by Paul Hazard
There was, however, a way of reconstructing the past, and that was by archaeological research. A whole tribe of learned men were hard at work undertaking the most dryasdust tasks, digging out original texts, deciphering manuscripts, scraping stones, rubbing coins, a whole little tribe, full of zeal and courage, as busy as an ants’ nest, with its artizans, and even its warriors. Sound workmen, with a taste for tackling big jobs, what they intended to do was to make sure of every step they took. Whatever its importance, great or small, they were determined to be completely and irresistibly sure about it. What they aimed at doing was to dig up solid material out of the past, something concrete and perdurable, something that should remain as a permanent possession. There was Francesco Bianchini who sought in archaeological exploration the sure data that no documents could give him; Richard Bentley, the Master of Trinity, curator of the Royal Library, a most eminent classical scholar and a man of incomparable intellectual vigour; Pufendorf, a great believer in ancient records; and there was Leibniz. Leibniz went and buried himself in libraries, grubbed about among old documents, amusing himself with copying them with his own hand—royal edicts, diplomatists’ dispatches, or whatever they might be. He deemed that a code of international relations should be based on authentic documents, declarations of war, peace-treaties and other similar written evidence, and not on mere words. As librarian to the Duke of Brunswick, he undertook to write the history of the reigning house. After a considerable time had elapsed, he brought out a bulky volume, which was followed sometime later by two others. These did not conform to the fashionable taste in the least, crammed as they were with quotations from original sources. When people expressed amazement at the sort of work he had turned out, he retorted that he had done something a great deal more useful than if he had employed himself in producing resounding phrases, swelling periods, rhetorical flourishes. He told them that his work was something absolutely unique, that the like of it had never been seen before, that he had shed a new light on centuries that had hitherto been shrouded in terrible obscurity, that he had settled a number of disputed points, and rectified a number of errors.
How they laboured at their task! And in every country! Henri Meibom devoted himself to German archaeology; Thomas Gale and Thomas Rymer to the study of English documents; Nicolas Antonio to the beginnings of Spain’s literary history. How they toiled, too, in that vast workshop organized by the Jesuits, in which the Bollandists gained particular distinction. How they laboured, those Benedictines, winning for themselves their reputation, their afterwards proverbial reputation, for steady, unremitting toil. So great was their zeal that the impetuous Rancé, the reformer of La Trappe, reproached these industrious brethren with devoting to the pursuit of secular knowledge the hours and the ardour which should have been consecrated to God. Dom Mabillon took up the challenge, whence there arose a long and lofty war of words, in which the question at issue was the nature of the summum bonum.
Benedictine lay-brothers toiled with equal zest, as well as Étienne Baluze, and Charles Du Cange, and their combined efforts resulted in research scoring some of its greatest victories. We may call to mind that it was in 1678 that Du Cange published his Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis; that in 1681 Mabillon published his De re diplomatica libri V; and that in 1708, Montfaucon brought out his Palaeographica graeca. But if we had to select one example, and one only, from the ranks of those who devoted their lives to research, it would, perhaps, be Antonio Muratori on whom our choice would light. His whole life was devoted to the task of rescuing from oblivion the titles in use among the human race. Shut up from morning till night in his library at Modena, which he scarcely ever left save to make a journey of learned research through the archives of his native Italy, Muratori piled up folio upon folio. His literary, philosophical and polemical writings which alone would have sufficed to establish the reputation of any other man, were really but the products of his leisure moments, parerga, which offered him a little relaxation from his main task, the task which he so stubbornly pursued and which involved, as a preliminary, the gathering together of all the documents he could unearth that related to Italy, not so much to the Italy of Roman times as to the Italy of the Middle Ages, till then so utterly neglected. After that, he would essay to bring ten dead centuries back to life.
In England, perhaps the main emphasis was on Greek studies; in Holland, on Latin; in France, on ecclesiastical history and hagiography; in Italy, on her own past. However, there were no watertight compartments; work went on in every country with a common aim. When treasure of undisputed value had at last been brought together; when the junior sciences, such, for example, as numismatics, had delved deep into the earth to lay bare the relics of vanished civilizations; when the salutary lessons of patience and humility provided by those labours had had their effect, and corrected the general view of things, then would the days of historical scepticism at last be over.
Quite so; but when would the work be done? How many years, decades, centuries would be needed before one would be able to say, “I know”, instead of “I think”; when one could say that such a such a thing was so, without fear of misrepresenting the truth? It is a desperate business to find even a piece or two of the vast mosaic, and then no sooner have the finders set to work to fit the pieces into their proper places, than they, too, are called away to the land of shadows, and they and their labours become things of the past, that past which, stealing stealthily upon them, envelops them, too, in its dark embrace. Even supposing they could perform the miracle of coming back to life again, those to whom they offered their little portions and parcels of the vanished past, and whose task it should be to restore to these dead things the form, the hue, the breath of life, would have no use for them, so true is it that archaeologists and historians worked side by side each in complete ignorance of what the other was doing. Soon these paths themselves began to diverge more and more. A new generation was now appearing on the scene, a comfort-loving, care-free generation that fought shy of anything that called for effort. On the one hand were the drudges, people that did the spade-work, who wrote ill, who lumbered up the margins of their books with references, who were heavy, obscure, willing galley-slaves, self-condemned to inglorious labours. On the other side, were the historians, men of soaring genius who disdained to descend to minutiae, leaving to second-rate minds the exacting labours of pettifogging research, and carefully avoiding any discussions or arguments which might have tended to dim the fire within them. The slaves got together piles of material, which the great lords of language disdained to look at.
What, when all is said and done, is history? A collection of fairy-tales, when it treats of the origin of nations; and, thereafter, a conglomeration of errors. We fancy we detect in the man who is generally regarded as the typical sceptic, in Fontenelle, a note of sadness bordering on despair when this view of the matter is borne in upon him.
What a prodigious time it takes for man to arrive at any sort of sound conclusion, no matter how plain and straightforward the question at issue may be. To preserve a record of events as they actually happened—there does not seem anything particularly out of the way about that; yet many centuries had to elapse before the power to perform that simple task was mastered. Before then, the things with which men stored their memory turned out to be but dreams and fantastic imaginings.
As children, we are taught so much about Greek myths, and get so accustomed to them that when we grow up we do not recognise how extravagant they really are; but if we could disabuse our minds of our ingrained idea of them, if we could see them with fresh eyes, we should realize with amazement that what is called a nation’s early history is in reality nothing but a phantasmagoria, a string of childish tales. Can it really be, we ask ourselves, that such things were ever given out as truth? If those who passed them on did not believe them, what was their motive for deceiving us? How was it that men were attracted to tales so manifestly absurd? And if they were drawn to them then, how is it they are not drawn
to them still?
That way of recording history was succeeded by a newer method, which obtained among the more cultivated and disciplined races. It consisted in scrutinizing the motives behind the various actions, and in examining the character of those who wrought them. It proved no less fallacious than its forerunner. For man is bound to be passionate, or credulous, or ill-informed, or careless. “What you would have to discover would be one who had observed things with perfect attentiveness and, at the same time, with perfect impartiality. You would never succeed. At best the historian elaborates an a priori plan in which all the parts are dove-tailed together to form a complete whole; the sort of thing the metaphysician does with regard to his theories. He takes certain given facts and then assigns them causes of his own imagining. His work is still less sure, of still more doubtful validity, than the speculations of a philosophical theorist. The only really useful sort of history would be made up of an account of the passions and the errors of man:
Madmen we are, but not quite on the pattern of those who are shut up in a madhouse. It does not concern any of them to discover what sort of madness afflicts his neighbour, or the previous occupants of his cell; but it matters very much to us. The human mind is less prone to go astray when it gets to know to what extent, and in how many directions, it is itself liable to err, and we can never devote too much time to the study of our aberrations.
That, according to this very modern champion of the Moderns in their famous quarrel with the Ancients, is all that history can do for us. Let the present concern itself with the present. Many years are taken up in our schools in compelling young folk to read the works of the Roman historians. How far more profitable it would be to tell them about the times in which they themselves are called upon to live! Really it is difficult to see what light is shed on the affairs of our own day by anything we may glean from Cornelius Nepos, Quintus Curtius, or the first ten books of Livy. And that would be true even if you got the whole thing up by heart, or made a detailed abstract of all the notable thoughts and sayings contained in those authors. It profits little to know the exact number of cows and sheep the Romans carried off with them when they defeated the Aequiculani, the Hernici and the Volscians.[11] But what is going on to-day, our own lives and what the future promises—that is what appeals to us, that is what bears us away on the wings of enchantment! Ratio vicit, vetustas cessit . . .
[1]Paul Valéry, Regards sur le monde actuel, 1931, p. 161.
[2]Varillas, Histoire de François Ier; à laquelle est jointe la comparaison de François Ier avec Charles-Quint par le même auteur, 1684.
[3]Le P. Le Moyne, De L’Histoire, 1670, pp. 76–77.
[4]Paulian, Critique des Lettres pastorales de M. Jurieu, 1689, pp. 78–80.
[5]As stated by Laurence Eachard, The Roman History from the building of the City . . . 1694. Vertot, in his Histoire des Révolutions arrivés dans le gouvernement de la République romaine (1719), though he varies a little as regards the facts, says more or less the same thing.
[6]Saint-Évremond, Réflexions sur les divers génies du peuple romain, dans les différents temps de la République.
[7]Quoted by Henri Bremond, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, Vol. X, 1930, c. VI.
[8]Le P. Paul Pezron, L’antiquité des temps rétablie, 1687, chap. XV.
[9]Le P. Greslon, Histoire de la Chine sous la domination des Tartares, 1671, I, chap. IX, p. 42.
[10]Le P. Paul Pezron, L’antiquité des temps rétablie, 1687, p. 8.
[11]S. von Pufendorf, Einleitung zu der Historie der vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten . . . in Europa, 1682, Preface. See also Malebranche, De la Recherche de la vérité , 1674, II, chap. IV, V, VI.
III
THE LIGHT FROM THE NORTH
EUROPE looked as if it had taken permanent shape. The several nations composing it had each such familiar and decided characteristics that the mere mention of any one of them sufficed to call up a whole string of stock-epithets, each the inalienable property of that particular country, just as “white” is of snow, or “scorching” of the sun. Is it the Swiss we are thinking of? Well, they are sincere, level-headed, loyal, unaffected, open-hearted. They possess courage and resolution, and if they are attacked by their foes, they are prompt to hit back at them; they are steady-going, staunch, bold, and of good physique. They make good soldiers and most of them take service in France. However, they must have good pay: point d’argent, point de Suisse—no pay, no piper! The Germans? They are warlike and make first-rate fighting men, once they have been licked into shape. They have good heads for business and display aptitude in all such callings. They are not easily incited to sedition and like to keep to the sort of government they have been accustomed to. They constitute a large bloc, but unfortunately they are a prey to a whole host of internal divisions, religious and political. . . . “The Poles are brave, with a taste for letters and the fine-arts, rather prone to inebriety, and Catholics to a man.” So, in the year 1708, declared the worthy Nicolas de Fer, geographer to His Most Catholic Majesty and to Monseigneur the Dauphin. “The Hungarians are a sturdy race, fond of war and of horses, daring, uncouth and notable toss-pots. Their nobles live in sumptuous style; their womankind are comely and sedate of mien.” “The Swedes are an honest and courageous folk and fond of the arts and sciences. The air of their country is clear, keen and salubrious; their forests are the haunt of numerous wild and ferocious animals. The Danes are more or less the same in their manners and customs as the Swedes. The Norwegians appear to be of a simpler type, and are very frank and ingenuous.”
When an author was looking about him for a stock character, the various countries thus labelled offered him a convenient field of selection. Anyone thinking of composing a ballet, or an entertainment for royalty had no need to cudgel his brains unduly; there were plenty of foreigners to choose from—Neapolitans, Croats, characters as well-worn as the heavy-fathers, or the lackeys, of the traditional comic stage—maybe even more so. In 1697, Houdar de la Motte prevailed on the Académie royale de Musique to perform a ballet entitled “l’Europe galante”. “From the various European countries those characters were drawn which offered the most striking contrast one with another and were thus calculated to prove ‘good theatre’: France, Spain, Italy, Turkey. The authors kept to the notions commonly current regarding their respective national characteristics. The Frenchman was fickle, impulsive, dandified. The Spaniard was true-hearted and sentimental; the Italian jealous, subtle, hot-tempered; and, lastly, the high-and-mighty aloofness of the Sultans and the passionate tantrums of the Sultanas were presented with all the realism that the resources of theatrical production would permit.”
Now let us take the same clichés and swing them over to the black, the opprobrious, side. These wishy-washy adjectives then become part of the vocabulary of invective, but the process is the same in either case. In 1700, Daniel Defoe wrote a political lampoon which made a great stir. It was entitled The True-born Englishman. Every country gets its compliment. It is all quite plain-sailing:
Pride, the First Peer, and President of Hell,
To his share Spain, the largest province fell . . .
Lust chose the torrid zone of Italy,
Where Blood ferments in Rapes and Sodomy . . .
Drunkness, the darling favourite of Hell,
Chose Germany to rule . . .
Ungovern’d Passion settled first in France,
Where mankind lives in haste, and thrives by chance.
A dancing nation, fickle and untrue . . .
They had been through so many clashes, all these bickering brethren, they had so often made it up, shaken hands and embraced, they had been through so many trials and tribulations that they thought they knew one another, and the notions they then formed, each one of all the rest, never changed any more. How wrong they were. In the western sky, some constellations began to pale, while others were waxing brighter. The light came no longer from the same quarter. It was not only frontiers, r
endered fluid by incessant wars, that changed, but the intellectual forces and the collective spirit of Europe. But this change was not effected without a struggle, without suffering, nor was it accomplished without another revolution.
The intellectual hegemony of Europe had always been a family heritage, as it were; a sort of heirloom confined to the Latin races. In the days of the Renaissance, Italy was the tenant-in-tail. Then it was Spain’s turn to have her golden age. Finally, France succeeded to the heritage. Any suggestion that the barbarous northerners should ever presume to dispute the sceptre with these queenly races would have seemed both impertinent and absurd. What, forsooth, had they to offer? The monstrous Shakespeare? Or, if they were Germans, the uncouth runes of rugged and untutored bards? People like these did not seriously count. Though they quarrelled fiercely enough among themselves, glowering darkly at one another, playing on one another the most unhandsome tricks, Italy, Spain and France had still their royal descent to boast of, to support their claim; all three of them were daughters of Rome. Spain alone had dimmed her radiance. We will not say that even now she did not fling over Europe some rays of a light that could not be extinguished; but it is a hard task for a nation to go on indefinitely keeping ahead of her rivals. It means she must never falter, never exhaust her strength, never cease to keep bright, and to diffuse around her far and wide the radiance of her pristine glory. But by this time Spain had ceased to live in the present. The last thirty years of the seventeenth century, and, for the matter of that, the first thirty of the eighteenth, were with her well-nigh completely barren. Never before, throughout her whole intellectual history, says Ortega y Gasset, had her heart beat so feebly. Wrapt up in herself, she presented an attitude of lofty indifference towards the rest of the world. Travellers continued to visit her, but they did not conceal the disdain with which she inspired them. They harped on her defects—a populace wallowing in superstition, a court sunk in ignorance. They enlarged on the decay of her commerce and spoke contemptuously of the sloth and vainglory of her people. As for her writers, her foreign critics repeatedly gave instances of their pretentious and affected style, and of the eccentricities and irregularities of her stage plays, things calculated to outrage the feelings of all who were conversant with such matters. People were beginning to say, not only that Spain had lost her power and influence, but that she was a traitor to her own genius. Her romantic spirit, her national pride, her nice sense of honour, her love of justice, her complete unselfishness—all those qualities which had been her particular pride and glory, Cervantes in his Don Quixote had held up to ridicule. And the Spaniards by applauding Don Quixote had belied their nature and disowned their birthright. Absurd as it was, this idea was not more absurd than a host of other reproaches with which nations competing for leadership have sought to give the coup de grâce to their already weakening rivals.
