The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6

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The Modern Regime, Volume 2
^M
The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6
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by Hippolyte A. Taine^M

BOOK FIFTH. The Church.

CHAPTER I. MORAL INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III

BOOK SIXTH. Public instruction.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III. Evolution between 1814 and 1890.

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After Taine's death in March 1893, his nephew André Chevrillon
arranged his last manuscripts on the Church and Education for
publication and wrote the following introduction which also tells us
much about Taine and his works

PREFACE By André Chevrillon.

"To treat of the Church, the School, and the Family, describe the
modern milieu and note the facilities and obstacles which a society
like our own encounters in this milieu, such was the program of the
last[1] section of the "Origins of Contemporary France." The preceding
volume is a continuation of the first part of this program; after the
commune and the department, after local societies, the author was to
study moral and intellectual bodies in France as organized by
Napoleon. This study completed, this last step taken, he was about to
reach the summit. He was about to view France as a whole, to
comprehend it no longer through a detail of its organs, in a state of
formation, but its actual existence; no longer isolated, but plunged,
along with other occidental nations, into the modern milieu,
experiencing with them the effects of one general cause which changed
the physical and intellectual condition of men; which dissolved
sentiments formerly grouping them together, more or less capable at
length of adapting themselves to new circumstances and of organizing
according to a new type suited to the coming age that now opens before
us.

Only a part of this last volume was written, that which relates to
the Church and to public instruction. Death intervened and suddenly
arrested the pen. M. Taine, at this moment, was about completing his
analysis of subordinate societies in France. - For those who have
followed him thus far it is already clear that the great defect of the
French community is the fragmentation of the individuals, who
isolated, dwindling, and prostrate at the feet of the all-powerful
State, who, due to remote historical causes, and yet more so by
modern legislation, have been made incapable of "spontaneously
grouping around a common interest." Very probably - and of this we may
judge by two sketches of a plan, undoubtedly provisional, but the
ideas of which were long settled in his mind - M. Taine would have
first described this legislation and defined its principles and
general characteristics. He meant to show it more and more systematic,
deliberately hostile to collective enterprise, considering secondary
bodies not as "distinct, special organs," endowed with a life of their
own, "maintained and stimulated by private initiation," but as agents
of the State "which fashions them after a common pattern, imposes on
them their form and prescribes their work." - This done, this defect
pointed out, the author was to enumerate the consequences flowing from
it, the social body entirely changed, "not only in its proportions but
in its innermost texture," every tendency weakened by which
individuals form groups that are to last longer than themselves, each
man reduced to his own self, the egoistic instinct enhanced while the
social instinct wastes away for want of nourishment, his daily
imagination solely concerned with life-long aims, incapacitated for
politics as he is "lacking spheres of action in which he may train
himself according to his experiences and faculties", his mind
weakening in idleness and boredom or in a thirst for pleasure and
personal success, - in short, an organic impoverishment of all
faculties of cohesion, leading to the destruction of the natural
centers of grouping and, consequently, to political instability.[2]

One association of special import remains, the most spontaneous, the
deepest rooted, so old that all others derive from it, so essential
that in any attack upon it we see even the substance of the social
body decaying and diminishing. On the nature of the Family; on its
profound physiological origins; on its necessary role in the
prolongation and "perpetuation of the individual" by affording him
"the sole remedy for death"; on its primitive constitution among men
of our own race; on its historic organization and development "around
the family home"; on the necessity of its subsistence and continuance
in order to insure the duration of this home; on its other needs, M.
Taine, with his knowledge of man and of his history, had given a good
deal of thought to fundamental ideas analogous to those which he has
consecrated to the classic spirit, to the origin of honor and
conscience, to the essence of local society, so many stones, as it
were, shaped by him from time to time and deeply implanted as the
foundations of his criticism of institutions. Having set forth the
proper character and permanent wants of the Family he was able to
study the legislation affecting it, and, first, "the Jacobin laws on
marriage, divorce, paternal authority and on the compulsory public
education of children; next, the Napoleonic laws, those which still
govern us, the Civil Code" with that portion of it in which the
equality and leveling spirit is preserved, along with "its tendency to
regard property as a means of enjoyment" instead of the starting-point
and support of "an enduring institution." - Having exposed the system,
M. Taine meant to consider its effects, those of surrounding
institutions, and to describe the French family as it now exists. He
had first studied the "tendency to marriage"; he had considered the
motives which, in general, weaken or fortify it, and appreciated those
now absent and now active in France. According to him, "the healthy
ideal of every young man is to found a family, a house of infinite
duration, to create and to rule." Why in modern France does he give
his thoughts to "pleasure and of excelling in his career"? Why does he
regard marriage "without enthusiasm, as a last measure, as a
'settling-down,' and not as a beginning, the commencement of a
veritable career, subordinating all others to it and regarding these,
pecuniary and professional, as auxiliary and as means?" - After the
tendency to marriage, "the tendency to paternity." How does the
shrunken family come to live only for itself? In what way, in default
of other interests, - homestead, domain, workshop, lasting local
undertakings, - how does the heart, now deprived of its food by the
lack of invisible posterity, fall back on affection for visible
progeny?[3] In a country where there are few openings, where careers
are overcrowded, what are the effects of this paididolatry[4], and, to
sum up in one phrase, in what way does the French system of to-day
tend to develop the most fatal of results, the decline in the birth
rate?

Here the study of institutions on a grand scale terminated. Formerly,
M. Taine had contemplated a completion of his labors by a description
of contemporary France, the product of origins scrutinized by him and
of which he had traced the formation. Having disengaged his factors he
meant to combine them, to show them united and acting in concert, all
centering on the great actual facts which dominate the rest and which
determine the order and structure of modern society. As he had given a
picture of old France he aimed to portray France as it now is, with
its various groups, - village, small town and large city, - with its
categories of men, peasants, workmen, bourgeois, functionaries and
capitalists; with the forces that impel each class along, their
passions, their ideas, their desires. Besides the numerical statistics
of person he meant to have set forth the moral statistics of souls.
According to him, psychological conditions exist which render the
social activity of men possible or impossible. And, especially, "in a
given society, there is always a psychological state which provokes
the state of that society." It was his aim to seek out in the novel,
in poetry, in the arts since 1820, that is to say in all works that
throw light on the various and successive kinds of the reigning ideal
- in philosophy, in religion, in industry, in all branches of French
action and thought - the signs of the psychological tendencies of
modern Frenchman in this or that social condition. What would this
book have been? M. Taine had sketched it out so far back, he had
abandoned it for so long a time and never alluded to it, that nothing
remains by which we can form any idea of it. But, in this undertaking
demanding so much science, so much intuition, so much experience of
accurate observation, of general views and precise generalization - in
this vast study requiring such profound knowledge, not alone of France
but of societies offering points of comparison with her, we may be
certain that the author of Notes sur Paris, Notes sur l'Angleterre, of
the Ancien Régime, the critic accustomed to interpret civilizations,
literature and works of art, the thinker, in fine, who, to prepare
himself for the greatest tasks he undertook, traveled five times over
France, studying its life with the eyes of an artist, in the light of
history and of psychology, ever preceding his philosophic study with
visual investigation, would have been equal to the task.[5]

Already for several years, M. Taine, aware that his time was short,
had narrowed the limits of the work he was engaged upon. But what his
work lost in breadth and in richness of detail it would have gained in
depth and in power. All his master ideas would have been found in it,
foreshortened and concentrated. Always seeking in this or that group
of them what he called his generators, intellectual and moral as well
as political, he would have described all those which explain the
French group. Unfortunately, here again the elements are wanting which
allow one to foreshadow what this final analysis and last construction
might have been. M. Taine did not write in anticipation. Long before
taking the pen in hand he had derived his most significant facts and
formed his plan. He carried them in his brain where they fell into
order of themselves. Ten lines of notes, a few memoranda of
conversations - faint reflections, to us around him, of the great
inward light - are all that enable one to attempt an indication of the
few leading conceptions were to complete "Les Origines de la France
Contemporaine."

"Le Milieu Moderne", was to have been the title of the last book. The
question here is how to discover the great characteristics of the
period into which European societies entered and about were to live.
Rising to a higher point of view than that to which he had confined
himself in studying France, M. Taine regarded its metamorphosis as a
case of transformation as general as the passage of the Cité antique
over to the Roman Empire over to the feudal State. Now, as formerly,
this transformation is the effect of a "change in the intellectual and
physical condition of men"; that is to say, in other words, in the
environment that surrounds them. Such is the advent of a new
geological period, of a glacial period, for example, or, more
precisely, "the very slow and then accelerated upheaval of a
continent, forcing the submarine species which breathe by gills to
transform themselves into species which breathe by lungs." It is
impossible to divine in what sense this adaptation takes place if we
do not comprehend the event, that is to say if we do not perceive its
starting-point and the innate force which produces it. According to
Taine, this force, in the present case, is the progress the increasing
authority of positive, verifiable science. What a definition he would
have given of science and its essence! What a tableau of its progress,
the man whose thought was matured at the moment when the scientific
spirit entered into history and literature; who breathed it in his
youth with the fervid and sacred enthusiasm of a poet seeing the world
grow brighter and intelligible to him, and who, at the age of twenty-
five, demanded of it a method and introduced this into criticism and
psychology in order to give these new life - the mechanical equivalent
of heat, natural selection, spectroscopic analysis, the theory of the
microbes, recent discoveries in physics and the constitution of
matter, research into historic origins, psychological explanation of
texts, extension of oriental researches, discoveries of prehistoric
conditions, comparative study of barbaric communities - every grand
idea of the century to which he has himself contributed, all those by
which science embraces a larger and larger portion of the universe, he
saw them containing the same essence; all combining to change the
conception of the world and substitute another, coherent and logical
in the best minds, but then confused and disfigured as it slowly
descends to the level of the crowd. - He would have described this
decent, the gradual diffusion, the growing power of the new Idea, the
active ferment which it contains after the manner of a dogma,
beneficent or pernicious according to the minds in which it lodges,
capable of arming men and of driving them on to pure destruction when
not fully comprehended, and capable of reorganizing them if they can
grasp its veritable meaning.

Its first effects are simply destructive, for, through Darwinism,
through experimental psychology, through the physiology of the brain,
through biblical exegesis, through the comparative study of savage
communities and their moral systems, the new concepts at first shocks
the religious idea which it tends to replace; even, with the half-
cultivated and in the minds of novices, it tends to pure negation, to
hostility against existing religions. To every social gathering around
the religious idea that explains and sustains it, what a disturbance
in the secular system formed by the co-ordination and mutual
adaptation of laws, customs, morality, and institutions! What a
rupture of the inward equilibrium which maintains man passive and
tranquil! The consequent mental agitation will lead to agitation,
impulsion, ambitions, lassitude, despondency, and disorder in all the
sentiments which had thus far maintained every species of society, the
family, the commune, the Church, free association and the State! -
Now, along with the immediate effects of science on the intellectual
habits of men consider the effects of its application to their
material condition; at first, their increased well-being, their power
increased, then the rupture of the ties that bind them to their
birthplace, the concentration of masses of workmen in the towns to
which they are attracted by great and rapid industrial development,
the influx of new ideas, of every species of information, the gradual
decline of the old hereditary prejudices of caste and parish which act
automatically as instincts, and are useful as instincts to the small
groups in which the individual is born and in which he lives. How
could such a profound change in the condition of humanity fail to
undermine everywhere the order of things which group men together? Why
should not the new milieu at once attack all ancient forms of society?
For, at the moment of its establishment, there exists in Europe a
general form of society manifest through features in common; a
monarchy - hereditary royalty, dynastic but frequently limited, at
least in fact, - a privileged nobility performing military service as
a special function, a clergy organized as a Church, proprietary and
more or less privileged, local or special bodies also proprietary -
provinces, communes, universities, brotherhoods, corporations - laws
and customs which base the family on paternal authority, perpetuating
it on the natal soil and by social rank; in brief, institutions which
modern ideas disturb in every direction, the first effect of which is,
while developing the spirit of doubt and investigation, to break down
subordination to the king, to the gentleman, to the noble, and, in
general, to dissolve society founded on heredity. Such phenomena are
already observable everywhere, the ruin of feeble corporations by the
state, its constant tendency to interference, to the absorption of
every special service and the descent of power into the hands of a
numerical majority. - What plan, then, governs these societies in the
way of reorganization, and, since they all belong to a common type,
what are the common resources and difficulties of adaptation? On what
lines must the metamorphosis be effected in order to arrive at a
viable creations? And, abandoning the general problem in order to
return to contemporary France, grown up and organized under our own
eyes, how does the great modern event affect it? How does "this common
factor combine with special factors, permanent and temporary," belong
to our system? With the French, whose hereditary spirit and character
are easily defined, in this society founded on Napoleonic institutions
moved by our "administrative mechanism," what are the peculiar
tendencies of a leveling democracy which seeks immediate
establishment? Among the maladies which are special with us - feeble
birth-rate, political instability, absence of local life, slow
industrial and commercial development, despondency and pessimism - can
an aptitude for transformation which we do not possess be
distinguished in the sense demanded by the new milieu ? The knowledge
we have of our origins, of our psychology, of our present
constitution, of our circumstances, what hopes are warranted?

M. Taine could not have replied to all these questions. If, twenty
years ago, on the morrow after our disasters, just as we once more set
about a new organization, putting aside literature, art, and
philosophy, noble contemplation and pure speculation, abandoning works
already projected, he gave himself up to the technical study of law,
political economy and administrative history; if, for twenty years, he
secluded himself and devoted himself to his task - at what a cost of
prolonged effort, with what a strain his mental faculties, with what
weariness and often with what dissatisfaction! - if he shortened his
life, it was to discharge what he deemed a duty to that suffering
France which he loved with tender and silent passion, the duty of
aiding in her cure by establishing the general diagnosis which a
philosopher-historian was warranted in presenting after a profound
study of its vital constitution. The examination finished, he felt
that he had a right to offer the diagnosis. Not that his modesty
permitted him to foretell the future or to dictate reforms. When his
opinion was asked in relation to any reform he generally declined
giving it. "I am merely a consulting physician," he would reply; "I do
not possess sufficient details on that particular question - I am not
sufficiently familiar with circumstances which vary from day to day."
In effect, according to him, there is no general principle from which
one can deduce a series of reforms. On the contrary, his first
recommendation would have been not to try to find simple solutions in
political and social matters, but to proceed by experiments, according
to temperaments, and accepting the irregular and the incomplete. - One
becomes resigned to this course by a study of history and by acquiring
"the sense of surrounding facts and developments." Here do we find the
general remedy for the destructive effects produced by the brusque
progress of science, and she herself furnishes this remedy, when, from
the hasty and the theoretical, she becomes experimental and builds on
the observation of facts and their relations. "Through psychological
narration, through the analysis of psychological conditions which have
produced, maintained, or modified this or that institution, we may
find a partial solution to each question of reform," gradually
discovering laws and establishing the general conditions that render
possible or impossible any given project. When constituted and then
developed, reorganized, respected and applied to human affairs, the
sciences of humanity may become a new instrument of power and
civilization, and, just as the natural sciences have taught us to
derive profit from physical forces, they may teach us to benefit by
moral forces. M. Taine believed that the French were very well
qualified for this order of study: if any other people possess
superior mental faculties in respect of memory or a better knowledge
of philology, he thought we had in our favor a superiority of the
psychological sense.

Except for such beneficial generalities which may provide general
hygienic guidelines, could M. Taine have suggested immediate remedies?
It is scarcely probable. In any even, he was not a partisan for hasty
decentralization. When, under the influence of a bad system, an
organization has contracted a vice that reaches its vital organs, the
following treatment nearly becomes mandatory;[6] in any event, no
sudden modification of it must be thought of; all that can be done is
to lessen its pernicious effect by resorting to make-shift or short
term measures. Taking advantage of unforeseen circumstances, using
great circumspection, noting favorable symptoms that had impressed him
- for example a certain new birth of the spirit of association under
the Third Republic - leaving to political authorities the care "of
adjusting means" to the diversity and mobility of things, we may
believe that M. Taine would have confined himself to indicating in
what sense we could, with prudence, lay our course. To do this, it
sufficed for him to sum up his diagnosis and lay down the conditions
of duration and progress. In a matter of such vital import nobody can
speak for him. Accordingly, if the conclusion is not written, whoever
knows how to read his thought may divine it. The work, such as it is,
is finished; it already contains his ideas in full; the intelligent
eye has only to follow them and to note their consequences and
combination.
André Chevrillon
Menthon, St-Bernard, October, 1893.
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BOOK FIFTH. The Church.

CHAPTER I. MORAL INSTITUTIONS

I. Napoleon's Objectives.

Centralization and moral institutions - Object of the State in
absorbing Churches. - Their influence on civil society.

After the centralizing and invading State has taken hold of local
societies there is nothing left for it but to cast its net over moral
societies[7], and this second haul is more important than the first
one; for, if local societies are based on the proximity of physical
bodies and habitations, the latter are formed out of the accord which
exists between minds and souls; in possessing these, the hold is no
longer on the outside but on the inside of man, his thought, his will;
the incentive within is laid hold of, and this directly; then only can
he be fully mastered, and disposed of at discretion. To this end, the
main purpose of the conquering State is the possession of the
Churches; alongside as well as outside of itself, these are the great
powers of the nation; not only does their domain differ from its own
but, again it is vaster and lies deeper. Beyond the temporal patrimony
and the small fragment of human history which the eyes of the flesh
perceive, they embrace and present to mental vision the whole world
and its first cause, the total ordinance of things, the infinite
perspective of a past eternity and that of an eternity to come.
Underneath the corporeal and intermittent actions which civil power
prescribes and regulates, they govern the imagination, the conscience
and the affections, the whole inward being, that mute, persistent
effort of which our visible acts are simply the incomplete expressions
and rare outbursts. Indeed, even when they set limits to these,
voluntarily, conscientiously, there is no limit; in vain do they
proclaim, if Christian, that their kingdom is not of this world;
nevertheless, it is, since they belong to it; masters of dogma and of
morals, they teach and command in it. In their all-embracing
conception of divine and human things, the State, like a chapter in a
book, has its place and their teachings in this chapter are for it of
capital importance. For, here do they write out its rights and duties,
the rights and duties of its subjects, a more or less perfect plan of
civil order. This plan, avowed or dissimulated, towards which they
incline the preferences of the faithful, issues at length,
spontaneously and invincible from their doctrine, like a plant from
its seed, to vegetate in temporal society, flower and fructify therein
and send its roots deeper down for the purpose of shattering or of
consolidating civil and political institutions. The influence of a
Church on the family and on education, on the use of wealth or of
authority, on the spirit of obedience or of revolt, on habits of
initiation or of inertia, of enjoyment or of abstention, of charity or
of egoism, on the entire current train of daily practice and of
dominant impulses, in every branch of private or public life, is
immense, and constitutes a distinct and permanent social force of the
highest order. Every political calculation is unsound if it is omitted
or treated as something of no consequence, and the head of a State is
bound to comprehend the nature of it if he would estimate its
grandeur.

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