CHAPTER VII.
In the last chapter but one, I have attempted to ascertain what those circumstances were which, almost immediately after the death of Louis XIV., prepared the way for the French Revolution. The result of the inquiry has been, that the French intellect was stimulated into activity by the examples and teachings of England; and that this stimulus caused, or at all events encouraged, a great breach between the government of France and its literature;—a breach the more remarkable, because during the reign of Louis XIV. the literature, notwithstanding its temporary brilliancy, had been invariably submissive, and had intimately allied itself with the government, which was always ready to reward its services. We have also seen that, this rupture having arisen between the governing classes and the intellectual classes, it followed, that the former, true to their ancient instincts, began to chastise that spirit of inquiry to which they were unaccustomed: hence those persecutions which, with hardly a single exception, were directed against every man of letters, and hence too those systematic attempts to reduce literature to a subserviency similar to that in which it had been held under Louis XIV. It has, moreover, appeared, that the great Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, though smarting from the injuries constantly inflicted on them by the government and the church, abstained from attacking the government, but directed all their hostility against the church. This apparent anomaly, of the religious institutions being assailed, and the political institutions being spared, has been shown to be a perfectly natural circumstance, arising out of the antecedents of the French nation; and an attempt has been made to explain what those antecedents were, and how they acted. In the present chapter, I purpose to complete this inquiry by examining the next great stage in the history of the French mind. It was needful that, before both church and state could fall, men should change the ground of their hostility, and should attack political abuses with the zeal they had hitherto reserved for religious ones. The question, therefore, now arises, as to the circumstances under which this change took place, and the period when it actually occurred.
The circumstances which accompanied this great change are, as we shall presently see, very complicated; and, as they have never yet been studied in connexion with each other, I shall, in the remaining part of this volume, examine them at considerable length. On this point it will, I think, be practicable to arrive at some precise and well-defined results respecting the history of the French Revolution. But the other point, namely, the time at which the change took place, is not only much more obscure, but by its nature will never admit of complete precision. This, however, is a deficiency it possesses in common with every other change in the history of man. The circumstances of each change may always be known, provided the evidence is ample and authentic. But no amount of evidence can enable us to fix the date of the change itself. That to which attention is usually drawn by the compilers of history is, not the change, but is merely the external result which follows the change. The real history of the human race is the history of tendencies which are perceived by the mind, and not of events which are discerned by the senses. It is on this account that no historical epoch will ever admit of that chronological precision familiar to antiquaries and genealogists. The death of a prince, the loss of a battle, and the change of a dynasty, are matters which fall entirely within the province of the senses; and the moment in which they happen can be recorded by the most ordinary observers. But those great intellectual revolutions upon which all other revolutions are based, cannot be measured by so simple a standard. To trace the movements of the human mind, it is necessary to contemplate it under several aspects, and then coördinate the results of what we have separately studied. By this means we arrive at certain general conclusions, which, like the ordinary estimate of averages, increase in value in proportion as we increase the number of instances from which they are collected. That this is a safe and available method, appears not only from the history of physical knowledge,[952] but also from the fact, that it is the basis of the empirical maxims by which all men of sound understanding are guided in those ordinary transactions of life to which the generalizations of science have not yet been applied. Indeed such maxims, which are highly valuable, and which in their aggregate form what is called common sense, are never collected with any thing like the precautions that the philosophic historian ought to feel himself bound to employ.
The real objection, therefore, to generalizations respecting the development of the intellect of a nation is, not that they want certainty, but that they lack precision. This is just the point at which the historian diverges from the annalist. That the English intellect, for example, is gradually becoming more democratic, or, as it is termed, more liberal, is as certain as that the crown of this country is worn by Queen Victoria. But though both these statements are equally certain, the latter statement is more precise. We can tell the very day on which the Queen ascended the throne; the moment of her death will be known with equal precision; and there can be no doubt that many other particulars respecting her will be minutely and accurately preserved. In tracing, however, the growth of English liberalism, all such exactness deserts us. We can point out the year in which the Reform Bill was passed; but who can point out the year in which the Reform Bill first became necessary? In the same way, that the Jews will be admitted into parliament, is as certain as that the Catholics have been admitted. Both these measures are the inevitable result of that increasing indifference to theological disputes, which must now be obvious to every man who does not wilfully shut his eyes. But while we know the hour in which the bill for Catholic emancipation received the assent of the crown, there is no one now living who can tell even the year in which similar justice will be granted to the Jews. Both events are equally certain, but both events are not equally precise.
This distinction between certainty and precision I have stated at some length, because it seems to be little understood,[953] and because it is intimately connected with the subject now before us. The fact of the French intellect having, during the eighteenth century, passed through two totally distinct epochs, can be proved by every description of evidence; but it is impossible to ascertain the precise time when one epoch succeeded the other. All that we can do is, to compare the different indications which the history of that age presents, and arrive at an approximation which may guide future inquirers. It would perhaps be more prudent to avoid making any particular statement; but as the employment of dates seems necessary to bring such matters clearly before the mind, I will, by way of provisional hypothesis, fix on the year 1750, as the period when those agitations of society which caused the French Revolution entered into their second and political stage.
That this was about the period when the great movement, hitherto directed against the church, began to be turned against the state, is an inference which many circumstances seem to warrant. We know on the best authority, that towards the year 1750, the French began their celebrated inquiries respecting political economy,[954] and that, in their attempt to raise it to a science, they were led to perceive the immense injury which the interference of government had produced on the material interests of the country.[955] Hence a conviction arose that, even in regard to the accumulation of wealth, the authority possessed by the rulers of France was mischievous, since it enabled them, under the notion of protecting commerce, to trouble the freedom of individual action, and to prevent trade from running into those profitable channels which traders are best able to select for themselves. Scarcely had a knowledge of this important truth been diffused, when its consequences were quickly seen in the national literature, and in the habits of national thought. The sudden increase in France of works relating to finance and to other questions of government, is, indeed, one of the most remarkable features of that age. With such rapidity did the movement spread, that we are told that, soon after 1755, the economists effected a schism between the nation and the government;[956] and Voltaire, writing in 1759, complains that the charms of lighter literature were entirely neglected amidst the general zeal for these new studies.[957] It is not necessary to follow the subsequent history of this great change; nor need I trace the influence exercised shortly before the Revolution by the later economists, and particularly by Turgot, the most eminent of their leaders.[958] It is enough to say, that within about twenty years after the movement was first clearly seen, the taste for economical and financial inquiries became so common, that it penetrated those parts of society where habits of thought are not very frequent; since we find that, even in fashionable life, the conversation no longer turned upon new poems and new plays, but upon political questions, and subjects immediately connected with them.[959] Indeed, when Necker, in 1781, published his celebrated Report on the Finances of France, the eagerness to obtain it was beyond all bounds; six thousand copies were sold the first day; and the demand still increasing, two presses were kept constantly at work in order to satisfy the universal curiosity.[960] And what makes the democratic tendency of all this the more obvious is, that Necker was at that time one of the servants of the crown; so that his work, looking at its general spirit, has been truly called an appeal to the people against the king by one of the ministers of the king himself.[961]
This evidence of the remarkable change which, in or about 1750, the French mind underwent, and which formed what I term the second epoch of the eighteenth century, might be easily strengthened by a wider survey of the literature of that time. Immediately after the middle of the century, Rousseau published those eloquent works, which exercised immense influence, and in which the rise of the new epoch is very observable; for this most powerful writer abstained from those attacks on Christianity,[962] which unhappily had been too frequent, and exerted himself almost exclusively against the civil and political abuses of the existing society.[963] To trace the effects which this wonderful, but in some instances misguided, man produced on the mind of his own and of the succeeding generation, would occupy too large a share of this Introduction; though the inquiry is full of interest, and is one which it were to be wished some competent historian would undertake.[964] Inasmuch, however, as the philosophy of Rousseau was itself only a single phase of a far larger movement, I shall at present pass over the individual, in order to consider the general spirit of an age in which he played a vast, but still a subsidiary part.
The formation of a new epoch in France, about the year 1750, may be further illustrated by three circumstances of considerable interest, all pointing in the same direction. The first circumstance is, that not a single great French writer attacked the political institutions of the country before the middle of the century; while, after that period, the attacks of the ablest men were incessant. The second circumstance is, that the only eminent Frenchmen who continued to assail the clergy, and yet refused to interfere in politics, were those who, like Voltaire, had already reached an advanced age, and had, therefore, drawn their ideas from the preceding generation, in which the church had been the sole object of hostility. The third circumstance, which is even more striking than the other two, is, that almost at the same moment there was seen a change in the policy of the government; since, singularly enough, the ministers of the crown displayed for the first time an open enmity against the church, just as the intellect of the country was preparing for its decisive onslaught on the government itself. Of these three propositions, the first two will probably be admitted by every student of French literature: at all events, if they are false, they are so exact and peremptory, that it will be easy to refute them by giving examples to the contrary. But the third proposition, being more general, is less susceptible of a negative, and will therefore require the support of that special evidence which I will now adduce.
The great French writers having by the middle of the eighteenth century succeeded in sapping the foundations of the church, it was natural that the government should step in and plunder an establishment which the course of events had weakened. This, which took place in France under Louis XV., was similar to what occurred in England under Henry VIII.; for in both cases a remarkable intellectual movement, directed against the clergy, preceded and facilitated the attacks made on them by the crown. It was in 1749 that the French government took the first decisive step against the church. And what proves the hitherto backward state of the country in such matters is, that this consisted of an edict against mortmain, a simple contrivance for weakening the ecclesiastical power, which we in England had adopted long before. Machault, who had recently been raised to the office of controller-general, has the glory of being the originator of this new policy. In August 1749,[965] he issued that celebrated edict which forbade the formation of any religious establishment without the consent of the crown, duly expressed in letters-patent, and registered in parliament; effective precautions, which, says the great historian of France, show that Machault ‘considered not only the increase, but even the existence of these ecclesiastical properties, as a mischief to the kingdom.’[966]
This was an extraordinary step on the part of the French government; but what followed showed that it was only the beginning of a much larger design.[967] Machault, so far from being discountenanced, was, the year after he had issued this edict, intrusted with the seals in addition to the controllership;[968] for, as Lacretelle observes, the court ‘thought the time had now come to tax the property of the clergy.’[969] During the forty years which elapsed between this period and the beginning of the Revolution, the same anti-ecclesiastical policy prevailed. Among the successors of Machault, the only three of much ability were Choiseul, Necker, and Turgot, all of whom were strenuous opponents of that spiritual body, which no minister would have assailed in the preceding generation. Not only these eminent statesmen, but even such inferior men as Calonne, Malesherbes, and Terray, looked on it as a stroke of policy to attack privileges which superstition had consecrated, and which the clergy had hitherto reserved, partly to extend their own influence, and partly to minister to those luxurious and profligate habits, which in the eighteenth century were a scandal to the ecclesiastical order.
While these measures were being adopted against the clergy, another important step was taken in precisely the same direction. Now it was that the government began to favour that great doctrine of religious liberty, the mere defence of which it had hitherto punished as a dangerous speculation. The connexion between the attacks on the clergy and the subsequent progress of toleration, may be illustrated, not only by the rapidity with which one event succeeded the other, but also by the fact, that both of them emanated from the same quarter. Machault, who was the author of the edict of mortmain, was also the first minister who showed a wish to protect the Protestants against the persecutions of the Catholic priesthood.[970] In this he only partly succeeded; but the impetus thus given soon became irresistible. In 1760, that is only nine years later, there was seen a marked change in the administration of the laws; and the edicts against heresy, though not yet repealed, were enforced with unprecedented mildness.[971] The movement quickly spread from the capital to the remoter parts of the kingdom; and we are assured that, after the year 1762, the reaction was felt even in those provinces, which, from their backward condition, had always been most remarkable for religious bigotry.[972] At the same time, as we shall presently see, a great schism arose in the church itself, which lessened the power of the clergy, by dividing them into two hostile parties. Of these factions, one made common cause with the state, still further aiding the overthrow of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Indeed, the dissensions became so violent, that the last great blow dealt to spiritual ascendency by the government of Louis XVI. proceeded not from the hands of a layman, but from one of the leaders of the church; a man who, from his standing, would, under ordinary circumstances, have protected the interests which he now eagerly attacked. In 1787, only two years before the Revolution, Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse,[973] who was then minister, laid before the parliament of Paris a royal edict, by which the discouragement hitherto thrown upon heresy was suddenly removed. By this law, the Protestants were invested with all those civil rights which the Catholic clergy had long held out as the reward of adherence to their own opinions.[974] It was, therefore, natural that the more orthodox party should condemn, as an impious innovation,[975] a measure which, by placing the two sects, in some degree, on the same footing, seemed to sanction the progress of error; and which certainly deprived the French church of one of the chief attractions by which men had hitherto been induced to join her communion. Now, however, all these considerations were set at nought. Such was the prevailing temper, that the parliament, though then in a mood very refractory to the royal authority, did not hesitate to register the edict of the king; and this great measure became law; the dominant party being astonished, we are told, how any doubt could be entertained as to the wisdom of the principles on which it was based.[976]
These were omens of the coming storm; signs of the time, which those who run may read. Nor are there wanting other marks, by which the true complexion of that age may be clearly seen. In addition to what has been just related, the government, soon after the middle of the eighteenth century, inflicted a direct and fatal injury upon the spiritual authority. This consisted in the expulsion of the Jesuits; which is an event, important not only for its ultimate effects, but also as an evidence of the feelings of men, and of what could be peaceably accomplished by the government of him who was called ‘the most Christian king.’[977]
The Jesuits, for at least fifty years after their institution, rendered immense services to civilization, partly by tempering with a secular element the more superstitious views of their great predecessors, the Dominicans and Franciscans, and partly by organizing a system of education far superior to any yet seen in Europe. In no university could there be found a scheme of instruction so comprehensive as theirs; and certainly no where was displayed such skill in the management of youth, or such insight into the general operations of the human mind. It must, in justice, be added, that this illustrious society, notwithstanding its eager, and often unprincipled, ambition, was, during a considerable period, the steady friend of science, as well as of literature; and that it allowed to its members a freedom and a boldness of speculation which had never been permitted by any other monastic order.
As, however, civilization advanced, the Jesuits, like every spiritual hierarchy the world has yet seen, began to lose ground; and this not so much from their own decay, as from a change in the spirit of those who surrounded them. An institution admirably adapted to an early form of society, was ill suited to the same society in its maturer state. In the sixteenth century, the Jesuits were before their age; in the eighteenth century, they were behind it. In the sixteenth century, they were the great missionaries of knowledge; because they believed that, by its aid, they could subjugate the consciences of men. But, in the eighteenth century, their materials were more refractory; they had to deal with a perverse and stiff-necked generation; they saw in every country the ecclesiastical authority rapidly declining; and they clearly perceived that their only chance of retaining their old dominion was, by checking that knowledge, the progress of which they had formerly done much to accelerate.[978]
Under these circumstances, the statesmen of France, almost immediately after the middle of the eighteenth century, determined to ruin an order which had long ruled the world, and which was still the greatest bulwark of the church. In this design they were aided by a curious movement which had taken place in the church itself, and which, being connected with views of much wider import, deserves the attention even of those for whom theological controversies have no interest.
Among the many points on which metaphysicians have wasted their strength, that of free-will has provoked the hottest disputes. And what has increased the acerbity of their language, is, that this, which is eminently a metaphysical question, has been taken up by theologians, who have treated it with that warmth for which they are remarkable.[979] From the time of Pelagius, if not earlier,[980] Christianity has been divided into two great sects, which, though in some respects uniting by insensible shades, have always preserved the broad features of their original difference. By one sect, the freedom of the will is virtually, and often expressly, denied; for it is asserted, not only that we cannot of our own will effect anything meritorious, but that whatever good we may do will be useless, since the Deity has predestined some men to perdition, others to salvation. By the other sect, the freedom of the will is as strongly upheld; good works are declared essential to salvation; and the opposite party is accused of exaggerating that state of grace of which faith is a necessary accompaniment.[981]
These opposite principles, when pushed to their logical consequences, must lead the first sect into antinomianism,[982] and the second sect into the doctrine of supererogatory works.[983] But since on such subjects, men feel far more than they reason, it usually happens that they prefer following some common and accredited standard, or appealing to some ancient name:[984] and they, therefore, generally class themselves on the one side under Augustin, Calvin, and Jansenius; on the other side under Pelagius, Arminius, and Molina.
Now, it is an interesting fact, that the doctrines which in England are called Calvinistic, have been always connected with a democratic spirit; while those of Arminianism have found most favour among the aristocratic or protective party. In the republics of Switzerland, of North America, and of Holland, Calvinism was always the popular creed.[985] On the other hand, in those evil days, immediately after the death of Elizabeth, when our liberties were in imminent peril; when the Church of England, aided by the crown, attempted to subjugate the consciences of men; and when the monstrous claim of the divine right of episcopacy was first put forward;[986]—then it was that Arminianism became the cherished doctrine of the ablest and most ambitious of the ecclesiastical party.[987] And in that sharp retribution which followed, the Puritans and Independents, by whom the punishment was inflicted, were, with scarcely an exception, Calvinists:[988] nor should we forget, that the first open movement against Charles proceeded from Scotland, where the principles of Calvin had long been in the ascendant.
This different tendency of these two creeds is so clearly marked, that an inquiry into its causes becomes a necessary part of general history, and as we shall presently see, is intimately connected with the history of the French Revolution.
The first circumstance by which we must be struck is, that Calvinism is a doctrine for the poor, and Arminianism for the rich. A creed which insists upon the necessity of faith, must be less costly than one which insists upon the necessity of works. In the former case, the sinner seeks salvation by the strength of his belief; in the latter case, he seeks it by the fullness of his contributions. And as those contributions, wherever the clergy have much power, always flow in the same direction, we find that in countries which favour the Arminian doctrine of works, the priests are better paid, and the churches more richly ornamented, than they are where Calvinism has the upper hand. Indeed it is evident to the most vulgar calculation, that a religion which concentrates our charity upon ourselves, is less expensive than one which directs our charity to others.
This is the first great practical divergence of the two creeds: a divergence which may be verified by any one who is acquainted with the histories of different Christian nations, or who has even travelled in countries where the different tenets are professed. It is also observable, that the Church of Rome, whose worship is addressed mainly to the senses, and who delights in splendid cathedrals and pompous ceremonies, has always displayed against the Calvinists an animosity far greater than she has done against any other Protestant sect.[989]
Out of these circumstances, inevitably arose the aristocratic tendency of Arminianism, and the democratic tendency of Calvinism. The people love pomp and pageantry as much as the nobles do, but they do not love to pay for them. Their untutored minds are easily captivated by the array of a numerous priesthood, and by the gorgeousness of a well-appointed temple. Still, they know full well that these things absorb a large part of that wealth which would otherwise flow into their own cottages. On the other hand, the aristocracy, by their standing, their habits, and the traditions of their education, naturally contract a taste for expense, which makes them unite splendour with religion, and connect pomp with piety. Besides this, they have an intuitive and well-founded belief that their own interests are associated with the interests of the priesthood, and that whatever weakens the one will hasten the downfall of the other. Hence it is, that every Christian democracy has simplified its external worship; every Christian aristocracy has embellished it. By a parity of reasoning, the more any society tends to equality, the more likely it is that its theological opinions will be Calvinistic; while the more a society tends towards inequality, the greater the probability of those opinions being Arminian.
It would be easy to push this contrast still further, and to show that Calvinism is more favourable to the sciences, Arminianism to the arts;[990] and that, on the same principle, the first is better suited to thinkers, the other to scholars.[991] But without pretending to trace the whole of this divergence, it is very important to observe, that the professors of the former religion are more likely to acquire habits of independent thinking than those of the latter. And this on two distinct grounds. In the first place, even the most ordinary of the Calvinistic party are, by the very terms of their creed, led, in religious matters, to fix their attention on their own minds rather than on the minds of others. They, therefore, as a body, are intellectually more narrow than their opponents, but less servile; their views, though generalized from a smaller field, are more independent; they are less attached to antiquity, and more heedless of those traditions to which the Arminian scholars attach great importance. In the second place, those who associate metaphysics with their religion are led by Calvinism into the doctrine of necessity;[992] a theory which, though often misunderstood, is pregnant with great truths, and is better calculated than any other system to develop the intellect, because it involves that clear conception of law, the attainment of which is the highest point the human understanding can reach.
These considerations will enable the reader to see the immense importance of that revival of Jansenism, which took place in the French church during the eighteenth century. For, Jansenism being essentially Calvinistic,[993] those tendencies appeared in France by which Calvinism is marked. There appeared the inquisitive, democratic, and insubordinate spirit, which has always accompanied that creed. A further confirmation of the truth of the principles just laid down is, that Jansenism originated with a native of the Dutch Republic;[994] that it was introduced into France during the glimpse of freedom which preceded the power of Louis XIV.;[995] that it was forcibly repressed in his arbitrary reign;[996] and that before the middle of the eighteenth century, it again arose, as the natural product of a state of society by which the French Revolution was brought about.
The connexion between the revival of Jansenism and the destruction of the Jesuits, is obvious. After the death of Louis XIV., the Jansenists rapidly gained ground, even in the Sorbonne;[997] and by the middle of the eighteenth century, they had organized a powerful party in the French parliament.[998] About the same period, their influence began to show itself in the executive government, and among the officers of the crown. Machault, who held the important post of controller-general, was known to favour their opinions;[999] and a few years after his retirement, Choiseul was called to the head of affairs; a man of considerable ability, by whom they were openly protected.[1000] Their views were likewise supported by Laverdy, controller-general in 1764, and by Terray, controller of finances in 1769.[1001] The procureur-general, Gilbert des Voisins, was a Jansenist;[1002] so also was one of his successors, Chauvelin;[1003] and so was the advocate-general Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau;[1004] and so too was Camus, the well-known advocate of the clergy.[1005] Turgot, the greatest statesman of the age, is said to have embraced the same opinions;[1006] while Necker, who on two different occasions possessed almost supreme power, was notoriously a rigid Calvinist. To this may be added, that not only Necker, but also Rousseau, to whom a large share in causing the Revolution is justly ascribed, were born in Geneva, and drew their earliest ideas from that great nursery of the Calvinistic theology.
In such a state of things as this, it was impossible that a body like the Jesuits should hold their ground. They were the last defenders of authority and tradition, and it was natural that they should fall in an age when statesmen were sceptics, and theologians were Calvinists. Even the people had already marked them for destruction; and when Damiens, in 1757, attempted to assassinate the king, it was generally believed that they were the instigators of the act.[1007] This we now know to be false; but the existence of such a rumour is evidence of the state of the popular mind. At all events, the doom of the Jesuits was fixed. In April 1761, parliament ordered their constitutions to be laid before them.[1008] In August, they were forbidden to receive novices, their colleges were closed, and a number of their most celebrated works were publicly burned by the common hangman.[1009] Finally, in 1762, another edict appeared, by which the Jesuits were condemned without even being heard in their own defence;[1010] their property was directed to be sold, and their order secularized; they were declared ‘unfit to be admitted into a well-governed country,’ and their institute and society were formally abolished.[1011]
Such was the way in which this great society, long the terror of the world, fell before the pressure of public opinion. What makes its fall the more remarkable, is, that the pretext which was alleged to justify the examination of its constitutions, was one so slight, that no former government would have listened to it for a single moment. This immense spiritual corporation was actually tried by a temporal court for ill faith in a mercantile transaction, and for refusing to pay a sum of money said to be due![1012] The most important body in the Catholic church, the spiritual leaders of France, the educators of her youth, and the confessors of her kings, were brought to the bar, and sued in their collective capacity, for the fraudulent repudiation of a common debt![1013] So marked was the predisposition of affairs, that it was not found necessary to employ for the destruction of the Jesuits any of those arts by which the popular mind is commonly inflamed. The charge upon which they were sentenced, was not that they had plotted against the state; nor that they had corrupted the public morals; nor that they wished to subvert religion. These were the accusations which were brought in the seventeenth century, and which suited the genius of that age. But in the eighteenth century, all that was required was some trifling accident, that might serve as a pretence to justify what the nation had already determined. To ascribe, therefore, this great event to the bankruptcy of a trader, or the intrigues of a mistress,[1014] is to confuse the cause of an act with the pretext under which the act is committed. In the eyes of the men of the eighteenth century, the real crime of the Jesuits was, that they belonged to the past rather than to the present, and that by defending the abuses of ancient establishments, they obstructed the progress of mankind. They stood in the way of the age, and the age swept them from its path. This was the real cause of their abolition: a cause not likely to be perceived by those writers, who, under the guise of historians, are only collectors of the prattle and gossip of courts; and who believe that the destinies of great nations can be settled in the ante-chambers of ministers, and in the councils of kings.
After the fall of the Jesuits, there seemed to be nothing remaining which could save the French church from immediate destruction.[1015] The old theological spirit had been for some time declining, and the clergy were suffering from their own decay even more than from the attacks made upon them. The advance of knowledge was producing in France the same results as those which I have pointed out in England; and the increasing attractions of science drew off many illustrious men, who in a preceding age would have been active members of the spiritual profession. That splendid eloquence, for which the French clergy had been remarkable, was now dying away, and there were no longer heard the voices of those great orators, at whose bidding the temples had formerly been filled.[1016] Massillon was the last of that celebrated race who had so enthralled the mind, and the magic of whose fascination it is even now hard to withstand. He died in 1742; and after him the French clergy possessed no eminent men of any kind, neither thinkers, nor orators, nor writers.[1017] Nor did there seem the least possibility of their recovering their lost position. While society was advancing they were receding. All the sources of their power were dried up. They had no active leaders; they had lost the confidence of government; they had forfeited the respect of the people; they had become a mark for the gibes of the age.[1018]
It does, at first sight, seem strange that, under these circumstances, the French clergy should have been able, for nearly thirty years after the abolition of the Jesuits, to maintain their standing, so as to interfere with impunity in public affairs.[1019] The truth, however, is, that this temporary reprieve of the ecclesiastical order was owing to that movement which I have already noticed, and by virtue of which the French intellect, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, changed the ground of its attack, and, directing its energies against political abuses, neglected in some degree those spiritual abuses to which its attention had been hitherto confined. The result was, that in France the government enforced a policy which the great thinkers had indeed originated, but respecting which they were becoming less eager. The most eminent Frenchmen were beginning their attacks upon the state, and in the heat of their new warfare they slackened their opposition to the church. But in the mean time, the seeds they had sown germinated in the state itself. So rapid was the march of affairs, that those anti-ecclesiastical opinions which, a few years earlier, were punished as the paradoxes of designing men, were now taken up and put into execution by senators and ministers. The rulers of France carried into effect principles which had hitherto been simply a matter of theory; and thus it happened, as is always the case, that practical statesmen only apply and work out ideas which have long before been suggested by more advanced thinkers.
Hence it followed, that at no period during the eighteenth century did the speculative classes and practical classes thoroughly combine against the church: since, in the first half of the century, the clergy were principally assailed by the literature, and not by the government; in the latter half of the century, by the government, and not by the literature. Some of the circumstances of this singular transition have been already stated, and I hope clearly brought before the mind of the reader. I now purpose to complete the generalization, by proving that a corresponding change was taking place in all other branches of inquiry; and that, while in the first period attention was chiefly directed towards mental phenomena, it was in the second period more directed towards physical phenomena. From this, the political movement received a vast accession of strength. For the French intellect, shifting the scene of its labours, diverted the thoughts of men from the internal to the external, and concentrating attention upon their material rather than upon their spiritual wants, turned against the encroachments of the state an hostility formerly reserved for the encroachments of the church. Whenever a tendency arises to prefer what comes from without to what comes from within, and thus to aggrandize matter at the expense of mind, there will also be a tendency to believe that an institution which hampers our opinions is less hurtful than one which controls our acts. Precisely in the same way, men who reject the fundamental truths of religion, will care little for the extent to which those truths are perverted. Men who deny the existence of the Deity and the immortality of the soul, will take no heed of the way in which a gross and formal worship obscures those sublime doctrines. All the idolatry, all the ceremonials, all the pomp, all the dogmas, and all the traditions by which religion is retarded, will give them no disquietude, because they consider the opinions that are checked to be equally false with those that are favoured. Why should they, to whom transcendental truths are unknown, labour to remove the superstitions which darken the truths? Such a generation, so far from attacking ecclesiastical usurpations, would rather look on the clergy as convenient tools to ensnare the ignorant and control the vulgar. Therefore it is that we rarely hear of a sincere atheist being a zealous polemic. But if that should occur, which a century ago occurred in France; if it should happen that men of great energy, and actuated by the feelings I have described, were to find themselves in the presence of a political despotism,—they would direct against it the whole of their powers; and they would act with the more determined vigour, because, believing that their all was at stake, temporal happiness would be to them not only the first, but also the sole consideration.
It is from this point of view that the progress of those atheistical opinions, which now rose in France, becomes a matter of great though painful interest. And the date at which they appeared, fully corroborates what I have just said respecting the change that took place in the middle of the eighteenth century. The first great work in which they were openly promulgated, was the celebrated Encyclopædia, published in 1751.[1020] Before that time such degrading opinions, though occasionally broached, were not held by any men of ability; nor could they in the preceding state of society have made much impression upon the age. But during the latter half of the eighteenth century, they affected every department of French literature. Between 1758 and 1770, atheistical tenets rapidly gained ground;[1021] and in 1770 was published the famous work, called the System of Nature; the success, and, unhappily, the ability of which, makes its appearance an important epoch in the history of France. Its popularity was immense;[1022] and the views it contains are so clearly and methodically arranged, as to have earned for it the name of the code of atheism.[1023] Five years later, the Archbishop of Toulouse, in a formal address to the king on behalf of the clergy, declared that atheism had now become the prevailing opinion.[1024] This, like all similar assertions, must have been an exaggeration; but that there was a large amount of truth in it, is known to whoever has studied the mental habits of the generation immediately preceding the Revolution. Among the inferior class of writers, Damilaville, Deleyre, Maréchal, Naigeon, Toussaint, were active supporters of that cold and gloomy dogma, which, in order to extinguish the hope of a future life, blots out from the mind of man the glorious instincts of his own immortality.[1025] And, strange to say, several even of the higher intellects were unable to escape the contagion. Atheism was openly advocated by Condorcet, by D'Alembert, by Diderot, by Helvétius, by Lalande, by Laplace, by Mirabeau, and by Saint Lambert.[1026] Indeed, so thoroughly did all this harmonize with the general temper, that in society men boasted of what, in other countries, and in other days, has been a rare and singular error, an eccentric taint, which those affected by it were willing to conceal. In 1764 Hume met, at the house of Baron d'Holbach, a party of the most celebrated Frenchmen then residing in Paris. The great Scotchman, who was no doubt aware of the prevailing opinion, took occasion to raise an argument as to the existence of an atheist, properly so called; for his own part, he said, he had never chanced to meet with one. ‘You have been somewhat unfortunate,’ replied Holbach; ‘but at the present moment you are sitting at table with seventeen of them.’[1027]
This, sad as it is, only forms a single aspect of that immense movement, by which, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, the French intellect was withdrawn from the study of the internal, and concentrated upon that of the external world. Of this tendency, we find an interesting instance in the celebrated work of Helvétius, unquestionably the ablest and most influential treatise on morals which France produced at this period. It was published in 1758;[1028] and, although it bears the title of an essay on ‘the Mind,’ it does not contain a single passage from which we could infer that the mind, in the sense in which the word is commonly used, has any existence. In this work, which, during fifty years, was the code of French morals, principles are laid down which bear exactly the same relation to ethics that atheism bears to theology. Helvétius, at the beginning of his inquiry, assumes, as an incontestable fact, that the difference between man and other animals is the result of a difference in their external form; and that if, for example, our wrists, instead of ending with hands and flexible fingers, had merely ended like a horse's foot, we should have always remained wanderers on the face of the earth, ignorant of every art, entirely defenceless, and having no other concern but to avoid the attacks of wild beasts, and find the needful supply of our daily food.[1029] That the structure of our bodies is the sole cause of our boasted superiority, becomes evident, when we consider that our thoughts are simply the product of two faculties, which we have in common with all other animals; namely, the faculty of receiving impressions from external objects, and the faculty of remembering those impressions after they are received.[1030] From this, says Helvétius, it follows, that the internal powers of man being the same as those of all other animals, our sensibility and our memory would be useless, if it were not for those external peculiarities by which we are eminently distinguished, and to which we owe every thing that is most valuable.[1031] These positions being laid down, it is easy to deduce all the essential principles of moral actions. For, memory being merely one of the organs of physical sensibility,[1032] and judgment being only a sensation,[1033] all notions of duty and of virtue must be tested by their relation to the senses; in other words, by the gross amount of physical enjoyment to which they give rise. This is the true basis of moral philosophy. To take any other view, is to allow ourselves to be deceived by conventional expressions, which have no foundation except in the prejudices of ignorant men. Our vices and our virtues are solely the result of our passions; and our passions are caused by our physical sensibility to pain and to pleasure.[1034] It was in this way that the sense of justice first arose. To physical sensibility men owe pleasure and pain; hence the feeling of their own interests, and hence the desire of living together in societies. Being assembled in society, there grew up the notion of a general interest, since, without it, society could not hold together; and, as actions are only just or unjust in proportion as they minister to this general interest, a measure was established, by which justice is discriminated from injustice.[1035] With the same inflexible spirit, and with great fullness of illustration, Helvétius examines the origin of those other feelings which regulate human actions. Thus, he says that both ambition and friendship are entirely the work of physical sensibility. Men yearn after fame, on account either of the pleasure which they expect the mere possession of it will give, or else as the means of subsequently procuring other pleasures.[1036] As to friendship, the only use of it is to increase our pleasures or mitigate our pains; and it is with this object that a man longs to hold communion with his friend.[1037] Beyond this, life has nothing to offer. To love what is good for the sake of the goodness, is as impossible as to love what is bad for the sake of the evil.[1038] The mother who weeps for the loss of her child, is solely actuated by selfishness; she mourns because a pleasure is taken from her, and because she sees a void difficult to fill up.[1039] So it is, that the loftiest virtues, as well as the meanest vices, are equally caused by the pleasure we find in the exercise of them.[1040] This is the great mover and originator of all. Every thing that we have, and every thing that we are, we owe to the external world; nor is Man himself aught else except what he is made by the objects which surround him.[1041]
The views put forward in this celebrated work I have stated at some length; not so much on account of the ability with which they are advocated, as on account of the clue they furnish to the movements of a most remarkable age. Indeed, so completely did they harmonize with the prevailing tendencies, that they not only quickly obtained for their author a vast European reputation,[1042] but, during many years, they continued to increase in influence, and, in France in particular, they exercised great sway.[1043] As that was the country in which they arose, so also was it the country to which they were best adapted. Madame Dudeffand, who passed her long life in the midst of French society, and was one of the keenest observers of her time, has expressed this with great happiness. The work of Helvétius, she says, is popular, since he is the man who has told to all their own secret.[1044]
True it was, that, to the contemporaries of Helvétius, his views, notwithstanding their immense popularity, bore the appearance of a secret; because the connexion between them and the general march of events was, as yet, but dimly perceived. To us, however, who, after this interval of time, can examine the question with the resources of a larger experience, it is obvious how such a system met the wants of an age of which it was the exponent and the mouthpiece. That Helvétius must have carried with him the sympathies of his countrymen, is clear, not only from the evidence we have of his success, but also from a more comprehensive view of the general complexion of those times. Even while he was still pursuing his labours, and only four years before he published them, a work appeared in France, which, though displaying greater ability, and possessing a higher influence than that of Helvétius, did, nevertheless, point in exactly the same direction. I allude to the great metaphysical treatise by Condillac, in many respects one of the most remarkable productions of the eighteenth century; and the authority of which, during two generations, was so irresistible, that, without some acquaintance with it, we cannot possibly understand the nature of those complicated movements by which the French Revolution was brought about.
In 1754,[1045] Condillac put forth his celebrated work on the mind; the very title of which was a proof of the bias with which it was written. Although this profound thinker aimed at nothing less than an exhaustive analysis of the human faculties, and although he is pronounced by a very able, but hostile critic, to be the only metaphysician France produced during the eighteenth century,[1046] still he found it utterly impossible to escape from those tendencies towards the external which governed his own age. The consequence was, that he called his work a ‘Treatise on Sensations;’[1047] and in it he peremptorily asserts, that every thing we know is the result of sensation; by which he means the effect produced on us by the action of the external world. Whatever may be thought of the accuracy of this opinion, there can be no doubt that it is enforced with a closeness and severity of reasoning which deserves the highest praise. To examine, however, the arguments by which his view is supported, would lead to a discussion foreign to my present object, which is, merely to point out the relation between his philosophy and the general temper of his contemporaries. Without, therefore, pretending to anything like a critical examination of this celebrated book, I will simply bring together the essential positions on which it is based, in order to illustrate the harmony between it and the intellectual habits of the age in which it appeared.[1048]
The materials from which the philosophy of Condillac was originally drawn, were contained in the great work published by Locke about sixty years before this time. But though much of what was most essential was borrowed from the English philosopher, there was one very important point in which the disciple differed from his master. And this difference is strikingly characteristic of the direction which the French intellect was now taking. Locke, with some looseness of expression, and possibly with some looseness of thought, had asserted the separate existence of a power of reflection, and had maintained that by means of that power the products of sensation became available.[1049] Condillac, moved by the prevailing temper of his own time, would not hear of such a distinction. He, like most of his contemporaries, was jealous of any claim which increased the authority of the internal, and weakened that of the external. He, therefore, altogether rejects the faculty of reflection as a source of our ideas; and this partly because it is but the channel through which ideas run from the senses, and partly because in its origin it is itself a sensation.[1050] Therefore, according to him, the only question is as to the way in which our contact with nature supplies us with ideas. For in this scheme, the faculties of man are solely caused by the operation of his senses. The judgments which we form are, says Condillac, often ascribed to the hand of the Deity; a convenient mode of reasoning, which has only arisen from the difficulty of analyzing them.[1051] By considering how our judgments actually arise, we can alone remove these obscurities. The fact is, that the attention we give to an object is nothing but the sensation which that object excites;[1052] and what we call abstract ideas are merely different ways of being attentive.[1053] Ideas being thus generated, the subsequent process is very simple. To attend to two ideas at the same time, is to compare them; so that comparison is not a result of attention, but is rather the attention itself.[1054] This at once gives us the faculty of judging, because directly we institute a comparison, we do of necessity form a judgment.[1055] Thus, too, memory is a transformed sensation;[1056] while the imagination is nothing but memory, which, being carried to its highest possible vivacity, makes what is absent appear to be present.[1057] The impressions we receive from the external world being, therefore, not the cause of our faculties, but being the faculties themselves, the conclusion to which we are driven is inevitable. It follows, says Condillac, that in man nature is the beginning of all; that to nature we owe the whole of our knowledge; that we only instruct ourselves according to her lessons; and that the entire art of reasoning consists in continuing the work which she has appointed us to perform.[1058]
It is so impossible to mistake the tendency of these views, that I need not attempt to estimate their result otherwise than by measuring the extent to which they were adopted. Indeed, the zeal with which they were now carried into every department of knowledge, can only surprise those who, being led by their habits of mind to study history in its separate fragments, have not accustomed themselves to consider it as an united whole, and who, therefore, do not perceive that in every great epoch there is some one idea at work, which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issue. In France, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, this idea was, the inferiority of the internal to the external. It was this dangerous but plausible principle which drew the attention of men from the church to the state; which was seen in Helvétius the most celebrated of the French moralists, and in Condillac the most celebrated of the French metaphysicians. It was this same principle which, by increasing, if I may so say, the reputation of Nature, induced the ablest thinkers to devote themselves to a study of her laws, and to abandon those other pursuits which had been popular in the preceding age. In consequence of this movement, such wonderful additions were made to every branch of physical science, that more new truths concerning the external world were discovered in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century than during all the previous periods put together. The details of these discoveries, so far as they have been subservient to the general purposes of civilization, will be related in another place; at present I will indicate only the most prominent, in order that the reader may understand the course of the subsequent argument, and may see the connexion between them and the French Revolution.
Taking a general view of the external world, we may say, that the three most important forces by which the operations of nature are effected, are heat, light, and electricity; including under this last magnetic and galvanic phenomena. On all these subjects, the French, for the first time, now exerted themselves with signal success. In regard to heat, not only were the materials for subsequent induction collected with indefatigable industry, but before that generation passed away, the induction was actually made; for while the laws of its radiation were worked out by Prevost,[1059] those of its conduction were established by Fourier, who, just before the Revolution, employed himself in raising thermotics to a science by the deductive application of that celebrated mathematical theory which he contrived, and which still bears his name.[1060] In regard to electricity, it is enough to notice, during the same period, the important experiments of D'Alibard, followed by those vast labours of Coulomb, which brought electrical phenomena under the jurisdiction of the mathematics, and thus completed what Œpinus had already prepared.[1061] As to the laws of light, those ideas were now accumulating which rendered possible the great steps that, at the close of the century, were taken by Malus, and still later by Fresnel.[1062] Both of these eminent Frenchmen not only made important additions to our knowledge of double refraction, but Malus discovered the polarization of light, undoubtedly the most splendid contribution received by optical science since the analysis of the solar rays.[1063] It was also in consequence of this, that Fresnel began those profound researches which placed on a solid basis that great undulatory theory of which Hooke, Huygens, and above all Young, are to be deemed the founders, and by which the corpuscular theory of Newton was finally overthrown.[1064]