The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  The critics discussed at great length the morality of the Epic, the propriety of introducing the Christian miracles into the world of Art. They never wearied of extolling the virtues of that most resplendent jewel in Art’s crown, the three unities. But meanwhile, in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus, in the Ethics, in the Essay concerning Human Understanding, in the Histoire des Variations des Églises Protestantes, in the Dictionnaire Historique, in the Réponse aux Questions d’un Provincial, questions were being debated compared with which these paltry matters seemed like the diversions of doddering old men, or pastimes for little children.

  What men craved to know was what they were to believe, and what they were not to believe. Was tradition still to command their allegiance, or was it to go by the board? Were they to continue plodding along the same old road, trusting to the same old guides, or were they to obey new leaders who bade them turn their backs on all those outworn things, and follow them to other lands of promise? The champions of Reason and the champions of Religion were, in the words of Pierre Bayle, fighting desperately for the possession of men’s souls, confronting each other in a contest at which the whole of thoughtful Europe was looking on.

  Inch by inch the assailants gained ground. Heresy was no longer a solitary, hole-and-corner thing. It made conquests, it gained disciples. Flown with insolence and pride, it came out into the open, it flaunted itself for all to see. Reason was no longer synonymous with sober good sense, with serene and benevolent wisdom. It became critical, aggressive. The most widely accepted notions, such as deriving proof of God’s existence from universal consent, the historical basis of miracles, were openly called in question. The Divine was relegated to a vague and impenetrable heaven, somewhere up in the skies. Man and man alone was the standard by which all things were measured. He was his own raison d’être. His interests were paramount. Long, too long, had power been wielded by the pastors of the peoples. They had promised that goodwill, justice and brotherly love should reign on earth. They had not kept their promise. In the great contest where Truth and Happiness were the prizes to be won, they had been the losers. There was nothing for them now but to quit the field. If they went with a good grace, so much the better. If not, well, they would go perforce. The ancient fabric which had provided such indifferent shelter for the great human family, would have to come down. The first task was one of demolition. That well and truly completed, the next thing was reconstruction. Foundations must be laid for the City of the Future. Nevertheless it was equally important, equally urgent, that man should be preserved from falling into scepticism, the precursor of Death, equally important that, to that end, a philosophy should be constructed which, while discarding those metaphysical chimeras that had always led mankind astray, should concentrate on those appearances which are within man’s limited grasp and with which, seeing they are all he can ever hope to attain, he should learn to rest content. A political system without divine sanction, a religion without mystery, a morality without dogma, such was the edifice man had now to erect. Science would have to become something more than an intellectual pastime; it would have to develop into a power capable of harnessing the forces of nature to the service of mankind. Science—who could doubt it?— was the key to happiness. The material world once in his power, man could order it for his own benefit and his own glory, and for the happiness of future generations.

  Such are the “notes” by which the eighteenth century is readily recognizable. What, however, we have made it our endeavour to bring out is that its essential characteristics were discernible much earlier than is commonly supposed, that they were identifiable in a complete state of development while Louis XIV was still at the zenith of his power and glory, and that virtually all those ideas which were called revolutionary round about 1760, or, for the matter of that, 1789, were already current as early as 1680. Then it was that a sort of moral clash took place in Europe. The interval between the Renaissance, of which it is the lineal descendant, and the French Revolution for which it was forging the weapons, constitutes an epoch which yields to none in historical importance. For a civilization founded on Duty—duty towards God, duty towards the sovereign, the new school of philosophers were fain to substitute a civilization founded on the idea of rights—rights of the individual, freedom of speech and opinion, the prerogatives of man as man and citizen.

  Five and thirty years of the intellectual life of Europe; a slice of history impossible to carve out and isolate in time without having regard to the years which followed, and, more important still, to the years which preceded it; a tribunal before which Man himself is arraigned in order that he may declare whether he was born innocent or stained with sin; whether his hopes of happiness were centred mainly on this world, or on the world to come; ideas so pregnant with life, so rich in power whether for attack or defence, that even now the force of that movement is far from spent, so far, indeed, that when to-day we deal with our present problems—religious, philosophical, political, social—we are but continuing in a measure the great and unresolved disputes of an earlier day; massive, close-packed works produced in singular profusion by men concerned less with perfection of form than with the abundance and cogency of their arguments; recondite treatises on theology and philosophy; the varied intercourse of country with country, interfusions, permeations, contacts of every sort, phenomena which, inexplicable when viewed apart, and in their own milieu, have to be integrated into the atmosphere of Europe as a whole before they can be readily understood; routes to be discovered across this mountainous country, bearings to be taken, the lie of the land to be ascertained, pathways and passes to be explored; people to be portrayed in their habit as they lived, countenances, some frowning and sombre, some amiable and benign—such is our material. To essay to deal with so complex and multifarious a collection as this was doubtless a formidable undertaking. We make no apology for having attempted it; but neither are we under any illusions as to what we have left in our wake either not done at all, or demanding to be done anew. And while, of course, we are well aware that one can only learn all there is to be known about a tree by a careful study of its roots and branches, we deem that sometimes it may not be unprofitable to blaze a trail, however tentative and experimental, across such bewildering and trackless forest mazes.[1]

  But there were interludes, lyrical interludes, when works of poetic beauty were given to the world; and how delightful, as one cons their pages, to breathe in the exhalations of their perfumed harmonies, to suffer oneself to be wafted on the waves of their subtle music to the empyrean of ineffable beauty. At moments such as these, the earth is one great song of enchantment. There were such interludes; but the period we have set ourselves to explore was not one of them; it made light of such things as rhythm and cadence; it misconceived the very nature of poetry; it never knew the incantatory charm that may be born of words. Not that all feeling for the sensuous and the imaginative had suddenly disappeared from the world, or that men, for a time, had ceased to be swayed by their pleasures and their passions. On the contrary, we have noted how, side by side with works of pure understanding, considerations of form and colour still counted in the scheme of things, and how the human heart would still demand a hearing.

  Here it is Pietism, and there Quietism that discover to us the aspirations of those lofty spirits for whom Reason sufficed not, and who, with hungry heart, yearned for a God of Love. But this very mysticism contributed its quota to the crisis, intellectual and moral, that marks the epoch with which we are to deal. It disavowed the alliance between religion and authority, and, throwing off the bonds of orthodoxy and regarding religion as the spontaneous uplifting of the individual soul to God, it too played, on its own account, the part of innovator. While all this was going on in select religious circles, another parallel process was at work in the world at large. The door had been opened to anarchy by those who held up to contrast the virtues of the primitive, untutored savage on the one hand, and the errors and crimes of civilization on the other.
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br />   These years, so rude and unpolished, so crowded with events, with quarrels and calls to arms, so prolific of ideas, are, nevertheless, not without a beauty of their own. As we contemplate those vast movements and watch the great systems of ideas slowly disintegrating, dissolving, to group themselves anew in fresh patterns and obeying different laws; when we look back on our brothers of those days dauntlessly striking out along new paths towards some distant and uncertain goal, yet never faltering, never losing heart, we cannot but feel, as we contemplate them and their struggles, a thrill of mingled admiration and compassion. There was a touch of grandeur in that stubbornness of theirs, in their grim, invincible determination, and if it is, as we shall presently make clear, an inalienable characteristic of Europe never to rest content, but always to be setting forth anew on the immemorial quest for Truth and Happiness, there is a beauty tinged with pathos about that unwearying effort which compels our admiration. Nor is that all. As we study the birth of their ideas, or at least their changing forms; as we follow them along their road, noting how feebly they began but how they gathered strength and boldness as they went along; as we note their successive victories and their crowning triumph we are forced to the conviction that it is not material advantages, but moral and intellectual forces that govern and direct the life of man.

  [1]In the Revue des Deux Mondes of 15th August, the 1st and 15th September, 1932, in the Revue de littérature comparée of October-December, 1932, in L’Europe centrale of the 21st October and the 25th November, 1933, several fragments of the present work have already appeared. They will be found here in a greatly modified form.

  THE CRISIS OF THE EUROPEAN MIND

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The translator wishes to record his grateful indebtedness to Mr. J. E. Walker, Chief Librarian of the Hendon Public Libraries, for obtaining for him, from sources all over the country, the loan of a number of not easily accessible philosophical and theological works, so that passages from them, quoted in French, might be given in the ipsissima verba of the several English authors. For similar services, also most generously rendered, the translator tenders his thanks to his friend Mr. Stephen K. Jones, lately Librarian of Dr. Williams’s Library, Gordon Square, London.

  January, 1952.

  PART ONE

  Changing Psychologies

  I

  THE FERMENT BEGINS

  TO preserve existing conditions, to keep things firm and steady, to avoid any change that might disturb an equilibrium so miraculously attained—such was the paramount preoccupation of the Classical Age. There was peril in those questionings that vex the restless spirit. And not only peril, but folly to boot. For let a man rush off to the utmost limits of the globe, what will he find there but what he brings, that is to say, himself? And even if he found anything else, would he not have wasted his mental and spiritual riches in the effort? Far better that he should concentrate his powers, and focus them on those eternal questions which are certainly not to be solved by aimlessly flitting about from place to place. Seneca has it that the hall-mark of a well-regulated mind is that it can call a halt when it will, and dwell at peace within itself; while Pascal lays it down that all the ills that afflict a man proceed from one sole cause, namely, that he has not learnt to sit quietly and contentedly in a room.

  The classical mind, with the consciousness of its strength, loves stability, nay, if it could, it would be stability. Now that the Renaissance and the Reformation—big adventures these!— were over, the time had come for a mental stocktaking, for an intellectual “retreat.” Politics, religion, society, art—all had been rescued from the clutches of the ravening critics. Humanity’s storm-tossed barque had made port at last. Long might it stay there! Long! Nay, let it stay there for ever! Life was now a regular, well-ordered affair. Why, then, go outside this happy pale, to risk encounters that might unsettle everything? The Great Beyond was viewed with apprehension; it might contain some uncomfortable surprises. Nay, Time itself they would have made stand still, could they have stayed its flight. At Versailles, the visitor got the impression that the very waters had been arrested in their course, caught and controlled as they were, and sent skywards again, and yet again, as though destined to do duty forever.

  In Part II of Don Quixote, Cervantes presents to us a gentleman in a green cloth riding-coat whom the Knight of the Rueful Countenance encounters on the road. The gentleman in question is making his way towards home, where comfort and good cheer, on a modest scale, await him. He is of some estate, though possessed of no great wealth. He spends his time with his wife, his children and his friends. His favourite diversions are shooting and fishing, but he keeps neither hawks nor greyhounds, only some decoy partridges and a stout ferret. His library consists of some six dozen books, which are sufficient for his needs. Sometimes he dines with his neighbours and friends, and often invites them in return. His table is neat and clean, and not parsimoniously furnished. He likes freedom within limits, and just-dealing, and good fellowship. He shares his substance with the poor, making no parade of his good works. He always endeavours to make peace between those that are at variance. He is devoted to Our Lady, and ever trusts in the infinite mercy of God. Such is how he portrays himself, and Sancho, whose feelings completely carry him away, leaps off his ass and falls to covering the gentleman’s feet with kisses. “What mean you by this, brother?” said the gentleman; “why these embraces?” “Suffer me to kiss your feet”, cries Sancho, “for verily your worship is the first saint on horseback I ever saw in all my life.”

  Don Diego de Miranda, he of the green cloth riding-coat, was not a saint. He was merely a preliminary adumbration, dating back to 1615, of the classical ideal of wisdom and moderation. He does not despise the Knight Errant; indeed, he has a secret admiration for heroes and deeds of derring-do, but he draws the line at taking the road himself. He knows that a man is never so happy as when his mind, his senses, and his heart are all working harmoniously together; and having discovered that recipe for a contented life, he clings to it, and will do so till his dying day.

  But times change, and fashions with them. That precious recipe of his won’t count for much with the next generation, and, when his grandsons arrive at man’s estate, they will regard the Knight of the Green Coat as a very out-of-date old gentleman indeed. They will despise his placid, contented outlook on life. No more, for them, of that spell of calm, when a man might go about his lawful occasions with a tranquil mind. Giving vent at last to desires so long repressed, off they will hie them, up and down the world, looking for trouble. If, as time goes on, we see the itch for travel wax stronger, more widespread; if, quitting village, or town, or mother-land, explorers sally forth to learn how others live and have their being, we must recognize in this the first, faint hint of a change already brewing, a change that, later on, will transform the whole complexion of society.[1]

  When Boileau was at Bourbon taking the waters, he felt as if he was at the other end of the earth; Auteuil was world enough for him. So was Paris, for Racine; and both of them, Racine and Boileau, were terribly put about when they had to accompany the King on one of his expeditions. Bossuet never went to Rome; nor did Fénelon. Nor did Molière ever revisit that barber’s shop at Pézenas. The great classics were not given to moving about; for the wanderers, we must wait for Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau. But, in between, some obscure forces had been at work, preparing the way for the impending change.

  The fact is that by the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, the Italians had revived their taste for travel; and that the French were as mobile as quicksilver. If a contemporary observer speaks the truth about them, they were so enamoured of novelty that they even took care not to keep a friend too long. According to the same authority, they brought out some new fashion every day, and finding nothing but drabness and boredom at home, packed up their traps and set out for Asia, or it might be Africa, to get a little change of scene, and something to break the monotony.[2] The Germans
travelled as a matter of habit; indeed the thing was in their blood; it was a sort of mania with them. There was no keeping them at home. “We are born travellers, every mother’s son of us, like our fathers before us, and nothing, no business, however urgent, ever keeps us back.” So says the German that Saint-Évremond brings on in that amusing comedy of his, Sir Politick Would-be. “As soon as we have got hold of a bit of Latin, we prepare to start on our travels. The first thing we do is to procure an Itinerary, showing the various routes we have to take; next, a handbook mentioning all the things that ought to be seen in the different countries. When our travellers are of a literary turn of mind, they invariably take with them a book consisting solely of blank pages, nicely bound, which they call an Album Amicorum. Armed with this, they make a point of calling on the various learned men of the locality they happen to be visiting, and beg them to inscribe their names in it.” This German of ours is not afraid of hard work. He must needs scale the highest peaks; track the course of the rivers, from their source to the sea, carefully noting down all the fords, ferries and bridges; explore the ruins of amphitheatres and temples, and, notebook in hand, visit all the churches, abbeys, convents, public buildings, town-halls, aqueducts, forts, arsenals; he must make copies of the epitaphs on the tombs; he must not omit belfries, chimes, church-clocks from his purview. Yet he will not hesitate to turn his back on it all, and rush off post-haste, at the first hint that the coronation of the King of France is about to take place, or that a new Emperor is to be elected.

  The English travelled as a way of putting the finishing touch on their education. Young gentlemen just down from Oxford or Cambridge, liberally furnished with funds, and attended by a staid and sober-minded tutor, crossed the Straits and set out to make the grand tour. They were birds of every feather, these young men. Some thought they had done all that was expected of them when they had sampled the wines of Frontignan and Montefiascone, of Ay and Arbois, of Bordeaux and Xeres. Others, bent on self-improvement, conscientiously examined every cabinet of natural history specimens, every collection of antiques. Every man to his taste! “The French usually travel to save money, so that they sometimes leave the places where they sojourn worse off than they found them. The English, on the other hand, come over with plenty of cash, plenty of gear, and servants to wait on them. They throw their money about like lords. It is reckoned that in Rome alone there are, in the ordinary way, upwards of six hundred English gentlemen, all with people in their pay, and that, taking everything into account, they spend at least two thousand crowns per head every year, so that Rome alone derives from England a yearly revenue of thirty thousand pistoles, good and sound.” And in Paris, too, “where there is never any lack of English visitors; an English business man assured me the other day that he had paid out to Englishmen in France a hundred and thirty thousand crowns in a single year, and he was by no means one of the biggest bankers either.” It is Gregorio Leti who tells us that, Gregorio Leti,[3] adventurer and globe-trotter, who had at least five countries he could call his own. Born at Milan, he turned Calvinist at Geneva, became Louis XIV’s panegyrist in Paris, England’s historian in London, and government pamphleteer in Holland, where he died in 1701. Men of learning added to their stores of erudition, as they journeyed from city to city, like that Antonio Conti, for example, a native of Padua, who, in 1713, was in Paris, and two years later in London, where he took part in the controversy concerning the infinitesimal calculus. After that, he went to Hanover to confer with Leibniz, and on his way through Holland, did not fail to pay a visit to Leuwenhoeck. Philosophers went abroad, not to go and meditate in peace in some quiet retreat, but to see the wonders of the world. Such were Locke and Leibniz. Monarchs, too, indulged in foreign travel; Christina of Sweden died at Rome in 1689; and Peter the Great set out for Europe in 1696.