The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte

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СКАЧАТЬ from a Briton in the time of Caesar, and by retaining only the part which is common to all.2210 The essence thus obtained is a prodigiously meager one, an infinitely curtailed extract of human nature, that is, in the phraseology of the day,

      "A BEING WITH A DESIRE TO BE HAPPY AND THE FACULTY OF REASONING,"

      nothing more and nothing else. After this pattern several million individuals, all precisely alike, have been prepared while, through a second simplification, as extraordinary as the first one, they are all supposed to be free and all equal, without a past, without kindred, without responsibility, without traditions, without customs, like so many mathematical units, all separable and all equivalent, and then it is imagined that, assembled together for the first time, these proceed to make their primitive bargain. From the nature they are supposed to possess and the situation in which they are placed, no difficulty is found in deducing their interests, their wills, and the contract between them. But if this contract suits them, it does not follow that it suits others. On the contrary, if follows that is does not suit others; the inconvenience becomes extreme on its being imposed on a living society; the measure of that inconvenience will be the immensity of the distance which divides a hollow abstraction, a philosophical phantom, an empty insubstantial image from the real and complete man.

In any event we are not here considering a specimen, so reduced and mutilated as to be only an outline of a human being; no, we are to the contrary considering Frenchmen of the year 1789. It is for them alone that the constitution is being made: it is therefore they alone who should be considered; they are manifestly men of a particular species, having their peculiar temperament, their special aptitudes, their own inclinations, their religion, their history, all adding up into a mental and moral structure, hereditary and deeply rooted, bequeathed to them by the indigenous stock, and to which every great event, each political or literary phase for twenty centuries, has added a growth, a transformation or a custom. It is like some tree of a unique species whose trunk, thickened by age, preserves in its annual rings and in its knots, branches, and curvatures, the deposits which its sap has made and the imprint of the innumerable seasons through which it has passed. Using the philosophic definition, so vague and trite, to such an organism, is only a puerile label teaching us nothing.—And all the more because extreme diversities and inequalities show themselves on this exceedingly elaborate and complicated background—those of age, education, faith, class and fortune; and these must be taken into account, for these contribute to the formation of interests, passions, and dispositions. To take only the most important of these, it is clear that, according to the average of human life,2211 one-half of the population is composed of children, and, besides this, one-half of the adults are women. In every twenty inhabitants eighteen are Catholic, of whom sixteen are believers, at least through habit and tradition. Twenty-five out of twenty-six millions of Frenchmen cannot read, one million at the most being able to do so; and in political matters only five or six hundred are competent. As to the condition of each class, its ideas, its sentiments, its kind and degree of culture, we should have to devote a large volume to a mere sketch of them.

      There is still another feature and the most important of all. These men who are so different from each other are far from being independent, or from contracting together for the first time. They and their ancestors for eight hundred years form a national body, and it is because they belong to this body that they live, multiply, labor, make acquisitions, become enlightened and civilized, and accumulate the vast heritage of comforts and intelligence which they now enjoy. Each in this community is like the cell of an organized body; undoubtedly the body is only an accumulation of cells, but the cell is born, subsists, develops and attains its individual ends only be the healthy condition of the whole body. Its chief interest, accordingly, is the prosperity of the whole organism, and the fundamental requirement of all the little fragmentary lives, whether they know it or not, is the conservation of the great total life in which they are comprised as musical notes in a concert.—Not only is this a necessity for them, but it is also a duty. We are all born with a debt to our country, and this debt increases while we grow up; it is with the assistance of our country, under the protection of the law, upheld by the authorities, that our ancestors and parents have given us life, property, and education. Each person's faculties, ideas, attitudes, his or her entire moral and physical being are the products to which the community has contributed, directly or indirectly, at least as tutor and guardian. By virtue of this the state is his creditor, just as a destitute father is of his able-bodied son; it can lay claim to nourishment, services, and, in all the force or resources of which he disposes, it deservedly demands a share.—This he knows and feels, the notion of country is deeply implanted within him, and when occasion calls for it, it will show itself in ardent emotions, fueling steady sacrifice and heroic effort.—Such are veritable Frenchmen, and we at once see how different they are from the simple, indistinguishable, detached monads which the philosophers insist on substituting for them. Their association need not be created, for it already exists; for eight centuries they have a "common weal" (la chose publique). The safety and prosperity of this common weal is at once their interest, their need, their duty, and even their most secret wish. If it is possible to speak here of a contract, their quasi-contract is made and settled for them beforehand. The first article, at all events, is stipulated for, and this overrides all the others. The nation must not be dissolved. Public authorities must, accordingly, exist, and these must be respected. If there are a number of these, they must be so defined and so balanced as to be of mutual assistance, instead of neutralizing each other by their opposition. Whatever government is adopted, it must place matters in the hands best qualified to conduct them. The law must not exist for the advantage of the minority, nor for that of the majority, but for the entire community.—In regard to this first article no one must derogate from it, neither the minority nor the majority, neither the Assembly elected by the nation, nor the nation itself, even if unanimous. It has no right arbitrarily to dispose of the common weal, to put it in peril according to its caprice, to subordinate it to the application of a theory or to the interest of a single class, even if this class is the most numerous. For, that which is the common weal does not belong to it, but to the whole community, past, present, and to come. Each generation is simply the temporary manager and responsible trustee of a precious and glorious patrimony which it has received from the former generation, and which it has to transmit to the one that comes after it. In this perpetual endowment, to which all Frenchmen from the first days of France have brought their offerings, there is no doubt about the intentions of countless benefactors; they have made their gifts conditionally, that is, on the condition that the endowment should remain intact, and that each successive beneficiary should merely serve as the administrator of it. Should any of the beneficiaries, through presumption or levity, through rashness or one-sidedness, compromise the charge entrusted to them, they wrong all their predecessors whose sacrifices they invalidate, and all their successors whose hopes they frustrate. Accordingly, before undertaking to frame a constitution, let the whole community be considered in its entirety, not merely in the present but in the future, as far as the eye can reach. The interest of the public, viewed in this far-sighted manner, is the end to which all the rest must be subordinate, and for which a constitution provides. A constitution, whether oligarchic, monarchist, or aristocratic, is simply an instrument, good if it attains this end, and bad if it does not attain it, and which, to attain it, must, like every species of mechanism, vary according to the ground, materials, and circumstances. The most ingenious is illegitimate if it dissolves the State, while the clumsiest is legitimate if it keeps the State intact. There is none that springs out of an anterior, universal, and absolute right. According to the people, the epoch, and the degree of civilization, according to the outer or inner condition of things, all civil or political equality or inequality may, in turn, be or cease to be beneficial or hurtful, and therefore justify the legislator in removing or preserving it. It is according to this superior and salutary law, and not according to an imaginary and impossible contract, that he is to organize, limit, delegate and distribute from the center to the extremities, through inheritance or through election, through equalization or through privilege, the rights of the citizen and the power of the community.

III.—The estates of a society.

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