The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4

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* it coins money,
* it regulates weights and measures,
* it establishes quarantines,
* on condition of an indemnity, it expropriates private property for
public utility,
* it builds lighthouses, harbors, dikes, canals, roads,
* it defrays the cost of scientific expeditions,
* it founds museums and public libraries;
* at times, toleration is shown for its support of universities,
schools, churches, and theaters,
and, to justify fresh drafts on private purses for such objects, no
reason is assigned for it but the common interest. (l'intérêt commun)
- Why should it not, in like manner, take upon itself every enterprise
for the benefit of all? Why should it hesitate in commanding the
execution of every work advantageous to the community, and why abstain
from forbidding every harmful work? Now please note that in human
society every act or omission, even the most concealed or private, is
either a loss or a gain to society. So if I neglect to take care of
my property or of my health, of my intellect or of my soul, I
undermine or weaken in my person a member of the community which can
only be rich, healthy and strong through the wealth, health and
strength of his fellow members, so that, from this point of view, my
private actions are all public benefits or public injuries. Why then,
from this point of view, should the State scruple about prescribing
some of these to me and forbidding others? Why, in order to better
exercise this right, and better fulfill this obligation, should it not
constitute itself the universal contractor for labor, and the
universal distributor of productions? Why should it not become the
sole agriculturist, manufacturer and merchant, the unique proprietor
and administrator of all France? - Precisely because this would be
opposed to the common weal (l'intérêt de tous, the interest of
everyone)[15]. Here the second principle, that advanced against
individual independence, operates inversely, and, instead of being an
adversary, it becomes a champion. Far from setting the State free, it
puts another chain around its neck, and thus strengthens the fence
within which modern conscience and modern honor have confined the
public guardian.

V.

Direct common interest. - This consists in the absence of constraint.
- Two reasons in favor of freedom of action. - Character, in general,
of the individual man. - Modern complication.

In what, indeed, does the common weal (l'intérêt de tous, the interest
of everyone) consist? - In the interest of each person, while that
which interests each person is the things of which the possession is
agreeable and deprivation painful. The whole world would in vain
gainsay this point; every sensation is personal. My suffering and my
enjoyments are not to be contested any more than my inclination for
objects which procure me the one, and my dislike of objects which
procure me the other. There is, therefore, no arbitrary definition of
each one's particular interest; this exists as a fact independently of
the legislator; all that remains is to show what this interest is, and
what each individual prefers. Preferences vary according to race,
time, place and circumstance. Among the possessions which are ever
desirable and the privation of which is ever dreaded, there is one,
however, which, directly desired, and for itself, becomes, through the
progress of civilization, more and more cherished, and of which the
privation becomes, through the progress of civilization, more and more
grievous. That is the disposition of one's self, the full ownership
of one's body and property, the faculty of thinking, believing and
worshipping as one pleases, of associating with others, of acting
separately or along with others, in all senses and without hindrance;
in short, one's liberty. That this liberty may as extensive as
possible is, in all times, one of man's great needs, and, in our days,
it is his greatest need. There are two reasons for this, one natural
and the other historical. -

By nature Man is an individual, that is to say a small distinct world
in himself, a center apart in an enclosed circle, a detached organism
complete in itself and which suffers when his spontaneous inclinations
are frustrated by the intervention of an outside force.

The passage of time has made him a complicated organism, upon which
three or four religions, five or six civilizations, thirty centuries
of rich culture have left their imprint; in which its acquisitions are
combined together, wherein inherited qualities are crossbred, wherein
special traits have accumulated in such a way as to produce the most
original and the most sensitive of beings. As civilization increases,
so does his complexity: with the result that man's originality
strengthens and his sensitivity become keener; from which it follows
that the more civilized he becomes, the greater his repugnance to
constraint and uniformity.

At the present day, (1880), each of us is the terminal and peculiar
product of a vast elaboration of which the diverse stages occur in
this order but once, a plant unique of its species, a solitary
individual of superior and finer essence which, with its own inward
structure and its own inalienable type, can bear no other than its own
characteristic fruit. Nothing could be more adverse to the interest
of the oak than to be tortured into bearing the apples of the apple
tree; nothing could be more adverse to the interests of the apple tree
than to be tortured into bearing acorns; nothing could be more opposed
to the interests of both oak and apple tree, also of other trees, than
to be pruned, shaped and twisted so as all to grow after a forced
model, delineated on paper according to the rigid and limited
imagination of a surveyor. The least possible constraint is,
therefore, everybody's chief interest; if one particular restrictive
agency is established, it is that every one may be preserved by if
from other more powerful constraints, especially those which the
foreigner and evil-doer would impose. Up to that point, and not
further, its intervention is beneficial; beyond that point, it becomes
one of the evils it is intended to forestall. Such then, if the
common weal is to be looked after, the sole office of the State is,

1. to prevent constraint and, therefore, never to use it except to
prevent worse constraints;
2. to secure respect for each individual in his own physical and
moral domain; never to encroach on this except for that purpose and
then to withdraw immediately;
3. to abstain from all indiscreet meddling, and yet more, as far as
is practicable, without any sacrifice of public security;
4. to reduce old assessments, to exact only a minimum of subsidies
and services;
5. to gradually limit even useful action;
6. to set itself as few tasks as possible;
7. to let each one have all the room possible and the maximum of
initiative;
8. to slowly abandon monopolies;
9. to refrain from competition with private parties;
10. to rid itself of functions which these private parties can
fulfill equally well -
and we see that the limits assigned to the State by the public
interest (l'intérêt commun) correspond to those stipulated by duty and
justice.

VI.

Indirect common interest. - This consists in the most economical and
most productive employment of spontaneous forces. - Difference
between voluntary labor and forced labor. - Sources of man's
spontaneous action. Conditions of their energy, work and products. -
Motives for leaving them under personal control. - Extent of the
private domain. - Individuals might voluntarily extend it. - What is
left becomes the domain of the State. - Obligatory functions of the
State. - Optional functions of the State.

Let us now take into consideration, no longer the direct, but the
indirect interest of all. Instead of considering individuals let us
concern ourselves with their works. Let us regard human society as a
material and spiritual workshop, whose perfection consists in making
it as productive, economical, and as well furnished and managed as
possible . Even with this secondary and subordinate aim, the domain
of the State is scarcely to be less restricted: very few new functions
are to be attributed to it; nearly all the rest will be better
fulfilled by independent persons, or by natural or voluntary
associations. -

Let us consider the man who works for his own benefit, the farmer, the
manufacturer, the merchant, and observe how attentive he is to his
business. This is because his interest and pride are involved. One
side his welfare and that of those around him is at stake, his
capital, his reputation, his social position and advancement; on the
other side, are poverty, ruin, social degradation, dependence,
bankruptcy and the alms-house. In the presence of this alternative he
keeps close watch and becomes industrious; he thinks of his business
even when abed or at his meals; he studies it, not from a distance,
speculatively, in a general way, but on the spot, practically, in
detail, in all its bearings and relationships, constantly calculating
difficulties and resources, with such sharp insight and special
information that for any other person to try to solve the daily
problem which he solves, would be impossible, because nobody could
possess or estimate as he can the precise elements which constitute
it. - Compare with this unique devotion and these peculiar
qualifications the ordinary capacity and listless regularity of a
senior public official, even when expert and honest. He is sure of
his salary, provided he does his duty tolerably well, and this he does
when he is occupied during official hours. Let his papers be correct,
in conformity with regulations and custom, and nothing more is asked
of him; he need not tax his brain beyond that. If he conceives any
economical measure, or any improvement of his branch of the service,
not he, but the public, an anonymous and vague impersonality, reaps
all the benefit of it. Moreover, why should he care about it, since
his project or reform might end up in the archives. The machine is
too vast and complicated, too unwieldy, too clumsy, with its rusty
wheels, its " old customs and acquired rights," to be renewed and
rebuilt as one might a farm, a warehouse or a foundry. Accordingly,
he has no idea of troubling himself further in the matter; on leaving
his office he dismisses it from his mind; he lets things go on
automatically, just as it happens, in a costly way and with
indifferent results. Even in a country of as much probity as France,
it is calculated that every enterprise managed by the State costs one
quarter more, and brings in one quarter less, than when entrusted to
private hands. Consequently if work were withheld from individuals in
order that the State might undertake it the community, when the
accounts came to be balanced, would suffer a loss of one-half.[16]

Now, this is true of all work, whether spiritual or material not only
of agricultural, industrial and commercial products, but, again, of
works of science and of art, of literature and philosophy, of charity,
of education and propaganda. Not only when driven by egoism, such as
personal interest and vulgar vanity, but also when a disinterested
sentiment is involved, such the discovery of truth, the creation of
beauty, the propagation of a faith, the diffusion of convictions,
religious enthusiasm or natural generosity, love in a broad or a
narrow sense, spanning from one who embraces all humanity to one who
devotes himself wholly to his friends and kindred. The effect is the
same in both cases, because the cause is the same. Always, in the
shop directed by the free workman, the motivating force is enormous,
almost infinite, because it is a living spring which flows at all
hours and is inexhaustible. The mother thinks constantly of her
child, the savant of his science, the artist of his art, the inventor
of his inventions, the philanthropist of his endowments, Faraday of
electricity, Stephenson of his locomotive, Pasteur of his microbes, De
Lesseps of his isthmus, sisters of charity of their poor. Through
this peculiar concentration of thought, man derives every possible
advantage from human faculties and surroundings; he himself gets to be
a more and more perfect instrument, and, moreover, he fashions others:
with this he daily reduces the friction of the powerful machine which
he controls and of which he is the main wheel; he increases its yield
; he economizes, maintains, repairs and improves it with a capability
and success that nobody questions; in short, he fabricates in a
superior way. - But this living source, to which the superiority of
the works is due, cannot be separated from the owner and chief, for it
issues from his own affections and deepest sentiments. It is useless
without him; out of his hands, in the hands of strangers, the fountain
ceases to flow and production stops. - If, consequently, a good and
large yield is required, he alone must have charge of the mill; he is
the resident owner of it, the one who sets it in motion, the born
engineer, installed and specially designed for that position. In vain
may attempts be made to turn the stream elsewhere; there simply ensues
a stoppage of the natural issue, a dam barring useful canals, a
haphazard change of current not only without gain, but loss, the
stream subsiding in swamps or undermining the steep banks of a ravine.
At the utmost, the millions of buckets of water, forcibly taken from
private reservoirs, half fill with a good deal of trouble the great
central artificial basin in which the water, low and stagnant, is
never sufficient in quantity or force to move the huge public wheel
that replaces the small private wheels, doing the nation's work.

Thus, even when we only consider men as manufactures, even if we treat
them simply as producers of what is valuable and serviceable, with no
other object in view than to furnish society with supplies and to
benefit the consumers, even though the private domain includes all
enterprises undertaken by private individuals, either singly or
associated together, through personal interests or personal taste,
then this is enough to ensure that all is managed better than the
State could have done; it is by virtue of this that they have devolved
into their hands. Consequently, in the vast field of labor, they
themselves decide on what they will undertake; they themselves, of
their own authority, set their own limits. They may therefore enlarge
their own domain to any extent they please, and reduce indefinitely
the domain of the State. On the contrary, the State cannot pretend to
more than what they leave; as they advance on their common territory
separated by vague frontiers, it is bound to recede and leave the
ground to them; whatever the task is, it should not perform it except
in case of their default, or their prolonged absence, or on proof of
their having abandoned it.

All the rest, therefore falls to the State; first, the offices which
they would never claim, and which they will deliberately leave in its
hands, because they do not have that indispensable instrument, called
armed force. This force forces assures the protection of the
community against foreign communities, the protection of individuals
against one another, the levying of soldiers, the imposition of taxes,
the execution of the laws, the administration of justice and of the
police. - Next to this, come matters of which the accomplishment
concerns everybody without directly interesting any one in particular
- the government of unoccupied territory, the administration of
rivers, coasts, forests and public highways, the task of governing
subject countries, the framing of laws, the coinage of money, the
conferring of a civil status, the negotiating in the name of the
community with local and special corporations, departments, communes,
banks, institutions, churches, and universities. - Add to these,
according to circumstances, sundry optional co-operative services,[17]
such as subsidies granted to institutions of great public utility, for
which private contributions could not suffice, now in the shape of
concessions to corporations for which equivalent obligations are
exacted, and, again, in those hygienic precautions which individuals
fail to take through indifference; so occasionally, such provisional
aid as supports a man, or so stimulates him as to enable him some day
or other to support himself; and, in general, those discreet and
scarcely perceptible interpositions for the time being which prove so
advantageous in the future, like a far-reaching code and other
consistent regulations which, mindful of the liberty of the existing
individual, provide for the welfare of coming generations. Nothing
beyond that.

Again, in this preparation for future welfare the same principle still
holds.

VII.

Fabrication of social instruments. - Application of this principle.
- How all kinds of useful laborers are formed. - Respect for
spontaneous sources, the essential and adequate condition. -
Obligation of the State to respect these. - They dry up when it
monopolizes them. - The aim of patriotism. - The aim of other
liberal dispositions. - Impoverishment of all the productive
faculties. - Destructive effect of the Jacobin system.

Among the precious products, the most precious and important are,
evidently, the animated instruments, namely the men, since they
produce the rest. The object then, is to fashion men capable of
physical, mental or moral labor, the most energetic, the most
persistent, the most skillful and most productive; now, we already
know the conditions of their formation. It is essential and
sufficient, that the vivacious sources, described above, should flow
there, on the spot, each through its natural outlet, and under the
control of the owner. On this condition the jet becomes more
vigorous, for the acquired impetus increases the original outflow; the
producer becomes more and more skillful, since 'practice makes
perfect.' Those around him likewise become better workmen, inasmuch as
they find encouragement in his success and avail themselves of his
discoveries. - Thus, simply because the State respects, and enforces
respect, for these individual sources in private hands, it develops in
individuals, as well as in those around them, the will and the talent
for producing much and well, the faculty for, and desire to, keep on
producing more and better; in other words, all sorts of energies and
capacities, each of its own kind and in its own place, with all
compatible fullness and efficiency. Such is the office, and the sole
office, of the State, first in relation to the turbid and frigid
springs issuing from selfishness and self-conceit, whose operations
demand its oversight, and next for still stronger reasons, in relation
to the warm and pure springs whose beneficence is unalloyed, as in the
family affections and private friendships; again, in relation to those
rarer and higher springs, such as the love of beauty, the yearning for
truth, the spirit of association, patriotism and love of mankind; and,
finally, for still stronger reasons, in relation to the two most
sacred and salutary of all springs, conscience which renders will
subject to duty, and honor which makes will the support of justice.
Let the State prevent, as well as abstain from, any interference with
either; let this be its object and nothing more; its abstention is as
necessary as its vigilance. Let it guard both, and it will see
everywhere growing spontaneously, hourly, each in degree according to
conditions of time and place, the most diligent and most competent
workmen, the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the merchant, the
savant, the artist, the inventor, the propagandist, the husband and
wife, the father and mother, the patriot, the philanthropist and the
sister of charity.

On the contrary, if, like our Jacobins, the State seeks to confiscate
every natural force to its own profit, it seeks to make affection for
itself paramount, if it strives to suppress all other passions and
interests, if it tolerates no other preoccupation than that which
concerns the common weal, if it tries to forcibly convert every member
of society into a Spartan or Jesuit, then, at enormous cost, will it
not only destroy private fountains, and spread devastation over the
entire territory, but it will destroy its own fountain-head. We honor
the State only for the services it renders to us, and proportionately
to these services and the security it affords us, and to the liberty
which it ensures us under the title of universal benefactor; when it
deliberately wounds us through our dearest interests and most tender
affections, when it goes so far as to attack our honor and conscience,
when it becomes the universal wrong-doer, our affection for it, in the
course of time, turns into hatred. Let this system be maintained, and
patriotism, exhausted, dries up, and, one by one, all other beneficent
springs, until, finally, nothing is visible over the whole country,
but stagnant pools or overwhelming torrents, inhabited by passive
subjects or depredators. As in the Roman empire in the fourth
century, in Italy in the seventeenth century, in the Turkish provinces
in our own day, naught remains but an ill-conducted herd of stunted,
torpid creatures, limited to their daily wants and animal instincts,
indifferent to the public welfare and to their own prospective
interests, so degenerate as to have lost sight of their own
discoveries, unlearned their own sciences, arts and industries, and,
in short, and worse than all, base, false, corrupted souls entirely
wanting in honor and conscience. Nothing is more destructive than the
unrestricted meddling of the State, even when wise and paternal; in
Paraguay, under the discipline of Jesuits, so minute in its details,
"Indian physiognomy appeared like that of animals taken in a trap."
They worked, ate, drank and gave birth by sound of bells, under watch
and ward, correctly and mechanically, but showing no liking for
anything, not even for their own existence, being transformed into so
may automatons; at least it may be said is that the means employed to
produce this result were gentle and that they, before their
transformation were mere brutes. But those who the revolutionary-
Jesuit now undertakes to transform into robots, and by harsh means,
are human beings.

VIII.

Comparison between despotisms. - Philip II and Louis XIV. - Cromwell
and Frederick the Great. - Peter the Great and the Sultans. -
Relationship between the tasks the Jacobins are to carry out and the
assets at their disposal. - Disproportion between the burdens they
are to carry and the forces at their disposal. - Folly of their
undertaking. - Physical force the only governmental force they
possess. - They are compelled to exercise it. - They are compelled
to abuse it. - Character of their government. - Character requisite
of their leaders.

Several times, in European history, despotism almost equally harsh
have born down heavily on human effort; but never have any of them
been so thoroughly inept; for none have ever attempted to raise so
heavy a mass with so short a lever.
And to start with, no matter how authoritative the despot might have
been, his intervention was limited. - Philip II. burned heretics,
persecuted Moors and drove out Jews; Louis XIV. forcibly converted
the Protestants; but both used violence only against dissenters, about
a fifteenth or a twentieth of their subjects. If Cromwell, on
becoming Protector, remained sectarian, and the compulsory servant of
an army of sectarians, he took good care not to impose on other
churches the theology, rites and discipline of his own church;[18] on
the contrary, he repressed fanatical outrages; protected the
Anabaptists as well as his Independents. He granted paid curates to
the Presbyterians as well as the public exercise of their worship, he
showed the Episcopalians a large tolerance and gave them the right to
worship in private; he maintained the two great Anglican universities
and allowed the Jews to erect a synagogue. - Frederick II. drafted
into his army every able-bodied peasant that he could feed; he kept
every man twenty years in the service, under a discipline worse than
slavery, with almost certain prospect of death; and in his last war,
he sacrificed about one sixth of his male subjects;[19] but they were
serfs, and his conscription did not touch the bourgeois class. He put
his hands in the pockets of the bourgeois and of every other man, and
took every crown they had; when driven to it, he adulterated coin and
stopped paying his functionaries; but, under the scrutiny of his eyes,
always open, the administration was honest, the police effective,
justice exact, toleration unlimited, and the freedom of the press
complete; the king allowed the publication of the most cutting
pamphlets against himself, and their public sale, even at Berlin. - A
little earlier, in the great empire of the east, Peter the Great,[20]
with whip in hand, lashed his Muscovite bears and made them drill and
dance in European fashion; but were bears accustomed from father to
son to the whip and chain; moreover, he stood as the orthodox head of
their faith, and left their mir (the village commune) untouched. -
Finally, at the other extremity of Europe, and even outside of Europe,
in the seventh century the caliph, in the fifteenth century a sultan,
a Mahomet or an Omar, a fanatical Arab or brutal Turk, who had just
overcome Christians with the sword, himself assigned the limits of his
own absolutism: if the vanquished were reduced to the condition of
heavily ransomed tributaries and of inferiors daily humiliated, he
allowed them their worship, civil laws and domestic usages; he left
them their institutions, their convents and their schools; he allowed
them to administer the affairs of their own community as they pleased
under the jurisdiction of their patriarch, or other natural
chieftains. - Thus whatever the tyrant may have been, he did not
attempt to entirely recast Man, nor to subject all his subjects to the
recasting. However penetrating the tyranny, it stopped in the soul at
a certain point; that point reached, the sentiments were left free.
No matter how comprehensive this tyranny may have been, it affected
only one class of men; the others, outside the net, remained free.
When it wounded all at once all sensitive chords, it did so only to a
limited minority, unable to defend themselves. As far as the
majority, able to protect itself, their main sensibilities were
respected, especially the most sensitive, this one or that one, as the
case might be, now the conscience which binds man to his religion, now
that amour-propre on which honor depends, and now the habits which
make man cling to customs, hereditary usages and outward observances.
As far as the others were concerned, those which relate to property,
personal welfare, and social position, it proceeded cautiously and
with moderation. In this way the discretion of the ruler lessened the
resistance of the subject, and a daring enterprise, even mischievous,
was not outrageous; it might be carried out; nothing was required but
a force in hand equal to the resistance it provoked.