Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  I conclude not only that the independence, liberty, and equality of an ancient people did not imply the independence, liberty, and equality of other peoples in relation to itself and as far as lay in its power, but on the contrary implied the subjection and servitude of other peoples, especially neighboring ones, and the obedience of the weaker. And a people free within its own borders was always tyrannical outside them, if it had enough power to be so, and that power often stemmed from its liberty. In the same way that a prince, in order to be independent and free, and not to have restraints on or impediments to his will, does not for that reason stop tyrannizing his own people. Indeed, the more jealous he is of his liberty, the more he takes from his subjects, or those who are weaker than he. Thus, the [889] more a nation was conscious of itself and loved itself, which is especially the case with free peoples, the more hostile it was to foreigners, and eager to raise itself above them, to secure their obedience, and, if they were conquered, to oppress them; and the more covetous it was of their possessions, greedy for them, etc., which is a natural consequence of national love, just as it is of self-love in the case of individuals, for love of country is, in short, simply national egoism and, as regards the whole nation, the egoism of the nation. And you can say the same of any love or spirit of group, party, etc. The nation in which national love rules forcefully and passionately and effectively is like an individual on a larger scale, and, just like an individual, because it loves itself, it loves itself preferentially, and desires and strives to overcome others in any way possible. And as for a people being the more tyrannical outside its country the more jealous it is of its own liberty, and hostile to tyranny within, see the modern example that the author of the Essai, etc., apparently discerns in England, with regard to its settlements outside of Europe. I mean, look at the passage quoted on the previous page.1

  These descriptions not only appear sickening, in fact horrible, but such that no ill, no terrible conditions can be compared to this state of the ancient nations. And this will particularly be the reaction of those who regard life as a good in itself, whatever it may be. But let us turn now to the moderns, and consider the other side of the coin.

  (1) Man will never be able to shed love of himself (any more than any living being can), nor can self-love shed hatred of [890] others. Once power has been concentrated, once the participation of individuals in the nation has been almost wholly taken away, and, furthermore, illusions have been extinguished, the individual has discovered and seen that the common good is separate and different from his own. Being obliged to choose, he has shown no hesitation in abandoning the former for the latter. And he could not do otherwise, being a man, and being alive. Once nations have effectively disappeared, and national love likewise, national hatred has also been extinguished, and being a foreigner is no longer a fault in men’s eyes. Has hatred of others therefore been extinguished, and self-love? It will be extinguished only when nature has created another order of things and of living beings. The fairy tale of universal love, of a universal good—a good and an interest that can never be combined with the good and interest of the individual, who, in laboring for others, would not be laboring for himself, or in order to outdo anyone, as nature would have him do—has given rise to universal egoism. We no longer hate the foreigner? but we hate our comrade, fellow citizen, friend, father, son; and love has indeed disappeared from the world, and faith, justice, friendship, and heroism have disappeared, and every virtue except love of oneself. There are no more national enemies? but there are private ones, and as many as there are men, and no friends of any kind now, or duties except to oneself. The nations are at peace beyond their borders? [891] but they are at war within, and at war without respite, and at war every day, every hour, every minute, and at war each against each, and without even the semblance of justice, and without a shadow of magnanimity, or at least of valor, in short, without a trace of any virtue, and without anything but vice and cowardice; at war without quarter; war all the more atrocious and terrible for being deaf, dumb, and hidden; perpetually at war, with no hope of peace. We don’t hate; we don’t oppress foreigners or people far away? but neighbors, friends, relatives are hated, persecuted, and, as far as possible, exterminated; the most sacred ties are trampled underfoot; and since war is between people who live together, there is not a moment’s calm or safety for anyone. Which enmity, then, is more terrible? Enmity toward those who are at a distance, which is directed at them only on specific occasions, certainly not every day; or enmity toward those who are near at hand, which is directed at them always and unceasingly, because the opportunities are unceasing? What is more opposed to nature, morality, and society? The interests of those at a distance are not so opposed to our own (and insofar as they are, the distant person is now hated just as, and more than, in ancient times, though less openly and in a more cowardly fashion). But since the interests of those near at hand constantly clash with our own, the most terrible war is the one that derives from egoism, and from the natural hatred of others, which is no longer directed at the foreigner, [892] but at one’s fellow citizen, comrade, etc.

  (2) The reason that universal love is a dream, and one that can never be realized, emerges from the things said in this discourse, and I have already explained it in other thoughts [→Z 148–51, 457–58, 541–42]. Now, since a human being would cease to live if he were to shed either self-love or hatred of others, it remains only for these passions to assume a more favorable aspect, as far as possible; for self-love to extend its object as much as it can (but it cannot extend it too far without losing the oneself that is indivisible from man, and hence inevitably relapsing into love of self alone), and for hatred of others to be diverted as far away as possible, that is to say, to choose a distant target. This happens first when the individual finds a community and identity of interest with those around him; and, second, when he discovers that the main opposition to this interest lies only in those who are distant. And this is love of the homeland and hatred of foreigners. And for all these reasons, I maintain that, given self-love and man’s natural hatred of others—passions that render him by nature ill-suited to society—a society cannot truly subsist, that is, really be ordered in terms of its goal, which is the common good of all of it, if these passions do not take on the appearance mentioned, that is to say, society cannot subsist without love of the homeland, and hatred of foreigners. And man being essentially and [893] eternally egoistic, society cannot as a consequence be ordered in terms of the common good, that is to say, subsist in truth, unless man becomes egoistic in relation to this society, that is, in regard to his own nation or country, and therefore naturally an enemy of others. And for all these reasons, and for others that I have explained elsewhere, I maintain, and it obviously follows, that society existed among the ancients and does not exist today.

  (3) Just as without love of the homeland there is no society, so, too, I maintain that without love of the homeland there is no virtue, or at any rate no great virtue, or virtue of great usefulness. Virtue is, in short, simply the application and ordering of self-love—the only possible motive for the actions and desires of men and living beings—to the good of others, considered as far as possible as others, because in the last analysis man does not pursue or desire the good, and cannot pursue or desire it except as his own good. Now, if this good of others is absolutely the good of all, and is never confused with one’s own good, man cannot pursue it. If it is the good of a few, man can pursue it, but virtue then has little scope, little influence, little usefulness, little splendor, little greatness. Furthermore, and for these same reasons, it receives little encouragement or reward, and is therefore unusual and improbable, since we are back where we started, and since the spur that incites man to embrace virtue, that is, his own good, is lacking or of little effect. So that under this head also [894] the excessive restrictiveness or smallness or slight importance and merit of societies, groups, parties, etc., is harmful. And under the other head, that is, the limited useful
ness of the virtues that relate to the good or to any interests of the few, or the unimportant, etc., this is the reason that small groups, orders, parties, associations, and the love and spirit of these in individuals are not praiseworthy, and indeed are often harmful. For the virtues and sacrifices to which these loves lead the individual are petty, constricting, lowly, humble, and of small significance, benefit, and scale. Moreover, they harm the wider society, since, just as love of the homeland produces the desire and intention to outdo the foreigner, so love of small groups, being likewise preferential, causes individuals to feel ill-disposed to those who do not belong to a particular group, and to desire to outdo them in any way they can. Thus arises the habitual disunion of interests and hence of purpose, and thus these small societies destroy the large ones, and divide citizens from citizens, and members of a nation from one another, leaving them with a society only in name. From which you may gather the harm done by sects, of whatever kind, especially in their famous modern and present-day form.1 Even if they are concerned either in appearance or, let us also suppose, in actuality with the good of the whole country, one may see through experience that they have never done any good, and always great harm, and they would do still greater harm if they happened to prevail and realize their goals, for the reasons already stated and because love for a sect (even one that is entirely pure) harms love for a nation, etc. See p. 1092, beginning. It remains the case, then, that social egoism has as its object a society of a size and extent such that, without succumbing to the shortcomings of the small, it is not so large that man, in order to pursue its good, is compelled to lose sight of himself. [895] Since he could not do this as long as he lived, he would relapse into individual egoism. Universal egoism (for it, too, cannot be anything other than egoism, like all the passions and all the loves of living beings) is contradictory in its very idea, since egoism is a preferential love, which is applied to oneself, or to whomever one regards as oneself, and the universal excludes the idea of preference. Far more extravagant, however, is the love dreamed of by many philosophers, which embraces not only all men but all living beings and, as much as possible, all that exists. But this is in contradiction with nature, which has indissolubly joined to self-love a quality of exclusiveness, in which an individual puts his own interests before those of others, and desires to be happier than others, and from which there arises hatred, a passion as natural and as indestructible in all living beings as self-love is. But, returning to my argument, this middling-size society is simply a nation. Because the love of particular native cities is as harmful today as the love of small groups. It produces nothing great; it neither incites nor rewards great virtues, and, on the other hand, it disconnects the individual from national society and divides nations into so many different parts, all of them bent on outdoing each other, and therefore mutually hostile. No greater harm can be done. Ancient cities, even if they were as small as modern ones and yet served [896] as homelands, were, however, much more important, because of the supreme power of illusions that ruled them, and which, by supplying great incentives and great, though illusory, rewards, was sufficient to produce great virtues. But such power of illusions is characteristic only of the ancients, who, like a child, knew how to extract true life from anything, no matter how small. The modern homeland must be quite large, but not so large that a community of interest cannot be found, as if someone wanted to give us Europe for a country.1 Our own nation, with its boundaries marked out by nature, is the society that is fitting for us. And I conclude that without national love there is no great virtue. From all this you may infer the huge advantage of the modern state, which has completely done away with the basis, indeed the possibility, of virtue, and certainly any great, or greatly useful, virtue, any solid, stable virtue with a lasting foundation and a rich source.

  (4) I will pass over the quantity of life that is born from love of the homeland, in proportion to the strength of that love, which is greatest in free peoples, and which the ancients enjoyed because of it; and the death of the world, once love of the homeland has disappeared, a death that we have been experiencing for a long time.

  (5) Modern wars are certainly less bitterly fought than ancient ones, and victory is less terrible and harmful to the conquered.2 This is very natural. Since nations, and hence national [897] enmities, no longer exist, no people is conquered, and none is a conqueror. Someone who conquers does not conquer a particular people but a particular government. Only governments are enemies of one another. Victory is then not over the nation (which, like Phaedrus’s ass, changes only its load or its driver)1 but over the government alone. A conquered nation loses its government and receives another one, which is more or less the same. Not being an enemy of the conquering nation, not having had a war with it, or vice versa, it has a share in its advantages, in public office, etc. It does not lose property, civil liberty, or customs, etc. (Sometimes it doesn’t even lose its laws.) But just as all a person had was not his own but his master’s, so, too, all of this passes whole and undivided, and with no further harm done to individuals, as had been the case with the ancients, to another master.

  In ancient times, a private person would lose his possessions individually, if he owned them individually. Now, however, it is not he who has them individually and loses them but his prince who, when defeated, loses at a stroke all of his subjects’ possessions, which were generally and jointly his; and, as a consequence, this occurs without any alteration in the status of particular persons, and without further violations of private and individual rights. If the nation becomes dependent externally, it already was internally. Its dependence is new only in name, because its independence was the same. And if it now depends on the foreigner, the foreigner is just the same as the fellow national, because the nation did not exist before the conquest, either, and, not loving itself, not having any love of country, it does not hate the foreigner any more than a fellow national, and as one man hates another. The law of nations [898] was born after there were no longer any nations. The nation therefore enjoys the same rights it enjoyed before the conquest, and it enjoys them now on the same basis as the conqueror. As for wars, they are, of course, neither less frequent nor less unjust than those of antiquity. Because the source of wars, which once was national egoism, is now the individual egoism of those who command, indeed constitute, the nations. And this egoism is neither less greedy nor less unjust than the former kind. So, like national egoism, individual egoism measures its desires according to its powers (often even beyond its powers), and power is the arbiter of the world today, as it was in antiquity, not justice, because men’s nature doesn’t change, only accidents do. Those who exaggerate the injustice and frequency of ancient wars before Christianity, the law of nations, and supposed universal love make it plain that they have indeed read ancient history but not that of the Christian centuries up to our own day. Ancient history and modern feature precisely the same injustice, the same wars, the same triumph of power, etc., nor in this regard has Christianity improved the world one bit, the only difference being that then nations committed injustices and fought, whereas now it is individuals or rather governments who do so; then as a consequence the combatants, or the unjust, were just and virtuous toward someone, that is, toward their own, now toward none; then enmities [899] fostered great virtues, and heroism in each nation, now great vices and cowardice; then one nation oppressed the other, now all are oppressed, the conquered and the conquering alike; then the conquered served, now servitude is common to the conquered and the conqueror; then the conquered were wretched and slaves, a very natural thing in every species of living being, today the conquerors and the fortunate are, too, which is barbarous and absurd; then the one who waged war was often unjust to the nation on which he waged it, now the one waging war is unjust, to a greater or a lesser degree, as much toward the nation it wages war on as toward the nation whose resources and power it uses to wage it, and this both in waging it and in all the rest of its public actions. And governments toda
y are as constantly in a state of war with each other (whether declared or not) as were the nations of antiquity.

  I will pass over the atrocities committed even in the early and most fervent Christian times against the heads of conquered nations, which was logical, since it was they who were conquered, not the nations. And that was the custom, naturally enough, also in antiquity, in the victory of nations that were enslaved within and monarchical. Nor is there any lack of more recent examples, in the histories, of this natural consequence of the present condition of peoples, that is, of hatred, private or public, between their leaders, and of the tortures inflicted on defeated or imprisoned princes, etc.

  I turn now to the act of war. In antiquity, they say, whole nations used to fight: the wars of Christian [900] times, fought with small armies, cause less bloodshed and less harm. But in antiquity enemy fought enemy, today the indifferent fight the indifferent, or even friend or comrade or relative; in antiquity there was no one who did not fight for his own cause, today no one who does not fight for someone else’s; in antiquity the benefit of victory went to those who had fought, today to the one who gave the orders to fight. It is in nature that enemy should fight enemy, and each for his own advantage; and this can also be seen with animals, which are certainly not corrupt, and also within their own species, and with their fellows. But there is nothing so opposed to nature as an individual who—without either habitual hatred or present anger, for no or almost no advantage or interest of his own, at the command of a person whom he certainly does not much love and probably doesn’t know—kills one of his fellows, someone who hasn’t offended him in any way, and who, to say the least, doesn’t even know and isn’t known by his killer. What’s more, an individual whom he hates in most cases far less than he does the one who gives the command to kill that individual, and certainly far less than he does a great many of his companions-in-arms and fellow citizens. Because today hatred, envy, and enmity are directed at neighbors, and not ordinarily at those who are distant. Individual egoism makes us [901] enemies of those who surround us, or whom we know and who have relations with us, and especially those who follow the same career, and aspire to the same goal that we seek, and in which we would like to be preferred; those who because they are more eminent than we are consequently arouse our envy and goad our self-love. The foreigner, by contrast, is at the least a matter of indifference to us, and often more esteemed than the people we know, because esteem, etc., is inspired by distance, and by ignorance of reality, and by what we imagine as a result. Indeed, in a country in which love of the homeland does not prevail, the foreigner is always valued, and his customs, mores, etc., or those of any foreign nation are always preferred to the national ones, and he is likewise. So that the soldier today is much more the enemy of those in whose company he fights and those for whose profit, at whose bidding, and under whom he fights than of those whom he fights and kills. And all that is due to the nature of things, and not to whim. Such that, should we wish just once to look carefully at things rather than at appearances, we would find much more barbarism today in the slaying of a single enemy than in antiquity in the devastation of a people, because the latter was wholly in accord with nature, whereas the former is in every respect contrary to nature.