by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER III.
ON WHAT TERMS THE PAST IS VENERABLE.
The monastic system, as it existed in Spain, and as it exists now atThibet, is to civilization a sort of consumption. It stops life short.It depopulates, nothing more nor less,--claustration, castration. Ithas been the scourge of Europe. Add to this the violence so oftendone to conscience, the forced vocations, the feudal system restingupon the cloister, primogeniture pouring into the monastic system theoverflow of the family, these cruelties of which we have just spoken,the _in pace_, the mouths sealed, the brains walled up, so many unhappyintellects thrown into the dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of theveil, the burying alive of souls. Add the individual sufferings to thenational degradation, and whoever you may be, you feel yourself shudderbefore the frock and the veil, these two shrouds of human invention.
However, on some points, and in some places, in spite of philosophy,in spite of progress, the monastic spirit persists in the midst ofthe nineteenth century, and a strange reopening of the monastic soreastonishes at this moment the civilized world. The obstinacy which oldinstitutions show in perpetuating themselves is like the stubbornnessof rancid perfume demanding to be used on our hair, the pretension ofspoiled fish clamoring to be eaten, the persecution of the child'sgarment demanding to clothe the man, and the tenderness of corpsescoming back to embrace the living.
"Ingrates!" says the garment. "I have sheltered you in the bad weather.Why do you cast me off?" "I come from the deep sea," says the fish."I was once the rose," says the perfume. "I have loved you," says thecorpse. "I have civilized you," says the convent.
To this there is one answer: "Yes, in times past."
To dream of the indefinite prolongation of things that are dead, andthe government of men by embalmment, to restore to life dogmas thatare rotting away, to regild the shrines, to replaster the cloisters,to reconsecrate the reliquaries, to refurnish the superstitions,to galvanize the fanaticisms, to put new handles on the holy watersprinklers, to set up again monastic and military rule, to believe inthe saving of society by the multiplication of parasites, to imposethe past on the present,--this seems strange. There are, however,theorists for these theories. These theorists, sensible men in otherrespects, have a very simple expedient. They varnish the past with acoating which they call social order, divine right, morality, family,respect for ancestors, ancient authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy,religion; and they go about crying, "Here! take this, my good people."This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers used to practiseit They rubbed with chalk a black heifer, and said, "She is white."_Bos cretatus._
As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it always,provided that it consents to stay dead. If it tries to come to lifeagain, we attack it, and we try to kill it.
Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms,though they are only phantoms, are tenacious of life; they have teethand claws in their obscurity, and we must grapple with them body tobody, and make war upon them, and war without truce; for it is thefate of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. Thespectre is hard to take by the throat, and throw to earth.
A convent in France in the full noon of the nineteenth century is acollege of owls blinking at the daylight. A cloister in the open actof asceticism, in the very midst of the city of '89, of 1830, and of1848,--Rome blossoming in Paris,--is an anachronism. At any ordinarytime, to lay an anachronism, and make it vanish, we need only to makeit spell out the date. But we are not in ordinary times.
Let us fight.
Let us fight; but let us distinguish. The essence of truth consists innever exaggerating. What need has she of exaggerating? There are somethings that must be destroyed, and there are some things that need onlybe lighted up and looked at. Kind and serious examination, what a powerit is! Let us not use fire where light will answer even purpose.
Given the nineteenth century, then, we are opposed on generalprinciples, and in all nations, in Asia as well as in Europe, in Indiaas in Turkey, to cloistered asceticism. Convent means bog. Theirputrescence is undisguisable, their stagnation is unhealthy, theirfermentation breeds fever and wasting pestilence in nations, theirincrease becomes one of the plagues of Egypt. We cannot think withoutfright of those countries where fakirs, bonzes, santons, caloyers,marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply like swarms of vermin.
This said, the question of religion still remains. This question hasphases which are mysterious and almost fearful. Let us look at itsteadily.
