal application, and are equally sound and true when applied to the wants of the new, as to those of the old world. A few chapters of a purely local nature have been omitted, but care has been taken that nothing should be added to the text of the author. Enjoying as we do in this country, a happy exemption from many of the ancient prejudices, which former bar- barism has entailed upon other nations, it would seem that 2 XVllI PREFACE. in these free states, the great problem of human progress under free institutions is to be solved. Since these institutions have no solid basis but in the virtue and intelligence of the people, and in the cultivation of the moral sense as the guide to intellectual pov^er, there is, perhaps, no other people to whom the system proposed by our author is so well adapted as to ours. Liberty is ever in danger of degenerating into license, where the people, at their pleasure, make or unmake their own laws ; and if, in the old world, there are obstacles in the way of moral advancement, there are others, albeit of a different nature, in this country. We are the occupants of a vast continent, where each individual has ample room for his wildest schemes of selfish ambition — forests are, even yet, to be felled — the busy hammer of the artisan is still held in constant requisition to supply the simplest wants of civilized life, experiment succeeds experiment, in order that sound principles of government, suited to the new condition of things, may be discovered and tested — and our laws, changing from day to day, insensibly assume the character, for good or for evil, of those who frame them — all is unfinish- ed — every thing is unsettled — and each head and hand is overtasked in eager efforts after competence or aggran- dizement. If, in this confusion, sound morals be forgotten, if principles of expediency be substituted for truth, how is the current of misrule to be checked? What power is there to throw back the tide of vice, in its desolating progress towards the rising generation ? We have the Scriptures, the pulpit, and sometimes the press, but a power is wanted which shall apply more closely the principles they incul- PREFACE. XiX cate. In their eager struggle, the fathers of the land can scarce find time to think of the moral training of their offspring, much less to pursue any well digested system of education— consequently, by the mere force of cir- cumstances, this sacred trust must devolve upon the mo- thers, who, by their fitness of constitution, must have been designed by their Creator, from the beginning, to be the educators of mankind. But ignorance, pride, and preju- dice, in past times, by depriving women of the proper means of education, and by giving a false direction to their aims and pursuits, have, from age to age, produced their natural results, and it is to be feared that we have been but too wilUng imitators of a vicious example. If the mothers of our country be but faithful to themselves and to their children, we may then hope for the maintenance of our Hberties ; for they will train up good and faithful citizens, who, by the enactment of wise laws, will sustain the cause of order and of Christianity. M. Martin has most clearly pointed out the defects of the old systems of education, and delineated, in fascinating colours, the rule of maternal duty, whilst his arguments have a force and beauty which have never before been ap- plied to this subject. We earnestly entreat the serious attention of all to a work from which none can fail to draw an instructive and delightful lesson. Philadelphia, Oct. 30th, 1843. INTRODUCTION^ Some years since, I conceived the design of studying France, of making myself acquainted with her soil, her monuments, her cities, her hamlets, and that vast cincture of rivers, seas, and mountains, which extends from the Pyrenees to the Alps, and from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. I anticipated much pleasure from this pursuit, nor were my hopes disappointed. Under the mildest climates, I found intelligent populations, and a singular abundance of every earthly good. I saw with admiration, innumerable vessels enter our ports, and deposit therein the riches of every quarter of the globe; these riches requiring many thousands of carriages for their transportation and distribu- tion throughout the country, in which they maintained an ever active prosperity. Here, the iron of Norway grows hot and soft under the forger's hammer ; there are displayed the fleecy tissues of the wools of Spain and Cachemire ; further on, the manufacturers spin, weave, and impress with the liveliest colours, the cotton of the Indies. Every where I found ancient cloisters and abbeys converted into work- shops, their deep vaults re-echoing to the songs of the arti- sans, and the unceasing din of the steam engine. It was delightful to witness such unbounded prosperity ; but that which excited my most lively surprise, was the immense impulsion communicated to the whole country by the train- ing of an insect. From the south to the north, from the frontiers of Italy, to the volcanic mountains of the Vivarais, XXll 1^^^ INTRODUCTION. a worm every where excites activity. At Avignon, at Lisle, at Vaucluse, its cocoons are reeled. In Normandy, the skilful fingers of the women attach these threads to light spindles, and throw a thousand graceful designs over the aerial meshes of our blondes. At St. Etienne, the same threads woven into ribands, are spread over the whole of Europe. At Nismes, stuffs are fabricated, which rustle and glitter like metals. At Lyons, my own beautiful country, they are spread out in heavy velvets, in gauzes, transparent as the air, in satins, in damask, in lampas. Finally, in Paris, silk rivals the pencil, and reproduces on sumptuous tapestries, the pictures of the greatest masters. But what are these master-pieces of art, these prodigies of industry, in comparison with the blessings which have been so boun- teously bestowed by nature ? Here is to be found every variety of cUmate, every species of cuhure; in the south, the olive, the citron, the orange ; in the north, the larch and fir, the two extremities of the botanic chain. The trees of Persia and the two Americas interweave their branches with the feudal elm and the oak of ancient Gaul ; the perfumed fruits of Asia, with the indigenous apple; the entire Flora of the East, with the humble violet, with our wreaths of blue bottles, our rustic bouquets of Easter daisies, and the mys- terious vervaine. Thus, France is covered with the produc- tions of the new world, and the treasures of the old. From the heights of its vine clad hills, rivers of wine incessantly flow into the cup of every nation, whilst over her vast plains harvests wave, like the billows of the ocean, under the winds which bend them, under the sun which ripens them. My heart bounded for joy at the sight of such prosperity. Beloved country! happy land! I exclaimed, thou hast all: wealth, intelligence, liberty. Is there upon the globe a spectacle comparable to that of thy glory 1 Thou hast cast off thy vices and superstitions as vile rags; no more useless monks, nor feudal rights, nor forced service, nor bondage. INTRODUCTION. XXlll nor castes, which despise each other, nor rival and jealous provinces ; within thy bosom I see but one people, and in this people but one family ! And in thus speaking, I seemed to hear every where, the hymn of gratitude, which was chaunted from the depths of my own heart. Alas ! I scarcely dare to write it ; in this land of promise, in the midst of families loaded with every blessing which can make life easy and happy, on a close examination, none were to be found, except little children, those gay crea- tures, careless as the birds of heaven, who were really happy. With this exception, the population, young and old, citizens and villagers, seemed to labour under an internal malady which left them no repose. From the midst of his fields, the peasant casts upon the towns an eye of contempt and envy ; from the depth of his parks and gardens, the rich man utters a cry of wretchedness and desolation ; the shop- keeper complains of the state of trade, the artisan of his wages, the banker of politics — all, of their social condition. The higher the position, the more bitter the complaints, the louder the murmurs ; the scepticism which had been hitherto confined to things of heaven, now extends itself to the things of earth ; the physician no longer has faith in medi- cine, the judge in laws, the priest in religion, the soldier in glory, the youth in love ; even kings have ceased to believe in royalty ; and the disgust which preys upon all, precipi- tates them into desperate schemes of ambition. Thus, every where is abundance, every where discontent: a gloomy picture of our beautiful France ! This industrious people, who had appeared to me as one great family, now more resembled a miserable being, who concealed hideous wounds under rich garments, and ennui, that profound void, under the semblance of a factitious gayety. Admiration ceased, and a compassion, at once active and fervid, possessed my whole being. I sought for the cause of the evil, and thought to have discovered it in the general want of knowledge and XXIV INTRODUCTION. leisure. To secure this leisure, what was needful? Machines must be invented, which might be substituted for human force. And for imparting instruction ? Methods must be in- vented, facilities obtained for instruction, schools multiplied, books and journals distributed. Young, then, and doubting nothing, I applied myself to the work. I had pursued a course of study preparatory to entering the Polytechnique school, where Louis XVIII. afterwards called me as profes- sor of history. I resumed these studies. I became gramma- rian, mechanician, chemist, and even economist. I possessed myself of all the new inventions, I improved and multiplied them ; I imagined France covered by rail-roads, and our fields cultivated without labour. I had machines for grub- bing the forests, and cultivating the soil. With a little char- coal and some drops of water, I lighted the cities, I gave coursers to our carriages, wings to our vessels, fingers to our mechanics. I made them spin, weave, forge, print, sail ; they produced by turns, like sentient beings, needles, paper, cannon, clothing, furniture — and all without interruption or fatigue ; whilst the steam laboured, man was to yield him- self to enjoyment and repose. Leisure being secured, it must be employed for the im- provement of the mind. Here I had only to follow the general movement; the most enlightened men were then occupied with popular instruction, and I associated myself with them. Thousands of schools were opened, and pri- mary instruction passed rapidly from city to village. But more was necessary than to teach the people to read ; un- less books were provided for them, nothing was done ; hence parish libraries were invented. It was about this time, that exhausted by incessant toil, my failing health gave cause for disquietude, and I began to fear that I was not destined to enjoy what I had so assi- duously cultivated. Must I then die, thought I, at the dawn of success, and relinquish the hope of seeing France happy INTRODUCTION. XXV and regenerate ? I sought my physician, a man of sense and probity, and explained to him at length the cause of my malady, my projects, my hopes, my fears, and my life exhausted by labour. He listened at first with an air of resignation, then suddenly exclaimed, " And where is all this to lead you?" at the same time casting upon me an oblique glance of raillery. " To advance the well-being of France," I replied. " Ah ! I understand ; but to succeed in this, you would require place, power, money, and an ele- vated position in the world." " But I anticipate none of these, doctor." " What ! have you no ambition ?' " None, doctor." . " Then tranquillize yourself, the evil is not so serious ; you only need quiet and country air." I went accordingly to establish myself at two leagues' distance from' Versailles, at the extremity of an immense plain, covered with golden harvests, of which there seemed neither limit nor shade. Here, the plain descends, and forms itself into two branches ; there, as if by enchantment, opens a succession of smiling valleys, whose green mea- dows are indefinitely prolonged between two banks, covered with rich culture, and crowned with chestnut trees. On the border of these woods, rises the pretty village of Cha- teaufort, with its rustic clock, its two tumuli, or Gaulish tombs, placed like two bastions under the picturesque ruins of the Chateau of Hugues-de-Cadavre, and in the midst of all this, is a simple dwelling, shady and rural, inhabited by a family of the good old times, where friendship offered me an asylum. I passed there two long years, occupied with my health, and above all, with my projects, associating myself in all the labours of the societies for the diffusion of useful know- ledge, and encouraging my friends in the pursuit of the great work of universal regeneration. We had not long to wait for results; but they were far from answering our anticipations. In proportion as XXVI INTRODUCTION. knowledge was extended, disquietude increased. Science irritated, instead of soothing : and the evil, I cannot deny it, pursued me into my very solitude. In this pleasant village, which already had a school, and where I had found the es- tablishments and improvements of the age, in this village, of which all the inhabitants could read, and whose knowledge and leisure should have multiplied their enjoyments, alas ! nothing was heard but murmurs and complaints. Some old men, few in number, regretted the seigneur, who once a year had received the farmer at his table; others, less proud, lamented the monks, who distributed soup at the con- vent-gate. The rich were offended to see in the valley the sumptuous parks of two or three bankers ; the poor envied the rich, and wished for a division of property, the abolition of imposts, and a republic. In fine, the youth just escaped from school, declared that science and good sense could only be dated from their own arrival in the world ; that the youth were the country, that the rest were worthy only of contempt, and this was, as it were, an epitome of all France. This, said I to myself, this is but a sad experience, and sufficient to give cause for reflection to the advocates for progress. I had discovered that in proportion as the ac- quisitions of the intellect were increased, morality became impoverished, and that in empty heads sophistry and envy spring up with thought. Thus I had either ill comprehended the situation of France, or mistaken the remedy. I was overwhelmed with mortification. In the first moments of disappointment, I could find no consolation but in violence ; I would have burned the books, destroyed the journals, annihilated industry, uprooted the fatal tree of science. I even went so far as to think that all which is called the people, that is to say, the human race, a few privileged beings excepted, is made to stagnate eternally in baseness and error ; that despots are right in terrifying this intractable animal ; that the monks are wise INTRODUCTION. XXVll in limiting the number of thinking beings ; that it is only by chaining him to ignorance and wretchedness that his evil passions can be subdued; that he must be subjugated Hke a brute, by hunger and fear, since he will not be happy like the angels, through light and intelligence. I was full of these thoughts, and like another Machiavel, was converting them into a system, when a singular cir- cumstance suddenly occurred to modify them. In the depth of the valley, on the left, stands an elegant mansion, so happily situated that the woods, the hills, the meadows and the hamlets which environ it, seem the natural accom- paniments of its park and gardens. Near this house, a little above the rivulet, is the village school, well shaded, of which the model is only to be found in the romances of Auguste La- fontaine : in front is a bridge, overlooked by a mill, erected merely to please the eye ; finally, a little chapel, where re- poses, under a modest marble, the lady of the place, who died in the flower of her age, but whose piety and beauty have left lasting remembrances. This group of trees, houses, and pavilions, and two Gothic turrets which rise above the woods, form an exquisite point of view in the midst of the most profound solitude ; for the road is furrowed only by the heavy carriages of the wood-cutters, and the feet of the flocks, which, towards the close of autumn, animate the valley. Every Sunday, warned by the chapel clock, I went to attend the service. It was a charming spectacle to see the women of the villages, in their simple costume, set forth at the same hour, and from all points in the valley, to cross the meadows — I say the women, for none but women attend church. It happened, nevertheless, that I sometimes had a companion. It was a venerable old man, whose ardent and ingenuous piety I would never cease to admire. In spite of his coarse vestments, and some appearances of penury, all about his person expressed tranquillity, and by an inex- XXVIU INTRODUCTION. pressible charm, the calm of his spirit, was gradually, as I contemplated him, transmitted into mine. My encounter with this man excited my curiosity ; I sought for informa- tion, and soon learned that he was supported by public charity. He had, I was told, at an advanced age, lost two brave boys, who would have been his support : one fell at Beresina, the other at Waterloo, and their mother soon fol- lowed them. He is now too old to work, but the proprietor of the chateau assists the old man a little, and the parish does the rest. Encouraged by these recitals, I approached him, at the same time offering some slight succour. " You have need of a warmer coat," I said, " the winter will be severe, and we must think of it in season." He raised his eyes towards me — his look was serene. "And why need I to think of it," said he in a tremulous voice, '* since God puts it into the hearts of good people?' Here is an example of true resignation, I thought to myself, I must inquire into his thoughts and occupations. "Can you read ?" said I. " Yes, sir— in my youth I received les- sons from the curate, an excellent man, who took pleasure in teaching the children." "And have you any books?" "Oh, at my age, we do not read, we pray!" ''You pray then often ?" " It is such a happiness to pray ! In the evenincr, sitting at the door of my poor cabin, which you see down there, under the chestnuts, I see the sun set, and I say, * Our Father !' " « And is that all your prayer ?" " Is there any thing which better fills the heart? 'Our Father!' Often after having pronounced these words, I pause, and in seeing the herds which return from the pastures to give us milk, and the sun which rises and sets on the valley, I bless the warmth which causes the grass to grow on our prairies, and the fruits in our fields. Oh, then I feel that my prayer is indeed true, and then I have the whole evening to think upon these words—' Our Father.' " " But in bad weather what do you do?" "Hook towards the heavens, and ob- r INTRODUCTION. XXIX serve the great clouds which traverse them, and which come, I know not where, driven by the winds, moving on without noise, and shedding rain here and there on the plains which grow green again, and give us bread, butter, and [loney, neither more nor less than if God himself had put them into our hands. Ah! 'Our Father, who art in heaven,* thou wilt live for ever. Men cannot destroy thee, as they have murdered my poor children." In thus speaking, the eyes of the old man filled with tears, his head sunk upon his breast, and I heard a low murmuring, as if he continued his prayer. " My poor Bertrand," he resumed, after a mo- ment's silence, "he was the youngest, and died at Waterloo shoiiiing Vive rEmpereurf Ah! if he had cried, 'Our Fa- ther, who art in heaven,' he might have lived still ! And my poor wife, who is gone to rejoin him— I should not have lost her ! But it was the will of our Father, and I bless Him," added he, drying his eyes, " for he has replaced my children by good people." "You are too solitary down there in the valley you ought to come nearer to the village." "Alas !" replied he, "I cannot leave my house, I have there seen my children born, and their mother died there; besides, as our curate says, he who can speak with God is never alone." " Are you content with your lot ?" " Ought I not to be ? God has never forsaken me." " Oh ! you deserve to be far happier," I exclaimed, " excellent old man ! Take this money, and pray for me, for me, subjected to fewer trials, and yet who cannot dare to call myself so happy as you are." " Ought we then to pray for money ?" said he, with emo- tion, as with a trembling hand, he put aside the gift which I wished to offer him. I felt that I had wounded him. " Par- don me," said I, "like worldly men, I have wished to make a selfish gift." In thus speaking, I seized his pious hands, which 1 pressed with a holy respect. I then withdrew, my heart filled with emotion, but as I turned away, he said to XXX INTRODUCTION. me, " Oh, you are a good man ! I will pray for you, and for your little children too, if you have any, who do not yet know how to pray !" It is related of the celebrated astronomer Tycho Brahe, that one night, in descending from his observatory, he found himself suddenly surrounded by a tumultuous crowd, who filled the public place. Having inquired the cause of so great an assemblage, they showed him in the constellation of the Cygnet, a brilliant star, which he, aided by the best telescopes, had not yet perceived. These are the chances which humble the learned, but which serve science. My situation was not unlike that of the great astronomer. A simple villager had just pointed out to me the star which I had sought in vain for so many years. Yes, I was mistaken : neither industry, nor science, nor machines, nor books, can constitute the happiness of a na- tion. Doubtless these are all useful in their places, and it should be the care of the legislator to propagate and mul- tiply them ; but if, content with having developed the intel- lect, the earthly part of man, he neglects to develope the spiritual nature, that divine essence of humanity, instead of a happy people, he will see himself surrounded by a mul- titude, restless in its unbridled passions, a multitude tor- mented by the double necessity of self-elevation and ac- quirement, and whom this sublime instinct serves only to torture. You have directed it towards the earth, and there it attaches itself, in the midst of the sensualities and volup- tuousness which exhaust it. Why do you not open the way to heaven ? The soul would then discover from whence it came, surprised at last to find the object of its desires, which hitherto had been mistaken, and of its ambition, which until now had been misguided. All that can give repose to the heart, all that can advance humanity, comes to us from on high. Would you have happiness ? do you wish for power 1 It is there that God has placed them. The most highly in- INTRODUCTION. XXXI structed people, if they are not also the most religious, can never be a sovereign people. Thus the example of the old man, happy in the midst of wretchedness, calm in his afflictions, had conducted me to the sources of good and evil. Our earthly passions — they are the tree of knowledge of good and evil — they materialize us, unless purified through our spiritual nature. I then felt why it is that the developementof the intellect alone, had increased the evil, instead of destroying it. What spectacle can there be more fearful, than that of a people, active and vigorous, struggling without hope, within the brazen walls of false glory, selfishness, and egotism ? This spectacle we exhibit to the world, because we are deficient in the religious principle, and the religious principle is defi- cient, because mothers have neglected to impress it upon the cradles of their children. This truth has become the subject of our meditations, and it has inspired the following work. We ask nothing of governments, or legislators, or professors — a people des- titute of religion may have schools, colleges, science — but nothing more. Let us then seek a power for all hours, for all moments, for all ages ; a power indestructible, indefati- gable, loving its employment, and which embraces the whole frame of society; let us address ourselves to the family ; let us demand of it succour for our families, for our country, for humanity. Man, blinded by his passions, treads upon the borders of an abyss, but he would not lead his child there. A mother, might covet fortune, might dream of power, for the child she cherishes, but how would she shudder, were it said to her, " This boy, the object of so much love, whom thou hast nourished at thy breast, whom thou coverest with caresses, will be an apologist for Robe- spierre, and will die on the scaffold !" Perish, for ever perish, the generation which has just been born, if in each family a voice be not raised in favour of the truth ! It is XXXll INTRODUCTION. truth that we want — truth, the only life of the soul, the only hope for the future, of the human race. But what is this voice whose sweet eloquence can pene- trate the very depths of our soul ? which can impress upon the hearts of our children those divine truths which no reso- lution can overturn? There exists in each family an un- known divinity, whose power is irresistible, whose kind- ness is inexhaustible, who lives but in our life, who knows no joy but our joy, nor happiness beyond our happiness, whose whole power is derived from love. It is that divinity whom we invoke : — I appeal to mothers for the moralization of the family and of the country. Their true mission is the religious developement of infancy and youth. It is upon maternal love that the future destiny of the human race depends : do not then reject this power. Although it may appear feeble, its action is invincible, and it is des- tined to produce the greatest revolution which the world has yet seen. The army of the Saviour of mankind was at first composed of a few women, and some poor fisher- men : to these He added little children — and it is with these fishermen, these women, and these little children, that He has conquered the world. Napoleon one day said to Madame Campan, " The old systems of education are good for nothing : what is wanting, in order to train up young people properly in France ?" " Mothers," said Madame Campan. This word struck the Emperor. " Right," said he, " therein lies a complete sys- tem of education, and it must be your endeavour, Madame, to form mothers who know how to educate their children." This profound word is the subject of our book. Ex- pecting nothing from the present generation, hoping nothing from our public education, we have said to ourselves in our turn, we, too, must endeavour to form mothers, who will know how to train up their children. A TEtang-le-ville, Feb. 8th, 1834. THE EDUCATION OF MOTHERS OF FAMILIES. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. MISSION OF ROUSSEAU. " J'qi toujours pense qu'on reformeroit le genre humain si Ton reformoit I'edu- cation de la jeunesse." Leibnitz, Lettres a Placcius. The age of Louis XV. was a bad age: a king without power, a nobility without dignity, a clergy without virtue ; the loose manners of the regency naixed with the gothic pre- judices of the nniddle ages ; all the feudal race in embroidered coats ; princes, dukes, marquises, gentlemen, making an art of corruption, and a merit of debauchery ; noble by the grace of God, philosophers by the grace of Diderot ; empty, foolish creatures, aspiring to profound thoughts, and taking refuge in incredulity on the faith of the facetiae of Voltaire or of a tale of Voisenon ! Such was the age in which Rousseau appeared. Below this gilded troop there was a people which looked on — they had been forgotten there in the street ; and not- withstanding they looked on, amused with this grand spec- tacle, the actors of which, stripped all at once of their coat of mail, and of their feudal appurtenances, began to appear a less pure and formidable race. Bowed down beneath the 3 ^^ MISSION OF ROUSSEAU. weight of their long servitude, the people had remained barbarous in the midst of civilization, ignorant in the midst ot science, miserable in the midst of riches; they had been mstructed neither in their rights nor in their duties, and they suddenly found themselves face to face with their masters, like a hon before its prey, free in his strength and in his ferocity. w^"^ ^^^^^ ^'^ power oppose to these imminent perils? Where was the legislation which should protect the citizens, and the evangelical worship which was to reform the man- ners? Power apprehended nothing, it went on as before, without thinking of the future; employing the Bastile to control the nobility, the Sorbonne to control the philoso- phers, and having neither strength to modify laws, which had remained barbarous amidst the pro£Tress of the age, nor yet to awaken the clergy, stupidly occupied with the mira- cles of St. Paris in the company of the encyclopedists. One man, one man alone, at this juncture, thought of the future destinies of the country ; and this man was not even a Frenchman, he was the son of a poor watchmaker of Geneva named Rousseau. Struck with the universal dis- organization, he conceived one of those lucid ideas to which are attached, by imperceptible threads, the destinies of hu- manity. His aim was to give citizens to the country, while he appeared only to think of giving mothers to our children ! ihe mother's milk shall be the milk of liberty ! Concealing the regeneration of France beneath the veil of an isolated education, he removes his pupil from the falsehoods of public education : in this plan, so vast, in which one saw merely the child and its tutor, the genius of Rousseau comprised all that might constitute a great people; he knew that ideas of individual liberty do not fail speedily to become ideas of national liberty. While educating a man, he thought of forming a nation. And what would be the means of this great revolution? Amidst so much vileness, who would dare ro animate souls with the sacred love of truth? There is in the heart of woman a something of republicanism which incites her to heroism and to self-sacrifice; and it is there that Rousseau looks for support: it is there, also, that he finds the power. He does not come as a severe moralist to impose sad and importunate duties: it is a family ^/e which he convocates; MISSION OF ROUSSEAU. 35 it is a mother which he presents to the adoration of the world, seated near the cradle, a beautiful child on her bosom, her countenance beaming with joy beneath the tender looks of her husband. Delightful picture, which re- vealed to woman a divine power, that of rendering us happy by virtue. Never did the human voice fulfil a more holy mission; at the voice of Rousseau each woman again be- comes a mother, each mother again becomes a wife, each child will be a citizen. Thus was the family to be regenerated, and by means of the family the nation. Thus woman worked, without knowing it, a universal regeneration. Rousseau had en- listed them on his side, without placing them in his confi- dence ; and while Europe thought that it only owed to him the happiness of the children, and the virtue of the mothers, he had laid the foundation of the liberty of the human race. Such was the influence of Rousseau on woman, and later on the nation. All that he exacted from women he ob- tained ; they were wives and rrjothers. One step more, and by entrusting them with the moral education, as much as he had entrusted them with the physical education, of their children, he would have made of maternal love the most powerful promoter of the interests of humanity. Unfortu- nately he stopped short. He who, speaking of women, had so well observed, " What great things might be done with this lever," dared not propose to them any thing great; he only left to their tenderness the management of early child- hood, and thought their mission accomplished. Something, then, remains to be done after Rousseau ; the impulsion which he gave to moral studies wanted force, be- cause it wanted an agent which we must seek, not among the learned and philosophers, but in the very bosom of the family. Men only educate those who have gold ; one may buy a tutor. Nature is more munificent, she gives one to each child. Leave, then, the child under the protection of its mother; it is not without design that Nature has con- fided it at its birth to the only love which is always faithful, to the only devotedness which terminates but with life. 36 OP THE TRUE GOVERNOR CHAPTER 11. OF THE TRUE GOVERNOR OF CHILDREN. " Dans nos societes modemes les meres nous donnent nos premiers sentimens et nos premieres idees; c'est la mere qui reconnoit le caractere et le genie de son enfant, applaudit a sa vocation, le soulient centre le mecontentement paternel, le console, le fbrtifie, et enfin le livre a la societe," Lerminier, Philosophie du Droit. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not de- part from it. Proverbs. Let us then follow the laws of nature : she consigns us, at our birth, neither to the care of a pedagogue, nor to the tutelage of a philosopher, but entrusts us to the love and the caresses of a young mother. She calls around our cradle the most graceful forms, the most harmonious sounds, — for the sweet voice of woman becomes still sweeter for child- hood ; in fine, all that is delightful on earth nature bestows upon us in our early age ; the bosom of a mother on which to repose, her sweet looks to guide, and her tenderness to instruct us. The governor par excellence is the being to whom our inclinations lead us; the pupil must understand the master; in their relations all should be tenderness, suitableness and conformity, and thus it is that nature adapts the mother to the child. See with what care she brincrs the two beino-s together, by the combination of beauty, grace, youth, sprightliness of disposition, and, above all, by the heart. Her patience replies to curiosity, and her sweetness to petu- lance ; the ignorance of the one is never cast down by the pedantry of the other; one would say that the reason of both grows at the same time, so much is the superiority of the mother softened down by love; and then, the frivolity, the love for pleasure, the taste for the marvellous, which are blamed with so little reflection in women, is an addi- tional link between the mother and child. Every thing draws them near to each other; their likings and their contrasts ; and in the distribution which nature has made of gentleness, patience, and vigilance, she points out to us OF CHILDREN. 37 strongly and affectionately the being to whom she is desi- rous of confiding our weakness. In general, it is not suffi- ciently observed that children only understand what they see, and comprehend only what they feel — sentiment in them always precedes intelligence ; therefore, to those who teach them to see, who awaken their tenderness, belong all the happiest influences. Virtue is not merely taught, it is inspired : the talent of women consists especially in the circumstance, that what they desire, they make us love — a delightful means of making us value it. But a prince, a king, what can he learn from a woman? That which St. Louis learned from Blanche; Louis XII. from Marie de Cleves ; Henry IV. from Jeanne d'Albret. Out of sixty-nine monarchs who have worn the crown of France, only three have loved the people; and, remarkable circumstance, all three were brought up by their mothers. You will say that the high thoughts of politics require more learned interpreters; that a Bossuet is not too much to in- struct the great dauphin, and a Montausier to direct him. Be it so, if you can always find a Bossuet or a Montausier ; and yet I am fearful of an education, which could inspire the prodigious " Discours sur Vliistoire universelle ;" it seems to me that this sublime language would be likely to over- power the brain of so frail a creature ; and in reading these pages, which dazzle me and absorb my attention, I find myself regretting, for this child, the stories of Mademoiselle Bonne and Lady Sensee. Do you not think that after having been bowed down during several hours beneath the instructions of so powerful an intellect, the dauphin would not feel the desire to recreate himself with his valets? A preceptor may descend without effort to the level of his pupil ; he may form a religious heart, an honest man, a good citizen, and he will have done his all. And what is there in this mission which a woman would not be able to do ? Who better than a mother can teach us to prefer honour to fortune, to cherish our fellow-creatures, to relieve the unfortunate, to elevate our souls to the source of the beautiful and the infinite? An ordinary preceptor counsels and moralizes; that which he offers to our memory, a mother ingrafts in our hearts : she makes us love that which he can at most but make us believe, and it is by love that she leads us to virtue. 38 OF THE TRUE GOVERNOR Struck by the little care generally bestowed upon the education of women, and by the irresistible influence which they exert, the celebrated Sheridan conceived the idea of establishing for them in England a national education. He transmitted his plan to the queen, and invited her to place herself at the head of the institution. " Women govern us," said he, " let us try to render them perfect ; the more they are enlightened, so much the more so shall we be. On the cultivation of the mind of women depends the wisdom of men. It is by woman that nature ivrites on the heart of manJ' This, as may be perceived, was a great idea, and it would be difficult to estimate the influence which its execution would have exerted on Old England. In it were comprised a moral and political revolution, an improved government, the abolition of slavery, humanity in Ireland, civilization in the Indies, morality by the side of industry, &c. ; for woman thus instructed will never engrave on the heart of man any thing but the dictates of evangelical charity, and of the noblest sacrifices to the interests of humanity. Our pretensions, however, do not rise so high. We neither reckon upon kings, queens, nor universities, to assist the country, but solely upon maternal influence — an influence which is exerted on the heart, which through the heart may direct the mind, and which, in order to save and regenerate the world, only requires to be properly directed. This influence exists every where, — it every where deter- mines our sentiments, our opinions, our tastes, — it every where decides our fate. " The future destiny of a child," said Napoleon, " is always the work of its mother ;" and the great man took pleasure in repeating, that it was owing to his mother that he had raised himself so high. A reference to history will justify these words; and without supporting our argument by the memorable examples of Charles IX. and of Henry IV., of the pupil of Catherine, and that of Jeanne d'Albret, we may ask ; was not Louis XIII. like his mother, weak, ungrateful, and unhappy? Always in con- tradiction, and yet always submissive? Do you not recog- nise in Louis XIV. the passions of a Spanish woman, the gallantry at the same time sensual and romantic, the terrors of the bigot, the pride of the despot, who requires the same prostration before the throne as before the altar ? It has I OP CHILDREN. 39 been said, and I believe it, that the woman who gave birth to the two Corneilles possessed a great soul, an elevated mind, and a dignified manner; that she resembled the mother of the Gracchi ; that these were two women of the same mould. On the other hand, the mother of the young Arouet, • spirituelle, jesting, coquettish, and of loose manners, im- pressed the genius of her son with all her peculiarities ; she excited in his soul the fire which, while it gave light, con- sumed; which produced so many chefs-d'oeuvre, and dis- honoured itself by so many immoral tales. Twenty volumes would not suffice to collect all the pro- minent examples of maternal influence. A child of the people, Kant, loved to repeat that he owed every thing to the pious care of his mother. This good woman, though herself without instruction, had nevertheless instructed him in the greatest of all sciences — that of morality and virtue. In her walks with her son, she explained to him, with the aid of good sense alone, what she knew of the wonders of nature, and she thus inspired him with the love of God his Creator. " I shall never forget," said Kant, in his old age, " that it is she who caused to fructify the good which is in my soul." Not less fortunate than Kant was our illustrious Cuvier, w^ho received from his mother the first lessons by which his genius was developed : with an instinct peculiarly maternal, she directed his tastes towards the study of nature. " I used to draw under her superintendence," says Cuvier, in the MS. memoirs which he has left to his family, " and I read aloud books of history and general literature. It is thus that she developed in me that love of reading, and that curiosity for all things, which were the spring of my life." This great man attributed to his mother all the pleasure of his studies and the glory of his discoveries. But the most striking example of this beneficent or fatal influence may be found in the lives of two of the greatest poets of the present age. To the one, fate had given a mother, foolish, mocking, full of caprice and pride, whose narrow mind was only expanded by vanity and hatred : a mother who pitilessly made a jest of the natural infirmity of her child ; who alternately irritated and caressed him, and at last despised and cursed him. These corrosive pas- sions of the woman became profoundly ingrafted in the 40 OF THE TRUE GOVERNOR heart of the young man ; hatred and pride, anger and disdain, boiled within his breast, and Hke the burning lava of a vol- cano, suddenly overspread the vs^orld with the torrents of a malevolent harmony. Upon the other poet beneficent fate had bestowed a mother, tender without weakness, and pious without formality, — one of those rare mothers which exist to serve as a model. This woman, young, beautiful, and enlightened, shed over her son all the light of love ; the virtues with which she inspired him, the prayer which she taught him, addressed themselves not merely to his intellect, but by becoming implanted in his soul, elicited divine sounds — a harmony which ascends unto God. Thus surrounded from the cradle with examples of the most touching piety, the child walked in the ways of the Lord under the tuition of his mother; his genius resembled incense, the perfumes of which are diffused over the earth, but which only burns for heaven. Come then, now, with the morality of a college or the philosophy of a pedant, and modify these maternal influ- ences; try to re-form Byron and Lamartine ; you will always arrive too late ; the vessel is soaked through ; the cloth has acquired its fold ;* and the passions of our mothers are be- come to us a second nature. Here is, however, a power, always acting beneath our eyes, an invariable love, a creative will, (the only one, perhaps, on earth which seeks but for our happiness,) left without direction since the beginning of the world, for want of enlightenment and education. In conclusion ; What is the child to the preceptor? It is an ignorant being to be instructed. What is the child to the mother? It is a soul which requires to be formed. Good teachers make good scholars, but it is only mothers ihat form men ; this constitutes all the difference of their mission; it follows that the care of educating the child belongs alto- gether to the mother, and that if it has been usurped by men, it is because education has been confounded with in- struction — things essentially different, and between which it is important to make the distinction, for instruction may be interrupted, and pass without danger into other hands; but education should be continued by the same person ; * " Certain age accompli Le vase est irabib^, I'etoffe a pris son pli." La Fontaine. OP CHILDREN. 41 when it is interrupted it ceases, and whoever gives it up after having began it, will see his child fall into the tortuous ways of error, or, what is more deplorable, into an indif- ference to truth. Let us, then, not seek out of the family for the governor of our children ; the one which nature presents to us will relieve us from the necessity of inquiring further, and that one we shall every where find; in the cottage of the poor, as in the palace of the rich ; every where endowed with the same perfection, and ready to make the same sacrifices. Young mothers, young wives, let not the stern title of gover- nor alarm your weakness ; I would not impose upon you pedantic studies or austere duties : it is to happiness that I wish to lead you. I come to reveal to you your rights, your power, your sovereignty ; it is inviting you to roam through the happy paths of virtue and love that I prostrate myself at your feet, and that I ask of you the peace of the world, the order of families, the glory of your children, and the happiness of the human race. Some inattentive minds will perhaps accuse me of wish- ing to resuscitate learned women; let them not be alarmed, l-the genitive and the dative, as Montaigne says, are not the ^object of this book. Leaving, then, aside the mere works of the memory, these mechanical attributes of teachers, I will call upon w^omen to fulfil their mission, by taking charge of the superior education which comprises the developement of the soul. I will trace out its elements, I will lay down its principles, I will unfold its science, so that the road once opened, it may be easy for them to penetrate into it without any other study than that of their own hearts. But before entering into it myself, I must examine this power which I invoke. We know women as mothers, let us try to know them as lovers and as wives. In the age which has just passed away, they were nothing more than that, and yet they have reigned : in the age which is approaching, they will be something more, they will be citizens ; and this title, which requires more enlightenment and reflection, promises to them a new empire. 42 ON THE INFLUENCE OP WOMEN. CHAPTER III. ON THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN — CIVILIZATION EXISTS ONLY BY MARRIAGE. " L'ignorance ou les femmes sont de leurs devoirs, Tabus qu'elles font de leur puissance, leur font perdre le plus beau et le plus precieux de leurs a\antages, celui d'etre utiles." Madame Bernier, Discours sur V Education des Femmes. Whatever be the customs or the laws of a country, it is the women who give the direction to its manners. Whether free or subject, they reign because they derive their power from our passions. But this influence is more or less salu- tary according to the degree of estimation in which they are held ; be they our idols or our companions, courtesans, slaves, or beasts of burthen, the re-action will be complete — they will make us what they themselves are. It appears as if nature attached our intelligence to their dignity, just as we attach our happiness to their virtue. Here then is a law of eternal justice; man cannot debase women without becoming himself degraded ; he cannot elevate them with- out becoming better. Let us cast our eyes over the earth, and observe the two great divisions of the human race — the East and the West; one half of the old world continues without improvement, and without ideas, beneath the weight of a barbarous civilization; there the women are slaves ; the other half progresses towards equality and enlightenment, and we there see women free and honoured. A few months ago* was published in the papers the ac- count of an English physician, whom curiosity had led to the East. Being accidentally introduced into the slave- market, he perceived a score of Greek women, half naked, lying on the ground, in expectation of a purchaser. One of them had attracted the attention of an old Turk ; the barbarian examined her minutely as one would examine a horse, while during his inspection the merchant praised the beauty of her eyes, the elegance of her figure, and * The first edition was published soon after the Greek revolution. \ ON THE INFLUENCE OP WOMEN. 43" Other minor perfections; he protested that the poor girl was not nnore than thirteen years of age, that she was a virorin, and neither dreamed nor snored in the night. In short, after a close examination, and some bargammg about the price, she was sold, body and soul, for about sixty pounds. The soul, it is true, was but little considered in the bargain. The unhappy creature, half-fainting in the arms of her mo- ther, (for this horrid compact was made beneath the eyes of her mother,) implored with piercing cries the assistance of her sorrowing companions. But in this barbarous land all hearts were closed ; the laws render one insensible to the evils which they sanction. The affair was concluded, and the young girl was delivered to her master. Thus vanished for her, thus must vanish for all women in this part of the world, that delightful futurity of love and hap- piness which nature has prepared for them. Who would believe it ? this infernal transaction took place in Europe in 1829, at the distance of six hundred leagues from Paris and London, the two capitals of the human race ; and at the present moment it is the living history of two-thirds of the inhabitants of the globe. What monsters would be pro- duced by such an union ! What kind of progeny will arise from this combination of vileness, hatred and misfortune! Worshipper of Mahomet, is this one of the companions of thy life, one of the mothers of thy children '( Thou requirest from her delights for thyself and an affectionate disposition for thy son ! An affectionate disposition ! Nothing can be expected from this sorrowing creature but thy own degra- dation and that of thy posterity. Nature has so willed it, that true love, the most exclusive of all the feelings, should be the only possible foundation of civilization. This sentiment invites all men to a simple life, exempt at the same time from idleness, from effeminacy, and from brutal passions. All is harmony, all happiness, in the intimate link which unites two young married persons. The man, happy in the society of his wife, finds his faculties in- crease with his duties : he attends to out-door avocations, takes his part in the burdens of a citizen, cultivates his lands, or is usefully occupied in the town. The woman, more re- tiring, presides over the domestic arrangements. At home she influences her husband ; diffuses joy in the midst of order and abundance ; both see themselves reflected in the 44 ON THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. children seated at their table, who promise by the force of example to perpetuate their virtues. Contrast with this picture of the European family that of an Eastern one; the former is based upon equality and love; the latter, upon polygamy and slavery, which leave to love its brutal fury, but which deprive it of its sweet sympathy and its divine illusions. A man may shut himself up with a number of women, but it is impossible that he can love several. See him, then, reduced, amidst a crowd of young beauties, to the saddest of all conditions — that of possessing without loving, and without being beloved. Inebriated with the coarsest pleasures, without family in the midst of his slaves, without affection in the midst of his children, he im- prisons his companions, he mutilates their keepers, and makes his house a place of punishment, crime, and prosti- tution. And, after all, does this animal life yield him happi- ness? No; his senses become blunted, his mind becomes enervated, and he vainly pursues unto the brink of the tomb the sensual delights which, while they excite him, elude his grasp. In order properly to estimate the wretchedness of a simi- lar degradation, we may allude to the recent history of a French officer called Seve, who has lately become cele- brated in the East under the name of Soliman-Bey. Being obliged to quit the service at the period of the fall of Na- poleon, Seve offered his services to the Pacha of Egypt, who, on account of his military talents, employed him and made his fortune, without requiring him to change his reli- gion. In 1826, Seve was living in a most luxurious style; he had in his harem the most beautiful Greek and Egyptian slaves; but, says the author to whom we are indebted for this account, amidst all these delights his heart was a void, and he sighed for a companion worthy of him. " Send me," said he, "a French, an English, or an Italian woman, it matters not which, I promise you to marry her, and will send away this troop of creatures, without soul and without ideas." Then added he with fervour, *' Nothing more is re- quired to complete my happiness than a true female friend, whose heart and mind would embellish my solitude. This treasure would enable me to enjoy all the rest." On read- ing this narrative, one cannot help admiring, how, when social institutions have not deeply depraved the heart of ON THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. 45 man, a sense of natural rectitude forcibly brings him back to order, that is to say, to virtue. Polygamy is a purely animal state — it gives us only slaves; marriage gives us a companion ; — the former establishes de- bauchery in the house of the man, the latter for ever banishes it, and sanctifies the house of the citizen. From these facts, which comprise in some degree the history of the East, it may be inferred that civilization is only possible by means of marriage, because in marriage alone women are called upon to exert their intellectual and moral power. European society has entirely arisen from the power of the wife over the husband, and that of the mother over the child. At the beginning of the world God created only one man and one woman, and ever since the two sexes have been born in about equal numbers. Thus each man ought to have his companion — it is the law of nature; all the rest is only barbarity and corruption. In order to convince you that such is the law of nature, allow yourself to be charmed by the most delightful of all scenes! Observe these two young lovers, experiencing the same transports, — they have but one thought, that of living and dying together. AH that is divine upon earth animates their bosoms. Do you not feel that they are the two halves of the same being which have again found each other? and do you not perceive how, in proportion as the two souls form one, its sentiments are enlarged and its joys purified? Oh, how easy the practice of virtue appears to love! He who knows how to love, is strong, is just, is chaste, can un-~ dertake every thing, and suffer every thing. The soul of true lovers is like a holy temple, in which incense inces- santly burns, in which every voice speaks of God, and every hope is of immortality. In his paternal goodness, the Creator has placed, at the brightest epoch in the lives of the dwellers upon the earth, happiness by the side of virtue. Is it not a wonderful thing, that the woman who has not the power of resisting him whom she loves, can yet find in so weak a soul all the energy, all the heroism, necessary to sacrifice her life for him ? It is because woman is made to love, and that in her 46 ON THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. weaknesses, as in her sacrifices, it is always love which triumphs. Far, then, from interdicting love to young persons, I would bring them up for this sentiment, I would make it the end and the reward of virtue: my pupils should know that the quaHties of the soul can alone render us worthy to love and be loved; that love is but a tendency towards the beau- tiful ; that its dreams are but a revelation of the infinite ; that in attaching itself to perfections too frequently ideal, the soul points out to us the only objects which it can eter- nally love ; in a word, that it is always the moral beauties which move us, even in the contemplation of physical beauty; and to corroborate this idea, I would point out the most ordinary physiognomies becoming beautiful under the inspi- ration of a generous sentiment ; and on the other hand, to the most perfect physiognomies becoming degraded beneath the impression of a low and malevolent passion ; and I would conclude, that, for women the most becoming co- quetry would be to embellish the soul sooner than the body, because it is the soul which renders all perfect. CHAPTER IV. CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT. WOMEN IN BECOMING THE COMPANIONS OF MEN SOFTEN THEIR BARBARITY. Would you become acquainted with the political and moral condition of a people? ask what is the position occu- pied by the women. Between the sweetness of conjugal love, and the degradation of the harem, there is the same distance as between civilization and the savage state. Be- tween the society in the time of Louis XIV. and that under Louis XV., there is the same difference as between their two mistresses, Mademoiselle de la Valliere, and Madame Dubarry. We might, doubtless, adduce examples of mo- rality superior to those of the time of Louis XIV., but what advantage should we derive by so doing? they are out of our reach ; at Sparta, where women formed heroes because they were citizens ; at Rome, where temples were raised ON THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. 47 to the sanctity of marriage, and where the violated chastity of a woman was considered so momentous an event, that it sufficed to change the fate of the kingdom. The influence of women is extended over the whole of our lives ; a mis- tress, a wife, a mother — three magic words which comprise the sum of human felicity. It is the reign of beauty, of love, and of reason ; it is always a reign. A man consults with his wife, he obeys his mother, he obeys her long after she has ceased to live, and the ideas which he has derived from her, become principles which are frequently more powerful than his passions. On the maternal bosom the mind of nations reposes ; their manners, prejudices, and virtues — in a word, the civiliza- tion of the human race all depend upon maternal influence. The reality of the power is admitted, but the objection is stated, that it is only exercised in the family circle, as if the aggregate of families did not constitute a nation ! Do we not perceive that the thoughts which occupy the woman at home, are carried into public assemblies by the man? It is there that he realizes by strength, that with which he was inspired by caresses, or which was insinuated by submis- sion. You desire to restrict women to the mere manage- ment of their houses — you would only instruct them for that purpose; but you do not reflect that it is from the house of each citizen that the errors and the prejudices which pre- vail in the world, emanate. There is another influence less durable, but more power- ful, from which none can escape. It is at the age of adole- scence, when life appears to us a series of pleasure, of which the perspective is prolonged into futurity, that the revolution is all at once effected which changes the destiny of the man. A celestial image comes to occupy all his thoughts ; it, at the same time, disturbs and delights him. The friend of his early choice; the tenderness of his mo- ther, are no longer enough for him: he requires a more in- timate and exclusive affection, the half of himself; the com- panion which God has created for him ; the angel which he should solely and eternally love : he desires the happi- ness of the elect. This other half of himself: at last he discovers it, and all his desires become concentrated in this one object. But, yesterday his will was inflexible as iron, to-day he has neither will nor caprice ; a something heroical 48 ON THE INFLUENCE OP WOMEN. is awakened in his heart by the side of love, and life is only dear to him because he can devote it to her. Would vou see the charmer who produces all this change ? it is that young girl, whose looks are expressive of innocence ! Sur- prised at the sentiment which she inspires, pensive and silent, she looks down and blushes ; but while blushing, she is aware of her conquest, and secures it. And who, then, has revealed to her a secret which her lover would conceal from the whole world? Who but her lover himself: the silence, the respect, the submission, the timid adoration which renders him immovable and fearful. And this is a universal language ; beneath the torrid zone, as well as near the icebergs of the north, innocence understands this lan- guage — understands ii without having learnt it, for it is a general law of nature, that at the time when beauty is per- fected it should become mistress of a will which is not in itself. Thus, this young girl, who scarcely yet knows herself, who till this day has only known how to obey without re- fleeting; to whom nothing has been taught of what is going on in the world ; this young girl, without knowledge, with- out experience, becomes all at once powerful and sovereign. She disposes of the life and the honour of a man, guided by his passion ; she wishes, and her wishes are fulfilled ; she wills, and is directly obeyed. Her childish will may give a hero to his country, or an assassin to the family, ac- cording to the loftiness of her soul, or the blindness of her passion. O, woman, you reign, and man is subject to your dominion ! you reign over your sons, your lovers, your husbands ! In vain do thev call themselves vour masters, they become men only when you have rendered their ex- istence complete: in vain do they boast of their superiority; their glory, and their shame, are alike derived from you. This is every where perceptible — in history as in fable; in the palace of Circe, where the warriors were changed into hogs ; and in the palace of the Medicis, where men became as wild beasts. Speaking of a generous action, a generous man, Byron, declares that he could not undertake it ; his friends urge him ; he resists their entreaties ; then, after a moment's re- flection, he exclaims — " Well, if had been here, she would have induced me to undertake it. She is a woman ON THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. 49 who, amidst all seduction and temptations, has always in- cited a man to glorious and virtuous actions — she would have been my guardian angel."* If, then, there be an incontestable fact, it is that of the influence of women; an influence exerted over the whole of life by means of filial piety, pleasure, and love. This being admitted, one is led to ask oneself by what incon- ceivable oversight so powerful a lever has been hitherto neglected — how moralists, instead of calling to their aid the softest and the most energetic power, have laboured to weaken it — and how legislators of every period have com- bined to render it prejudicial to us? for it cannot be too often remarked, that all the evil which women have done us is derived from us, and all the good which they do us comes from themselves. It is in spite of our stupid educa- tions that they have thoughts, an intellect, and a soul ; it is in spite of our barbarous prejudices that they are at the present day the glory of Europe, and the companions of our lives. At a period not yet very remote, grave doctors denied them a soul ; but as if Providence had taken care to revenge so great an outrage, there then existed at the Louvre that Isabeau who gave up France to a king of England; and in a lowly hut on the borders of Lorraine that Joan of Arc who saved her country, expelled the Eng- lish, and died the death of a martyr, after having lived the life of a hero. What we have done to degrade women, what they have done to civilize us, presents perhaps the most moral and dramatic spectacle in our history. There was a time when their beauty alone strove against barbarity : shut up in tur- reted castles like prisoners, they there civilized the warriors w^ho despised their weakness, but who adored their charms. Accused of ignorance by those who deprived them of the means of instruction ; vilified by prejudices, and deified by love; weak, timid, seeing nothing around them but steel and soldiers, they adopted the passions of their tyrants ; but while adopting, they softened them. We next saw them directing the combatants to the defence of the weak. Chi- valry became a protector ; it redressed wrongs, and was thus the precursor of the reign of the laws ; at last, after * It was to defend, at the House of Lords, a petition of prisoners for debt. Byron's Memoirs. 4 50 ON THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. having fought for the conquest of kingdoms, it humanized itself so far as to fight for the beauty of the ladies, and civilization commenced by means of gallantry. A great revolution was effected in France on that day when a noble knight caused his soldiers to retire, on learning that the castle of which he was about to commence the siege was the asylum of the wife of his enemy, and that she was about to become a mother. A little later, some elements of science having penetrated through the obscurity in which the world was enveloped, all eyes were dazzled ; and it was then that the fate of women became worthy of commiseration. So long as men had believed themselves to be superior merely by their bodily strength, and by the energy of their courage, they had yielded to the ascendant of weakness and beauty ; but when their brains became muddled with a vain science, they were seized with pride, and women nearly lost their empire. The most unhappy age for them was the age of clerks and doctors, when the impertinent questions were started of the pre-eminence of men, and the inferiority of women. An alphabet of their malice, and the history of their imperfections, were drawn up ; the existence of their soul was even called into question, and theologians them- selves, in their confusion, seemed to forget that the rela- tionship of Jesus Christ to the human race was but by means of his mother. These discussions produced this deplorable result, that the degradation of women became a system of moral polity, as the degradation of the people was made a system in politics. Our fathers for a long period confounded ignorance with innocence; and from this arose all their evils. They wished for simple women in the interest of husbands, and for an ignorant people in the interest of power. Women thus assimilated to the people, received, like the people, no sort of instruction. Every thing was against them, science, legislation, theology ; theology, which was then mistaken for religion, and which only exhibited to them virtue beneath the stripes of discipline and the austeri- ties of penitence. Such was the fate of women. It was by depriving them of their soul, and delivering them up to those petty devotional practices, without morality, which stupify the mind, that they hoped to preserve them pure and immaculate. That their wives retained sufficient in- EDUCATION OF GIKLS. 51 telligence to give the lie to the foresight of their husbands, may be seen from the historiettes of Louis XL, of Boccaccio, of the queen of Navarre, &c. ; in them are illustrated the advantages of ignorance, of which the soirees of Bouchets, Pantagruel, &c., completed the gothic picture. These licen- tious books, which are scarcely named at the present day, were at that period books read in good society, and quoted by ladies in their castles. That the people, for their part, caused to recoil upon its tyrants the weight of their preju- dices and their ignorance, is written in letters of blood in every page of our history ; the massacre of the Albigenses, of the Armagnacs, of St. Bartholomew, were the works imposed on fanaticism and on superstition. Ignorance be- lieves all, superstition does not reason ; fanaticism prostrates itself, and then rising says. Whom shall I strike'? Wo, then, to kings who ground their power upon the degrada- tion of their subjects ! These kings may require crimes, they may demand blood, but it must be on the condition of never stopping in the career of crime or of blood ; the tem- pest which they have raised must take its course. The more a people is ignorant, the more pleasure it takes in acts of ferocity ; it is restrained by no reason — it is enlightened by no intelligence — it is arrested by no respect — it is an instrument which kills, until, from corpse to corpse, it ar- rives at last at the head which directs it. CHAPTER y. THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS ACCORDING TO THE ABBE HENRY AND FENELON. A WOMAN excites an insurrection among the people, arms princes, drives Mazarin from Paris ; another woman turns the cannon of the Bastille against the king, who only re- enters his palace after he has seen the great Conde fly. Thus began the age of Louis XIV. A few years passed on, and the young prince appears surrounded by that bril- liant court, all the names of which are chronicled in history. Amidst the splendour of festivities and the turmoil of wars, the reign of woman is continued — the greatest poets, the greatest commanders, the greatest ministers, form the cor- 52 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. tege of the great king. He fills Europe with the fame of his victories and of his amours, and Europe, dazzled, pro- claims his age to be one of the four glorious epochs in the history of the human mind. Then was heard on a sudden, a supplicating voice, which implored a little commiseration in favour of women ; mistresses, it is true, of the destinies of the country, but the education of whom, amongst so many prodigies, had been entirely forgotten. How sur- prising was the circumstance, that a simple ecclesiastic should accuse himself of a great paradox in stating, that girls ought to learn something else than the catechism, sewing, singing, dancing, dressing, speaking politely, and curtseying. And of what did this new instruction consist, which was to scandalize the age of the Sevignes, of the Coulanges, and of the Lafayettes 1 It comprised reading, writing, and accounts, the understanding matters sufficiently to be able to take counsel, and a little knowledge of medi- cine, to administer to the sick. This is what the respecta- ble Abbe Henry believed necessary to be added to the talent of curtseying properly. Poetry, philosophy, history, mo- rality ; all that tends to enlarge the ideas, enlighten the con- science, and elevate the soul, were not to be thought of by women ; such matters did not concern them, or might ex- cite their vanity ; yet, in making this concession to the great age, the Abbe added, as if suddenly enlightened, "It is said, women are not capable of studies, as if their souls were of a different kind from those of men ; as if they had not, as well as us, reason to guide them, a will to regulate, pas- sions to combat; or as if it were easier for them than for us to fulfil these duties without learning any thing." To this religious voice was shortly added an almost divine voice. Fenelon had consecrated the first ten years of his career to the instruction of female Catholic children. He had read in the hearts of these young children all the secrets of another age. He had learnt from their innocence the art of directing their passions, and from their simplicity the art of forestalling them. This delightful study, while ex- hibiting to him women in their proper character, showed him at the same time the necessity of strengthening them, because they are wxak ; of enlightening them, because they are powerful. Thus was composed, in the pre- sence of nature, the book De VEducation des FilleSi a EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 53 chef d'oeiivre of delicacy, grace, and genius, of which the simple and maternal doctrine is but the love of Christ for little children. An inimitable model, because it is impressed with the soul of its author; a treasure of truth and wisdom; the best treatise on practical education yet given to the world ; even after the second book of the Emile, which is entirely derived from it. In the first chapter Fenelon lays down the principles : to the instruction recommended by the Abbe Henry, he super- added at the outset, Greek and Roman history, the history of France and its relations with other countries. He even goes so far as to consider the study of Latin reasonable, because it is the language of the church and of prayer; thus attacking the insensate doctrine, which causes to be addressed to God supplications unintelligible to those who pray, unless they have studied Horace and Virgil. Lastly, he allows the reading of works of eloquence, literature, and poetry. All these appear to him good, because they excite in the soul lively and sublime sentiments which lead to virtue. It is true that heavy restrictions immediately follow ideas so novel. The principles being laid down, the author reflects upon the peculiarities of the age, and stops short. At first he thought of the destiny of women, according to the laws of nature ; he now estimates it according to the position which they occupy in society ; and this fatal point of view becomes the limit of the good which he wished to do. " We must be apprehensive," said he, " of engaging women in studies in which they might become opinionated, for they are neither to govern the state nor to make war." A specious mode of reasoning, which carries with it its own refutation. Women, it is true, are neither to govern nor to carry on war ; but if they rule those who command, what will be the consequence of their enlightenment or of their ignorance? This is the question which should have been examined ; and in this point of view the opinion of Fenelon is altogether favourable to our case. We will not say that women are our masters; such a term would wound French delicacy; even our gallantry would not dare to adopt it ; but we will say, with the great genius whom we have quoted, " that good is impossible without them; that they either ruin or elevate families ; that they regulate all the details of domestic 54 EDUCATION OF GIRLS. affairs, and, consequently, they decide upon all which most nearly concerns the whole human race." The education of women is more important than that of men, since the latter is always their work. Such is the doctrine of Fenelon — such is the substance of his book. This book was written at the period when women pos- sessed the greatest influence; when from their romantic throne they gave to society those polished and graceful manners which were to change the destinies of Europe ; and yet such was the power of prejudice, that in the pre- sence of the most gallant court in the world, Fenelon was obliged to justify his undertaking, not only by reasons of interest or of humanity, but by this purely theological prin- ciple, "that women constitute one-half of the human race, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and are, as well as men, destined for an immortal life." In order to teach them something else than singing, dancing, and saluting gracefully, he was under the necessity of invoking the merits of the redemption, and of covering them with the blood of our Saviour. The ideas of Fenelon were but little understood in his age, and are too much neglected in ours. After having trampled with both feet on his doctrines and on his work, we believe that we have advanced ; and yet, how many countries in Europe — how many towns in France — are there in which the truths which it contains are unknown ! Even in the very centre of civilization are women what they ought to be? And does not their education, at the present day, bear witness to our ingratitude and want of foresight? On seeing the manner in which they are brought up, might it not be said that their good or bad inclinations would be unattended by any result? O women ! is it then true, foolish men every where condemn you to unhappiness — to abjec- tion ? Every where do they treat you as playthings, shut you up like idols, or sell you like merchandise? The most polished people, far from enlightening your reason, and elevating your soul, place their happiness in corrupting you; they teach you to consider dress as the first essential of life, and beauty as the chief of human qualities ; they induce you to rely upon this transient beauty, and, as the height of stupidity, after having depraved your hearts, weakened your EDUCATION OF GIBLS. 55 reason, and obscured your intelligence, they rest their honour upon your virtues ! What indifference, therefore, is there not annong women respecting important affairs ! and what a degree of ardour exists for frivolities! Their souls, agitated by the whims of the day, are passionately directed towards things of nought, for which they dissemble, disguise, and torment themselves ; for which they suffer cold, heat, hunger, destroy their health, and risk their lives. Alas! we give to our dauofhters the habits of courtesans, to our wives the instruc- tion of children, and then we ask of Heaven glory and hap- piness ! What is the consequence ? the levity of one sex necessarily influences the habits of the other ; women are trifling in order to please us ; and we must become frivolous in order to be agreeable to them. Our political and moral indifference, the ignorance of our interests and of our duties, the forgetfulness of our country, our petty vanities, our faults, our evils, all this is the work of women. Their character is become the national character. We have been obliged to receive from them what they had obtained from us. But let our mothers become citizens and all will be changed ; instead of disputing, like nurses, as to which has the prettiest and best dressed children, they would emulate each other as to which should best sow, as the good Amyot says, the seeds of virtue in the soul, and of vigour in the mind, — and France would become the model of nations. Legislators 1 it is high time to think of such matters. These women, whom you forget, constitute one-half of the human race. Do you wish for magistrates, warriors, citizens T Are you desirous of the prosperity of a kingdom — of a re- public? Address yourselves to the women; for unless they attach our souls to your institutions, the works of your genius will remain useless among nations. In dictating your laws, in drawing up your codes, have you condescended to remember that women exist? Do you know what is a mother's love; do you remember that her voice is the first sound which strikes our ears? her look the first light which rejoices our eyes? her songs our first concerts? her caresses our earliest pleasures? Have you considered this hourly and daily influence, and the indelible impressions to which it must give rise? Well, this is only one of the threads which nature weaves, of the omnipotence of women. They 56 OF PRESENT EDUCATION educate us as children ; they inspire us as men. A mother's love incites us to good or evil ; the love of a mistress or of a wife decides our destiny. To labour for their education, is, then, to labour for our own. By giving them elevated and noble thoughts, we de- stroy at one blow our petty passions and our petty ambitions. We shall be so much the more worthy, in proportion as they become better ; and they cannot render us better with- out becoming happier. Even at the present day, the exist- ence of women may often be said to end when our homage to them terminates. In youth they reign, in old age they are neglected; and yet these years, so long and dreary, might become years of delight. There is a power superior to that of beauty, viz. that which depends upon the enlight- ened fulfilment of duties. This is a means of being always young and beautiful which deserves to be tried ; yet this is not all. A woman, who lives surrounded by her family ; who has learnt, in order to teach; who expands her soul, in order to exert all her influence, becomes, by this circum- stance alone, inaccessible to seduction. The foresight of Nature is full of grace; she has established, in the heart of the mother, the source of the virtues of the child ; and, by a sweet reaction, she wills that the innocence of the child should be the safeguard of the discretion of the mother. CHAPTER VI. OF PRESENT EDUCATION AND ITS INSUFFICIENCY. " Une jeune femme qui entre dans le monde n'y voit que ce qui peut servir a sa vanite et I'idee confuse qu'elle a du bonheur, et le fracas de tout ce qui I'en- toure empeche son ame d'entendre la voix de tout le reste de la nature." Voltaire. — TraiU de Metaphisique. " Que de parens croient avoir eleve leur filles lorsqu'ils ont paye leurs maitres." Mad. Bernier. — Sur V Education des Femmes. Since the periods of Fenelon and Rousseau there has been progress among men, and the education of women has consequently improved. We now no longer discuss the question, whether they should be instructed, or the amount of the instruction which should be allowed them. We consent to develope their intelligence. We go further, and AND ITS INSUFFICIENCY. 5t give them the talents of artists, and of doctors of sciences; they skim, if we may so speak, encyclopsedial studies, but in these studies there is nothing which leads them to think with their own thoughts. When, therefore, the passions arrive, to which it is not too much to oppose habits of vir- tue, the powers of the soul, and the principles of religion, they find hands skilful upon the piano, a memory which recites, and a soul which sleeps. Such is, with a few rare exceptions, the woman which the age gives us, with her petty devotional practices, her school morality, her mecha- nical talents, her love of pleasure, the ignorance of the affairs of life, and the want of loving and of being beloved. It is not that this education has not also its bright side. It introduces into society artistical taste and manners, more grace, more originality. The duchess and the hourgeoise may compete in our salons with first-rate talents; some compose poems, which are sold for the benefit of the Greeks and Poles ; others paint pictures, the price of which is ap- propriated to charitable purposes; all write with graceful- ness, and the style of Sevigne and of Lafayette is become almost common. Thus education gradually levels society; its uniformity is the most powerful democracy, and I do not think that I advance a paradox in saying that the talents of women have done more towards the equality of ranks, than all the decrees of our national assemblies. Enter our most fashionable salons, observe that group of men, of all ages, standing in the centre, and who all appear as if dressed from the same piece of cloth ; one of them is a banker, another a marquis; this a magistrate, that a virtuoso. Well, notwithstanding the monotony of their black coats, there is in their language — in their gait — a something which dis- tinguishes and classifies them. It is not the same with re- spect to women. From their graceful attitudes, the ele- gance of their manners, you would think them all equal in point of birth and rank. There is the same instruction, the same charm, the same taste for the arts. No means of dis- tinguishing the daughters of a notary from those of a cour- tier; those of a capitalist from those of a general. Look at that charming group assembled around the piano, exe- cuting together one of Rossini's best productions, with as much self-possession as Italian singers — they are the wife of a peer of France, and of a physician ; a marchioness, a 58 OF PRESENT EDUCATION young arliste^ and the daughter of a man of business; no- thing distinguishes one from another except talent. Now cast your eyes on that lady whose toilet is so simple and yet so elegant; she is one of our pretties duchesses. See what an amiable smile she exchanges with the young person seated near her. Both are remarkable women. The duchess teaches her sons Latin, and writes novels; the other composes verses. She is a poetess; she is beau- tiful ! the Corinna of the age: her glory is her nobility. Thus in this elegant assembly in which all is confounded, birth, fortune, titles, conditions, there is no blemish; beauty attracts the eyes, talent marks the places, and education passes the level. Certainly, if the life of women were to be restricted to exhibitions and fetes, if their business were only to dazzle and to please, the great problem would be resolved by this education of soirees: but the hours of pleasure are short, and in their train follow the hours of reflection. The life of home, moral life, the duties of mother and wife, all this comes, and all has been forgotten. Then they find them- selves as in a void in the bosoms of their families, with romantic passions, an unbridled exaltation, and ennui, that great destroyer of female virtue. The lamentations of the fatal consequences of this state of matters assail our ears on all sides; it is the cry of all mothers, the complaint of all husbands; and in these painful straits, wherein each one is agitated and desponding, the w^orst effect is, that care- lessness terminates all. What is requisite in order to obtain a correct idea of the want of foresight in our education? If we ask ourselves what is the end to be attained: is it religion? But religion, improperly understood, it is true, condemns almost all that is taught. Is it domestic happiness? But the talents ac- quired with so much pains, those talents which prevent thought, disappear in the routine of household affairs. Is it the prosperity, the glory of the country ? Ridiculous ! what mother thinks of such matters now-a-days? Thus, in pro- portion as we seek the end, every thing disappears; nothing for private happiness, nothing for the general prosperity. The world remains, and it is to that point, in fact, towards which all our previsions are directed. The object is more to please the world than to resist it; to shine, to reign. AND ITS INSUFFICIENCY. 59 Vanity ; such is the object which the tenderest mothers do not cease to show their daughters, and upon which rock the world, which cheers them on, sees ^hem wreck themselves with indifference. Vanity in dress, vanity in agreeable talents, vanity in instruction. Be handsome, be polite, people see you ; be gentle, be submissive, people hear you, says a mother to her daughter; that is to say, let appearance always take the place of reality. The soul, like the body, has its liffht dresses, to which we are accustomed from the cradle. The evil is not cured, it is concealed; the charac- ter is not changed, it is disguised; thus vanity covers all; to seem not to be, constitutes the aim of education. Let music, painting, and dancing charm the leisure hours of a young girl, nothing can be better. But wherefore should we turn delightful recreations into heavy and painful tasks? why satiate her with occupations which ought only to be pleasurable? What a question! You wish that she should possess talents which amuse her, and we wish talents that shall cause her to be applauded ; an artist's hand and foot. Once more vanity ! Here are books ; good taste has presided over their selec- tion. Racine, La Fontaine, Fenelon, Bossuet, Pascal, La- martine : very well ; enlarge the young soul, furnish it with rich thoughts, strengthen it with wise maxims, cause to spring up the appreciation of the beautiful — a sentiment which God himself has implanted in it. But, say you, our lessons are not intended to make learned women!. Ah 1 I understand; the object should be to fill the memory. She has remembered some verses, she can repeat certain por- tions of geography, of chronology, of history, a few dates, a few events : it is an affair of convenance ; the varnish which causes a piece of furniture to shine, the gilding which gives the appearance of gold to the vilest metal ; the cover- ing is a little thin ; no matter, provided the copper do not appear. Still vanity ! It is true one seeks to check the excesses by the exercise of some religious practices ; but this teaching, at all times somewhat monastic, is but another impediment in our edu- cation. You give to a young girl a taste for worldly toi- lettes, a dancing and a singing master, and at the same time you prohibit balls and brilliant assemblies. On the one hand, you inculcate a contempt for worldly pleasures; on 60 OP PRESENT EDUCATION. the other, you give her lessons -which excite her love for these pleasures. You enrich her memory with the chpfs d'auvre of the stage, and you prohibit theatrical entertain- ments. You praise before her the destiny of virgins, and you give her a husband. Always a step forwards and back- wards; temptation and a moral discourse; a preparation for sin, and a scruple of conscience. Pitiful admixture of the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries, which tends to make the same person a penitent and a coquette: the de- Jight of a salon, and the angel of a convent. These con- trasts, so violently united, jostle with each other at the outset, and the war of the passions and of prejudices begins amidst the seductions of the world, and in the absence of all moral strength and reason. Such are our foresight and our wis- dom ; such is the way in which education places us under the necessity of offending either the law or nature. The point of setting out is always a stumble, and a stumble on the brink of an abyss. Thus our belief and our sciences only meet to confront each other; the war is within us, it is ourselves which it destroys ; and our educations have no other result than to propagate its fury. All these elements of discord, all these opposing principles, w^hich should be amalgamated into one universal reason, are cast at our intelligence in their sharp and crude forms, without modifying them, without even seeking to render their union possible ; their union, which alone could constitute a reasonable education. It would appear as if a religious and a worldly life were the two champions in a deadly conflict. Whichever be the con- queror, the man who adopts it is no more than a mutilated incomplete being ; the deplorable remains of passions or of superstitions. The perfect man is he who at the same time leads a so- cial and a religious life; with a powerful hand he puts an end to the strife of the two adversaries, and giving to each his place, he advances with a firm step in the ways of God, and in the light of reason. But in order that this light, so rare in the present day, should be diffused in the world, it must shine in our educations ; it can only arrive at the multi- tude mixed with the first emotions of our lives, and beneath the irresistible influence of a mother. It is the sacred lamp i SOCIAL SCALE. 61 which the laborious wife of Virgil lighted in the night for her work near the cradle of her child. Mention is made in the Paradise Lost of a lion, the crea- tion of which is not yet terminated ; one sees him half emerging from the earth, his eye sparkles, his mane is agi- tated, but his body is an inert immovable mass, which still adheres to the earth, while impatiently waiting for the last spark to leap out. Sublime image of the human race, it has only the head living ; the rest has not even motion. Cause the light to penetrate into it, snatch the lion from nothingness, and let him take possession of his empire. CHAPTER VII. SOCIAL SCALE. " Partout ou les peuples ont des moeurs elles ont regne." Bernardin de St. Pierre. In barbarous times women were slaves or servants. At the first glimmerings of civilization they became our housekeepers, then our companions. At a later period they were less restricted to their houses, and were more closely united to the world by their agreea- ble talents, and to their husbands by the developement of their intellect. Lastly, when society, having arrived at a more perfect state of civilization, without losing its courteous forms, re- cognised the rights of men, woman assumed her position in the state ; she was at once a housekeeper, a companion, and a citizen. Thus the place which women occupy in society shows us the history of the civilization of the world. The savage epoch. The epoch of Homer. The Greek and Roman republics. The middle ages. The age of Louis XIV. And our own — the age of regeneration, when women may raise themselves to the highest position, by the simple fulfil- ment of their duties as wives and mothers of families. 62 EDUCATION OP THE WIFE CHAPTER VIII. EDUCATION OP THE WIFE BY THE HUSBAND. " II y a dans les affections profbndes du cceur quelque chose de pur et de desinteresse qui annonce I'excellence et la dignite de Tame humaine." Ancillon, de I' Immortality. The last chapter but one will doubtless give rise to nu- merous protestations. More than one mother of a family, more than one directress of a school, indignant at my irre- verence, will accuse me of errors, or even of bad faith. Such or such a liberal institution will be cited where young girls exercise their rhetoric and their logic, as at college, and could, if required, take their degrees at a university. I shall be overpowered by their knowledge, dazzled by their talents, and after all, what v^'ill this have proved ? a very insignificant circumstance, that there is nothing exceeding the vanity of the scholars, unless it be the vanity of the masters, and of parents. It is a fact that the instruction of women is ameliorated ; but what has this instruction produced up to the present time? Let us examine this question. My first observation bears upon the method of teaching ; it has been supposed that the education of women would be perfected by giving it the scholastic forms of the education of men. Here lies the error. These forms are only convenient for the pro- fessor, for they dispense with the necessity of instruction, and of exertion of the intellect. With a few words, he im- parts an impulsion to the knowledge of his pupil, as motion is imparted to a machine by pushing a spring — the machine repeats the names, the dates, the facts ; repeats, in a word, judgments rather learnt than understood, but which appear to belong to the pupil, and give him the aspect of a prodigy. And yet the soul slumbers, all its faculties are forgotten or mistaken ; imagination, morality, poetry, the sentiment of the beautiful, our celestial guides, are benumbed, and die beneath the mechanical developement of memory. My second observation turns altogether on the things which are learnt. A young girl marries — what have you BY THE HUSBAND. 63 taught her — and what ought she to have been taught in order to assure our happiness and her own ? This cfuestion so simple, is yet a new question. It appears, at least, that no one has dared to ask it ; since no one has thought of resolving it. It is a light which is wanting in all our trea- tises on education, and which I would wish to extend over every page of this book. We educate our daughters in vanity and in innocence; we then give them to a husband, who destroys their inno- cence and cultivates their vanity; thus vanity alone re- mains, and here begins its active and disastrous influence. It tells woman that beauty merits homage, that happiness consists in luxury, that fortune gives every thing, conside- ration, and well-being, and that fortune must be acquired. That which vanity inculcates, the woman wills, and the man executes it. Such is the way of the world — repose, health, and even conscience, are often sacrificed to this ob- ject. The best years of life are employed in attaining it, after which, those who have best succeeded, become dis- gusted, and complain with bitterness of the futility of their labours. Such was not the case in the early periods of history ; girls were ignorant even of their power ; they were brought up in innocency, and especially in humility : in receiving a husband they considered that they received a master, as at the present day they believe they receive a lover, and this condition of mind prepared them wonderfully for obedience. Then it was, that the husband commenced the education of his wife — taught her how to regulate the domestic affairs, and gave a direction to her mind and character. A great philosopher, Xenophon, has transmitted these details to us in a special treatise of domestic economy. He shows us a young couple deliberating on their duties in order to divide their labours and their pleasures ; but, in the first place, sacrificing to the gods, invoking their assistance, and asking of them to be enlightened, the one to be able to counsel well, the other to obey worthily. But these lessons of ancient wisdom would be inappli- cable to our age. With us life is more intellectual, society is more general ; education should, therefore, be more extended. For women to reign in the interior of their houses ; for them to establish in them order and economy ; 64 EDUCATION OF THE WIFE this is only a part of their mission. Besides the duties of a prudent housekeeper, the exigencies and the elegancies of the world are to be considered ; other times have rendered other modes of life necessary. This is what those persons cannot see, who are unceasingly regretting gothic manners, or patriarchal virtues. These good people have not even perceived that the age of Louis XIV. substituted for the isolation of families, the life of society, or, in other terms, the life of the salons. Thus our relations are extended, manners are more polished, new duties have arisen to modify former duties, and from out of all this has origi- nated a more perfect civilization, in which women are called upon to play the part of legislators, by means of the irresistible influence which they exercise over their husbands and their children ; all the opinions of men are formed in the family. This is the good, let us now turn to the evil side; the domestic scene, such as Xenophon relates it, supposes, on the one hand, virtue in the man, ignorance and humility in the woman : our educations bestow neither virtue nor humility. Far from being able to support our argument by the authority of Xenophon, we must come to the conclusion that the most perilous time for a woman is the period when the passions of her husband insinuate themselves into her heart, and alter her character. If these passions be want- ing in nobleness and probity, and if the woman have no other arms than her innocency, she is lost. Nothing of what she has been taught can defend her — she will fall without a contest, she will be vilified without suspecting her degradation. And what then becomes of the powers of in- nocence ? Answer, you who oppose them with so much audacity, and for so many ages, to the seductions of the senses, of vanity and of fortune. The education which most husbands give at the present day to their wives, is a spectacle which I would wish to place beneath the eyes of all mothers. This young girl, without experience, almost without ideas, whom you give to a man she scarcely knows; if she be handsome, passes in a few hours from submission to sovereignty ; from calm- ness of the soul, to high excitation of the senses. Her hus- band is inebriated by her caresses, he is amorous, he is BY THE HUSBAND. 65 jealous, he is furious ; he now labours to destroy, at once, the innocence of his wife, and her earher affections — to isolate her from the world, and even from her mother. He labours to this end with eagerness, without considering the evil which he does to himself; the effervescence which in- toxicates him, and which disturbs his reason, is manifested by extravagance and frenzy. Oh ! he is ready to ruin him- self for her — to sacrifice his life, his honour, to her — she is not his companion, she is his idol — like to a mistress or an opera-dancer, whom one covers with cashmeres, insults, adores, pays, and of whom one becomes satiated. The young wife, incapable of knowing how much there is humi- liating in these brutal passions, smiles at her triumph, and accustoms herself to these violent emotions, which are so shortly to escape from her. Amidst this life of dissipation and caprice, the perceptions become sharpened, and the soul evaporates. Alas ! nothing now remains of that innocent girl, but a frivolous woman, running from visit to visit, an object of pity and of adora- tion. Music and dancing already occupy the place of thought — then come dress, and the theatres — then the gossip of the world — then vain desires and vain pleasures ; and, at the end of all this, a void, the most frightful void. What a mode of life ! one would be inclined to think that intelligence was bestowed upon her merely that she might rise in the morning, dress, and chatter all day. It was well worth while to combine with so much care, these artistical talents, with the innocence of a child, in order to offer up to the world one victim more— a charming, an adorned victim — and that is all. But we approach the conclusion. The first acts of the drama are played, and all the scenes w^hich compose it ter- minate in the same catastrophe; to the sighs of love will shortly succeed the cries of despair — the passion of the hus- band has cooled — the illusions of the wife vanish. This woman, of whom he made a mistress — this woman, whose beauty alone captivated him, this woman, whom he has spoiled, depraved, and idolized ; whose caprices he adored, w^hose passions he had excited — this woman, whom he had intoxicated with adulation and pleasures, he no longer wants her, he is tired of her : yesterday he loaded her with presents, to-day he complains of his embarrassments, and speaks of 5 66 EDUCATION OF WIVES. economy; she is no more to him than a housekeeper, a being fit to take the orders of the master, and to be reckoned with the servants. Ah ! to be obliged to descend from the throne, — to be treated as a despised woman, afier having been treated as an idolized mistress ! Sad day, which sooner or later arrives without having been foreseen. Then supervene bitterness, hatred, ven- geance, contempt, adultery. Adultery, which brings in its train scandal and dishonour. The wife separates herself from her husband, or she deceives him. The heart requires love. Youth will seize again its lost emotions ; one seeks that other half of oneself of which one has dreamt, and the depravation commenced by the husband is completed in the arms of a lover. After a similar picture, is it necessary to say that it is not the woman who should be instructed bv means of the husband, it is the husband who should be regenerated by means of the wife. What, then, is to be done I Restore women to the complete sense of their dignity, and teach them to distinguish true love from the fury which usurps its name. The first point is that they should be loved and respected ; that they should on no account consent to the deplorable part imposed upon them by our brutal passions ; that they should learn how degrading is the homage which would transform them into instruments of caprice and of pleasure. I will dare to say it, there is no possible progress for civilization so long as women have not made us blush at those gross assimilations which even good company thus enumerates: — Wine, dinners, women, horses — sad catalogue of the pleasures of the brute by which man blasts the very bosom which bore him. But how can they make us blush at such things, if they do not blush themselves ? Let the most exquisite delicacy be, then, in a young girl, the light of her modesty, — as in a young woman it is the evidence of her dignity. It is not the grimaces of prudery, it is virtue that I require. In rendering seduction more difficult, I would render love purer and more ideal ; I would leave it the illusions, which charm our youth, and introduce it for the first time into the world of the beautiful and the infinite. Thus should be accomplished the education of girls ; EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 67 and as to the education of the husband, we need not be under any apprehension — it will form itself simply and natuallv from the virtues of the wife. CHAPTER IX. OP SOME MODIFICATIONS NECESSARY IN THE EDITCATION OF GIRLS. "On doit inculquer a chaque moment dans la tete d'une jeune fille, qu'elle est destinee a faire le bonheur d'un homme ; son genre d'education doit etre de lui en inspirer le gout en y attachant sa gloire." Madame Bernikr, Discours sur V Education des Femmes. Marriage is accused of all the evils which I have sketched — an unjust accusation ; marriage is good ; it is our methods of education which are bad. Whatever, there- fore, would amend these methods would render the state of marriage more happy. What is required ? only a very simple thing, but which has not yet been tried ; viz. to ac- custom us from our childhood to all the thoughts and senti- ments which are to fill up our lives. I would wish above all to fix the attention of young girls on the choice of their husbands ; educate them for this choice : impress deeply in their souls the characters of true love, in order that they may not be deceived by whatever has only its appearance. Are they not made for loving? Should not this happi- ness extend itself throughout their whole life ? Is it not at the same time their supremacy, their power, and their des- tiny? And yet the old conventual prejudices which abhor love still subsist in families. Mothers forget, in the presence of their children, the perils with which this narrow educa- tion surrounds them, the illusions to which their ignorance gives birth, and the weaknesses which follow these illusions. To open the soul of young girls to true love is to arm them against the corrupting passions which usurp its name; and here the advantage is twofold, for by exalting the loving faculties of the soul, you in some measure paralyse the tu- multuous passions of the senses. Examine the first choice of a young girl. Amongst all the qualities which please her in a lover, there is perhaps not one which would be suitable in a husband ; and, in fact, 68 ON THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS. she frequently sees little else of him she loves than the beauty of his form, or perhaps the elegance of his dress. Is not this, then, the most complete condemnation of our systems of education? From an apprehension of too strongly af- fecting the heart, we conceal from women all that is worthy of love ; we allow the sense of the beautiful which exists in them to be lost among futilities ; the outside pleases them ; what is within is unknown. When, therefore, after having been united for six months, they look for the delightful young man whose presence charmed them, they are often very much surprised to find in his place only an impertinent fel- low or a ibol. Yet this is what is commonly termed in the world a marriage of inclination. It is triie, that in the present state of our manners, young girls are seldom called upon to make their choice; their imagination is occupied, not with the husband, but with marriage. Whence it results that most girls have marriage for their object, without thinking much about the husband. On their part, the parents seek to match the fortunes; their aim, they say, is to secure the futurity of their children, and, absorbed with this idea, they treat of marriage as of an affair of commerce — as of a thing which gives a position in the world — forgetting that it is likewise a thing which causes happiness or unhappiness. Thus our foolish wisdom has succeeded in detaching love from marriage : we have made a bargain by which girls purchase the power of regu- lating the expenses of their household, of going out alone, and of seeking in the circle around them that half of their soul, that ideal being which youth dreams of, and will possess. For, how much soever our educations may succeed in suppressing our inclinations, they cannot destroy them ; man and woman are the same being, whom nature unconquer- ably tends to unite by love. The actual system is then but a deception ; it removes the danger from the paternal roof, to transport it to that of the husband. Singular education ! the chief aim of which is to throw upon another the heavy load of our want of loresight. Thus, in the present state of matters, young girls are un- able to make a proper choice for want of experience, and the choice of parents is almost always bad for want of the EDUCATION OF MOTHERS OF FAMILIES. 69 recollection of what is required in youth. We are placed between two evils, without any chance of good. In order to extricate ouselves from such a deplorable position, there is but one means, which consists of giving at the same time to girls more freedom and more enlighten- ment. I would imprint in their souls an ideal model of all human perfections, and teach them to subject their inclina- tions to the guidance of this model. While destroying their state of half-slavery, I would accustom them to rely upon their own powers, which is of more importance as regards the stability of their virtues than is generally supposed ; by developing in them the innate sense of moral beauty", I would accustom them to seek for it every where, and to prefer it before all. Love need then, no longer be feared; this flame, which consumes, would then be no inore than the flame which enlightens and vivifies. We shall examine farther on, how the sense of the beautiful, this powerful spring of moral, education, is to be developed : I say developed, for the sentiment exists within us; it is this which colours the anticipations and desires of youth, and which leads us in our youthful games and friend- ships to imagine things of which we never see the reality. It is this which causes the poet and the painter to seize nature in her brightest, her most touching, and lively impressions. It is this, in fine, which, on reading Plutarch, transports the child into the regions of heroic life, when, having scarcely left his mother's lap, he despises the crimes by which thrones are acquired, and worships the virtue which leads to death. CHAPTER X. EDUCATION OF MOTHERS OF FAMILIES GENERAL PLAN OF THE WORK. ■^ " Une femme qui pense, fi done, autant vaut un homme qui met du rouge. La femme doit rire, toujours rire ; cela sufRt a sa noble mission sur la terre, cela suffit pour maintenir en joyeuse humeur I'auguste roi de la creation." Lessing, Emilia Galotii. I HAVE shown the faults of our prevailing modes of edu- cation, and yet I have proposed no general reform. School 70 EDUCATION OF MOTHERS OP FAMILIES. education, family education, education of convents, old methods, new nnethods, no matter, I admit them all, in order at a later period to assure their reform ; but this first education being completed, I take charge of the pupil, and mine begins. The young girl has quitted the paternal roof — she is now a wife and mother — her solicitude leaves her no repose; while seeking every where a method and guidance, a secret instinct reveals to her, that in order to render herself fit for the education of her child, she must recom- mence her own. The first thought which she should be led to entertain, is to occupy herself a little less about that which she ought to teach, and a little more about that with which she ought to inspire him. Many other persons may render him learned, she alone can render him virtuous. Let the mother take charge of the soul, in order to be able, at a future day, to direct the intellect ! This is the essential point, or to express it better, it is the summary of the education of mothers of families. The ob- ject is, in fact, to cause women to emerge from the narrow circle to which society confines them, and to expand their thoughts over all the subjects which may make us better and happier. It is a religious, moral, and philosophical world which is opened out to them. Their mission consists in introducing our childhood into this world as into a holy temple, where the soul looks into itself, and knows itself to be in the pre- sence of its God. Let us for a moment consider so serious a question. The thoughts of man are not circumscribed, like those of animals, within the limits of this globe. They leave the visible for the invisible, and freeing themselves from the regions of matter, ascend to lose themselves in the contem- plations of infinity. There lies all our greatness, since there only can we find the principle of our being, the ground- work of our morality, the ultimate wherefm-e of this our fleeting existence. Truth springs from the immaterial world ; it is the torch of another life which throws its fight upon this. Thus, our soul is drawn towards this unknown world by the very necessities of our earthly existence. God has GENERAL PLAN OF THE WORK. 71 placed in it the sources of truth and virtue, with the reve- lation of a better life. The'study of these great phenomena forms what Socrates would have termed the important knowledge. It is the proper subject of this book — the knowledge of ourselves, which leads to the knowledge of God. The knowledge of the moral laws of nature, which leads to the knowledge of truth. Man may attain this knowledge, since he aspires to it. It is the promised land of which we have already a glimpse. It will be granted to us, because it is promised and con- ceived; and I dare to say, that those who read this book with attention will have advanced a step forward in the career. One cannot inquire into so rich a subject without participating in its riches. It is sufficient to reflect upon it, in order for us to become greater; and the soul which enters fully into its consideration springs up again more bright and more pure. Objections may be raised respecting the depth of the sub- ject, the weakness of our nature, and the mere passive re- sistance which it opposes to meditations which may over- power it; and people do not perceive that true philosophy is full of light, and that the philosophers alone are in dark- ness. On account of the barbarous and pedantic language in which philosophy is enveloped, it is the science of but few; though by the very foundation of its thoughts, it is an universal science. Is it not philosophy which unites man to man, and the human race to God 1 These questions, so vast, of annihilation and eternity, which absorb the medi- tations of the philosopher, how often have I not found them occupying the villager in his cot, and the soldier in his bivouac ! I know no metaphysics more transcendental than those which are formed in a camp, on the eve of a great battle. What silent contemplations of infinite worlds — what thoughts directed towards invisible creations — what ardent prayers towards that celestial life which was forgotten yes- terday, but which is now something more than a hope ! If a ball strikes me to-morrow, all these luminaries will shine below me ! God reveals himself to those about to die ; and from amidst this crowd, which no religion humanizes, no instruction softens ; from this impure sink of debauchery, of crimes, and of impiety, arises all at once an immortal 72 EDUCATION OF MOTHERS OF FAMILIES. thought, which penetrates to the depths of the soul, and transports it to the bosom of God. Thus the meditations of Socrates, when expiring, may be shared by an entire army. What do I say? they animate every creature possessed of a soul; the weakest plunge into them with delight; they experience the presentiment and the want of them. When at fifteen years of age, in our solitary walks, we dream of an ideal life of virtue and love ; when death appears to us beautiful, and we desire it, as a precursor of happiness ; when the word for ever be- comes intelligible, and when on this earth where all passes away, all dies, we speak of loving eternally, it is a veil which falls, it is a new world which is discovered, the per- ception of the beautiful — the sentiment of the infinite, place themselves between us and heaven, like the steps which lead up to it. What young girl has not pictured to herself a divine image of the man she could love I Modesty yields to love, only because she dreams of him in heaven; she sanctifies him on earth by eternity. Enter into our churches, observe the crowds prostrated before the altars; the most humble communicate with the invisible world. Oh ! could you but hear their prayers, the questions addressed to Heaven, the anxiety for their future destinies, the ardent supplications, asking for faith and light, you would be able to determine all the questions of which the doubts agitate piiilosophers — you would be certain of your immortality. "Each individual is a philosopher with- out knowing it, and, if we may so say, in spite of himself,'* says a sensible and profound writer.* Kant, in his cabinet at Kcenigsberg, passed his life in meditating upon the soul, and upon duty ; his servant, the old Lampe, had doubtless, likewise, his mind disturbed by the same problems. While brushing his master's coat in the garden, he thinks that Kant was already advanced in life, that some day he would die — soon, perhaps. What will become of M. h Professeur, so learned and so good, after his death? Will all be over with him when he lies in the cemetery? What the minister preaches to us on Sundays, is it quite true? What will M. Je Professeur do with all his science in the other world ? and I, shall I see him there ? It seems to me, that when * M. Doudans, in an article inserted in the Journal des Debate. GENERAL PLAN OP THE WORK. 12 one has never done harm to any one . Then came the breakfast hour, and the good man thought about other matters. Do you not admire how the great philosopher and his humble domestic, occupied with the same thoughts, arrive at the same conclusions'? the one, by the strength of his transcendental genius, the other, by the simple convic- tion of a good conscience. But the crowd knows not these anxieties which disturb some few. And I will reply to you, that amongst the lowest and most stupid beings there is not one to whom, at some period, these questions — What am I? whence do I come ? and whither do I go ? have not presented themselves. God and nothingness, fatality and duty, are great ques- tions which agitate all of us, according to the scope of our passions and our intellectual acquirements. Philosophy and religion are present to resolve them. These vigilant sentinels warn the human race that there exists a something beyond that which is seen. A few days ago, a frivolous and coquettish young girl, who was for the moment absorbed in grief, on account of the death of her betrothed, said to me, " Pray sir, tell me of some good books which treat of the immortality of the soul ; not that I have any doubts on the subject, but, since he has quitted the earth, I wish to feed upon this idea, and to be better able to comprehend it." Then, with a deep sigh she added, " Men are very happy in being able to give themselves up to those studies which tend to impart con- solation ; it is, I believe, what you term philosophy." Thus, misfortune and death maintain our souls in a salu- tary activity ; they are the great teachers of the human race ; they dematerialize our thoughts and spiritualize our affections. And, in truth, I know no example which better expresses the misery caused by our systems of education than the melancholy reflections of this young girl upon herself. In our foolish pride we keep for ourselves this philosophy, which is to us a college ornament, when it would be better worth while to cause it to penetrate into the soul of women. From this book of consolation and of love — this living book, always open to weakness and to misfortune, it would be delightful, O Socrates ! O Fenelon ! to seize again your most sublime inspirations, freshened by the tenderness of 74 EDUCATION OP MOTHERS OF FAMILIES. our mothers, and the love of our wives ! Let us, then,- hasten to pour its light into their hearts, in order that they may be able to diffuse its cheering rays over our whole life. ^ What a destiny is that of women! Equally a prey to all*" the seductions of pleasure, and to all the anguish of grief; as lovers, as wives, as mothers, without any other arms than their weakness, who is there that cannot understand how important it is to give them an enlarged and solid education, which might afford them the resource of a virtue more powerful than the griefs which await them, and than the seductions which threaten them ? In former times religion instructed them from the pulpit; but, by concentrating its morality in penitential practices, it presented more inducements for repentance than for the practice of virtue. The Massillons, the Bourdalous, the Bossuets, laboured to stifle the passions — they should have learned how to direct them. Far from sustaining humanity, they crushed it beneath the yoke of a violent doctrine which they lighted up with the flames of hell. And see, their greatest aim was not to make us live honestly in the world, but to tear us from it. At their voice Lavailliere covered herself with the sackcloth of penitence, Chevreuze and Longueville fled to the deserts to hide their faults, and queens raised temples, founded monasteries, and went to humble themselves beneath their roofs. Certainly, lofty moral truths, unceasingly repeated before the altar, in the presence of God, have not been fruitless for humanity ; and if they were separated from all the superstitions in which they are shrouded, and from the cruel doctrines of an eternity of suffering, and the ven- geance of an implacable divinity, women might yet, at the present day, derive from them strong and powerful instruc- tion ; but solitude is in the temple, priests alone watch in it, listening to the distant noise of a world which will no longer tolerate their ideas of bygone ages. Formerly, people sought them because they walked foremost in the paths of knowledge; at the present day, the people wait for them in its turn, because they have remained behind. It is thus that moral instruction escapes them. What a sad reaction of our excesses ; theological impiety has brought GENERAL PLAN OF THE WORK. 75 about the neglect of religion, and the neglect of religion delivers us over to all the vanities of our intellect. What now remains to women 1 Some devotional prac- tices and mass on Sundays; no moral or religious guidance, for I cannot call by this name the brief and circumscribed instruction confided to the memory in the earliest years of life, and which, not being supported, either by the convic- tion of parents, or by family example, holds almost the place of a dream in the dream of life. Yet the religious impression exists, and will suffice, joined to maternal love, wholly to reanimate the soul. These two sentiments, which are unchangeable in women, are, at the present day, the last hope of civilization ; and while the present systems of education tend to weaken them, our aim shall be to fortify them, and to re-establish their power. This power is alto- gether moral ; we will first seek it in the thorough study of our material and spiritual faculties. We shall have to mark the line that separates them, to indicate those which belong to earth, and those belonging to heaven ; an im- portant distinction, which has been hitherto too much neglected, and the ignorance of which plunges us into dark- ness. Before this line be drawn, you are oppressed by the vain phantoms of materialism, you are overwhelmed by doubts, but the distinction being once established, the phantoms vanish, the darkness disperses, and the consoling truth clearly appears. We will point out how this separation, so simple, suffices to confirm the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, not as dogmas, but as facts at once independent of the illusions of thought and the forms of reasoning. There is a pleasure in seeing such lofty truths disengage themselves from the invisible world, at once luminous and undeniable. These truths make their way, it is true, by means of terres- trial sensations, but without originating from them. We shall find in this inquiry a new knowledge of our being, and consequently, new elements of education, The child presents itself to the mother as a divine creature, whose intellectual powers it is not merely necessary to cul- tivate, but whose soul must also be developed; and this soul the mother is acquainted with ; she knows where to carry the light, where to address her lessons. Others will sufficiently provide the vessel with sails and rigging; she 76 EDUCATION OF MOTHERS OF FAMILIES. alone must take her place at the helm with the pilot, fur- nishing him with the compass, and hefore launching him out upon the ocean of the world, show him in the heavens, the star which should guide him. From the study of man, we will pass to the search of truth. Truth is opposed to error, and upon error depend the barbarity and the crimes which desolate the world. Our object is to examine the moral, philosophical, poli- tical, and religious questions which concern man, and to bring them back to truth, by submitting them to an immu- table authority. Thus we shall arrive at the most important part of this book — the moral study of the Gospel. I say the most im- portant, for all education, which has not religion for its basis, renders man incomplete, and succeeds at best but in forming an intelligent animal. It is a mistake to suppose that man is great by means of science; he is only great — he is only man, by the knowledge of God. Beyond this we only see his circumscribed life, and a philosophy without light. Wherefore does such universal egotism exist? Whence arises the love of gold? the love of power? the love of vengeance, instead of the love of humanity ? Whence arises so much ambition, which engenders so many crimes ? Whence so many murders and adulteries? and so much ingratitude, calumny, and depravation ? From two causes, error and misery; and there is only one remedy — religion. You may well agitate and torment yourself, work your brains, to supply the place of this divine power. You may vainly interrogate all the sciences of which you are so proud ; the figures of algebra, and the lines of geometry, these vast unfoldings of the intellect will bestow on you nothing more than the knowledge of a learned man. In order to form a man, the soul must be developed, and when- ever the soul appears it seeks its God. Thus we always return to this so much despised thing — religion. The idea of God alone renders man complete. Such is the sketch of the plan of these studies. We address it to mothers, not that they may merely intrust its principles to the memory of their children, but that they should impress them freely and deeply into the soul : their mission is not a teaching, it is an influence ; it is not merely THE GRANDMOTHER, 77 knowledge which they should impart, it is inspiration and direction which they should give. In the bosom of his family the child receives a certain number of ideas which belong to his age, his nation, and the position which he holds in it. These ideas are more or less elevated, more or less true, — some only express political or religious pas- sions, others are only prejudices or superstitions ; no matter; while immersed in this atmosphere, he is impregnated with it; he becomes whatever he sees or hears, a royalist or jacobin, a fanatic or an atheist; just as in former times one was of the Armagnac or Bourguignon party, of that of the League or of the Navarrese. The impressions of childhood may render one enthusiastic for a party, for an interest, rarely for truth. Do you not perceive that here lies the source of all our errors, and that from hence also may originate all our virtues ? It is, then, into the family that education should be carried : truth ought to appear to us in the same light as duty did at Sparta, and the love of country at Rome. Truth, this great mover of modern nations, the whole world is promised to it; and, as we have seen a people of heroes produced by the love of country, so shall we see the civi- lization of the human race produced by the more vast and sublime love of truth. CHAPTER X. THE GRANDMOTHER. "Women, who comprehend well their rights and duties as mothers, cannot certainly complain of their destiny. If there exist any inequality between the means of happiness accorded to the two sexes, it is in favour of women." Mad. Sirey, vol. i. p. 123. " The mother who lives in her children and her grandchildren, has, among the human race, the beautiful privilege of not knowing the sorrows of old age." Mad. Sirey, vol. i. p. 133. The education of women tends chiefly towards the intel- lect; but it is to the cultivation of the moral sense, to the cultivation of the heart, that it should be directed. Were we to enlighten the heart, virtues only would remain, and, instead of women, we might have angels. 78 THE GRANDMOTHER. And it is, indeed, to this defect of education, that the chief misfortunes of women may be traced. Maternal ten- derness, for example, is full of deceptions, which, though taking their rise in cold selfishness, we never fail of attribut- ing to love. Enlighten the soul of the poor mother, and you will cause transports of delight to spring from the very feeling which now overwhelms her. A woman grows old ; the homage of the world forsakes her; but she has children; she nurses, she educates, she basks in the warm rays of, these young creatures, who are born to love her. Nevertheless, there is an hour marked out both by nature and the Gospel, in which the child must leave its mother ; the son to receive his wife, the daughter to re- ceive her husband. The maternal nest is no longer large enough ; the birds fly away, the brood is dispersed. Other rocks are wanting to the eagle, other shades to the dove, other loves to all. It is then that the poor mother, oppressed with feelings hitherto unknown, finds her task finished, per- ceives her own isolation, sees a blank in the future, and knows no longer how to employ life. Here indeed is a profound evil, though hitherto unnoticed by moralists ! This feeling, which devours her, and which has not a name; this feeling, which saddens her in beholding her daughters happy and in a happiness which springs not from herself, cannot be jealousy, cannot be selfishness, or even regret of the past; and yet we detect in it every appearance of them. The saloons of Paris yet resound with the history of Madame de Bal . . . , a pious and charitable woman, re- splendent in all the graces of second youth, who threw her- self into a cloister to avoid witnessing the happiness of her two daughters, whose education she had carefully directed. "What !" said she, " strangers to supplant me in my daugh- ters' affections ! Twenty years of tenderness and devotion to be effaced by a few days of delirium ! To be left thus alone, to be forgotten by my children, and to have my sufferings even held in derision ! I dare not interrogate myself; my feelings affright me; they resemble envy. But can I be jealous of the affections of my daughters?" A sad question, but one which almost every mother might address to herself, at the fatal hour when a husband separates her from her daughter. Let us leave the unreflecting to accuse nature of a monstrosity, the whole cause of which is to be THE GRANDMOTHER. 79 found in our false system of education. We have pointed out the evil ; we must now look for the remedy. The evil is in believing that the mission of the mother has terminated the moment that she is deprived by some stranger of the attentions of her daughters. For the remedy, — it consists in the discovery of the true mission of the grandmother, that is to say, in the discovery of all the joys which she can diffuse, of all the benefits which she can confer. It is but too true, that marriage weakens, at least in ap- pearance, those sweet ties which unite the daughter to the mother. But how shall this be otherwise? Unhappy mothers ! before you accuse Nature, have courage to ask yourselves what you have done to prepare for a revolution so complete in the existence of this feeble creature ? Yester- day she was a timid child, living only in the affection of her mother; to-day she is a woman, who imparts happiness, and whose caprices are deified by love. The young girl obeyed, the young wife commands; and, in this rapid trans- ition from innocence to pleasure, from submission to em- pire, you w^onder that vanity, delirium of the senses, pride, and, more than these, love, have wrought their accustomed effects. But this evil, which you deplore, and which it had been so easy to avert, is but a transient effervescence. The mother will soon recover her daughter; she will find her again, happy or unhappy, (no matter,) she will find her daughter again, to console, to enlighten, to love her. Con- solations and love are the life of the maternal heart. Thus then the mother, far from being transformed into an useless and passive being, after the marriage of her children, becomes the guardian angel of her new family. Careless of the charms which yet remain to herself, freed from domestic anxieties, having renounced the world and its frivolities, she finds herself again in the midst of her be- loved ones, whom she enriches with the treasures of her experience. She alone understands attentive devotetiness, kind foresights; she alone possesses that goodness which nothing exhausts, and that unfailing tact, which, taking its rise in love, can comprehend or divine all griefs. See her at her daughter's side on every approach of indisposition ; how she foresees the accidents, how she guards against the uneasinesses, the disgusts, that threaten her! What tender 80 THE GRANDMOTHER. confidings ! What sweet ministrations ! What cares, which she alone knows the exact moment to alleviate ! At length come the first pains, which cause the young husband to fly, but which chain the mother more closely to the bed of her daughter. There is also another woman, who awaits the new-born and handles it with indifference ; it is the nurse, who only acts in her vocation. But with what transport does the grandmother receive the innocent creature ! how she broods over it with her looks, how she cherishes it with her love ! Oh, she is doubly a mother ; she has recovered both the emotions of her youth and the joys of maternity. There she is, all tenderness, bustle, and trepidation ; she watches over the child's slumbers, comprehends its least cries, anticipates all its wants, and divines all its instincts. The young wife, exhausted and suffering, scarce dares, in her inexperience, to touch the fragile creature; but the grandmother, radiant with joy, raises it to the maternal bosom, and, having placed it at this source of life, brings back the distracted husband to the bed of suffering, and in the fulness of maternal feeling thus doubled, pours over these three beings the treasures of her benediction. Oh, then all pains are forgotten, and, as in the first days of the Creation, the family prospers and increases under the eye of the Almighty. Then come the physical cares, necessary alike to the health of the mother and to the life of the child r missions of prudence and devotedness, which demand a long experience aided by much love, and which a young wife can learn only from her mother. For instance, there is not a wife, who, at the cradle of her babe, does not give way to the most restless inquietude. The slightest acci- dent throws her into a fever, the feeblest cry alarms her. Hearken to her; she is recounting sad stories, and, in the vivacity of her anguish, becomes exhausted without com- fort to herself or good to the child. Not so wdth the grand- mother ; she is less alarmed, because she has more expe- rience ; and then she is acquainted with the symptoms, she has secrets of her own for alleviating them ; then she is patient, she can wait ; and it is a fact worthy of attention, that, in all the ills of infancy, Nature calls more for our patience than for our remedies. The best physician of in- fancy is patience. Let us cite another example. It happens sometimes that THE GRANDMOTHER. 81 the pains of nursing prevent the young mother from suck- ling her child. Here it is that the grandmother is a power- ful assistant. She shows the admirable harmony between the wants of the infant and the health of the mother, and that the health of the mother is every thing to the child. In fine, she shows her, that her happiness consists in the per- formance of her duties ; and the result of all these lessons is the grand one, that experience, like virtue, always leads us back to nature. Such is the almost divine mission of the grandmother. It is to accomplish this mission, that God has endowed women in the decline of life, with so much courage and sensibility. In proportion to the wretchedness of her, who, forgetting her lost freshness of youth, and laden with finery, runs after the vain homage that flies her, is that woman's glory, who, though still beautiful, is seen surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Thus the woman between forty-five and sixty, instead of withering away in solitude, becomes the soul of a new society. Every young house- hold claims her and makes a holiday of her presence, for wherever she turns her steps, moral power and tender con- solations are in her train. It is thus that families, true to the laws of nature, find, within themselves, their pleasures, their glory, their instruction and their support. All is linked together in the moral, as it is in the physical world ; and the grandmother is not only the joy, but the light of child- hood. It is through her that the daughters resemble their mother, and that the sons, in marrying, carry into the con- jugal mansion the virtues which they have practised under the maternal roof. When the immortal Richardson sought to trace, in the character of Harriet Byron, the ideal type of a perfect woman, he gave to her for her instructress her grandmother Mrs. Shirley, remarking on all occasions, that the deceased mother of Miss Byron had been an excellent wife. This admirable genius wished us to understand that the grand- mother is a second mother, and that her vivifying influence can exercise itself over two successive generations. And, on this subject, we remember to have heard it said by Madame Campan, that, of all the young girls confided to her care, the best was one who had been brought up by her grandmother. This amiable child was remarkable for 6 82 OF THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION tender piety, order, submission, attentive obedience, and that gentleness, which, if it be not the first virtue in a woman, is perhaps her most powerful means of happiness. jMot indeed that we mean to insist on the education given by a grandmother as being better than that given by a mother, but only that the grandmother can best inspire and direct the mother in each successive care required by in- fancy and youth ; delightful cares, which ward off peril and lead to virtue by the path of pleasure and example; cares, which all women understand, and of which it has been given to no man to comprehend the charm and possess himself of the sweet secrets. We will enter into no details on this part of education : Jean Jacques Rousseau has ex- hausted it; but what we shall never be weary of repeating, is, that the heart of a wife, the heart of a mother, is the strongest, the most disinterested, and the most ardent, upon earth ; that it can support all things except seeing itself reduced to imbecility and oblivion, all things save isolation, abandonment, and indifference. From all this two conclusions are to be drawn : the first, that women are not unhappy in growing old, except when they misunderstand their twofold mission of mother and grandmother ; the second, that society, in the present day, shaken even to its foundations, can only be re-established by means of the family, and that the family itself cannot acquire true elevation except by the maternal influence. CHAPTER XI. OP THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION OF CHILDREN, AND OF ITS PROGRESS. "C'est merveille combien Platon se montre soigneux eu ses lois, de la gayete et passe-tems de la jeunesse, et combien il s'arrete a leurs courses, jeux, chansons, saults et danses: desquelles il dit que I'antiquite a donne la conduite et le patro- nage aux dieux memes." Montaigne, Essais. At the moment of commencing the education of mothers of families, I perceive that their solicitude is awakened. They inquire what instruction I intend for their sons? how, and by whom this instruction will be imparted to them? shall they go to college ? learn Greek and Latin, mathe- OF CHILDREN, AND OF ITS PROGRESS. 83 matics and chemistry? shall they follow the ancient or the new methods? In the present state of their minds, all is perilous, ignorance as well as science, the austerity of mas- ters as well as the laxity of principles, — all, even teaching which threatens to introduce into the schools the violent doctrines by which society is divided. Before answering these questions, it is important to ascer- tain the changes which have taken place at the same time in the discipline of families and of colleges. The times are not very remote when the severity of fathers encouraged the severity of the teachers; the pupil then saw nothing around him but severe countenances, and hands armed with rods. Every where there existed the abuse of force, and the forgetfulness of humanity. All the forms of despotic governments, and even its infamous punishments, were applied to education. Colleges had then official floggers, and thus an executioner was introduced among the classes of children. But at the present day all is changed ; rods are no longer scattered about our schools; the gifts of sovereigns no longer serve to procure instruments of torture.* The rod and starvation have ceased to be the moral powers of edu- cation, and the professors, who are now chosen from among fathers of families, no longer treat our children in the same way as criminals are treated in the public square. The source of these reforms springs altogether from the ameliorations in domestic life. In proportion as paternal severity has diminished, scholastic cruelties have ceased. Under our new regime, the tyrannical power of fathers has decreased, like that of kings, of which it was the image ; but what we have lost in despotism we have regained in happiness. Husbands are no longer despots, kings are no longer absolute, and fathers deign to love their children ! Is it, then, so great a misfortune that austerity should dis- appear, and that we should find in its stead the laugh, the games, and the songs of love? Would you wish to enjoy all the delights of so sweet a scene, enter the garden of the Tuileries on a summer's day at noon. A few solitary loungers appear here and ihere, and are soon lost sight of in the avenues ; but, then, on all * Louis XI. having placed his name at the head of the subscribers to the college of Navarre, his subscription was appropriated to the purchase of rods. 84 THE FATHER. sides are seen groups of children, commodiously and grace- fully dressed, running, dancing, singing, or skipping with the lively and simple grace which belong only to our early years. Charnning creatures ! they fill with joy these long avenues, in which they appear near their mothers, like happy souls beneath the light of the Elysian fields. Ah ! enjoy these moments so sweet while you may. Good mothers ! Providence of your dear children ! allow beneficent nature to develope their delicate limbs — others will soon adorn their minds and cultivate their intellects, but it is your charge to arm them for the world which already calls for them. From beneath these refreshing shades listen for a moment to that continued noise, which might be compared to the distant rolling of the ocean; it is the city which growls; it is its voice which threatens you. Alas ! poor children. Yet a little while, and they will be cast upon the tempestuous world of which you hear the for- midable agitation ! CHAPTER XII. THE FATHER. " La puissance paternelle est devenue amie de tyrannique qu'elle etoit." Etienne Jouv. It has been asked why we do not call upon the father for the education of the child. Our answer is plain : viz. that in the present state of things, and with a few rare exceptions, the concurrence of the father is almost impossible. How seldom can he find time to watch over these young souls ! Has he not duties to fulfil, and a livelihood to gain ? Is he not a lawyer, merchant, artist, or working man ; and more than all this, is he not a citizen? How, then, amidst the w^orry of aflfairs, and the ambitious calls of fortune, can he be sufficiently at liberty to give to his children those daily instructions and examples which alone can raise them to virtue? The most difficult thing on earth is not merely to do good, but to inspire others, and to cause them to love it. Can man compete with woman in the privilege of patience, and the forbearance of love ? The influence of the father is certainly a good thing THE FATHER. 85 when it is good ! but how rare are the instances in which it can be exerted in all its plenitude. Time and inciinatiQTT. are the two elements which are wanting. It is likewise essentially variable. The woman belongs exclusively to her family; the man belongs to his family and to the com- munity. Every form of government modifies the duties of the father, alters his ideas, and imposes upon him opinions which produce actions. Thus, at the earliest period of the world, in the time of the patriarchs, for instance, the three chief powers of society rested on the head of the father ; he was at the same time pontiff, judge, and king. A more advanced state of civilization deprived the father of these three powers, to bestow them upon the laws. At Athens, at Sparta, at Rome, he was no more than a citizen. Paternal despotism was modified without being softened. At a subsequent period the citizen disappeared, and the feudal power arose. All the power of the father was merged into that of his lord : he was no longer either judge, pontiff, or citizen ; he was master and vassal ; master of the weak, vassal to the strong ; always oppressing or oppressed ; his tyranny extended even to his family, which he separated and lopped off, leaving only one branch to the tree, in order that it might rise the higher ; giving all to the eldest son, — fortune, honour, greatness, titles ; and leaving the others as t;heir heritage, misery, or that anticipated death which is termed celibacy. Thus feudal despotism rendered the father unnatural. Tyranny still governed the world, but it was no longer, as in the time of the patriarchs, tempered by paternal tenderness. It was a tyranny of the master to the servant, by which the family tended to invidualize itself in the first- born, without any other end than the pride of the family name, and the splendour of its head. Such is an epitome of the history of paternity on the earth. Each epoch has a type which represents it. In the heroic period, Agamemnon and his daughter ; in the days of the patriarch, Abraham and his son ; in the days of liberty, Brutus and the scaffold. At a later period the sacrifice continues. Abraham no longer raises his knife upon the mountain, Brutus no longer turns away his face from the bleeding head of his son, the sword ceases to strike, but the father still strikes ; ostracism enters into the family, and the iniquities of the rights of the eldest born obliterate at one 86 THE FATHER. blow two of the softest sentiments of our nature, filial love and fraternfil tenderness. And during this period what becomes of the women ? they lament, they deplore, they understand nothing of these fero- cities of faiih and policy ; their piety so tender, their patriot- ism so devoted, are humbled before Abraham and Brutus; the scaffold and the pile are to them nothing but what they are in fact, barbarities: and from their soul the sublime cry ^escapes, which a great poet has repeated, God would never / have required this sacrifice from a mother I At the present day all is changed : despotism has disap- peared from the family as well as from the state. The father no longer strikes, no longer curses, no longer kills ; he is the protector of his children, not their master nor their executioner. It is a remarkable circumstance that in losing the power of the tyrant, he has lost the desire for tyranny ; and were patriarchal or feudal omnipotence now offered to him, he would decline to use it. The power which arises from love, renders all other power distasteful. These poor children, people now think of rendering them happy. It would appear that the great troubles through which our generation has passed, have taught it not to blast in our condition the only days of pure happiness which are allowed us in our journey through life. This state of things is good ; and yet there are people who see in it a sign of decay, and the efficient cause of all the evils which threaten us. They regret the strong will, the absolute dominion concentrated in the head of the family, which regulated the present by the past, tracing out to each his path, imposing upon each his destiny; a power, the fall of which has occasioned, say they, the fall of all other authorities. Thus speak the friends of despotism, and they publish volumes upon paternal authority, de- manding that it be restored, and attaching to this miracle the repose of kings and the prosperity of nations. It is true, that by depriving the father of his despotic authority, a state of things has been destroyed which pos- sessed a unity, a general order, and great power. It is true, also, that this power has not yet been replaced, and that for want of principles, society seems on the point of being dissolved. But can we hope to re-constitute the THE FATHER. 87 present by the past? You believe in the past, but it belongs to no one, for the sole reason that it is the past. Were you to re-establish the republics of Sparta and of Rome, were you to introduce into your codes the Penta- teuch and the law of the Twelve Tables, you would effect nothing unless you could at the same time re-animate the people of which these institutions were the glory. There are ideas which die with populations, and which can only be revived with them. You require the resurrection of these ideas ; ask, then, also the resurrection of the dead. The father is the representative of society at home; the mother only represents the interior order of the house. The one brings home the cares of public life, the other prepares the pleasures of the domestic hearth. It is the father who should acquire fortune, or provide for the daily sustenance ; it is the mother who should elevate the hearts of her children to the love of God and man. Thus all the func- tions of the father, be he a magistrate, soldier, merchant, tradesman, or mechanic, are exterior and public, and all those of his companion, be she queen or servant, are inte- rior or private ; nature has so ordered it for the happiness of the father, and for the morality of the children. If the soft voice of the mother, if the grace of her gestures, and the sweetness of her look, penetrate into the heart of the child, the manly voice of the father, the seriousness of his manners, his look, are better adapted under difficult circumstances for imposing respect and compelling obedience; they prevent the child from be- coming enervated in the cradle of caresses lavished in the arms and the lap of his mother. The part of the father in the education of his children can then neither be a lesson nor a labour. Let him im- prove his condition by his avocations, let him place his delight in fulfilling his duties as a man and as a citizen, let his actions be always in accordance with his speech, always expressive of generous thoughts, and he will have done more for his children than could the teachers of all the universities in the world. Society has established the education of youth in schools, nature has placed the morality of a people in the family circle. Every day on returning home the father relates what he has seen or heard in the w^orld ; his relations with his work-people, if 88 THE FATHER. ^ he be a master; with the state, if he be a public man; with his work or studies, if he be an artist or hterary man. Then an affectionate exchange of thoughts and sentiments take place between the husband and wife, in which the high questions of morality and polity are considered at proper times. It is thus that the destinies of a country are influenced ; thus are formed, by a sweet intimacy in the effusions of the heart, the opinions of a whole life. What an admirable means of enlightening the conscience of the child, of making him an honest man, a patriot — of raising his soul to the two passions which most strongly move youth, the love of the beautiful and of truth ! This is an easy education, which in no wise alters the habits of life, which exacts no sacrifice, which requires no care, and the vivifying action of which will be exerted over the father as well as the children. And, indeed, what father will dare to praise vice, or even to boast of a bad action, when he knows that each of his words being received into their young minds, may become an opinion, and tend to form the character of his children ? Look at Cato under Sylla, Joan of Arc under Charles VII., Bayard under Charles VIIL, Henry of Na varre under Charles IX., — whence did they derive the virtues which isolated them from the shameful passions of their age, but from these simple family conversations ? But it must not be supposed that the influence of the father is only exerted over his sons. It is through her brothers, if she have any, and especially by her father, that the young girl learns to know the prerogatives of our sex, and how she should one day choose a husband. Our sex possesses strength, the poor child knows it, and she who is so weak already dreams of directing this strength, or of taming it. All her relations with her father teach her, then, the dependence of woman ; but it is a royal dependence which causes itself to be served and obeyed. She has re- course to him in all her wants, she leans upon his arm, she rests upon his bosom, she solicits caresses, and subdues him ; one perceives that she has understood her strength at the same time as her weakness, and this early experience acquired in the family will be the lesson of her whole life. Here concludes what we had to say respecting the influ- ence of the father over the education of children? ' To him OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. 90 belongs the part of bringing beneath the domestic roof the generous influences of society, and of extending them to the human race. It behoves him to modify by positive virtues that which may be too ideal or too exalted in the lessons of the mother. It is his province to furnish his children with that solid nourishment which, according to St. Paul, is to replace the maternal milk. The mission of fathers is to defend the rights of the family in society, and represent the interests of society in the family circle. They should not isolate themselves either from the one or the other, and their task will be worthily fulfilled if they form for society honest men, and for the country good citizens. CHAPTER XIII. OF PUBLIC EDUCATION, AND OF A MIXED EDUCATION. Man is susceptible of three educations, viz. physical, moral, and intellectual education. The first was highly estimated in the political institutions of the ancients. Socrates might be seen passing from the gymnasium to the academy, to accustom his limbs to fa- tigue and his mind to wisdom ; holding himself ready to serve his country either as a magistrate or as a warrior. Among the moderns, gymnastics are no longer a means of defence, it has therefore ceased to be a part of the laws of the state. Having become useless by the omnipotence of artillery, it has been too much neglected as a hygienic means. I know not whether historians, or even physiolo- gists, have ever made the remark, and yet it is impossible that a similar revolution could have been effected without inducing evident changes in the physical constitution of man. Next to physical, comes moral education, which we would intrust to maternal tenderness ; it is the subject of this book : and as regards the education of the intellect, which is the third, it belongs to the professors. Its end is to fertilize thought, whereas the aim of moral education is to vivify the soul, and to call it in to the judgment of our actions. From these three educations, properly conducted and 90 OF PUBLIC EDUCATION, maintained in their just proportions, we see man issue com- plete. Their isolated and superficial developement pro- duces nothing good. A purely physical education tends to elicit the cruelty of the animal or the barbarity of the savage. The two others, exclusively cultivated, may give rise either to religious exaltation and fanaticism, or to the pride of knowledge and to nothingness. The tree of know- ledge and the tree of ignorance bear the same fruit. We will treat of the education of the intellect with refer- ence to the education of the soul. Harmony must be established between them, which is a somewhat difficult matter considering the bad direction given to the studies of youth. It is true that public instruction calls for reform, and that on all sides voices are raised to require freedom of teaching ; but this latter method is full of peril, for while it opens a wide field to the progress of thought, it destroys unity of doctrine, the only power which causes empires to last. Schools, you will say, should be adapted to all opinions, in order that each family may exert its rights. The father has a right to educate his child in the principles which suit him. To which I would reply by the question : Does there exist no superior right to that of the father ? Fenelon has said that one owes more to one's family than to one's self, more to one's country than to one's family, and more to the human race than to one's country. This generous idea was for a long period only a Christian maxim, but which in the soul of Montesquieu became the bond of the political world. " If I knew," said he, *' any thing that would be useful to my country, and which was prejudicial to the human race, I should regard it as a crime." This is the manner in which superior minds un- derstand the principle of rights. This application of the morality of the Gospel to human institutions is the greatest stride which has been made during the last twelve centu- ries, in that indefinite perfectibility of which we must admit the operation, surrounded as we are by its benefits. Whoever regards in this question the isolated interest of the father of a family, will retrograde towards the past, and will make himself the advocate of circumscribed and illiberal ideas. The question at the present day is not only AND OF A MIXED EDUCATION. 91 that of the personal advantage of the family, it is that of the particular advantage of the country, subject to the general good of humanity. Here the gradation of duties becomes the measure of rights, and in expressing the prin- ciple in a more precise manner, I would say, Where duty is, there is right. In conclusion, education is a public affair; to separate it into particular interests is to disturb the order, to injure the general interests, to organize anarchy for the advantage of despotism. It is a terrible law of Providence, eternal and without exception, that from the crowd of anarchists there always arises a master who flatters and who crushes them, after having taught them to obey. The rights being recognised, let us come to the appKca- tion of the principles. What is public instruction? A power which perpetually acts on the political and moral existence of a people. The definition is simple and precise, it does not even leave to government the right of granting an unlimited liberty ; and how could it do so without being wanting to the first of its duties, and giving the people up to all the seductions of an unrestricted license ; to the aberrations and errors of the human mind ? What ! shall the superintendence of government be ex- erted even over the baker, to ascertain the weight and the quality of the bread destined for our corporeal nourishment, and shall this superintendence stop short at the door of our schools ? Can it not assure itself of the amount and the quahty of the intellectual food, of the bread of life, which teachers distribute to our children? To the perils of an unlimited liberty, our adversaries will not fail to oppose the perils of a privileged system of teaching ; the routine, the party spirit, the Jesuitism, which was lately so predominant — the moral and religious indif- ference which predominates at the present day — and the universal demoralization, the consequence of these excesses. We will not attempt to conceal it, these perils are great, they are perhaps as great as the perils of free license : but what can we conclude from this? Nothing in favour of either system. An equal danger appears to condemn them both, whence it results, that it is not from a law upon public instruction, even were it a good law, that we must seek the 92 OF PUBLIC EDUCATION, remedy for the evil. This remedy will be found in the mixture of the two educations, private and public, — it is there, and there only. This is the anchor of safety amidst the storm. Let the child receive then as an out-pupil in the colleges, this scholastic instruction to which so much consideration is attached, but which, however, must ere long be reformed ; let his intellect be awakened, let his memory be stocked ; the soul will be secure, if every evening in the bosom of his family he can hear the voice of his mother, and be influ- enced by her examples. Thus all reverts to the educa- tion of women. We would leave to the colleges the classi- cal, and the almost mechanical instruction of the intellect, neutralizing the vices of this instruction by the sweetest, the most penetrating, and the most durable of all influences. While a mixed education shields us from the perils of public education, it leaves us all its advantages. Your pupil will escape the apathy of solitary studies, and the ennui of a monotonous life. You give exercise to his body and activity to his soul; other young people work and play with him ; he has companions, rivals, a friend ; and this with- out leaving his family, without losing for a day the caresses of his mother ; he makes the trial of life with the genera- tion among which he is to advance himself in the world. Thus all would be obtained, the safety of the child, and the liberty of the family. Fulfil your duties as a man and a citizen, — be a magistrate, soldier, merchant, or agricul- turist, — represent in our Chambers the interests of the country, labour to improve your fortune, — these labours, these duties, far from disturbing your family, serve it as lessons and examples. There is only vice, disorder, ex- treme misery, all that blasts or dishonours, which is incom- patible with the sacred duty of cultivating yourselves the souls of your children. But if you make your house a hell, if you introduce into it disorder and terror, insolent servants, a husband brutal, passionate, a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine ! a wife, either frivolous and coquettish, or else a victim always in tears ! What a picture is this to exhibit to innocent creatures ! Then hasten to remove them from this school of grief; plunge them into the rust of colleges ; let your children at least be rather corrupted by others Than by yourselves. They will one day be sent back to you AND OF A MIXED EDUCATION. 93 crammed with Greek and Latin, without principles, without religion, without love for their parents; but you will at least have gained this, that their indifference will be less painful to you than their contempt. The idea of instructing and elevating the masses belongs to modern times : it opens out new doctrines to the world. The ancient legislators would not have comprehended it ; the legislators of the middle ages would only have seen in it an impiety, as they considered that knowledge ought to belong only to the church. Consequently, no people, up to the present time, has produced all that it might produce. I do not say in wisdom or in virtue; but merely in intelli- gence. This is a sublime spectacle which was wanting on the earth, and which is now preparing for future generations. Happy will the people be if, thus regenerated, they learn to subject their intelligence to morality. This is the highest point of perfection to which man can attain ; and in order to attain it, what is required ? A single evangelical prin- ciple. All that moves us in the beautiful, all that transports us in virtue, all that is generous, all that is heroic, is com- prised in these divine words! Love God and man! God has placed morality in love, in order that it may be within the reach even of the least intelligent. The intelligence may be more or less developed ; but the soul shall be great. Sublime doctrine ! which seeks its disciples in the lowest as well as in the highest grade. And thus this inert crowd, these sterile masses, may raise themselves even to the wis- dom of a Socrates by means of the charity of Jesus Christ. It is their religion which is to vivify the people. They will be just before God. if they love men; and powerful among men, if they love God. Here woman's mission reveals itself. Placed among all classes and every people, out of the sphere of political laws, exempt from our fatal conflicts, alone in the bosom of society, women have remained true to the laws of nature. The worry of affairs does not absorb their thoughts ; they are neither warriors, magistrates, nor legislators ; they are wives and mothers — they are what the Creator has willed they should be. They form one-half of the human race, which, on account of its very weakness, has escaped the corruptions of our power and of our glory. Oh, let them 94 OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. cease to regret that they have no share in these fatal pas- sions ; let them leave to us legislation, the political arena, armies, war ; were they to partake of our fury, who would there be on earth to appease it 1 Herein lies their influence ; here is their empire. As they bear in their bosoms future generations, so likewise do they carry in their souls the destinies of these generations. Let them cause to be heard over the whole world the words of humanity and liberty; let them excite the single sentiment of the love of God and men, and their mission will be accomplished. Armies are required to conquer nations, a moral sentiment alone is required to civilize and to save them. BOOK II. EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE MOTHER OF A FAMILY. CHAPTER I. STUDY OP THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. " Nous ne travaillons qu'a remplir la memoire, nous laissons Tentendement et la conscience vides." Montaigne. " L'Education doit mettre au jour I'ideal de I'individu." Jean Paul Richter. This book comprises the first elements of the education of the soul, and in as far as it depends upon us, the two following books shall develope and complete its exposition. Let us not be alarmed at the apparent dryness of these studies. If the words be severe, the science is divine ; it is exercised by ourselves, and in ourselves, in the depths of our souls — that immortal sanctuary, where all announces to us that we have to meet a God. And we will dare to promise it: every woman, who, with the fervour of a mother and a wife, will accompany us, with the eyes and the heart, in the search of truth, will revive, as if by enchantment, to a new and more compre- hensive life — to loftier ideas — to a love more pure. She .will feel what she has never felt; she will be what she has never been ; not that these studies can add any thing to 'what she is, but they can make her enjoy all that she is. They can vivify in her the sense of the beautiful, and Destow on her that supreme reason which our educations deny her. To develope the soul of woman, in order that woman 96 STUDY OF THE n should be something more than the plaything of our coarse passions; to develope the soul of woman, in order that woman may become in reality that heavenly creature of which we dream in our youth ; to develope the soul of woman, in order that that soul may renew our own. Such is the object and the aim of this book. But we can acquire nothing without labour, not even thought. The intellect sleeps if it be not awakened ; the functions of the body rust if it be not exercised ; even the soul, which exhibits itself with so many charms during infancy, falls into apathy, if it be not repeatedly called to the performance of new works. Its life being derived from God, it is silent when not occupied about God. Then it is that intellect, which becomes expanded among the things of earth, seeks to usurp its empire. It begins by calum- niating reason, that bright ray of the soul, and then finishes by substituting for it argumentations, those aberrations of thought. It goes so far as to deny the soul, in order to take its place, and proudly relying upon the perfectness of the arts, the discoveries of science, the progress of mind and matter, it exclaims, " These are my works : man owes every thing to me: I am the queen of the universe." It is amidst this chaos that we must seek for, and find the soul, in order to raise it : raise the soul — the logical reason of this phrase is full of depth ! To raise or elevate : to restore man to his true place, whence the isolation of his intellect has caused him to descend. What would happen, for instance, if, after having con- founded the faculties of the soul with the faculties of ani- mal intelligence, during a period often centuries, we should only think of cultivating the latter? The soul would be continually overpowered ; there would arise in every direc- tion, intellects, brilliant, but cold and powerless for the achievement of great things: for intellect imparts to us neither the love of country, nor the love of the human race, nor the sentiment of the divinity, nor the sublime devoted- ness of virtue. The morality of the intellect, when it has a morality, is only a calculation applied to ambition. Ob- serve our intelligent and thoughtful youth : they are occu- pied solely with two ideas, liberty and well-being, which are construed by their passions, into license, power, and riches. FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 97 Descend lower among the crowd, you will find it occu- pied with but one object, that of living ; but one thought, that of enriching itself. Thus the soul is absent from all our works, and truth escapes us, for all truth springs from the soul. Some will not fail to reply by adducing the example of a few superior beings, who still live for virtue. One must believe in the spiritual death of the whole human race, if privileged souls did not now and then escape, by the means of maternal grace, from the consequences of our lamentable modes of education. It is not the exceptions which I deny, it is the condition of the mass which I deplore. I grieve for the present, from the remembrance of the past, and from an apprehension of the future. Are we, then, so old as to have forgotten the lamentations of our fathers ? Fifty years ago, the colleges sent out into the heart of Paris, a generation of Spartans. Twenty years ago, the lyceums delivered over to Bonaparte a generation of soldiers: yet more recently, the Jesuits wished to produce a generation of congregationists. Religion was every where wanting — every where the human soul was misunderstood, and the moral sense stifled. Beneath the red cap, the uniform, and the cassock, France saw the same ambitions appear. We had executioners, heroes, and hypocrites. What better could our educations produce? One could not expect a perfect man from those to whom a mere intellect had been given to instruct, or a mere animal to train up. The ancients accomplished great things by pursuing a course directly the reverse. They left the intellect barren, and developed one or two faculties of the soul, thus establishing the power of Sparta, Crete, and Rome, by means of the love of virtue, subordinate to the love of country. The soul once awakened by these two powers, all the human passions were called upon to serve it, and these governments were heroical because their principle was immortal. What is the principle which directs our modern legis- lations? We derive fortune and pleasure, our greatness, and our miseries, from our intellects; man, deceived by his educa- tion, likewise requires from it happiness, as if the happiness 7 98 STUDY OF THE FACULTIES, ETC. of a moral being could emanate from faculties which animals possess in common with him. All power, all happiness, comes from the soul. This bright truth, applied to education, opens out a new era to the civilized world. But this soul, of which the education is so important, what is it ? where are the proofs of its power, the evidences of its superiority, of its immortality ? How can it be recognised amidst earthly passions, and the habits of the material world? The necessity of providing for the wants of the body, naturally directs our attention towards external things, among which w^e are detained by the whole spectacle of nature. But when, abandoning the world of the senses, we try to plunge into the interior world, there to look for our soul — what a chaos ! and what darkness do we not discover! Prolonged contempla- tions can alone accustom our feeble eyes to this search; then all becomes unveiled, w^e break the chains which retain us in this obscure cell, where only the shadow of things is seen, and we again find ourselves beneath the bright canopy of heaven, and in the presence of light. It is then to the search, and to the education of the faculties of the soul, that we consecrate this work. The interest of the subject is immense, or rather herein consists the paramount interest of humanity ; it concerns kings upon their thrones, as w^ell as mechanics in their work- shops. Thus our aim is to examine the different faculties of which the human being is composed — to render to matter that which belongs to matter, and to the mind that which belongs to the mind : to determine, in a word, the qualities which constitute the animal, and the qualities which con- stitute the man ; from this distinction, when once well established, (and it has not as yet been so,) we shall see the elements of our new education arise. » The developement of the intellectual faculties is the pro- vince of the schools. The inspiration of the faculties of the soul, the develope- ment of the love of God and man, is the province of the mother. KNOW THYSELF. CHAPTER II. KNOW THYSELF. " Que sont tous les interets de la terre, que sent toutes les passions, aupres de ce grand interet de I'etre spirituel se cherchant lui meme ?" — Villemain, Melan- ges littiraires. Two things disturb me in commencing the study of man. The brutalization which may cause him to sink to the level of animals, and the intelligence which sometimes raises animals up to his level. I would seize the ends of this chain, and ascertain whe- ther they are connected with each other. I would seek to be acquainted with the phenomena of instinct and of intel- ligence, and to know whether there be any thing else beyond them. I would compare the perception, reflection, judgment, memory, and the will of animals and of man ; to fix w'ith a strong reason the relations which unite them, or the facts which separate them, and that without any other interest — without any other aim — than truth ; having the courage to look it in the face, even were it only to show me the depravations of a Berkeley and of a Cabanis, a phan- tom, or a corpse. Important science ! sole possible basis of a universal morality ! Every man who thinks ought to make an eflx>rt to recognise himself in it, for faith is practicable only after reflection. And in order to prepare myself for this task, I will sup- pose myself to forget all that I know, all that I believe, all that I desire — the apprehension of annihilation, and the delights of immortality. I will seek, in the darkness, for that ray which may give me life, or for that truth which may crush me. But, in the first place, I ask myself who has been able to excite in me a curiosity so sublime? Whence does it arise ? To what does it tend ? Wherefore this uneasiness, which looks beyond all that I can see? Whence this zeal, which constantly carries me towards the beautiful, which I cannot reach? — towards the infinite, 100 OF INSTINCT. which I cannot understand? — towards the perfection, which I cannot possess ? You are astonished at the weak- ness of a creature who cannot resolve these questions ; but I admire the greatness of the soul which can ask them of itself. Let us, then, examine whether this greatness belongs only to man. Let us study the human intelligence in animals which most resemble us, and the animal intelli- gence in those of the human race who approximate more nearly to the brute. Let us compare the instinctive and intellectual phenomena which depend upon the action of the nervous system, with the phenomena of conscience and of reason ; and let us mark, if we can, the precise point at which the influence of the organization stops short, and at which our moral liberty commences. And, from this examination, vou shall decide which was the dupe, Aristippus or Socrates, Dubois or Fenelon; which of the two best understands his true interests, the voluptuary, who lives but in his senses and in his passions, or the sage, who lives in his soul and in the practice of viptue. The education, the polity, the life of individuals and of nations, the entire philosophical knowledge of man, arise from these questions, so vivifying and so vast, that the attempt to resolve them is already to deserve well of the human race. ' CHAPTER III. OF INSTINCT. " II 'est dangereux de trop faire voir a Thoinme combien il est egal aux betes, sans lui raontrer sa grandeur. II est encore dangereux de lui faire trop voir sa grandeur sans sa basesse ; il est encore plus dangereux de lui laisser ignorer Tune et I'autre." Pascal. Instinct is that impulse without reasoning, which de- termines in an invariable manner the character, the habits, and the manners of animals. Each species has its instinct which distinguishes it. Simple instinct, or instinct almost without an admixture of intelligence, shows itself especially in insects. Their existence is so short, that God would not confide to time the care of instructing them. They come, OF INSTINCT. 101 then, upon the earth already taught ; knowing their parts, if one may so speak, and requiring neither lessons nor ex- amples in order to fulfil their destiny. On seeing the stra- tagems, the works, the combats, the attack and defence of these armed multitudes, I felt astonished that the picture has not varied since the commencement of the world; all the different species are at war, and yet one does not anni- hilate the other; one is not more powerful than another. There is in this chaos of destruction and reproduction, in these varieties of powers and instincts, a harmony which regulates, an intelligence which presides over all. One feels that these little joyful or funereal dramas have been composed by the same author, that one hand directs, that it is a single work, of which the entrances and the exits are combined in such a manner as perpetually to last. The unity of God manifests itself even in the wonders of this little world. The foresight of instinct is sometimes twofold in the same insect. The caterpillar lives upon the tree which it Hkes, forms itself a winding-sheet, or buries itself in its chrysalis, changes its form, and reappears with the gorgeous wings of the butterfly. During this long sleep the spirit is metamorphosed as well as the body ; one would say that a master had been to instruct it in its tomb. No appren- ticeship, no trial of its new life, the crawling and destruc- tive insect at once expands its wings, abandons the plant without which it could not have lived, disdains the leaves, its former food, flies from flower to flower, to imbibe a juice which it does not know ; its character, its taste, its habits, all are changed ; it has the life of a bee, of a bird, after having possessed the instinct of a caterpillar. Are there two instincts in the same animal? What be- came of the second during the action of the first ? Does a new organization suffice to determine new habits ? What matters'? all the imaginable explanations of this double phenomenon, whether they be moral or physiological, could only establish this one fact — there is foresight. Instinct is then a foresight ; and further, it is an eternal foresight. The eyes of our children will see the insect with its bright wings burst from its tomb and mount up towards heaven, just as in former days the eyes of Plato saw it, when he regarded it as the emblem of immortality. 102 OF INSTINCT. But instinct produces something more than the strata- gems, the combats, and the character of animals; it has its general laws, which act in a uniform manner upon all organized matter. Such, for example, is maternal love, that energetic sentiment and protecting power by which the most feeble beings are universally guarded at their birth. It is true that this law, which ascends by gradations from the insect up to man, suffers some exceptions, but they are only exceptions, not an abandonment. Where the cares of the mother are wanting, nature is not wanting. Observe fishes; they deposit their eggs by millions, just as plants deposit their seeds, so that the multiplicity of the germs saves the species as well as maternal love could have done. I see elsewhere a destructive bird of which Providence seems to wish to limit the multiplication.* The form of its belly does not allow it to hatch, and it is ignorant of the art of constructing a nest; yet it does not indifferently leave on the ground the only egg which contains its posterity ; it seeks a nest, as if it knew the use of one, and deposits its egg in it, as if it could foresee the necessity of its being hatched ; it gives a mother to its young one, as if it felt the maternal sentiment. All these combinations are not derived from it, they exist in it, and revive in each bird of its kind ; they are — not its intelligence — but the intelligence of him who will preserve his work. Thus the exception comes to the support of the general law, the same design is evident. I take pleasure in demonstrating both the wonders of instinct, and the great foresight which is attached to them. Isolated instinct will always be an inexplicable thing. The flight of a gnat, the industry of a spider, the labours of a •wasp, in providing a shelter for a posterity which it will never see, surpass human comprehension ; but the unity of these facts, their operation in the harmonies of the earth : instinct, as a general law of nature, establishing the equili- brium, and founding the duration, reveal an intelligent cause, and this cause being once ascertained, all is explained. Pure instinct is but a law of nature, like germination ; there is only in it one degree more towards life. Insects seek their prey, as the roots of vegetables choose their soil ; they enclose and defend their eggs, as the plant encloses ♦ The Cuckoo. OF INSTINCT. 103 and warms its sprouts ; their power is innate, without will and without consciousness. You draw out the sting from a wasp, nevertheless, for a long time afterwards it attempts to sting. You tear off the claw of a crab, yet it still attempts to take hold. It is evident that this is a law imposed upon matter, but this law is always the expression of a maternal solicitude for the individual, subject to the conservation of the species and the harmony of the whole. Thus, in investigating instinct, I have not failed to per- ceive that the question is not merely that of a faculty but of a law. Hence I ought to give up the study of the phe- nomena, and seek for the object of this law, in order to ascend to its cause. This is all that we are permitted to know upon the subject; to ask more is to open the chaos of questions which cannot be solved, because their solution is useless. All the explanations of genius succumb before an insect; all the difficulties of metaphysics disappear before the presence of God. If then animals possessed no more than instinct, the ques- tion would be one without danger, as regards our souls ; it would be restricted to the examination of a law, above which man finds himself placed by his conscience, his will, and his liberty. But on looking higher in the scale of beings, on ascending from animals with a ganglionic nervous system, (insects to vertebrated animals, mammifera, &c.,) I perceive a something superior to instinct. Actions are not merely imposed, they are modified and multiplied according to cir- cumstances and wants. I observe perceptions, memory, ideas, and a will. It is no longer the transcendental but necessary geometry of the spider or of the bee ; it is the free intelligence of a being which reflects and chooses. The organization is changed in proportion as new faculties ap- pear. Insects have no brain — I perceive one in the horse, and in the dog. There is an instrument for the intelligence, just as there is one for instinct. Here the difficulty is un- bounded. Whilst I saw in animals no more than instinct, my mind was calm ; now that I discover a brain, senses, and intelligence, my soul becomes uneasy : it understands that the question might even ascend to itself In its anxiety it interrogates itself; it compare^ it seeks to throw off an odious animality. Hard contest between mind and matter, in which the mind at last recognises its greatness, in the very 104 OF INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. desire which it experiences to separate itself from the rest of the creation ! CHAPTER IV. OF INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. " Ainsi les betes sentent, comparent, jugent, reflechissent, concluent, se resou- \iennent, etc. Elles ont, en fait d'idees suivies tout ce dont on a. besoin pour parler." Leroy — Letlres philosophiques sur Vintelligence des Animaux. We see of man no more than his body ; a body subject to all the wants — to all the passions — of animals; a flesh, the infirmities of which inspire disgnst, and the nakedness of w^hich excites shame : a body animated by intelligence, but promised to corruption and subject to pain ; senses which we possess in common with the brute, and the pri- vation of which would reduce us to nothing. Such is, in fact, all that strikes me on casting my eyes upon myself; but when I come to think that just now another part of my being, which I cannot see, was absorbed in the contempla- tion of God, my soul again rises, I feel astonished in being able to conceive something else besides matter — to foresee something else beyond time ; I recognise in myself two na- tures, for I aspire to infinity; I surprise in myself two wills, for I am sensible of their conflicts ; I feel myself to be double, by the disaccord of my celestial and terrestrial passions, my appetites and my sentiments, by my wants, my fears, and my hopes. There is a double self in man. Nevertheless this body perplexes me, it causes me to rank among animals, it marks me with a fatal resemblance. Have we not the same organs, and do not these organs produce the same phenomena? Observe this dog, asleep at my feet ; the nerves of his brain are distributed to the organs of the five senses, and place him in relation with the external world ; light acts upon his eyes, sound upon his ears, taste upon his palate ; he receives from them the sen- sations and impressions which determine an action. Locke ascribes no other origin than this to our thoughts ; but in these prodigies of a material intelligence, how can the animal ascend, without man being lowered ? OF INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. 105 What a difference ! exclaims the philosopher; the senses of man receive impressions, but the soul is there to distin- guish them ; it is the soul which sees, feels, hears, and wills ; in animals there is nothing of this. Then, may I ask, where- fore do sight, hearing, touch, and taste, exist in animals ? Why should there be senses, if they are to remain useless, without perception and without action? Wherever there exist senses there is perception; wherever there is perception there are ideas ; and wherever there are ideas there is a thinking being. An animal is, then, a thinking being. One of two things must, therefore, take place : either it is not the soul which sees, hears, feels, and wills, in man ; or else animals have, like us, a soul, which sees and hears, which feels, and which wills. Shall we reduce animals merely to instinct? Shall we say that they act without intelligence, like the springs of a machine ? Before we attempt to delude ourselves by such poor sophistry, let us observe what is passing around us. Here is my dog, asleep in the chimney-corner ; his sleep is disturbed, he is dreaming of pursuing his prey, he attacks his enemy, he sees him, he hears him ; he has sensations, passions, ideas. When I rouse him up, his visions dis- appear, and he becomes calm ; when I take up my hat he darts out, jumps about, looks me in the face, and studies my actions ; he crouches at my feet, runs to the door, is joyful or sorrowful according to the will which I express. What then has taken place in his brain ? What combina- tion of ideas between my words and the excursion which he anticipates ? How does this simple action of taking up my hat awaken in him a reminiscence, a desire and a will? He hopes, and flatters me ; he whines, and fawns upon me, in order that I may caress him. He seeks to please me by his joy, or to affect me by his sorrow. The combinations of my intellect could go no further ; he is at once a pathetic orator and a courtier full of wiles. I observe him, and am alarmed. Here is an animal who thinks, wills, remembers, and combines his ideas. There are moments in which I am tempted to believe him to possess a soul, for, in fact, I find in his intelligence the phenomena which exist in my own ; a correspondence is even established between our wills and our thoughts, our two selves (moi) meet and 106 OF INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. understand each other. If I call him he runs to nne, if I scold him he is apprehensive, if 1 forget him he fawns upon me ; we understand each other because he thinks. The thoughts of an animal? Can matter think 1 And if matter can think in an animal, why should it not likewise think in man ? But, you may say, the evidences of intelligence which astonish me are only the inspirations of the master ; the dog, a civilized animal, may repeat thoughts, in the same way as a parrot repeats words, without compre- hending their sense. And yet, if the dog be capable of per- fectibility, if education can alter his habits and modify his actions, we must conclude that there is something in him ■which reflects and remembers. The education of animals, without reflection on their part, would be as incomprehen- sible as that of man without liberty of action. The court- yard dog, for instance, of whom nothing awakens the intelligence, who is condemned to the chain like a slave, remains all his life in a state of complete stupidity, whilst the intelligence of the shepherd's dog becomes developed by all the circumstances of his active and attentive life. Continually occupied in the care of the flock, every thing which relates to his office finds a place in his memory. His eye watches, his ear listens ; he concentrates himself into a double attention — looking to his master in order to obey him ; looking to his flock, to guide it. There are some actions which he tolerates, and others which he does not allow. He at once distinguishes the green corn which must not be touched, from the pasturage on which the flock may be allowed to feed. He draws the line between the one and the other, always bringing back to order the greedy and ignorant multitude, imposing upon the rash by movements which frighten them, and chastising the obsti- nate, for whom the first warning is not sufficient. How much intelligence is there not in these difierenl observa- tions? The animal distinguishes, chases, threatens, chas- tises, obeys, and commands ; he receives some orders which he executes, and others which he transmits, and all with quickness, justness, and discernment. When brutes do things which we could not do without reasoning and judging, we are bound to believe that they reason and udge. From domestic animals, of which the intelligence is OP INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. 107 developed by associating with man, let us pass to wild animals, whose intelligence is developed by peril and hunger. Hunters observe a very great difference between the actions of a young and ignorant wolf, and those of a wolf become old amidst snares and dangers. The gait of the former is always free and bold, that of the latter is always cautious and uneasy. Wherever he perceives a man he suspects a snare ; the most tempting prey will not then induce him to advance, and this apprehension becomes so strong in him as even to get the better of the pangs of hunger. The circle of his ideas is then expanded by peril, he loses his natural character, which is that of audacity, and acquires a factitious character, that of fear; he becomes distrustful, that is to say, he institutes approximations and reasonings, and by the past judges of the future. This is the case with the isolated individual, but the temporary association of two individuals of the same species produces an influence still more surprising. And, first, if the strata- gems which require the concurrence of two animals, sup- pose ideas, the execution of these ideas must necessarily lead to the supposition of means of communication. Here, then, are animals who consult together, as in the fables of La Fontaine ; they fix upon a plan, and arrange a series of actions, of which each result is foreseen. For instance ; a flock is to be attacked, the care of which is confided to a dog ; and as this circumstance is known, the dog must be got out of the way. The she-wolf shows herself, induces the dog to pursue her, while in the meantime, without risk or combat, the male carries off a sheep, of which the female, after having led the dog astray, shortly arrives to partake. Is a deer to be attacked, the parts are calculated in proportion to the strength. The wolf sets out, frightens the animal, pursues, and causes it to fly towards a spot where the female, placed in ambush, takes up the chace with fresh powders, and with a certain result. Can we refuse thought to these bold combinations, of which all the chances are foreseen, of which all the results are assured, and which are constantly varied according to the times, the places, and the danger. But let us mention other instances drawn from nature in a yet wilder state. Let us penetrate with Audubon into the untrodden forests of America, and ask this great 108 OF INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. explorer for a few of his observations respecting the pri- mitive manners of animals. " In autumn, at the time when myriads of birds quit the north to approach nearer to the sun, let your bark skim the surface of the Mississippi. When you see on the banks of the river, two trees, the tops of which are higher than the rest, raise your eyes, the eagle is there, perched on the summit of one of them ; his eye sparkles and seems to burn like fire, he contemplates attentively all the visible extent of the waters, he observes, waits, and listens to all the noises which are heard, and distinguishes them. The sound of the antelope, which scarcely touches the leaves, does not escape him. On the opposite tree the female sits as a sentinel : every now and then her cry is heard, as if ex- horting the male to have patience ; he answers by flapping his wings, a general movement of his body, and a screech- ing of which the noise and the discordance resemble the laugh of a maniac. Then he again becomes quiet ; from his immobility and his silence you might think him a statue. Ducks, and water-fowl of all kinds, fly together in compact crowds ; the eagle scorns any such prey, and this disdain saves them from death. A sound, which the wind brings down the stream, at length strikes the ear of the two robbers ; it is the voice of the swan. The female warns the male by a cry composed of two notes ; the whole body of the eagle trembles, he is about to set off. " The swan advances like a vessel floating in the air, its snow-white neck extended forwards, its eyes sparkling with anxiety, the quickened movement of its wings hardly suffices to sustain the weight of its body. It approaches slowly, a devoted victim ; a war-cry is heard, the eagle darts off* with the rapidity of a falling star, the swan sees its executioner, lowers its neck, makes a half circle, and manoeuvres in the agony of its fear to escape from death. One only chance remains for it, that of plunging into the stream ; but the eagle foresees the stratagem, he forces his prey to remain in the air by keeping himself constantly below it, and threatening to strike it in the belly, or beneath the wings. This depth of combination, which man might envy, never fails to attain its end ; the swan becomes weakened and loses all hope of safety, but her enemy then fears that she will fall into the river, and by a blow of his OF INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. 109 talons strikes his victim beneath the wings, and casts it obliquely upon the bank. " So much power, address, activity, and prudence, have achieved the conquest. You could not see without horror the triumph of the eagle ; he dances upon the body, he digs his talons deeply into the heart of the dying swan, he flaps his wings, he screeches with joy ; the last convulsions of the bird intoxicate him, he raises his bald head towards the sky, and his eyes, inflamed with triumph, are red as blood; the female joins him, together they turn the swan over, pierce its breast with their beaks, and gorge them- selves with its blood."* In this terrible drama intelligence is united to instinct; it is impossible not to recognise here attention, observation, and reflection ; a foresight which arises from experience, combinations which suppose a memory, an inteUigence which satisfies a passion, a language which awakens ideas, and a will which directs them. The existence of animals is incomprehensible ; it is an abyss in which some lights are shining which add to our alarm. Cast Hke ourselves upon this globe, of which they possess a part, they also develope on it a thousand different Idnds of industry. They fight and labour, forced as they are to defend, against all the elements, a life given up like our own to the twofold ravages of pleasure and pain. Nature arms and preserves them only in the interest of a general harmony, and all their relations with man are those of a servant to a master. As peaceful flocks, they supply us with food and clothing ; as patient drudges, they labour in our fields ; as vigilant sentinels, they guard our houses : every where their toils relieve us, every where their songs enliven us, and in order to let us hear them, they instinctively approach our dwellings; it is always within the scope of our hearing that birds modulate their concerts. Destroy man, and animals, then masters of the world, would continue to people and to possess it. Destroy animals, the earth would cease to be habitable, and the human race would perish. Animals were then created for man, because they are indispensable to man ; and from this the fact arises, the * Revue Britannique, No. 15, 1831. 110 OF INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. deduction which should long occupy our thoughts, that from the first period of the creation man was foreseen. Thus our existence is dependent on that of animals; they approximate to us on all sides, without ever raising themselves to our level. Nature gives them only sufficient light to escape from or to serve us; but this light is an in- telligence which understands and obeys us. Beneath yonder coarse exterior there is a mind which knows me, there are affections which seek me. Nature seems to have bestowed upon matter all the devotedness which we ascribe to love. This dog which I love, which hears me, in which I have found a friend — I feel myself at the same lime confounded by his powers of attachment and thought, and on consi- dering his nothingness. Wherefore all these myriads of beings born but to die? What is the object of their perpe- tuating themselves? What do they on the earth which belongs to them only in our absence ? Have they a futurity like ourselves ? Why then are they delivered over to the caprices of the human race? Are they only a prey pre- pared for our voracity ? then why have they passions, why pain, why life and thought ? When a truth perplexes us, we deny it as if our evidence could destroy it. It likewise sometimes happens that supe- rior minds oppose a system to it, and imagine that they have saved humanity ; but truth,, still exists ; its day must come, for all eyes are in search of it. Of what conse- quence, then, are the systematic errors of Descartes, Bos- suet, of Locke, and Buffon ; genius has no authority for untruths. This apprehension of truth arises from the ignorance of a superior truth, viz. that truth is always good. It should, then, be received whenever it presents itself, whatever may be the unpromising appearances with which our preju- dices surround it. How can it be prejudicial to man, is it not the offspring of God? Impressed with these maxims, we will not recoil before truth ; we will say, the ideas of animals and the ideas of man have a common origin ; they are engendered by the same principle, sensation ; they are multiplied by the same means, memory, comparison, and judgment ; they are ex- ercised by the same faculty, the will. Thus to think, to feel, to remember, to will, within the circle of matter, are or INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. Ill animal faculties, and not spiritnal faculties. We must stop at this first point, for in the systems of philosophers these faculties belong to the soul, and constitute, so to speak, the entire soul; a similar view of the subject causes our brain to whirl. In order to save the soul, and to separate it from matter, we may appeal in vain to the extent of our intelli- gence, to the superiority of our thoughts ; the physiologist answers us, dissecting knife in hand, by showing us the superiority of our organs ; he measures the perfection of the intelhgence by the perfection of the instrument. As- cending from the shell-fish to the insect, from the insect to the dog, from the dog up to man, he exhibits to us thought attached to the organization, and developing itself in the same proportion, always more vast, always more powerful, in proportion as the animal is higher in the scale of beings, and to the perfection of its organs. He recognises in the palpitating fibres a material law which comprises all crea- tures ; man is to him only the first among animals. His observations are true ; the conclusions which he deduces from them are just. We may admit the whole of his argument; he reasons only from dead bodies. Let us first observ^e, however, that the force of his argument rests upon a metaphysical error, viz. that sensa- tion, thought, memory, and the animal volitions, are facul- ties of the soul. But if all these things do not belong to the soul, what becomes of his arguments? The question reduces itself, then, to separating the intelli- gent faculties of the animal from the intellectual faculties of man ; to knowing what properly constitutes man. This separation has never been attempted, for we cannot term an attempt the systematic divisions which have prevailed in the schools during so many ages, and which tend only to a fatal confusion. This, then, is the principle : — none or the FACULTIES WHICH MAN POSSESSES IN COMMON WITH ANIMALS BELONG TO THE SOUL. From this principle, at once simple and transcendent, results the following fact : that the faculties of the soul are independent of the senses and of organs. But the science of the physiologist is altogether material ; he estimates the intelligence by the organization ; the forms of bodies reveal to him their faculties. How can he judge of the soul, which is not connected with that which he sees? 112 OF PHILOSOPHICAL PHYSIOLOGY. At the point where the relations cease, there knowledge must also cease; the study of the mind cannot be con- founded with that of matter; physiology stops short on the borders of metaphysics. CHAPTER V. OF PHILOSOPHICAL PHYSIOLOGY. "Nous croyons qu'il y'a des faits qui ne sont point visibles a I'oeil, point tan- gibles a la main, que le microscope nije scalpel ne peuvent atteindre si parfaits qu'on les suppose, qui echappent egalement au gout, a I'odorat, a Touie, et qui Dependant sont susceptibles d'etre constates, avec une absolue certitude." JouFFROY, Esquisses de Philosophie Morale. From the principle of Locke, that all the thoughts arise from the senses, we have seen a new science emanate, physiology. It w^as then supposed that the source of some great discoveries was attained. Having been drawn upon this ground by their adversaries, the philosophers were obliged to continue the contest upon it. They were ac- cused of ignorance because they reasoned upon man with- out knowing the composition of his body; and they were consequently obhged to become anatomists, as their adver- saries had become philosophers. This double metamor- phosis produced no result ; for the latter quitting the domain of matter in order to arrive at the soul, the former leaving that of the soul to arrive at matter, each remained in his element ; the point of departure sufficed to separate them for ever. I will then conclude, not that these two sciences are incompatible, but that each attaches itself separately to a distinct part of man, and of which the point of contact can neither be seized by means of the dissecting knife, nor of thought. The one studies all of that which in man belongs to the animal, the other all of that which in man belongs to the angel; how can they meet? Another conclusion not less rigorous, is that physiologists have accorded to physiology a power which it has not : in other words, they have required from it the explanation of psychological facts which lie out of its sphere. The anatomist may seek the relations of our organs with OF THE "TREATISE ON SENSATIONS." 113 the phenomena of the intelligence ; he may seek in the perceptions of our senses all the animal thoughts and pas- sions, and he will have attained the limits of his science. The scalpel can reach nothing but matter; but is there nothing beyond its reach? Is there nothing in us which contradicts, combats, and condemns our material thoughts and passions? That which exists in us beyond intelligence and matter is what constitutes the science of the philosopher. A reason superior to animal interests. A sense of infinity which neither time nor space can satisfy. A sense of the beautiful, the type of which we have a glimpse of, but which has no perfect model upon earth. A moral sense, which opposes all our vicious inclinations. A conscience, which either condemns or absolves us. This is what exists in us beyond intelligence and matter ; faculties and a will higher than our intellect, stronger than our passions, and which often direct them towards an end totally opposed to our material interests. And truly, what man is there so unfortunate as never to have felt his soul rise against baseness and crime? What individual is there who in this terrible contest of our vices and our virtues has not experienced, at least once in his life, the celestial joy of causing the triumph of inclinations, which are not of the earth ? The soul is there, it is the soul which triumphs, which enjoys, which drives back crime, hatred, vengeance, and which from the summit of the cross, while the body suf- fered and the intellect grew dim, still prayed for the execu- tioners. CHAPTER VI. OF THE " TREATISE ON SENSATIONS." " La realite qui tombe sous nos sens n'est pas toute la realite." JouFFRoy. Desirous of explaining the nature of man, Condillac supposes a statue ; he presents to it odours, images, sounds. 8 114 OF THE TRUE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. Each sense produces its ideas, each idea instructs the understanding. The statue thinks, compares, reasons, ima- gines, knows, and wills ; the education of the senses is complete, and man appears, material, intelligent ; the first among animals — no more. The statue having received every thing from without, man as a moral, infinite being does not exist. In fact, nothing is more variable than sensation, nothing more immutable than truth. How could sensation produce in man ideas independent of things, times, and places ? The variable does not produce the immutable. Unskilful sculptor ! Condillac forgot to invoke a god in beginning his work. He gives life to a statue, and refuses it immortality. Let us observe, that the statue being once perfect in this sense, the author wishes for it nothing more. He desires to prove that one may form a man with sensations, and he sends forth nothing more than an ape or a parrot: such is the whole power of the materiaHst. In spite of himself, Condillac refutes Locke; the disciple destroys the master in the very book wherein he promises himself to establish his triumph. ^ CHAPTER VII. OP THE TRUE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. " Revenons a rhomme maintenant, et laissons ce qu'il a de commun avec les plantes et avec les beste." Saint Augustin, De la VeriU religieuse. " Dans le sein de I'homme, je ne sais quel Dieu, mais il habite un Dieu." Seneque. Our body partakes, at the same time, of the plant and of the animal : there takes place in us a multitude of opera- tions, over which our will has no power. The blood circu- lates, the hair grows, the flesh is renewed ; we vegetate, we grow, we exist, and die without our own consent. Thus is man, as a plant. It is the vegetative faculty which impresses matter with its forms ; it is as the mould of all things, and of all beings. Man, as an animal, unites within himself alone, the inclina- tions, the passions, the instincts, the intelligence, of all or- or THE TRUE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 115 ganized beings : he is more industrious than the bee, nnore cruel than the ti^-er, more cunninsr than the fox ; more ter- "'111 rible, more variable, more dissolute, more insatiable, than all the other animals together. This is so striking, that their names alone express his different characters : so that at the first view, man with his armies, his towns, and his palaces, appears to be only the most intelHgent of animals. Let him speak of his affections, of his foresight, of his memory. I cast my eyes around, and I find all the facul- ties of which he boasts, attached to matter in the brute. The bird which measures its flight by the experience which it has acquired of the reach of gun-shot ; the swallow which throws itself into the flames to save its brood; the fox which, by its ever-varying stratagems, puzzles the hunts- man's pack, reveal to me treasures of imagination, of intel- ligence, tenderness, and judgment. I am forced to admit in animals, as in man, innate sentiments ; attachment, hatred, jealousy, gratitude, revenge, are renewed in them at each generation. What we feel, they feel; what we will, they will; man has only more scope, because his organs are more perfect. He is an universal animal : a being who thinks, remembers, combines, reflects, desires, reasons, and wills. But if I were to destroy all these faculties, all these pas- sions, would man be annihilated : to a certainty I should have only destroyed a plant, and an animal — the intelligent and thinking faculties which are possessed by the brute, and which exist in us. Is this, then, the whole man? Does his intelligence restrict itself to raising dykes like the beaver, or palaces like the bee, with all the developement which his organs permit him t Is all his soul concentrated in the wants of his body? are all his thoughts in the perceptions of his senses, all the will of his passions in the fury of his jealousy? Certainly, if man be only composed of those faculties which brutes share with him, there is an end of his futurity. How can we immaterialize them in the one, and not in the other? how give these to eternity, those to annihilation? shall we lower ourselves to the level of the brute, or shall we raise the brute up to our own ? Nothing of the kind : we shall emerge from this slough, by reverting to ourselves; the internal operations of con- science will reveal to us that hidden bein«j which lives in us. 116 OF THE TRUE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. which constitutes ourselves, and which manifests itself by virtue. The soul will warn us of its power by a will opposed to our animal passions ; of its morality, by the sense of justice and injustice; of its greatness, by the spontaneous actions of a reason which aspires after eternal truths ; of its celes- tial origin, by the sublime notions of the beau ideal; of its immortality, by the sense of infinity which expands until lost in the presence of a God. Philosophers, who seek, as Montaigne says, whether man be any thing else than an ox, now is the time to exercise your science ; take this body, place it on your dissecting table — search in its heart, in its blood, its fibres, its entrails ; display the innumerable folds of its brain, examining the matter, in every sense; handling it, dissecting it with the knife, studying it with the magnifying glass ; recognise at a glance, memory, will, stratagem, avarice, the spirit of calculation; all the human arts, all the animal passions; measure the intelligence by the developement of the organs ; suppress at pleasure, such or such function, by cutting such or such nerve ; and when, after having become mas- ters of your subject, you have well seized the relation of the fibres to sensation, of sensations to thoughts — on the re- mains of this palpitating flesh; then tell me what is that powerful conscience, that severe master which commands the animal passions, which cuts short their pleasures, and which rejoices to see them overcome; tell me what sense could have given the idea of infinity to a creature so finite ; and whence does he experience the sentiment of the beau ideal, the model of which is not to be found on earth? Lastly, I would ask you, what is it to act, think, sufl^er, and die, for the cause of truth ? and to employ another ex- pression of Montaigne, " What sort of beasts are virtue and justice?" Morality, reason, beau ideal, conscience : such is man distinct from time and matter; these are the faculties which he alone possesses on the earth. I have found his soul, and in his soul the moral source of the human being, — that is to say, the necessity of another life. From these divine modifications, I see virtue emanate, which is the triumph of the soul over matter ; the true love which dreams of eternity ; the idea of order, which arises OF THE TRUE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 117 from conscience, and from reason — the relations of effects to causes in infinity: in sliort, a God. And these faculties which are in me, independently of my senses, exist in all men. I find traces of them, more or less marked in each individual, in each nation: they unite, they constitute the human race. For, it is not the intellect which produces civilization. Men and nations tend to separate themselves by their manners, habits, opinions, and animal passions. They unite only at one point — the moral sense, the sense of the beau- tiful ; and this invisible link suffices to combine the great human family upon the earth. In animals, on the other hand, the individual is always detached from the species. Its instinct isolates it, even when it becomes the instinct of a society. No instinct unites the bee of Chamouny to the bee of Mount Hymettus. For the bee there is no race of bees, as there is for man a human race: there is only a hive. Thus, intelligence, memory, will, all the affections and passions which are in the hfe of animals, may die in man : but man will not therefore die — his immortality is more than a fact ; it is a right, were he only separated from the brute by the sense of the Divinity. During three thousand years, philosophers have not ceased to submit the great questions of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul to the examination of the intellect, and have all been surprised that they could only arrive at doubt. For my part, I am surprised at their surprise. Let them recommence a hundred times the same work, and they will obtain a hundred times the same result. How can faculties which belong to time and matter suffice for the discovery of the infinite ? Is there not a somewhat of folly in attempting to contemplate the w^onders of another world, with a torch destined only to light us in this ? Let us not deceive ourselves : it is for the soul to speak to us of the soul : and now that we know its true faculties, we have neither doubt nor error to apprehend, for they touch on all sides at the truth, which is God. 118 FIRST LINE OF DEMARCATION. CHAPTER VIII. FIRST LINE OF DEMARCATION. "Dieu I'inepuisable mot, vient au bout de toutes les etudes de rhomrae." St. Marc Girardin. The animal which has senses, and which perceives ideas like man, receives these perceptions and these ideas with- out analyzing them, and without seeking for their principle. It does not experience that sublime curiosity which inces- santly recalls us to the first cause, that is to say, to a cause which we can neither touch, see, nor feel, but of which the power of imagining and comprehending is bestowed upon us. The intelligence of the animal restricts it perpetually to the earth; but as regards ourselves, we pass from a visible to an invisible world : this is a privilege of our nature. We desire to know what we are, and for what purpose we exist; we ask ourselves these questions, which exceed our intellectual powers. We always go beyond time and space, thus illustrating that there is in us a senti- ment of infinity and of eternity. CHAPTER IX. OP THE INSTINCT OF MAN, AND OF THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF DEFINING THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. Let us then come to the following conclusion, viz. That which animals know, and what they have not learnt, is a law of harmony purely terrestrial. Their instinct is restricted to the earth. That which man knows, and which he has not learnt, is a celestial faculty, vs'hich displays to him the invisible, and carries him into eternity. Our instinct is the revelation of a God, and the consciousness of our immortality. Let us study in detail the different modifications, or rather the different faculties of the soul, and we shall find THE MORAL SENSE. 119 that their sole object is to place man in the presence of Him who is. We bear within ourselves the undeniable proof of the existence of God. Before beginning this study, I ought to give some expla- nation respecting the language which 1 have adopted. Leaving aside all learned technicalities, I have endeavoured to employ only words which are perfectly intelligible. I know not whether I am mistaken, but it appears to me that the barbarous phrases invented by the schools are abso- lutely useless for the purposes of reason and thought; the object of philosophers ought to be, not to obscure philoso- phy, but to render it familiar to us. Yet we must not expect to find here a precise definition of what I call the faculties of the soul. Some philosophers have attempted it, but always in vain. How can we define that which from its nature eludes all definition 1 To define a thing, is to separate it from the infinite: it is to cause it to re-enter the circle of finite things by describing the parts which compose it, and by displaying it to the eyes. Any definition of the faculties which belong to infinity is then impossible. Neither sentiment nor reason, nor the beautiful, nor God, nor any of the faculties of the soul, have ever been defined, precisely because their essence is infinite. And yet, that which we are unable to define, we feel it, we think of it, we believe in it, we have the consciousness of it without knowing it, and this consciousness is the mysterious light which shines upon the limits of the two worlds. CHAPTER X. THE MORAL SENSE A FACULTY OP THE SOUL. " La premiere idee de justice naVt en nous, non de celle que nous devons mais de celle qui nous est due." Guyton-Morveaux, Sur V Education. Man is the only one of all beings who is able to abuse his powers. Animals enjoy the gifts of nature, but only within the limits of their faculties: when once satisfied they stop : and to establish universal order, God has willed that their desires should expire with their gratification. 120 THE MORAL SENSE. \^Z^ Man*s desires, on the other hand, are so exorbitant that nothing can satisfy them, and he soon perceives the neces- sity of restraining them within bounds. This perception is the first revelation of the moral sense which is in him, and he proclaims it by regulations and commandments; first in his family, next in his tribe, then in the state. Such is the origin of human and political law, which is holy even when imperfect, for it testifies to our liberty by enchaining it, and to our reason by compelling us to obedience. And so true is it that the nature of man requires these chains, that it is only beneath the supremacy of law that a people becomes civilized. The more perfect the law, that is to say, the greater scope which it allows to liberty within the bounds of reason, the more powerful and great does the nation become. Thus the prosperity of the masses is attached to the perfection of the political laws which arise from the sentiment of our liberty, in the same way as the wisdom of the individual is attached to the developement of the moral sense which is in him. Hence it follows, that the moral sense is not dependent upon our intelligence, and that it imperatively indicates to us what we must do in order to deserve happiness. Do that which may render you icorthy of happiness, says the philosopher of Koenigsberg. To render oneself worthy of happiness is to follow the only path which can lead us to happiness : it is the fulfilling of all the moral laws of our being. Nevertheless, earthly happiness is not a necessary conse- quence of the fulfilling of these laws : the soul, which opens out this path to us, awaits then for a justice which is not of the earth : a reward which supposes a God. It is thus that in seeking the end of the moral law, we meet with the only power which can realize its promises ; and, consequently, at the first steps in this path we leave space and time. Our hopes overleap the bounds of creation, in order to raise us to the Creator. The moral sense — a faculty of the soul. The first light which radiates towards God. SENSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 121 CHAPTER XI. SENSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL A FACULTY OF THE SOUL. " On ne peut rien imaginer de si beau, de si grand, qu'on ne le trouve dans rhomme ; que Thomme ne puisse meme le produire quelquefois dans une purete celeste." Jacobi Woldmar. The type of the beautiful is immutable — eternal ; it exists ; for we have the consciousness and the love of it: conscious- ness, to incline us to seek it ; love, to render us worthy of contemplating it. Enlightened by this internal light, our soul in vain ex- hausts all that surrounds it upon the earth : it passes from one world to the other, from the finite to the infinite, and stops dismayed at the feet of the Creator. In bestowing this faculty upon us, God has revealed himself to us. Thus the sense of the beautiful makes its way through the darkness of our senses : it is a large breach in matter, of which all the perspectives open from earth to heaven, fron:i time to eternity. The sense of the beautiful — a faculty of the soul. The second light which radiates towards God. CHAPTER XII. SENSE OF INFINITY A FACULTY OF THE SOUL. "II est done vrai et jene me trompe point en le disant.je porte toujours au dedans de moi, quoique je suis fini, une idee qui me represente une chose infinie." Fenelon, De V Existence de Dieu. Everything is transitory upon the earth ; all speaks to us of our nothingness : life is composed of days which are no more, and the present is but the future which passes by. Still if time were only to spare our reminiscences ; but after the transports of joy and the pains of grief, indifference and oblivion supervene. Our existence is effaced even in 122 SENSE OF INFINITY. our memory; we depart by piecemeal, and these portions detaching themselves day by day, disappear in proportion as we advance. Thus the past dies, the present vanishes, and the future is but a hope. A hope — O mortal, this is thy greatness ! Amidst this world of destruction, in the presence of death and oblivion, when all around thee perishes, thou hopest a life which will never end ! The word eternity does not astonish thy soul : it responds to it by that of infinity, the sublime sentiment which detaches us from time and space, to transport us to the bosom of God. It is because the sense of infinity exists in us, that nothing which is finite can satisfy our souls. The horror of annihilation is a revelation of infinity. But what is infinity? all my eflforts to conceive it are useless. It is equally impossible for me to deny it or to understand it. What I know is, that out of infinity there is nothing, or, to express myself better, that all is in infinity. Guided by this feeble light, I lay down a number, to which I add other numbers; I fill immensity with my calculations. — Useless trouble ! The sum constantly increasing, is only composed of finite things : I must always refer to its two extremes, the beginning and the end : but there, casting my eyes on this side and on that, I perceive no end, no begin- ning ; that which the figures of arithmetic pursue without ever attaining, that which is before and after, that which is every where and always, constitutes infinity. The sentiment of infinity gives us the idea of all that which cannot be attained by the senses : it realizes for us the unknown. God is infinity; it is God which thou seekest, O my soul, since nothing of that which is finite can satisfy thee here — below. Thou detachest thyself from all the joys of earth, because all these joys have an end. Thou placest thy de- pendence solely upon this infinity, which is beyond all our passions, and which is at the same time thy hope, thy light, and thy satisfaction. Thus, man is the point of union between nature and its Creator; all that which he experiences beyond his earthly desires is an announcement of eternity. It is by means of intelligence and love that nature arrives at him ; it is by the sense of the beautiful and the infinite that he arrives at REASON. 123 God. The chain commenced on earth does not break, but ascends to lose itself in heaven. The sense of infinity — a faculty of the soul. The third light which radiates towards God. CHAPTER XIII. REASON A FACULTY OF THE SOUL. " It is by reason that we discover the general rules of justice which ought to direct our actions." Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. I OPEN for the first time the " Republic" of Plato ; all his ideas are new to me, and yet my soul experiences no sur- prise : it recognises itself, if I may so say, in these high conceptions ; it enters into them with transport, like a con- queror into his empire. And further, without any other assistance than its own light, it separates truth from error. There is in it a judge which weighs, discusses, and chooses ; a judge which says, " Here is the good, there is the bad." This judge is reason. Reason is the sentiment of truth, it is a revelation of wis- dom and order. Sometimes it plunges into the world of transcendental truths ; at other times it surrounds us with the plain notions of common sense — practical reason and pure reason. On the one hand, it estimates the material interests of humanity ; on the other hand, it exhibits to us God ; but it is still the same reason. Philosophers have calumniated reason without hearing it. They reproach it with bending itself beneath the yoke of the passions, as if it were bestowed upon us in order to combat them. They do not see that reason is a light, not a force; that its office is, not to conquer, but to enlighten ; that it docs not master our vicious inclinations, but that it shows us the penalties of them ; that it does not enforce virtue, but signalizes its delights. Such is reason ; posi- tive, inflexible : its oracles must be accomplished either in the face of the world which despises it, or in the depths of conscience, which it enlightens even when succumbing. This, then, is the most energetic power of nature, for in addressing itself to the intellect it leaves it no other choice 124 REASON. than that between truth and falsehood, wisdom or folly, virtue or remorse. Between the two extremes, reason causes her light to shine, the divine reflection of which extends afar in the heavens. And in fact, there are two universal revelations ; the one external, which is nature ; the other internal, which is reason. Nature addresses herself to the senses ; all her perceptions are local, varied, and transient. Reason is independent of matter ; all its ideas are one — general and eternal. Unity, generality, eternity, is the triple character of reason. Vainly do Montaigne and Pascal declare violent war against reason, threatening with the condition of brutes whosoever walks by its light. No one is inclined to believe them. One feels that they deceive themselves, either from humility or pride. That, if you ask them what offends them in reason, they will answer you by decrying politics, medicine, history, jurisprudence, all the physical and moral sciences;* thus reducing reason to the pleadings of advo- cates, and to the contradictions of the learned. In this manner, then, do these lofty intellects mistake the work of God, calumniating the only guide which can lead us to virtue ; the latter to cast himself upon a blind faith, of which the last term was the sackcloth of the fanatic, and the idolatry of the savage; the former to cause the triumph of doubt and incredulity. What a panegyric of reason is this fall of its two most powerful adversaries. And after this, how much surprise do we not feel, when we see Kant, the transcendent genius of the age, with the sole view of striking at reason, submit the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul, to the abstractions of a lying logic ; weigh the arguments for and against, declare their weight equal, and at last triumph over the impotence of reason ! as if true reason had any thing to do with these pitiful reasonings. It is very true that Kant's philosophy rests upon that imperceptible con- fusion which ascribes to reason all the sophistries of the understanding. The understanding is a compound power, and is consequently variable ; its faculties are at the same time spiritual and animal, they comprise the sensations and the passions, which have each their separate logic. It is * Essais de Montaigne. Pensees de Pascal. CONSCIENCE. 125 not therefore accorded to them to produce conviction. But reason is a simple power; it has no arguments, no categories, no contradictions; it is reason, that is to say, light. What can darkness effect against light 1 Reason is always in the right. Socrates, interrogating Menon,* asked him, " What is virtue ?" ** There is," said Menon, '* a virtue of man, a virtue of woman, of the child and old man, of the slave and of the citizen." " The question is well answered," said Socrates, " we only asked for one virtue, and the ad- mirable Menon presents us with a whole collection." Our modern philosophers have treated reason in the same way as Menon treated virtue. Observe carefully the men who rail at reason, and see if they have not some interest to keep you in darkness, for reason, as we have already said, is the light. Let us then conclude that, though reason explains nothing, yet it shows us God as the explanation of all. In fact, all the problems which the understanding presents, all the phenomena which nature exhibits, can only be resolved in God ; and it is thus that reason arrives at their solution. If then, from the testimony of the senses, man knows that the world exists ; so by the testimony of reason, he knows that the world has an author. And this is not merely the reason of a man, it is the reason of the whole human race. Reason— a faculty of the soul. The fourth light which radiates towards God. CHAPTER XIV. CONSCIENCE A FACULTY OF THE SOUL, " Nous formons notre conscience au gre de nos passions, et nous croyons avoir tout gagne, pourvu que nous puissions nous tromper nous-memes." Bossuet. Conscience becomes awakened by the notions of good and evil : of justice and injustice. It is the first faculty of the soul which appears in us; it is powerful, but blind. He who deceives his conscience may become a Ravaillac or * Plato's Dialogues. 126 DEDUCTIONS. a Marat. Man is not always innocent when his conscience absolves him ; he is not always guilty when his conscience accuses him. Have a care, young mother, now is the time; free thy reason in order to expand thy soul, for it is about to pass entirely into the soul of the child. Ah ! do not suffer any other thoughts than thine own to penetrate into that sanctuary. It is a question between vice and virtue, between the joy or remorse of a whole life ; thou engravest upon brass. The earliest education is effected entirely in the conscience, and conscience is only good when enlight- ened by reason. Conscience is the executioner of our bad passions; it has joys which raise us up to heaven, and pains which preci- pitate us into hell. Inflexible to fortune^ power, and pleasure, conscience only gives way before repentance and virtue. From it we derive faith. Conscience and faith, like two Wind men, cast themselves groping in the paths of fanati- cism, of superstition, and of idolatry, and arrive ultimately at God. There the human race meet ; the want of belief, the sense of the beautiful, the contemplations of the infinite, bring man constantly to this point. Thus, on every side, the soul makes its way through the senses, it breaks out in matter, as the fire in darkness. It wills that one should see it, that one should knov/ it ; manifesting its existence by the sentiment of virtue, its greatness by the thought of God, it spreads over this terrestrial life, sublime lights, the source of which exist only in heaven. Conscience — a faculty of the soul. The fifth light which radiates towards God. CHAPTER XV. CONCLUSIONS FROM THE FIVE PRECEDING CHAPTERS. •' Et c'est ainsi, dis-je a ition ame, Que I'ombre de ce bas lieu, Tu brules invisible flamme En la presence de ton Dieu." Lamartine, Harmonies. Thus, the direction of all the faculties of the soul indi- cates a point of meeting placed beyond the boundary of this life. INTERNAL ANTAGONISM OF MAN. 127 Thus, the veritable man, freed from matter, is an essence which tends towards God, by all the points of his being. Thus, there is an universal truth, the authority of which is infallible, not because it is universal, for universal errors are known to exist, but because it is in us, because it appears divinely at each birth to constitute the testimony of the human race. This truth is God. All the faculties of the soul discover him. His existence is the condition of our greatness. His existence is the con- solation of our misery. His existence explains all. God does not prove himself. No animal faculty, no faculty of the intellect reaches up to him. Logic denies him, reasoning denies him, metaphysics deny him, the passions deny him. What matters ! the soul perceives him. This fruitful truth is the source of all truth ; this celes- tial instinct is the source of all virtue. God has not con- fided us to an unstable intellect, which has equal argument for falsehood and for truth ; he has placed us above reason- ings, in the unchangeable sanctuary of conscience, of reason, of the beautiful, the good, and the infinite ; he has placed us in his own attributes, as if to instruct us of our glorious destinies ; by impressing his name on his work, God has consecrated our immortality. Thus, two natures exist in animals ; the instinct which attaches them to earth ; intelli- gence which unites them to man. Two natures exist^ in man : intelligence which unites him to created beings ; the instinct of the soul which reveals to him a God. The sphere of creation extends from matter to mind, from nought to eternity. CHAPTER XVI. OF THE INTERNAL ANTAGONISM OF MAN. "Whenever I will examine my own conduct and judge it, it is evident that I divide myself, so to speak, into two persons, and that the self (moi), who judges, is different from the self whose conduct is examined and judged." Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. From this separation of the two natures of man, we see originate this fact, worthy the attention of the philosopher. 128 INTERNAL ANTAGONISM OF MAN. ^1 All the faculties of the intelligence tend towards earth. All the faculties of the soul tend towards heaven. The one kind of faculties are ideas : the others are senti- ments. Two natures, two empires reign in the same being — death and immortality. According as these two natures are more or less deve- loped, our ideas are more or less terrestrial : our sentiments are more or less religious. And in these matters the power of man is the greatest that can be conceived. I would then engrave in letters of fire on the heart of every mother — I would proclaim to the whole world this truth : — " The faculties of the intellect grow and become stronger by labour. The terrestrial 'passions acquire strength by our weakness. The sentiments of the soul acquire strength by the exercise of our will.^^ This difference is characteristic ; it contains the proof of our moral liberty. Thou shalt be an animal, inteUigent, and given up to thy passions, if thou abandonest thyself to thy material appetites like animals. Thou shalt be a free being, an immortal substance, a man, if thou so wiliest it. Mark well, that the sentiment of God is bestowed upon minds of the most limited calibre ; whilst some lofty intel- lects lose themselves in the abyss of atheism. Complete incredulity, if it exist, explains itself by the slumber of all the faculties of the soul. The developement of only one of these faculties suffices to show us God : all together do not enable us to compre- hend him. And yet they cannot be wanting to us, without every thing being wanting. The brightest geniuses among the incredulous, are always incomplete beings; they give us the work of the intellect : religious geniuses give us the work of the intellect and of the soul. Thus we may see the superiority of Socrates, Descartes, Newton, and Fenelon, over all the intellectual powers which have advocated the doctrines of annihilation. FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. 129 CHAPTER XVII. THE DEVELOPEMENT OF THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL LEADS US TO THE PRESENCE OF GOD. t " Les veritables principes de la morale sont encore a nailre avec la connais- sance plus intime des facultes de notre ame." Bonstetten. "Dieu est esprit, et ce n'est que par I'esprit qu'on peut I'atteindre." BOSSUET. There are then in man two beings very distinct, the intelligent being and the spiritual being. To the one belong the ideas which are derived from the senses, to the other the sentiments derived from the soul. The being which has ideas, and the being which has sentiments, constitute each a self (rnoi), and their perpetual contests form the drama of life. They are the two men whom Louis XIV., recognised in himself, and of whom the conflicts produced so many shameful or magnanimous consequences, accord- ing as the one or the other was the conqueror. In the animal there is only one being : there are therefore no conflicts. Its thoughts act only among matter, and remain material. In man, on the contrary, the thoughts of the intelligence unfold themselves through the sentiments of the soul, and derive something from them. The vilest receive an impression more or less profound of the celestial essence. This is what renders love so sublime every time that the troubled soul impresses it with the sentiment of the beautiful and of the infinite. One does not instruct the faculties . of the soul, one awakens them. All that comes to us from them seems to us either a reminiscence or an inspiration. Thus the great moral truths exist in us as sentiments, before genius renders them perceptible as thoughts. The tlio'jghts of genius are nothing more than a clearer view of the faculties of the soul, that is to say, of the senti- ment of the divinity. This ex})lains what happens to us on reading Plato, Des- cartes, Fenelon, Rousseau, Bernardin de St. Pierre ; ihey 9 130 PHYSICAL AND MORAL do not instruct, they fertilize. All which they think to teach us, we believe ourselves to remember. And yet this phenomenon only occurs with reference to the great moral truths which are in us. Never, for in- stance, do w^e think we recollect the physical truths which we discover, and about which we are occupied for the first time : intelligence has only memory for that which it learns — the soul has a memory for that which it has not learnt. From these principles, and these facts, I will conclude that the combination of the faculties of the soul composes a superior being, a separate, perfect, and immortal being. But as all the faculties of this being are sentiments, it follows that the essence of the soul is not thought, but love. Therefore, it is only through love that we can approach to God. ^ We are not allowed to comprehend, and yet it is permitted us to love him. God reveals himself to this part of ourselves, and this revelation is more than a hope; if God shows himself to man, there must be in man a some- thing worthy of God, CHAPTER XVIII. OF MEMORY AND PHYSICAL WILL — OF THE MEMORY AND WILL OF THE SOUL. " L'homme est done le temple de Dieu, ef il merite beaucoup raieux ce nom que le monde ... car il n'est pas seulement le temple, il est I'adoraleur." BOSSUET. _ " II resulte de la que la societe des animaux ne peut subsister que par des pas- sions, et celle des hommes que par des vertus." Bernardin de St. Pierre. Let us suppose a creature organized like man, with hands, a brain and thought ; let us abstract from this crea- ture the moral sense, the sense of the beautiful, of the in- finite, reason and conscience ; in short, all the faculties of the soul ; man, a celestial being, will no longer exist, and yet there will be a complete, a living being, an animal endowed with intelligence superior to that of the dog or the monkey ; the man of the materialist. This being will experience sensations and will perceive ideas, according to the theory of Locke ; he will possess MEMORY AND WILL. 131 memory and volition, but this volition will be restricted to the things which fall under the cognizance of the senses, and will only excite material passions and coarse appetites. Thus, on the one hand, there would be no revelation of the power which created the world ; on the other, no moral will against bad passions ; the internal conflict between good and bad would cease ; the antagonism of man would be annihilated, and all that the sense of the beautiful and of infinity can produce of great and generous, all the works of the human soul, would be obliterated from our history. Such a creature does not exist. There is no intermedial between the brute and man, unless it be man himself, for man sometimes sinks to the level of the brute. But from this abjection to which he is cast, he may be redeemed, whilst nothing can raise the brute from its brutalization ; the most perfect animal remains faithful to its instincts. Educate a dog; the most brilliant success will only produce a dog ; that is to say, that his intelligence, so wonderful, will only develope itself within the acknowledged qualities of his species. Thus, he may chase, watch the flock, love and defend his master, but you will never teach him to live in a community like the bee, or to build a house like the beaver. And even the qualities which are proper to him are extremely limited. All is restricted to intelligence, and to affections without choice and without enlightenment ; the dog attaches himself to the master which chance gives him. He does not love men ; he gives himself to a man, and he looks for his protection ; it is the instinct of the ivy, and not the election of love; it is a law imposed, not a free sentiment ; that which you admire in him you will find in a hundred thousand others, and all the prodigies of the individual are only the character of the species. An admirable animal, doubtless, but evidently created for man, since from this attachment which is so strong, and from this wonderful intelligence, no ray of light radiates to- wards God. It is not the same thing with man. Choose the most abject being in the lowest grade of intelligence, place this man in circumstances favourable to the developement of the beautiful and the infinite ; on a sudden, this being, void of intelligence, will raise himself up to the thought of God; 132 PHYSICAL AND MORAL and from out of the heart of the brutal and vicious man, you will see spring up the noble sentiments of pity and of love. There are in us some lights which our idleness leaves in the shade ; others which education leaves in forgetfulness ; a moral idea only is required to render the former visible, as a blow only is required to cause the spark to emanate from the flint which conceals it. The celebrated methodist Whitfield was preaching in the streets of Philadelphia. The prodigious influence of this sectary, and the power of his eloquence over the mul- titude, are well known. He required money for an act of charity, and he addressed himself to a brutal population. All at once he was interrupted by sobbings; a man emerged from the crowd, and throwincr down before him a dozen stones, and some pieces of money, said in his energetic language, " Here, take my alms ; I came to break your head, and it is you who have broken my heart." The two wills of the man are here developed in all their energy. The orator awakens the will of the moral being ; he goes to seek it amidst the most hostile passions, and opposes it to the will of these passions. He effects sud- denly, that which education ought to have effected by degrees, and with greater advantage to the individual. He separates the man from the wild beast; he calls him forth, and forces him to signalize his presence by a manly action. There exist, then, two wills in man : there is only one will in animals. Man therefore is alone free upon the earth. He alone can struggle with and conquer himself. He alone escapes from the fatalities of organization. The virtuous man is he in whom the will of the spiritual being is stronger than the will of the material being. When these two wills are opposed, there is a contest, and then, according as the one or the other predominates, you will see produced, an Epaminondas or a Caesar, a Socrates or a Sylla, a Washington or a Bonaparte — wis- dom or ambition, with all their consequences. When the will of the soul is the strongest, it makes the faculties of the intelligence subservient to its triumph ; and "when, on ih^ contrary, the animal will is uppermost, all the faculties of the soul are either obliterated or obey it. In MEMORY AND WILL. 133 this latter instance, the soul imparts to the terrestrial pas- sions a something of its power and of its greatness. Infinity applied to human ambition produces heroes and conquerors. All the glories which have not for their object the welfare of humanity, originate from this source. We have seen that man, reduced to his bodily organiza- tion, and to his intelHgence, is a perfect animal, living and thinking ; but the purely intellectual being which we have separated from him, is neither less perfect, less living, nor less thinking, though his thoughts are of another order: they constitute the moral being, as the thoughts of the intel- ligence constitute the physical being. Intelligence is con- stituted in order to feel and to know ; the soul in order to reveal and to love. Thus, besides the memory of earthly things, there exists the memory of celestial things ; at first, obscure and confined like the visions of a dream ; then bright and luminous as the first rays of the morning. To this memory the senses contribute nothing ; being indepen- dent of time and matter, all its recollections are of eternity ; it speaks to us of God, always of God, and we believe in him without seeing him, without touching or hearing him ; and we believe in him intellectually, contrary to our mate- rial interests, notwithstanding our terrors, notwithstanding our weakness and our crimes. Such are the reminiscences of the soul. Leibnitz termed them obscure thoughts; Descartes innate thoughts ; Bacon the divine sense. Happy memory, which remembers God, and brings him here below, in order to adore him ! For, from this faculty pro- ceeds the celestial passion which is termed love, and which belongs only to man upon the earth. It constitutes our greatest power, and perhaps, likewise, our brightest light ; the want of a something perfect to love being as a revela- tion of our destiny. And in fact, would our soul be capable of knowing eternal perfections, if it did not touch by some points at eternity ? The soul possesses, then, a superior memory, which comes to us already impressed with the wonders of a world which we do not see, and with the thought of a God who is unknown to us ; and we foreknow this God as the earth foreknows the rising of the sun when the first glimmerings of day gild the mountain tops; then the zephyr blows, the bird sings, and the human soul expands amidst these joyful presentiments of nature. 134 MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES. CHAPTER XIX. UNION OF THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL AND OF THE INTEL- LECTUAL FACULTIES. " Nous somraes trop eleves a I'egard de nous memes pour nous coinprendre." Saint Augustin. " God is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." St. John. We are asked how the soul is combined with thouorht, we ourselves ask how thought is combined wiih matter, and both questions must alike remain without an answer. All that we know without comprehending and without wishing to explain it, is, that thought is the organ of the soul, as the senses are the organs of thought. At the summit of the intelligent faculties the soul appears. In this temporary amalgamation of two natures, the ntelligent being makes itself known only by its relations with terrestrial things, and the spiritual being by its im- pressions of divine things. Nothing is more decided than the attributes of these two beings, the union of which con- stitutes man. Intelligence knows that there are a world, animals, plants, stars, the sun, &c. The soul knows that it is immortal, and that God exists. Thus the soul teaches us that which without its assist- ance the loftiest intellects would never know ; the infinite, the beautiful, the moral, the true, is a closed world to them. The soul, on the contrary, enlarges the being which it possesses ; it dematerializes him ; all which it adds to thought is incomprehensible to thought; out of time it makes eternity; out of space immensity; out of death, im- mortality ; it attaches itself only to the invisible, and reposes only in infinity. What a distance is there between these conceptions and thought ! To think is to judge. But animals think, though their thoughts stop where the beautiful, the infinite begin. But OF MORAL LIBERTY. 135 there is no beautiful, no infinite for the material being. The beautiful exists only for the sublime essence which seeks it ; the infinite exists only for the soul which desires it. If you could endow the sinallest insect with the sense of the beautiful and the infinite, this imperceptible atom would comprehend eternity, and would see God, and this vision would render it immortal. CHAPTER XX. OF THE TRUE SOURCE OF VIRTUE. /■ 2* Ah si Satan pouvoit aimer 11 cesseroit d'etre mechant." .' Sainte Therese. All our first movements are good, generous, heroical; reflection weakens and kills them. The soul first speaks, and its language is that of love and of virtue. The intel- lect afterwards reasons, and its reasoning is always more favourable to matter than to the soul. Be not surprised if the progress of intellect is so often useless for virtue ; nothing is more easily explained, viz. that virtue arises from another source. In the domain of the intellect all is individual ; in the regions of the soul all is sympathy. We see, therefore, produced from isolated intellects little else than a cold egotism or a sad personality ; whereas the soul covers the w^orld with its wings, and feels itself to live only by the love of God and of humanity. CHAPTER XXI. OF MORAL LIBERTY. " Le sage seul est libre." Zenon. "Etre meilleurs ou pires depend de nous ; tout le reste depend de Dieu." JOUBERT. The nature of man being double, his moral liberty may be inferred. The two powers meet only in order to con- tend, and the contest is the proof of the liberty. 136 OF MORAL LIBERTY. Another proof of our .moral liberty, which we have already noticed, is the creation ot laws. Man contracts the circle of his faculties of his own accord ; he enchains the animal within him, in order to give more power to the soul:. one would. say that he guesses from his first step in life that the soul alone can make him great. Man gives laws to iiimself, animals receive them from nature ; therefore man can do all that the laws prevent ; therefore animals can only do that which nature allows them. The true life of man begins only with the thought of God, and the thought of God alone makes us free. This is the reason why inordinate passions and the animal- volitions tend to extinguish it. They attack God in all the faculties which reveal him ; they render man incapable of compre- hending truth and virtue; they degrade him in order to master and to possess him. Be not surprised if, circum- scribed within the circle of his senses, this man refuses to leave it. Whither could he go, and what could he do, when he sees nought beyond? and yet a soul is there; but this soul sleeps, and with it its will and its liberty. Liberty is the power of choosing and of willing. Hence liberty without reason is dangerous ; as reason without liberty would be useless. Man is aKvays free, but he is not always strong enough to make good use of his freedom ; strong minds make the passions bend, other minds yield to them. Thus man enjoys true liberty only in strength and in enlightenment. Strength and enlightenment — inseparable elements of all wis:dom, power, and happiness ! To resist our passions, is to verify the existence in us of a will stronger than our passions. This will awakens the conscience, for conscience rejoices in its triumph or grieves at its fall. This will is enlightened by the sentiment of the beautiful and the infinite, for it acts for. an ideal interest, which is frequenth^ opposed to the material interest. This will is the soul itself; a perfect, pure, and sublime being, which may be repulsed, which may be overpowered, but which cannot be vilified. Conflict tries it; a fall weakens it; repentance revives it ; triumph elevates it; it is; this word constitutes all the superiority of man. We consider liberty, then, as a sphere in which man ex- IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 137 ercises his power and his two wills. This sphere is more or less vast, according to the extent of our intellectual and moral faculties. In other words, the circle of our liberty- expands in proportion as our enlightenment increases; which does not mean that those who are more enlightened are necessarily better than those who are less so ; but it simply means that they have the power c^ becoming better. The man who yields to his passions, obeys a master to whom he has given himself up. Hence to obey our passions is not to be free ; it is to yield to them ; it is to yield to something inferior to our- selves. Every man who studies himself is great; every man who energetically employs his powers is invincible. To make oneself a character for wisdom and virtue, is to advance freely and resolutely against the torrent of. our vices and of our passions ; it is to will and to be able to do that which we both can and will. Whence it results that the most powerful and free creature in the universe is he who knows how to submit to pain in obeying the dic- tates of virtue. CHAPTER XXII. OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. " The kingdom of God is within man." Words of Jesus Christ. " D'ou viendrait tant d'orgueil a la poussiere, et tant de pretensions au neant." Ancillon sur V ImmortaliU de VAme. The preceding meditations have for their object the study of man. I wish to know myself; and it is by directing my regards upon myself that I arrive on all sides at God. God exists, for he has placed within us a witness of his existence. He exists, for all the faculties of the soul seek him and find him; an immense truth, without any possible refutation. In fact, that which one intellect adopts another may deny. Logical demonstrations have all their contradictions^, but here nO reasonings, no arguments, are admissible ; it is a celestial lyre, all the chords of which vibrate for heaven : it is a God who manifests himself to the conscience of the 138 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. human race. This is our best title to immortality. God has done every thing for mankind, in allowing us to have a glimpse of him. Wherefore should he have revealed him- self to one who was to cease to know him ? To have loved God, and to return to nothingness, is an impossible and contradictory thing ; to have contemplated the eternal perspectives, and to (iCc^se to be, is an absurd idea. It would be to have imagined more than God has created. But, would you say, I dare not believe in such a lofty destiny for myself. God only gives me the thought of it in order to soften the evils of life ; and this thought, were it only an illusion, is still the most magnificent of presents. What could God owe me further? Well, then, cast your eyes around; among so many benefits bestowed, try to dis- cover a single deception. The question is, to know what has been promised and what has been given ; whether the gifts are equal to the wants — whether the enjoyments are equal to the desires. Seek an animal that is thirsty, and cannot find a fountain ; a plant attached to the earth, to which the breath of morn does not brinor refreshing dews ; a human thought which cannot be accomplished; a senti- ment of love which cannot be realized. God says to each intelligence, that which thou conceivest I will give thee, and his magnificence is exhibited even in the extreme limits of creation. Observe this frail butterfly, its head is circled with diamonds, its wings have the variegated colours of the rainbow ; for it the zephyr balances the flowers, for it the earth is a magnificent banquet, and life a radiant morning, all consecrated to pleasure; and yet, amidst so many riches, among so many pleasures, no voice awakens its gratitude, nothing occupies it beyond its appetites, nothing disturbs it beyond its horizon ; it lives, enjoys, and dies; and its destiny is then fulfilled. What, the fly has not been deceived, and shall man be so ? Would there be in us a sentiment without an object? an anxiety about a heavenly life without any necessity 1 de- sires without fulfilment 1 an eternal foresight without a futurity ? the penalty of annihilation, in the presence of an immortality promised and refused ? promised because it is exhibited to us. But pain ! but death ! Thou complainest of death, as if thou didst not carry within thyself the sentiment which IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 139 triumphs over it ; as if it did not open to thee the gates of eternity. Alas, great lessons are not spared us, they are mixed up with the lives of all men. God sends us pleasure as a celestial messenger to invite us to come to him ; and misfortune as a severe master to force us. But a few days ago I saw a child die — the sole thought of its mother ; with what anxiety did she not look fur life in its eyes, which were closing for ever. I still hear her lamentations; I still see her sorrowing countenance. All consolation was destroyed by the words — he is no more! All at once her soul becomes elevated ; a celestial joy beams in her eyes ; she invokes the name of God— she remembers his promises — an immortal sentiment restores to her all that she has lost. This inconsolable mother, who would hear nothing, is now consoled by the inspirations of infinity ; it is no longer on earth, it is in heaven, that she contemplates her child. Ah, if she were never to see it again, what a horrid mockery ! Will God be wanting in power or in justice? Would there be magnificence and truth in the instinctive life of the fly ? artifice and falsehood in the moral and reli- gious life of man t virtue persecuted on the earth, and turn- ing its regards towards heaven? the devotedness to one's country and to the human race? the heroism which looks for nothing here below ? all the sacrifices made to duty, with the sole aim of pleasing God ? Would these be only the mistakes of humanity? Thy soul, O Socrates! would have experienced thoughts more vast than the creation. Thou, the friend of truth, wouldst have died for a lie. Would God have deceived Socrates? Could the created being be more magnificent than his Creator ? No, no ! to those who invoke him, to the human race which acknowledges him, Providence does not respond by a sentence of eternal death. It is not on the tombs that his answer is inscribed ; it is in our own souls, whence escapes the sublime cry — God — eternity ! When man casts his eyes around him, what does he see ? the creation which on all sides raises itself up to him ; and when he restricts his regards to himself; when he studies and contemplates himself, what does he find, beyond his terrestrial passions? An instinctive sentiment of infinity, a conscience which tends to ideal perfection, a reason, the 140 SOURCE OF GENIUS AND VIRTUE. 1 light of which extends up to heaven ; in fact, a soul, all the faculties of which radiate towards God. Mysterious intui- tion of the Divinity which announces to us another existence as surely as the senses reveal to us the actual world. The kingdonn of God is within man.* a CHAPTER XXIII. OF THE SOURCE OF GENIUS AND VIRTUE. " Ceux qui n'exercent point leur ame sont incapables des belles oeuvres de I'ame." Xenophon. " Si vous voulez concevoir ce qui est divin c'est le sens divin qu'il vous faut." CElenschlager, The elenaents of man's essence being known, his exist- ence — his greatness — his passions — his contradictions, all are explained. Man is a soul united, not to a body, not to a corpse, as Maxime de Tyr says, but to a living and intelli- gent animal, which itself is endowed with all the instincts and all the passions of other animals. They are two beings of an opposite nature, which form but one being ; two thoughts — two interests — two wills, which dispute with each other the sovereignty : such is man. The soul and the body itiay be likened to the rider and the horse, which are united together for a single course; they start forth, contest, press close to each other, passing from victory to defeat, and from defeat to victory, till the moment when the exhausted ani- mal falls expiring in the arena. It dies ; the freed rider scarcely bestows a last look upon it; and, all panting with the lengthened conflict, finds himself in the presence of the master who is to reward or punish him. In our modern educations, all the care, all the foresight are for the horse ; to him belong the boldness — the strength ; to him the glory and ambition. In order that he may start brilliantly in his career, that he should be intoxicated with the applause of the multitude, his passions are awakened, his intelligence is enlarged ; time and matter are his. But the rider ! who thinks of instructing him 1 What lessons has he received to guide him in the arena ? How can he find himself * " Neither shall they say, Lo, here, or lo, there, for behold the kingdom of God is within you." St. John xvii. 21. SOURCEOF GENIUS AND V IHTV IS. 141 prepared for the struggle ? Who will give him the will and ihe courage? We train up an animal to the exercises of horsemanship ; we develope his intelligence, we enrich his memory, we fertihze his talents — his passions — his vices, and then we proudly contemplate our work, believing that we have completed the education of a man. Do you now understand why the soul has so little con- trol over the body? why its contests are so feeble? its resistance so slight? and, consequently, why there exist so little morality, so little religion, conscience, and virtue, in the world? We must have professors to study a flea, to classify a gnat, to distinguish a cat from a rose-tree ; but man, this sublime and hidden being, which it is important for us to instruct and to know — where is he taught? In what college — in what institution — do you see any one oc- cupied in developing in him the sense of the sublime and beautiful — the moral sense — the sense of infinity ? or reason or conscience? these noble faculties which unite him to God. And yet, herein lies the whole strength of man ; his in- telligence merely places him at the head of animals ; his soul separates him from them, by calling him to duty. Let him congregate families, assemble people together, build towns, it is but the work of ants and bees ; but let him establish laws, let him cause justice to reign, this will be the work of man. Let us elevate men, then, if we would see in our cities something else than human ants. One truth of which we must be convinced before all others, is, that the develope- ment of the faculties of the soul is the sole and universal source of all our superiority ; we owe to it both the chefs- d'asuvre of genius, the advantages of virtue, and all the noblest works of the human race. To the moral sense we are indebted for Bayard, L'Hopital, Socrates, and Fenelon. To the sense of the beautiful, Homer, Corneille, Shakspeare, La Fontaine, Moliere, Lamartine. To the sense of the infinite, Plato and Descartes, Kant and Newton. It is our union with God which makes us great. To separate our- selves from God, — and all our modern educations do sepa- rate us from him, — is to deprive ourselves at once of genius, virtue and immortality. Do but observe the influence of the faculties of the soul 142 SOURCE OF GENIUS AND VIRTUE. over the works of the painter and of the sculptor. A mnn " may be a good colourer, draw well, and compose a picture, and yet not rise above mediocrity. You copy a model, you give it physical beaut}^ colouring, and attitude ; it will be a work of the hand, of the intelligence, but only an inani- mate work, if you do not impress it with soul. Raise, then, thy soul, artist! let me feel its breath, let me expe- rience its inspiration; an immortal cause can alone produce immortality. We possess this double power of embellishing in our imagination all the objects of nature, and of communica- ting to our own works that ideal and moral beauty which comes from the soul. Genius does not paint as it sees out- wardly, it expresses what it sees inwardly. The sense of the beautiful is the light of the mind. I enter the museum, and I select a picture, the material execution of which is admirable — the swearing of the Horatii by David. I recognise in it the purity of the forms, the study of antiquity, the knowiedge of the drama ; there is somethinoj enercretical in the attitude of these three warriors, their gesture is an oath, they swear to fight, but for what? Here the work of the intelligence stops short; the painter has made a fine picture, but no voice emanates from this canvass; my admiration is limited to the beauty of the lines and the purity of the design, but nothing awakens in me the love of country. The father who presents the swords might be considered but a drunken man ; the three young men who listen, only vulgar warriors. I do not hear that energetic cry which responds to the call of Rome; I do not see the assurance of victory which radiates from the brow of heroes ; all these heads are mute; and yet, among these warriors, there is a con- queror, a noble conqueror, who will become a cruel mur- derer. Where is this Roman, so eager for the honour of Rome ; who, in his enthusiasm, sacrifices his sister to her? show him to me; give him a soul at once sublime and ferocious, or lay aside your pencil. I do not want the work of an intelligence; you owed me a page of the history of the world, and you give me the doings of a great workman. To these passions altogether physical, to this purely mate- rial picture, let us oppose one of those rare chefs d'ceiivre SOURCE OF GENIUS AND VIRTUE. 143 which derive life and immortality from the soul of the artist. A few years ago, during a journey in Italy, after having visited the galleries of Venice, Bologna, and Florence, I arrived at Milan, where I expected to admire the Swpper of Leonardo da Vinci. This composition", cast as if by chance upon the wall of a refectory, was in ruins. At the time of the wars of the republic, the refectory was successively turned into stables and barracks ; considerable dilapidations were the consequence, and the picture, half effaced but still existing, was no more than a sort of apparition, reminding one of those shadows in Milton's Paradise, of which the scarcely-perceptible forms seem always ready to vanish. It required some time for me to recognise it, but by de- grees my eyes became accustomed to this vision, I caught the lines, I distinguished the figures, and the whole work became visible. What a subject ! and what a painter! All the human passions put in motion by a divine passion! the fear, the surprise, the treachery, the indignation in t!ie apostles, the pity and mercy in the look of the Saviour; one disciple only, with his head bowed down, expresses grief; this one is the well-beloved; he does not protest, he grieves, and his grief is love. All these things are visible in this obliterated picture; or, so to speak, the physical picture is destroyed, but its soul exists, and sur- vives matter; and in these remnants of a sublime work I read the thought of each figure, I recognise the sentiments of each individual, I hear the Gospel, I see the disciples, I adore the God. It would be difficult to find a more striking example of the influence of the soul over the arts ; it is a lesson to artists. Enrich your memory, exercise your hand, deve- lope your intelligence ; these are purely animal operations. If you do not draw from the vivifying source of the beau- tiful, of the infinite, and of conscience, you will produce nothing; one only attains to excellence by the paths of virtue. A sublime principle, of which the finest developement belongs to Socrates; Cato reproduced it in defining an orator a good man, skilful in the art of speaking. Thus the sage of Greece and the sage of Rome attributed genius, not to the workings of thought, but to the beauty of the 144 SOURCE OF GENIUS AND VIRTUE. soul. Both said, the source of eloquence is virtue; and by virtue they understood the sentiment of our duty towards the gods and men. The forgetfulness of this principle has precipitated us into chaos. Man has mistaken, for the highest part of himself, that which is but the evidence of a superior ani- mality. What has been the consequence? an eager and learned youth has risen up on all sides. Each personality has constituted itself a centre ; for intellect, far from uniting men, divides them. Each comes with his particular rea- sonings ; no one with the sentiment of truth : and if, amidst this anarchy, the soul do not resume its empire, we shall see nothing else than opinions without morality, and ambition without restraint. It is the property of intellect, when abandoned to itself, to destroy society, while in- creasing the enjoyments of civilization. The causes of our falling off are sought for in the doc- trines of the philosophers; but the doctrines of phi- losophers are, themselves, only the result of our modes of education. You reduce man to his intellect, and his intellect yields its fruits. Observe what is become of our literature; inquire of it what it will have, and to what it tends. You will hear cries of liberty ! one would say a people was in insurrection; it likewise has kings to de- throne. But, in fact, what are its works ? What have we substituted for the heroical literature of Pericles, of Augus- tus, and of Louis XIV. Have we, then, approached nearer to nature ? Have we searched deeper in the recesses of the human heart? Have we been made more pure, more true, or more enthusiastic ? No. For a worn-out circle we have substituted a narrow circle ; for a" literature of convention, a superficial literature ; for rules, license. We have erased from our poetry, sentiment, heroism, and even French character. We are no longer poets ; we are no longer lovers; we no longer imagine; we paint, it is the talent of David transported into speech. Our writers wish to speak to the eyes; and they only represent of man the body and the animal passions — those passions of which satiety is the end. Open the newest works, study this literature, which certainly is not wanting either in raciness or talent, but which has lost its regenerating mission, by plunging into matter. Hideous figures surround you, SOURCE OF GENIUS AND VIRTUE. 145 frightful dramas oppress yon ; you are in a fantastic world a prey to tortures and executioners. Not one look towards heaven, not one sentiment for the heart. To see all these human forms which crime puts into motion would remind you of the Alberic of Dante walking the streets of Genoa, when his soul had already descended to hell. It is no longer life, neither is it death ; it is a corpse animated by a demon. Such is the type of our literary creations, the heroes of our dramas and our fictions; one would say that the aim of art is only to produce terror and disgust. But we copy nature; but we exhibit the age and humanity. Man is the subject of our works ! Yes, man as an animal, but man as a religious being, purifying his passions by the sense of infinity, I seek in vain for any such in your works, and yet therein alone is the pathetic ; therein only are truth and immortality. Oh, you have not lied to the world, divine Richardson, virtuous Bernardin de Saint- Pierre, eloquent Rousseau 1 you have not lied to the world, in depicting the charms of modesty, and the sublime con- flicts of virtue ! and shall the source of such delicious tears be dried up for ever'? Does there not exist in the universe a single holy emotion — a single generous sentiment ? This earth, so vast — this civilization, so much boasted of, — do they offer for our contemplations nothing but the scenes of the charnel-house, and the pathetics of the scaffold ? Such we must say, are works of pure intellect. All their effects are physical : the body shudders, the senses are dis- turbed; but the eye remains dry, the heart barren; nothing goes to the soul, because nothing comes from it. That which should be taught, therefore, to philosophers, to artists, to poets; that which must be especially taught to mothers, for it is they who form great men, is the knowledge of the soul, the art of awakening its faculties, and of separating them from the animal faculties. A truly human science, since its aim is to restore man to his true rank, from whence all our methods of education tend to make him descend. Cause him to know that which elevates and that which debases ; show him the degradation of those material habits which fetter thought ; of those brutal passions which cir- cumscribe and destroy it ; show him especially the glory and the happiness which result from the developement of 10 146 DEVELOPEMENT OP THE SENSE his most sublime faculties, — the sense of the beautiful, and the love of truth. To possess the fury of the tiger, the courage of the lion, the devotedness of the dog, is but to live the life of all the animals; the life of the man begins only with the sentiment of the divinity. CHAPTER XXIV. DEVELOPEMENT OF THE SENSE OF THE GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL BY THE STUDY OF GREAT MODELS. " Donnons a I'empire des femmes une sublime direction, que cette puissance enchanteresse dont elles disposent recoive de nos propres mains une impulsion salutaire vers les grandes et les belles choses, et qu'elles nous guident ensuite elles memes vers cetle amelioration morale si inulileraent cherchee par les philoso- phes." Raymond, Essai sur V Emulation. A PHENOMENON takcs placc in the intellectual world which it appears to us has not been sufficiently considered, viz. the fall of all that is false, and the triumph of all that is true. Whatever may be the enthusiasm with which evil is received, and the indifference to the good, the termination is inevitable, the great of every kind must always regain its place, which is ihe first in nature as well as the first in the human soul. This is the reason why the soul in its transports, that is to say, in its highest aspirations, harmonizes with nature in her most ideal perfections. The consequence is that cliefs- d^ceuvre of every kind alone survive. Universal consciousness, stronger than all the bad pas- sions which a vitiated taste engenders, marks with a fatal stroke in human works that which is to live, and that which is to be forgotten. The grand never dies; the indifferent (mediocre) never lives; and this immense selection, this work of every day, performed by the hand of time beneath the influence of great souls, is not liable to oblivion and error. Thus Homer, Plato, Sophocles, Euripides, have come down to us through the dust of ages, with the ap- pearance of an eternal freshness. Thus Tasso, Milton, Shakspeare, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, Fenelon, form, with the geniuses of Greece and Rome, the magnetic chain which unites the past to the present, and which likewise carries the present into the future. By the Iliad we are linked with OP THE GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL. 147 the heroic ages ; with the earUest periods of the world by the Old Testament ; and by the New Testament with the futurity of the human race. There is then in the works of man a something immu- table, which partakes of eternal beauty, and which con- stantly escapes from all the revolutions of thought. To verify this phenomenon, is to reply beforehand to those who might be tempted to make exceptions to the great models, that is to say, the works of all kinds which have descended to us amidst the admiration of men, and with the consent of ages. We should there find the source of a multitude of delightful sentiments, and of the exquisite taste which origi- nates from the knowledge of the beautiful and of the con- sciousness of our morality. The education of women is so superficial, they are so little accustomed to serious thoughts, that all reading, I do not say of instruction, but of meditation, becomes insup- portable to them. This painful impression is difficult to overcome. The soul having been long silent, seems to re- venge itself by disgust for the obUvion in which it has been left. But when surmounting its first repugnance you pursue the studies wiiich awaken and appeal to it, with what transport does it not respond to the call ! what an abun- dance of enjoyment does it not yield ! All the thoughts of the most lofty minds become your thoughts ; you penetrate with them into the treasures of the beautiful and the infinite which they have disclosed, and which without their inspira- tions would have been for ever hidden from you. You feel yourself strong by their strength, virtuous by their virtue, pious by their piety; they transport you, ordinary beings, with the emotion of great souls, and in these delightful studies of intellect and sentiment it is permitted to you to live at the same time with the thoughts of Homer and Tasso, of Fenelon and Socrates, Montesquieu and Descartes ; to see nature with the eyes of Linneus, and the greatness of God with the eyes of Newton. This power of illuminating our souls by the light of the greatest minds, superadding them to our own, if we may so speak, is one of the transcendental laws of our nature ; it causes the age which is passing not to pass uselessly for the age which is coming ; it constitutes our perfectibiUty. And further, it estabUshes the only equality which is possible 148 SENSE or THE GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL. between the intellects ; for, not being able to raise us up either to inspiration or to invention, — which are privileges of the few, — it bestows upon us the enjoyment, the admira- tion, and the possession of them. In these delightful studies we borrow from genius all that genius receives from nature. If, unfortunately, all these divine voices should leave your soul languid and listless, do not be discouraged : above all, do not condemn these magnificent works, because they only cause you fatigue or ennui. One thing of which it is indis- pensable you should be convinced, is, that the weakness is in yourselves, not in them. Persevere, make efforts to feel and to appreciate them ; the greater the aptitude which you possess, the more you will approach perfection : and your love for these divine models will become the measure of your intelligence and progress. Then only will you feel the justness of that verse of Boileau, an eternal epigraph of all that is good and great in the arts and in literature — " C'est avoir profile que de savoir s'y plaire." To take pleasure in the perusal of good models, to perse- vere in their study, is to give to oneself that which all the treasures of the world cannot give us — delicacy of taste, peace of mind, contentment, and the joys of a pure con- science ; for the knowledge of the beautiful always leads us to the enjoyment of virtue. ' Let us, then, conclude this chapter as we commenced it, by saying that knowledge and eloquence are a divine harmony, and that all that is most elevated in our souls unceasingly responds to all that is most elevated in nature. INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES. 149 CHAPTER XXV. OF THE HARMONY BETWEEN THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES. " Ainsi sont exclus de la nouvelle science les stoiciens qui veulent la mort des sens, et les epicuriens qui font des sens la regie de rhomme." Vico. Science Nouvelle. " L'homme n'est ni ange ni bete ; et le malheur est, que qui veut faire I'ange, fait la bete." Pascal. At the first glance there is something alarming in the part which nature accords to matter. Foresight, intelli- gence, animal volition, all the instincts, all the passions, appertain to it. Animals think, remember, will, love, hate ; but these faculties have no other aim than the conservation of the species. Matter, being satiated, sleeps or rests; man still desires, always desires ; his passions are without repose; after the satisfactions derived from earth, they dream of satisfactions from heaven. There is, then, in man something else than matter, an infinity which aspires to eternity. The principles being thus defined, the alarm-ceases, for the noblest part belongs to the soul. The soul is the delight in good, it is the virtuous, the immortal being. What animal passion, what earthly pleasure can we regret in the contemplations of the beau ideal, and of the infinite'? And yet we must be careful not to disunite on earth these two halves of our being. Death alone has this right : it kills the animal in order to set the god free ; but man cannot destroy the one nor the other without disturbing the well-being of the world. If he attempt to make himself an angel, his animal passions draw him forcibly back earth- wards ; if he attempt to become an animal, his celestial passions torment him with remorse. He is not free to alter his nature, but only to regulate it. Whenever he abandons the rule, he mistakes his position : he is no longer any thing, for he cannot attain, in the two extremes, either to the 150 or THE HARMONY BETWEEN THE perfection of a god, nor to the usefulness of a beast, and he will have ceased to be a nnan. Education ought to apply itself to develope sin^ulta- neously these two halves of our being ; it is applied, on the contrary, to separate them. This is the cause of all the evils which afflict humanity. What do we see in the world 1 intellects which strive to acquire fortune. People will have gold in order to have pleasures ; this is all that is desired; they are taught only for this object; it is the avowed aim of our studies and of our labours ; all comes fo this point ; even the transcendental speculations of science, and the science which does not tend to attain it is despised. On seeing the use which we make of thought, would it not seem to be bestowed upon us merely to gratify in a splendid manner the animal appetites? Man then forgets even his God ; for the animal passions, when they are dominant, stifle the thought of God ; and, as we have already said, they render us incapable of compre- hending truth and virtue. But amidst this crowd of men, powerful by their intellect, there exist some individuals, whose sole thought is to free themselves from their senses; they would live only the life of the soul. These men are likewise in a false position ; for they live upon the earth. Observe how they make imbecility and suflTering a religious precept, attacking the body by fastings and mortifications, attacking the mind by insensate beliefs, forcing it to believe that which is absurd, and demolishing the temple in which God himself has willed that he should be adored. Thus, some condemn themselves to live as if they had no soul ; others, as if they had no body. Useless efforts ! it results from them, that in the former a great develope- ment of the intellect takes place without principles, and in the latter, a great developement, not of the faculties of the soul, (for they reject reason,) but of the sense of infinity, without intellect. Every where man is the victim of an error which arises from pride ; every where man is found to be incomplete. The perfect and complete man is he who maintains the harmony between the two principles of his being, who accepts his position upon the earth on the conditions which God imposes upon us, leaving the plant free, and far from INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES. 151 killing the animal passions, regulates and deifies them by the sense of the beautiful, by reason and conscience. He feels that he loses the most subhme part of himself if he attach himself only to the things of earth. He feels, also, that in a world altogether material, the despising of matter could not be a perfection. We are condemned to live with a body, because all is substance around us. If man attenuate himself by discipline and fasting, still a skeleton of him must remain ; and in this labour against a part of himself, it is not an angel which he developes, it is the harmony of a world which he falsifies or destroys. And again, if the one or the other of these theories pro- cured the happiness which they appear to promise ; but they produce nothing but degradation and death ; and this truth, already sufficiently striking in the annals of convents, becomes a luminous truth in the annals of nations, — man can only he enslaved by being made incomplete. The most opposite despotisms, the religious and the philosophical despotism, have no other origin than this — they divide the work of God in order to debase it, and they debase it in order to rule over it. Observe what takes place in India and in China, the ancient cradles of these two kinds of despotism. In India the Brahmins devote to contempt the material man, his intelligence, his science, and even his reason ; stifling the lights which would guide him, exalting the superstitions which degrade him, leaving only all- powerful in the soul the sentiment of infinity, and by the light of this devouring flame precipitating an entire people of martyrs into the sacred waters of the Ganges, or beneath the bloody wheels of the car of Jaggernaut. In China, on the other hand, it is the faculties of the soul which they extinguish, and those of the animal which are favoured. There, no sentiment of infinity exists ; the soul is walled in like the nation. All the sciences are without progress, all the arts without movement, all the operations of the mind without ideality. Three thousand years ago, the thoughts of the Chinese came to a stop, and an immense people became as if automatized beneath the influence of its terrestrial doctrines. Given up to pleasure, they remain beneath the yoke of their tyrants, who surround them with keepers, enclose them within walls, watch over their safety, provide for their 152 WHAT CONSTITUTES INTELLECT wants, and without caring for their souls, encourage even the depravation of their manners. Nothing is more admirable than the regulations of the Chinese police, when the object is the cleanliness of the towns, the perfection of agriculture, the abundance of the markets, or the developement of industry. Thus the me- chanical part of the sciences and the arts is carried even to a prodigy of perfection. But by the side of this material order, the most hideous vices are publicly practised. There, slavery is in honour; women area merchandise; fathers sell their children, and infanticide, consecrated by custom, is abominably protected by the magistrates. In order to render this nation moral, to tear it from its depravations, what is required? To awaken its soul, which has slumbered for thirty centuries. Give to China the senti- ment of infinity which consumes the Indian ; to the Indian, the industrious intelligence which materializes the Chinese ; you will render man more complete. You will resuscitate these nations to reason and truth ; you will restore them to the human race. CHAPTER XXVI. WHAT CONSTITUTES INTELLECT SEPARATED FROM THE SOUL. " lis sentent leur neant sai?s le connaitre." PAfeCAL. Thus, human intelligence extends to all things which are on the earth ; the soul only appears there by the sentiment of the beautiful, the good, the true, and the infinite. It is intellect which calculates the shape of a sail, and the form of a ship ; which divides even the sun's rays and the invi- sible air into different elements : it creates the chemist, the naturalist, the geometrician, the astronomer ; it does more, it communicates to brute matter those sublime sciences which measure time and space; it causes them to emanate from some ingenious wheel-work, just as nature causes them to emanate from thought. Pascal constructed a machine which executed the most complicated rules of arithmetic. Babbage increased the power of this machine ; SEPARATED FROM THE SOUL. 153 he made of it a geometrician, an astronomer ; he submitted sums to its calculation, and the astonished world now sees produced from a mechanical instrument the same learned formulae which occupy the intellectual sphere of the Aragos and of the Poissons. The operation of intellect, when continual and without the presence of God, dries up and exhausts the soul. Because intellect controls the elements, fabricates our arms, fertilizes our lands, embellishes our cities, causes our vessels to skim the ocean ; because it attaches steam to our carriages, hydrogen gas to our balloons ; because it lodges, clothes, feeds, and enriches us, we have supposed that it was every thing ; yes, if man merely belonged to earth, it would suffice him to possess, to develope all the germs of earthly power and pleasure which are in him. Master of the elements, passing from one pleasure to another, he might at least satiate himself; but suppose him to know all; flatter his passions, satisfy his desires, give him a world: he will still lament, and hke a child will complain of the- limits of his empire. All may become obliterated, or deceive us in thought : sensation has its deceptions, memory its forgetfulness, in- tellect its illusions and its prejudices ; and yet this is the power with which we try to create and to comprehend every thing. Like the wonderful pillar which guided the Israehtes in the desert, so long as it advances it presents its brightness to us, but as soon as it stops we see only its dark side. The soul, on the contrary, — I mean the complete soul, — always appears in the light: all with which it inspires us is immortal, and partakes of its nature. Thus the senti- ment of the beautiful presents to us models of all things so perfect, that intellect which sees them, and which seeks to imitate them, despairs of so doing, and feels its inability to equal them. Thus, in its generous transports, the moral sense exacts those magnanimous sacrifices which stir up the vulgar, and for which great souls deserve the gratitude of the human race. It is the same with reason, before which all errors disappear, and also with the sentiment of infinity, the light of which loses itself in heaven. Whilst intellect wanders amidst the illusions of this material life, the soul sets it right by the contemplations of another hfe ; 154 DANGER OP SEPARATING THE FACULTIES, ETC. it manifests itself in the wonders of the invisible, by the astounding convictions, of which the living source is in itself. In fine, the testimony of intellect is a vision of the order of earthly things ; the testimony of the soul is a revelation of the invisible world, of eternity and God. CHAPTER XXVII. OP THE DANGER OF SEPARATING THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL. / " La vertu d'un homme ne doit pas se raesnrer sur ses efTorts, mais sur ce qu'il \fait d'ordinaire." Pascal. We may conclude, from all that has preceded, that the faculties of the intellect, and the faculties of the soul, should be developed simultaneously, and, so to speak, by the same impulse : to separate them is to destroy the man. But a still greater peril is that of dividing the faculties of the soul ; that is to say, of isolating the one from the others. The soul is a whole, a sun which has its rays ; when divided by the prism, the rays of the sun permit us to see only particular colours, but when united they conf- stitute light. For instance, separate in your mind the sentiment of the grand and beautiful, and the sentiment of infinity from the other faculties of the soul which illuminate them ; the former, isolated from reason and conscience, will go to expand itself in an endless license, or in a measureless am- bition : the latter will hght up funeral piles, lay waste the world, or concentrate its desires in money-bags. Thus, Lovelace, St. Dominick, Richelieu, Bonaparte, Harpagon, represent all the excesses of the sentiment of the beautiful and of infinity, isolated from the moral sentiment, from reason and conscience. In these powerful but incomplete organizations, I see merely a wandering ray of the soul, which lends its energy to earthly passions. The faculties of the soul, when separately developed, are like the luminous rays which, in the experiment of Fresnel, meet, are extinguished, and produce darkness ! OF THE SOUL OF NATIONS. 155 CHAPTER XXVIII. OF THE SOUL OF NATIONS. " Tant il est a craindre en fortifiant les liens d'une societe de forcer ceux de la nature." '' Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. " Le triomphe de la lumiere a toujours ete favorable a la grandeur et a I'ame- lioration de i'espece humaine." Madame de Stael. Of all human infirmities the saddest is the slumber of the soul. How many men pass by on the earth without its ever awaking ! The multitude which bears the toil of the day, and whose whole faculties are concentrated in this one thought — work and food. The red, blue, green, or orange-coloured automata, who march at the sound of the drum, place themselves in rank, fight without anger, and kill without hatred or re- morse. The man who goes to bed at night, rises in the morning, dresses, transacts business, breakfasts, dines, and digests, without any other thought. Here is animal intelligence — matter in motion. I should like to know exactly the number of the ideas of this crowd which every morning goes forth from its houses, fills the streets, encumbers the public squares, rolls on, hur- ries itself, and silently disappears in the first hours of the night. A mass with a hundred thousand heads, which, interro- gated without reference to its passions, expresses only the most noble sentiments, the purest taste, the most generous inclinations, which admires Socrates and curses Anytus; but of which, by a singular contrast, each member taken separately, — a sort of animal with a human face, — seems to have eyes in order not to see, ears not to hear, an intel- lect not to think ; and with all this, a soul engulfed in matter. I ask myself why so few truths have penetrated into the conscience, I do not say of a barbarous, but of a civilized people ? 156 OF THE SOUL OP NATIONS. Why the entire mass of the human race, with some ex^ ceptions, lives enchained in its routines, as if it were re- duced to instinct ? To these facts history responds by the most astonishing of phenomena. On this globe, the soul of which slumbers, I see sages appear here and there, like torches, the light of which awakens nations. And the nations receive each the thoughts of a man or of a God — Moses, Confucius, Boudah, Mahomet, Socrates, Jesus Christ : a thinking head : a moral head of the human race. They reign over the earth, which they have partitioned among them, in giving a soul to each people. This in- fluence is so general, that one would be inclined to take it for a law of nature. The moral thoughts of genius become as the instinct of nations, and nations become great in pro- portion to the genius of their legislator. Hence the pro- digies performed by Sparta, Athens, and Rome. The soul of their great men lived in the crowd, so that the crowd taken in the mass felt all the sentiments of a great man. In the middle ages, and even up to our own times, an immense corporation cast its nets over the civilized world ; it was no longer a great man, it was the Church, which was the soul of the West. The ideas of Brahma and of Mahomet continued to cir- cumscribe the East. All the legislations, all the ancient theocracies, being dead, the human race lived only through these three souls. Hostile souls, which divided the people, fettered their in- telligence, and fanaticised them in the prejudices and the crimes of a conventional morality. At the present day, the social transfiguration is being effected : ideas are multiplied, and nations become more intelligent ; but in proportion as the number of their ideas increases, they detach themselves from religious and pater- nal traditions ; faith leaves them, and the soul of ther legis- lators abandons them. A terrible revolution! the greatest which has yet agitated this world, for it tends to give the people up to the madness of their intellect; but it likewise tends to destroy their isola- tion, by destroying the religious authorities which separate INFLUENCE OF THE PRESS. 157 them. In its powerful march it must some day unite the nations, these scattered limbs of the human race, and give to them all a single moral code, taken from the laws of nature — and a single soul, drawn from the verv bosom of God. . This revolution has already began in Europe, where there will shortly be only a single people, divided into different states, kingdoms, or republics, which will all tend towards the same Uberty, beneath the general law of the Gospel. CHAPTER XXIX. PROGRESS. " Le probleme pour la presse comme pour la societe entiere est ceci : desarmer la mediocrile, ses passions jalouses et ses haines antisociales, en laissant au talent son libre essor pour arriver au faite, et dire comme Jean XXII. en se redressant: ' Me voici, c'est moi qui regnerai sur vous.' " Salvandy. "Si je vous parte fbrtement n'en soyez pas etonne, c'est que'la verite est libre et forte." Fenelon, Lettre a Louis XI V. There is a book, the pages of which are printed in all languages, the living picture of the world, in which the most lofty thoughts, the most serious questions, political, religious, of glory and liberty, of peace, war, finances, or justice, are discussed freely and impartially, and are delivered fresh with the interest of the day, to the knowledge of the grand jury of nations. Ephemeral pages, works without end, which every even- ing sees die, and every morning sees revive, always richer, always more powerful, adding the thought of to-day to the thought of yesterday, expanding intellects, awakening the masses, and perpetually calling to them — forward, forward ! Pass your eyes over these sheets, still w^et from the press ; — you are at Constantinople, at Ispahan, at Moscow, at London, at Paris. Here is Europe, where kings fall for want of morality. Here Asia, where nations die for want of intelligence. There America, with its cities and its deserts, presenting the twofold spectacle of civilized and wild liberty. You read day by day, hour by hour, all the events of the world : here a battle, a siege, a treaty ; there a congress of princes, or the energetic discussions of a popular assembly. No more secret councils, no more ob- 158 INFLUENCE OP THE PRESS. scure diplomacy, no more hypocritical machinations. The cabinets of kings are exposed ; the eyes of the people pene- trate into them, and truth springs up on all sides. An im- mense picture of human thought ! an eternal conflict between mind and matter, in which you every where perceive the progress of civilization, and the human race proceeding in detail to death, and in the mass to liberty. This book profits by all lights, enriches itself by every discovery; fire, wind, water, all the elements serve to mul- tiply and to spread it abroad. , It appears ; — ^millions of hands seize it, and millions of eyes devour its contents. It passes from town to town, from kingdom to kingdom, to move all hearts and heads, to engage the thoughts of all ; casting in the midst of the people, good, evil, truth and error, engendering a chaos — the chaos which precedes creation. This is the new, intelligent, and irresistible power which tends to destroy institutions, cause faith to perish, and kill the soul of nations. It is a fact, that already the periodical press reigns over the world : it places nations in the presence of nations; all contemplate and judge each other. And yet. powers grown old continue to roll on in their ancient tracks; they understand nothing of what is taking place ; they do not see that this press, to which they know nothing better to oppose than the censorship, customhouses, prisons, and the police, is effecting at the present moment the most powerful revolution which has hitherto shaken the world; that it tends to change all ; that what,was formerly done in darkness must now" be done in the open day,* — that the power of kings is on the decline, that their majesty is disappearing. They do not see this, they do not hear it, and in their ignorant pride they raise armies, surround themselves with soldiers ; they appeal to brutal force, for- getting the progress of thought, and those terrible words pronounced amidst the triumph of a great people, " the intelligent bayonets." O let them for once understand. The revolution which is taking place is invincible; that which is urging on the human race towards progress, is a great law of nature ; * There are now published in Europe 2,142 newspapers to a population of 227 millions of souls. America has 988 papers to a population of 39 millions. Asia has 27 to a population of 390 millions. Africa has 12 to a population of 60 mil- lions.— iVcie in 1834. EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. 159 kings cannot cause a people to retrograde, they cannot pre- vent the law frona being lulfillecl. But there is yet time to direct this naovement which they cannot overcome. What is there dangerous in the news- papers but error 1 Teach, then, the people to know the truth ; oppose the power of the soul to the falsehoods of the intellect : develope the primitive germs of grandeur, beauty, honesty, and justice, which are the very essence of man. This is the soul which the people again ask of you: they received it from heaven, and legislators have laboured only to extinguish it. All have attempted to mutilate man ; restore to us man complete. Absolute kings place their safety in ignorance and falsehood; popular kings will find their security in the diffusion of knowledge and of truth. CHAPTER XXX. OF THE EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. "Rien ne revele mieux I'origine de I'ame humaine que les emotions qui sont sans rapports avec la conservation de la vie materielle. Ces emotions que n'eprouvent jamais les creatures inferieures, semblent eire I'introduction a une existence plus relevee." Madame Necker, Education Progressive. The faculties of the soul do not develope themselves together and at once. Their successive developement is adapted to our wants ; they appear at the proper moment, in order to enlighten, to enjoy, or to combat. To study the precise period of their appearance, to learn to recognise, to direct, and to harmonize them, is what we term forming the education of man. This education belongs by right to women ; they alone know how to smile upon childhood, they alone can seize by sympathy the first transports of a soul which is awakened by their caresses. We transfer this work to rhetoricians and to logicians, but they arrive too late. In order to understand well the science of the soul, its alphabet must be studied near the cradle. Who- ever has not the beginning of it, cannot guess at its result. Hasten then to inquire of mothers of faniilies : they will tell you, how at six months old, the child begins to live for the external world, how it sees, judges, enjoys, how much a cheerful countenance enlivens it how much a severe aspect frightens, and renders it dejected. Its in- 160 EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. telligence is still mute, while its soul already sympathizes with ours. Impressions correspond to impressions, and form a touching language of which few men know the secret. And further, while animals remain within the nar- row circle of their material interests, the child delights in objects which it admires. It does not yet know what can be useful to it, and already it attaches itself to that which is agreeable. Before the material interests come the pleasures of the imagination ; before the revelations of intelligence the sympathies of love ; before the wonders of speech the mysterious relations of the soul which receives and com- municates thought. There is in this course of the being a something superior. From the depths of sensitive life the soul escapes by flashes, and, in a child which is ignorant of itself, reveals to us the future contemplator of the beauti- ful, the meditator upon infinity. These are the first facts which signalize the appearance of the soul, but there is one still more decisive and stronger : it is the appearance of consciousness. The child does not know duty, and already it is incensed at injustice. He ex- periences this exquisitely delicate sentiment almost as soon as he is born, while still on the bosom of his mother, or in the arms of his nurse. It is his first powerful emotion ; you have punished him unjustly. He is angry, he cries, a some- thing sublime takes place within him ; a general rising against injustice, which exhibits itself outwardly by anger and grief From this time the line of demarcation is drawn, the spiritual being separates itself from the animal being, a sentiment unknown to the rest of the creation constitutes him man. At a later period, the child being wounded in its con- sciousness, appeals to God from the judgment of man. Ah, if you could but read in this oppressed soul, if you could but understand its transports towards heaven, to which it aspires as to the day of justice ! There its innocence will be known, its wounds will be closed ; it will then be believed, for it suffers in the cause of virtue and truth. Happy warnings of consciousness ; death, which our prejudices and our terrestrial passions surround with fear, appears to us in our earliest youth, as the only remedy for human in- justice. Scarcely has it left the hands of the Creator, and EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. 161 the soul foreknows that its high destinies can only be ful- filled in another life. And this train of judgment and thought is not the pro- duction of imagination. We here trace the sketch of our most happy reminiscences. We again live in our child- hood, and seize the soul in its first transports. We verify by the study of ourselves the appearance of the moral sen- timents and of conscience; the greatest event in the history of man. In fact, according as you develope more or less these two faculties, will your child be more or less free, more or less happy. His virtues depend upon this first trial of your power. You hold in your hands the moral lever of hu- manity, two faculties which reveal man, two faculties which lead to God ; but Ukewise two faculties of an exqui- site delicacy, which are always ready to be exalted, and which, like soft wax, receive and retain every impression. If you repress them, you tend to obliterate the love of one's neighbour — if you stifle them, you destroy moral life — if you deceive them, expect no more repose, liberty, or truth. The maternal mspirations can impart vice or virtue, as the word of God imparts life. Such a power requires that we should stop and reflect upon it ; by exercising itself upon the child it reacts upon the mother, it ennobles her earliest offices, it even changes the nature of her tenderness. Before reflecting upon these truths, her anxious foresight watched with care and ten- derness over her child ; it was her blood, her life, a living and a suffering being ; but now it is a conscience which addresses her, it is a soul w^hich responds to hers ; she has a glimpse of heaven in its smile, of infinity in its love. This terrestrial form reveals to her an angel. Oh, what joy for her to develope herself the benevolent dispositions of this tender creature, to bestow upon it the life of the soul ; to render it at the same time worthy of the love of men, and of the regard of God. Already the sentiment of the beautiful and of the infinite, mix themselves in- stinctively with all the pleasure of childhood. We grow up, and in proportion as the animal passions develope themselves, the divine faculties appear to direct or control them ; till at last the grand, the subUme and beautiful, be- come the most energetic and ordinary sentiments of youth. 11 162 EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. This careless being, this timid child whom you see playing, if you touch his soul, becomes at once the rival of Bayard, the disciple of Aristides, and of Socrates ; he despises for- tune, ambition, and all false glories; in the face of society, which understands nothing of his transports, he is ready to die for his friend, his country, and his God. What a pro- digy is this ! man passes without transition from innocency to heroism. At the moment of experiencing the terrible force of the passions, all young souls would thus unite in the contempt of vice, and in the delights of virtue. This is the moment which must be seized ; the child is born good ; let not his goodness be effaced in the man ; he is eager for the beautiful, let this passion grow up with him. There is in the sentiment of the grand and beautiful a power superior to all our bad inclinations. Tender mothers, you must make haste. See, the pas- sions come like the tempest, but the young man still looks up to heaven. By a foresight of nature, which has hitherto remained useless, from not haying been sufficiently observed, the instinct of virtue is awakened at the same time as the passions are developed, and seek to make themselves obeyed. Ah ! do not lose this fortunate opportunity, in which the most sublime sacrifices present themselves as the natural object of life. Fear neither the excess of enthu- siasm, nor romantic exaltation! Acquire dominion over the soul, if you would control the senses, and leave to time and nature the care of re-eslablishing harmony between them. All our moral powders exist in us. The highest aim of our teachers should be to disengage, and call them forth, but this is what they think the least of. Without troubling themselves as to whether the house be already full, they only busy themselves about furnishing it. They fatigue the intellect with their wearisome maxims, and they leave asleep the faculties of the soul which could render these maxims intelligible. Fortunately, these faculties, so much neglected, possess a power which is proper to them, and which drives them outwardly. The moral sentiment mani- fests itself, on the mere occurrence of a violent or an unjust action. The aspect of nature, or the presence of virtue suffices to awaken the sentiment of the beautiful. It is our soul which incites us to the most generous sacrifices and EDUCATION OP THE SOUL. 163 devotedness ; it engenders chefs d^oeuvre as well as great actions, and nevertheless, it never completely realizes in its transports, that ideal model of beauty, of truth and of he- roism, which is in us. CHAPTER XXXI. OP THE DEVIATIONS OP THE SENTIMENT OF INFINITY. "En elevant avec soin nos enfants nous ferons beaucoup pour noire propre bonheur." Drax, Essai sur Vart d'etre heureux. Thus, the conscience, the moral sense and the sentiment of the beautiful, develope themselves at an early age, easily and spontaneously. These three faculties have a celestial tendency, but they have likewise something to do upon the earth ; their mission is to elevate the human soul, and to embellish its journey through life, by the sentiments of admiration and virtue. It is not the same with the sen- timent of infinity, which shows itself at a later period, is developed with difficulty, and never arrives at the know- ledge of itself. A stranger on the earth, without indica- tions of its noble origin, it loses itself amongst our passions and our ambitions. Passing from the delirium of love to the madness of play, from the covetousness of avarice to the intoxication of vanity, and impressing each with that infinity which absorbs them, it tries all human courses before attaining those which lead to heaven, and only at- tains them after having experienced that all here below is unsatisfactory and deceptive. You will never be able to prevent the deviations of the sentiment of infinity, if you do not at an early period recall it to its celestial origin by means of worship and prayer. To speak to little children of God, is in other terms to pre- sent to their contemplation the object to which all souls ought to tend. Cause the sentiment of infinity to recognise itself in the presence of the infinite God, and nothing will be lost, even amidst our terrestrial passions, if from the depth of their darkness man has still a gUmpse of the radiant path to heaven. What would become of the faculties of the soul, if isolated from that heaven to which they tend ? Misled by false lights into a purely terrestrial 164 EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. course, lost in the frightful void of our passions, they would impart to them an inexhaustible ardour which could never be satisfied on earth ; they would lead us to err in seeking their path, and we should think we had found this path, even in crime, if crime presented itself with a false aspect of greatness and virtue. Maternal power, which I call to my aid, be not deceived ! The sentiment of infinity re- quires immortality ; if you direct it towards finite things, it will exhaust them all, without exhausting itself. It will produce in the soul of your pupils insatiable avarice, un- bridled licentiousness, ambition, superstition, despotism, madness, despair, — in a word, all the passions which con- sume without satisfying us, which flatter us without ren- dering us happy. Alexander, the conqueror of the East, was dissatisfied with the smallness of the world ; he knew not what to do with his soul, this master of men, and after having deceived it by the conquest of the earth, he debased it by debauchery. This is an example applicable to our own history. Brought up in ignorance of God, the actual generation is the most terrible answer to the system of Rousseau ; not that it is hostile to all morality ; in its thoughts vices have remained vices, because vice is always without elevation. But crime, these children of error have reinstated it; they have praised its energy; they have assigned it its place in the policy of the people at the very time when they con- demned it in the policy of kings. The unfortunate crea- tures ! I have heard them envy the glory of Marat and the wisdom of Robespierre ! They spoke coolly of causing heads to fall for the good of humanity ; and the reign of the executioner was but to them the regeneration of a world. Every time that a noble sentiment is mixed up with vicious thoughts, the cause must be sought for in the devia- tion of the sentiment of the beautiful, and of the infinite. If you restrict man to the earth, he will attach himself to it. If you hide from him the road to heaven, he will mistake the object of creation. Ah ! if man be born but to seek a terrestrial happiness, then all crimes are justified ! But if our inheritance is not of this world ; if the object of crea- tion be to draw us to God by love ; if all the faculties of our soul aspire to this end, wherefore delay to exhibit EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. 165 heaven to us ? To leave us without a guide here below, is to will that we should every where meet with nothingness ; Ithe nothingness {le n^ant) which attaches itself to our ter- restrial desires, in proportion as fortune gratifies them. But children do not comprehend God ! and thou, philo- sopher, dost thou comprehend him ? The child prays to God as he prays to his father ; what canst thou imagine greater or more true ? There is a something which ex- ceeds all our earthly ambitions ; a something of infinity which opens heaven to us in the first words of the prayer, — " Our Father." So far, then, man is almost complete. We have seen arise successively in him, the love of the beautiful, the moral sentiment, conscience, and infinity ; but as yet, reason does not appear. It would at first be useless, for it would have nothing to enlighten ; it would even be preju- dicial, for it would check the graceful carelessness, which is so favourable to children, and which so well becomes us in the games of early childhood. Reason will come later, at the stormy period when the passions are unchained ; when ambition corrodes us. Then if you have been able to develope the other faculties of the soul, those exquisite qualities which form the charm of childhood, and which, in youth, produce enthusiasm ; doubt not of the victory. Is there on earth a vice which will not fall before the revela- tion of the beautiful ? an error which will not vanish before the light of reason ; and is not conscience more powerful than the sword, the faggot, torture, or pleasure 1 Develope in C{3esar the moral sentiment which animated Cato, and Rome will be free, and Csesar will be great. Develope in Alexander the sentiment of the beautiful, which animated Socrates, give to his ambition the infinity of virtue, and instead of conquering the world, Alexander would render it happy. A generous thought in the soul of a mother, was then only required to save the human race. 166 DEVELOPEMENT OF REASON CHAPTER XXXII. OF THE DEVELOPEMENT OF REASON ON THE EARTH. " On trouve dans les verites eternelles des ressources centre les errears pas- sageres." Madame de Stael — L'AIlemagne. Develope the intellectual faculties, and you will give rise merely to opinions: there will be chaos, incoherencies, systems, but no principles. In a society subjected to this special kind of education, men only associate with each other under the influence of transient passions; though poli- tically united, they always remain morally isolated. Develope the faculties of the soul, and principles arise on every side ; men then respond to each other by a small number of truths, the spontaneous expressions of pure reason, and which constitute the bond of unity of the human race. It is important not to confound this superior reason with the narrow and variable reasonings which dishonour hu- manity. Follow the course of the individual reason of a man, the circumscribed reasen of a corporation, of a town, of a kingdom, you will see it oppose itself to every truth which offends it ; it will take umbrage at every virtue which surpasses it ; and leave every generous idea out of the question. Because thou art the king of a great people, the mayor of a little town, or the president of an academy, dost thou think that reason has infeoffed itself to thy greatness, or has subjected itself to the measure of thy ambition? Thus the reason of a family, of a caste, of a tribe, of a people, express only narrow, transient, and fugitive inte- rests: they divide the earth into hostile societies. Pure reason is universal : it unites all men in the same moral code — assembles every people under the same God. This only is true reason. In order to disengage reason from all that which is not ON THE EARTH. 167 itself, we must ascend to the primitive principle of each thing. Reason is the tracing of facts up to their unity : it is the ex- pression of the principle itself. I interrogate a savage respecting the existence of God, and he shows me his idol. " But who made this idol V he answers, " I carved it out from a branch of the sacred tree, and this is my God." " And who made this tree?" — '* The earth, over which, from gratitude, it spreads its shadow." " Well, but who made this earth, whose bosom engenders and bears forests 1" — " Seest thou1" exclaims the savage, directing his ears towards the horizon, " it is the great spirit who resides beyond the blue mountains." Thus, passing from deduction to deduction, the savage arrives at all that which the human mind can conceive of greatness; his un- tutored reason, which humiliated itself before an idol, has all at once discovered the invisible. He believes in it, and is firm in this belief: he touches upon the regions of infinity. This train of deductions is like a summary of the general history of the world. All civilized nations have passed from the worship of the idol to the worship of God ; that is to say, from an act of circumscribed intelligence to a manifestation of universal reason. Let us now follow the savage into the woods, and let us see how the morality of his limited intelligence will raise itself by degrees up to the principles of universal reason. He hunts for his family, he fights for his tribe ; a forest, of which he knows the limits, constitutes his world ; his reason sees nothing beyond enemies to be conquered, and a prey to be devoured. But when a few degrees more advanced in civilization, the wandering tribe becomes stationary, — attaches itself to the soil ; the soil becomes a country which must be defended, and more especially honoured. Then arise sciences, arts, politics, and philosophy. Human reason takes its flight upwards, it becomes expanded, but without quitting the limits marked out by patriotism, and it is still but a narrow egotistical virtue, which centres all in one spot, which makes us only citizens instead of making us men. These limits must be overstepped, all these isolated reasons of colonies and tribes which tend to divide the world, must be brought back to the universal reason, which tends to re- constitute the family of the human race. From the love 168 DEVELOPEMENT OP REASON of country we must pass on to the love of humanity. While advancing upon this long and difficult passage, man abandons his prejudices, his superstitions, his human sacri- fices, national vengeances, wars of conquest, wars of reli- gion ; in short, all kinds of despotism and fanaticism. This is a spectacle worthy the regards of heaven ! In proportion as the reason of the human race expands, nations draw closer to each other, the arms fall from their hands, and men recognise each other as brethren. In the presence of nature there are neither nobles nor parias, masters nor slaves ; neither French, Germans, nor English ; there are only men, all children of the same Father, who is in heaven. Beneath the influence of this high truth, what people will dare to sell slaves, what nation will dare to declare war against another nation, what man will dare to despise his fellow man 1 And here we begin to comprehend the work of the Creator. We should love our family more than ourselves, and the human race more than our family. Our soul then embraces the whole world, and even extends beyond its limits. From one people to another it arrives at the unity of the human family, just as from the contemplation of the idol the soul of the savage arrives at the unity of God. But here, theologians of every dogma, and the doctors of all forms of worship, may raise a serious objection. By developing this pure reason, say they, you obliterate faith — faith, the only support of man, before men and before God. It is by faith that we disperse armies, that we trans- port mountains, that we control the flesh and the passions. Show us then the prodigies of your reason, the armies which it disperses, the mountains which it moves, the pas- sions which it controls. Faith, you say, is only an illusion, but this illusion cons^tjtutes our power ; and far from being repugnant to the nature of man, it renders him complete, since it corresponds to a faculty of his soul. This is the way in which theologians make use of reasonings against a reason which throws them all into the shade. But these objections, which the priests of all religions have repeated from the beginning of time, points only to imaginary dangers. Reason does not destroy faith, she directs it towards greater things ; from the rehcs of a saint to the power of God ; from the apparition of a phantom to medi- ON THE EARTH. 169 tations on the future life; from the suspicious miracles of a monk or of a dervise, to the daily-recurring miracles of a Providence which watches over us. Reason destroys the errors which circumscribe faith, and the prejudices which pervert it, at the same time that it displays to our souls those infinite truths which astonish and delight us. Nothing is more confined than the regions of falsehood, for falsehood is of human origin ; nothing is more vast than the regions of truth, for truth comes from God. Thus, in the presence of reason, the empire of faith, far from being contracted, is enlarged by it ; though we no longer implicitly believe the word of man, we believe in the power of the Creator. Faith passes from the miracles of Madame de Saint-Amour, and of Prince Hohenlohe, to the miracles of the creation ; from the blind man who is re- stored to his sight by touching the tomb of Saint-Paris, to the human race who receive light from the hands of the All-powerful. The true point of view is then the totality (ensemble) of things. We thus attain the limits of human thought, and on every side these limits extend to God, who is the reason of all things. BOOK III. EDUCATION OF THE SOUL. MORAL AND POLITICAL STUDIES OF MOTHERS OF FAMILIES. CHAPTER I. OP A GREAT DUTY WHICH IS IMPOSED UPON MOTHERS. " O Dieu, donnez moi des paroles, nori de celles qui flattent les oreilles, et qui font louer les discours, mais de celles qui pcnetrent les coeurs, etqui captivent Tentenderaent." BossuET, Sermons. Listen-, good mothers : this is not a question of one of those idle studies, the only aim of which is to stock the memory ; it concerns an important question, the most im- portant which can be agitated on the earth ; so important, that the manner in which you resolve it, will decide without appeal of your moral life and death, of the moral life and death of your children. It is not only a matter that re- gards yourselves, but also the flesh of your flesh, the blood of your blood ; those poor little creatures, whom you have brought into this world, with passions, vices, love, hatred, pain, and death ; for these are in truth w^hat they have received from you with the life of the body ; and these will indeed be miserable presents, if you do not also give them the life of the soul ; that is to say, arms wherewith to fight, and a light whereby to direct themselves. You are mothers according to the laws of our material nature, with all the love of a hen which watches over its little ones, and covers them with its wings. I come to ask you to be mothers according to the laws of our divine nature, with all the love of a soul called upon to form souls. Assure yourselves well, whether or not you owe to your DUTY IMPOSED UPON MOTHERS. I7l childuen only the milk of your breasts, and the instruction of the intelligence; and if you interrogate the Gospel and nature, take heed to their answer — " Man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of truth." Truth is that which renders man free ; it is the voice which calls us to the love of God and of our neighbour, and to virtue. Error, on the contrary, is that which renders us slaves to the passions of others and to our own ; it is that which causes us to sacrifice our conscience to fortune, to honours, to glory, to vice. There are men who have lived for truth, and who may be cited as its type; Epaminondas, Socrates, Plato, Fene- lon, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and out of the sphere of humanity, Jesus Christ. There are others who have lived for error; Anytus, Marat, Cartouche, Cassar, Napoleon ; for all glory which is bought with the slavery or the blood of men is but a false glory. Thus, virtue springs from truth ; crime from error ; whence we may infer that a good treatise on education can only be in the end the search after truth. The destiny of your children depends then on the solici- tude with which you engage in this search. You may open out to them the road to happiness, and precede them in it. A delightful task, which calls for all the powers of your soul, and which will place you in the presence of God, of nature, of your children, and of yourselves. And mark well all that nature has done towards accom- plishing this difficult work. In the first place, she has brought you near to the truth which is in her, by detaching your sex from almost all the ambitions which debase our own : and secondly, she has given your love to the tender- ness of little children, at the same time that she has filled their hearts with innocence, and their minds with curiosity. Can you doubt the object of your mission, when you per- ceive the sweet harmonies which unite them to you ? Nature attaches them to your bosoms, awakens them by your caresses : she wills that they should owe every thing to you, so that after having received from you life and thought, these earthly angels await your inspirations, in order to believe and to love. 172 DUTY IMPOSED UPON MOTHERS. But the care of nature is not limited to these sweet ap- proximations : she has for you and for your children a particular foresight, which being badly understood, have caused her more than once to be accused of forgetfulness and injustice. All the beings which inhabit this earth, except man, receive instincts from her: she perfects the education of animals, and neglects ours; she gives to an insect a splendid covering, and casts us naked upon the earth. Such are the complaints of Lucretius ; and yet it so happens that what appeared to him an abandonment, is the highest degree of foresight. On the one hand, our nakedness has given us the whole world ; on the other, our ignorance tends to bring us nearer to truth. In fact, when education comes to take possession of the child, it finds him in a situation absolutely similar to that of the sage of Descartes : his intelligence is new, his soul slumbers : his memory is still unfurnished, the mind is a blank sheet: but there is this difference between the sage and the child, that the former was obliged to erase from his mind that which he had already learned with great trouble ; whereas the child, having received nothing, either from nature or from education, presents himself pure to the thoughts of men, with a soul which aspires to develope itself. Thus his ignorance is a benefit, a foresight, which raises him to the level of the sage. This sheet is empty, good mothers, in order that you should fill it ; but reflect well, that all which you engrave upon it will remain ; that if you engrave error, the child will Hve in error ; that is to say, that he will be unhappy even were fortune to load him with her choicest gifts : that if you engrave upon it truth, the child will live in truth ; that is to say, he will be happy even if fortune should try him with affliction ; for, according to the beautiful remark of Plato, the knowledge of truth alone suflices for the happiness of man. To establish principles which recall all men to the laws of nature by destroying the institutions and the prejudices which oppose themselves to these laws, — this is what must be sought for, this is what it is truly useful to know. Be then in a state to inspire your children, if you are desirous that they should be happy. The entrance upon this path may perhaps seem to you barren, and the word truth has in it a something of austerity, which perhaps ERROR AND TRUTH. 173 startles you. But, have you ever draw^n back from the most painful sacrifices, w^hen the material life of your chil- dren has been concerned ? Do you not each day descend to the most trifling details respecting the support and the health of their bodies, and when their moral life, when their soul is concerned, when the question is to save them by your means, and to save yourselves by means of them, would you hesitate ; you will not violate the law of your being, which calls you to the source of the good, the true, the infinite. What are a few days of study, in order to arrive so near to God and to bring your children thither? CHAPTER II. OF ERROR AND TRUTH. " Que puis-je savoir! que dois-je faire, qu'ose-je esperer ?" Kant. " Et de quel autre sujet un homme sense pourroit-il s'entretenir plus souvent et plus volontiers." Platon. What can I know, what ought I to do ? What dare I hope? I raise my voice, I interrogate all the systems of philosophy, all the religions, and all reply to me, " Come to us." Then hstening to each, I hear some proposing to me to believe nothing, others to believe without examining ; they begin by requiring doubt, and end by requiring from me credulity.' If I speak of virtue, I hear this name given to crime ; if I speak of God, I hear this appellation bestowed upon matter ; the farther I advance, the more my reason becomes confused, and I conclude by being sure of nothing ; not even of the existence of my soul ; not even of the sub- stance of my body ; metaphysics do not leave me my sensa- tions ; logic leaves me only in uncertainty between two opposite reasonings. Thus I may touch upon every system without arriving at any conviction ; and immersed in this philosophical and religious darkness, after having studied all, and pondered over all, I stop, alarmed at being able to understand only my nothingness. But what ! is it really true that the knowledge of truth is denied to us ; that we experience the desire for it ; we feel the want of it, and that nothing in us can reach up to if? 174 ERROR AND TRUTH. Ah! if truth were not necessary to virtue, one might believe in the eternal reign of falsehood. But truth is the life of the soul ; truth is that which is beautiful, that which is just. What would the world be without truth ? what would man be without justice ? On casting my eyes upon myself, I find all the wants of my being supplied. The ear is constructed for sounds, and the voice of all nature is raised to charm it. The eyes are made for hght, and light comes to them through thirty- three millions of leagues, and shall the soul thus formed for truth, seek for it without hope 1 shall the first necessity of its being be wanting to it ; the eye has its sun, shall the soul not have its sun ? what an anomaly in nature would man be, if condemned to live in doubt between crime and virtue, he could neither content himself with animal exist- ence, nor aspire to celestial life ; such an anomaly does not exist. To begin with the errors of the senses, is there any one of them that experience does not rectify, judge of, and ' correct ? Let Malebranche* point them out with all the sagacity of his methodical mind ; let him show us their illusions and deceptions ; the more he advances in his task, the more I perceive that he allows the results to escape him. The philosopher sees only the senses which deceive us, but I can see the power which rectifies their deceptions. How could he discover the falsehood, when he did not possess the truth ? The sun rises and sets every morning and evening, our eyes see it advance in the heavens, which it fills with its light ; it then sinks beneath the horizon. Before this sun which appears to us to be in motion, on this earth which seems to us immovable, a manf comes to declare that our eyes deceive us, and that the whole human race is in error. This man is thrown into a dungeon ; there are against him the east and the west, the authority of the church, the authority of the people, and six thousand years of belief, founded upon the double testimony of our senses and of Holy Scripture. But, striking the earth with his foot, " and nevertheless it turns," he exclaimed ; sublime words, which changed at the same time the physical system of the uni- * Recherche de la Verite. t Galileo. ERROR AND TRUTH. 175 verse, and the moral system of the rehgious world. For the first time the authority of the thing seen and written, was made to bend before the authority of genius discovering the law of nature. Thus man raises himself even to the intelligence of matter. He finds in geometry the firm basis of all the physical truths, but where will he find the solid basis of moral truths ; the criterion of truth ? To seek for the principle of certainty ; to effect by this principle the separation of good from evil, of vice from virtue ; to disengage by this means truth from the preju- dices which veil it, and the human race from the errors which corrode them. This is the problem to be solved. Nature invites us to this work. She wills that we employ in it at the same time all the powers of our being; and in order to dispose us to it, she places in us the sense of jus- tice and injustice, which requires a judge; she gives wings to our soul, and then carries it into the regions of infinity, where the soul finds the solution of the questions — God, heaven, hell, immortality, and nothingness. Terrible visions, which torment the conscience of man while upon earth. Herein are comprised the highest ques- tions to which the soul can attain ; all the interests of mind and matter ; the being in its relations with visible and in- visible things ; that is to say, the double being ; for when- ever man interrogates himself, he hears two answers — one which speaks in favour of his earthly passions, the other which separates him from these passions and recalls him, if we may so speak, to the bosom of the Divinity. What should he do with these double qualities? By what law should he regulate them ? What light will guide him in this path shrouded with darkness ? this is the great business of life, and we must say it is that which appears to disturb us the least. Some little teaching and discus- sion takes place upon the subject at college, but when we are once in the world, we hasten to forget it. Things are arranged in such a manner that the courses of philosophy cannot teach us to philosophize, for good scholars and not good philosophers are what is required. So far it concerns men ; for as far as women are concerned, the matter is still worse ; no one thinks of developing their souls ; and there will soon be six thousand years that they have led the 176 SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. world, without the world's ever having thought whether, in the exercise of such a power, truth might not be productive of some good to them. The study upon which we are about to enter, will avenge them for this forgetfulness ; we will trace out for them some pages of the history of human wisdom ; then quitting those dry paths which philosophers shroud at will with abstractions and syllogisms, we will enter upon a new tract, in which nature herself will be our guide, where all is easy, all is beautiful; where the soul, anxious about its destiny, will find the termination of its fears, and of its uncertainty, where wisdom is but love, where truth pro- duces delight. CHAPTER III. SEARCH AFTER TRUTH IN LOGICAL REASONINGS, OR THE AUTHO- RITY OF REASONING INVALIDITY OP THIS CRITERION. " II y a une force de verite invincible a tout le scepticisme ; il y'a une puis- sance de demonstration invincible a tout le dograatisme." Pascal. We employ reason in all the affairs of life. We expect that it should gain our lawsuits, and advance our sciences; we carry it with us from the college to the bar, from the bar to the tribune ; it is the strength of all our opinions, and the official defender of our interests. Always varying, and always consequent, it derives its support from our manners, our usages, our laws, and our prejudices, and it is thus, that notwithstanding its contradictions, it becomes an imposing authority. Listen to a lawyer and a soldier, on the same subject; both reason justly, and yet they both arrive at different conclusions. It is therefore not the rea- soning which deceives them, it is the point of starting. Let the premises be good, and truth will be the result. Sophists complain of the errors of reason ; they accuse it of all the triumphs of falsehood. This is as if they were to accuse gunpowder of all the devastations of war. Reason is the weapon of intellect, not intellect itself. Enlighten the intellect, and you will ameliorate the reasoning. One of our most singular illusions is, that we will interrogate it SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. 177 upon every thing. Keason has its limits ; out of the sphere of the sensations it sees nothing, it can arrive at nothing. No matter ; we continue to require it to solve the highest truths ; v^^e expect that it should decide upon eternal matters, whereas it can only take cognizance of human interests. We do not cease to consult and question it, notwithstanding it casts incessantly into our faces the humiliation of its doubts, and the folly of its scepticism. Thus constantly deceived, our intellect exhausts itself in these contem- plations, which are not made for it, and which end in its confusion. To consult the intellect respecting the mysteries of the invisible world, is like placing a blind man before the sublimest pictures of nature, and asking him for a descrip- tion of them. Transcendental metaphysics is but the application of reason to questions which are not within its grasp. How can they arrive at a single positive truth, when even existence itself is to them an insoluble problem 1 Metaphysics deny the bodies which surround me, and the soul which receives im- pressions from them, without my being able to refute their denial : there is, according to them, neither matter nor mind, no percipient being, nor perceived object. When we see a town, a river, the sun, the wonders of nature and the wonders of the heavens, — when we see a man who sees all this, there is only a sensation, of which nothing can as yet prove to us the reality. " Bodies do not exist," said Berkeley. " Spiritual substances do not exist," said Hume. The sensations remain. " What is it to feel ? am I even certain of feeling ?' says M. la Menais. Thus the greatest efforts of the intellect may lead us to the highest degree of absurdity. Man can assert nothing of his being, he can neither say, I exist, I feel, or I think ! Show me, then, what remains of creation. And some are surprised that these metaphysics, which refuse us the proofs of our own existence, cannot give us proofs of the existence of God. How can it be expected that man should prove a God to exist by reasonings which cannot even prove to him the substance of his body. In Homer and in Virgil we see the shades of the dead : in metaphysical discussions we see nothing : it is a com- 12 178 SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. 11 plete void, there is no substance ; the logician does not even leave us a phantom, not even the dust which returns to dust, according to the energetic expression of the Scrip- tures. Shall we, then, seek for truth in nothingness 1 A man who was at the same time the greatest of moralists and the most powerful of logicians, Kant, wished to come to a conclusion respecting this incapable and threatening science — the greater it seemed to be, the more he. desired to comprehend the whole, and to define its limits; his eagle eye penetrated into it as into an abyss : the question, was to examine human intellect, to ask an account of what it can, and what it will effect; to study it at the same time in its relationship to God and nature, to time and eternity. From this examination, the most conscientious, the most profound, which ever emanated from a philosophical brain, an immense fact results ; viz. that the instrument of thought (the cognizant organ) can do nothing beyond the domain of the sensible perceptions, and that logic is power- less regarding all the questions which carry us beyond the sphere of time and space. And this result, so positive, is not the product of reasoning, it is the consequence of a fact. Kant places on two paral- lel lines the metaphysical arguments for and against the existence of God : weighs them in the same balance, and demonstrates their equality. The argumentation having decided nothing, doubt supervenes, and the truth remains unknown. As many times as he repeats the experiment, he arrives at the same conclusion. The liberty of man, the eternity of the world, the immortality of the soul, are insoluble problems to the perceptions of the senses. Rea- soning is restricted to the earth. How should the finite comprehend the infinite ? Thus, one of the loftiest intellects has employed all the powers of abstraction to establish that abstraction is power- less in the research of principles, and that instead of com- plaining of this weakness, we ought to thank nature for it. What would have become of truth — the truth which ought to be universal — if nature had made its demonstration de- pendent upon reasonings which are unintelligible to seven- eighths of the human race 1 SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. 179 CHAPTER IV. SEARCH AFTER TRUTH ON THE AUTHORITY OP THE DOCTORS — INVALIDITY OF THIS CRITERION. " Le plus grand mal sur la terre, c'est I'ignorance de la verite." Platon. Man has opened out to himself two roads towards truth: reason and faith. From reasoning we have seen philo- sophical systems arise ; from faith we shall see religious systems originate. To the former belongs the authority of genius ; to the latter, the authority of scripture : the one makes philosophers, the other theologians. The former gives life to nations, the latter imparts to them thought and movement. All scripture, even Holy Scripture, has passed through the hands of men. They have copied, falsified, interpreted ! every where leaving the impress of their passions, and of their miserable sophistry ; substituting error for truth ; theo- logy for religion ; and man for God. Let the Bible, the book of charity and love, fall into the hands of the doctors, they will find the executioner in it. It is by punishments that they unite this life to the other, and the flames of the inquisition correspond to the flames of hell. There is in the Bible a line, the authoritv of which has been cited from age to age up to our own times, in order to justify the greatest of all crimes, slavery : " Cursed be Canaan ! a servant of servants shall he be to his bre- thren."* " Shall we allow a single man to infect a town with his impiety, when we see that God has punished whole cities'?" exclaims Calvin, in his refutation of Michael Servet ; and this argument suffices to cause to be burnt alive the anta- gonist whom he could not overcome. On the authority of the Bible the reformer made himself an executioner. * Genesis ix. 25. 180 SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. Certainly, one must either give up the search after truth by means of theological authorities, or consent to find it in all the crimes which have shocked the world. The history of the interpretation of holy books would be the history of human insanit}'. This vast picture, drawn by a skilful hand, would disgust us both with the gloss and with the commentary. But what mortal eyes could ever decipher all its bloody pages 1 To take a single example. Carry yourself back to the days of the League : the war is over ; a solemn abjuration has just restored Henri IV. to France. Already order is becoming re-established, and prosperity is about to revive. But if the king were not truly converted ; but if the Hu- guenots were not sufficiently persecuted; the king must be deposed, the Huguenots must be annihilated. These fatal ideas still disturb some minds, A preacher undertakes to express them ; he is not a sanguinary man, and yet he asks for blood ; he is not an enemy to his country, and yet he la- bours to overthrow it. He is a man of faith, a man of con- viction, a man misled, unquestionably, but yet consequent in his doctrines, and whose doctrines are logical and canonical. Let him alone ; he will say nothing without the support of the text and of the law ; he will be positive, unexception- able ; if you adopt his authorities, you will be obliged to adopt his opinions. You would expel the king, you would burn the heretics, you would sanctify the crime of Jacques Clement. He now asks for his share in the riches of the Huguenots, and do not think that he would exercise a scandalous spoliation, — no, it is a right which he claims. He can quote the authority of Moses, of Joshua, of the Book of Wisdom, in which it is said, " The just shall spoil the unjust." To blame the church for plundering the Huguenots is, there- fore, to deny the authority of the Holy Scriptures ; it is still more, it is to blame God for having stripped Saul, Roboam, Achab, by the hands of the priests, for the notorious crimes of these princes.* Under similar circumstances one does not take the goods of others ; but one justly strips the unjust possessors of goods of which they are not worthy ; and this is truth and justice ; for in the assembly of prelates at the * Porthaise, 4th Sermon. SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. 181 Council of Latran, all the kings and emperors of the Chris- tian world being present, it was decreed that the said sovereigns should, within a year, drive from out of their territories all heretics, and if they did not obey, they were 1o be excommunicated and their treasures distributed among the Catholics. Thus speaks father Porthaise. A line of the Scriptures is sufficient for him to decide upon the interests of multi- tudes, and he pronounces this line with a firm voice, with- out fear or remorse, whatever may be the meaning which it contains. Of what consequence are the afflictions of men to him who believes that he is accomplishing the word of God ? If he would give to the priesthood the right of over- throwing nations; if he would also give to nations the right of upsetting thrones, he opens Saint Bernard and Saint Augustin, who lay down the rule, from a passage of the Scriptures, that the church possesses two swords, the spiritual and the temporal ; that she makes use of the former in excommunicating heretical princes, and that she may give canonically to the people the right of employing against the prince who is rebellious to the church the tem- poral sword upon his goods, his lands, and his life. If he would prove that the sovereign pontiff has the right of dethroning: kings, he does not trouble himself to seek for the principles of political right, he at once comes to the point, and says, " It is allowable for the pope to depose kings, since Samuel deposed Saul ; Joad, Athaliah ; Azarias, king Osias ;"* and he corroborates these authorities by the authority of the Council of Latran, which has admitted this right. When the authority is not sufficiently clear, he comments upon it and interprets it. It is thus that he finds the stake and fagot in the Scriptures: " God says. Every tree which bears not fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire ;" and thus, adds Porthaise, the punishment of fire is destined to heretics. Lastly, he establishes as a principle that the action of Jacques Clement-|- cannot be condemned, because it would * Sermons of Porthaise. t The murderer of Henry III. 182 SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. be to condemn the actions of Ehud, Samson, Judith, and Jehu, which are sanctioned by the Bible, and by the deeds, counsels, and commandments, of Samuel, Elias, and Elisha, which were inspired by God. Of a truth, here are infamous doctrines, and we must hasten to say, doctrines which religion disproves ; but if they are opposed to the spirit of the scriptures, they harmo- .nize with the letter of theology. Father Porthaise reasons well according to the principles of authority, or, to speak plainer, this principle dispenses him from all reasoning. When an action takes place, he need not consider whether it be good, but merely whether the Scriptures find it good. The proof of its goodness does not lie in man's reason, but in the authority of the book. Be not in a hurry to condemn him ; there is nothing wicked about him but his principles. This man who horrifies you, who burns heretics, who would place the heads of kings beneath his feet, who justifies the commission of crime by crime, believes in his conscience that he is sanctifying virtue by virtuous works. And yet his words pronounced in the temple, in the presence of a people still armed for the defence of their faith, must produce their fruits. Amidst this crowd there is a man, who, while listening, raises his forehead jaundiced by fever. His brain burns, his mind is excited, he hears that a saviour of his religion, an avenger of God is required. He runs in a bewildered state from convent to convent, from one solitude to another, bearing within him the poison which corrodes his bosom, until the fatal hour when Europe resounds for the first time with the name of Ravaillac* Observe that it is never in the new law, but in the abolished law, that fanatics go to seek for their terrible arguments : they are obliged to invoke Moses, in order to strike in the name of Jesus Christ. Let it not be said that I give to the works of Father Porthaise the power of an authority. The authority is not in him, it is in the scripture which he quotes, and in the councils upon which he depends. As for the doctrine, it is a misfortune doubtless, but it essentially belongs to his epoch. That which he preached at Poictiers, the Doctor Boucher preached at Paris almost in similar terms; and * The murderer of Henry IV. SEA.RCU AFTER TRUTH. 183 the same was taught by the remnant of the League all over France. But 1 quote men whose works have left no reminiscence, obscure men, who were lost in the darkness of ignorance and fanaticism. In order to prove the aberrations of the principle of authority, a more enlightened age should have been chosen, and in this age, one of those transcendental minds, the convictions of which become in their turn autho- rities for the human race. Well, let us quote Bossuet, and what greater man could I quote ? A splendid genius, the leading intellect of the age of Louis XTV., his name reminds us of all the prodigies of eloquence, and of all the powers of faith. You see him in solitude turning over the pages of the theological w^orks of one of the most illustrious princes of the church ; all of a sudden his eyes sparkle, his lips quiver, his hair stands on end, and he is horrified. What, then, has happened in the Christian world ? What sacrilege, what impiety, awaken the thunders of his wrath ? A holy prelate. Cardinal Sefrondate, moved with compassion for some little children who died without having been baptized, had dared to main- tain that they were not condemned to the everlasting fires of hell. " Low and enervating sentiment," exclaims Bos- suet," which destroys the force of piety; strange novelty, detestable error, unheard-of language, which has over- whelmed us with astonishment." Then yielding to the holy rage which transports him, the prelate addresses himself to the pope, and requires him to punish the guilty cardinal ; he desires that the punishment should be severe, as it is fitting that its severity should be proportioned to the high quarter from which the fault emanated. " The con- demnation of children dying without having been baptized," says he, " is an article of firm faith of the church. They are guilty, since they die in the wrath of God, and in the powers of darkness. Children of wrath by nature, objects of hatred and aversion, cast into hell with the other damned, they remain there everlastingly subject to the horrible ven- geance of the devil Thus the learned Denis Peteau has decided, as well as the most eminent Bellarmin, the Council of Lyons, the Council of Florence, and the Council of Trent ; for these things," coolly adds the new father of the church, "are not to be decided by weak reasonings, and 184 SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. by affections entirely human ; but by the authority of scripture and that of tradition."* Frightful doctrine, which supplants the authority of nature by the authority of Peteau and of Noris. The prelate be- lieves that he acts in accordance with his reason, in yielding to the desire of burning and of condemning ; this passion of the twelfth century, of which the sad remains still oppress us ; and imparting to this idea the energy of his enthusiasm, and the inspiration of his genius, he falls into impiety, under the pretext of bringing us back to faith. There is a fatality attaches to certain dogmas which draws even genius down with it. And what are these idolatrous dogmas which tend to regulate the belief of all by the authority of some ? Where- fore did God come upon the earth, if men will still dictate to us ? Is the authority of a book or of a council any thing else than the expression of the predominating idea of an age ? Time passes on, and this authority expresses no more than an error. To seek for truth in the decisions of the doctors is, in fact, to bring us back to the opinions and the passions of bygone ages; it is to make us return to what is no more ; it is to deny the existence of Christianity in accordance with human perfectibility. In order to arrive at similar results, not only must we renounce reason, but we must also stifle the sense of justice and of injustice which exists in us. We must say as Pascal said, " I believe because it is absurd ; and. again, I believe because it is iniquitous." Certainly, there is no one who respects more than our- selves the holiness of scripture ; but, also, no one is more apprehensive of the interpretations of men. After the example of Bossuet, who will dare to seek for truth in them ? From this example it must necessarily be inferred? 1st, that the authority of doctors, the authority of writings, is a very bad means of knowing the truth, because it may lead to error. 2d. That the most sacred authority requires a rule which justifies it, and that this rule exists neither in a bhnd faith, nor in human reasonings. * CEuvres de Bossuet. SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. 185 CHAPTER V. SEARCH AFTER TRUTH IN THE AUTHORITY OF THE HUMAN RACE INVALIDITY OF THIS CRITERION. " On n'aurait jamais fait un pas vers la verite, si les autorites eussent prevalu sur la raison." Duclos. A MAN, powerful in eloquence, has come to place the authority of the human race by the side of the authority of scripture. We will not examine how far these authorities may proceed together ; this point of doctrine is foreign to our subject. The question for us is to seek for the founda- tion of certainty, the infalHble rule of truth. Is this. rule to be found in universal testimony ? In other words, does the consent of all mankind suffice to establish truth ? This is the question. And this question includes another, of which the solution will be decisive, viz. whether the voice of the human race has always proclaimed truth ? , For if it so happened that the voice of the human race had proclaimed error, it could no longer be considered as a testimony. How can you cause an eternal truth to arise from a transient opinion ? Authority is infallible only in as far as it is immutable. In order to establish the principle of the authority of the human race, some have endeavoured to demonstrate, on the one hand, the weakness of individual reason, and on the other, the strength of general reason. M. de la Menais will have it, that the one should be abject, that the other should be infallible ; like Pascal, he humiliates human reason, and like Vico, he deifies the reason of the human race. But, if each individual reason only engenders error, how can the aggregate of all these reasons produce truth ? Is it, then, one of the privileges of falsehood to disappear by becoming larger? You say that I am but darkness, and you add, from the union of all these darknesses, light will spring forth. Thus my logic must be to repel the reason of each as an insensate thing, and to adopt the reason of all 186 SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. as a respectable authority. I must approach this impure sink, to which each individual reason brings its follies and its crimes ; where the one announces the doctrines of anni- hilation, where the other creates the manners of the age of Tiberius, for it is reason, you say, which engenders all these monstrosities. It formed Petronius and Nero. I must listen to India and China, the east and the west, and amidst the frightful clamour of all these human reasons, the voice which most predominates over the abyss will be the voice of reason.* In order to destroy similar sophistries, it suffices to pre- sent them clearly to the mind ; they carry with themselves their own refutation. Let M. de la Menais depict reason with the characters of crime and madness ; reason does not answer him, it shows itself, and whosoever can but have a glimpse of it, declares it to have been misunderstood and calumniated. And as regards the authority of the human race, this universal reason, which is to serve as a rule and as a prin- ciple, at what epoch did it proclaim truth ? Shall we select the earliest periods of history? Then barbarity and igno- rance divided the earth between them ; all nations had slaves, and all religions human sacrifices. Such is the most ancient testimony of the reason called universal. At a later age, the belief in the holiness of celibacy, the divinity of virgins, the power of demons, enchanters, of ghosts, magic, and oracles, was spread over the whole world, and covered it with chains which are not yet broken. It is in this manner that the doctrine presents itself; one must believe in the truth of all these things, or else deny the au- thority of the human race. Just imagine what would have become of the world, if the rare intellects which have enlarged the scope of human thought ; if Socrates, Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes, had suc- cumbed beneath the general belief of their ages. Though still immersed in the darkness of idolatry and- slavery, the world, even at the present day, would have believed itself civilized while selling an entire people by auction, like Caesar, or while prostating itself before an ox, like Sesostris. Uni- versal authority is universal immobility, and immobility in folly and in crime. * " Essai sur rindifference." SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. 187 In vain does individual rer.son protest against these aber- rations of what people dare to call universal reason, it is overwhelmed by the number. Authority does not judge, it counts ; that which is attested by the generality of men must be believed, not because wisdom invites us to believe it, but because the generality of men attest it. This is the princi- ple, and there is none more fatal to humanity and to truth. The human race knows all, hence there would be no more progress, no more developement; its testimony is a sort of divine right, before which genius and reason must be silent. I know that M. de la Menais believes that he has an- swered these objections, beforehand, by establishing two principles — the order of faith, that is to say, the authority of the human race, and the order of conception, that is to say, the labour of the intellect, which itself only becomes an authority by means of universal suffrage. But, one of two things must occur ; either the discoveries of the order of conception can change nothing in the belief of the human race, or this belief can be modified by the twofold operation of genius and lime; in the former case the human race is immovable, all improvement is prohibited to it, it remains with its idols and its slaves; in the second case, the monu- ment raised with so much care gives way at its foundation, and falls to the ground. Of what value is the testimony which one man may destroy ? Wherever there is uncer- tainty there is no longer authority. These two orders are, then, incompatible ; the activity of the one constantly tends to shake the power of the other. Copernicus, by arresting the course of the sun, like Joshua ; Jesus Christ, by overthrowing idols and destroying slavery — have proved that there were universal errors ; and from th at period no general opinion has been able to become the criterion of truth. The system of authority is but a fragment of the old school, one of the ruins made by Descartes, with this dif- ference, that it has been attempted to substitute the testi- mony of the human race for the testimony of the master, always the i-pse dixit. And, nevertheless, there is an immense fact which saps this syste.vi at its base, viz. that the lofty truths which at the present day are spread abroad on the earth, arrived at the reason of the multitude only through the intermedium of the reason of individuals. The masses know nothing 188 DIVINE REASON. but that which they believe, and that which they believe they defend with all the eagerness of ignorance and faith. Thus Moses stood alone against his people ; Socrates alone against Greece ; Jesus Christ alone against the world ; on the one hand the human race, on the other a sage — a man — a god. O miserable condition of humanity ? I see a cross raised, executioners who prepare themselves, the universal testimony has been convicted of being in error, and thus revenges itself by punishments ! CHAPTER VI. OF DIVINE REASON. "Hors de Dieu tout est contingent: hors de lui rien n'existe que' par sa volonte, lui seul est necessairement, lui seul possede done en lui-meme la certi- tude," De jla Menais. To seek the principle of truth, is to seek an infallible reason. Let us then cease to interrogate human reason : infallibility is not in our nature. But it is in our nature to seek after truth, and here our very weakness becomes the source of our greatness. After having exhausted all the resources of his intellect, man raises himself from his no- thingness by means of the single idea of an infallible reason : he has not the power of comprehending it, but he has the power of perceiving it. In giving up the desire for truth, God has pointed out to us the luminous path which leads to himself. Oh! the destiny of man is beautiful! You speak to me of his misery; I will speak to you of his glory. The crea- ture is great to whom it is allowed to imagine questions to which a God alone can reply ! This is the invisible link which unites earth to heaven. On the one side, the innate desire for truth ; on the other, the complete inability of satisfying it without ascending to God. That which we ask in vain of human reason, will be decided by divine reason. But how are we to know divine reason? what represents it on earth? where has it left its impression? Is there but one divine reason? Which is the true God? is it the avenging God, the jealous God, or the God of love and UNITY OF GOD. 189 pity? Impious questions; but which yet must be resolved, since our superstitions have caused us to mistake every thing, since man has altered even the attributes of the Divinity. CHAPTER VII. OF THE UNITY OF GOD. "La premiere chose qu'il faut apprendre c'est qu'il y'a un Dieu; et qu'il gou- verne tout par sa providence; ensuite il faut examiner quelle est sa nature: sa nature etant bien connue, il faut necessairement que ceux qui veulent lui plaire et lui obeir, fassent tous leurs efforts pour lui ressembler: qu'il soient libres, fide- les, bienfaisants misericordieux, magnanimes." Manuel d'Epictjete. Men have made gods after the image of nature, terrible or benevolent, according to the scenes which have been pre- sented to their eyes. To smiling fields, golden harvests, to the abundance of fruits, — altars of gratitude were raised : to arid wastes, dark forests, the devastation of storms, the fire of volcanoes, — the altars and sacrifices of fear. This is the origin of the two powers which divide the world : good and bad spirits, the genius of evil and the genius of good; gods and demons. Thus in the periods of barbarity, the isolation of nations, ignorance of the harmonies of the universe, astonishment at its phenomena, increased the number of the gods: in each temple there was a divinity: each divinity was the apothe- osis of a power of nature, or of an attribute of the Deity. To bring back all these powers, all these attributes to one only God, it was necessary to conceive him ; and how could such a conception be entertained without a divine revela- tion, or without the unexpected contemplation of the aggre- gate harmonies of the earth? A double prodigy, which God could not refuse to the human race : Moses received this truth from heaven, and Socrates from his genius. Divine spectacle! amidst all the nations buried in the darkness of idolatry and of slavery, a man inspired of God brings to light a truth which is to regenerate the world. And this truth, which Moses could not make his people understand, he left to the world : when all the religions de- nied it, he announced that the posterity of those who should believe in the one God would possess the earth, and for the 190 INFLUENCE OF A SINGLE TRUTH accomplishment of this prediction his soul penetrated through the ages of a futurity of four thousand years. Even genius became annihilated before so lofty a destiny : there was then on the earth but one man, who in the pre- sence of the suns scattered over space could support the weight of this immense thought- — one only God ! And this man was likewise the only one, among the legis- lators of antiquity, who dared to proclaim this truth, and attach to it the civilization of the people. ^ Two thousand years elapsed, and Socrates again finds in the presence of idols the divinity unknown to civilized Greece ; he finds it, because it alone explains to him the universe. Where there is but one pervading mind, there must be but one God. The more Socrates examines nature, so low,. so contracted, and so immoral, beneath the laws of Venus and Jupiter, of Mercury and Juno, the more does it geometrise and expand itself, and soon escapes from him by its immensity. He no longer meets with gods, but he every where meets with laws. The harmony and unity of the universe reveals to him the unity of God. CHAPTER VII. INFLUENCE OF A SINGLE TRUTH UPON THE WORLD. One only God : the influence of this principle extends so far that even the imagination is astonished. It is the line drawn between ancient and modern people : we see arise from it a new knowledge, a new moral code, a new civiUzed world. Let the pagan divinities divide among themselves the heavens, the earth, and the waters, and the contest soon begins. Open Homer, and see the gods combating. This graceful mythology, which confides the fountains to the Naiades, the crops to Ceres, the flocks to Pan, thunder to Jupiter, only engenders trouble and confusion. Wherever the gods are divided, men arm themselves in their quarrels. How can rnan expect benefits from the source where he sees nothing but hatred, or harmonies from whence he sees nothing but contradictions, or foresight from whence there is only evil ? Idolatry was with the ancients the greatest obstacle to a knowledge of the laws of nature. Socrates UPON THE WORLD. ^ 191 could only comprehend the wisdom of these laws by raising his ideas up to the unknown God ; or rather, it was by the discovery of their wisdom that he was led to the discovery of the unity. Unity is the essence of order ; and order reigns every where, since every where the world is preserved and renovated. This was the idea of Socrates; and that which was at that time the most sublime effort of a subhme genius, is at the present day the starting point of the most limited intel- lects. Thus the unity of the laws of nature leads us to the unity of God ; and the unity of God ordains the unity of the human race. Cast your eyes over the world of the ancients, you see it divided into hostile colonies, which have each their gods to avenge or to defend; religion di- vides instead of uniting them. Cast your eyes upon the modern world ; it remains divided into republics and king- doms, and yet religion acknowledges only one people, because there is only one God. This is a subUme spec- tacle, which all men do not yet understand; but the gene- ral comprehension of which will be the triumph of huma- nity. And each succeeding age is preparing this triumph. Nations will one day know that the same revelation which gives us a Father in heaven, gives us likewise brothers in all men. From that moment castes will be an impiety, and all wars a fratricide. It is thus that by the power of a single truth we arrive at the union of the human race. And let me not be accused of stating abstract ideas for facts. We enjoy the immediate consequences of this truth, in the establishment of religious liberty, and in the twofold abolition of concubinage and slavery: three principles un- known to the ancients, and of which the genial light radiates from all parts upon our new civilization. It is true that passions, prejudices, the spirit of sects and bodies, and national animosities, retard the progress of this light; but still it shines in the heart. of every civilized people: it is a necessity of their high state of intelligence; the principles which it enlightens are benefits or virtues, and every one may convince himself that the deviation from these principles is alone the cause of all our political and religious errors ; that is to say, of all the evils of which we complain at the present day. Let us take for an example a 192 INFLUENCE OF A SINGLE TRUTH nation which thinks itself civilized, — Spain. I see abject superstition, a depraved clergy, a crowd which fasts, con- fesses, receives the communion, revenges itself with the poniard, and receives from the all-powerfulness of the priests an absolution which frees it from its remorse. One would say that this people only supported priests in order to per- mit themselves the crimes of hatred and assassination. There, as in ancient Egypt, God disappears beneath the multitude of his attributes — God to a Spaniard is the thirty thousand idols which are spread over the surface of the most Catholic kingdom. With superstitions as insensate as those of the pagans, Spain has less of civil liberty, and has in addition the priests. But even nearer to ourselves : in the very heart of France, a hundred leagues from the capital of Europe, the centre of civihzation, there are savage hordes, whose souls no ray has enlightened. There the god Teutates formerly reigned. The letter of the Gospel has been carried thither, but its spirit is unknown. I see there a people without ideas and without morality ; the adoration of images instead of the belief in God ; fanaticism and misery prostrated before coarse pictures representing portions of the body, — the liver, the heart, the arms, the feet, the smoking entrails of some divinity. It would seem that the ancient Druids still held possession of the land, and that being no longer able to mutilate man in order to offer him up to their god, they mutilate their god to present him piecemeal to the adora- tion of men. Here, then, are worthy objects of worship for a people who have churches, priests, bishops, and the Gospel. They are not allowed to elevate their souls to the idea of an only God, for this idea would break their chains, and redeem them from their degradation. This is a representation of the middle ages in the nine- teenth century. Whosoever wishes to find himself in the year 1200, should visit the hamlets of Lower Brittany. The East, with its slaves and its harems, offers nothing so degrading to humanity. And yet in Brittany, as in the East, the unity of God, this truth which cost Socrates his life, no longer carries death with it. Nations have received it, but they have not yet reflected upon it. " There is but one God," says the follower of Mahomet, without compre- hending the greatness of these words; — " there is but one UPON THE WORLD. 193 God," says the poor inhabitant of Poullalouen, while pros- trated before the innages which are the objects of his idola- try; — "there is but one God," says the Spaniard, while imploring St. Dominic, St. Antony, and St. James of Com- postella : and yet in this single phrase the future civilization of Spain and of the East is comprised. In vain do pre- judices and superstitions endeavour to prevent us from attaining the goal; the road which brings us to it is opened. One Father in heaven, one family upon earth ! When this sublime truth shall be in the understanding of men, as it is at the present day in their mouths, the regeneration will be accomplished. In fact, all the barbarities which still degrade us as a civilized people, are created in the face of idols, and that which is created in the face of idols must disappear before God. It is' in the face of idols that the powerful have conse- crated their dominion over the weak, and divided men into two species, — the noble and the ignoble. It is in the face of idols that the ambitious have given themselves up to the lash, fasting, and cehbacy, in order to obtain riches and power. It is in the face of idols that barbarous hordes prostrate themselves for the first time after a battle, to render thanks to heaven for the blood which they have shed. But if, at the present day, a noble, a pontiff, or a war- rior, should present himself before the altar of the only God, would the noble say, " I am of another race than this crowd which thou hast created, separate me in heaven from those whom I have despised on the earth ?' Would the pontiff say, " I have refused the companion which thy wis- dom had bestowed upon me : bless me for having violated thy law, and for having condemned virgins to solitude and prostitution ?" That Csesar should decree fifteen days of thanksgiving in the temples of the gods at Rome, after having exterminated the Gauls, and sold by auction the inhabitants of Namur, — who, according to the statement presented to the Senate, amounted to fifty-three thousand persons, — this we can conceive ; he prayed before idols. But will the Christian warrior dare to sully the altars of Christ, in his song of 13 194 ATTRIBUTES OF THE DIVINITY. victory, by saying, " I am Cain ! bless me, O God, I have been killing my brethren." They still dare to do it, do you say ? Yes, but you are surprised that they should so dare, and you do not mark that they dare to do it without glory. What do I say? Already they can no longer dare it without shame. Look at Poland, and ask the world if a single voice of admira- tion responded to the ferocious cries of the conquerors. The barbarians ! they heard but the groans of Europe ; — • and whilst three kings divided among themselves, like rob- berSj the bloody members of the body, all the people who believed in God were alarmed at their impiety. CHAPTER IX. OF SOME ATTRIBUTES OF THE DIVINITY. • " Les vraies causes finales de la nature, ce sont les rapports avec notre ame, et avec notre sort imniortel. Les objets physiques eux-memes out une destination, qui ne se borne point a la courts existence de rhomme ici-bas. lis sont la pour concourir au developpement de nos pensees, et a Toeuvre de notre vie morale." Madame de Stael, L'Allemagne. " n ne s'agit pas de vouloir connoitre ce que Dieu cache, il suffit d'etre attentif a ce qu'il montre." ' Fenelon. Lettres. But what name must be given to this God, the Creator who manifests himself in the unity of his works '( Is he the God of pity or the God of vengeance ? Has he con- ceived in his bosom vice and crime 1 Will it be said that all the evils of humanity, all the disturbances of nature, diseases, poisons, plagues, war, are the presents of a bene- ficent Deity ? How can we recognise goodness in this chaos of misery and agony 1 If I refer to the earliest periods of the world, priests talk to me of the God of armies — the terrible, the avenging God. If I interrogate the nations, they look upon the bloody spots on their altars with exclamations of terror. If I appeal to the sages, I perceive a bitter smile on their lips. The most splendid geniuses succumb beneath the weight of so many mysteries. Others raise an impious forehead, and try to conceal their nothing- ness in the nothingness of incredulity. For these objections and these reasonings, I see two causes ; our greatness and our littleness. In our greatness ATTRIBUTES OF THE DIVINITY. 195 we estimate the laws of nature, according to the exquisite sentiment of the grand and beautiful, which is in us; we appreciate this world in accordance with a secret revelation of the other; we apply to it the type of ideal perfection which IS placed in our souls, not in order to measure by it the things of earth, but to call us towards a more perfect creation. Our fault is, not in the study of the laws of this universe, but in wishing to regulate it according to a subhme sentiment which is not made for it. I hasten, therefore, to remark that our doubts and our objections serve but to elevate us. They prove that we bear within ourselves the type of a more perfect being. It is not a reminiscence ; it is a foresight, it is a promise. Hope and the heau ideal are the keys of a world which we are about to enter, since we have had a ghmpse of it. But if the sentiment of the beau ideal be a light, our objections and our reasonings are but darkness. We are at first surprised at their force ; then comes experience, and we are surprised at their weakness. How many times does It happen to us to blame an isolated fact for want of ele- vating ourselves to the comprehension of the whole ! A truth remains hidden; we deny it: nature conceals herself from our intelhgence, and we accuse her. What is there in all this ? A world given up to the genius of evil ? No. There is a man who blasphemes, because he cannot explain to himself the work of God. In order to justify nature from the accusations which are made against her at the present day, it will suffice to show what is become of the accusations which were formerly addressed to her. There, where disorders had been anticipated, we have received benefits ; where the eyes of our fathers saw only chaos, we can perceive wisdom and foresight. Does any one think that the sciences have nothing more to unfold ? it would be to think that we have nothing more to discover. The sciences have not disclosed alf, but that which they have disclosed has been decisive. It is a remarkable circum- stance, although it has not been remarked, that all their discoveries bring things back to order, and prove the laws of nature. All are the expression of power and the reve- lation of goodness. The genius of evil has nothing to gain by the progress of the sciences. Each discovery contracts still more its empire ; each ray of light presses down its 196 ATTRIBUTES OP THE DIVINITY. darkness still deeper. It is an usurper who must fall from his throne, before the full light of truth. Philosopher, seize thy pen, here is a fine book to com- pose — a book of intelligence; a book of soul, in which God only will appear. Imagine a Fenelon or a Bernardin de St. Pierre collecting all the accusations of sophists against nature, and opposing to them from age to age the discoveries of science. It would be like a new creation. Between the globe of Pliny and the globe of Newton, there is many a gulf What a moral history of the universe, and what a glorious spectacle would be that of the human race freeing itself by degrees from its errors, and arriving at the knowledge of God, by the labour of its own intelli- gence ! I should like to see, on the one hand, chaos, darkness, the confusion of the elements, and of plants ; of plains and of mountains; the air, fire, and earth disputing with each other the dominion of the world, and leaving only to man, his nakedness and his misery ; (for, it is thus that Pliny and Lucretius represent the world to us ;) on the other hand, deserts, seas, and mountains, in accordance with the course of the winds, the fecundity produced by climates, and the harmonies of the earth and heavens. From the burning sands of Africa come the winds which warm our winters ; from the glaciers of the poles, the breezes which refresh our summers. Every where the elements called to their proper order, the seasons to their proper change, the earth to yield its fruits in due season. To the chaos of vegetation would succeed a botanical geography, which would unite all the people of the earth ; each country would possess its garlands of flowers and its fruits, each plant its country. One would contemplate with delight these vegetable substances, distributed by zones, as if upon the acclivity of a hill, and amidst this infinite multitude of forms and colours, ever varying according to the climates, the gramineous plants universally diffused over the earth, from the equator to the poles, and forming around the globe a circle of corn, for the nourishment of the human race. From these general harmonies, the author would descend to the most minute details of the creation. In them, close to us, is frequently found the cause of the most distant phenomena, — in a piece of amber the secret of thunder, in ATTRIBUTES OF THE DIVINITY. 197 a drop of water the explanation of the rainbow, in a coal the diamond. A simple blade of grass, a grain of sand, have been impressed with the thought of God, and can relate his wonders. Seest thou this shapeless pebble which rolls from beneath thy feet ? it is the image of knowledge ; thou despisest it, and only remarkest its coarse particles ; another observes, studies it, and causes light to emanate from it. Enchanting pictures, unforeseen discoveries would ferti- lize each page of this history, in which truth would gra- dually come to supply the place of opinion. I would wish that all the wonders of modern science should be developed in it, in opposition to the physical and moral errors of the ancients. And who, for instance, does not know the accu- sations which have been made against Providence respect- ing the colour of negroes 1 Has it not been proved a hundred times that black absorbs all the rays of light, and that it absorbs all its heat ? By blackening the skin of a whole race of men, and casting them beneath the burning sun of Africa, nature has then done nothing but afflict them with torture ; a frightful combination, which is wanting in the hell of Dante. Open the Bible, and mark the descendants of the second son of Noah, cursed for the crime of their father. Their black skin is the mark of their condemnation, the eternal brand of their slavery, " Cursed be Canaan, he shall be the servant of the servant of his brethren."* And thus we have theologians quoting, arguing, cursing; the abjection of a whole race, justified by the sin of Ham. What is required in order to destroy a prejudice, to over- throw a malediction? To observe nature. If, during the rigours of winter, I visit the fields in which the corn was beginning to shoot forth, I see that all has disappeared beneath a covering of snow. I interrogate the husband- man, and I lament to see so frail a plant exposed to the mortal influences of ice and hoar-frost. He answers me, smiling, that God has provided against the calamity, and that the crop is in safety. He knows by experience that this white mantle thrown upon the earth, is like a warm covering, a winter garment, under the shelter of which Providence secures treasures of every season. * Genesis ix. 198 ATTRIBUTES OP THE DIVINITY. Spring arrives, the woods, the orchards, the bushes be- come covered with blossoms, and all these blossoms have the whiteness of snow ; nature thus guards the fruits of the ensuing seasons. The cherry, the strawberry, the pear, the apple, arises from a flower white as alabaster, and the food of the little birds is sheltered from the cold beneath the light covering of the hawthorn bushes. If the frosts of spring sometimes destroy the fruits of the almond and peach tree, it is because their blossoms are red. This exception strikes me so much the more forcibly, inas- much as these two trees are in these latitudes far from their proper country, they belong to the clime of the East. In proportion as the hoar-frosts depart, the blossoms assume a darker hue, and in the heat of summer I see them all clothed in robes of varied beauty. Thus every where, white is opposed to the cold ; brown, red, and black, to heat. This general law is perpetuated in the colour of the human race, which is black beneath the rays of a tropical sun, and white in temperate regions. No condemnation hangs over you, poor Africans; if the doctors curse you, nature blesses you; if horrible pre- judices cast you into a horrible exception, nature, like a tender mother, includes you within the generality of her laws. The study of these phenomena, the approximation of these foresights, which are constantly repeated in vegeta- bles and in the human race, suffice to lead us to truth. It has also been attained by another road, and it is while seeking for the cause of dews, that the learned discovered the reason of the colour of negroes. We need not here explain the theory of radiating heat, but we may remark, that the experiments of naturalists always tend to justify the observations of true philosophers ; the one explains the pro- perties of colours, the other admires their employment in the great picture of the universe, and their combined science verifies at least this double experience; viz. that the stroke of a painter's brush suffices nature to refresh the inhabitants of the hottest climates, as well as to give warmth to the seeds and buds of the vegetable creation in the coldest regions. I conclude from all these observations, that colours, possess the property of retaining heat, or of allowing it to ATTRIBUTES OP THE DIVINITY. 199 escape, according as they are more or less dark ; the white retains the heat, the black allows it a free passage ; white is then a warm garment, and black a cool garment ; both are bestowed by nature according to the necessities, the seasons, and the climates, and their wise distribution bears testimony to her foresight. A charming exception comes to confirm the rule. Be- neath these ■ hedges, all resplendent with their alabaster blossoms, the violet appears in the snow, clad in the dark colours of summer. Here is a contrast which appears to violate the law of nature, or to accuse her foresight. Let us not be in a hurry to condemn her. Our systems reduce themselves to monotonous classifications, because they admit of no exception. Nature, on the contrary, embel- lishes herself with exceptions, which so frequently come to destroy our systems. You observe that the violet conceals itself beneath its foliage; it has been made the emblem of modesty; it is, however, only the iapprehension of the cold which keeps it thus veiled. Physics teach us that all bodies radiate their heat to- wards the sky. If the sky be serene, it receives the heat without sending it back, and bodies on the earth become cold. Such is the cause of frost in the clear nights of spring ; but if clouds cover the atmosphere, the tempera- ture immediately changes; these clouds radiate towards the earth, as the earth radiates towards them ; that is to say, that they restore to the earth as much heat as they receive from it. This is the reason why the heat is so oppressive, and the air so heavy in the cloudy days of summer. Radiation takes place from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ; the more the atmosphere is charged with humidity, the warmer is the weather. That which takes place on a large scale in the atmo- sphere, takes place on a small scale in the violet. It radiates towards the foliage which covers it, and the foliage radiates towards it. In this constant interchange the warmth is maintained. It is a second garment which nature throws over the first, but this garment warms without touching. It allows a free passage to the air, which agitates the flower, and brings us its perfume. Thus the violet is pre- 200 STUDY OF GOD IN THE served from the cold, and its summer habits are but an additional charm which nature imparts to spring. As a general rule, nature has done nothing to render man unhappy, and when he laments, it is because, on the contrary, he is deprived of the goods which she lavishes upon the race. The prisoner complains of the loss of the liberty which he held from nature; the hungry man com- plains of the privation of the produce which she has caused to grow for all; the sick man asks her for health; the orphan, for his mother. In all these afflictions, I seek for the genius of evil, but I see only the conditions of our mortal life, or the absence of those benefits for which we are indebted to nature. It is good to notice the circumstance, that all the evils which do not depend upon our physical constitution arise from our ignorance. In order to remove them, our errors should have been removed ; but we have found it more convenient to accuse as their source I know not what evil genius, to which we deliver up the universe. Nature has opened her book to us, in which God himself has written his thoughts; and it is in the books of men, in works of ambition and of corruption, that we go to look for truth. This is the way in which truth has been lost upon the earth, — this is the way that the God of the universe, the infinitely good, just, and merciful has become the God of a small number ; the terrible, the jealous, the avenging, ex- terminating God. Fortunately, the work has preserved the name of the workman, and notwithstanding all the efforts of fanaticism ; this name, some syllables of which every people has repeated, is still found entire, in the benefits of nature, and in the prayer of the human race, " Our Father.^^ CHAPTER X. STUDY OF GOD IN THE WORKS OF NATURE. " Et son empire immense Nulle part ne finit, nulle part ne commence." Observe what passes in the regions of infinity, where the stars are multiplied like the sands on the sea-shore. WORKS OF NATURE. 201 These stars, these suns, I can nneasure them without reach- ing them — I regulate their movements by means of hnes and figures. Geometry is the reason of God. Man is permitted to discover it in matter, and thus to ascend to his intellectual origin. But my soul is more vast ; the in- finity which it contemplates gives it the idea of an infinity which is beyond its contemplation. The only one of all created beings, man has been able to say : Perhaps ! — and this word in his mouth expresses a measureless and end- less power — perhaps each of these suns has a movement which is proper to it, as each of these planets pursues a difl^erent course ! perhaps the light from these constella- tions produces colours which are unknown to us! — perhaps these nebulae allow atoms to escape from them which diflfuse joy and delight, just as our sun bestows light and heat ! perhaps, also, these myriads of worlds are but the avenues to the abode of the incomprehensible Being who perceives them like dust at his feet. But it is only angels who have a glimpse of this divine spectacle; they employ eternity in studying it from sphere to sphere, from delight to delight. And yet it is given to us, weak creatures, to penetrate therein by thought ; we, who are lost upon this globe, which is itself lost in space, we may imagine that which we do not see : the wonders which God alone has been able to conceive. This correspondence between man and God; these worlds, these suns placed between us and the Creator, like the luminous steps which lead up to the threshold of the celes- tial temple, astonish my soul without overpowering it. I pass from admiration to love, and from love to prayer. This testifies at the same time my weakness and my great- ness ! All the creatures which surround me follow their instincts and fulfil their destiny, — I alone pray. Animals see nothing of that which I perceive, hear nothing of that which I hear; and because T am the only creature that prays, I know the object of my being. If man had not a soul for prayer, the world would be as if he were not: there would be nothing between annihilation and God. Thus we see two intelligences which correspond to each other — one in heaven, the other upon earth. The all- powerful Being has deigned to manifest himself to his creature. Our soul is a temple in which he has impressed 202 STUDY OF GOD IN THE his thought ; in nature, as well as in ourselves, his exist- ence is revealed by intelligence, pov^^er, and goodness. In order that there should be power, there must be creation ; in order that there should be intelligence, there must be relations and harmonies; in order that there should be goodness, there must be foresight and benefits. From the existence of all these conditions, I may infer the ex- istence of God: the attributes are only present, because he exists. And even should a part of the laws of nature be inexplicable to me — even if a multitude of relations and harmonies should be beyond the scope of my intelligence, it will suffice me to have seized some of them in order to estabhsh ray certainty, for my certainty need not arise from a profound knowledge of nature, which belongs to none, but from the understanding of some of its laws. If fore- sight and goodness are evident in one instance, I may infer that they exist in all other instances. How could they exist in one, if not in all ? The universe is but one work, its totality is but one creation, its laws are but one law : order exists only in unity. But the genius of evil could not produce any good ; if, therefore, the good shows itself in some parts of the work, it is every where. God exists : this is a sufficient reason for the world to be. A sublime truth ! a light of nature and intelligence ! God exists, and his attributes are, — power, since he creates ; foresight, since he preserves ; and goodness, since we live. God exists, and the light which renders him visible shines only in the soul of man, who seeks in heaven for the cause of that which he sees upon the earth. To multiply suns in space, worlds around these suns, exist- ences in these worlds ; to give them light and darkness, pleasure and pain, Hfe and death, to cause to spring forth the harmonies of these contrasts and the love of these har- monies, — such is the visible work of God ! And we, the witnesses of his power and the proofs of his bounty, — we who enjoy his earthly benefits, — we are permitted to medi- tate upon that which we do not see, to rest our hopes upon that which we cannot touch ; — we, weak creatures, believe in that which is invisible, we implore that which is un- known. There is in us a something which seeks infinity without conceiving it, which aspires to eternity without comprehending it, and which raises itself up to God by WORKS OF NATURE. 203 love! Therein lies the proof of our high destiny; love, this sentiment which nothing here below can satisfy, raises itself up to God only because it is immortal. Thus, from all parts in nature, God comes to man in order that man should come to God. If my regards plunge into the heavens, I recognise him. If I descend to the lowest degrees of the creation, I still contemplate him. It seems to me that I hear a voice arise from out of each blade of grass : " Thou seekest God," it says ; " he is around thee, and in thee. Interrogate thy soul, thou wilt find him there ; interrogate the smallest insect, it will reveal to thee the greatest foresight. I am but a blade of grass in a meadow ; I shall only live a few days, and yet it is for me that the winds sweep over the seas ; it is for me that they bring back on their wings the most refreshing dews, and that the stream perpetually flows from the mountain's side. I am but a blade of grass, and notwithstanding, thou seest I partake of the benefits of the great phenomena of the universe. What an harmonious concurrence between the winds, the clouds, the sea, the sun, man, a fly, a quad- ruped, and a frail plant that lives but for a day! My history is that of the whole of nature. He who knows my secrets, knows the word of the creation; whosoever knows how I exist, will have heard the voice of God. Between nought and life — the being and not being — there are, power, intefligence, and will ; between life and life, the being and the being, there is relationship. God is every where." Such is, to him who knows how to understand it, the language of the grass of the field. Thus speaks the grain of sand— thus speak the trees : thus all creation expresses itself. And if we ascend from these details to the whole, from a plant to the earth, from the earth to heaven, we see with astonishment all these particular foresights resolve them- selves into the combinations of a general foresight, which unites God to man by benefits, and man to God by the heart. It is the celestial chain of Homer ! Each of its links is a world suspended in infinity: it traverses through- out all the interval which separates the power which creates, from the soul which contemplates. Thus each study reveals to me a foresight, each foresight *204i STUDY OF GOD IN THE 1 a benefit, of which the germ comes from the hand of God, and of which the fruit ripens in the hand of man. And yet philosophers lament over the misery of man. They exclaim that animals are born armed and clothed with shells, hair, and fur, whereas man is cast naked and defenceless upon the earth. Yes, man is cast naked upon the earth; thou, wonderful genius, w^ouldst have him re- semble animals? Let thy lofty intellect, then, preside over this new work ! Warm this frail creature, supply its wants with that w^hich heaven has refused: correct the work of God ! Very well ! suppose man to be now sheltered from the frost, perpetually covered with the furred coat of the fox, the plumage of the swan, or the skin of the lion. Ah 1 miserable being, thou hast deprived him of a world ! his nakedness gave him all climates, thy foresight has restricted him to the degrees of latitude. Thus, thou didst accuse for want of comprehending, and thy pity was but blindness. Man exists every where, and he can exist every where only because he is by nature naked. Let him, then, be born naked to reign over the globe; let him appropriate to him- self for clothing the skins of animals and the fibres of plants ; this is not a proof of abandoning, but an act of power; he does but take possession of his empire; though, as if to draw us to himself, God wills that the oris^in of this empire should bear a reference to our destitute condition. Praise, then, be to him whom darkness and ignorance alone accuse. Animals are diffused over the globe — man alone possesses it. Nature gives to the one a tree, to another a meadow ; to some a plant, to others a forest. By clothing animals with shells and furs, God has said to them as to the sea — " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." And this law is calculated upon so profound a foresight, that order is maintained amidst an apparent confusion ; and that life is preserved and renewed amidst a general conflict. These conflicts, these instincts, these arms, these coverings, this nakedness, constitute the harmony of the world. And mark ; in this vast whole, man always re-appears as the object of creation ; in the north, in the south ; beneath the tropics, in every latitude, in every climate, a domestic animal attends to relieve him and to share his labours. The horse and the ass on the plain ; the cow on the mountains ; WORKS OF NATURE. 205 the goat among the rocks; the reindeer amidst the snows; amidst the sands, the camel; in the marsh, the buffalo; the dog in all parts of the world. Thus, man travels over the earth, and every where he meets with a servant and brings witfi him a friend. And further, the strength of animals is modified according to the exigences of climates. In India, for instance when man languishes exhausted by the heat of the sun, nature has placed the elephant, as if she propor- tioned the powers of the servant to the weakness of the master. Thus are animals distributed over the earth. Some, however, by annual migrations pass from one country to another. The air and the sea are filled with these travel- ling cohorts ; and man, the object of all this care, blesses the unknown law which by a twofold foresight brings perpe- tually to our shores the fishes of the north, and to our fields the birds of the south. And this aggregation of benefits has been placed out of the reach of our ambitions and of our passions. Man may lay waste the earth, but he cannot prevent the ground from being productive, the sun from fecundating, or rivers from fertilizing. Povi^er and foresight; such are the primary attributes of God. These attributes testify to this greatness: he gives life, and he preserves it. This is what he owed to himself in this immense creation, for he owed something to himself, after having given himself a spectator. But if power and foresight extend even beyond this, — if God be pleased to bestow upon his work treasures which are destined solely to embellish it, — if he lavish upon it pleasures, of which the object is neither' creation nor pre- servation, but happiness! what terms, O God, can express the attributes of thy munificence? what human tongue is worthy of naming and blessing thee? Man is so poor, O God, that he can only offer to thee that which thou hast bestowed upon him ; and yet the most sublime proof of this goodness, which has no name upon earth, is it not that a thing of nought can raise itself even up to thee by gratitude and by love? Yes, God does more than bestow existence, he does more than preserve it ; he embellishes it and renders it full of delights and happiness. Observe the multitude of pleasures, in some 206 STUDY OF GOD IN THE measure superfluous, which he attaches to all our senses ; or, rather, how faculties are awakened in us which have no other object than pleasure ! Say, even if musical harmony were not to exist, would the ear be less fitted to enable us to understand ideas'^ Was there any necessity, in order to show us objects, to lavish upon them colours, forms, and perspectives, and to render all these harmonies visible and enchanting by the exquisite sentiment of the beautiful 1 Say, would not the sense of smell perform its office, even were it to remain insensible to the varied odours of fruits and flowers? and might not the delicacy of taste be lessened without its ceasing to be the stimulus of hunger? The pictures of the country, the melody of the nightingale, thy inspirations, O Beethoven ! the perfume of the strawberry, the juice of the peach ; all these divine harmonies, all these delicate savours, all these ethereal emanations, seized, chosen, perceived, and analyzed by taste, lavished upon us, and infinitely varied by nature; heightened and multiplied by genius; this is the work of magnificence and goodness ! Life would still be a benefit without these benefits, which superabound. Where- fore would so many pleasures be added to so much power, if it were not in order to render goodness visible 1 In these benevolent prodigalities God has placed his attributes. It is by them that he declares to us that happiness is the spec- tacle in which he delights. But when from the physical we pass to the moral world, w^hat a variety of emotions and sentiments do we not per- ceive ! It is neither the cries of pain nor those of joy which transport us : they excite at most some sensations of pity or of pleasure. It is the noble and generous sentiments, those which belong to a superior nature, which expand the soul or which find it out: it is the disinterested love of men, and piety towards God. I more especially admire how the art of expressing them by speech developes and varies their emotions ; so that if man had only imagined language, or if he had not received it from the Creator, these sentiments would remain useless in our souls. This is the reason why great writers charm us, — this is the reason why great poets elevate us, — this is the way, by a stroke of their genius, in which they impart to the vulgar crowd the devotedness of the Gracchi for their country, or the enthusiasm of Socrates for virtue. WORKS OF NATURE. 207 And yet more ; the sentiments of infinity, glory, and im- mortality, are mixed up with all the sensations of man. Amidst the attractions of a terrestrial life, they detach us on a sudden from that which we have most desired, and lead us to death by the attractive prospect of an immortal life. It is these sentiments which throw a majesty over ancient monuments, and a celestial pity over virtue in misfortune. It is they which give so much activity to our hopes, so much sensibility to our adieus, and so much strength to our regrets. Thus, the delightful impressions of taste and of sentiment in the arts and in eloquence being accidentally and almost instinctively seized by great artists in every depart- ment, are invariable laws of nature, a prodigality of her gifts. Their source is not in matter. Infinity has another origin than sensation, transporting it beyond the domain of time. As a ray of the sun which has made its way through the dark clouds lights up the verdant meadows on the hori- zon, and exhibits to us a radiant prospect, so, in like man- ner, infinity, this ray of the divinity which shines in the darkness of our souls, heightens our earthly enjoyments, and opens to an ephemeral creature the perspectives of eternity. Well ! these pleasures of the soul, this delicacy of taste and sentiment, man could live, and even live happily, without experiencing them. Nature lavishes them on him as a superabundance, as proofs of her munificence and her benevolence ; they are the pleasures of the other life brought down into this. By this means, also, God has declared to us that happiness is the spectacle which he loves. Every where in the creation I read these words : magnificence, foresight, goodness. God notifies them to us in an univer- sal language; he wills that the human race should hear them ; for truth is no more the appanage of a locality or of a sect, than the benefits of nature are the property of a nation ; whence I infer that, that only is true upon the earth which God has expressed to all men, and that he speaks to all men of his works. This is a principle without exception. A thing is then true, not because it is supported by the testimony of the doctors, not because it presents itself to us with the assent of the human race ; it is true because it is the thought of God as expressed in the laws of nature. The eyes of all men may see these laws, and no human power can change them. Thus our reason discovers the 208 THE LAWS OF NATURE. principle of certainty. It is independent of all human powers. The criterion of truth lies only in the immutable and the eternal. CHAPTER XI. SEARCH AFTER TRUTH IN THE LAWS OP NATURE IMMUTABILITY OP THIS CRITERION. OP ORDER THE FIRST LAW OP NATURE. "II ne faut qu'enoncer ces idees pour en faire sentir toute I'evidence." Ancillon sur V Amour de la Vdrite. In order to avoid false interpretations, which are always dangerous in inquiring into a similar subject, we will define, once for all, the meaning which we attach to the word nature. Nature is the work of God. The laws of nature are the established order in this work ; they are the thought of God rendered visible to our mortal eyes. By showing us what God has done, they teach us what God wills. To study nature is, then, to seek for the will of God in a book written by the very hand of God. There, no errors, no falsifications, are possible : the revelation is universal, and the book which contains it opens itself resplendent with glory beneath the eyes of the human race. But how am I to know these laws of nature? Do they exist within me, or are they external ? Am I to consider as a law of nature the impetuosity of my desires ? Am I to yield to inclinations which fascinate me ? to pleasures which tempt me'( to those devouring passions which are likewise a law of nature, and a voice so energetic, that it too frequently silences all other considerations '( These are important questions which agitate the world, and to which certain sophists do not blush to return an answer which would precipitate us lower than the brute. No, no, the abuse of our faculties is not a law of nature ; for every where in our excesses we meet with bitterness and disgust. The disorders of the soul, and the evils which THE LAWS OF NATURE. 209 afflict the body, sufficiently warn us when we violate the law of nature. Let us state the principles. The abuse of our faculties proves only one fact: our moral liberty. But, from the existence of this liberty, we may perceive the necessity of the rule. In animals, it is God who marks out the rule, and this rule is a law which no power can infringe. Animals are not free. In man, on the contrary, it is himself who traces out the rule, and voluntarily places limits to his powers. He is the only one of all created beings on whom this necessity is imposed ; in, the first place, as a condition of his existence, and, subsequently, as a condition of his greatness. This is the way in which, from the power of doing evil, the necessity of doing good has arisen for the advantage of humanity; and it is there that the law of nature must be sought for. Thus, order is the law of nature; the gratification of a vice, the excesses of passion,, are always a disorder. The law of nature for man, is the harmony of the phy- sical and moral, of the intellectual and the spiritual being, and not the isolated predominance of any one part of himself. The body should no more be disassociated from the soul than the soul should be disassociated from the body. To render man incomplete is to debase him. Every thing which is offensive to the morality and dig- nity of man is oflfensive to the law of nature, which requires before every thing else our morality and our dignity. These principles are mathematical. Mathematical operations induce certainty, only because, with respect to a given subject, they always present the same figure. From this results an eternal order, of which figures are but the expression. In morals, all corruption brings with it its inevitable consequences : trouble, pain, confusion, abasement, death. This is a point of mathematical certainty, and from it results an eternal order, of which the laws of nature are the expression. 14 210 THE LAWS OF NATURE. The laws being found and fixed, the perception of truth becomes easy. The laws of nature are of two kinds ; 1st, those which exist in us, and which are in us alone ; that is to say, they are the product of the faculties of our soul ; and 2dly, those which arise externally to us, that is to say, which regulate the physical universe. The first are few in number ; we will mention five of them — 1. The sentiment of the Divinity. 2. The sociability of the human race. 3. And its perfectibility. The law of perfectibility is joined in our souls to two other important laws, viz. 4. Man is always naturally incHned to that which is grand and beautiful. 5. Truth is always found in that which is most grand and beautiful. The second kind, that is to say, the laws which arise externally to ourselves, are more numerous; they are inevitable so long as they are applied to matter ; and moral as soon as they attach themselves to man. In other terms, from each physical law of nature God causes a moral law to emanate which our soul alone can compre- hend. It is the light of the world ; it shines amidst our ignorance and our passions, as a lighthouse built on the sea-shore shines amidst storms and darkness. In the absence of any complete code, I will endeavour, to make some sketches. I will write the first pages of a book, wherein all the ideas shall be those of God, and I . will translate these divine ideas into a human language, without enthusiasm, without colouring, and rich only in the exposure of falsehood. I will exhibit the sun as contrasted . with the shade, and hfe as contrasted with annihilation. I would then write on the frontispiece of the book — All that which comprises merely the interests of a man, of a body, or of a nation, is not the law of nature. The invariable character of the law of nature is universal aptitude — {convenance.) A MORAL LAW OF NATURE. 211 CHAPTER XII. THE SENTIMENT OF THE DIVINITY A MORAL LAW OF NATURE. " Nous avons besoin parrai nos erreurs, non d'un philosophe qui dispute, raais d'un Dieu qui nous determine dans la recherche de la verite." BossuET — Sermons. All the phenomena of nature reveal a power received, and an impulsion given. They have an action, but no will; and each action has its rule which constitutes the duration of things, while the aggregate of all the rules constitutes universal order. These rules are at once so precise and so constant, that it is sufficient for a man of genius, by seizing a single link, to be able to imagine the whole chain. The pupil who tried to deceive Linneus, by presenting to him a plant composed of the fragments of several other plants, did not remember that the deception was impossible, because, in the eyes of the master, it was opposed to the organic laws of nature. All the forms, all the movements of matter develope themselves geometrically, and science sums them up by lines, figures, affinities, and attractions. Place in the hands of Cuvier an unknown bone, and his genius will define from it the nature of the entire animal. There Hved a young man, who by the sole appreciation of the attractive forces necessary for the movement of the stars, and for the fixity of the sun, dared to state that several planets were still wanting in our solar system, and from his closet he boldly pointed out in the heavens the place where Herschell shortly afterwards sought for and discovered them. This young man, who calculated so well the powers of the sun, was Kant. At a later period he penetrated into the darkness of metaphysics, and illuminated the human soul with the divine light which had guided him in the heavens. From the facts which have preceded, the following two- 212 SENTIMENT OF THE DIVINITY— fold principle may be deduced. 1st. That matter is not free. 2d. That the laws which influence it, indicate an intelligence which does not exist in it. We do not at the present moment seek what this intelligence is. It is suffi- cient for us to know, that, from the beginning of things, matter has been subjected to a power of which it has con- stantly preserved the impress, and by which it has been regulated. We have called this power, this will, a law of nature. One exception, however, presents itself. Man, as a moral being, is freed from the laws which enchain the world. He is so free, that one would think that he was forsaken. The disorders of the human race, and the order of the universe, prove at the same time the Uberty and the law. Observe the entire mass of created beings. Each species enters at birth upon a path which it must necessarily follow. Their course is decreed beforehand in the book of nature. Man alone, though subject to the laws of matter, yet remains free to yield to his passions, or to subdue them ; to lay down a principle for himself and to obey it. Nothing prevents, nothing obliges him ; he can say yes or no ; go, or not go ; do, or not do ; live, or not live. Here is either a fatal liberty which precipitates us from crime to crime, or else a celestial liberty which incites us to virtue. Seize this crown, O mortal ! thy liberty is thy supreme power here below, and imm.ortality in heaven. Free amidst this submissive world, thou canst receive as a light the divine thoughts which are not imposed upon thee as a law. God, in placing thee in the midst of his work, has opened for thee the book of truth. He constantly unfolds before thee the ever-varying pages of this book, wherein he has engraved, in immortal letters, what he is, and what he wills. And these pages express the same thoughts and speak the same language at either extremity of the world ; they comprise but one religion, one truth, and one love. The conditions of existence are not then the same for man as for animals ; the life of animals is but the fulfilling of a will which is not in them, and from which they cannot escape ; the life of man is the submission to the law which he himself makes ; but he must lay down this law^ for himself; he must ascertain the bounds of evil, since he alone has the power of doing evil. God imposes A MORAL LAW OF NATURE. 213 upon him this sole obligation ; but he attaches to it the existence and the prosperity of the species. The necessity of regulating himself is the first law which calls man to virtue ; he is led to it by his wants, by his interests, by all the faculties of his intellect and of his soul. Such is the origin of the moral and legislative codes which divide mankind between them ; they are a necessity of our nature; one of the laws of our being and the evi- dence of our greatness. We must thank Heaven that it has made the moral existence of man the irretrievable con- dition of his physical existence. Thus, this law is fulfilled in a manner more or less general over all the inhabited earth. Wherever you shall meet with two families, you may be sure that there is an established rule ; and this rule is not, as it has been stated, an attempt on the liberty of man, but it is, on the contrary, the proof and the testimony of this liberty ; and still more, it is the accomplishment of a law. Thus the morality of man is the proof of his liberty, just as his liberty is a proof of his immortality. We have said that matter is not free ; and yet man is free ; there is then something in man which is not matter ; this is the way in which his liberty testifies to his immor- tality. Observe, that if nature does not subject man to any law, she shows him on all sides the laws to which she is sub- jected. She establishes a harmony between these laws and the faculties of our soul, and she forces us by this means to ascend to God, the eternal source of truth. The fixed point of the moral world is God. Our souls must seek and contemplate him. Beyond this, man only feeds himself with illusions and falsehoods, and his vast intelligence serves only to precipi- tate him into nothingness. Thus, the sentiment of the Divinity is the first moral law of nature ; it is as the in- stinct of our being, and this instinct expresses itself in all the forms of worship which prevail throughout the world. We do not here judge of these forms of worship, which are more or less enlightened, more or less barbarous. We assemble them, as forming the voice of the human race ; and proving the sentiment, that is to say, the law. 214 SENTIMENT OF THE DIVINITY — Those who think that God can only be known by means of revelation, do not consider that the revelation is renewed at each birth. The temple of God is neither in this globe of earth, nor in those suns of fire ; neither in time, space, nor infinity ; it is in the human soul. We see God external to ourselves, only because he is in us. In fact the spectacle of nature comes from nature to man from without, inwards ; but it brings with it nothing but pictures. The thought of God, on the contrary, goes out from man to nature : from within outwards ; but it carries with it life and power. Thus, the thought of God is in this world only because man has placed it there. This is the reason why it is universal ; its source is the whole human race. Wherever there is a ^ man, God is manifested, God appears. If you wish to know the true character of the Divinity, interrogate neither the forms of religion nor theologians. Leave to all people their forms, observe the sentiment at its origin, in the days of innocency, and at its point of perfection in the lights of wisdom ; these two extremes meet in the same revelation ; a sentiment of pure love ; the only incense of the soul which is worthy of God. The sentiment of the divinity is then the first moral law of our nature ; without it we should see nothing, we should know nothing, we should understand nothing. The torch is lighted up in the depth of our soul, and casts its luminous reflection over man and the universe. In vain is the objection made that this sentiment not being universal, since there are atheists, cannot be a law of nature. This objection does not affect our position ; one may lose the eyes of the soul as w^ell as the eyes of the body; moral blindness is not more rare than physical blindness. Hence, what becomes of the argument 1 Shall the incredulity of the blind man who sees not the light be called in testimony against the existence of the sun ? To deny the existence of light is not to destroy it : it is simply saying that one does not possess organs which see the light : it is to declare oneself incomplete. And in fact what is an atheist? A man without all the faculties which raise man to God. But these faculties exist: witness Socrates, Fenelon, Newton, Bernardin de St. Pierre — witness the whole human race. What a sad mutilation has this man then performed upon himself! To A MORAL LAW OP NATURE. 215 deny God, he must have cut off from his being the senti- ment of the beautiful, of which the model is not found here below ; the sentiment of infinity, which earth cannot satisfy ; the moral sentiment, of which the reward must be in another life. This unhappy being will have obliterated and stifled all ; even his conscience, since conscience is a revelation of the invisible power ; even his reason, since reason ex- plains nothing without the assistance of a first mover. He is, then, such as he has made himself, reduced to the cold intelligence of which he is so proud, but which, however, he shares with animals : there is only the faculty of deny- ing which separates him from them. Thus deprived of his divine faculties, man is no more than a portion of matter, borrowed for a time from the globe which he inhabits. He weighs here below only the weight of his attraction towards the earth ; he compre- hends only the visible, and seeks only the finite. We may imagine that we see in him the angel of the legend, who, for having attached himself too strongly to the things of the earth, found on a sudden his wings fall powerless, and lost at the same time the power and the will of taking his flight towards heaven. If, then, the man who repels the idea of God is an incom- plete being, — if by raising an impious hand against himself, he cuts off all that which elevates him above animals, — it must nevertheless be confessed that the sentiment of the divinity is a law of our nature, and that it is precisely the law which constitutes us as men. This is the origin of religions. God himself has placed the foundations of all the temples of the world in the human soul, by causing to arise in it the sentiment which reveals him. It is this universal sentiment which consti- tutes the great human family, and makes all nations but one people. The unity of the human race becomes esta- blished by the light of the unity of God. In order fully to understand the bearings of this law, it must be studied in the moral and political institutions of the universe of which it is the indestructible basis. Every where man establishes a power against, his evil passions, and a reward for his virtues. He raises monuments to it in his codes, in his philosophy, in his sciences; he pub- lishes it even while denying it. The sophists who attempt 2^16 SOCIABILITY : I to degrade us, never fail to bring forward in proof of their argument human infirmities and misery. It is the proof of man's weakness and decay, say they. No, no : it is the proof of the decay of the flesh, and of all flesh. The stamp of man, the law of his nature, is not the law which anni- hilates him, but the law which causes him to live. Let the gates of eternity no longer hide us from the light ; let them open before the man who desires to see his God. We dare to say, that whoever denies the truth, not only isolates himself from God, but isolates himself likewise from man, — to separate himself from heaven, is to separate him- self from humanity. Let us then boldly engrave on the first page of our code — The sentimentof the Divinity: the first moral law of the human race. CHAPTER XIIL SOCIABILITY A MORAL LAW OF NATURE. ■" II faut juger de la nature par le fini on perfection ou elle tend." Aristote, Politique. The love of God cannot exist without the love of men, or rather it is because there is a God that men love one another: hence arises sociability — the second law of na- ture; which imparts movement to the world at the same time that it subjects it to our domination. For, and this is well worth noticing, in the beginning of things men were united by love. Family ties are the true origin of society: then came human interests, more or less extensive, more or less generous: they drew the bonds more closely together: they assisted to fulfil, but they did not make the law, and they were even sometimes opposed to it. Sociability is then the love of God and of men. Seek not the laws of nature in narrow passions and isolated in- terests; seek them in all that is most pure and great. They are all expanded over the human race, and extend from the human race to God. All is foreseen around us and within us ; all is combined for the accomplishment of this law; the isolated ^nan can A MORAL LAW OF NATURE. 217 do nothing : he does not even experience the desire of his own well-being. The arts, sciences, philanthropy, lofty- moral ideas, are all the fruits of civilization and the work of society. Man must have companions and rivals; a town, a country, a world. When he has not all these his intellect slumbers, his soul becomes torpid, he is incomplete. The savage state is contrary to nature : it circumscribes every thing, because it creates nothing. To the savage the forest is his country; his tribe is the human race; his God is an idol, or a piece of wood. The savage is neither a man by his intelligence nor by the developement of his soul. Sociability is therefore a law, for it renders man complete. Let us not then say that the savage state is the law of nature. All the eloquence of Rousseau cannot prove that the life of a CafTre or of a Mohican is not the most narrow circle of the soul and of human thought. If creation have an aim, it can only be in the developement of that which it gives ; thus, the state of nature for the tiger will be the wild state ; the natural state for man will be society. The error of Rousseau is, to have confounded the wild state with the state of nature. He did not perceive that the natural state in animals which have no soul is an in- stinct ; that is to say, a life already marked out : whereas the natural state for man who has not merely instinct is the developement of the faculties of the soul and of the intellect; that is to say, a life not yet marked out, and which may be varied in an infinite manner in each in- dividual. The more, therefore, man shall be enlightened, the nearer will he approach to the state of nature, or rather to the state of his nature which is the developement of all his faculties. What is there, in fact, between civilized man and nature? ignorance and prejudices, which civilization tends to destroy. What is there between nature and man in the savage state ? a still greater mass of errors and misery, which the savage state tends to perpetuate. That which separates the civilized from the savage man are the sciences, without which we should know nothing of the work of God, or of the love of our neighbour; without which we should again fall into a state of war between man and man, tribe and tribe, nation and nation; and lastly, the knowledge of an only God, which establishes the human 218 sociability: confraternity, and without which we should die in the superstitions of the worshippers of idols, and amidst the horrors of cannibalism. Do you not perceive that in the savage the best qualities of the soul remain dormant, while his most terrible animal faculties are developed with a frightful energy ? The savage man requires the qualities of the wolf, of the tiger, the lion, the serpent; all the ferocity, all the instinct of the brute; and without these he is in danger of perishing. The social man requires, on the contrary, pity, humanity, charity, all the faculties of the intellectual and religious being, and "without which he would again fall into the savage state. Would you dare to say, that those are not the nearest to a state of nature, who are nearest to God and man 1 The savage state is not then the state of nature, but rather a state opposed to nature. In the absence of other proofs, it will suffice to refer to the horrible misery which decimates the wandering tribes of North America. John Tanner has drawn a picture of it, not as a mere traveller, but after thirty years sojourn in these deserts, where he himself lived the life of a savage. This life, to which poets and philosophers have ascribed so many charms, is the life of the brute, softened only by some sentiments of pity and hospitality. Beyond this there is nothing else that is worthy of man. The day of the savage is passed like that of the animal, in seeking his prey, without any other thought. Intelligence seems to have been bestowed upon him only in order to provide for the wants of his stomach ; and yet a time always arrives, a fatal hour, when his strength be- comes exhausted, his cunning is at fault, and after unheard- of fatigues, he dies of hunger, with all his family, amidst the forests which refuse him food. The life of the savage is but the punishment of Ugolino transported into the desert, and interrupted from time to time by hunting or by human sacrifices. At these periods the forests re-echo with cries of joy or the songs of death : the hunger of the savage, the hunger of the man is appeased, amidst the horrible delirium of a feast of cannibals. Such are the memoirs of Tanner ;* such are the virtues and delights of savage life. And after this picture one * Thirty Years in the Deserts of America. New York, 2 vols. A MORAL LAW OP NATURE. - 219" would, I should think, be but little moved by the declama- tion of Rousseau, on that which it has pleased him to call the state of nature; the plain truth destroys the eloquent paradox. Sociability is then imposed upon the human race: it is a condition of man's life, a second creation, which imparts to him all his value : for not only does it snatch him from these barbarities, but it discovers in him virtues and senti- ments which would die without it. The savage state, like the barbarous state, may produce a Jenghis Khan ; but it could not produce an Alexander ; it could not produce a Plato, a Socrates, a Galileo, or a Newton ; neither could it produce the apostles of Christ. Man appears complete only at the summit of civilization. God has bestowed a light upon society, and this light adapts itself to all the degrees of civilization. According as the society is more or less extensive, our mind enjoys a greater or less scope. We develope just sufficient for the size of our locality. This is the origin of the petty passions which afflict little towns, and also of the narrow views of our deputies at each integral renovation of the Chamber. Those who are newly elected bring us, for the most part, but the petty ambitions or interests of their localities, ideas as enlarged as their department. How many degrees must they pass through, before comprehending, I do not say the universality, but the nationality of their mission ! Paris appears to them a gulf as long as they escape from its thinking influence; at last they yield to this influence, then the social admixture takes place, the narrow provincial ideas are extended to the whole country, and they revive as Frenchmen. During fourteen years I have narrowly observed this phenomenon, and I have blessed a form of government which, by forcing minds to expand themselves, must necessarily contribute to their morality. And yet this is only a first step in the fulfilment of the social law. In proportion as the soul expands, it embraces the whole world, and wishes to subject it to unity. Ancient legislators appear to have mistaken this sentiment in giving it for its invariable limits the love of country. Jesus Christ alone thought of directing it according to the voice of nature: without overthrowing local legislations, he included them all in the moral code of his universal legislation. It 220 OF THE LOVE OF COUNTRY is the Gospel which opens out to us the world, by showing us every where brethren. The limits of an empire only mark the extent of a power, and not the extent of humanity. Thus society, beginning in the family, is completed in the human race. One God in heaven — one people on the earth. Such is true religion and true sociabihty. The sentiment of the Divinity. — The sociability of the human race. These two laws, engraven in our souls as in a sacred temple, form the basis of the whole code of nature. They substitute for all theological violence this axiom, — Love God. For all social tyranny they substitute the law, — Love nien. They tell us that it is the will of God that men should be free, that they should be happy ; and in order that this will should always be present before us, they im- part to it the attractions of a reward and the seductions of a sentiment. All human tongues express it in one word — Love ! And every people among whom the Gospel is preached comprise it in one single maxim, — Love God and men. This, then, is the second article of our code — the socia- bility of the human race. CHAPTER XIV. THE LOVE OF COUNTRY AND OF HUMANITY A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LAVT OF NATURE. " Tout I'amour qu'on a pour soi-raetne, pour sa famille, pour ses amis se reunit dans I'amour qu'on a pour la patrie." BOSSUET. Something of this appears in plants and animals. Plants have their geography, and fix themselves on the earth in varied but constant zones. Animals have their favourite localities and climates. And further, we see them attaching themselves to the house of man, and making of it a country in which they live and die. Every spring the swallow returns from across the seas to the nest in which it had burst its shell. Every evening the ass, the horse, and the ox stop before the door of the farm- house where the hardest labour awaits them. The dove AND OF HUMANITY. 221 travels five hundred leagues in three days to return to its dove-cote; and the faithful dog breaks the chain which retains him at a distance from the habitation of his master, to which he joyfully returns after some years of absence. It is then impossible not to admit in animals at least the instinct of localities. In man this instinct becomes the love of country. Man attaches himself from habit to the spot in which he was born: he loves every thing about it — • even the stones. It may be but a town, of which the dirty streets and the obscure houses are scarcely habitable; it may be a village built over a precipice and amidst perpetual snows; but it is the home of our childhood; we have breathed there — we have loved — we have there been young and happy, like the bird beneath the wings of its mother. And yet, the charm attached to our native country is counterpoised in youth by the desire of seeing and of knowing. This restless passion is another law of nature. Man must travel over the earth, ideas niust be exchanged and brethren must meet. Thus, the instinct which attaches us yields to the passion which draws us on. The world discloses itself to our view, and our regards are lost in the imaginary spectacle of its delights and its pleasures. But at a later period, when, awakened from our illusions and buffeted about by the winds of adversity, we seek for a shelter against the tempest, our native country presents itself to our minds with its sweetest reminiscences. We again see ourselves fresh with innocence and youth, amidst a joyful crowd, running about the meadows, or tumultu- ously rushing out of the school-room, the scene of our first successes; or, alone and pensive in the mountain paths, we hear the caressing voice of our parents, we press the hand of a friend, and though suffering from the wounds which the world has inflicted upon us, we feel ourselves revive amidst the graceful images of our earliest pleasures. The love of country is the love of our native land extended to all men who speak the same language, and live beneath the same laws : it is a fraternity larger than that of the family, but yet too contracted for our soul. The proof that the love of country, such as our legislators define it, is but a mutilated sentiment, is that conquests enlarge it: it is more or less vast, according to the genius of Alexander 222 LOVE OF HUMANITY — ^A LAW OF NATURE. or of CsBsar. Let us curse the fury of conquest, but while cursing it, let us take care not to mistake its deep and mys- terious agency. This desire to extend the limits of empires, to carry them to the extremities of the world, what is it but the desire to make the people of different nations one people, — of all countries one country 1 We fulfil without knowing it this great law of nature, which tends to make us embrace the whole world. The error is not in the idea, but in the act ; we try to do with arms that which can only be accomplished by love. Thus the instinct of localities, a purely animal instinct, raises itself in man, by the double impulsion of the beautiful and the infinite, up to the love of the human race. The love of the human race is the love of country, such as Socrates defined it, and such as the law of nature wills it. God has placed it in our souls to triumph over all the national hatred which divides men, and over the fratricidal wars which are an outrage to humanity. CHAPTER XV. THE LOVE OF HUMANITY IS THE LAW OF NATURE. *-) " Interroge sur sa patrie Socrate repondit qu'il etoit citoyen du monde." Plutarque. To be born beneath such or such a degree of latitude, is to be born an Icelander or a Chinese ; a slave or a citizen ; it is to receive from the authority of example the manners and habits of a people, their opinions, and their supersti- tions. To be born in such or such an age, is to be born with the predominating ideas of a particular epoch : either to kill helots, to burn heretics, to die in the Holy Land, or to fight for liberty. This influence of time and place presses upon us like a fatality. An Indian dies in the waters of the Ganges for an idea which he would have despised if he had been born in Europe. Let Spain be advanced a century in civiHzation, and the same people who arm themselves to defend the Inquisition would rise in insurrection for the purpose of destroying it. LOVE OF HUMANITY — A LAW OP NATURE. 223 Suppose Bonaparte to be born in London, or Washington in Paris; suppose them to have been born a century earlier or later than they were, and the current of their ideas would have been changed. Other opinions would have created for them another destiny, and the civilized world would have taken another direction. Thus we receive our social ideas, and sometimes also our moral ideas, from our country and the age in which we live. The circle contracts or enlarges itself, according to the date of the calendar or the degree of latitude. But the more society surrounds us with errors, the greater is the number of the means of escape which the law of nature presents to us. Whilst we circumscribe our country, the law enlarges it by our desires, and by the benefits spread over the surface of the earth. Our soul is always greater than our affections and our ambitions, and so long as it does not embrace earth and heaven, so long as it does not plunge into infinity, there still remains a void to be filled up, and sentiments to be experienced. Heraclitus said of the philosophers of his time, *' They seek truth in the little world, and not in the great world." The little world is that which surrounds and concerns us; our interests, our passions, our prejudices, our family, our town. The great world is the earth and heaven; the interests of our soul, and the interests of humanity. There is then a means of escaping from the influence of times and of places : it is to seek truth in the great world, and to make oneself, like Socrates, a citizen of the world. The love of humanity — is the moral law of nature. 224 LOVE — A PHYSICAL AND MORAL CHAPTER XVI. LOVE A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LA.W OF NATURE. "Seulil tientles renes de I'empire du monde; partout il dirige son vol : A est accorapagne d'une lumiere pure qui dissipe les tenebres du chaos ; sa voix retentit dans toute la nature." Orphee. " II y a dans I'ame una force qui la portant hors d'elle, vers I'ideal, tend a I'union : e'est I'amour dans le sens le plus etendu." Heinsterhuys. " Le mariage pent seul faire une vertu de cette passion." Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. This law is the life of the universe. We find it existing every where, in the highest and in the lowest grade of crea- tion ; modifying itself with matter, and deifying itself with mind. As an affinity, it attracts molecules : as an attrac- tive power, it sustains worlds : as a productive power, it renews nature : as a sentiment, it opens out to us infinity. Thus the law, disengaging itself by degrees from its geome- trical forms, passes from attraction to love ; and already in plants and in animals it seems to be no more than an allure- ment to pleasure. In plants, observe it creating chefs- d^aeuvre for a mar- riage of a few hours. Nothing is spared ; perfumes, forms, colours, grace, riches ; it varies all ; it is lavish of all, as if it knew that there existed eyes to see, and souls to admire its productions. Ascending from plants to animals, the scene becomes more animated, and life expands. Here is a third world, in which pleasure has a voice, in which all the creatures call and seek out each other; in which the bird sings, the insect hums, and lions make the deserts resound with their terrific roarings. Here love begins ; a terrestrial and ephe- meral love ; the love of a season, of a day, of an hour ; and this hour having passed, the lions again become solitary, the bird loses its brilliant plumage, the nightingale ceases to sing, and beauty disappears. So nature wills it. While calling all beings to pleasure, while multiplying love, she has husbanded its flames ; for she foresaw the perils of a greater liberality. What would , the perpetuity of love have produced in animals 1 if not LAW OF NATURE. 225 an eternal warfare, a frightful multiplication, confusion and chaos. So far the law has been imposed, though always sweet- ened by pleasure. Having ascended up to man, it ceases to be an obligation without ceasing to be a power. Its power is even increased by all the charms of the sentiment of the beautiful and of infinity ; but, while increasing, it changes its direction, and raises itself, if we may so speak, from earth to heaven. A something which will not die, a sentiment which declares itself eternal is awakened within us. The first emotion of two souls which respond to each other, is to call forth another life ; one would say, that nature attaches to love a revelation of immortality. And yet man remains free, he may refuse the pleasures which are offered to him ; he can do what animals cannot, viz. refuse to transmit life. The pleasure is . not imposed upon him, and if he obeys the law, it is not because it is a law, it is not because it is a delight, it is because he may make of it a virtue. On this point the warnings of nature are positive ; they leave no pretext to our passions, they condemn all extremes — celibacy, as well as profligacy ; and order is thus esta- blished in the graceful harmonies of virtue and of pleasure. This is the law. Among animals, the number of males and females varies according to the species. Sometimes we see a single female to a great number of males, as in the instance of bees; sometimes a single male to many females, as in poultry. Nature has given to the one a, court, to the other a harem. Sometimes she multiplies the males more than the females, with the intention of perpetuating the vigour of the species by rivalities and conflicts. Thus tigers, lions, and all the ferocious species, make furious war upon each other at the period of their amours. Sometimes also she multiplies the females a little more than the males, with the intention of uniting flocks, of founding colonies by the allurement of a quiet possession. Thus the cow, the horse, the bull, the goat, the sheep, and all the house- hold species, live in common beneath the roof of man, of whose labours they partake, and of whose prosperity they lay the foundation. But in arriving at man, the law assumes a more sacred 15 226 lOVE — A PHYSICAL AND MOEAL character. In animals, it only occupies itself with the conservation of the species ; in man, it appears to think of the happiness of the individual. The moral rule springs from the care w^hich nature always takes to create a man for a woman, a woman for a man ; the number of men and women being about equal upon the earth. Thus nature does not give us a seraglio ; she gives us a companion ; and she gives us this companion not merely for a season, but for the whole of life. Realizing in some measure the ingenious fable of Plato, who regards woman as the half of man, she calls the soul to the search of a congenial soul, and renders us again complete by love. Unity in marriage, such is the order established by nature, and the civilization of the earth, depends upon the fulfilment of this law. A It divides the east from the west. We see on the one hand slavery, imprisonment, and bar- barity, forced and voluntary mutilations ; on the other, moral and social liberty. Where youth is without love, where man is without a companion, where the children are without a mother — we must not seek for civilization. If love were but a slight convulsion, as Mark Aurelius calls it, man would not raise himself above the brute. He owes all his moral superiority to the moral power of love ; and this is so true, that wherever he disallows this power^ his superiority ceases. Then it is that man contemns himself in a part of him? self; he vilifies himself when vilifying the woman; he cuts off from himself the one-half of his soul, and all mutilation demoralizes him. And how should he know virtue if he debases his most amiable and most devoted guide 1 Who will teach him the graces of innocence, the devotedness of the heart, and those pious transports towards heaven which are the life of love? See how love repels ambition, how he despises riches, how ready he is to make all the sacrifices" which are made by heroes ! That which charms us in love, is not its vivid pleasures, it is its devotedness, its modesty, its fidelity ; we see of it only the sublime ; we cite only its moral joys and its divine transports. ' Our most pleasing dreams do not exhibit to us love either ' in the palaces of kings, or in the voluptuous festivities of the i LAW OF NATURE. 22? East, but in a cottage amidst bowers and green meadows All in nature seems to us made in order to beautify and to I centre in love. And when, in travelling through a pictu- ] resque country, our eyes are attracted by some beautiful spot ; a rich orchard with a clear springing fountain ; a wood in which we hear the nightingale ; we at once picture it to ourselves as a retreat for happy lovers, and the charmed imagination presents to us nothing more delight- ful than an innocent life, gliding away beneath these shades, in the raptures of love. These are the desires, these are the ambitions of the heart ! love inspires us with all that wisdom requires ; he discloses to us, at fifteen years of age, this enchanted world, in which the beautiful and the infinite appear to us as the sole aim of life. And let it not be said that such a world is imaginary. These ideal perfections, the objects of our reveries, this devotedness which seems so easy to us, all these smiling images of virtue in love, and of happiness in a middle state ; all this is true ; there is even nothing true but this upon the earth, nature does not deceive us; it is the world which deceives us, when it tears us from these visions of truth, in order to plunge us into the sad realities of its vices and its falsehoods. The developement of the faculties of the soul tends to cause love to reign upon earth, as the developement of the intellect tends to produce the reign of ambition. Love is an angel which comes to us with resplendent wings, not as a woman of genius has said, to unite us in egotism, but to introduce us into active life ; to render its troubles lighter and its duties easier. It is true, that love has its hours of egotism. At first, the lovers seek and sigh for each other; and, like flowers which a light wind detaches from the maternal stem, they separate themselves from the family, allowing themselves to be carried into solitude. This de- sire of isolation in tenderness is expressed in the most ancient books. The wife, in the Song of Songs, desires to fly from the tumult of cities ; the sight of men diverts her attention ,from her love. " Come, beloved," she says, " let us go into the country, let us dwell in the fields. Let us arise in the mornins: to visit our vines, and to see if thev begin to put forth their blossoms." Sweet words, which exhale pleasure, and appear to identify the delights of love 228 LOVE A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LAW. with the delisrhts of a rural life. But this sentiment — a secret instinct of modesty — does not last long ; nature has- tens to enlarge its sphere, and in this she shows her wisdom and her solicitude : she does not destroy ; she regulates. It is by multiplying the felicities of love, that she places limits to its egotism. These two beings who isolated themselves from society, who desired to live alone, and to live only for each other, we see them re-appearing, surrounded by a group of little children; they advance, their countenance beaming with a twofold joy, as if drawn forwards by these new ties which again attach them to the world. And who then on earth has ever experienced enjoyments so pure and so manifold 1 Attached to her husband by all the cares of tenderness, to her children by all the duties of love, the woman possesses within her breast the sweetest affections of nature. Her mind and heart are in a continual activity; she lives in him, in them ; in the present, the past, and the future; and infinite pleasures are the reward of her inex- haustible tenderness. To isolate oneself, is one of the first phases of love, but it is not love itself; love does not contract the heart, it expands it, and renders it capable of conquering selfishness. Ungrateful creatures that we are, we complain that the moments of solitude and egotism so soon pass away, and we do not feel that the family and society would be lost, if a similar enchantment could last for ever. In ceasing to be social, man would cease to be powerful ; love, which raises him up to heaven, would cause him to lose even his terrestrial empire. Fortunately, nature is superior to our desires, and more generous than our wills. In fact, man sighs and languishes at the feet of his mis- tress ; but by the side of his companion amidst his children, he enjoys the plenitude of his being. He is the support, the protector of his family; all that is in him of noble, powerful, or generous, becomes excited and active. And yet he has lost nothing of his love ; but, like his companion, he difl^uses it over a greater number of objects: all these little hands which caress him, all these smiling countenances which surround him, recall to his mind her whom he loves; he recognises her in the smile of his children, and blesses her in their innocence. Ah ! the graces of the young MATERNAL LOVE. 229 virgin never caused sweeter transports than those of the mother of a family! Love is happiness, for this world and for eternity. Love, and your desires will be accomplished ; love, and you will be happy; love, and all the powers of the earth will be at your feet. Love is a flame which burns in heaven, and of which the soft reflection extends to our- selves. Two worlds are open to it, two lives are bestowed upon it; it is by love that we redouble our being ; that we approach to God. CHAPTER XVII. OF MATERNAL LOVE A MORAL AND PHYSICAL LAW OF NATURE. •' C'est ici que sa voix pieuse et solennelle Nous expliquait un Dieu que nous sentions en elle; Et nous montrant I'epi dans son germe enferme, La grappe distillant son breuvage embaume, JNous enseignait la foi par la reconnoissance Et faisait admirer a nolre'simple enfanee, Comment I'astre et I'insecte invisible a nos yeux Avaient ainsi que nous leur pere dans les cieux." Lamartine. All our earthly attachments are dictated by pleasure. Maternal love alone arises amid suffering. Imagine to yourself, says Plutarch, the sensations of woman in the ear- jliest days of the world, when after the pains of child-birth, she saw her new-born infant upon the ground covered with blood, and more resembling a flayed animal than a living creature. Doubtless she might have regarded it as an evil |of which nature had just delivered her; no visible charms '.attracted her towards it; her heart was moved neither by the beauty of its form, nor by the sweetness of its voice, and jyet, still feverish with her sufferings, still trembling with the languish of parturition, she washes and caresses it, clothes it, and presses it to her bosom, constantly recommencing a Uoil which never fatigues her; and in exchange for so many sacrifices, receiving only cries and wailings. Well, this power, which is stronger than pain or disgust ; this power at which Plutarch is with reason astonished, is but an animal feeling, Uke the tenderness of the cat for its 230 MATERNAL LOVE A MORAL AND PHYSICAL young ; a blind instinct which belongs to the plant, to the insect, to the quadruped, to birds, as well as to woman; it is an immutable law of nature; a law of preservation; and that is all. It is this law which prepares in the plant the juice which is to nourish the seed, the down which warms it, the folds which shelter it; it is this again which provides the seed with hooks, sails, shells, wings, tufts of feathers, according as it is required to be wafted to the mountains, or to aban- don its vegetable fleets to the peaceful current of a rivulet. In more perfect beings this intelligent power is associated with the passions, increases their force, and trains them up to industry. The bird prepares its nest before knowing that it is about to produce a something of which it ought to take care, and lines it with a soft down, before knowing the deli- cacy of its brood ; it hatches, that is to say, that the most restless of beings remains motionless during several weeks, seated on a cold and insensible shell, before knowing that it encloses a being similar to itself At length, when the young ones are born, it brings them food ; it defends them against enemies, it sings, it is anxious, or rejoices, and all these painful or joyful labours are destined to remain with- out any reward ; no filial tenderness will ever respond to this maternal tenderness. Some day the young ones will try their wdngs ; on another day they will take their flight and disappear in the regions of air. Animals have no family, they are truly neither father nor mother, nor related to each other; they are but the workmen of nature. Thus, although organized beings are born weak and powerless, although they are surrounded with enemies, and as if on a battle-field, yet are they born in safety. Mater- nal love shields them by its foresight and its devotedness. Like a vigilant sentinel it watches oVer each birth ; not for the preservation of an isolated being ; of a quadruped, a bird, a fly, or even of a child, but for the accomplishment of this great work of nature, which wills that all should die, and that nothing should perish; that all should be born, and that nothing should be immortal. Whatever, then, may be the wants of all beings, their ferocity or their destructiveness, whatever may be the exigencies of death, maternal love remains as a conqueror on the earth, which it re-peoples. By it, every plant is renewed in its seed, every insect in its LAW OF NATURE. 231 egg, every animal in its young; it is at the sanne time the source of life, and the Hmit of destruction It is a fact worthy of observation, that maternal love lasts only in each animal the time necessary for the conservation of the species; as soon as the young no longer require their mother, she abandons them. This sentiment, so strong, so tender, so caressing, so sublime, which occasions so many privations and sacrifices, becomes all at once extinct, and is succeeded by the most complete indiflference. In the morn- ing a mother will fight with fury to defend her progeny, which in the evening she no longer knows. And this aban- donment, which excites no regret, which leaves no remem- brance, is effected at the moment when long habit, or grati- tude, would seem to render it impossible. When we re- flect that the harmony of the world depends upon this double law of love and indifference, we are surprised not to see it any where pointed out. Only let us conceive what a new power the durable affection of animals would introduce upon the earth. What strength would be added to their exterminating instinct. If a war-cry were raised, twenty generations would arise around a single female, families would be armies, and all these armies would labour only to destroy. In order to prevent such destruction, to establish the equilibrium of life and death, indifference suffices, with one single exception. This exception is found in the heart of woman ; there only is maternal love a durable sentiment, because it is a moral sentiment ; it participates in the in- finity which gives wings to our soul; and thus it is, that it creates a family, nations, and the human race. True maternal love, human love, begins then at the point where animal instinct terminates. It is certainly not our intention to undervalue the maternal cares bestowed upon childhood; but women must know the fact, and how can they know it if no one dares to tell it them 1 They will be mothers, according to the moral law of nature, only when they shall labour to devolope the soul of their children. Their mission upon earth is not merely to procreate an in- telligent biped ; it is a complete man which the world re- quires from them ; a man whose passions shall partake of the great, the beautiful, and the infinite, who knovi^s how to choose himself a companion, to inspire his children, and, if needs be, to die for the cause of virtue. There is then for 232 MATERNAL LOVE. the woman a double duty to perform, as there is for man a double birth. To be born into life, is but to be born to pleasure and pain, to be born in. the love of God and of men, is to be truly born, and our mother owes us this second birth, if she would. enjoy a greater happiness than that of see- ing us breathe and digest food ; the liappiness which Shaks- peare so well expresses, when he makes the mother of Coriolanus say, " I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child, than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man." It is a fine thing to surprise, as Plutarch does, in the heart of the son the source of this joy of the mother. " The reason which made him love glory," says he, in speaking of Coriolanus, "was the joy which he perceived it oc- casioned his mother."* These two souls understood each other for the good of their country and of humanity. % CHAPTER XVIII. OF SOME OTHER LAWS OF NATURE. "Ce sont les hommes qui font leur propre malheur : les lois de la nature sont toutes fondees sur I'amour : les lois huinaines le sont sur le besoin de punir ie crime. Heureux ceux qui ne sont gouvernes que par les lois de la nature." Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. The five preceding laws give rise to a multitude of secondary laws, which are equally applicable to man and to animals. Such is friendship, which among the Greeks became a political law ; and paternal and filial afiection, the only moral support of the legislation of the Chinese, and the chief cause of its long duration. We will not consider in this place these difl^erent modifications of the sentiment of love, our subject draws us towards laws of a higher order, and which place us directly beneath the direction of Providence. Such is the law which establishes the prin- ciple that no object contains within itself the first cause of its existence, and the three following laws. Man always naturally inclines to that which is great and beautiful. * Plutarch. Life of Coriolanus. OF SOME OTHER LAWS OF NATURE, 233 Truth is always found in that which is most great and beautiful. Man is complete ; he becomes all that which he may be- come ; he produces all that which he can produce, only when he is in freedom. Such, again, is the law of the partition of the earth be- tween man and woman, — a law which regulates the order of their occupations. The law which establishes that moral reaction, is always equal to action. Labour ; a physical and moral law of nature ; whence springs the principle of property. Perfectibility; a moral law of nature, which reveals to us this great truth, viz. that the human race is constantly advancing towards an end, which is the fulfilment of a thought of God. Lastly, death ; a law of deliverance, which law, from being imperfectly known, frequently precipitates us into superstition and incredulity. Men are, in the presence of death, like Columbus on the edge of the ocean's abyss. He may well be told, that this ocean has no shore : his eagle eye plunges into immensity : he penetrates into it through darkness and tempests, and sees a new world and an immortal glory, where stupid fear sees merely a void. CHAPTER XIX. NO OBJECT CONTAINS WITHIN ITSELF THE FIRST CAUSE OF ITS EXISTENCE ; A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LAW OF NATURE. " Les sources fornient des ruisseaux, et ceux-ci forment les rivieres. Que le nocher les remonte aussi loin qu'il pourra, encore n'atteindra-t-il pas'la'derniere origine des fontaines." Linnee, Empire de la Nature. In order to force mankind to turn their eyes towards him, God has willed that no object of nature should contain within itself the first cause of its existence. He attaches all to himself by the unknown. This will is stamped upon matter. This is the reason why the sciences explain nothing more than phenomena ; 2^4 OF THE DIVISION OF THE EARTH the absolute cause always escapes them : how much so ever intellect may search, nature answers only by secondary causes ; but when the soul unites itself to intellect, all the sciences are eclipsed, the absolute cause is unveiled, and God appears. CHAPTER XX. OF THE DIVISION OF THE EARTH BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN ,' A MORAL AND PHYSICAL LAW OF NATURE. " Mais encore, quand Thomme aura porte du dehors en la raaison ce qui est necessaire, si est il besoign d'avoir quelqu'un qui le garde, et qui fasse les choses qui ne peuvent etre faictes que dans le logis." De la Boetie de Xenophon. Marriage gives to man a companion, and to woman a support. It unites beneath the same roof a strong and a feeble being; but, considering only society in its origin, a similar state of things must have been foreseen, and ac- cordingly it was foreseen. In multiplying earthly goods, God has made of them two parts ; or rather, he has doubled his gifts, as if to establish a double sovereignty. Man reigns over the earth ; his power subjects the ox to the yoke, the horse to the bridle, and the reindeer to the sledge ; he sends the falcon into the air, and makes it bring him its prey ; he sends the cormorant to the bottom of the water, and makes it bring him its fish ; he sends the dog across the fields, and makes it bring the game. This is the power of strength ; one would say that it could subject ever}'- thing to it; and yet it suffices to contemplate nature in her most charming works, in order to perceive that after this lordly master, she looks for a more gentle master. The woman comes and establishes her empire by caresses. All becomes tractable around her : the hen yields up her egg, and the cow her milk ; she superintends the bees which yield their honey, and the worm which changes into silk the leaf of the mulberry tree. There are even some animals which seem to be created expressly to suit her weakness and that of her children ; such is the ass, a more patient animal than the horse ; the goat, more easy to feed than the cow ; and the sheep, of which she spins the fleece, J BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN. 235 which is warmer than the skins of wild beasts. If nature have attached to man the dog, which Hke him is unsettled and irascible, to defend him from carnivorous animals, she has subjected to woman the cat, which like herself is more sedentary and patient, to watch over the provisions collected in her store-rooms. Man learns from animals several kinds of industry : the rabbit teaches him how to excavate subterranean passages ; the beaver, to raise embankments ; the swan to navigate. But woman learns from them lessons very different though no less useful ; the spider teaches her- to spin ; the butter- fly, to imprint her dress with various colours ; the bee, to extract the juice from the sweetest vegetables. It is not then without reason that the Greeks gave, not to the gods, but to a female, a goddess, to Ceres, to Minerva, the glory of these ingenious inventions. Man strives with nature, and each of his victories renders him more proud and un- ruly : woman, on the contrary, is softened and embellished by all her conquests ; and the graces of our homes, and the enjoyment of our well-being, are the invisible chains with which she binds us to civilization. In the vegetable kingdom the division is continued : man chooses from it all that may excite his courage, and woman all that may add to her beauty. The one has the forests, in which he exhibits his strength and his courage ; the other has the meadows to which she leads her flocks. It is on the flower-enamelled meads that woman appears to greatest advantage, whether dancing with her companions, or whether in solitude, she receives from nature the celestial thoughts of love and humanity. And of how many benefits has she not been the dis- coverer ? It is by the patience, the industry, and perhaps the curiosity of women that from the cereal plants, flour and bread have been drawn ; from the bulbous, various drinks ; from the filamentous, such as hemp and flax, the primary materials for our vestments — the further we ascend towards primitive manners, the more clearly we perceive traces of this division of nature. Among savage tribes, women gather the first products of their rude agriculture : the men follow the chase or fishing, and whilst they are running over the deserts, a few plants, strewed around their 236 OF THE DIVISION OP THE EARTH, ETC. cabins prepares them for civilization by the attraction of a new enjoyment. In all countries women love flowers, in all countries they form nosegays of them ; but it is only in the bosom of plenty that they conceive the idea of embellishing their dwellings with them. The cultivation of flowers among the peasantry indicates a revolution in all their feelings. It is a delicate pleasure, which makes its way through coarse organs ; it is a creature, whose eyes are opened ; it is the sense of the beautiful, a faculty of the soul which is awakened. Man, then, understands that there is in the gifts of nature a something more than is necessary for existence ; colour, forms, odours, are perceived for the first time, and these charming objects have at last spectators. Those who have travelled in the country can testify, that a rose-tree under the window, a honeysuckle around the door of a cottage, are always a good omen to the tired traveller. The hand which cultivates flowers is not closed against the supplications of the poor, or the wants of the stranger. But as civilization advances the share of woman becomes less rude — she then withdraws into the house, and there receives the productions which man lays at her door, and order and economy found a new empire. We may read in the Mesnagerie {DJirt de Men Menager) of Xenophon, (a charming picture of conjugal union among the ancients,) how the pupil of Socrates has founded the duties of the man and woman upon the sweetest harmonies of nature. " And God made the body of the woman less vigorous than that of the man : on which account I am of opinion that he destined her for the care of domestic mat- ters; and enjoined them to nourish their children at an early age; he also bestowed more natural affection towards them, upon woman than upon man. And likewise, after he had consigned to the woman the care and superintendence of the household things, knowing that in order to preserve them well, it is not a bad thing for the heart to be some- what apprehensive, he made woman more timid than man ; and seeing, on the other hand, that he who has to do the work out of doors would require to defend himself, should any attack him, he gave to him the advantage in courage and strength. But inasmuch as it was requisite that both should be in a state to receive and to give out, he consigned CIVILIZATION OF COUNTRIES BY WOMEN. 237 to them both in common the care of memory ; so that in this respect there is no rule that either the one sex or the other should enjoy a greater advantage. This is the reason why the one cannot do without the other, and their union is so much the more useful, as the one possesses that in which the other is deficient." CHAPTER XXI. OF THE CIVILIZATION OF COUNTRIES BY WOMEN. " Ce pendant la mere de toute la famille prepare un repas simple a son epoux et a ses chers enfants, qui doivant revenir fatigues du travail de la journee. Ella a soin de traire ses vaches et ses brebis, et ou voit couler de ruisseaux de lait. Elle fait un grand feu autour duquel toute le soir en attendant le sommeil." Fenelon. The ignorance of the peasantry, their coarseness, and their misery, are little favourable to poetry or romance. Thus the picture, which we sketch, is rarely met with in our rural districts. I have nevertheless seen it, but in the bosom of some privileged hamlets, where the civilizing law of a division of the earth* has been fulfilled, and where, by the sole effect of this law, the women have again become beautiful. There all has been made sweet, — life, morals, and labour. The great misfortune of our villages is the degradation of the women through labours which belong to men. In their earliest years they tend the flocks and gather in the harvest. As young girls, an instinct of coquetry and the foresight of their mothers remove them from the rude fa- tigues of husbandry ; but no sooner do they marry, than all is changed ; they abandon the house and follow their husbands into the fields. You see them bowed to earth, as labourers, or laden with enormous weights, like beasts of bur- den. There are districts in France, I do not say in Africa, w^here they are harnessed to carts with the ox and the ass. From that time their skin becomes shrivelled, their com- plexions hke coal, their features coarse and homely, and they * The words of our author are : " la loi civilisatrice du partage du globe," and the idea, which he means to convey, is, that men and women have equal but divided empire — equal rights, but different duties. 238 CIVILIZATION OF THE EARTH BY WOMEN. fall into a premature decrepitude, more hideous than that of old age. But, whilst thus performing the labour of men, their own labours, those labours which sweeten and refine all others, remain neglected or unknown. Nothing can be more filthy, nothing more unwholesome, than the interior of their cottages. Fowls, ducks, pigs, contending for a meal, the door opening into the mud, and the windows, where there are any, serving only as vent-holes to carry oflf the smoke. It is there, nevertheless, in a hole, miry as the hut of a savage, amidst the gruntings and fetid emanations of animals, that, every evening, two human beings, male and female, repose from the fatigues of the day. Nobody is there to receive them, nothing to flatter their regards, the table is empty, and the hearth cold as ice. There, lastly, other labours await the woman, and, before thinking of her husband's supper or the care of her children, she must think of the stable and of supper for the beasts. But how diflferent would it be, if, leaving to her husband the hard labours of the field, and confining her attention to the interior of the house, the wife, in her delicate fore- thought, had prepared all for the hour of return ! The fire would blaze on the hearth, and the evening's meal smoke on the polished board. The good housewife would present herself to her husband in the midst of plenty and surrounded by the smiling faces of her children. Thus a sweet and easy life would be the natural life of the villager. But there is nothing to impress his mind with any image of this happiness; he knows not the word comfort; he is insensible to the charm of caresses and even the power of love. His children tremble before him, his wife dreads the vigour of his arm. The adversary, not the protector, of these feeble beings, he knows of no law but force. The dernier argu- ment of the peasant, in his cottage as in his field, is the weight of his fist. If asked for examples of these things, we will cite whole provinces, the richest as well as the poorest, of France : Perigord, where the women live in a state of filth and abjectness, which reacts on the whole family : Picardy and Limousin, where, degraded to the lowest rank, and as of an inferior race, they serve their husband at table, with- out ever daring to take a place at his side ; Brescia, where they are mere labourers, mere beasts of burden; lastly, CIVILIZATION OF THE EARTH BY WOMEN. 239 Lower Brittany, where husband, wife, and children, reduced to a state almost savage, live all, pell mell, in the same filthy chamber, and eat black bread, in the same trough with their sheep and hogs. Every where is the degrada- tion of the woman a sure proof of the brutishness of the man, and every where is the brutishness of the man a ne- cessary consequence and reaction from the degradation of the woman. Do not offer them comfort or well-beinor, thev would reject it as something useless or strange. To desire comfort, it is necessary for them to know what comfort is, and ages have passed over their cabins without leaving there any other thoughts than those of labour and wretch- edness. Such is the condition of whole districts in almost every country of civilized Europe. And what is sadder still, is the fact, that these spectacles strike our eyes without wounding them our souls without softening them. Time has habituated us to these miseries, andjiabit robs us of all pity for them. Poor creatures! we behold them so little sensible of their own condition, that it never even enters our thoughts to solace or improve it. One might suppose them, in these countries, to be of another species, an inferior race, placed there from all eternity, ^to grub up the earth, to carry its produce into the city, its harvests into the granary, and to receive from us, in exchange, our contempt and a few pieces of money for the bread which they give us. Two modes, very simple, ofl?er themselves, however, for ameliorating the lot of these poor rustics. The first is to establish a primary institution, sufficiently large, for young girls, where they may learn how to direct the interior economy of a house, and thus, hereafter, be themselves qualified to instruct their own children in the same. To establish in a village, the intellectual superiority of the women over the men, however transiently, is to restore to the former their influence, that vivifying influence, which enriches cottages and civilizes nations. Hitherto, as we have stated at the commencement of this work, all our laws of primary instruction have proved insufficient, because they did not establish — before all and in preference to all — schools for the education of young girls. Never will instruction take deep root and spread in the rural districts, if it does not reach the children through 240 CIVILIZATION OF THE EARTH BY WOMEN. their mothers, and the men through their wives. The pub- lic teacher is but a dry instrument, that teaches the alpha- bet; the mother of the family, on the contrary, is a moral power, which fertilizes the mind, while, at the same time, it opens the heart to love and the soul to charity. The second method, a necessary sequel of the first, con- sists in restoring to the women of the village the occupa- tions of their sex, and in bringing them back to the law of nature. This change, so simple, would operate as a com- plete revolution. In resuming her appropriate tasks, wo- man recovers her beauty ; in recovering her beauty, she regains her justinfluence and power. Occupied with employ- ments less gross, her tastes become purified, her manners softened ; she studies neatness, she comprehends comfort, and a day at length comes, when all her thoughts, all her desires, penetrate even the heart of her husband. Delicacy in woman is the most powerful enemy to the barbarism of man. It maybe urged, perhaps, that, to withdraw women from the rude labour of the field, is to ruin the labourer. To this we reply, that, far from ruining, it would enrich him. Surely the avocations of the cottage are neither less nu- merous nor of less importance than those of the field. If it require a vigorous arm to handle the spade or the plough, it requires not less careful hands to receive the crop, to gather in the fruits, to rear the poultry, to prepare butter and cheese, to card and spin the wool, and to maintain every where order and neatness. The earth does not bring forth but under the plough, which rends it asunder, and the house cannot prosper but under the wisdom which superintends it. When Solomon would describe the prosperity of a house, it is not the labours of the man, but the sweet influences of the wife, that occur to his thoughts. To the woman he attributes all the favours of fortune, even to the wisdom for which her husband is honoured. He describes her as watching over the ways of her household, and rising while it is yet night, to distribute wool to her servants. Wisdom speaks through her mouth, kindness reposes on her Hps, and never is she seen to eat the bread of idleness. Thus is she respected by her servants, blessed by the poor and needy, and when she appears so girded with strength and CIVILIZATION OF THE EARTH BY WOMEN. 241 beauty, her children arise up and call her blessed, and her husband, joining his praises to theirs, says to her, " Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." The recompense of the virtuous woman in the Bible, is the respect of her children, the love of her husband, and the homage of all around her. Such are the sentiments, which would spring from the civilization of the country. Let the legislator but once give birth to them and we shall, ere long, admire in the cottage the same virtues, which, in the time of Solomon, gave delight to the palace. Nevertheless it must not be supposed that we would leave to woman no share in the concerns of agriculture. There are labours in it ready for their hands ; and the gathering of vegetables and the culture of fruits might mingle themselves agreeably with the daily cares of the household. Nor are these labours less useful or less lucra- tive. Nature has placed in them the commencement of all civilization, and, the better to attract us to them, has made them the source of great riches. See Thomery and Mon- treuil ! They were once two poor villages, whose rude inhabitants languished in misery ; they have arisen out of it by the culture of a fruit, which is committed to the women. The soil of Thomery consists of 400 acres of dry quarry, known from the time of Henry IV. by the name of the Effondres. In giving to this spot the grape, they have increased its products a million-fold. There is not perhaps on the face of the globe, at the' present day, a country more interesting, a village more charming, or worthier the regards of the legislator. It is a small agri- cultural republic, the inhabitants of which live like one great family, and are industrious, rich, and happy. The labour of the women is light, and consists in stripping off the leaves of the vine, so as to admit the sun and air upon its branches ; in freeing the clusters from the damaged berries ; in cutting off the fruit without injuring the bloom ; and, when the moment of sale arrives, in preparing the fern which should envelope and perfume the grape. All these things require a delicacy and care, of which women are alone capable. The art of ornamenting the baskets and of packing the grapes forms in itself a complete science. Young girls, possessed of it, are much sought after by the 16 242 CIVILIZATION OF THE EARTH BY WOMEN. young men, and this talent supplies sometimes the wealth of their dower. In the winter the women occupy them- selves with their fruit garden, or in arranging at the side of their white grapes numerous rows of apples and pears, which their husbands purchase in Auvergne, and the traffic in which brings them great profits. Such is the way by which the villagers of Thomery have passed from misery to comfort and well-being, from barbarism to civilization, all by the culture of one fruit, and the all-powerful influence of women restored to their natural labours.* The history of Montreuil offers a yet more lively in- terest. In the time of Louis XIII. it was only a wretched village, where we met, here and there, some of those savage animals described by Bruyere, black and livid, alwpys bowed down to the earth, and scarcely exhibiting the features of men. Since that period the same village has been transformed into an opulent market-town, peopled by four or five thousand souls, who are all occupied, men and women, young and old, in cultivation of the peach tree, with whose blooming and high-flavoured fruits our tables are spread during three months of the year. It was a poor knight of Saint Louis, who introduced this culture at Montreuil. After long years of service, he solicited, at Versailles, a pension, which was never given him. Often, with heart wounded by disappointment, he quitted the ante- chamber of the court and descended into the kitchen-gar- dens created by La Quintinie. This celebrated gardener dehghted in communicating his art. He remarked the old knight, took pleasure in his conversation, divined his distress, and to divert his attention, put garden-tools into his hands, as he had done to the great Conde and to Louis XIV. At this period he was occupying himself in bringing to perfection a peach tree, and by the secrets of a new mode of culture, was enabled to give to his fruits the rich colouring and perfume of the fairest flowers. Pleased with this first success, he invented those little walls made for espaliers, and which, placed at a little distance from * Not far from Thomery is a parish of considerable extent, named Champagne. There the women share with their husbands the hard labour of the fields ; and the consequence is, that coarseness and sluttishness reappear, that their manners are degraded, and their children no longer cared for. They run about the fields in rags, and many of them are beggars. You would think yourself a hundred leagues from Thomery, and yet the Seine alone separates the two villages. CIVILIZATION OF THE EARTH BY WOMEN. 243 each other, double the heat by reflecting it. This inven- tion, which concentrated the rays of the sun, vividly struck Girardot, and he resolved on taking it to Bagnolet, near to Montreuil, where he possessed a small dwelling house and three acres and a half of land. This was a wise and noble resolution, which at once freed him from all his anxieties, though he was far from foreseeing its most beautiful re- sults. To change the morals of a village, it is sometimes only necessary to change its culture, and by this was his resolution effected ; for it withdrew the women from the rude labours of the field. Instead of the spade and the hoe, it slipped into their hands the fruit-basket. From that period their coarseness disappeared with their misery, and in the place of barren and unwholesome wastes, we behold a succession of smiling gardens. The little walls at Mon- treuil and their rich espaliers had civiHzed the country. Thus were several poor villages, in the vicinity of the capital, successively transformed, such vicinity rendering the transformation more easy. Yet the same effects may be obtained by the same means, in countries the most iso- lated and barren. Witness the Vivarais of former times, and the Vivarais of to-day. On the summits of volcanic mountains, in the very entrails of these volcanoes, amidst torrents of lava, without culture, and almost without vege- tation, one still saw, only a few years ago, the remnant of a half-savage colony, whose grossness and ferocity recalled to us the manners of the old Scottish clans. These people always went armed, and their wretchedness was so great, that not even religion could soften them. Every Sunday they might be seen issuing from their huts in garments of blackish wool, resembling those of the Corsicans, in great wooden shoes, many inches thick, and guns on their shoulders. Thus equipped, they went to church, and from thence, after service, betook themselves to the tavern. " TAere," says a traveller who visited them towards the end of the last cen- tury, " a ferocious joy succeeded, all at once, to prayer and compunction. I have seen thirty of them at a table, each with a pistol at his side, quarrelhng, shouting, and delivering themselves up to orgies which always ended in the murder of some of them." Such was the condition of some parts of Upper Vivarais in 1770. At this day every thing is changed. No more 244 CIVILIZATION OF THE EARTH BY WOMEN. armed men, no more savages, no more homicides ; but likewise, no more untilled ground, no more wretchedness, no more isolation. Easy roads wind over all the moun- tains, rich villages rise on the ruins of the most miserable hamlets. Every where you find ease in the place of indi- gence, humanity in the place of barbarism ; the men are bold and vigorous, the women fair and industrious ; young girls with black eyes and delicate hands, troops of young children with smiling faces, appear at the doors of all the cottages. One might call them a new people ; it is, how- ever, but a new generation, born under the shelter of a Tree, unknown to former generations. This tree is the mulberry. To effect these wonders the culture of a vegetable and the education of an insect have sufficed. It is necessary to see the country whose destiny has been thus changed. Floods of red and black lava, rivers of ashes, giant causeways, like those of Ireland, ba- saltic masses, which encased the torrents and crowned the mountains, these alone compose the whole soil of Vivarais. In front of the little town of Aubenas, three ranges of moun- tains rise in amphitheatre, like large steps, even to the Cevennes, which terminate them. The whole country has been burnt up and destroyed, and if its volcanoes were relighted, Aubenas would see around her sixty blazing mountains. Well ! these mountains, so long sterile, are now planted up to their very summits ; these plains, so long uncultivated, are now green and fertile ; every village has its plantations, and the very towns look like baskets of verdure. Aubenas is a lovely hillock, covered with houses, in the midst of a meadow covered with mulberry trees. The mulberry is every where : one might think it indigenous, so easily does it multiply itself. All along the sides, as well as on the plateau which crowns the summit, of Villeneuve-de-Berg, it multiplies itself. All along the sides, as well as on the summit, of Villeneuve-de-Berg, may be seen immense rocks, not belonging to the soil, yet covering its whole extent. It is as if a shower of aerolites had fallen from heaven. To know how they have been brought there is impossible, for there is no mountain above them. I say impossible, unless we are to believe that this mountain, with all stones that crown it, have been lifted up from below. Well I in CIVILIZATION OF THE EARTH BY WOMEN. 245 the midst of this chaos, you still find the mulberry. After having fertilized volcanoes, it fertilizes the flint rock. Thus has Vivarais been transformed. A new culture has changed the lot of the women, and, through the women, has softened the brutality of the men. Would you civilize a region, give to it some plant useful to its neighbours, of easy cultivation, and such as to occupy the women at home. With this plant comes commerce, with com- merce come roads, with roads come ideas. Commerce enriches, roads civilize. We in vain look for those half- savages w^ho went armed to the church and to the tavern, and of whom Faujas de Saint-Fond has given us so pic- turesque but terrible a portrait. Then there were no roads ; now a superb route runs along the borders of the mountain, which it environs with its triple cincture. Forests of mul- berry trees display themselves at every turning, high and low, as far as the eye can see. They are almost in the ashes, almost in the mouth of the infernal gulf It is through verdant forests that we arrive at Thuye. The first house we see on entering the village, is one of luxury, sur- rounded by beautiful grounds; the second is a primary school, and the third an inn. These mountains, inhabited of old by ferocious peasants, and dangerous even to enter, have become places of pleasant resort for the inhabitants of the towns. Travellers find shelter there, and children re- ceive instruction. It is a tree, however, which has done all this. A Tree, a Man, and a Woman! for the benefit of nature do not show themselves at once to all eyes ; it requires the intelligence of genius to discover them, and the labour of the masses to propagate them. Oliver de Sevres, the illus- trious author of the '' Theatre d^ Agriculture et Mesnage des Champs,^^ was this man of genius. It was on his estate of Pradel, a league from Villeneuve-de-Berg, that the first mulberry trees ever seen in Vivarais, were planted by his care. Henry IV., who had heard of his success, wrote and asked him for some plants of this tree, in order, as he told Sully, to encourage industry amongst the people. His de- mand was attended to; and twenty thousand mulberry trees were immediately sent from the nurseries of Pradel to the royal domain. In order to give a more effectual exam- 246 CIVILIZATION OP THE EAETH BY WOMEN. pie to France, the good king had them planted under his own eyes, in the garden of the Tuilleries. The ancient habitation of Oliver de Sevres yet exists. It is a modest mansion, placed like all the houses of that coun- try, in the midst of a field of mulberry trees. Its windows open upon plains and hills, equally planted with mulber- ries. Four years ago, as we passed through this district, a peasant, who acted as our guide, told us that, in 1815, having shown the Pradel to two Englishmen, they both knelt down at the threshold, as though they had been in some holy temple, honouring by that touching act the man who had civilized the country. But the most curious fact, and best calculated to place the glory of Oliver de Sevres in its true light, is the con- dition of the neighbouring regions. On arriving at the summit of the mountain, which separates Thuye from the Norse, we find a vast forest of firs, drawn, like a dark curtain, along the boundary of the two districts of Vivarais and Velay. There we take our leave of the mulberry ; there we enter on a new country. The hills are naked, the lands badly cultivated ; no more smiling orchards, no more blooming plantations, no more soft labours for the wo- men : neither leaves to gather, nor insects to look after. There all is changed ; physical and moral beauty have both alike disappeared. The women, performing the work of men, grow old before their time; the men are rude and coarse ; the children homely and wicked ; one might call them another race. Yet there is but one tree less in the country I We might cite other examples, but those already cited are sufficient. Resuming, therefore, the principal points touched upon in this chapter, we will conclude by saying : That the grossness and misery of almost all our rural population are a disgrace to the civilized world. A That the best means of putting an end to this state of barbarism is to reinstate the women in the occupations of their sex ; — that to reinstate woman in the occupations of her sex, is, in other terms, to prolong her life, her youth, her beauty. j That the habitual labours of the wife should be concen- i trated in the care of her house, and the education of her children. REACTION EdUAL TO ACTION. 247 Lastly, that the mitigation of the lot of women, in the country, is the beginning of all civilization ; and that this may be effected in two ways ; in the house by the occupa- tions of the house ; and in the fields by the discovery of a plant or the culture of a fruit. Hence nothing is easier than this work of regeneration ; all souls are called to it ; for useful plants are numerous ; there are some for all soils and for all climates. Who can doubt of finding that which suits his ovv^n valley and his own mountain, when Providence sends us from the farthest bounds of Persia, of Arabia, and of China, the peach, the vine, and the mulberry tree, not solely to enrich great kingdoms, but to civilize poor villages, about which the kings of the earth have never dreamed? CHAPTER XXII. REACTION IS EQUAL TO ACTION ,' A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LAW OF NATURE. " Quand la politique humaine attache sa chaine au pied d'un esclave, la jus- tice divine en rive I'autre bout au cou du tyran." Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Divine justice upon the earth is always the fulfilling of a law: God has arranged all, so that from our actions should arise the penalties or the rewards which they de- serve. Good reacts upon good — evil upon evil. The reaction may be more or less speedy, more or less visible ; no matter, it exists : it is equal to the action, and if its effects sometimes escape our observation, it is not because the law is inactive, it is simply because the last scene of the drama takes place in the depths of the conscience, between man and his God. It may be objected, that such a law tends to destroy our moral liberty. This is a mistake. Man is always free to choose between vice and virtue ; but when he has chosen, an event occurs which he is no longer able to control : an inevitable consequence, — the reaction of his action. We do not know enough of the matter to cease to be free; we know too much about it not to feel ourselves guilty of a part of the ills which bow down the human race. 2A& BE ACTION EQUAL TO ACTION. Possessed of immense riches, thou art without pity for misery. Have a care, from this misery will arise robbery, assassination, and prostitution, all the scourges which swal- low up riches. Thou bringest up thy children in impiety, and thou darest to complain of their abandonment ; and I hear them curse their existence — a painful existence which leads to nought. What a fine present hast thou given them to de- serve their gratitude ! Thou wouldst have a rich and beautiful wife ; thou shalt have riches and beauty. But, my wife deceives me ; she ruins me ; she is carried into the vortex of the world, for- getting her husband, neglecting her home, abandoning her daughter to the care of a servant. What ! didst thou not ask for riches and beauty ? thou seest that thou hast for- gotten something else in thy bargain. Thou wouldst Hve by war ; thou shalt perish by war. The sword brings the sword, pillage induces pillage, mur- der induces murder. Men give to these reactions the name of vengeance : they mistake ; it is the law of God which is being fulfilled. Thus stands the law, as expressed by a man who had profoundly studied history: — "That which is obtained by war shall be retaken by war ; all spoils shall be restored, all booty shall be scattered. The con- queror shall be conquered, and every town full of the fruits of pillage shall be taken and pillaged in its turn." The action of a vice may appear to us agreeable, but the reaction is always bitter. " If headache and sickness affected us before intoxication," says Montaigne, « we should take care not to drink too much ; but pleasure, in order to deceive us, steps on before, and conceals from us, its sad consequences." The reaction of impiety is ingratitude and pride. The reaction of hatred is revenge. The reaction of egotism is abandonment. The reaction of celibacy is licentiousness and prostitu- tion. The reaction of riches is poverty of the soul and bodily infirmities. There are reactions of equity and happiness, as there are reactions of impiety and infamy. Thus the good and the evil are to a certain extent. REACTION EQUAL TO ACTION. 249 the disposal of man. It suffices to know the law of nature ; that is to say, the actions of which the reaction is agreea- ble, and the actions of which the reaction is painful, in order to arrive by a new path at the knowledge of good and evil, of vice and of virtue. One may judge of the importance of a study which con- tains the secret of the future, and, if we may so express it, the direction of all our destinies. He who shall know the certain consequences of each human action (and these con- sequences are invariable) will know the ways of Divine justice ; and, like the prophets of antiquity, he will be able to reveal them to the world. What a prodigious science is that which can say to man, If thou dost such a thing, such a thing will happen to thee ; but the study is difficult, and full of accidents which deceive us. The reaction does not always take place in a direct manner. It sometimes strikes the performer of the action, sometimes those which surround him. Its justice appears to us slow and capricious. It overturns a throne, where we perceive only a tyrant to be punished : then come the exceptions which irritate us, and fill us with alarm. All this arises from our shortsightedness, and sometimes likewise from the extent of our pride. We form our judgments according to the laws of human justice ; and not according to the enlarged and profound views of universal aptitude, which is the justice of God. For want of positive rules for arriving at the truth, we will mention a fact, to which we cannot too strongly direct attention, for it may serve to enlighten us ; viz. that the more of virtue there is in man, of equity in the laws, of instruction and religion among the people, the more gentle are the reac- tions : life is more pleasurable, and the general well-being more certain. This fact is highly important ; it comprises the history of all times and of all places ; it shows us the rule of the great reactions which overthrow empires; and there results from it, that the only solid foundation of the happiness of liings is the happiness of the people ; as the only possible foundation of the happiness of the people is in liberty and j virtue. You overturn a throne ; you will have Danton and 250 REACTION EQUAL TO ACTION. Robespierre. You overturn the altars ; you will have scaffolds and executioners. Men of high destinies are almost always the slaves of a great passion. So long as this passion triumphs, they ap- pear to be happy. And nevertheless the people wonder and tremble ; they foresee that the hero is marching be- neath the yoke of a fatal law, stronger than his fortune, stronger than all the human powers, and which urges him on to the catastrophe. This terrible reaction brought Robespierre to the scaf- fold, and removed Bonaparte from the world, conquered but not subdued, to cast him upon- the rock of St. Helena. I have never looked over the ♦' Discours" of Bossuet without being dazzled, and without apprehension. There is a something so terrible in these pages which record the history of ages : judgment follows so near to crime, and punishment so near to judgment! Nations die, and em- pires crumble to the dust: it is the book of eternal justice placed beneath the eyes of the human race. What lesson can be more terrible or more admirable, and yet what lesson is less listened to than this ! But, in those sublime pages where the priest assists at the last hour of all the nations of antiquity, modern periods have not reached their termina- tion. Our history is prolonged from action to action, from catastrophe to catastrophe, throughout twelve centuries of misfortunes, without arriving at that prodigious reaction which marks the end of an epoch: a frightful deluge of which the mutinous waves h?ve entirely swallowed up the whole race of the high and puissant lords of the middle ages, and thrown their privileges into the hands of a people-king. What, in fact, is the French revolution? The last scene of a grand drama began in the year 500 of our era; the contests of two castes against the nation, and of the nation against two castes. Open the book of history, and if you would understand the present, ask from it an account of the past. What a forgetfulness of God and of humanity do we not perceive ! The powerful reign, — that is to say, they crush the people, they divide among them- selves lands, honours, places, dignities, leaving only to the people which supplies them, misery, ignorance, and toil. Amidst this darkness the light never shines, but hatred accumulates, reactions prepare themselves, then the hour REACTION EQUAL TO ACTION. 251 arrives, and the law is executed. Then the gulfs of hell are opened ; nothing is seen on the earth but the frightful work of executioners and demons. The man disappears amidst acts of vengeance and of blood. Great politicians have exhausted their science in seek- ing around us the causes of this dreadful catastrophe. They have accused Richelieu and Louis XVI., blaming in turns the vigour of the one and the weakness of the other. Some go on dreaming that a little more or a little less of strong will would have changed the law of time. The armies of all Europe have succumbed to it, like all the rest ; they have seen it, and they have forgotten it, and they would always appeal to force ; as if there were on the earth any force which could arrest the reaction of twelve centuries of crimes and misfortunes. And yet the history is not complete, the last hour of the gothic ages is tolling on every side, and kings still act as if we were in the middle ages. See them in Spain, Austria, Hungary, Prussia, Holland, Savoy, arming themselves furiously against the reaction which threatens them. Mad- men ! they still rely upon the executioner, and say to him, Make us reign; as if the man with bloody hands could command fate. But the executioner can do no more for kings ; when told to strike, he looks around him to seek for the criminals, and stops, astonished at the work required of him ! A hundred millions of heads alarm him. And who then is to save thrones, if the executioner is powerless? Kings themselves, if they will but be just. The reaction must come from them, and not from the people; it must come from their hands as a benefit, instead of from the hands of the people as a vengeance. This is the only path of safety which is open to them, and also the only means of arresting the terrible scourge of anarchy which destroys both people and kings. Such is the law of action and of reaction : it fulfils itself in a day, or in twelve centuries ; all people believe in it, and all men call for it ; it is, perhaps, the law of nature upon which the most of faith and hope reposes ! What complain- ings, therefore, and what groans arise at the slightest ap- pearance of an exception ; one would believe that the world was distracted ! A great criminal remains unpunished ; one of the agents of Robespierre, the assassin or the accom- 252 MAN ALWAYS INCLINES TO THAT plice of a king; and there he is drinking, eating, and smil- ing at his victims ! Earth is then forsaken ! Heaven is then powerless. Then they blaspheme, and cry out, and the voice of multitudes is raised to apprise Providence that a wicked wretch is about to escape — as if eternity were not before him. CHAPTER XXIII. MAN ALWAYS INCLINES TO THAT WHICH IS MOST GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL A MORAL LAW OF NATURE. • • • • " Voyez a'nos spectacles, Quand on peint quelque trait de candeur, de bonte Ou brille en son jour la tendre humanite, Tous les cceurs sontremplis d'une volupte pure, £t c'est la qu'on entend le cri de la nature !" Cresset. " Quand I'homme detrompede I'humaine grandeur Contemple de la nuit la lugubre splendeur; Et ces brillants deserts, et ces voutes profondea Ou des mondes sans fin eclatent sur des mondes, Abime dans I'extase, il cherche, audacieux Quelle main a seme les soleils dans les cieux, Quel monarque cache dans sa toute-puissance S'eleve encore plus grand que son empire immense." De Fongerville. When society rests its foundations (point d'appui) upon the material well-being, it renders men active, eager, rest- less, intelligent ; enemies to each other, insatiable in pursuit of riches and pleasures. On seeing a whole people thus attached to the wheel of fortune, one would suppose them incapable of sublime actions and thoughts. And yet, if you cause to shine on a sudden before this greedy multitude a sentiment which awakens its soul, — if you present to it, I do not say hopes of happiness, but something great or generous to be effected, all the bad passions are hushed, personal interest is forgotten, and a whole people are prodigal of their riches and their lives, in order to procure the triumph of that which they believe to be just or great. The rudest soldier braves death only because his soul is excited by the illusions of glory which he will not enjoy, but which he attaches to his colours, or to his general. What did all our brave men pursue, who fell on the fields of Austerlitz and WHICH IS GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL. 253 Wagram ? An imperceptible portion of the immense renown of their chief. It was not the man— it was not the emperor —it was nothing earthly that the soldiers worshipped in Bonaparte: it was the illusions of his glory— the infinity of his power and of his genius, and an indefinite something of the magnificent, which radiated upon themselves from the con- quest of the world. But what more striking example of this position is there, than the establishment of Christianity? The earth was covered with temples, in which men worshipped their own passions; when a voice arose, which, despising the idols of the world, called men to a more perfect good than the goods of the earth, and placed their future destiny, not in this life, but in eternity. From this time the vocation of the people declared itself, and the army of martyrs was formed. A something superior to earthly riches and plea- sures was shown them, and they hastened to it triumphantly : they hastened to it through tortures and death. Thus, the man of the people, the soldier, the martyr, and the saint, equally incline towards that which they know to be great or beautiful. As often as you explore history, so often will you see the multitude detaching itself from its bad passions beneath the influence of magnanimous passions or sentiments. I That which we admire in the masses, we find in indivi- duals. Every reader of Tacitus or of Plutarch can bear witness to this great law of nature. Our soul flies to meet all that they narrate of noble and generous : it recognises itself, if we may so speak, in these heroic deeds, joyfully accepting exile or death in the bosom of virtue ; identifying itself with Socrates or Aristides, but never with Anytus or Sylla, even when at the summit of their power and their triumph. And, what indignation does it not feel at their crimes! what disgust at their pleasures? and what con- tempt for this fortune which raised them so high, and which gave rise among the people of their age to so much envy and fear ! This is a sentiment which comes in colHsion with our senses, and places us in opposition to our strongest material interests ; to all the animal pleasures, the will of enjoying, of commanding, and of Uving. Do you not discover in thTs passion for the heau ideal a being of another nature than 254 MAN ALWAYS INCLINES TO THAT the lion or the tiger ? To die is nothing, but to die for an idea of which the reward is not in this world, — my soul, what a sublime manifestation is this of thy immortality ! Thus, in order to regulate the grosser passions, it will suffice to oppose to them celestial passions. Man follows the law of his being, and raising himself by degrees above his material desires, he at last attains the only treasures which there is not greatness of soul in despising. Do not believe that these sentiments derive their source from education and civihzation ; they belong to our nature, and not to our schools, nor to the world : they are found among savages, and even in the most barbarous countries of Africa. The sentiment of the great and beautiful is then every where — I mean wherever there is a man. We are not permitted to comprehend it, but we are allowed to enjoy it : it is at the same time the most powerful promoter of the moral sentiment, and the most direct means of arriving at truth. This is the reason why the sciences produce nothing of a superior kind except through the means of this senti- ment ; they owe to it all that they do not owe to chance, — that is to say, all the transcendental discoveries of genius. Let us reflect for a moment on this law of nature, which may have so much influence on the human race, and which we will thus express — Truth is always found in that which is most great and beautiful. The principle is vast ; it opens out to the sciences an interminable career ; but in order to know the whole of its extent, we must make the application of it to the discoveries of genius. In ancient times, Heraclitus maintained that the sun was only a foot in diameter, and Anaxagoras excited the incre- dulity of Greece, by stating this luminary to be equal in extent to the Peloponnesus. Thus a burning coal of a foot in diameter, or of the size of a province, such was the sun of the ancient philosophers. How many degrees in the sentiment of the sublime and beautiful were required to be traversed, before arriving at a more correct knowledge of this eternal source of colours, of odours, and of life; which warms our atmosphere, revives nature, sustains worlds by its own weight, and ^ WHICH IS GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL. 255 which, as measured by Huygens, is found to be thirteen hundred thousand times larger than the earth. The ancients made of the sky a crystal canopy, and regarded the constellations in it but as so many torches, imagining nothing more than that which they thought they perceived. But these impeneneirable heavens, this sohd roof which they believed rested upon our earth, in propor- tion as curiosity observed them, and as the sentiment of the sublime and beautiful elevated mankind, became sepa- rated into several portions like children's playthings: the infinity of space; the infinity of worlds; the infinity of suns correspond to the infinity of power. Let us look nearer to ourselves ; in this milky way, where our sun, with all the planets which it vivifies and attracts, occupies only an imperceptible point ; what a multitude of wonders, unknown to bygone ages! At one point are perceived double stars ; at another, two suns of enormous dimensions, forming by themselves an entire system ; they suffice to each other, supplying each other with light, the one revolving around the other. Among these suns there are some which require forty years, others six thousand years, to perform the double circle of their immense revolution. Farther off in another heaven, the heaven of Sideral astronomy,* modern science discoversluminousmasses of infinitely-varied shapes; round, oval, square, triangular, spear-shaped, fan-shaped, resembling a tree, a mountain, or unfolding themselves like the circles of an immense snake, or, lastly, transparent; allowing us to perceive at an immense depth, other whitish masses which float in other spaces; and these masses so varied in their forms, are composed of an aggregation of worlds and of suns. Ah ! that was a sublime hour when the great Herschel, and the son who pursues his glorious career, met for the first time in the realms of space, with these oceans of stars which have been termed nebulous, on account of the dusky lights which they radiate. Two feeble creatures, while yet enveloped with their earthly covering, had sprung upwards into infinity, and it was permitted them to contemplate that which no mortal had hitherto contem- plated. More fortunate than Newton, that great explorer of the heavens, they had overleaped the limits of the visible * This name is given to the science which takes cognizance of the celestial bodies placed out of the limits of the solar system. 256 MAN INCLINES TO THE GREAT AND BEAUTIFUL. creation, and suddenly found themselves emerging from darkness, amidst myriads of suns, animated with myriads of movements, which arose like a living wall before them. This was the extent of the vision of the learned men ; this is the limit of our knowledge, but not the limits of creation. Mount, mount still higher, and the nearer you approach to that which is most sublime and beautiful, so much the nearer will you approach to truth. Truth is richer than imagination ; she overleaps it on all sides. You have just seen the constellations muUiplied like the sands of the sea ; mount, mount yet higher. Plunge with Herschel into this abyss of light and fire. The great man aspires to that which is most grand ; his soul foreknows that all these stars which radiate in space must have their animated and intelligent beings. What is to him a sun which would do no more than impart light? God has every where given himself spectators. Full of this thought, he observes the constellation whose presence constitutes our day, and he soon discovers that it is an opaque planet, somewhat resembling the earth, and not a burning fire ; that light does not emanate from its interior, but that it floats in an atmosphere as the clouds float in ours ; that it is there perpetually formed to radiate upon worlds, and doubtless likewise upon the sun itself, to which it gives light; which it fertilizes, and which it would have con- sumed a hundred times over, if, by means which are un- known to us, the devouring heat of its fire were not con- stantly tempered. And he infers from this, that "the phenomenon of life is produced in the sun, as on the earth, but under different forms and conditions ;"* thus surpassing the profound conceptions of Huygens, who, while peopling the stars, had not dared to people the sun ;t the younger Herschel raises himself a degree higher towards the sublime; he feels that intelligence is every where, because he recog- | nises every where a God. Hence, all the luminous points of the firmament are animated by prayer and by love; each planet, each star, each sun, each milky way is an altar which burns, and whence arises the hymn of praise ; and the totality of these planets, of these stars and suns, is the * Philosophical Transactions, 1828. ,. t .• i.^iq t JMouveau Traite de la Pluralite des Mondes. Translated from the Latin, 171B. PERFECTIBILITY OP THE HUMAN RACE. 257 temple of the divinity ; and these sublime choruses which resound from world to world, form the worship of an end- less creation, an eternal, incomprehensible worship heard by God alone, amidst the harmony of the spheres, through- out space, time, and eternity. CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE PERFECTIBILITY OF THE HUMAN RACE A MORAL LAW OF NATURE. " Oh la belle, la noble destinee d'avaneer toujours vers la perfection, sans ren- contrer jamais le terrae de ses progres." Ancillon. De la Destination de I'Homme. Within the depths of our soul there reposes a sentiment of which moralists have scarcely had a glimpse, and which, nevertheless, exercises great power over the human race, viz. that man, whatever may be in other respects his ignorance or his enlightenment, will only recognise in reason and in justice, the right of ruling over him. It results from this, that nations obey the hardest laws, the most extravagant superstitions, only because they believe them to be just and reasonable. Under this sentiment, which is so simple, the greatest events in history come to arrange themselves. This sentiment is sublime, for it testifies, (and this in opposition to the calumnies of sophists respecting our love for falsehood,) it evidences, I say, that we attach ourselves to error, only in as far as it is presented to us in the garb of truth. Carry your ideas back to the middle ages, see the people bowed down before the nobles, and the nobility kings and people bowed down before the priesthood. Wherefore this double abjection ? It is because the supe- riority of noble races was a conviction of the people, as the holiness of the priests was a conviction of the nobles and of kings. But let one of these two powers, that which influences the people, for instance, understand its error, immediately its chains fall, and, stripping itself of a belief which retained it in slavery, it hastens to seek that justice in which alone it recognises the right of commanding. 17 258 PERFECTIBILITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. Certainly, I had great reason to call sublime, a sentiment which maintains the dignity of man even beneath the rod of despotism, and which renders him free upon the first glimmerings of truth. In this universal sentiment we recognise a law of nature, a law against which all the superstitions and tyrannical legislations of the world come one by one to destroy them- selves. This law likewise connects itself in a surprising manner with two other laws, which concur to the same end. Thus, man loves truth, and aspires to it : the first law of nature. But in the search after it he requires a guide, and this guide he carries within him. Man inclines always to that which is most great and beautiful : the second law of nature. Lastly, these two laws may be considered as the source of a third ; viz. the law of perfectibility, which affects all people by the same impulse, though not with the same degree of movement, (some being more forward, others more backward,) towards the fulfilment of all the laws of nature. This was only discovered towards the end of the last century; — Condorcet, from his dungeon, hastened to cast it out to the world. The thought was great, but he merely had a glimpse of it, leaving to the following age the glory of making the providential application of it to the develope- ment of morality and humanity upon the earth. Such is the obect of the law ; or, to speak plainer, such is the great work imposed upon the human race. What will be the end of this work ? I know not. All that it is possible for us to have a glimpse of, is, that there is a mis- sion given, a road more or less long to be travelled over, and that the moral world, though revolving in darkness, is continually approaching nearer to the light. Those who have combated this law have imagined that it proclaimed the progressive increase of human intellect. Full of this idea, they ask what poet can we compare to Homer, what philosopher to Socrates, what warrior to Epaminondas ? they then rejoice at their triumph, even before having understood the question. In fact, perfecti- bility is not the power of changing the nature of man : it is simply the expression of the movement of the masses and PERFECTIBILITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 259 of the progress of humanity. Considering all the people on the earth as a single naan, it inquires whether this being be anaeliorated since the beginning of the world : it asks him what he was at the time of Sesostris, and what he is at the present day ; the errors which he has destroyed, and the truths which he has brought to light : all which he has left upon his path, and all which he h£is collected on it in the course of more than six thousand years. Magnificent spectacle of human destinies, the circle of which expands in proportion as each new century passes on to eternity. It would be the history of a lofty conception, that of the progress of truth upon the earth. The greatest glories, the bloody glories, would occupy in it but the smallest space; all the people would be excluded from it who have left nothing to the world. Egypt, notwithstanding its castes, its idolatry, its slavery, and the mutilation of men, might obtain in it some lines. This country was a vast workshop, where a multitude of hands worked for the profit of the master. But whilst darkness enveloped the people, a hidden light shone in the temples and in the tombs; — Pythagoras and Plato went thither to seek wisdom, and with this light the sceptre of civilization was transferred to Greece. Athens and Sparta presented the spectacle of two free nations. It was the first trial of this truth, yet unknown, that all men being equal before the gods, ought to be equal before the laws. Greece bequeathed this principle to Rome, together with the doctrines of Socrates, the example of his death, and the idea of an only. God, as the source of all truth. Rome profited but little by the legacy. She prided her- self upon the love of country, and upon her family virtues : the chastity of a woman, and a temple raised to filial piety, established her power, and made her great in the eyes of the gods and men. She held the earth in her chains ; she exhibited to it the example of the most heroic devotedness ; but upon her fall she left to it none of thosa great truths which are the patrimony of the human race. And this is not one of those thoughtless accusations which history takes pleasure in contradicting. Open Tacitus and Titus Livius, you perceive Rome powerful ; Rome knows how to fight, to conquer, and to 260 PERFECTIBILITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. civilize ; but she adds nothing to the legacy of Greece, she takes off nothing from the ferocity of her civilization. Polytheism, idolatry, slavery, the glory of suicide, the bloody games of the circus, human sacrifices, the earth declared barbarian, the people considered as a prey, and the right of arms raised above moral right ; such are the popular errors, the religious, patriotic and political cruel- ties, against which during more than twenty centuries no complaining voice was raised. Antiquity was shrouded by these errors as by a veil, which concealed from its genius the greatness of God, the dignity of man, and the laws of nature. The progress of ancient society was restricted to these three ideas, — unity in marriage, civil and political liberty, and equality before the law. These two latter principles were, however, circumscribed within the narrowest limits ; they did not emanate from the nation, and they afforded no help to the conquered. It was not the man which the law honoured, it was the citizen. This was the moral work of forty centuries. Then the great empire fell, and with it all the ancient fabric of society. Amidst these ruins the rights of the citizen were lost, but those of the man were again found. They served to lay the foundation for a more enlarged, a more fruitful, and especially a more human order of things ; they were based upon the unity of God, from which arises the unity of the human race. It is from Jesus Christ that we derive this light. He caused the veil to fall which concealed from the world the God of Moses transfigured by love ; he restored the chil- dren to the father, and the father to the children ; and the loftiest idea of Socrates became at once prevalent among the people. Moral life is then enlarged with a thought which was wanting to Socrates, to Plato, and Aristides, and which one vainly seeks for in Moses. Jesus Christ caused it to be heard from the cross : it was lost amidst barbarity, and after eighteen centuries of conflict, we again find it in the Gospel. This single idea, thrown out amidst a world of masters and slaves, eflfected a ^reat revolution. Rome still reigned over the whole world, and all over the world there were PERFECTIBILITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 261 markets where man bought and sold his fellow-man. The thought of Jesus Christ was only comprehended by the victims; all the rest, people, kings, moralists, sophists, perceived in it only an ideal conception, a theory which might be discussed, perhaps the dream of a philosopher, till of a sudden the virtuous will of the civilized world was called into activity by the power of this dream. From all that has preceded, we may conclude that mo- rality and policy have undergone three great revolutions : the belief in one only God, manifested by the Hebrews and by Socrates; the first appearance on the earth of political liberty, manifested by the Greeks ; the realization of these two ideas; and further, the destruction of slavery, the powerful work of Jesus Christ. These are the first chap- ters of the moral history of the human race. Humanity progresses then, and it progresses towards the attainment of truth. The law of nature draws it on towards this object, of which the regeneration of the world will be the completion. That this progress should have been at first a little slow may easily be conceived, the first truths are the most difllicult to discover ; but at the present day the movement is accelerated, and the progress has become more rapid. The unity of God, — the unity of the human race, — the love of humanity, — the abolnion of castes, — the subjection of the rights of the citizen to the rights of man, — and, liberty of conscience. All these truths were unknown to the ancients, and mark well, they are all truths which harmonize with the laws of nature. But this advancement is only the prelude to the progress which yet remains to be eflfected. So long as our eyes shall see crime triumphant and per- secuting virtue, — so long as the popular masses shall be deprived of intelligence, and of those noble developements of the soul which distinguish us from the brute, — so long as man shall possess man as a merchandise, or as a beast of burden, — so long as there exist beggars, tyrants, and executioners, and human blood flows upon the earth, the law will not be fulfilled. The work of perfectibility is to cause the fall one by one of all these sufferings and oppro- bria with which society surrounds us at our birth; a divine and certain law, which leaves us no repose, which speaks 262 FIRST APPEARANCE OF POLITICAL LIBERTY. to the human race as death speaks to man, in the terrible phrase of Bossuet, " Onwards — onwards !" and all civilized nations answer, while looking up to heaven, " We advance !" CHAPTER XXV. CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT. FIRST APPEARANCE OF POLITICAL LIBERTY ON THE EARTH A FRAGMENT OF THE MORAL HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE. " En etudiant I'histoire il me semble qu'on acquiert la conviction que tous les evenemens principaux tendeni au meme but, la civilization universelle." Madame de Stael. De la Lilteraiure. The appearance of liberty on the earth constitutes a grand epoch in the history of the world. Man breaks the chains of despotism, and chooses for himself a better con- dition. Man can then choose; man can then move; he can then create. First manifestation of the law of pro- gress, — first revelation of a moral work imposed on the human race ! Happy discovery! Magnificent spectacle ! Asia, with its gigantic cities, its cyclopean monuments, its stationary arts and sciences, its despotic system of mur- der and rapine, its flocks of men, its barbarity, its luxury, its magnificence, was without a rival on the globe, until a small colony escaped from its bosom, and settled amidst the mountains of Greece. There, forgotten by all, they laid aside by degrees their Asiatic habits and manners. A sun less powerful, a less enervating climate, a more rude and active life, inspired them with new ideas: they developed the arts, perfected philosophy, established marriage, soft- ened down the worship of the gods, and already thought of ameliorating the condition of the multitude. This latter idea commenced the regeneration of the world, and from this period we must date the intellectual birth of nations. Up to this time all governments had been theocratic and despotic, and all nations enchained. Well, it was in the face of these nations and of these despots, who pressed on them from all quarters, that in a little corner of the world, a handful of men imagined and founded liberty. Then began a new epoch in the history of the human FIRST APPEAHANCE OF POLITICAL LIBERTY. 263 race : the two political systems were in the presence of each other. On the one hand, dark and silent slavery, the degradation of polygamy, and the unlimited power which only engenders monsters ; on the other, the glorious liberty which produces heroes. In the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh, you see unbridled license, terror reigns, feasts of cannibals, debauchery, incest, parricide, and fratricide take place. There is there no family, no country, and the blood of the people is of less value than that of the vilest herd. At Athens, at Sparta, on the contrary, it is the people who reign; a sublime though incomplete sentiment, the love of country, gives to them a moral force unknown throughout the whole of Asia, and which must conquer or regenerate it. On looking at Greece, one feels that man has there regained his rights. Woman is no longer a merchandise, she is respected as a wife and as a mother. Violence no longer exists in the city; it is only exercised in w^ar on barbarians; but, alas! barbarians cover the earth, barba- rians surround Greece. Athens was like a luminous point in the darkness, but which was one day, like the sun, to give light to the world. It was not therefore an ordinary conflict between Persia and Greece. The historians, who have seen, at Marathon and at Salamis, merely the hostile encounter of two nations, and the destiny of two cities, have understood nothing which relates to this epoch ; doubtless the most memorable in antiquity. There was in it a something terrible and solemn ; it was the contest between two principles, liberty and slavery, light and darkness, good and evil. It was a question not merely whether armies were to be extermi- nated, and nations to be conquered, but to know whether man be born to serve eternally the caprice of a tyrant; or whether perfectibility be the law of our nature; whether God, by placing us upon the earth, has given us an object to attain, a task to perform, and whether this task be the perfecting of humanity. This is the point which w^as con- tested between Asia and Greece. The destiny of the world then depended upon three men, whose mission was wholly providential. Miltiades at Marathon, Leonidas at Ther- mopyla3, and Themistocles at Salamis, thought only of devoting themselves for their country: while, in fact, they fought for the safety of the human race. 264 IDEA OF THE UNITY OF GOD. Suppose them to have been conquered ; see Greece perish with them, and see civilization, with its fruits, letters, arts, sciences, perish with Greece, the luminous point which was destined to be enlarged and to illuminate the earth, would have been extinguished, and perhaps for ever. What obstacle could then have arrested the torrent of the Persian armies? Rome was at that time ignorant and weak. Xerxes would have stifled it at its birth. Carthage, more commercial than warlike, would have prostrated itself be- fore the gold of Asia ; five millions of soldiers would have inundated Macedonia, and prevented the exploits of Alex- ander. Lastly, Europe was then composed only of savage tribes, of which the Roman armies were destined to com- mence the civilization at a later period, but which would have been lost, like the rest of the world, in the darkness of Oriental slavery. The defeat of the Persians was then a fortunate circum- stance for humanity; but it did not end the contest, since this contest still lasts after so many ages ; and in our own times the nations of Europe are still found to be divided, as were formerly Greece and Asia. On the one hand, a free people ; on the other, autocrats and absolute kings. The spectacle has only changed its locality; it has passed from the east to the west; but the army of the free people advances ; it reckons at the present day in its ranks all that is enlightened, noble, and generous upon the earth ; besides, it knows that it fulfils the law of Providence, which Themistocles did not know ; and it has thus been able to take for its device the victorious cry of the crusaders, " God wills it." CHAPTER XXVI. HOW THE IDEA OF THE UNITY OF GOD BECAME PREVALENT AMONG THE PEOPLE. " Les hommes dont la passion a corrompu le jugement ne savent pas sui vre les traces de la verite." Bossuet. The civil liberty of nations is the first step of the human race in the path of progress, that is to say, the primary condition of all other progress. LABOUR A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LAW. 2(55 The chains of despotism do not weigh less on the nnind than on the body ; despots reign only by force and false- hood ; they know that the sword may sometimes destroy them, but that truth always destroys them. It is then only among a free people that truth can arise. And if there had not been free nations on the earth, the thought of an only God, of a God the Creator, could never have consoled the human race. Observe, in point of fact, whence this thought has arisen ; seize it at its origin, that you may prostrate yourself and worship it. You will neither prostrate yourself, before Babylon nor before Memphis, those towns of idolatry and opprobrium. The first revelation of the unity of God mani- fested itself to two nations who had escaped as if by a miracle from the chains of slavery ; to the Israelites who had become free by the genius of Moses ; to the Greeks who had become free by the institutions of Solon. And, although expanded by the joys of liberty, the heart of these people was not sufficiently enlarged to contain this thought. Moses remained alone without being understood ; and at a later period Socrates experienced the same fate. All that these two great men could do, was to protest before God against the blindness of the people, and to bequeath their ideas to future ages. CHAPTER XXVII. LABOUR A PHYSICAL AND MORAL LAW OF NATURE WHICH ESTABLISHES THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY. " C'est une loi que la nature nous impose, afin de nous donner un droit. *' Quiconque violera cette loi renoncera a sa propre nature et se depouillera de rhumanite." Ciceron. Republique. It is not our intention to consider fully so vast a subject, but merely to state the principle. Here is a fact worthy of attention. Wild nature may suffice for the miserable existence of some savage tribes: it cannot suffice for the existence of civilized nations. In order that the earth may enable nations to live, man must moisten it with his sweat, and fer- 266 LABOUR — A PHYSICAL AND tilize it by means of his intelligence. Society is possible only through labour, and society is a law of nature ; whence it follows that labour is the necessary fulfilling of this law. Cast your eyes upon desert countries ; the earth there produces nothing but dark forests, the resort of wild beasts and of venomous reptiles; the air is unhealthy; vegetation is supported by corruption and decomposition, which is de- structive to man. You see onlv stacrnant waters, or rivers unrestramed m their conrse and without banks; coarse fruits, hard and thorny herbs, an exuberance of vegetation which prevents fertility, a stupendous nature which as- tonishes, but which is only solitude, war, and death. A magnificent creation, the domain of animals, but not of man, and which awaits the hand of the latter to become his property in becoming his work. Thus the physical mission of man here below is to re- organize the earth which he inhabits, the air which he breathes, and even the vegetable productions which are to shelter, clothe or nourish him. The ear of corn is filled only by means of his hand ; the fruits of the tree are sweetened only by his cultivation ; he chooses for himself companions from among animals, and makes them work with him and for him. He goes to seek iron and gold in the bowels of the earth, and makes use of them to embellish and fertilize it. At his command forests disappear, rivers re-enter their beds, climates are changed, the air is purified, flowers are multiplied, the rank and sterile grass of the sa- vannas gives place to verdant meadows, the vine grows in festoons among the hills, and rich crops present themselves to the view on every side. Thus rude nature becomes ob- literated, and the gardens of Eden are realized. Each step which man impresses upon the earth marks a conquest; he is charged to perfect creation, and God lends him a part of his creative power. Two thousand years ago, England, France, and Ger- many presented the aspect of the primitive forests of America — man has modified all, even to the productions of the earth. Csesar relates, that the cold prevented the cultivation of the vine in Gaul — man has thus modified even climates. It is by labour that he has reclaimed Europe, it is by labour that he reclaims America. On its uncultivated soil you see MORAL LAW OF NATURE. 267 labour advancing like an indefatigable giant, whose thousand hands restrain rivers, level mountains, destroy forests, and raise cities; and from this terrific and incessant struggle there arises a more smiling and fruitful nature, of which man is at the same time the master and the creator. This is the manner in which labour justifies the property of the country by the nation, and of the soil by individuals. For labour not only constitutes the elements of society, it establishes a right — the right of property. The earth has been given to all ; the fruits of labour are given to individuals. This is what those sophists will not understand who attribute property to force, and who seek its origin in the right of the first occupant ; as if violence were any thing else than a fact, or could constitute a right. Property has its roots in man himself; it is the want of his being, the product of his intelligence, the link of society, the right of labour. Those who talk of annihilating it, and of establishing a republican and monkish community, in which all goods would be in common, prove only one thing, viz. the complete ignorance in which they are respecting the faculties of man and the law of nature. To destroy property is, though under another name, to destroy society. Man at his birth is naked and possesses nothing. Later in life, by his industry he acquires clothing, a house, a garden; thus it is that he takes possession of the earth, changes its aspect, and makes it his property by the right of labour. From his wants and his weakness, his well-being, his right, and his sovereignty arise. And this law, the action of which has been prepared by our intelHgence and by our nakedness ; this law, of which the yoke appears to us so burthensome, and of which the result is so magnificent, takes, as we have just said, its root in the human heart. The child wishes to possess: he scarcely yet knows himself, and he already understands the meaning of property. If one of his comrades lend him a plaything, he amuses himself with it, but his pleasure is in- complete, — possession is wanting. He desires, and still desires until he can say, " This is mine." And further ; labour is one of the necessities of our nature — one of the conditions of the duration of families and of the perpetuity of races, as is proved by the observations of 268 LIFE AND DEATH Fresnel. This young philosopher, whose discoveries a few years ago obUterated at once nearly half of the book of Laplace, the Systeme du Monde, and the whole of the great work of Newton on Light — this great genius, whose premature death science has to deplore, had remarked that whenever four generations succeeded each other, without occupying themselves with manual labour, the children which constitute the fifth generation die young, and with diseases of the chest; labour with the arms being indispen- sable to the proper developement of the organs of respira- tion. History likewise corroborates this observation. It shows us the feudal nobility strong and robust, as long as they gave themselves up to the rude toils of arms and of chivalry, but weak, debilitated, and sickly, from the time that the invention of gunpowder had restored them to idleness. The twofold exercise of the mind and body is, then, the law of nature. Nature orders us to cultivate, to build, to create, to control, with iron, with fire, by our genius; and she commands this, not to a class of men, but to all men ; she desires not that some should exhaust themselves, while others remain idle. Her justice is universal and' without exception : all must obey, for upon obedience depends the conservation of races, whereas their cessation ensues upon the infraction of the law. Thus, property is founded, on the one hand, upon the desire of possessing, which is natural to man ; and on the other hand, on the necessity of labour, on which depend the perfecting of nature, the life of families, and the duration of races. These two laws harmonize admirably with another moral law of our code, viz. sociability. CHAPTER XXVIIL LIFE AND DEATH A LAW OF NATURE. " Qui apprendroit les hommes a mourir, leur apprendroit a vivre. Vostre mort est une des pieces de I'ordre de I'univers: c'est une piece de la vie du monde." Montaigne. Death is neither a law of hatred nor a law of vengeance ; it is the condition of that which is. God has opposed it to life in order to maintain life. A LAW OF NATURE. 269 The flowers of spring must fade, in order that autumn may produce its fruits ; generations must pass away, that love may produce its fruits. Life and death act Hke a single power: the one is charged to clear the place, the other to refill it ; their visible end is not to create, not to destroy, but to perpetuate the great spectacle of nature. Thus, there is nothing more remarkable than the harmony of these two powers, and, if we may so express it, than the equality of their labour. They advance at an equal pace, without either overtaking or passing each other ; life sows, death reaps ; and the reproductions and losses counterpoise each other. The destiny of the world depends upon the preservation of this equilibrium. You could not give death an advantage over life, or to life over death, without anni- hilating creation, for creation is the work of death as well as of life. And, this is so true, that in order to cause life to cease upon the earth, it would be sufficient to establish a single exception to the law of death, I do not say in the human race, but in the most ephemeral being — a plant, a gnat, a fly, a fish. The seeds of a single poppy would cover the earth in six years, and no more than three years would be required for a whiting to encumber the seas with its pro- geny. Fortunately, death is always on the watch. Fore- seeing and preserving, it prevents these frighful multiplica- tions, without ever annihilating the species; it saves the world from the excess of life. In this respect, we will dare to say, that death is but the instrument of life. All its power is reduced to changing the forms of matter which it cannot destroy, and which life again takes from it. Thus, death has only power over the form. The essence of all things escapes it. A similar fact presents to our souls something more than hope ! It is, then, from not knowing death that we surround it with apprehension. It is a crime for a man to kill a man, because he takes away that which he cannot restore; but in the hands of God, it opens out a passage to the human race ; it calls generations upon the earth. Were the work of death to be suspended, this immense stream would cease to flow. When the perceptible object of death is to mul- tiply existences, can its imperceptible object be to anni- hilate ? 270 LIFE AND DEATH And yet, moralists do not cease to tell us of the terrors of death : some regard it as a scourge ; others as a punish- ment. But if death be a law of vengeance, life is a law of wrath. Wherefore, then, do so many joys and hopes exist in our hearts, so many sublime inspirations in our souls'? Wherefore this sun, these harvests, this verdure: the air, perfumes, colours, and the delightful harmonies which indi- cate more goodness than power? Wherefore is life, in fact, this creation of a double self, (moi,) one of which being altogether material takes possession of nature, while the other detaches itself from nature to take possession of heaven; for our life on earth is double, and promises us two worlds. It is true that we arrive in this world without defence and without intelligence, but we also arrive in it beneath the safeguard of maternal tenderness. Then come the sports of early infancy, then the illusions of youth and love, which would suffice to our happiness, since they raise us up to God. We want for nothing in the voyage, and Providence, which foresees all its necessities, has not for- gotten its end. It bestows upon us the sentiment of infinity, which it refused to us at our entry into life. We must dare to say, however singular it may appear, that we apprehend death because we shut our eyes to the benefits of life. If we knew better what God has done for us, we should also know better what he reserves for us. Our double life is a heavenly gift of love and goodness — a magnificent, a gratuitous gift. We were not, and here is a power which loas from all eternity, that calls us not only to live and to feel, as all else lives and feels, but also to love him. This power which ivas, this divinity which created, gave us at first innocence and ignorance, and subsequently opened to us all the paths of imagination and of knowledge. By innocence we attain to the happiness of virtue, and by ignorance to the happiness of knowing. These two first conditions of life, which seem to attest our weakness, thus become the source of our sweetest pleasures ; ignorance is the attribute of childhood, it comprises in an unlimited futu- rity all the joys of love, and a world to contemplate. What a multitude of reasons for loving life ! But in proportion as the soul developes itself, as it feels itself free, eternal, infinite, more powerful than all the powers of nature ; in proportion as the sentiment of the sublime raises it above A LAW OP NATURE. 271 worlds and suns, and in proportion as it frees itself from all the pains and pleasures of the flesh, does it imagine a some- thing beyond all that it feels and all that it sees. Oh ! then, what numerous reasons are there not for loving death ; what numerous reasons for comprehending and hoping in the divine Creator of all things, the Power which was, is, and ever shall be ; of whom, notwithstanding our weakness, we are permitted to have a glimpse ; and to whom, notwith- standing our nothingness, we are allowed to pray. The life of this world is a happiness, since it is the way which leads us to God. Thus in proportion as life speaks, death loses its terrors, and appears to our souls but as a passage from darkness to light, a gate opening into heaven, at the threshold of which we only leave a corpse ; a thing which, says Bos- suet, has no longer a name, a handful of ashes. Hence, to die is to be transformed ; it is to pass from one life to another, from a world where we seek for truth, to a world where we possess it. Death leads us to God ; this is a fact which destroys all its pains. It is, then, for want of faith that we apprehend death, for want of enlightenment that we curse it ; it is the greatest benefit of this life, since it is the end of life. But, do you say, I would not die. Well, be it so. Suppose God to give thee an eternity upon the earth. What a ter- rible present! Thou wouldst be condemned always to desire, without ever possessing ; always to seek, without ever finding; to have constantly a glimpse of, without con- templating : always to love, without ever knowing the God whom thou lovest. Alas ! what would life be, if it were restricted to this world, with desires which constantly extend beyond 1 All that which man seeks, loves, adores, has a glimpse of — where is it ? Nowhere here — below. Death then must give us that which life shows us. Death is therefore a good, the greatest good which the soul can conceive ; the entrance to an eternity, which would be a punishment upon earth, the accomplishment of the pro- mises which life makes to us. Man of little faith ! thou blasphemest death, and it is by its means that thou mayst possess all the treasures which God permits thee in this life only to have a glimpse of and 272 DEATH NOT A PUNISHMENT. to desire. To understand death, is to study to live well; to understand life, is to be happy in death. Let us then repose fearlessly upon this bed whereon the human race reposes. If wrath do not weigh heavily upon our life, wherefore should it suddenly show itself at our death 1 The laws of nature are laws of benevolence, which protect us unto the end ; and it is perhaps in their last ex- pression that God has placed the great secret of futurity. Observe the dying looks of all creatures directed towards the place where their posterity must be renewed. The butterfly falls near the flower in which it has deposited its eggs ; the bird at the foot of the tree which sheltered its nest ; the goat dies among its rocks ; the bull in the mea- dows, stretched out upon the rich pasture ; but man dies with his head and eyes turned towards heaven, as a symbol of his immortality. CHAPTER XXIX. CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT. DEATH IS NOT A PUNISHMENT INFLICTED UPON THE HUMAN RACE. " Nous avons des affaires an ciel, ou plutot nous n'avons point d'affaires en ce monde ; c'est au ciel que sonl toutes nos affaires." " O mort! je te rends grace des lumieres que tu nous donnes." BossuKT. To the picture which w^e have just drawn, superstition op- poses the most alarming prospects. It exclaims on our arrival into the world : Have a care 1 thou art born in this hatred of the Lord. Have a care I this life so beautiful is but a condemnation to death. Lament, groan, suffer, punish thyself for thy birth ; dost thou not see that thy father has committed a fault; that he is cursed, and that the avenging God will inflict punishment ? Have a care ! enjoy nothing, accept nothing ; the pleasures which charm thy senses are snares ; thy most innocent passions are crimes. The ques- tion is not to regulate but to kill them ; to kill the work of God is to please God ; it is only by the despising of natural gifts, and by a horror of thyself, that thy safety can be assured ; and thou must also die by a terrible death ; for DEATH NOT A PUNISHMENT. 273 death is not the deUverance from the troubles of Ufe, but it is the punishment of thy iniquities. Child of wrath, trem- ble, and prostrate thyself before death, which brings hell and condemnation in its train. Such are the doctrines with which it is pretended to explain the presence of evil upon the earth. If man, say the doctors, were not cursed, would he then be so misera- ble ? Mark how pain is attached to his body— error at- taching itself to his thoughts ; all his pleasures withered by disgust, all his affections torn asunder by death ; always punishments ! First, those which nature imposes upon him, next those which he brings upon himself. Calumny, misery, poison, if he be virtuous ; isolation, remorse, the scaffold, if he be criminal. Whatever be the career which he pursues, he must expect always punishments ! punish- ments for Socrates, punishments for Cartouche, for Louis XVI., for Robespierre ! Whether innocent or guilty, still always punishments ! Oh, such a life could only have been bestowed in wrath ; it is the punishment of a crime — let it then be the expiation. Thus speak the doctors, thus speaks Pascal himself; in order to comprehend man, this great genius allows himself to calumniate God. But, in fact, does this universe, so magnificent, seem to offer nothing but vengeance? In this life, so wonderfuU do we experience only pain ? Silence for a moment the theological authorities, call to your assistance the authority of your eyes and of your soul, and dare to ask yourself if it is in the midst of abundance, on carpets of verdure and flowers, before the great spectacle of the sun, that God would have cast a creature smitten with a curse ? You speak always of hatred and wrath, but I will speak to you always of benevolence and goodness. Here all obeys man ; I see ferocious animals, but he controls them : I see sterile countries, but he covers them with crops. What ! shall all the fruits of the earth, and all the animals which inhabit it, be given to a cursed being; the sun, colours, savours, perfumes, light, pleasure, and love, power and the throne ; for, in fact, man is lord here below, he commands the whole of nature ; this earth is his empire, and his life a royalty. To these benefits which are bestowed upon us by bene- volence, since thev add pleasure to life, vou oppose the 18 274 DEATH NOT A PUNISHMENT. evil which is upon the earth, and our physical and moral injfirmities. I perceive them as well as yourself, and in order to try to comprehend them, I go back to the creation of man. What are the elements of which he is composed? If I consult the Scriptures, his soul is the living breath of God, but his body is only a little earth borrowed from the globe which he inhabits. God formed him from the dust of the earth, so it is said in Genesis. Thus, even according to the book of Moses, man on coming out of the hands of the Creator, before committing a fault, before being cursed, was subject to all the evils, to all the infirmities, which are inseparable from matter. He is not then, as Bossuet says, an edifice in ruins, which still preserves something of the beauty and the grandeur of the original plan. He is at the present day, that which he was at the beginning of the world, a little earth, animated by a divine breath, a being complete in his perfections as well as in his imperfections ; weak and strong, great and miserable, yielding to temptation, or overcoming it according as he allows himself to be ruled by soul or by matter. Hence it results that man, clogged with earth, could never have been immortal here below ; the laws imposed upon matter are opposed to his terrestrial eternity. Another observation not less important, is that the fall of man would have necessitated the formation of a new world, in harmony with his new wants, and his new infirmities ; of a world fallen Hke himself. But if we refer to the Scriptures, nothing is changed on the globe since the creation. Moses describes the earth, the air, and the waters, peopled with the same kind of vegetables and animals which are still seen on it ; he does more, he gives to each plant the seed which must reproduce it, and he exhibits to us all creatures attentive to the voice of God, who says to them, increase and multiply. Thus, all on the earth was prepared for death, even before the arrival of man. The means of reproduction are only ordained, be- cause destruction is foreseen ; it is the law of nature which is fulfilled. There is no exception to it ; it would be the annihilation of life. A single gnat escaped from this law, would in some years suffice to overwhelm the creation. And with respect to the proofs of the omnipotence of death from the origin of things, they are impressed in the DEATH NOT A PUNISHMENT. 275 very bowels of the earth ; man cannot search without dis- covering vestiges of a creation more ancient than that of himself. Thus death laid waste the globe before the appearance of man ; it awaited him. If therefore, before the appearance of man, death was a law of nature, the necessary condition of all existence, it could not be a punishment, and if it be not a punishment it is a benefit, since by its means alone can be accomplished the greatest of our thoughts. And what would death be, if it were not the realization of the things of which we have a glimpse in this life? Death is the entrance to another world, as life is the entrance into this. It is the completion of the being, a second birth, our birth to eternity.* But in order to assure ourselves that man could never have enjoyed a perfect state here — below, it will suffice to study him*^ in his relations with all the things which sur- round him. Here the gifts correspond to the wants, the benefits to the desires, the duration to the faculties ; life to life, and death to death ; for if man lives and dies, every thing else lives and dies around him, through him, and for him. Suppose man were immortal amidst this general de- struction ; it would be to invent for him punishments more cruel than those of hell. Not to be able to attach himself to any living thing, to see the whole creation pass before him, like an immense funeral procession, is such then the fate of a being destined for happiness 1 Man would have been less complete after his creation than after his fault, since in order for him to bear these lamentable scenes, it would have been necessary to deprive him of pity and love.f There is then no forfeiture, no expiation, but a trial ; no accursed creations, no wrathful and vindictive God, but a God beaming with the goodness which is seen in all his works. Death is a law of nature, like life ; pain is a law * It is as natural to die as to be bom ; and to a little infant, perhaps the one is as painful as the other. — Bacon's Essays. t It will be perceived from these arguments, that the author disbelieves the fall of man, as stated in the book of Genesis ; but there is nothing in the actual state of things which is incompatible with that account, for as it is evident that man's disobedience must have been foreseen, so circumstances would, from the begin- ning, have been adapted to his condition upon the earth.— TVo^e of Translator. 276 DEATH NOT A PUNISHMENT. of nature, like pleasure ; and pain and death are not the frightful vengeance of God.* And, in fact, what is life ? a gift of pure generosity. God owed us nothing, and he has created a world to give it to us. He has done more ; he has raised for us a corner of the veil which conceals him from the rest of the crea- tion; he has disclosed to us the invisible world of immensity and eternity ; and, lighting up the path which should lead us to him, he has allowed us to have a glimpse of him in death, in order to make us rejoice in him ; in pain, to make us appreciate him ; in pleasure, to awaken our hopes, and reveal to us one of his attributes, viz. his goodness. Thus the study of the laws of nature teaches us that God has made Hfe a trial and not a punishment. The trial con- sists in the conflict of good and evil passions ; of soul and matter. Alone amidst all other beings, man is called upon to undergo this conflict, and likewise he alone receives the reward. In order that the trial might be complete, it was requisite that man should be free to choose between good and evil, and that pain should exist by the side of pleasure; for not only does the trial explain to us the action of evil, but it likewise explains the presence of good on the earth. Probation can understand pleasure, because it sees every where benevolence and goodness. Expiation understands only pain, because it sees every where hatred and wrath. Pleasure alarms it, it is considered a snare, and in its folly, expiation would cut it off' from the earth. Hence austerities, penances, the rod, fasting, celibacy ; the mortifications of the soul and the body; man mutilated; the purport of creation mistaken, and the fatal doctrine of despair and fear. All the consequences of the trial are social, moral, and divine ; it requires man to be complete, virtue instead of penitence, the rule instead of mutilation. All the consequences of the expiation are savage, im- moral, and cruel ; it requires punishments, it asks for blood. Man then becomes implacable and implacable without re- morse. Crushed beneath the weight of the divine wrath, con- vinced that human infirmities are the chastisement of a fault, * In the new edition of the Bible, published by Longman and Co., the passage '* Yet man is born to trouble," is rendered " For man is not bom to trouble," &c. Job V. — Note of Translator. DEATH NOT A PUNISHMENT. 277 he imagines he can only redeem himself by sacrifices ; the desire to purify himself from an imaginary crime, incites him to actual crimes, and he sanctifies these crimes with the name of penitences. Hence crusades, the auto-da-fe^ the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, appear to him to be works of piety; human sacrifices are the charities of expiation. In order to save you from the torments of another hfe, they would burn you in this. The flesh cries out ; no matter, they will save you by killing you. "The salvation of the world by blood is the justice of Providence, and man is charged to kill man."* Do you hear these execrable words ? he who pronounced them was full of faith, and in consequence of the principle of expiation he regarded war as a divine institution, the Inquisition as a moral neces- sity, and the executioner as the corner-stone of society. Doctrines of despots and sophists which render men ferocious, and which assimilate, by their wishes and their actions, the most honest men with the most odious villains. It is, however, at such a price that expiation explains the presence of evil upon the earth ; it places man out of the laws of creation, it tears him from society, it chastises and mutilates him, and to the tortures which it inflicts upon us in this life, it adds the terrors of death, hell, and eternity. Once more, such doctrines cannot be true, for they are immoral and impious. Life is not an expiation, it is a trial. Death is not a punishment — it is a law of nature. But if man be subjected to a probation, the human race ought to advance towards an object: the probation is but the education of the soul for heaven. Let us then say, that the terrestrial life is the beginning of another life, to which we can only arrive by means of death, and let us terminate this chapter with this important definition, which comprises all the principles of this work. Man is a soul united for a period of probation to an intelli- gent animal. The intelligent animal shall possess the goods of the earth for which it is born, and the earth shall be its tomb. The soul which is the very man; if it has lived according * De Maistre. Soirees a St. Petersburg. 278 APPLICATION OF THE LAWS OF NATURE to the order of things, shall enjoy the immortaUty which it foresees, the heaven of which it has a gUmpse, the God to whom it prays. CHAPTER XXX. APPLICATION OF THE LAWS OF NATURE TO THE LAWS OF MAN. " Nos moBurs s'adoucissent ; chaque jour la philantrophie s'avance vers de nou- velles conquetes; une legislation se prepare qui conciliera, autant que notre siecle le permet, les interets de la surete commun avec le voeu de I'huraanite." De Martignac. Defense de Prince Polignac, a la Chambre des Pairs. *' There are three tribunals which scarcely ever agree ; the tribunal of the laws, that of honour, and that of religion." These w^ords of Montesquieu accuse the order, or rather the disorder of modern societies, at the same lime that they indicate to us the cause of their disturbance, and of the revolutions which rend them asunder. So long as these three tribunals shall produce contradictory judgments, peace is not to be hoped for on the earth. The peace of the world depends upon political, moral, and religious unity, and this unity exists only in truth. But if this truth always escapes us ; the reason is, not because it is invisible, but simply because we refuse to turn our eyes towards it. The theologian looks for it in the doctrines of his church, the magistrate in the codes of his country, the philosopher in a system. The man of the world seeks for it nowhere, but he believes that he receives it from the prevailing prejudices and fashions of the age. Then comes scepticism, a short-sighted sophist, who, at the aspect of this chaos cries out that our reason is deceptive ; that there is no truth upon the earth ; that all is either true or false, according to the judgment of times, places, and men. Fool ! wouldst thou estimate the limits of human intelligence by the extent of thine own ? Open thine eyes. Reason is not in fault, because within these limits it does not appear. Truth is not fluctuating, because there is no truth within the scope of thy vision. That which thou per- ceivest ai'e our vices, our passions, our opinions, our ambi- tions, which we would cause to be worshipped. Truth is beyond their sphere. TO THE LAWS OF MAN. 279 Beyond their sphere ; there only are the laws of nature to be sought. We invoke in our turn the judgment of God upon all questions which concern us. It is God him- self who will teach us that which we should do in order to be just, that which we are to believe in order to be happy. He will tell us what is virtue, and what is crime, whether we honour him by rejecting his gifts ; whether we obey his laws in abusing them ; whether religion should inspire us with indulgence, or arm us with wrath and cruelty ; whether it be permitted us to persecute men ; to deceive them ; to strip, mutilate, or kill them, either in the interest of an ambition, or in the interest of our con- science. He will tell us all these things, and in propor- tion as his answer shall strike upon the ear of nations, they will know the truth, and will hold out their hands to each other as brethren. This answer is comprised in the small number of laws of which we have presented the sketch ; laws of love and life, criteria of all truth, which are unanswerable by sophistry, since they verify the thoughts of man by the thoughts of God. And, truly, I do not believe there exists on the earth a being endowed with reason, who would dare to efface with a firm hand the articles of this code, under the pre- text of their being erroneous or false. How could we efface them without renouncing some portions of ourselves ; with- out ceasing to be men ; that is to say, free, intelligent and oving ? In fact, all the faculties of man correspond to some laws of nature ; so that in order to degrade the one, ihe other must necessarily be violated. This is the twofold labour of our prejudices and of despotic governments. We may conclude, that wherever man is degraded, there is a violation of the laws of nature; that is to say, a viola- • on of justice and of truth ; the laws of nature require that man should be complete. Of these laws five have their source in our soul, and radiate from man to nature ; ten have their source in the physical world, and radiate from nature to man. In order that truth should be always present, God has impressed it both within us and around us ; and in order that the laws which contain it should appear to us always pleasant, he 280 APPLICATION OF THE LAWS OP NATURE has made them to partake of the seniiment of love, which raises us up to him. These fifteen laws do not form the only ones of the code of nature, and yet they embrace the entire moral world. The sentiment of the divinity is the love of God. The sociabiUty of the human race is the love of men. The other laws are for the most part but developements or modifica- tions of these two fundamental laws, which all our moral codes thus express — Love God and man. Apply this principle to the political and religious codes which divide the world, and they will strip themselves by degrees of all the barbarities and of all the abjection which dishonour them. There is a something serious in the loss of the least national good ; it is a physical evil which always entails a moral evil, and this evil is so penetrating, that we draw back with apprehension when we would measure its depth. When the Emperor of China, for instance, isolates his people from all others, one imagines that it is at most but a question of the least of their liberties, the right of tra- velling over the globe, a right of which the multitude would never profit : the prison is vast ; it is an empire, a world rich at the same time in all the treasures of nature, and all the sciences of ancient Egypt. Well, this law, to which you ascribe so little power, has suflficed to viHfy the most industrious, and perhaps the most intelligent people on the earth. Enter the study of a literary Chinese, proud of his knowledge of four thousand years; he will tell you that the earth is a flat and square surface, of which China occupies the centre ; that the sun only rises on this part of the world ; and that the other nations, abandoned by Hea- ven, are scattered here and there on the edge of an abyss, without intelligence and without light, as the Esquimaux are represented on the desolate shore of the ocean. Thus, the earth is square, and flat, the Celestial Empire alone composes the universe, and the sun only shines for the Chinese. Such is the fruit of the law which separates them from the human race. And we must not think that this abjection reacts only upon their intelligence ; it reacts upon their morality, it precipitates them into the ignorance of the Creator, the greatest evil which exists upon earth. A people who know nothing of the world it inhabits, nothing of the surround- TO THE LAWS OF MAN. 281 ing nations, cannot form a just idea either of the general laws of nature, nor of the benefits of Providence, nor of the glory of God. By cutting itself off from the human race, it has cut itself off from truth. We may judge from this example of the influence which the most simple application of the laws of nature would exert upon the civilization and the happiness of the world. Would legislators but deign to take them for a guide, and all the crimes which have become established as principles, all the idolatry which has been raised into a religion, infan- ticide, concubinage, polygamy, mutilations, slavery, these lepers of the East; castes, privileges, vassalage, the celi- bacy of priests, monastic reclusions, religious suicides, these vices and degradations of civilized Europe ; the penalty of death, the fratricide which no law, no human convention can legalize; and lastly, war, the greatest of wrongs, and the only one which with the penalty of death still exists all over the world, would disappear. All these juridical crimes, all these glorious or legislative murders, would vanish be- fore the law of nature, like the clouds of darkness before the sun. Already, by instinctively approximating ourselves to this divine law, we have effaced from our codes the double bondage of the earth and of man. Our tribunals have lost the power of being cruel, and our kings the privi- lege of being unjust. Civil liberty, the liberty of worship, liberty of thought, form, together with equality of rights, and equality in the eye of the law, a legislation by which the dignity of man is at last respected, and this first step in the path of universal justice has commenced the deliver- ance of all nations ; the example is now given, the rights are conquered, and Europe is contemplating us. If I were an absolute king, and my eyes were directed towards France, I should see her without apprehension resuscitate the formidable armies of Napoleon ; but if I saw her legislators opening every where schools, founding colonies, protecting and enlightening the masses, extending knowledge, increasing the general welfare, giving to each citizen the power of raising himself to the rank to which his intelligence and his virtue would entitle him ; in a word, generously advancing in the paths of justice and liberty — oh ! it is then that I should tremble for the despotic thrones of Europe 1 France would then be a nation for- 282 OF AMERICA AND OF POLAND. midable even in her adversity : she would have laid aside her arms ; she would no longer fight ; but in proportion as she acquired strength, she would feel herself worthy of another glory, and she would be as eager to deliver the world as she formerly was to conquer it. CHAPTER XXXI. CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT. OP AMERICA AND OF POLAND. " L'Europe devrait etre citee au ban de la Pologne pour les injustices toujours croissantes dout ce pays a ete victime." Mad. de Stael. Elle le sara aujtigement de Dieu. "Les forces manquent amon zele ; mais le courage et I'esperance ne manquent pas a mon cceur." De Martignac. ^ " II n'y a point de droit centre le droit." Bossuet. There was a time when America, which we now see so fair, so prosperous and growing in liberty, was a vassal. English officers commanded in her ports, English govern- ors ruled in her cities, and English parliaments imposed laws. upon her. But a day at length arrived, when, wearied of this vassalage, the people flew to arms, and, appealing to mankind in testimony of her just cause, demanded of them whether it was right that men of all nations, thrown by the wind of adversity on desert shores where they had created for themselves a country, should be subject to the chains of Europe, and whether the laws of nature ordained that America should pay taxes to the King of Great Britain. It was on the 4th of July, 1776, that this solemn declara- tion was addressed to the world : *' We hold these truths to be self-evident: — that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that amongst these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their first powers from the consent of the governed ; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, OF AMERICA AND OF POLAND. 288 and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the, necessity, which constrains them to alter their former systems of government." Thus, men born in ancient Europe, where they were but yesterday, all at once call, to mind — at the sight of a virgin land, of a world issuing from the hands of its Creator, — the inalienable rights of humanity ; the aspect of nature restores them to nature, and from the depth of their deserts they raise a cry of liberty which resounds even amongst the nations of the other hemisphere. This appeal to the conscience of Europe, followed by a statement of the tyrannical acts and injuries inflicted by the King of Great Britain on the American people, thus concludes : " We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and of the authority, of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT States I — that they arc absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all politi- cal connexion between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things, which independent States may, of right, do. And, for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour." This manifesto we call sublime, because it is based on the rights of humanity. God has declared to us, by the first i 284 OF AMERICA AND OP POLAND. laws of our being, that man over man has no other power but love. Thus no man shall be the property of another man, no people the property of another people. This, the inalienable, the imprescriptible right, of man, and of nations, this is liberty. Such is the lavv^ of nature ; let us now see the law of men. To the destiny of America let us oppose that of Poland. She too was a nation smitten by vassalage ; she invoked the same principles, she displayed the same virtue : " Haste to our succour!" (it was thus she appealed to Europe,) '* haste to our aid ! time presses, the barbarians are at our gates, and we die for the liberty of the world !" But Europe was deaf to her cries, and, on the 7th of September, whilst a minister of France* was uttering these atrocious words, ** All is tranquil in Warsaw;" the noble nation had indeed found repose ; she slept, buried under the ruins of her ram- parts ! dying, as she had said, for the liberty of the world ! History will record the cowardice, the baseness, not of the nations, but of the kings, of Europe ; for every nation, unhappy Poland, would have flown to thy succour! All the nations cried out, and all the kings kept silence ! His- tory will tell how the disarmed Poles were transported to the snows of Siberia ! how the whole country was put beyond the pale of law ! how those who had flown for refuge to the temple, were butchered at the very altars ! She will tell that all these things passed in the nineteenth century, under the law of the gospel and in the sight of mankind ! As for us, we only record a fact, trifling without doubt, after such wholesale scenes of robbery and murder, but whose date should not be forgotten. Three months after the murder of Poland, the following announcement appeared in the Russian, Prussian, German, and French Journals : " In virtue of the Imperial Ukase of the 2d of January, 1831, have been confiscated for the benefit of the emperor,t the government of Podolia, 10,852 souls \ames] belonging to the Prince Adam Czartorysky; 185 souls to Elizabeth Tyrawski, 243 souls to Isokore Sachnowski, all the fortune of Erasmus de Dobrowski, and 592 souls of the Count * General Sebastiani. t The Emperor Nicholas, whom it has become the fashion with many modern professors of liberty and equal rights, to extol and to admire. OF WAR. 285 Thaddeus Ortowski, &c. &c. &c. Wilna, 31st October 1831."* One might believe that he was reading the barbarous le- gends of the 12th century. Not being able to sell men, as Csesar did, the conquerors confiscate souls like Satan. The punishments of servitude may be well compared with those of hell. The publicity given to such acts is a benefit to humanity. The more public the crime is made, the louder and more powerful will be the infamy attending it. Tyrants must hear the outcries of mankind in order to know that they stand alone, and that the eyes of the civilized world are upon them. CHAPTER XXXII. OF WAR ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF NATURE. " Qu'est ce que la guerre ? un metier de barbares, ou tout I'art consiste a etre le plus fort sur un point donne.' Napoleon, the eve of the battle of Moskow. " Et lorsque la civilisation sera arrivee a amener dans loute I'Europe I'abandon des vieux usages de la barbarie, la guerre ne sera plus possible, car il n'y aura plus de forces materielles qui puissent lutter contre les forces morales." Odillon Barrot. " Ne redoutez pas, Messieurs, de suivre ce veritable progres de I'esprit huraain, qui confiera, non pas a des armees commandees par des capilaines plus ou moins habiles, non pas a la force brutale, mais aux nobles combats de I'esprit, aux luttes de I'intelligence, la destinee et la direction des societes." Berryer, Discours d la Chamhre des Deputis. " II y'a deux droits que les siecles ont tour a tour vu pr^valoir sur la terre : le droit de force et de conquete, droit feroce et barbare, que je n'invoquerai jamais, droit brutal contre lequel toute civilisation a ete fondee et se developpe : il y en a un autre non moins dominateur, non moins infaillible, mais plus moral et plus divin : c'est celui que le monde reconnoitroit a son insu, c'est celui qui vous fera triompher sans combat et sans obstacle, c'est le droit de civilisation." Lamartine, Discours a la Chambre. The most violent advocate of sacerdotal despotism, a man who in his disdain for humanity has not feared to descend to be the apologist of the Inquisition and of the executioner, M. de Maistre, has said, " History proves that war is the habitual state of the human race ; that is to say, * In reading these sad details one is no longer astonished at the downfall of unhappy Poland. Half of the people had nothing to defend. But what shall we say of the conqueror? He could have restored liberty, but he loved better to confiscate souls. 286 OF WAR. that human blood should flow without interruption on the earth." In order to corroborate these horrid words, the author traces out the picture of the wars which have deso- lated the earth from the fall of Rome to the present day. He seizes the extremes of this bloody chain, which extends over centuries, and of which each link is a battle; then, with a voice which he would render prophetic, he dares to exclaim to the world — " Thus blood must always flow ; it is the law of our being, man must shed blood ; because he can only be purified by blood." In his theological insanity, M. de Maistre declares to us that all these massacres are from God ; his genius discovers in them a punishment which tends to a regeneration, as if the only means of rendering us better were to perpetuate our misdeeds. Kill, then, kill without fear and without remorse ; for you kill in order that you should be pardoned: war is redemption ! Might it not be said that this man was desirous of sur- passing in a few lines the most furious doctrines of our age ? To deny God was nothing, but to make him the representa- tive of the executioner, this was great. To deny crime and virtue, to say that all our actions are of no effect, this again was nothing; but to call upon man to murder, to inspire him with an enthusiasm for carnage, by causing war to arise from the will of God, this is what is great, moral, and catholic. Observe, it is no longer a question to justify crime by impiety, but to sanctify it by religion. Oh ! we argue admirably, our eloquence is splendid, our genius is infallible. Is it not written in the Bible that God is the God of armies? What does this mean? War is then divine. Is it not evident that animals devour each other? What does this mean but that war is the law of nature? " Thus man shall exterminate man continually and un- ceasingly ; he may strike innocently, because God ordains it ; because by striking he redeems himself, because there is a curse, and because this malediction must be fulfilled even unto death."* Let us leave the man possessed by a demon to insult at the same time both God and men, and let us try to emerge from this chaos of theological impiety, which is founded upon a complete ignorance of the laws of nature, and which * De Maistre — Soirees de St. Petersburg, OP WAR. 287 is developed in the interest of the doctrine of expiation ; the most fatal of errors, since it perverts the character of the Divinity. Among the writers who have treated of war, some have denied its rights, others have h'mited it to defence. The ancient school considered conquerors only as ravagers of the earth ; the modern school regards war as the most powerful means of civilization. If we wish for truth, let us neither ask the philosophers nor history. Grotius and Bacon knew less about the matter than nature ; and as to history, what folly it would be to allow it the weight of an authority ! Facts can testify to what it was, but how can they constantly represent that which it ought to be, without falsifying the perfectibility of the human race? This perfectibility is itself a fact, and a moral fact, which overrules all histories. Look at war in the different phases of our civilization. At first it is only a question of prey : all misery is cruel, and all ignorance blind : one kills one's enemy in order to strip him, or to devour him : such is the savage state. From the savage state to the state of barbarity, there is but a step, and nevertheless war tends already to ennoble itself It is less a question of prey than of revenge. The whole world arms in order to punish the ravisher of Helen ; it talks of redressing a wrong, of avenging an outrage; — thus there is progress. Next come the wars of conquest and ambition. Alex- ander lays waste Asia, in order to cause his name to be pronounced in the public places at Athens. Pillage and revenge are superseded by glory. The hero only wishes for admiration ; it is a great soul which goes astray : but the progress is immense, and wars for renown accelerate the civiHzation of the world. These wars of ambition are perpetuated up to modern times. Then commences wars of religion : a new thought makes its way to the heart of all nations. They no longer speak of the glory of man, but of the glory of God. The vain treasures of the earth give place to the treasures of eternity : they fight for the salva- tion of souls, to snatch their enemies from hell, and to open for them the gates of heaven ! A sublime error, cast by Christianity into the midst of the barbarous crowd — the first appearance of the sentiment of the great and the 288 OF WAR. infinite among the people and among armies. By it Europe becomes dematerialized. It obeys simultaneously {en masse) an idea which it believes to be moral. Piercing through the darkness which surrounds it, it advances to death in order to cause truth to triumph ; and whilst men's minds are dreaming of martyrdom, St. Louis establishes this generous though incomplete principle, viz. that war among Christians is a fratricide. The astonished world hears this sentiment without believing it ; but European wars are suspended, and the barbarity of the West, impressed with this new idea, directs its attacks during several ages against the barbarity of the East. Lastly, political wars, w^ars of deliverance, and of liberty, succeed to religious wars. This is the period at which we are now arrived, and which will terminate in wars of defence, which will be the only ones possible from the time that Europe, having shaken off its chains, shall have re- constituted its populations according to the precepts of the Gospel, and the principles of liberty. But it is not sufficient to characterize war according to the prevailing passion of each age; it must also be charac- terized according to the men who represent these passions. Let us pass from Achilles to Alexander, from Cassar to Bonaparte. These four men unite by the glory of arms ancient to modern times ; they are each the expression of their epoch, and they verify its progress. Human sacri- fices on the tomb of Patroclus. Two thousand Syrians crucified on the sea-shore in the calmness of victory. Entire populations put to the sword, or sold by auction in the pub- lic squares, like a drove of beasts. Such were the scenes presented to mankind by Achilles, Alexander, and Csesar. Let us now follow Bonaparte from Italy to Vienna, from Berlin to Moscow. What a change amidst this glorious butchery ! one laments for a friend, but one no longer kills men on his tomb ; they fight, but they no longer assassinate defenceless warriors ; they take a town, but they no longer sell the inhabitants for slaves. And what, then, prevented Bonaparte, when master of the world, from crowning him- self with the laurels of Achilles, of Alexander, and of Caesar? The voice of the human race. The war which Henry IV. wishes to undertake, in order to establish the universal peace of Europe, is perhaps the OF WAR. 289 noblest sentiment which ever expanded the heart of a king, and it is likewise the finest page of universal history. Doubt- less the great king deceived himself, but though he deceived himself, he yet deserved the gratitude of the civilized world. No one at that period could teach him, that this noble idea, in order to succeed, ought not to emanate from the king, but from the people. Peace is not the spark which springs from the shock of arms, it is the torch which lights itself at the hearth of civilization. Such will be the fate of war upon the earth, and we ask but one thing, viz. that the truth of the future be estimated by the truth of the past. War is but a transitory state of populations; in proportion as we advance, its pretexts change, and its justifications become moralized. But to this road to perfectibility there is no other end than peace, since there is only peace which is human and reasonable. To such powerful facts, the terrible law of nature will certainly be opposed; the law of reproduction by destruction; a law which condemns us to death on the very day which it calls us into life. In fact, war is in us, and around us, — all animals receive at birth arms wherewith to fight, — all arrive upon the earth as upon a battle-field, which they must moisten with their blood. And in this frightful scuffle, man appears with thunder, calling his intelligence to the assistance of his ferocity, turning against himself all the benefits of nature, and glorifying himself by the slaughter of his fellows. Would one not say, that to kill was to fulfil the law ? Yes, if man were only a wild beast, the blood of man would flow eternally ; such is truly the law for wild beasts, and the law must be fulfilled. But who, then, arrests its fulfilment in man ? Why do not all men rush like tigers on their prey 1 Whence this horror of blood, these warn- ings of conscience, these maledictions against the fury of conquest? Wherefore do pity and humanity exist? It is because the law of nature for man is a law of love, and not a law of destruction. Alone upon the earth, the animal is ordained to kill, and in man there is only the animal which kills. In proportion as our divine faculties become de- veloped, the arms fall from our hands; we begin by doubt- ing of our right to kill our fellow-creatures, and we end by lamenting our blindness. Ah ! if we were born for these 19 290 LAWS OF CRETE, SPARTA, ATHENS, AND ROME. massacres, God would not have placed in our bosoms con- science, which attaches only remorse to their perpetration, the moral sentiment which condemns them, and the reason which curses them. He would not have vivified the human soul with those sentiments of the sublime and the infinite, which raise it up to heaven, if he had wished an earth for the conflicts of tigers and the work of the executioner. All the faculties which distinguish us from the brute have a horror of bloodshed, and all these faculties tend to the love of God and of men. This is our law, the law which will on one day annihilate war upon the earth. It is human, it is divine ; it is derived both from heaven and earth, like the creature to whom it has been given. CHAPTER XXXIII. APPRECIATION OF THE LAWS OF CRETE, SPARTA, ATHENS, AND ROME, BY THE LAWS OF NATURE. " Les nations Grecque et Romaine ont disparu du monde a cause de ce qu'il y avail de barbare c'est a dire d'injuste dans leurs institutions." Madame de Stael. Considdrations sur la Rivolution Frangaise. Empires, like men, are born and cease to exist. Their elevation in proportion as they approach to truth, their de- cline in proportion as they separate themselves from it, is an immense fact which strikes all eyes, and of which humanity will one day reap the fruits. Hence it results that the superiority of a civilized over a barbarous people is entirely moral. Numbers and strength give way before the action of a lofty sentiment, or of a vir- tuous thought. Twice in the annals of the world, the love of a little cor- ner of the globe which received the name of country has be- stowed empire upon a handful of men. Had they been just, they would have preserved this empire ; there is no instance of a nation's dying while in the practice of heroism and virtue. All have succumbed beneath the weight of superstitions, of ambitions, of corruption, of ignorance, and of inhumanity. LAWS OF CRETE, SPARTA, ATHENS, AND ROME. 291 All have died from having forgotten the dignity of man, and violated the laws of nature. It v^^ould be an act of high justice to place Sparta, Athens, and Rome, the constant objects of our admiration in youth, in the presence of the laws of nature, and to judge them by these laws. With what surprise should we not see. the greatest geniuses of antiquity mutilate man, in order to make him bend to their conceptions; make him great as God has made animals free and powerful, by limiting them to a single instinct; and seek in an isolated law of nature (the love of country) the spring of a moral superiority which was able to regenerate a people, and to govern the rest of the world to whom this law remained unknown ; for in this law was concentrated the true spirit of the legislators of Greece. Man appeared to them a being too active and too great; and not being able to imagine a means of entirely subjecting him, they divided him and made him incomplete. They cut off one half, and said to the other half. Advance, fight, destroy ; be the strongest, and thou wilt be free. The child trained up to war, receiving from education but two ideas — the love of his native town, and the con- tempt of all other civilizations, — the man living free only on condition of his renouncing the exercise of his own will ; repelling as a weakness all the arts, all the sciences, which might have enlightened and polished him — seeing on the rest of the earth nothing but enemies, barbarians, and countries to be conquered, or slaves to be enchained ; separating himself, in fact, from all other nations by pride, and from the human race by ignorance ; such was the humanity of ancient times : such was the law imposed upon the heroic nations of Greece. To limit a people to one sole idea, to allow it only one passion, and to unloose this passion against the world ; such was the essence of a republican governnrient as it ex- isted at Crete, Sparta, Athens, and Rome, and this govern- ment was based upon the same principle as is a despotic government. . In a republican government the people is the despot, and its subjects are all the nations which surround it. lis caprices and its desires turn the world upside down ; others must either serve it, or die. 292 LAWS OF CRETE, SPARTA, ATHENS, AND ROME. Thus, the greatest effort of ancient legislation was to transfer despotism from the master to the subject ; to imbue a nation with the will of a tyrant. They gave to this thing the name of liberty, and the violation of all the laws of nature was termed virtue. And, let it not be supposed that I would deny the glo- rious influences of those institutions. Their action was frequently heroic. We have seen emanate from them some sublime characters, and instances of noble devoted- ness : they gave universal dominion to a handful of men, but they did nothing for the happiness of Greece ; they did little for the advancement of humanity. It has been said that these institutions have become im- possible at the present day because we are wanting in virtue. It would have been more true to say that they could not be reproduced because they violate three of the great laws of nature which are now recognised by all civilized nations. The sentiment of the Divinity, that is to say, the knowledge and the love of one only God ; the sentiment of sociability, that is to say, the unity of the human species ; and lastly, perfectibility, which does not allow the human race to retrograde towards the past. All the virtues of Sparta, Rome, and Athens, were hostile to humanity ; we could not return to them without degrading ourselves. What European people could cooly hunt down the Helots as the law of Sparta decreed ? What father would consent to sell his son three times over, or to kill him, as was permitted by the Roman law? What hero could make war for the sake of pillage and carnage, and on the smoking ruins of seventy cities would dare to sell by auction a hundred and fifty thousand citizens, in order to distribute the money to his army, as Paulus Emilius did in Epirus? which procured him the honours of a triumph, together with the admiration of the Roman people, and almost that of posterity. The reign of Rome was that of a robber : it aggrandized itself by war and pillage, and therefore it fell by its riches and by war. Let us no longer say that these institutions are become impossible because we are wanting in virtue ; let us rather say, that they are become impossible because humanity and truth are beginning to prevail upon the earth. HOPES OP THE FUTURE. 293 CHAPTER XXXIV. HOPES OF THE FUTURE, " Je n'ai vu dans la liberte que tous les hommes reclament, que le devellop- pement harraonique de leurs facultes," Bonstetten, Etude de V Homme. "Le gout et I'admiration du stationaire viennent des jugemens faux que Ton porte sur la verite des fails, et sur la nature de Thomme: sur la verite des faits, parcequ'on suppose que les anciens moeurs etaient plus pures que les moeurs rao- dernes; complete erreur: sur la nature de rhomme, parcequ'on ne vent pas voir que I'esprit humain est perfectible." Chateaubriand. This cursory examination of human laws, as confronted with the laws of nature, has shown us the world shaking off its chains, and advancing with rapid strides towards truth. In order to complete this picture, let us cast our eyes upon the moral state of the world, not within the narrow limits of the kingdoms into which the ground is partitioned off, but in the large divisions established by the different forms of belief which constitute various classes of their populations. The luminous point lies entirely in the progress of the Gospel, because the Gospel in its primitive purity is itself but the expression of the laws of nature. It is sufficient to appreciate this light in order to know the future destiny of the human race. At the present day more than one-third of the inha- bitants of the globe have received the law of Christ, and live beneath the influence of this law which gives life to nations. Europe is the centre of this new civilization, of which the starting-point is France and England. There arise and are developed the generous ideas of humanity and of liberty, of which the circle is perpetually enlarging itself, and which are being diffused from nation to nation throughout Europe ; and from Europe throughout the world. To this sublime junction of intellects, the United States of America come with all the ardour of youth, to join them- selves to old Europe. More fortunate than ourselves, they have had no middle ages. England, by trying to govern them, inspired them with the desire of independence. They learned from their masters to cherish liberty, and the first 294 HOPES OF THE FUTURE. news of their success was a great example to the nations of the old world. Thus, young America was free at her birth. No habits of vassalage, no regrets for the past, no gothic prejudices, disturbed her .victory : she had not to struggle against those theocracies which keep the people in the abjection of misery and of ignorance ; she did not see her soil de- filed by the superstitions of Brahmins or the fury of prose- lytism. All the sects which are there established possess the spirit of the Gospel. Oh ! spectacle never before viewed by mortal eyes ! she is born with liberty, tolerance, and intelligence, — she escapes at the same time from priests and from barbarism! Her most ancient recollections are those of her glory, and of her deliverance, and without having passed through the darkness of childhood, she arrives at the age of truth, rich in experience and in the reason of the human race. Such is the America of the United States : a new world which is born to new ideas. Such will be the America of the south after its triumph, for the nation must triumph where women fight for the cause of independence, and die by the side of their husbands and brothers. The nation must triumph, where every evening an officer asks, in the presence of the army, " Are the women of Cochabamba present?" And where another officer answers, "Glory be to God, they all died for their country on the field of honour."* Thus, a third of the inhabitants of the old world, and the whole of the new world, two hundred and seventy mil- lions of men, form at the present day the army of civiliza- tion ; and in the midst of this army, France and England arise like two constellations, of which the reflection is cast over the whole world. But, another nation, born to conquer, and to regenerate, attracts our attention. When the people of the north, awakened by the Spirit of God, rushed like the waves of the ocean upon falling Rome, they were barbarous — a blind instrument of Providence. They came to do two things — to carry death to ancient nations, and to receive the light of the Gospel, in order to transmit it to modern nations. Their mission was at the same time a mission of annihila- tion and of regeneration. They showed themselves to this * This was in 1818. HOPES OF THE FUTURE. 295 part of the world in order to temper it again with iron, to pour out upon it their vigorous children, who destroy and renew populations. But this was only half the work which Providence imposed upon them ; the time is now arrived when they have to show themselves to the other part of the world ; to overrun the east as they overran the west, since it is true that a fatal and providential law always calls them towards dying nations. They will not arrive there this time as a barbarous, but as a Christian people. God has placed them in regions of ice and of sterility, at the gates of Asia and of Europe, as if to invite them to descend successively on both sides of the earth. Subjected to fatality, the followers of Mahomet await them, mournfully sealed in their harems, in those palaces where they have been encamped during three centuries, and through which they ought merely to have passed. Thus, at an interval of two thousand years, the children of the north find them- selves commissioned to diffuse over the east the civilized doctrines which they had received in the west, and those who, at the decline of Rome, were conquerors and regene- rated, will be, at the fall of Constantinople, saviours and regenerators. Civilization extends itself on every side : it unites all Europe into a single people, and, like a benevolent divinity, it bends its course towards Asia, and advances, the Gospel in hand, into those rich countries, where nature is so powerful, the human race so beautiful, and where man is so degenerate. Before the Gospel was known, there was but little hope for humanity ; subsequent to the Gospel, all may be re- duced to figures. Reckon up the followers of each religion. To Confucius, the magi, and the w^orship of idols, a hun- dred and forty-seven millions ; to Boudah and his five apostles, a hundred and seventy millions ; to Brahma, sixty millions; to Mahomet, ninety-six millions. Amidst this census of men, Jesus Christ presents himself with two hundred and seventy millions of disciples, whatever be their communion — Greek, Lutheran, Calvinist, or Catholic; for the Gospel, which is the basis of all, has but one aim, the deliverance of nations — but one futurity, the triumph of truth and humanity. And, let it not be said, that in order to increase our 296 HOPES OF THE FUTURE. Strength, I join the faith of the church with that of heresy — the elect people with the cursed. This language would only reveal human passions. Election and malediction are not from God, but from man. A wretched fakir measures the munificence of the Creator by the narrow bounds of his earthly ambition ; he imagines that the All-powerful has nothing to do beyond this limit ; he curses the work, and thinks to exalt the workman ; but whilst the madman makes to himself a god for his little congregation, the Christian extends his regards over the whole world, and is reassured by seeing that all is prepared for the advantage of the human race. Thanks be to God, the ideas of a chosen people, of a condemned people, are dying away in Europe. The autho- rity of the consistory {infra lapsaire) no longer makes a religion, and the good pleasure of individuals no longer constitutes politics. A universal reason mixes itself up with eve^y thing. The vulgar expression, that the voice of the people is the voice of God, has been understood by the wise. They have felt that, in order to cause truth to arise, it is not so much kings who must be implored, as nations which must be instructed. Truth descends with difficulty from kings to the people, but its triumph is certain when it ascends from the people to kings. Observe what changes have been brought about in consequeuce of two or three evangelical principles having fallen by chance among the crowd. The French charter, the emancipation of Ireland, the liberty of America, the deliverance of Greece, were in the opinion of the people before being thought of by princes. Our masters did nothing so long as they heard only groans, but they became uneasy when vigorous ideas emanated from the crowd. Enlighten the people, and their passions will always be great, and in the interests of huma- nity I Let kings alone, and their ambitious or religious passions will almost always be in the interest of a man. Louis XIV. caused the Albigenses to be killed in order to save his soul. The nation, taken collectively, would have refused to sanction this crime. It is then to public conscience, enlightened by the Gospel and by the laws of nature, that we must appeal. Upon it depends the prosperity of the human race, and the STUDY OP GOD IN THE GOSPEL. 297 forthcoming age will see arise from it the civilization of India, and of Africa, the deliverance of the East, the aboli- tion of castes, the marriage of priests, the emancipation of nations, and the liberty of the universe. CHAPTER XXXV. STUDY OF GOD IN THE GOSPEL. " On ne rendra desormais quelque jeunesse a la race humaine, qu'en retoumant a la religion par la philosophic, et au sentiment par la raison." Madame de Stael — De VAllemagne. I AM treating of religion in presence of its three greatest enemies, incredulity, indifference, and fanaticism, having for myself no aid but reason, and no other object than the truth. A difficult task, and one which I would fain fulfil without wounding the consciences of any. For this reason I hasten to declare, that it is not my aim here either to alter modes of worship, or to overthrow dogmas of belief Above the particular and varying creeds of every sect, there reigns an immutable religion, which embraces them all, as the heavens embrace the universe. Our aim is to borrow from this religion, which is summed up in the gospel, the eternal principles, which agree with all reli- gions ; to introduce them imperceptibly through the influence of women, and to proceed, thus gently, to the triumph of Christianity and to the civilization of the world. I war only with the dogmas which impair our moral powers, with the errors which degrade us. For this end I adopt all Christian communions. Whether Romanists, Lu- therans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, no matter; children of the same God, we cannot be enemies. Retain your name, your modes of w^orship, your prayers ; retain all that belongs to faith, all that does not wound the morals and dignity of man; but at the same time, receive into your souls the seeds of true wisdom, of that love of God and of men, which makes one family of all nations, one religion of all religions. May wisdom then go forth from the darkness of superstition, as Moses did from the mount, with the tables of the Law in his hand. This labour, which I have undertaken with an ardour, 298 STUDY OF GOD IN THE GOSPEL. with an entire faith, is destined, above all, for the women of Europe and of the two Americas ; since, over the whole earth, it is only where the gospel reigns, that true civiliza- tion is to be found. And yet it must be such as can be read even by the disciples of Mahomet, without offending their belief. An Arabian woman, a Persian, or a Turk, adopting its principles, may believe herself a Mahometan, whilst her heart has already become Christian. Ablutions, fasts, prayers in the mosque, abstinence from wine, all the objects of her faith, all the mysteries of her worship, may yet subsist ; but, already initiated in the laws of nature, she ceases to comprehend polygamy, she is astonished at sla- very, and in these two new sentiments commences the regeneration of the East. Fanaticism resists the steel ; the progress of thought destroys it. How to lay down principles which suit all men, and which, without changing any thing in their external wor- ship, shall, by little and little, destroy its immoralities, such is the problem to be resolved. The apostles of these prin- ciples will be henceforward the true apostles of Christianity. Jesus knows that new truths penetrate with difficulty into the spirit of man ; there is so much of error lodged there. But it is not to the spirit, it is to the heart, that the gospel addresses its doctrines. It instructs us in the truth only by awakening within our bosoms sentiments always and every where the same, always and every where repressed, always and every where alive. If it be asked why I address this book to mothers, this is my reply: the little of true piety which yet exists on earth we owe to women much more than to theo- logians. Our religion is that of our mother. The in- struction of priests, cold, dogmatical, appalling, only en- graves itself on our memory ; but Jesus Christ teaches us that religion must be engraved in the heart. The passions will find it there, in its place, with the prayer of our infancy, that prayer learned word by word, repeated every evening, repeated every morning ; that prayer, which makes the innate sense of the infinite dawn in our souls, the very day in which our mother, joining, for the first time, our little hands, has taught us to pronounce the name of God. Sweet instruction of the cradle, prayer of angels, which STUDY OP GOD IN THE GOSPEL. 299 always comes back to us in the midst of our joys, or of our griefs, as an echo of the maternal voice. If these observations be true, if they speak to all hearts, I have no need to justify this book. The more elevated the religion of our mother, the more vivid and profound will be its impression on our hearts. Let the thought of God then descend upon us at the voice of our mother ; let this thought penetrate us ; let its light environ us ; let it be the joy of our infancy, the science of our heart, the life of our soul, and the prop of that new life, at the fatal hour when the last rays of our innocence tremble and disappear under the fire of the passions. O woman ! here is a study without fatigue, and without labour; a study of contemplation and of love. It is God himself who has spoken it, who still speaks it, to your souls, in the double book of the gospel and of nature* 300 RECAPITULATION. CHAPTER XXXVI. RECAPITULATION. "Maintenant leur sort est dans vos mains ; dites un motils vivront; dites un mot et ils mourront." Saint Vincent de Paul. I HAVE arrived at the termination of niy work, and this moment, so much wished for, appears to me, in proportion as it approaches, clouded by fears and doubts, which are but too well justified by my insufficiency. I feel that error must have introduced itself among these ephemeral pages, and this idea would be to me the worst punishment, if I could not testify to myself that in seeking for truth, I have sought it from God. Putting aside all human autho- rities, I have opened the great book of nature. It seemed to me that the work should express the design of the workman. Doubtless, I may have deceived myself in some interpretations of so elevated an order, but by invit- ing all men to the same studies, I have, if I may so say, corrected all my faults beforehand. Convinced of my own weakness, what more could I do? I appeal from my book to the book of nature ; from these feeble pages, to the bar of time and humanity. Two things have strongly pre-occupied me while writing this book. 1. The necessity of giving to moral truths, a mathe- matical origin, an immutable basis. 2. The discovery of the universal agent which should possess itself of these truths, and impress their image upon us. But there is no universal power here below, except that of women. Nature h^s given to them the superintendence of our childhood, and the control of our youth. As chil- dren we owe them our thoughts ; as young men we lavish our sentiments upon them ; and they preserve at a later period as wives, that influence which they had acquired as mothers and as mistresses. Thus the entire circle of our life rolls on beneath their influence. The mission of weak- RECAPITULATION. 301 ness is to regulate strength ; the mission of love is to make us delight in virtue. This truth has been so often repeated, that it has become common ; and yet who thinks of making any thing of it ; who dreams of pouring into the soul of mothers who are all powerful, the principles which may regenerate their children? These principles do not lead to fortune, but to happi- ness ; they all address themselves to the soul. It is then by the study of the faculties of the soul that our education should begin. Until the present day, these faculties have been con- founded with those of the intelligence, which are purely ter- restrial ; and this confusion has been the most powerful weapon of the materialists ; we have now broken it in their hands ; separating the grain from the chaff, the intellectual essence from the intelligent matter; we have drawn the line which separates annihilation from immortality. What surprise and joy have we not experienced ! In proportion as we advanced in this labour, the most sublime truths have presented themselves to us, naturally and simply; and the separation having been effected, it was ascertained that the faculties of the intelligence all tended towards the earth, and that the soul, like a sun, radiated entirely towards God. Thus each man carries within himself, not the demon- stration of the existence of God, but something more powerful and more irresistible, five faculties which dis- close him. It is to the developement of these five faculties of the soul, that the education of the mother should tend; the rest belongs to ordinary education, and lies in the domain of the intelligence. The soul raises us to God ; and God, as Raymond Lebon has so well said, is all that can be conceived of great, he who can do every thing by himself. On this first truth all the others depend. God is, and it is because He is, that we are ; the proofs of his existence are not only external to us, but also within us. He has made his thoughts evident by giving them a body, and by giving us a soul. We have tried to decipher some lines of the great book which He has placed beneath the eyes of the human race, 302 RECAPITULATION, and we have seen all our errors disappear before this divine revelation. By its means Plato purifies himself; and the Gospel itself, stripped of all the veils with which the middle ages obscured its light, has again become the most harmonious expression of the laws of nature. The two books correspond to each other in this truth, so simple, and yet so vast — " The unity of God" — and in this sentiment, so sublime and so natural — *' The love of God and of man." Unity of God, that is to say, one only God, the Father of all men ; and consequently brethren upon the whole earth. The equality of rights, the liberty of all, the abolition of castes, of slavery, of war, of the penalty of death, emanate from the confraternity of the human race. The love of God and of man. Here religion assumes a moral character by uniting God to man, like the father to the child ; and morality assumes a religious character by uniting man to God, like the child to the father. In proportion as the soul becomes impressed with these divine sentiments, national hatreds become extinguished, prejudices disappear, civilization extends itself; the uni- versal people is constituted, and the reign of God advances from the west to the east. The reign of God is the unity of the human race ; it is the happiness of humanity in virtue. The universe will arrive at it by the study of the laws of nature, and by their comparison with human laws. These pious studies would give to our children the con- tinual presence of God ; a sublime control, which would lead them to the discovery of physical and moral truths, since truth is but the evidence which nature gives of its author. And in order to accomplish this prodigious revolution, to change the destinies of the world, to reunite families, to link nations closer together, to renew all legislations, what is required ? an entire generation must arise with the intel- ligence of these truths ; a great people must receive them in its cradle. Oh, women ! could you but have a glimpse of some of the wonders promised to maternal influence, with what a noble pride would you enter upon this career, which nature RECAPITULATION. 303 has generously opened to you during so many ages ! That which is not in the power of any monarch, of any nation, it is sufficient that you should will it in order to execute it. You only upon earth dispose of the generation which is just born, and you alone can reunite its scattered mem- bers, and impart to them the same impulse. That which I could only write upon this insensible paper, you can en- grave on the heart of a whole people. Ah ! when I see in our promenades and public gardens, this boisterous crowd of little children who are playing around, my heart beats with joy from thinking that they still belong to you. Let each of you labour only for the happiness of your child ; in each individual happiness, God has placed the promise of the general happiness. Young girls, young wives, young mothers, you hold the sceptre ; in your souls much more than in the laws of legislators, now repose the futurity of Europe, the world, and the destinies of the human race. THE END. :*4 1^'" .657. ^m 419^^ .,7 ^ \--^ . %. ,<^ "^^. ; ■'^/^. , « , '^^_ ■'«* -^ •A O ^ '\ -^' -t tV * ^ \ -0^ .^ _„ % ' --Si .' .^^ ^^ vV Oo \' .^ '^/^ ''"^"' <^ '"-^^ 0^ ^\^1'^/ c^ ^^ X -J^^ '■'■''^ .^\^^ ■'^y>- . B . -/^^^ ■1 0' .^ ^ *x V / ,^ * s " -^A V^ •>'^ ^\ V *• xC^ ^rK ^. ^^' '^/>, ::x\>^ \ 'Km -/'^''I^'^ ^"^^ ^o \^^^. ' .1^' v'^- '^. 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