The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  Travel literature, with its indeterminate frontiers, provided a convenient reservoir for the most diverse material, from the dissertations of the learned, to museum-catalogues and love-stories, and so it came to the fore. It might take the shape of a weighty discourse chock-full of the most erudite matter; it might be a study in psychology; it might be a plain, straightforward novel; or it might be a combination of all three. It had its eulogists; it had its detractors. But, praise or blame, both made clear the important place it had come to occupy, and indicated that it was not a thing to be ignored. The same tendencies that fostered its popularity necessarily entailed the production of guide-books, itineraries and the like. There was a large assortment to choose from: Le Gentilhomme étranger voyageur en France, Il Burattino veridico, ovvero Istruzione generale per chi viaggia, Guia de los caminos para ir por todas las provincias de España, Francia, Italia y Alemania. Cities and towns of outstanding historic importance are treated in separate volumes, e.g., The City and Republic of Venice; Description of Rome for the use of foreigners; A guide for the use of foreigners desirous of seeing and understanding the most notable things in the royal city of Naples; An up-to-date description of all the most remarkable features of the City of Paris. There is one alluring title that makes you feel as if you were already glimpsing the fair scenes which it promises and that you really must book your seat on the coach. “Delight” is the operative word: The “Delights”, or the “Charms”, of this country and of that—of Italy, of Denmark and Norway, of Great Britain and Ireland, of Switzerland. Finally, when all these “Delights” are rolled into one, we have “The Wonders of Europe”!

  Attractive as these things were, the “Wonders of the World” outdid them. Indeed, from this time forth, Europe never ceased to explore and exploit the world at large; the seventeenth century thus resuming the task which the sixteenth had bequeathed it. As far back as 1619, an obscure writer, P. Bergeron by name, and a little later, in 1636, Tommaso Campanella, were putting forth this sort of thing: “The exploration of the globe having resulted in discoveries that have destroyed many of the data on which ancient philosophy reposed, a new conception of things will inevitably be called for.”[4] This idea, which at first gained ground but slowly, received a marked impetus when the Dutch not only opened up trade with the East Indies, but gave picturesque accounts of the strange things they found there; when the English not only displayed their flag in all the oceans of the globe, but described their voyages in the most marvellously circumstantial literature of the kind the world had ever seen; when Colbert told the French people of rich territories and treasures in lands beyond the seas, and recommended them as fitting fields for enterprise. How many were the glowing reports and stirring tales, compiled by order of the king, that came to France from “over yonder”! How little did His Majesty dream that from those very tales would spring ideas calculated to unsettle some of the beliefs he held most dear, beliefs essential to the maintenance of his royal authority.

  Thus the spate of travel-books, Narratives, Descriptions, Reports, Collections, Series, Miscellanea, continued to swell till it overflowed all reasonable limits. Gentlemen sitting comfortably at home by the fireside learnt all there was to know about the Great American Lakes, the Gardens of Malabar, the Pagodas of China and a host of things they would never behold at first hand. The good fathers of the Foreign Missions, Capuchins, Franciscans, Recollets, Jesuits, told of the conversion of the heathen; escaped captives from Tunis, Algiers, or Morocco gave harrowing descriptions of the tortures they had suffered for their faith. Medical men in the service of the trading companies duly reported the results of their scientific observations. Navigators gave the most vivid accounts of their voyages round the world, and the names of Dampier, Gemelli Carreri, Woodes-Rogers were household words for all. It was a sign of the times when that adventurous band of Protestant refugees embarked at Amsterdam that 10th day of July in the year 1690 and, bidding farewell to a thankless Europe, set sail for the East Indies in search of an Eden where they might begin a new life. They never found that Eden.

  Minds and consciences were deeply stirred by this startling influx of new ideas, and, by the time the century was drawing to its close, the effect of it was plainly visible. Sir William Temple, having relinquished the cares and preoccupations of political life, was free now to devote himself to the cultivation of his beautiful gardens at Moor Park, and also of his mind. Let us follow him into his study, and essay to catch the trend of his meditations. “What countries”, we can imagine him saying to himself, “what countries hitherto unknown to us, or looked upon as rude and barbarous, are now revealed as they really are in the accounts of them brought home by traders, seafarers and pioneers. In those regions that have recently been brought within our ken, and are now the subject of discussion among men of learning, discoveries have been made no less fruitful, deeds have been wrought no less remarkable, than those on which our minds have traditionally been nourished. It is not only their vast extent, the peculiar qualities of their soil, their various climates, their divers products, which engage our interest and compel our attention, but their laws, their systems of government, their empires.” And so Sir William betakes himself to studying the moral and political history of China, Peru, Tartary and Arabia. With an eye on a map of the New World, he examines once again the principles that governed and directed the Old.[5]

  Often enough, if truth be told, the traveller who came back with an idea he took to be new, had really had it already packed up in his baggage when he went away. But if he was mistaken about its novelty, he was perfectly right about its impressiveness. For when he brought it back again to Amsterdam, or London, or Paris, or wherever it might be, the “sea-change” had made it a much more imposing thing, far more telling than it had been to begin with. It is perfectly correct to say that all the fundamental concepts, such as Property, Freedom, Justice and so on, were brought under discussion again as a result of the conditions in which they were seen to operate in far-off countries, in the first place because, instead of all differences being referred to one universal archetype, the emphasis was now on the particular, the irreducible, the individual; in the second, because notions hitherto taken for granted could now be checked in the light of facts ascertained by actual experience, facts readily available to all enquiring minds. Proofs, for which an opponent of this dogma or of that had had laboriously to rummage about in the store-houses of antiquity, were now reinforced by additional ones, brand-new and highly coloured. See them just arrived from abroad, all ready for use! Pierre Bayle is constantly adducing as evidence the statements of these up-to-date authorities: “M. Bernier, in his interesting account of the territory of the Great Mogul . . .”. “We learn from M. Tavernier’s description of his travels . . .”. “What we read about China makes it clear . . .”. “Vide what the Dutch Trading Company has to say about Japan . . .”. As touching that business about delivering the moon from bondage, he says, “The Persians still observe this preposterous custom, if we are to credit the report of Pietro della Valle. It is also practised in the kingdom of Tonkin, where the moon is supposed to struggle with a dragon; see recent accounts by M. Tavernier.” “The observations I have just made regarding the prevalence of immodesty among Christians, reminds me of something I recently came across in M. Rycaut’s work” . . . “M. Rycaut’s book has created too much stir to have escaped your notice”. And when he desires to show—a matter of first-rate importance, this—that the existence of God is not a matter of universal consent, it is travel literature again that obligingly supplies him with his argument. “What, I wonder, would you say if I cited to you the various atheistic races of which Strabo makes mention, and those others which recent explorers have discovered in Africa and America?”[6]

  Of all the lessons derived from the idea of space, perhaps the latest had to do with relativity. Perspectives changed. Concepts which had occupied the lofty sphere of the transcendental were brought down to the level of things governed by circumstance. Prac
tices deemed to be based on reason were found to be mere matters of custom, and, inversely, certain habits which, at a distance, had appeared preposterous and absurd, took on an apparently logical aspect once they were examined in the light of their origin and local circumstances. We let our hair grow and shave our faces. The Turks shave their heads and grow beards on their faces. We offer our right hand to a friend; a Turk, his left. There’s no arguing about the right or the wrong of these opposing customs. We simply have to accept them. A Siamese turns his back to a woman as he passes her. He thinks he is showing his respect by not allowing his gaze to fall on her. We think otherwise. Who is right? Who wrong? When the Chinese judge our manners and customs according to their ideas, ideas which took shape four thousand years ago, what wonder if they look on us as barbarians? And what wonder if we, when we judge the ways of the Chinese, look on them as fantastic and absurd? Father le Comte who thus expresses himself in his book On the Ceremonies of the Chinese, draws this philosophical conclusion: “We, too, deceive ourselves, because the prejudices of our childhood prevent us from realizing that the majority of human actions are indifferent in themselves, and that they only derive their significance from the meaning the various races of people arbitrarily attached to them when they were first instituted.” Maxims such as that take us a long way, take us, indeed, to nothing short of universal relativity. “There is nothing”, says Bernier, “that opinion, prejudice, custom, hope, a sense of honour cannot do.” “Climate”, says Chardin, “the climate of each particular race is, in my judgment, always the primary cause of the inclinations and customs of its people.” “Doubt”, he goes on, “is the beginning of science; he who doubts nothing, examines nothing; he who examines nothing, discovers nothing; he who discovers nothing is blind and remains blind.” As we read these highly pregnant remarks, we realize the force of what La Bruyère says in his chapter on the Free-thinkers: “Some complete their demoralization by extensive travel, and lose whatever shreds of religion remained to them. Every day they see a new religion, new customs, new rites.”

  They arrived, these apostles from distant lands with their strange beliefs and customs, their laws, their own peculiar sense of values. They made a deep impression on a Europe only too eager to question them on their history and their religion. They made answer, each for himself.

  The aboriginal American was a problem. Lost to sight in the midst of his continent, a continent so long undiscovered, he was the son not of Shem, nor of Ham, nor of Japheth. Then whose son was he? That was the question. Pagans born before the coming of Christ at least had their share of original sin, since they were all descended from Adam. But these Americans? And here is another mystery. How did they escape the Flood? Nor was that all. The Americans, of course, were savages as everyone was aware. When people wanted to give you an idea of what man was like before he acquired the habit of living in community with his fellows, they took these Americans, a horde of creatures wandering about stark-naked, as their examples. But now a very different possibility was beginning to take shape. Was a savage necessarily such an inferior and pitiable sort of creature after all? Weren’t there savages who were happy enough?

  Just as the old-fashioned cartographers used to embellish their maps with pictures of plants, and animals, and natives, so on the intellectual map of the world, we must give a place to the Happy Savage. Not that he is so absolutely new, either. We have met him before. Nevertheless, it was about now, about the period we have selected for this study, between the two centuries, that he took definite shape and determined to stand up for himself. A lot of preliminary work had been done already. The missionaries of the various religious orders, extolling merits in him which were calculated to set him off to advantage, had not paused to ask themselves whether the virtues which they praised so highly were, or were not, the mark of a Christian. With a somewhat impetuous zeal, they belauded the simplicity of these savages, declaring that they derived it from nature; they spoke of their kindliness, their generosity, virtues not invariably conspicuous among Europeans. When these ideas had well sunk in, there came on the scene, as is so often the case, a man who found that all he had to do was to drive them home, and to do so with spirit, with vehemence and, most important of all, with talent. The individual in question was a born rebel, by name the Baron de Lahontan. Having somehow or other found his way into the King’s forces, where he was a very square peg in a round hole, he landed, in the year 1683, on the shores of Quebec. His first idea was to carve out a career for himself in Canada, for he lacked neither brains nor courage. He took part in the expedition against the Iroquois; but, impatient of discipline, disgruntled, and forever getting into scrapes, he finally deserted, and came back to Europe where he dragged out the existence of a man who had missed his vocation. When, however, in 1703 he published his Travels, his Mémoires and his Dialogues, he left behind him a monument far more enduring than he can have supposed, although he thought no small beer of himself.

  Adario the savage is having an argument with Lahontan the civilized man, and the civilized man has decidedly the worst of it. As against the Gospel, Adario triumphantly sings the praises of Natural Religion. As against European laws, which only aim at keeping a man on the right path by fear of the punishment he will incur if he transgresses, the savage belauds what he calls Natural Morality. As against Society, he puts forward a sort of primitive Communism, of which the certain fruits are Justice and a happy life. So, “Hurrah for the Huron!” He looks with compassion on poor civilized man—no courage, no strength, incapable of providing himself with food and shelter; a degenerate, a moral crétin, a figure of fun in his blue coat, his red hose, his black hat, his white plume and his green ribands. He never really lives because he is always torturing the life out of himself to clutch at wealth and honours which, even if he wins them, will prove to be but glittering illusions. Sturdy, untiring on his feet, skilled in the chase, inured to fatigue and privation, what a magnificent fellow is your savage! How noble in comparison! His very ignorance is an asset. Unable either to read or write, what a host of evils he escapes! For science and the arts are the parents of corruption. The savage obeys the will of Nature, his kindly mother, therefore he is happy. It is the civilized folk who are the real barbarians. Let them profit by the example of the savage and so regain man’s birthright of dignity and freedom.

  But now, alongside the Good Savage, the Wise Egyptian claims his place. But he is not yet quite ready to come on; he is still putting a few finishing touches to his make-up. One might imagine oneself looking on at the piecing-together of a mosaic: a few bits from Herodotus, a few more from Strabo; bits well-worn, but not worn-out; flattering testimony offered by the chronologists,[7] which tends to deprive the Hebrew of his halo and confer it on the Egyptian; narratives brought home by travellers. These latter call to mind that it was on the ancient soil of Egypt that music and geometry were born into the world; that it was on an Egyptian sky that the pathways of the stars had first been charted. Some magnificent passages from Bossuet, from his Discours sur l’Histoire Universelle, come readily to mind. The Scythians and the Ethiopians were rude and barbarous races. It was left for Egypt to provide the pattern of a perfect civilization. The Egyptians were a grave and thoughtful people. The glorious tribute rendered them, the tribute which described them as being the most grateful people in the world, implied that they were also the most friendly. Egypt had not only made known the law; she had also kept it, which is far less common. She had called up the dead to judgment; according to the sentence passed on them by that august Assize she had separated the worthy from the unworthy, assigning to the former the honour of stately tombs, casting the latter into a nameless and unhonoured grave. She had suffered the waters of the Nile to flow over the land in order that it might bring forth fruit in abundance; she had built the Pyramids.