The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1

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

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"The speeches are made beforehand in a small society of young men
and women, among them generally the fair friend of the speaker is one,
or else the fair whom he means to make his friend,; and the society
very politely give their approbation, unless the lady who gives the
tone to that circle chances to reprehend something, which is of course
altered, if not amended."

It is not surprising, with customs of this kind, that professional
philosophers should become men of society. At no time or in any place
have they been so to the same extent, nor so habitually. The great
delight of a man of genius or of learning here, says an English
traveler, is to reign over a brilliant assembly of people of
fashion[8]. Whilst in England they bury themselves morosely in their
books, living amongst themselves and appearing in society only on
condition of "doing some political drudgery," that of journalist or
pamphleteer in the service of a party, in France they dine out every
evening, and constitute the ornaments and amusement of the drawing-
rooms to which they resort to converse[9]. There is not a house in
which dinners are given that has not its titular philosopher, and,
later on, its economist and man of science. In the various memoirs,
and in the collections of correspondence, we track them from one
drawing room to another, from one chateau to another, Voltaire to
Cirey at Madame du Chatelet's, and then home, at Ferney where he has a
theater and entertains all Europe; Rousseau to Madame d'Epinay's, and
M. de Luxembourg's; the Abbé Barthelemy to the Duchesse de Choiseul's;
Thomas, Marmontel and Gibbon to Madame Necker's; the encyclopedists to
d'Holbach's ample dinners, to the plain and discreet table of Madame
Geoffrin, and to the little drawing room of Mademoiselle de
L'Espinasse, all belonging to the great central state drawing-room,
that is to say, to the French Academy, where each newly elected member
appears to parade his style and obtain from a polished body his
commission of master in the art of discourse. Such a public imposes
on an author the obligation of being more a writer than a philosopher.
The thinker is expected to concern himself with his sentences as much
as with his ideas. He is not allowed to be a mere scholar in his
closet, a simple erudite, diving into folios in German fashion, a
metaphysician absorbed with his own meditations, having an audience of
pupils who take notes, and, as readers, men devoted to study and
willing to give themselves trouble, a Kant, who forms for himself a
special language, who waits for a public to comprehend him and who
leaves the room in which he labors only for the lecture-room in which
he delivers his lectures. Here, on the contrary, in the matter of
expression, all are experts and even professional. The mathematician
d'Alembert publishes a small treatise on elocution; Buffon, the
naturalist pronounces a discourse on Style; the legist Montesquieu
composes an essay on Taste; the psychologist Condillac writes a volume
on the art of writing. In this consists their greatest glory;
philosophy owes its entry into society to them. They withdrew it from
the study, the closed-society and the school, to introduce it into
company and into conversation.

II. ITS METHOD.

Owing to this method it becomes popular.

"Madame la Maréchale," says one of Diderot's personages,[10]. "I
must consider things from a somewhat higher point of view." - " As
high as you please so long as I understand you." - "If you do not
understand me it will be my fault." - " You are very polite, but you
must know that I have studied nothing but my prayer. book." - That
makes no difference; the pretty woman, ably led on, begins to
philosophize without knowing it, arriving without effort at the
distinction between good and evil, comprehending and deciding on the
highest doctrines of morality and religion. - Such is the art of
the eighteenth century, and the art of writing. People are addressed
who are perfectly familiar with life, but who are commonly ignorant of
orthography, who are curious in all directions, but ill prepared for
any; the object is to bring truth down to their level[11]. Scientific
or too abstract terms are inadmissible; they tolerate only those used
to ordinary conversation. And this is no obstacle; it is easier to
talk philosophy in this language than to use it for discussing
precedence and clothes. For, in every abstract question there is some
leading and simple conception on which the rest depends, those of
unity, proportion, mass and motion in mathematics; those of organ,
function and being in physiology; those of sensation, pain, pleasure
and desire in psychology; those of utility, contract and law in
politics and morality; those of capital, production, value, exchange
in political economy, and the, same in the other sciences, all of
these being conceptions derived from passing experience; from which it
follows that, in appealing to common experience by means of a few
familiar circumstances, such as short stories, anecdotes, agreeable
tales, and the like, these conceptions are fashioned anew and rendered
precise. This being accomplished, almost everything is accomplished;
for nothing then remains but to lead the listener along step by step,
flight by flight, to the remotest consequences.

"Will Madame la Maréchale have the kindness to recall my
definition? " - "I remember it well-do you call that a definition?"
- "Yes." -"That, then, is philosophy! " - "Admirable ! " - "And I
have been philosophical? " - " As you read prose, without being
aware of it."

The rest is simply a matter of reasoning, that is to say, of
leading on, of putting questions in the right order, and of analysis.
With the conception thus renewed and rectified the truth nearest at
hand is brought out, then out of this, a second truth related to the
first one, and so on to the end, no other obligation being involved in
this method but that of carefully advancing step by step, and of
omitting no intermediary step. - With this method one is able to
explain all, to make everything understood, even by women, and even by
women of society. In the eighteenth century it forms the substance of
all talents, the warp of all masterpieces, the lucidity, popularity
and authority of philosophy. The "Eloges" of Fontenelle, the
"Philosophe ignorant et le principe d'action" by Voltaire, the "
Lettre à M. de Beaumont," and the "Vicaire Savoyard" by Rousseau, the
"Traité de l'homme" and the "Époques de la Nature" by Buffon, the "
Dialogues sur les blés" by Galiani, the " Considérations" by
d'Alembert, on mathematics, the " Langue des Calculs" and the
"Logique" by Condillac, and, a little later, the "Exposition du
système du Monde" by Laplace, and "Discours généraux" by Bichat and
Cuvier; all are based on this method[12]. Finally, this is the method
which Condillac erects into a theory under the name of ideology, soon
acquiring the ascendancy of a dogma, and which then seems to sum up
all methods. At the very least it sums up the process by which the
philosophers of the century obtained their audience, propagated their
doctrine and achieved their success.

III. ITS POPULARITY.

Owing to style it becomes pleasing. - Two stimulants peculiar to
the 18th century, coarse humor and irony.

Thanks to this method one can be understood; but, to be read,
something more is necessary. I compare the eighteenth century to a
company of people around a table; it is not sufficient that the food
before them be well prepared, well served, within reach and easy to
digest, but it is important that it should be some choice dish or,
better still, some dainty. The intellect is Epicurean; let us supply
it with savory, delicate viands adapted to its taste; it will eat so
much the more owing to its appetite being sharpened by sensuality.
Two special condiments enter into the cuisine of this century, and,
according to the hand that makes use of them, they furnish all
literary dishes with a coarse or delicate seasoning. In an Epicurean
society, to which a return to nature and the rights of instinct are
preached, voluptuous images and ideas present themselves
involuntarily; this is the appetizing, exciting spice-box. Each guest
at the table uses or abuses it; many empty its entire contents on
their plate. And I do not allude merely to the literature read in
secret, to the extraordinary books Madame d'Audlan, governess to the
French royal children, peruses, and which stray off into the hands of
the daughters of Louis XV,[13] nor to other books, still more
extraordinary,[14] in which philosophical arguments appear as an
interlude between filth and the illustrations, and which are kept by
the ladies of the court on their toilet-tables, under the title of
"Heures de Paris." I refer here to the great men, to the masters of
the public intellect. With the exception of Buffon, all put pimento
into their sauces, that is to say, loose talk or coarseness of
expression. We find this even in the" Esprit des Lois;" there is an
enormous amount of it, open and covered up, in the "Lettres Persanes."
Diderot, in his two great novels, puts it in by handfuls, as if during
an orgy. The teeth crunch on it like so many grains of pepper, on
every page of Voltaire. We find it, not only piquant, but strong and
of burning intensity, in the "Nouvelle Héloïse," scores of times in "
Emile," and, in the "Confessions," from one end to the other. It was
the taste of the day. M. de Malesherbes, so upright and so grave,
committed "La Pucelle" to memory and recited it. We have from the pen
of Saint-Just, the gloomiest of the "Mountain," a poem as lascivious
as that of Voltaire, while Madame Roland, the noblest of the
Girondins, has left us confessions as venturesome and specific as
those of Rousseau[15]. - On the other hand there is a second box,
that containing the old Gallic salt, that is to say, humor and
raillery. Its mouth is wide open in the hands of a philosophy
proclaiming the sovereignty of reason. Whatever is contrary to Reason
is to it absurd and therefore open to ridicule. The moment the solemn
hereditary mask covering up an abuse is brusquely and adroitly torn
aside, we feel a curious spasm, the corners of our mouth stretching
apart and our breast heaving violently, as at a kind of sudden relief,
an unexpected deliverance, experiencing a sense of our recovered
superiority, of our revenge being gratified and of an act of justice
having been performed. But it depends on the mode in which the mask
is struck off whether the laugh shall be in turn light or loud,
suppressed or unbridled, now amiable and cheerful, or now bitter and
sardonic. Humor (la plaisanterie) comports with all aspects, from
buffoonery to indignation; no literary seasoning affords such a
variety, or so many mixtures, nor one that so well enters into
combination with that above-mentioned. The two together, from the
middle ages down, form the principal ingredients employed by the
French cuisine in the composition of its most agreeable dainties, -
fables, tales, witticisms, jovial songs and waggeries, the eternal
heritage of a good-humored, mocking people, preserved by La Fontaine
athwart the pomp and sobriety of the seventeenth century, and, in the
eighteenth, reappearing everywhere at the philosophic banquet. Its
charm is great to the brilliant company at this table, so amply
provided, whose principal occupation is pleasure and amusement. It is
all the greater because, on this occasion, the passing disposition is
in harmony with hereditary instinct, and because the taste of the
epoch is fortified by the national taste. Add to all this the
exquisite art of the cooks, their talent in commingling, in
apportioning and in concealing the condiments, in varying and
arranging the dishes, the certainty of their hand, the finesse of
their palate, their experience in processes, in the traditions and
practices which, already for a hundred years, form of French prose the
most delicate nourishment of the intellect. It is not strange to find
them skilled in regulating human speech, in extracting from it its
quintessence and in distilling its full delight.

IV. THE MASTERS.

The art and processes of the masters. - Montesquieu. - Voltaire.
- Diderot. - Rousseau. - "The Marriage of Figaro."

In this respect four among them are superior, Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. It seems sufficient to mention their
names. Modern Europe has no greater writers. And yet their talent
must be closely examined to properly comprehend their power.- In tone
and style Montesquieu is the first. No writer is more master of
himself, more outwardly calm, more sure of his meaning. His voice is
never boisterous; he expresses the most powerful thoughts with
moderation. There is no gesticulation; exclamations, the abandonment
of impulse, all that is irreconcilable with decorum is repugnant to
his tact, his reserve, his dignity. He seems to be always addressing
a select circle of people with acute minds, and in such a way as to
render them at every moment conscious of their acuteness. No flattery
could be more delicate; we feel grateful to him for making us
satisfied with our intelligence. We must possess some intelligence to
be able to read him, for he deliberately curtails developments and
omits transitions; we are required to supply these and to comprehend
his hidden meanings. He is rigorously systematic but the system is
concealed, his concise completed sentences succeeding each other
separately, like so many precious coffers or caskets, now simple and
plain in aspect, now superbly chased and decorated, but always full.
Open them and each contains a treasure; here is placed in narrow
compass a rich store of reflections, of emotions, of discoveries, our
enjoyment being the more intense because we can easily retain all this
for a moment in the palm of our hand. "That which usually forms a
grand conception," he himself says, "is a thought so expressed as to
reveal a number of other thoughts, and suddenly disclosing what we
could not anticipate without patient study." This, indeed, is his
manner; he thinks with summaries; he concentrates the essence of
despotism in a chapter of three lines. The summary itself often bears
the air of an enigma, of which the charm is twofold; we have the
pleasure of comprehension accompanying the satisfaction of divining.
In all subjects he maintains this supreme discretion, this art of
indicating without enforcing, these reticences, the smile that never
becomes a laugh.

"In my defense of the 'Esprit des Lois,"' he says, "that which
gratifies me is not to see venerable theologians crushed to the ground
but to see them glide down gently."

He excels in tranquil irony, in polished disdain,[16] in disguised
sarcasm. His Persians judge France as Persians, and we smile at their
errors; unfortunately the laugh is not against them but against
ourselves, for their error is found to be a verity[17]. This or that
letter, in a sober vein, seems a comedy at their expense without
reflecting upon us, full of Muslim prejudices and of oriental
conceit;[18] reflect a moment, and our conceit, in this relation,
appears no less. Blows of extraordinary force and reach are given in
passing, as if thoughtlessly, against existing institutions, against
the transformed Catholicism which "in the present state of Europe,
cannot last five hundred years," against the degenerate monarchy which
causes useful citizens to starve to fatten parasite courtiers[19].
The entire new philosophy blooms out in his hands with an air of
innocence, in a pastoral romance, in a simple prayer, in an artless
letter[20]. None of the gifts which serve to arrest and fix the
attention are wanting in this style, neither grandeur of imagination
nor profound sentiment, vivid characterization, delicate gradations,
vigorous precision, a sportive grace, unlooked-for burlesque, nor
variety of representation. But, amidst so many ingenious tricks,
apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when
masquerading, his deportment throughout is irreproachable and his tone
is perfect. If; as an author, he develops a paradox it is with almost
English gravity. If he fully exposes indecency it is with decent
terms. In the full tide of buffoonery, as well as in the full blast
of license, he is ever the well-bred man, born and brought up in the
aristocratic circle in which full liberty is allowed but where good-
breeding is supreme, where every idea is permitted but where words are
weighed, where one has the privilege of saying what he pleases, but on
condition that he never forgets himself.

A circle of this kind is a small one, comprising only a select few;
to be understood by the multitude requires another tone of voice.
Philosophy demands a writer whose principal occupation is a diffusion
of it, who is unable to keep it to himself; who pours it out like a
gushing fountain, who offers it to everybody, daily and in every form,
in broad streams and in small drops, without exhaustion or weariness,
through every crevice and by every channel, in prose, in verse, in
imposing and in trifling poems, in the drama, in history, in novels,
in pamphlets, in pleadings, in treatises, in essays, in dictionaries,
in correspondence, openly and in secret, in order that it may
penetrate to all depths and in every soil; such was Voltaire. -
"I have accomplished more in my day," he says somewhere, "than either
Luther or Calvin," in which he is mistaken. The truth is, however, he
has something of their spirit. Like them he is desirous of changing
the prevailing religion, he takes the attitude of the founder of a
sect, he recruits and binds together proselytes, he writes letters of
exhortation, of direction and of predication, he puts watchwords in
circulation, he furnishes "the brethren" with a device; his passion
resembles the zeal of an apostle or of a prophet. Such a spirit is
incapable of reserve; it is militant and fiery by nature; it
apostrophizes, reviles and improvises; it writes under the dictation
of impressions; it allows itself every species of utterance and, if
need be, the coarsest. It thinks by explosions; its emotions are
sudden starts, and its images so many sparks; it lets the rein go
entirely; it gives itself up to the reader and hence it takes
possession of him. Resistance is impossible; the contagion is too
overpowering. A creature of air and flame, the most excitable that
ever lived, composed of more ethereal and more throbbing atoms than
those of other men; none is there whose mental machinery is more
delicate, nor whose equilibrium is at the same time more shifting and
more exact. He may be compared to those accurate scales that are
affected by a breath, but alongside of which every other measuring
apparatus is incorrect and clumsy. - But, in this delicate balance
only the lightest weights, the finest specimen must be placed; on this
condition only it rigorously weighs all substances; such is Voltaire,
involuntarily, through the demands of his intellect, and in his own
behalf as much as in that of his readers. An entire philosophy, ten
volumes of theology, an abstract science, a special library, an
important branch of erudition, of human experience and invention, is
thus reduced in his hands to a phrase or to a stanza. From the
enormous mass of riven or compact scorioe he extracts whatever is
essential, a grain of gold or of copper as a specimen of the rest,
presenting this to us in its most convenient and most manageable form,
in a simile, in a metaphor, in an epigram that becomes a proverb. In
this no ancient or modern writer approaches him; in simplification and
in popularization he has not his equal in the world. Without
departing from the usual conversational tone, and as if in sport, he
puts into little portable phrases the greatest discoveries and
hypotheses of the human mind, the theories of Descartes, Malebranche,
Leibnitz, Locke and Newton, the diverse religions of antiquity and of
modern times, every known system of physics, physiology, geology,
morality, natural law, and political economy,[21] in short, all the
generalized conceptions in every order of knowledge to which humanity
had attained in the eighteenth century. - Voltaire's inclination
is so strong that it carries him too far; he belittles great things by
rendering them accessible. Religion, legend, ancient popular poesy,
the spontaneous creations of instinct, the vague visions of primitive
tunes are not thus to be converted into small current coin; they are
not subjects of amusing and lively conversation. A piquant witticism
is not an expression of all this, but simply a travesty. But how
charming to Frenchmen, and to people of the world! And what reader can
abstain from a book containing all human knowledge summed up in
piquant witticisms? For it is really a summary of human knowledge, no
important idea, as far as I can see, being wanting to a man whose
breviary consisted of the "Dialogues," the "Dictionary," and the
"Novels." Read them over and over five or six times, and we then form
some idea of their vast contents. Not only do views of the world and
of man abound in them, but again they swarm with positive and even
technical details, thousands of little facts scattered throughout,
multiplied and precise details on astronomy, physics, geography,
physiology, statistics, and on the history of all nations, the
innumerable and personal experiences of a man who has himself read the
texts, handled the instruments, visited the countries, taken part in
the industries, and associated with the persons, and who, in the
precision of his marvelous memory, in the liveliness of his ever-
blazing imagination, revives or sees, as with the eye itself,
everything that he states and as he states it. It is a unique talent,
the rarest in a classic era, the most precious of all, since it
consists in the display of actual beings, not through the gray veil of
abstractions, but in themselves, as they are in nature and in history,
with their visible color and forms, with their accessories and
surroundings in time and space, a peasant at his cart, a Quaker in his
meeting-house, a German baron in his castle, Dutchmen, Englishmen,
Spaniards, Italians, Frenchmen, in their homes,[22] a great lady, a
designing woman, provincials, soldiers, prostitutes,[23] and the rest
of the human medley, on every step of the social ladder, each an
abridgment of his kind and in the passing light of a sudden flash.

For, the most striking feature of this style is the prodigious
rapidity, the dazzling and bewildering stream of novelties, ideas,
images, events, landscapes, narratives, dialogues, brief little
pictures, following each other rapidly as if in a magic-lantern,
withdrawn almost as soon as presented by the impatient magician who,
in the twinkling of an eye, girdles the world and, constantly
accumulating one on top of the other, history, fable, truth and fancy,
the present time and times past, frames his work now with a parade as
absurd as that of a country fair, and now with a fairy scene more
magnificent than all those of the opera. To amuse and be amused, "to
diffuse his spirit in every imaginable mode, like a glowing furnace
into which all substances are thrown by turns to evolve every species
of flame, sparkle and odor," is his first instinct. "Life," he says
again, "is an infant to be rocked until it goes to sleep." Never was a
mortal more excited and more exciting, more incapable of silence and
more hostile to ennui,[24] better endowed for conversation, more
evidently destined to become the king of a sociable century in which,
with six pretty stories, thirty witticisms and some confidence in
himself, a man could obtain a social passport and the certainty of
being everywhere welcome. Never was there a writer possessing to so
high a degree and in such abundance every qualification of the
conversationalist, the art of animating and of enlivening discourse,
the talent for giving pleasure to people of society. Perfectly
refined when he chose to be, confining himself without inconvenience
to strict decorum, of finished politeness, of exquisite gallantry,
deferential without being servile, fond without being mawkish,[25] and
always at his ease, it suffices that he should be before the public,
to fall naturally into the proper tone, the discreet ways, the winning
half-smile of the well-bred man who, introducing his readers into his
mind, does them the honors of the place. Are you on familiar terms
with him, and of the small private circle in which he freely unbends
himself, with closed doors? You never tire of laughing. With a sure
hand and without seeming to touch it, he abruptly tears aside the veil
hiding a wrong, a prejudice, a folly, in short, any human idolatry.
The real figure, misshapen, odious or dull, suddenly appears in this
instantaneous flash; we shrug our shoulders. This is the risibility
of an agile, triumphant reason. We have another in that of the gay
temperament, of the droll improvisator, of the man keeping youthful, a
child, a boy even to the day of his death, and who "gambols on his own
tombstone." He is fond of caricature, exaggerating the features of
faces, bringing grotesques on the stage,[26] walking them about in all
lights like marionettes, never weary of taking them up and of making
them dance in new costumes; in the very midst of his philosophy, of
his propaganda and polemics, he sets up his portable theater in full
blast, exhibiting oddities, the scholar, the monk, the inquisitor,
Maupertuis, Pompignan, Nonotte, Fréron, King David, and countless
others who appear before us, capering and gesticulating in their
harlequin attire. - When a farcical talent is thus moved to tell the
truth, humor becomes all-powerful; for it gratifies the profound and
universal instincts of human nature: to the malicious curiosity, to
the desire to mock and belitte, to the aversion to being in need or
under constraint, those sources of bad moods which task convention,
etiquette and social obligation with wearing the burdensome cloak of
respect and of decency; moments occur in life when the wisest is not
sorry to throw this half aside and even cast it off entirely. - On
each page, now with the bold stroke of a hardy naturalist, now with
the quick turn of a mischievous monkey, Voltaire lets the solemn or
serious drapery fall, disclosing man, the poor biped, and in which
attitudes![27] Swift alone dared to present similar pictures. What
physiological crudities relating to the origin and end of our most
exalted sentiments! What disproportion between such feeble reason and
such powerful instincts! What recesses in the wardrobes of politics
and religion concealing their foul linen! We laugh at all this so as
not to weep, and yet behind this laughter there are tears; he ends
sneeringly, subsiding into a tone of profound sadness, of mournful
pity. In this degree, and with such subjects, it is only an effect of
habit, or as an expedient, a mania of inspiration, a fixed condition
of the nervous machinery rushing headlong over everything, without a
break and in full speed. Gaiety, let it not be forgotten, is still a
incentive of action, the last that keeps man erect in France, the best
in maintaining the tone of his spirit, his strength and his powers of
resistance, the most intact in an age when men, and women too,
believed it incumbent on them to die people of good society, with a
smile and a jest on their lips[28].