The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42

This vast supply of positive or probable facts, either demonstrated
or anticipated, furnishes food, substance and impulse to the intellect
of the eighteenth century. Consider the leaders of public opinion, the
promoters of the new philosophy: they are all, in various degrees,
versed in the physical and natural sciences. Not only are they
familiar with theories and authorities, but again they have a personal
knowledge of facts and things. Voltaire[8] is among the first to
explain the optical and astronomical theories of Newton, and again to
make calculations, observations and experiments of his own. He writes
memoirs for the Academy of Sciences "On the Measure of Motive Forces,"
and "On the Nature and Diffusion of Heat." He handles Réamur's
thermometer, Newton's prism, and Muschenbrock's pyrometer. In his
laboratory at Cirey he has all the known apparatus for physics and
chemistry. He experiments with his own hand on the reflection of light
in space, on the increase of weight in calcified metals, on the
renewal of amputated parts of animals, and in the spirit of a true
savant, persistently, with constant repetitions, even to the beheading
of forty snails and slugs, to verify an assertion made by Spallanzani.
- The same curiosity and the same preparation prevails with all
imbued with the same spirit. In the other camp, among the Cartesians,
about to disappear, Fontenelle is an excellent mathematician, the
competent biographer of all eminent men of science, the official
secretary and true representative of the Academy of Sciences. In other
places, in the Academy of Bordeaux, Montesquieu reads discourses on
the mechanism of the echo, and on the use of the renal glands; he
dissects frogs, tests the effect of heat and cold on animated tissues,
and publishes observations on plants and insects. - Rousseau, the
least instructed of all, attends the lectures of the chemist Rouelle,
botanizing and appropriating to himself all the elements of human
knowledge with which to write his "Emile." - Diderot taught
mathematics and devoured every science and art even to the technical
processes of all industries. D'Alembert stands in the first rank of
mathematicians. Buffon translated Newton's theory of flux, and the
Vegetable Statics of Hales; he is in turn a metallurgist, optician,
geographer, geologist and, last of all, an anatomist. Condillac, to
explain the use of signs and the relation of ideas, writes abridgments
of arithmetic, algebra, mechanics and astronomy.[9] Maupertuis,
Condorcet and Lalande are mathematicians, physicists and astronomers;
d'Holbach, Lamettrie and Cabanis are chemists, naturalists
physiologists and physicians. - Prophets of a superior or inferior
kind, masters or pupils, specialists or simple amateurs, all draw
directly or indirectly from the living source that has just burst
forth. This is their basis when they begin to teach about Man, what he
is, from whence he came, where he is going, what he may become and
what he should be. A new point of departure leads to new points of
view; so that the idea, which was then entertained of the human being
will become completely transformed.

II. SCIENCE DETACHED FROM THEOLOGY.

Change of the point of view in the science of man. - It is detached
from theology and is united with the natural sciences.

Let us suppose a mind thoroughly imbued with these new truths, to
be placed on the orbit of Saturn, and let him observe[10]. Amidst this
vast and overwhelming space and in these boundless solar
archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the earth, what a
grain of sand! What multitudes of worlds beyond our own, and, if life
exists in them, what combinations are possible other than those of
which we are the result! What is life, what is organic substance in
the monstrous universe but an indifferent mass, a passing accident,
the corruption of a few epidermic particles? And if this be life, what
is that humanity which is so small a fragment of it? - Such is Man
in nature, an atom, and an ephemeral particle; let this not be lost
sight of in our theories concerning his origin, his importance, and
his destiny.

"A mite that would consider itself as the center of all things
would be grotesque, and therefore it is essential that an insect
almost infinitely small should not show conceit almost infinitely
great."[11] -

How slow has been the evolution of the globe itself! What myriads
of ages between the first cooling of its mass and the beginnings of
life![12] Of what consequence is the turmoil of our ant-hill compared
to the geological tragedy in which we have born no part, the strife
between fire and water, the thickening of the earth's crust, formation
of the universal sea, the construction and separation of continents!
Previous to our historical record what a long history of vegetable and
animal existence! What a succession of flora and fauna! What
generations of marine organisms in forming the strata of sediment!
What generations of plans in forming the deposits of coal! What
transformations of climate to drive the pachydermata away from the
pole! - And now comes Man, the latest of all, he is like the
uppermost bud on the top of a tall ancient tree, flourishing there for
a while, but, like the tree, destined to perish after a few seasons,
when the increasing and foretold congelation allowing the tree to live
shall force the tree to die. He is not alone on the branch; beneath
him, around him, on a level with him, other buds shoot forth, born of
the same sap; but he must not forget, if he would comprehend his own
being, that, along with himself, other lives exist in his vicinity,
graduated up to him and issuing from the same trunk. If he is unique
he is not isolated, being an animal among other animals;[13] in him
and with them, substance, organization and birth, the formation and
renewal of the functions, senses and appetites, are similar, while his
superior intelligence, like their rudimentary intelligence, has for an
indispensable organ a nervous matter whose structure is the same with
him as with them. - Thus surrounded, brought forth and borne along
by nature, is it to be supposed that in nature he is an empire within
an empire? He is there as the part of a whole, by virtue of being a
physical body, a chemical composition, an animated organism, a
sociable animal, among other bodies, other compositions, other social
animals, all analogous to him; and by virtue of these classifications,
he is, like them, subject to laws. - For, if the first cause is
unknown to us, and we dispute among ourselves to know what it is,
whether innate or external, we affirm with certainty the mode of its
action, and that it operates only according to fixed and general laws.
Every circumstance, whatever it may be, is conditioned, and, its
conditions being given, it never fails to conform to them. Of two
links forming a chain, the first always draws on the second. There are
laws:

* for numbers, forms, and motions,

* for the revolution of the planets and the fall of bodies,

* for the diffusion of light and the radiation of heat,

* for the attractions and repulsion of electricity,

* for chemical combinations, and

* for the birth, equilibrium and dissolution of organic bodies.

They exist for the birth, maintenance, and development of human
societies, for the formation, conflict, and direction of ideas,
passions and determinations of human individuals.[14] In all this, Man
is bound up with nature; hence, if we would comprehend him, we must
observe him in her, after her, and like her, with the same
independence, the same precautions, and in the same spirit. Through
this remark alone the method of the moral sciences is fixed. In
history, in psychology, in morals, in politics, the thinkers of the
preceding century, Pascal, Bossuet, Descartes, Fenelon, Malebrance,
and La Bruyère, all based their thoughts on dogma; It is plain to
every one qualified to read them that their base is predetermined.
Religion provided them with a complete theory of the moral order of
things; according to this theory, latent or exposed, they described
Man and accommodated their observations to the preconceived model. The
writers of the eighteenth century rejected this method: they dwell on
Man, on the observable Man, and on his surroundings; in their eyes,
conclusions about the soul, its origin, and its destiny, must come
afterwards and depend wholly, not on that which the Revelation
provided, but on that which observation does and will provide. The
moral sciences are now divorced from theology and attach themselves,
as if a prolongation of them, to the physical sciences.

III. THE TRANSFORMATION OF HISTORY.

Voltaire. - Criticism and conceptions of unity. - Montesquieu. - An
outline of social laws.

Through the separation from theology and the attachment to natural
science the humanities become science. In history, every foundation on
which we now build, is laid. Compare Bossuet's "Discours sur
l'histoire universelle," with Voltaire's "Essai sur les mœurs," and we
at once see how new and profound these foundations were. - The
critics of religious dogma here establish their fundamental principle:
in view of the fact that the laws of nature are universal and
permanent it follows that, in the moral world, as in the physical
world, there can be no exception from them, and that no arbitrary or
foreign force intervenes to disturb the regular scientific procedures,
which will provide a sure means of discerning myth from truth.[15]
Biblical exegesis is born out of this maxim, and not alone that of
Voltaire, but also the critical explanatory methods of the future.
[16] Meanwhile they skeptically examine the annals of all people,
carelessly cutting away and suppressing; too hastily, extravagantly,
especially where the ancients are concerned, because their historical
expedition is simply a scouting trip; but nevertheless with such an
overall insight that we may still approve almost all the outlines of
their summary chart. The (newly discovered) primitive Man was not a
superior being, enlightened from above, but a coarse savage, naked and
miserable, slow of growth, sluggish in progress, the most destitute
and most needy of all animals, and, on this account, sociable, endowed
like the bee and the beaver with an instinct for living in groups, and
moreover an imitator like the monkey, but more intelligent, capable of
passing by degrees from the language of gesticulation to that of
articulation, beginning with a monosyllabic idiom which gradually
increases in richness, precision and subtlety.[17] How many centuries
are requisite to attain to this primitive language! How many centuries
more to the discovery of the most necessary arts, the use of fire, the
fabrication of "hatches of silex and jade", the melting and refining
of metals, the domestication of animals, the production and
modification of edible plants, the formation of early civilized and
durable communities, the discovery of writing, figures and
astronomical periods.[18] Only after a dawn of vast and infinite
length do we see in Chaldea and in China the commencement of an
accurate chronological history. There are five or six of these great
independent centers of spontaneous civilization, China, Babylon,
ancient Persia, India, Egypt, Phoenicia, and the two American empires.
On collecting these fragments together, on reading such of their books
as have been preserved, and which travelers bring to us, the five
Kings of the Chinese, the Vedas of the Hindus, the Zoroastrians of the
ancient Persians, we find that all contain religions, moral theories,
philosophies and institutions, as worthy of study as our own. Three of
these codes, those of India, China and the Muslims, still at the
present time govern countries as vast as our Europe, and nations of
equal importance. We must not, like Bossuet, "overlook the universe in
a universal history," and subordinate humanity to a small population
confined to a desolate region around the Dead Sea.[19] Human history
is a thing of natural growth like the rest; its direction is due to
its own elements; no external force guides it, but the inward forces
that create it; it is not tending to any prescribed end but developing
a result. And the chief result is the progress of the human mind.
"Amidst so many ravages and so much destruction, we see a love of
order secretly animating the human species, and forestalling its utter
ruin. It is one of the springs of nature ever recovering its energy;
it is the source of the formation of the codes of nations; it causes
the law and the ministers of the law to be respected in Tinquin and in
the islands of Formosa as well as in Rome." Man thus possesses, said
Voltaire, a "principle of Reason," namely, a "an instinct for
engineering" suggesting to him useful implements;[20] also an instinct
of right suggesting to him his moral conceptions. These two instincts
form a part of his makeup; he has them from his birth, "as birds have
their feathers, and bears their hair. Hence he is perfectible through
nature, and merely conforms to nature in improving his mind and in
bettering his condition. Extend the idea farther along with Turgot and
Condorcet,[21] and, with all its exaggerations, we see arising, before
the end of the century, our modern theory of progress, that which
founds all our aspirations on the boundless advance of the sciences,
on the increase of comforts which their applied discoveries constantly
bring to the human condition, and on the increase of good sense which
their discoveries, popularized, slowly deposit in the human brain.

A second principle has to be established to complete the
foundations of history. Discovered by Montesquieu it still to-day
serves as a constructive support, and, if we resume the work, as if on
the substructure of the master's edifice, it is simply owing to
accumulated erudition placing at our disposal more substantial and
more abundant materials. In human society all parts are
interdependent; no modification of one can take place without
effecting proportionate changes in the others. Institutions, laws and
customs are not mingled together, as in a heap, through chance or
caprice, but connected one with the other through convenience or
necessity, as in a harmony.[22] According as authority is in all, in
several or in one hand, according as the sovereign admits or rejects
laws superior to himself, with intermediary powers below him,
everything changes or tends to differ in meaning and in importance:

* public intelligence,

* education,

* the form of judgments,

* the nature and order of penalties,

* the condition of women,

* military organization

* and the nature and the extent of taxation.

A multitude of subordinate wheels depend on the great central
wheel. For if the clock runs, it is owing to the harmony of its
various parts, from which it follows that, on this harmony ceasing,
the clock gets out of order. But, besides the principal spring, there
are others which, acting on or in combination with it, give to each
clock a special character and a peculiar movement. Such, in the first
place, is climate, that is to say, the degree of heat or cold,
humidity or dryness, with its infinite effects on man's physical and
moral attributes, followed by its influence on political, civil and
domestic servitude or freedom. Likewise the soil, according to its
fertility, its position and its extent. Likewise the physical régime,
according as a people is composed of hunters, shepherds or
agriculturists. Likewise the fecundity of the race, and the consequent
slow or rapid increase of population, and also the excess in number,
now of males and now of females. And finally, likewise, are national
character and religion. - All these causes, each added to the other,
or each limited by the other, contribute together to form a total
result, namely society. Simple or complex, stable or unstable,
barbarous or civilized, this society contains within itself its
explanations of its being. Strange as a social structure may be, it
can be explained; also its institutions, however contradictory.
Neither prosperity, nor decline, nor despotism, nor freedom, is the
result of a throw of the dice, of luck or an unexpected turn of events
caused by rash men. They are conditions we must live with. In any
event, it is useful to understand them, either to improve our
situation or bear it patiently, sometimes to carry out appropriate
reforms, sometimes to renounce impracticable reforms, now to assume
the authority necessary for success, and now the prudence making us
abstain.

IV. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY.

The transformation of psychology. - Condillac. - The theory of
sensation and of signs.

We now reach the core of moral science; the human being in
general. The natural history of the mind must be dealt with, and this
must be done as we have done the others, by discarding all prejudice
and adhering to facts, taking analogy for our guide, beginning with
origins and following, step by step, the development by which the
infant, the savage, the uncultivated primitive man, is converted into
the rational and cultivated man. Let us consider life at the outset,
the animal at the lowest degree on the scale, the human being as soon
as it is born. The first thing we find is perception, agreeable or
disagreeable, and next a want, propensity or desire, and therefore at
last, by means of a physiological mechanism, voluntary or involuntary
movements, more or less accurate and more or less appropriate and
coordinated. And this elementary fact is not merely primitive; it is,
again, constant and universal, since we encounter it at each moment of
each life, and in the most complicated as well as in the simplest. Let
us accordingly ascertain whether it is not the thread with which all
our mental cloth is woven, and whether its spontaneous unfolding, and
the knotting of mesh after mesh, is not finally to produce the entire
network of our thought and passion. - Condillac (1715-1780)provides
us here with an incomparable clarity and precision with the answers to
all our questions, which, however the revival of theological prejudice
and German metaphysics was to bring into discredit in the beginning of
the nineteenth century, but which fresh observation, the establishment
of mental pathology, and dissection have now (in 1875) brought back,
justified and completed.[23] Locke had already stated that our ideas
all originate in outward or inward experience. Condillac shows further
that the actual elements of perception, memory, idea, imagination,
judgment, reasoning, knowledge are sensations, properly so called, or
revived sensations; our loftiest ideas are derived from no other
material, for they can be reduced to signs which are themselves
sensations of a certain kind. Sensations accordingly form the
substance of human or of animal intelligence; but the former
infinitely surpasses the latter in this, that, through the creation of
signs, it succeeds in isolating, abstracting and noting fragments of
sensations, that is to say, in forming, combining and employing
general conceptions. - This being granted, we are able to verify all
our ideas, for, through reflection, we can revive and reconstruct the
ideas we had formed without any reflection. No abstract definitions
exist at the outset; abstraction is ulterior and derivative; foremost
in each science must be placed examples, experiences, evident facts;
from these we derive our general idea. In the same way we derive from
several general ideas of the same degree another general idea, and so
on successively, step by step, always proceeding according to the
natural order of things, by constant analysis, using expressive signs,
as with mathematicians in passing from calculation by the fingers to
calculation by numerals, and from this to calculation by letters, and
who, calling upon the eyes to aid Reason, depict the inward analogy of
quantities by the outward analogy of symbols. In this way science
becomes complete by means of a properly organized language.[24] -
Through this reversal of the usual method we summarily dispose of
disputes about words, escape the illusions of human speech, simplify
study, remodel education, enhance discoveries, subject every assertion
to control, and bring all truths within reach of all understandings.

V. THE ANALYTICAL METHOD.

The analytical method. - Its principle. - The conditions requisite
to make it productive. - These conditions wanting or inadequate in the
18th century. - The truth and survival of the principle.

Such is the course to be pursued with all the sciences, and
especially with the moral and political sciences. To consider in turn
each distinct province of human activity, to decompose the leading
notions out of which we form our conceptions, those of religion,
society and government, those of utility, wealth and exchange, those
of justice, right and duty. To revert to manifest facts, to first
experiences, to the simple circumstances in which the elements of our
ideas are included; to extricate from these the precious lode without
omission or mixture; to recompose our idea with these, to define its
meaning and determine its value; to substitute for the vague and
vulgar notion with which we started out the precise scientific
definition we arrive at, and for the impure metal we received the
refined metal we recovered, constituted the prevalent method taught by
the philosophers under the name of analysis, and which sums up the
whole progress of the century. - Up to this point, and not farther,
they are right; truth, every truth, is found in observable things, and
only from these can it be derived; there is no other pathway leading
to discovery.-The operation, undoubtedly, is productive only when the
vein is rich, and we possess the means of extracting the ore. To
obtain a just notion of government, of religion, of right, of wealth,
a man must be a historian beforehand, a jurisconsult and economist,
and have gathered up myriad of facts; and, besides all this, he must
possess a vast erudition, an experienced and professional
perspicacity. If these conditions are only partially complied with,
the result will only be a half finished product or a doubtful alloy, a
few rough drafts of the sciences, the rudiments of pedagogy as with
Rousseau, of political economy with Quesnay, Smith, and Turgot, of
linguistics with Des Brosses, and of arithmetical morals and criminal
legislation with Bentham. Finally, if none of these conditions are
complied with, the same efforts will, in the hands of philosophical
amateurs and oratorical charlatans, undoubtedly only produce
mischievous compounds and destructive explosions. - Nevertheless
good procedure remains good even when ignorant and the impetuous men
make a bad use of it; and if we of to day resume the abortive effort
of the eighteenth century, it should be within the guidelines they set
out.

_____________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1]. "Philosophiœ naturalis principia," 1687; "Optics," 1704.

[2] See concerning this development Comte's "Philosophie Positive,"
vol. I. - At the beginning of the eighteenth century, mathematical
instruments are carried to such perfection as to warrant the belief
that all physical phenomena may be analyzed, light, electricity,
sound, crystallization, heat, elasticity, cohesion and other effects
of molecular forces. - See "Whewell's History of the Inductive
Sciences. II., III.

[3] The travels of La Condamine in Peru and of Maupertuis in
Lapland.

[4] Buffon, "Théorie de la terre," 1749; "Epoques de la Nature,"
1788. - "Carte géologique de l'Auvergne," by Desmarets, 1766.

[5] See a lecture by M. Lacaze-Duthier on Lamarck, "Revue
Scientifique," III. 276-311.

[6] Buffon, "Histoire Naturelle, II. 340: "All living beings
contain a vast quantity of living and active molecules. Vegetal and
animal life seem to be only the result of the actions of all the small
lives peculiar to each of the active molecules whose life is
primitive." Cf. Diderot, "Revue d'Alembert."

[8] "Philosophie de Newton," 1738, and "Physique," by Voltaire. -
Cf. du Bois-Raymond, "Voltaire physician," (Revue des Cours
Scientifique, V. 539), and Saigey, "la Physique de Voltaire," - "Had
Voltaire," writes Lord Brougham, "continued to devote himself to
experimental physics he would undoubtedly have inscribed his name
among those of the greatest discoverers of his age."

[9] See his "Langue des Calculs," and his "Art de Raisonner."

[10] For a popular exposition of these ideas see Voltaire, passim,
and particularly the "Micromégas" and "Les Oreilles du Comte de
Chesterfield."

[11] Cf. Buffon, ibid.. I. 31: "Those who imagine a reply with
final causes do not reflect that they take the effect for the cause.
The relationship which things bear to us having no influence whatever
on their origin, moral convenience can never become a physical
explanation." - Voltaire, "Candide": "When His High Mightiness sends
a vessel to Egypt is he in any respect embarrassed about the comfort
of the mice that happen to be aboard of it?"