Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated - "Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: From Rome to the End"

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott - "Peace on Earth, Good will to Dogs"

E. Phillips Oppenheim - "Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo"

Henry James - "The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 2]"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Eve of the French Revolution

E >> Edward J. Lowell >> The Eve of the French Revolution




The war of the American Revolution was drawing near, and old Maurepas,
the prime minister, felt the need of a competent man to take charge of
the finances. A name was suggested to him,--that of Necker, a successful
banker. But Necker was a Protestant, a Swiss, a nobody. The title of
Controller was too high for him, so a new post was created, and he was
made Director-General of the Finances, coming into office in October,
1776.

It has been the fate of Necker to excite strong enthusiasm and violent
objurgation; but in fact he was little more than commonplace. An
ambitious man, he wanted to make a reputation, to build up the royal
credit, to found a national debt, like that of England. Did he really
believe that such a debt would pay its own interest, without additional
taxes, or did he rely on economy of expenditure and good administration,
not only to balance the ordinary accounts, but to cover the interest of
the war-loans which he was obliged to contract? How far did his cheerful
manifestoes deceive himself? What might he not really have accomplished
if the royal support had been anything more solid than a shifting
quicksand? These questions cannot be answered satisfactorily. Neither
Necker, nor anybody else, knew exactly what the government owed, or what
it borrowed. The loans contracted by Necker himself are believed to have
amounted to five hundred and thirty million livres. Of this sum it is
thought that about two hundred millions were employed in covering the
annual deficit for five years, and that three hundred and thirty
millions were spent for the extraordinary demands of the war. The money
was raised chiefly by state lotteries and by the sale of life annuities,
although many other means also were employed.

The royal lottery had been a favorite device earlier in the century. As
practiced by Necker and some of his predecessors it combined the
features of gambling and of investment. Every ticket, in addition to its
chance of drawing a prize, was in itself a pecuniary obligation of the
government, either carrying perpetual interest at four per cent., or to
be repaid at its full price in seven or nine years without interest. The
prizes were sums of money or annuities. Thus the ticket-holder did not
lose his whole stake, and ran the chance of winning a fortune. But the
operation was not brilliant for the government.

Nor was the sale of annuities more judiciously managed. Here, as in the
lotteries, Necker copied old models, without making any improvements of
importance. No account was taken of the age of the annuitants, but
incomes were sold at a fixed rate of ten per cent, of the capital
deposited for one life, nine per cent, for two lives, eight and a half
for three, eight for four. The bankers and financiers of the day were
shrewd enough to profit by this arrangement.

They bought up the obligations, and named healthy children as the
annuitants. The chance of life of these selected persons was more than
fifty years, and as the children were usually chosen at about the age of
seven, the treasury would be called on to pay its annuities for an
average term of between forty and forty-five years. As the current rate
of interest on good security was about six per cent, the operation was
not a very promising one for the state.

In spite of all these blunders Necker was liked by the nation. He
recognized the need of economy and honestly tried to reduce expenses. He
succeeded in cutting off a little of the extravagance of the court and
in simplifying the collection of the revenue. He tried to establish
provincial assemblies and to equalize the incidence of the salt-tax. And
above all, in order to sustain the royal credit, he took the country
into his confidence to some extent, and prophesied pleasant things. But
he did not stop there. The national accounts had long been considered a
government secret; Necker resolved to publish them to the world. His
famous "Compte rendu au roi" appeared in February, 1781. The portrait of
the author, excellently engraved on copper, stares complacently from the
frontispiece, above an allegorical picture, where we can make out
Justice and Abundance, while Avarice appears to bring her treasures, and
a lady in high, powdered hair, and no visible clothing, gazes astonished
from the background. The contents of the report are not such as we are
in the habit of expecting in financial documents, but are rhetorical and
self-complacent. The ordinary revenues of the country are said to exceed
the expenditures by ten million livres. As a matter of fact, no such
surplus existed, but Necker was an optimist by temperament, and was
moreover anxious to bolster credit. The nation was delighted, but
Maurepas and the court were shocked. The cupidity of the courtiers was
painted in the account in glowing language. Such a publication was
dangerous in itself, and the economical measures already taken, with
those announced as to follow, threatened many interests. Even the old
prime minister trembled for his personal power. Necker had obtained the
removal from office of one of the adherents of Maurepas, while the
latter was kept in Paris by the gout. So the usual machinery of
detraction was put in motion. Letters, pamphlets, and epigrams flew
about. While the larger part of the public was singing Necker's praises,
the smaller and more influential inner circle was conspiring against
him. He might yet have prevailed but for an act of imprudence. Although
the most conspicuous and popular man in the kingdom, he had hitherto
been excluded from the Council of State. He now asked to be admitted to
it. Louis XVI., whose Catholicism was his strongest conviction, replied
that Necker, as a Protestant, was inadmissible by law. Thereupon the
latter offered to resign his place as Director of the Finances, and the
king, by the advice of Maurepas, accepted his resignation.[Footnote:
Gomel, _passim._]

From this time all real chance of the extrication of Louis XVI. from his
financial difficulties, without a radical change of government,
disappeared forever. The controllers that succeeded Necker only plunged
deeper and deeper into debt and deficit. It is needless to follow them
in their flounderings. A long experience of the vacillation of the
government both as to persons and as to systems had discouraged the
hopes of conscientious patriotism, and strengthened the opposition to
reform of all those who were interested in abuses. From the well-meaning
king, if left to his own ways, nothing more could be hoped. Pecuniary
embarrassment, with Louis, as with many less important people, was quite
as much a symptom of weakness as a result of unmerited misfortune.



CHAPTER XVI.

"THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA."


We have seen that the church had an irreconcilable enemy in Voltaire;
that the government of France had found a critic of weight and
importance in Montesquieu; that the Economists had attacked the
financial organization of the country. But the assaults of the
Philosophic school were not leveled at the religious and civil
administration alone. The very foundations of French thought, slowly
laid through previous ages, were made in the reign of Louis XV. the
subject of examination, and by a very dogmatic set of thinkers were
pronounced to be valueless. Nor were men left at a loss for something to
put in the place of what was thus destroyed. The teachings of Locke,
explained and amplified by Condillac and many others, obtained an
authority which was but feebly disputed. The laws against free speech
and free printing, intended for the defense of the old doctrines,
deterred no one from expressing radical opinions. Only persons of
conservative and law-abiding temperament, the natural defenders of
things existing, were restrained by legal and ecclesiastical terrors.
The champions of the old modes of thought stood like mediaeval men at
arms before a discharge of artillery, prevented from rushing on the guns
of the enemy by the weight of the armor that protected them no longer.
The new philosophy, stimulated and hardly impeded by feeble attempts at
persecution, was therefore able to overrun the intellectual life of the
nation, until it found its most formidable opponent in one who was half
its ally, and who had sprung from its midst, the mighty heretic,
Rousseau.

The most voluminous work of the Philosophers is the "Encyclopaedia," a
book of great importance in the history of the human mind. The
conception of its originators was not a new one. The attempt to bring
human knowledge into a system, and to set it forth in a series of folio
volumes, had been made before. The endeavor is one which can never meet
with complete success, yet which should sometimes be made in a
philosophic spirit. The universe is too vast and too varied to be
successfully classified and described by one man, or under the
supervision of one editor. But the attempt may bring to light some
relation of things hitherto unnoticed, and the task is one of practical
utility.

The great French "Encyclopaedia" may claim two immediate progenitors.
The first is found in the works of Lord Bacon, where there is a
"Description of a Natural and Experimental History, such as may serve
for the foundation of a true philosophy," with a "Catalogue of
particular histories by titles." The second is Chambers's Cyclopaedia,
first published in 1727, a translation of which Diderot was engaged to
edit by the publisher Le Breton. Diderot, who freely acknowledges his
obligation to Bacon, makes light of that to Chambers, saying in his
prospectus that the latter owed much to French sources, that his work is
not the basis of the one proposed, that many of the articles have been
rewritten, and almost all the others corrected and altered. There is no
doubt that the whole plan of the "Encyclopaedia" was much enlarged by
Denis Diderot himself.[Footnote: Bacon, iv. 251, 265. Morley,
_Diderot_, i., 116. Diderot, _Oeuvres_, xiii. 6, 8. "If we
come out successfully we shall be principally indebted to Chancellor
Bacon, who laid out the plan of a universal dictionary of sciences and
arts _at a time when there were, so to speak, neither sciences nor
arts_."]

This eminent man was born at Langres in 1713, the son of a worthy
cutler. He was educated by the Jesuits, and on his refusal to enter
either of the learned professions of law or medicine, was set adrift by
his father,--who hoped that a little hardship would bring him to
reason,--and found himself in Paris with no resource but the precarious
one of letters. Diderot lived from hand to mouth for a time, sleeping
sometimes in a garret of his own, sometimes on the floor of a friend's
room. Once he got a place of tutor to the children of a financier, but
could not bear the life of confinement, and soon threw up his
appointment and returned to freedom. When any friend of his father
turned up on a visit to the town, he would borrow, and the old cutler at
Langres would grumble and repay. Gradually the young author rose above
want. He became one of the first literary men of his day and one of the
most brilliant talkers, rich in ideas, overflowing in language, subtle
without obscurity, suggestive, and satisfying; yet always retaining a
certain shyness, and "able to say anything, but good-morning." Yet he
was soon carried away by the excitement of conversation and of
discussion. He had a trick of tapping his interlocutor on the knee, by
way of giving point to his remarks, and the Empress Catharine II. of
Russia complained that he mauled her black and blue by the use of this
familiar gesture, so that she had to put a table between herself and him
for protection. Diderot was fond of the young, and especially of
struggling authors. To them his purse and his literary assistance were
freely given. He was delighted when a writer came to consult him on his
work. If the subject were interesting he would recognize its
capabilities at a glance. As the author read, Diderot's imagination
would fill in all deficiencies, construct new scenes in the tragedy, new
incidents, new characters in the tale. To him all these beauties would
seem to belong to the work itself, and his friends would be astonished,
after hearing him praise some new book, to find in it but few of the
good things which he had quoted from it.

Diderot's good nature was boundless. One morning a young man, quite
unknown to him, came with a manuscript, and begged him to read and
correct it. He prepared to comply with the request on the spot. The
paper, when opened, turned out to be a satire on himself and his
writings.

"Sir," said Diderot to the young man, "I do not know you; I can never
have offended you. Will you tell me the motive which has impelled you to
make me read a libel for the first time in my life? I generally throw
such things into the waste-paper basket."

"I am starving. I hoped that you would give me a few crowns not to print
it."

Instead of flying into a passion, Diderot simply remarked: "You would
not be the first author that ever was bought off; but you can do better
with this stuff. The brother of the Duke of Orleans is in retreat at
Saint Genevieve. He is religious; he hates me. Dedicate your satire to
him; have it bound with his arms on the cover; carry it to him yourself
some fine morning, and he will help you."

"But I don't know the prince; and I don't see how I can write the
dedicatory epistle."

"Sit down; I'll do it for you."

And Diderot writes the dedication, and gives it to the young man, who
carries the libel to the prince, receives a present of twenty-five
louis, and comes back after a few days to thank Diderot, who advises him
to find a more decent means of living.

The people whom the great writer helped were not always so polite. One
day he was seeing to the door a young man who had deceived him, and to
whom, after discovering it, he had given both assistance and advice.

"Monsieur Diderot," said the swindler, "do you know natural history?"

"A little; I can distinguish an aloe from a head of lettuce, and a
pigeon from a humming-bird."

"Do you know the formica leo?"

"No."

"It is a very clever little insect. It digs a hole in the ground, shaped
like a funnel. It covers the surface with fine, light sand. It attracts
silly insects and gets them to tumble in. It seizes them, sucks them
dry, and then says: `Monsieur Diderot, I have the honor to wish you
good-morning.'" Whereupon the young man ran downstairs, leaving the
philosopher in fits of laughter.[Footnote: Morley, Diderot and the
Encyclopaedists. Scherer, Diderot, passim. Morrellet, i. 29. Marmontel,
ii. 313. Memoire sur Diderot, par Mme. de Vandeul, sa fille (a charming
sketch only 64 pages long) in Diderot, Memoires, Corresp., etc., vol.
i.]

As a writer, the great fault of Diderot is one not common in France. He
is verbose. As we read his productions, even the cleverest, we feel that
the same thing could have been better said in fewer words. There is also
a lack of arrangement. Diderot would never take time to plan his books
before writing them. But these faults, although probably fatal to the
permanent fame of an author, are less injurious to his immediate success
than might be expected. A large part of the public does not dislike a
copious admixture of water in its intellectual drink. And Diderot
reconciles the reader to his excessive flow of words by the
effervescence of his enthusiasm. It is because his mind is overfull of
his subject that the sentences burst forth so copiously.

The first writing of Diderot that need engage our attention is his
"Letter on the Blind," published in 1749. This letter deals with the
question, how far congenital deprivation of one of the senses, and
especially blindness, would modify the conceptions of the person
affected; how far the ideas of one born blind would differ from the
ideas of those who can see. The bearing of this question on Locke's
theory that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection is
obvious. Diderot, in a manner quite characteristic of him, took pains to
examine the cases of persons who had actually been blind and had
recovered their sight, and where these failed him, supplied their places
by inventions of his own.[Footnote: Condorcet says of Diderot, "faisant
toujours aimer la verite, meme lorsqu'entraine par son imagination il
avait le malheur de la meconnaitre." D'Alembert, _Oeuvres_, i. 79
(_Eloge par Condorcet_). There is a great deal in this remark.
Unless we can enter into the state of mind of men who tell great lies
from a genuine love of abstract truth, we shall never understand the
French Philosophers of the 18th century.]

Diderot's principal witness is Nicholas Saunderson, a blind man with a
talent for mathematics, who between 1711 and 1739 was a professor at the
University of Cambridge. Diderot quotes at some length the atheistic
opinions of Saunderson, giving as his authority the Life of the latter
by "Dr. Inchlif." No such book ever existed, and the opinions are the
product of Diderot's own reasoning. When an author treats us in this way
our confidence in his facts is hopelessly lost. His reasons, however,
remain, and the most striking of these, in the "Letter on the Blind," is
the answer given to one who attempts to prove the existence of God by
pointing out the order found in nature, whence an intelligent Creator is
presumed. In answer to this, the dying Saunderson is made to say: "Let
me believe... that if we were to go back to the birth of things and of
times, and if we should feel matter move and chaos arrange itself, we
should meet a multitude of shapeless beings, instead of a few beings
that were well organized.... I can maintain that these had no stomach,
and those no intestines; that some, to which their stomach, palate, and
teeth seemed to promise duration, have ceased to exist from some vice of
the heart or the lungs; that the abortions were successively destroyed;
that all the faulty combinations of matter have disappeared, and that
only those have survived whose mechanism implied no important
contradiction, and which could live by themselves and perpetuate their
species."[Footnote: Diderot, i. 328.] The step from the idea here
conveyed to that of the struggle for existence and of the survival of
the most fit is not a very long one.

For his "Letter on the Blind," Diderot was imprisoned at Vincennes. The
real cause of this punishment is said to have been a slight allusion in
the "Letter" to the mistress of a minister of state. But this may not
have been the only cause. There occurred about this time one of those
temporary seasons of severity which are necessary under all governments
to meet occasional outbursts of crime, but to which weak and corrupt
governments are liable with capricious frequency. Diderot sturdily
denied the authorship of the "Letter," lying as thoroughly as he had
done in that piece of writing itself, when he invented the name of
Inchlif and forged the ideas of Saunderson. This time there was more
excuse for his untruth; for the disclosure of his printer's name might
have sent that unfortunate man to prison or to the galleys. The
imprisonment of Diderot himself, at first severe, was soon lightened at
the instance of Voltaire's mistress, Madame du Chatelet. Diderot was
allowed to see his friends, and even to wander about the park of
Vincennes on parole. After three months of captivity he was released by
the influence of the booksellers interested in the "Encyclopaedia."
[Footnote: Morley, _Diderot_, i. 105.]

The first volume of that great work was in preparation. Diderot, whose
untiring energy was unequal to the task of editing the whole, and who
was, moreover, insufficiently trained for the work in some branches, and
notably in mathematics, gathered about him a band of workers which
increased as time went on, until it included a great number of
remarkable men. First in importance to the enterprise, acting with
Diderot on equal terms, was D'Alembert, an almost typical example of the
gentle scholar, who refused one brilliant position after another to
devote himself to mathematics and to literature. Next, perhaps, should
be mentioned the Chevalier de Jaucourt, a man of encyclopaedic learning,
who helped in the preparation of the book with patient enthusiasm,
reading, dictating, and working with three or four secretaries for
thirteen or fourteen hours a day. Montesquieu, whose end was
approaching, left behind him an unfinished article on Taste. Voltaire
not only sent in contributions of his own, but constantly gave
encouragement and advice, as became the recognized head of the
Philosophic school. Rousseau, whose literary reputation had recently
been made by his "Discourses," contributed articles on music for a time;
but subsequently chose to quarrel with the Encyclopaedists, whose minds
worked very differently from his. Turgot wrote several papers on
economic subjects, and in the latter part of the work, Haller, the
physiologist, and Condorcet were engaged.

The publication of the "Encyclopaedia" lasted many years, and met with
many vicissitudes. The first volume appeared in 1751, the second in
January, 1752. The book immediately excited the antagonism of the church
and of conservative Frenchmen generally. On the 12th of February, 1752,
the two volumes were suppressed by an edict of the Council, as
containing maxims contrary to royal authority and to religion. The edict
forbade their being reprinted and their being delivered to such
subscribers as had not already received their copies. The continuation
of the work, however, was not forbidden. It was believed at the time
that the administration took this step in order to silence the Jesuits,
to please the Archbishop of Paris, and perhaps to be beforehand with the
Parliament, which might have taken severer measures. It was also
intimated that certain booksellers, jealous of the success of the
undertaking, were exerting influence on the authorities. All these
enemies of the "Encyclopaedia" were not content with their first
triumph. A few days after the appearance of the edict, the manuscripts
and plates were seized by the police. They were restored to the editors
three months later. The work was one in the performance of which many
Frenchmen took pride. It is said that the Jesuits had tried to continue
it, but had failed even to decipher the papers that had been taken from
Diderot. The attack of the archbishop, who had fulminated against the
great book in an episcopal charge, had served the purpose of an
advertisement; such was the wisdom and consistency of the repressive
police of that age.

From 1753 to 1757 the publication went on without interruption, one
volume appearing every year. Seven volumes had now been published,
bringing the work to the end of the letter G. The subscription list,
originally consisting of less than two thousand names, had nearly
doubled. But the forces of conservatism rallied. In 1758 appeared
Helvetius's book "De l'Esprit," of which an account will be given in the
next chapter, and which shocked the feelings of many persons, even of
the Philosophic school. Few things could, indeed, have made the
Philosophers more unpopular than the publication by one of their own
party of a very readable book, in which the attempt was made to push
their favorite ideas to their last conclusions. This is a process which
few abstract theories can bear, for the limitations of any statement are
in fact essential parts of it. But human laziness so loves formulas, so
hates distinctions, that extreme and unmodified expressions are seized
with avidity by injudicious friends and exulting foes.

The feeling of indignation awakened in the public by the doctrines of
Helvetius gave opportunity to the opponents of the "Encyclopaedia." That
work was denounced to the Parliament of Paris, together with the book
"De l'Esprit." The learned court promptly condemned the latter to the
flames. The great compilation, on the other hand, of which the volume of
Helvetius was said to be a mere abridgment, was submitted to nine
commissioners for examination, and further publication was suspended
until they should report. While proceedings before the Parliament were
still pending, the Council of State intervened, and the "Encyclopaedia"
was arbitrarily interdicted, its privilege taken away, the sale of the
volumes already printed, and the printing of any more, alike forbidden.

It is characteristic of the condition of things existing under the weak
and vacillating government of Louis XV, that the interdict pronounced
against the "Encyclopaedia" did not stop its printing. The editor and
the publishers determined to prepare in private the ten volumes that
were still unmade, and to launch them on the world at one time. To this
work Diderot turned with boundless energy. D'Alembert, however, was
discouraged, and retired from the undertaking. For six years Diderot
labored on, never safe from interference on the part of the government,
and managing a great enterprise, with its staff of contributors and its
scores of workmen, while constantly liable to arrest and imprisonment.
Diderot worked indefatigably also with his pen; writing articles on all
sorts of subjects,--philosophy, arts, trades, and manufactures. To learn
how things were made he visited workshops and handled tools, baffled at
times by the jealousy and distrust of the workmen, who were afraid of
his disclosing their secret processes, or of his giving information to
the tax-gatherer.

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