The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  Drama, pathos—these things are of the stuff of History; therefore she must be allowed a sumptuous setting. Battles, conspiracies, revolutions, schisms—first-rate material, fine subjects, these! With her taste for rhetoric, she is akin to poetry, for what is poetry but a form of eloquence, an eloquence controlled by rhyme? Noble herself, she breathes the sublime as her native air. She must, of course, provide a rich assortment of speeches, descriptions, maxims, analyses, parallels—as this, for example: Charles V and François Ier are standing before us: “Not content with bringing them into the world at the same time, and in the same kingdom, and with uniting them in a close bond of blood relationship, Providence further decreed that each should derive from the other his principal title-deed to fame. So true is this that, when one of them was called upon to make his exit from the stage, the powers of the other declined, and, from that moment, all his fortunes went awry. . . . Let us then begin this famous parallel with that which is least familiar in the story of our great heroes, and continue it, so far as in us lies, with all the scrupulous accuracy that Aristotle and Plutarch, pastmasters in this kind of composition, would demand of us.”[2]

  In a word, what every historian of that period was fain to prove himself was just another Livy, only even more eloquent, more ornate than his prototype. All would freely have subscribed the formula elaborated by one of the practitioners of the genre, Père Le Moyne. “History”, says he, “is a sustained account of things that are true, outstanding, and of public import, written, with ability, eloquence and judgment, for the instruction of princes and their subjects, and for the edification of the commonalty as a whole”.[3]

  They composed fine prefaces. They protested that their most anxious care would be to observe the strictest impartiality. However, as they also pointed out that it behoved them to champion the cause of their king, their country and their creed, it was clear that they would have to take sides in every discussion, and that their main object would be, not so much to discover the truth, as to ensure the triumph of their version of it. Catholics and Protestants confronted one another, armed with the pen. One extolled the virtues of Louis XIV, another sang the praises of William of Orange. Thus began endless debates, of which the most clamorous were those that raged about The History of the Reformation of the Church of England (1679—1715) by Gilbert Burnet; The History of Lutheranism (1680), and The History of Calvinism (1682) by Père Maimbourg, The History of the Revolutions that have taken place in Europe in the matter of religion (1686—1689) by Varillas.

  They allowed themselves a free hand. Saint Réal’s account of the life and character of Don Carlos, and of the outstanding events of the Spanish conspiracy against the Republic of Venice, reads with all the glamour of a romance. And, indeed, if the novelists draw freely on history for the matter of their romances, why should not an historian return the compliment and make his history as romantic as a novel, as romantic, and hardly less wide of the truth? Varillas, when, in his old age, his eyesight began to fail, dictated to an amanuensis for several hours a day, never troubling to verify a single reference. But he did not wait till he was a dim-sighted old man to begin inventing his facts. One of his critics charges him with fabricating, besides many other fanciful tales, the tragic circumstances alleged to have marked the end of the love-affair of François Ier and Madame de Chateaubriand. Varillas’ story is that M. de Chateaubriand, on his return from Pavia in 1526, had ordered his faithlesss consort to be shut up in a room entirely hung with black. In order to add relish to his vengeance, he devised a means by which, without being seen himself, he could watch her giving way to transports of despair. In the end, he caused her to be bled to death by a couple of surgeons. That is Varillas’ account of the matter, but, in point of fact, in the year 1532, while he was making a journey through Brittany, François Ier made over to the lady in question the rent of a number of manors, and, after her demise in 1537, permitted the husband to enjoy the usufruct of her estate.

  Laurence Eachard, who had set himself the task of writing the history of England from the time of Julius Caesar onwards, deems that, in an age of refinement like his own, it would ill become him to go rummaging about among a lot of crude monkish records, and says that he has therefore contented himself with remoulding, and sometimes with merely copying, whatever had struck him as worthy of preservation in the works of his predecessors, ancient as well as modern; thus making open confession of a practice which others followed without so frank an avowal. Some of the stories told about these historians impose no great strain on our credulity. Here is one: Vertot had just finished writing his account of the siege of Malta when someone drew his attention to the existence of some highly important documents bearing on the subject. Vertot told him he was too late, he had finished his siege! Père Daniel went to inspect the works in the royal library, spent an hour there, and declared he was perfectly satisfied. Lucky man! He himself said that a thoroughly well-documented piece of work is a credit to its author; all the same he had examined a fair number of original manuscripts and found the process more painful than profitable. We can well believe it.

  This building, with its imposing façade, was majestic to look at, but it was built on sand. The lightest touch would bring it toppling to the ground. Already doubts, misgivings were knocking at the heart of these historians. For they were humanists albeit belated, a tardiness of which they seemed vaguely conscious. Even in the hour of their greatest triumph, there was something that haunted them, that marred their peace of mind. For all their brio, for all the bravura of their public performances all was not well within. Something was whispering to them. . . . Quid est veritas?

  Truth. . . . Is truth just a matter of arranging problematic data, of getting things to fit into a pattern of apparent verisimilitude? Is it just the sort of logical cohesion that a little thought and ingenuity enables one to impart to things? Is it a mental concept, a factitious harmony resulting from a process of skilful composition, a piece of artistry? How difficult it is to get at it! How far does it become us to pursue our search for it? Are we to be allowed to invade people’s privacy? To go poking our noses into their houses, sneaking into inner apartments, tearing off the veils, dragging aside the curtains that conceal the family secrets? How often has it not happened that two writers, or three, or four, all describing the same siege, the same battle, have given widely divergent accounts of it. Which are we to choose? How is it that events as soon as they come under the pen, take on, as if by magic, an air of romance? These were the sort of questions that were disturbing the writers of history. And who can gainsay that they are superficial, that they are incapable of sustained and systematic research, that they are at once verbose and in a hurry, that they slur over difficulties, that they are poor hands at tracking down origins, at penetrating through successive layers of paint till they get to the original coat? They lack the critical sense; yet not so utterly as to be wholly impervious to a secret misgiving. In fact we find an open expression of it in a work entitled Une Méthode pour étudier l’ Histoire brought out in 1713 by Lenglet Dufresnoy, an independent, but not conspicuously clear-headed, thinker. “Be on your guard”, said this writer, “nothing is harder than to steer clear of error. You cannot be too careful; keep to well-tried rules; don’t swallow everything you are told; examine things for yourself; sift them to the bottom. If a thing strikes you as singular, out of the ordinary, be all the more suspicious of it; find out if there was anything that might have misled the writer, or have tempted him to mislead you. Be on the watch; keep a wary eye. If you don’t, the upshot will be that truth and false-hood will have the like dominion over you.” That is the danger, and the danger is recognized. It is revealed by an expression which is frequently cropping up; an expression which, though frowned upon, declines to be silenced. To the word Pyrrhonism. which had created such a commotion in Pascal’s bosom, another was now added, the word historical.

  In the year 1702, a very distinguished professor, Jacob Perizonius by name, who, at the time, w
as teaching Greek and Roman history at the University of Leyden, was invited to deliver a course of lectures on the history of the United Provinces. In accordance with traditional usage, he had to deliver an inaugural address before the civic authorities, his professional colleagues, and the students; and the subject he chose for his lecture was Historical Pyrrhonism. In sonorous Latin phrases, he proclaimed to his audience that society had reached an age when everything was a target for criticism, and when people were only too ready to rush to extremes; history, he said, was confronted with a grave crisis. While some, like ninnies, swallowed the various fairy tales by which it was distorted, others went to the opposite extreme and denied that history, in whatever shape or form, had any validity at all. This latter attitude, he went on, was gaining ground and was the more dangerous because it was the more showy, the more likely to attract attention. If it carried the day, disaster would ensue. The world would relapse into universal scepticism. And so the speaker affirmed that historic certitude was attainable, and, emboldened by this belief, exclaimed, Valeat tandem Pyrrhonismus, to hell with Pyrrhonism!

  But the task was beyond him. The adversaries of history were advancing in three separate columns; three, if not more. There were the Cartesians following the lead of their master, who said that a man was no more likely to be a better member of society because he knew Latin and Greek rather than Swiss or lowland Breton, or because he knew the history of the Roman or Germanic empire rather than that of the most insignificant little state in Europe. Malebranche went one better. Historians, he said, tell us what other people thought, without troubling to think for themselves. Adam in the Garden of Eden was possessed of perfect knowledge. Did Adam know history? Obviously he did not. Therefore perfect knowledge was not history. For his own part, he, Malebranche, was content to know what Adam knew. Truth, for such minds as that, is not something which one must go out and seek in the high-ways and by-ways, it comes to a man from within, from meditation. Truth is not a matter of history, but of metaphysics. The Jansenists, too, rigorous moralists as they were, mistrusted this manifestation of the libido sciendi, this everlasting itch for knowledge. But history’s bitterest foes of all were the freethinkers.

  They looked on history as a sort of personal enemy. They went about complaining that she was as untrustworthy as she was untruthful; that she was a despicable lick-spittle, a base fawner upon the great and powerful. History was like those dishes compounded in the kitchen to suit the different tastes of the diners. The same meat was served up with as many different sauces as there were countries in the world. If read it you must, then remember that you are reading, not to learn the facts, but merely to learn the interpretation that each individual, party, or people put upon the facts, and that, from start to finish, history is one everlasting note of interrogation.

  The French were conspicuous for the vivacity of their attack, but there were others no less vigorous. From Leipzig, J. B. Mencken, son of the founder of the Acta Eruditorum, launched his thunders against the historians, whom he included, without exception, in a sort of ignoble army of charlatans. Charlatans they were, some of them because, wishing to emulate the splendours of Livy, they strew their narratives with long and tedious declamations, putting into the mouths of rude and uncultivated boors the subtlest and most polished of discourses, and others because, thinking it useless to look for readers unless they gave them something to enchant the eye, they bedizened their pages with all manner of tawdry, secondhand adornments; while others yet again, in order to flatter the Mæcenases to whom they owed their livelihood, embellished their family trees with many a flower of fancy, or invented wholly imaginary ones. But the arch-charlatan, the charlatan par excellence, was the Frenchman Varillas. Speaking generally, and taking them as a whole, all historians were charlatans, all of them prefaced their works with the undertaking that they were going to give the truth to the world; and that truth . . . never came!

  Yes, thought the wiseacres, there’s something in that. In spite of all the “Histories of France” that we have had, not one of them could be trusted. Nor, in the strict sense of the word, is there a history, a real authentic “History of England,” nor, indeed, of any country at all. Time was when men swallowed blindly anything they were told. But now, they ask questions. “Would it not be correct to say that the age of historical pyrrhonism began in our time?”[4]

  But that the history of Rome should similarly be called in question; to arrive at the conclusion that the ancient writers were not a whit less one-sided, not a whit less irresponsible, not a whit less hollow and pretentious, than these of our own day, would be more painful still. Romulus, and the heroes that preceded him, had come to be looked upon by all educated men as old friends, almost as members of the family. They had known them since their schooldays; they wrote their language, they even composed their letters and their speeches for them. How well it hung together, the venerable old tale! So serene, so stately was it in the telling, that to associate with it the faintest suggestion of untruth seemed utterly preposterous. It was an epic of real life; nothing less. Once upon a time, or, if you must needs be precise, in the annus mundi 2824, four hundred years before Rome was founded, Aeneas set foot on the shores of Latium, accompanied by that scanty band of Trojans who had escaped from the tempest of fire that had reduced Ilion to ashes. For three years now he had been driven a homeless wanderer from sea to sea. At the time of his arrival, Latinus was king. This warm-hearted, hospitable monarch, moved by compassion for the sufferings of Aeneas, received him with great friendliness and, to retain him at his side by bonds as sweet as they were powerful, bestowed on him the hand of his daughter, Lavinia, in marriage. Thereupon Turnus, King of the Rutulians, stung by jealousy, made war upon the Trojans. But he was overcome and slain in battle. Peace being thus restored to Latium, Aeneas was henceforth enabled to wield unmolested the sceptre which Latinus had bequeathed to him on his death-bed, as an heritage which rightfully belonged to him as the husband of his daughter.[5] The whole story hung together like the successive scenes of some stately drama. These Romans were real flesh and blood; as real as any of those whom admiring spectators applauded on the stage with their plumed helmets and abbreviated tunics.

  But no; though it went terribly against the grain, there was nothing for it but to re-portray and gravely alter, the unfaithful pictures of those beloved friends. Nay, it might have to be accepted that they were not portraits at all, but mere phantoms, conjured up from the land of dreams. Dawn was approaching and they would soon be melting into air, into thin air. A voice, a voice which never yet had spoken in vain, had already declared them devoid of substance. That same voice had not hesitated to assert that men were always the same everywhere, childish, vainglorious, credulous, and particularly sensitive when the matter of their origin was under discussion. As they have always been, he said, so they are to-day, claiming for the race to which they belong an origin reaching back to some remote and mythical past. The Romans invented fables which we accepted as true and took to our hearts:

  The Romans were not exempt from this vanity. Not content with trying to establish a kinship with Venus through Aeneas, who led the Trojans into Italy, they must further buttress up their connection with the gods with the story of Romulus who, they gave out, was the son of Mars, and whom, after his death, they made a god in his own right. His successor, Numa, had no celestial family connections to boast of, but the saintly character of his life earned him the rare privilege of holding confidential communication with the goddess Egeria, a privilege which proved of no small assistance to him in the inauguration of his ceremonies. It would appear, in short, that the powers who have the moulding of our destinies had then no other concern than the founding of the city of Rome, and that, even after that event, an industrious Providence took it upon itself to adjust the different characters of her successive rulers to the changing requirements of her people.

  I hate admiring references which repose on mere fables, or which are bolstered up by false and misleadin
g judgments. There is so much that is real to admire in the Roman people, that we do them a disservice in flattering them with fairy-tales.[6]

  This voice so clear, so peremptory, these daring ideas, came as a rude shock to people who all their lives had clung to their beliefs in undisturbed security. Those “true things” which Saint-Évremond wanted people to admire, how were they to be distinguished from the things that were not true? More than that, how could people be expected to discard a finished whole, a thing complete and perfect in all its parts, for a conception based on the theory of evolution, an idea hardly comprehensible in those days? Were the frontiers of history to be pushed ever farther and farther back? Were we to ante-date the ages? Were we to play fast and loose with time, on the ground, forsooth, that it is only when it is viewed from afar, and in the shadows, that we can form an idea of what the past really was?

  At Leyden Jacob Gronovius asserts that there never was any such person as Romulus. Henry Dodwell, at Oxford, also expresses grave doubts about him. For nearly two thousand five hundred years, countless pens have recorded that the Vestal Virgin, Rhea Sylvia, having given birth to two male children as a result of her amorous intercourse with Mars, these twins, Romulus and Remus, were exposed on the Capitol, where they were suckled by a wolf. That story is so patently absurd that it is hardly necessary to refute it. Certe nulla est, praeter sacram, historia quae non primas suas origines fabulis immixtas habeat. Historia Romana ante Romulum nulla fide digna. Vel Romuli ipsius fortasse dubia. It is certain that, with the exception of Holy Writ, there is no history which does not partake of the fabulous in its earliest beginnings. The history of Rome before the time of Romulus is unworthy of credit, and even the story of Romulus is perhaps open to doubt. That was the sort of thing men were beginning to say. Later on it was shown how completely the first four centuries of Roman history were enveloped in doubt and obscurity.