The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  However, all this was not merely a case of Catholics versus Protestants, for now this matter of natural law comes into it. Jurieu had based his arguments on Grotius. Now, Bossuet knew all about Grotius, knew him for a learned man, indeed, and well-intentioned withal; but he knew him also for a Socinian, a man with dangerous ideas, who tended to confound things human and divine. What was he really driving at, with all this talk about the law of nature? The idea that the people are invested by nature with sovereignty implies no doubt that the human race had already, in its primitive state, an idea of the sovereignty which belonged to it of right, and of its power to delegate that sovereignty to whomsoever it thought fit. What a glaring mistake! Grotius, and Jurieu after him, err at the very outset; they fail to understand the terms of the discussion. Now, let there be no mistake; the earliest state of mankind was one of barbarous and ferocious anarchy, and if, as we have reason to suppose, the earliest tribes were not so much a people as a mob, how can we possibly imagine that they had any conception of sovereignty, for sovereignty in itself would involve a sort of government? “Far from the people in those primitive ages being sovereign, there was not, in the strict sense of the word, any such thing as a people at all. Families there may have been, but undisciplined and unstable; there may have been an agglomeration, a confused multitude, of human beings, but not a people, since the word implies a community amenable to definite rules and fixed laws; and that is something you only find among those who have already begun to emerge from the miserable state to which we have referred, in short, from anarchy.” Bossuet could not see how sovereignty could possibly be delegated by anarchy.

  Meanwhile, the case of Louis XIV, considered as an absolute monarch, was over and done with; he stood for what, even at this stage, might be called the Ancien Régime—the Old Order. Even in his own realm, in France itself, what a flood of opinion there was against the idea of a ruling authority deriving its sanction solely from God. There were opponents of the doctrine who went rummaging about amongst ancient documents regarding the earliest beginnings of the monarchical power; they discovered that it had been unlawfully acquired; there were stubborn, self-opinionated parliament-men who wrangled endlessly about the rights and prerogatives of their own august body; there were the nobles, who jealously insisted on maintaining all the privileges to which they were entitled as peers of France; everyone—commoners and nobles, disaffected grumblers and red-hot rebels, the sane and the insane—all, in treatises printed in Holland, in hand-written documents circulating under the rose, all gave vent to their discontent, their wrath, their impatience of the yoke.

  Abroad, as we have seen, Louis XIV was an object of detestation. Nevertheless, from the legal point of view, Bossuet’s argument is sound enough. If, in their natural state, men were nothing but a disorganized mob, how could a law of any sort have been born of this primeval confusion?

  1688. The English Revolution.

  James II, by the grace of God King, is driven from his throne, and William of Orange takes his place. The historians inform us that the new King, crowned at Westminster on the 11th April, 1689, “reigns by virtue of a right which differs in no respect from the right by which any landowner chooses the representative of his county”. He agrees to submit himself to the authority of the two Houses of Parliament, thus ensuring the triumph of constitutional government, in accordance with an unwritten pact between the monarch and his subjects.

  And those ideas which learned professors had enunciated from their lofty academic chairs, which their students had duly assimilated, of which learned journals had treated, which had been maintained, contradicted, and yet again maintained, and which, since the time of Grotius, had formed the mental pabulum of two generations—were not these ideas to be thrown into the battle? And then those others which, expounded by the Doctors of the Church, enlarged upon by official jurists, had also had their pupils, and had the advantage of a long tradition behind them. Were they going to remain aloof from the fray at the very moment when a practical example, in the shape of an event that was stirring Europe to its depths, offered them such an admirable opportunity to come out into the open and show their mettle at what promised to mark a decisive stage in the battle? To bolster up the tottering power of the Stuarts the theorists had been laid under heavy contribution. Among the works supporting absolute power which had been unearthed, were those of a sturdy disputant who, about the middle of the century, had struck a shrewd blow for the Royalist cause. Robert Filmer had gone about preaching submission and obedience far and wide, saying that a limited monarchy could result in nothing but disorder, that subjects had no right to rebel; that Hobbes had been wrong in his premises, but right in his conclusions; in a word, that the absolute power of kings in general was a necessity. Filmer became fashionable once more. In 1680, a new edition of the magnum opus of “this learned man”, Patriarcha, was given to the world, and was several times reprinted in the course of the ensuing years. This work proved, as clear as daylight, that the kingly authority is the extension of paternal authority. Against his father, no son who had any respect for God or man would dare to rise up in revolt. However the facts belied the Jacobite claims. But a man was now about to come on the scene who would invest the facts with the dignity of a universal principle.

  1689. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government. In the former the false principles and foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers are detected and overthrown. The latter is an essay concerning the true original, extent, and end of civil government.

  On the selfsame vessel that was bringing William of Orange from Holland to England and the Revolution, was John Locke, the philosopher of the New Age. He it was who, in these two treatises, was to take up the challenge of the monarchists.

  What, in fact, Locke really does is to hark back to a set of ideas with which we are already tolerably familiar; but he carries them further than they had ever been carried before, and he makes them prove, by a series of logical deductions, the right of subjects to rebel. Like Pufendorf, and like everyone else at that time, he begins with the Natural Man. To do so was the fashion, we might almost call it the craze, of the day. The state of Nature was not, as Hobbes would have it, a state of violence and ferocity. But neither was it perfect. To remedy the evils inherent in the natural state, man sets up a social state, but not on the patriarchal pattern, as Filmer depicted it. He sets it up, as Pufendorf shows, on the basis of an understanding, a covenant. His readers should be quite clear about it. “There, and there only”, he says, “is political society where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it.” Absolute power, which denies this right of appeal, is purely and simply incompatible with a Civil Society; and Divine Right, which Catholic teachers are always insisting upon, entirely fails to justify the contention that any one man may control the lives and destinies of all the rest. Power should be controlled, and divided, as in Great Britain, into legislative and executive. If the executive power failed to act in accordance with the purposes for which it was set up, if it encroached upon the liberties of the people, it must be taken out of the hands of the person wielding it. Nay more; if the subjects perceive that the tyrant is preparing the means to cast them into slavery, let them steal a march on him, let them, by open rebellion, prevent him from fulfilling his nefarious designs.

  Locke’s genius was of the practical order, and he set himself to adjust matters: to the idea of Nature, he added another one, the idea of Civilization. It looked as though he was answering Bossuet in advance. No doubt this state of Nature idea involved some perplexities. No doubt history, which, as regards the origin of human societies, is neither as explicit nor as accurate as one could desire, furnishes us with ground for plausible conjecture, rather than with solid fact. The best we can do is to form a reasonable notion of the circumstances which led men to delegate their power. We may take it, then, that men, i
n the first place, were naturally free; but as to the manner in which they were to consolidate this freedom, they were divided in opinion. And as to defending it, to whom should they appeal to do that? Men were, by nature, equal; but what means had they of defending this equality against possible encroachment? It would have meant a state of perpetual warfare if they had not entrusted their power to a government capable of preserving this primitive freedom and equality. They were not a horde, but a horde they would have become had they not taken due care. Natural law engenders political law, the law which prevents natural qualities from being endangered in the rough and tumble of existence.

  Whenever a difficulty presented itself, the sagacious Locke endeavoured to propound a considered solution. For example: there was some reluctance at parting with the idea of paternal authority, a sort of bridge between God and Man, the earliest foreshadowing of kingly power. Locke intervened, pointing out that children are not born into a state of complete freedom; although they are born for it; that the parents (the father and, equally, the mother) have a species of jurisdiction over them. The parents, in fact, are under an obligation to prepare their children for their freedom until they arrive at the age of reason. Paternal authority, paternal power, does, then, exist. It exists, but it is not absolute; it is a duty, rather than a prerogative; it cannot lay down laws; and if we may suppose in the earliest times the existence of a patriarchal state, such a state would have reposed solely on the tacit consent of the children.

  Now let us consider the question of property; a question of some gravity. The ownership of property does not fit in very well with the idea of natural equality. By the light, not only of reason, but also of Revelation, we see that God gave the earth in common to the whole human race. That being so, how is it to be explained that individuals could lawfully appropriate to their own use a portion of this common property? Individual property, he tells us, comes about as the result of work: “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a ‘property’ in his own ‘person’. This nobody has any right to but himself. The ‘labour’ of his body and the ‘work’ of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.” The water which flows from this spring here may be made use of by all who pass by; but if I fill my pitcher with it, who shall tell me that the water in my pitcher is not mine?

  Locke was busy with his notes and comments, acting as a sort of intermediary between the professional jurists on the one hand, and the general public on the other; as an intermediary, too, between ancient and modern, retaining, on the one hand, just enough of the old beliefs to avoid shocking the public conscience, and, on the other, producing a large assortment of novelties: No more Divine Right; no more Right of Conquest: “But conquest is just as far from setting up any government as demolishing a house is from building a new one in its place.” The effect of his interpretation of things was that the light of the English constitution was reflected back on to Natural Law, while Natural Law shone forth as the foundation of the English constitution, complete with Parliament and King, a King called to the throne by the voice of the people. He integrated Natural Law into the political ideas of his time, of his country, of his race, and, further than that, he showed how it was connected with the reformed religion. When Divine Right went to the length of setting up an absolute monarchy, it was supernatural no more; it was contranatural. The justification of absolutism by those who claimed that it was based on the Divine Will was no more than a belated afterthought of the Catholic theologians: “Nothing of the kind had ever been heard of until this great mystery was revealed by the theology of this last century.”

  1699. The Adventures of Telemachus.

  In point of fact, Fénelon does not contest the principle of Divine Right. However, amid all the various sentiments and ideas to which this long-famous book, circulating in its millions among young and old, gave currency, one sentiment, and one idea, we must not allow to escape us.

  To begin with the sentiment: This was a horror and a detestation of Louis XIV. What we have here is something more than a mere intellectual disagreement; it is much more like unbridled passion, the indignation of a public accuser. “Have you sought out those who were the most disinterested, the most likely to contradict you? Have you preferred such as were least devoted to your pleasure and to their own interest? such as appeared most capable of opposing your passions when they were irregular, and your sentiments when they were unjust? When you detected a flatterer, did you banish him from your presence? Did you refuse to trust such people? No, no, you have not done what those do who love truth, and deserve to know it. While you had abroad so many enemies who threatened your still unstable kingdom, you thought of nothing but adorning your new city with magnificent buildings. You exhausted your wealth; you never thought to better your people, or to till the fertile soil. A vain ambition has driven you to the very brink of the precipice. By trying to appear great, you have all but destroyed the foundations of substantial greatness.”

  Now, for the idea: the worthiness of the people. “Not for himself did the gods make him king, but that he might give himself to his people. All his time, all his care, all his affection, he owes to his people, and he only merits the kingship in so far as he takes no thought for himself, but devotes himself to the service of his country.” “Know that you are not a king save in so far as you have people to govern.” Nay, more than that: An oppressed people has but one desire, and that is to be avenged on their kings: then sounds the hour of revolution. “Absolute power degrades every subject to the condition of a slave; the tyrant is flattered, even to the point of adoration, and everyone trembles at the glance of his eye, but at the least breath of revolt this monstrous power perishes by its own excess. It drew no strength from the love of the people; it wearied and provoked all that it could reach, and rendered every individual of the state impatient of its continuance. At the first stroke of opposition the idol is cast down, shattered into fragments, and trodden underfoot.”[2]

  Great was the want and misery in the kingdom of France. We all know La Bruyère’s dramatic description of the state of the peasantry. Locke’s account, which strains less after effect, is perhaps even more impressive. He states that the peasants live in hovels, that they are hardly able to clothe and feed themselves; yet, miserable as is their plight, the Treasury contrives to squeeze something more out of them. So the land is falling out of cultivation and lies fallow; and, seeing that the more they toil the more they are oppressed, men cease to do any work at all. Then, again, industries either decay, or try to establish themselves across the frontiers, endeavouring to find abroad the liberty which, in France, is denied them. Customs duties, exacted at every station, are ruining trade. The check to Colbert’s policy, noticeable even in his lifetime, becomes conspicuously so after his death. In 1694 came the Great Famine, and utter bankruptcy. Oh, the pity of it!

  However, a select few gave ear to these complaints and essayed to remove their cause. France’s great sorrow came to be recorded in writings which the bare need of keeping body and soul together seemed to dictate. Clumsily, without art, but with a grimness, a tenacity, which have something touching about them, Boisguilbert shows how France, once the richest country in the world, had lost five or six millions of her annual revenue; a deficit which was daily increasing. Taxes were iniquitously levied, favouring the rich and inflicting a crushing burden on the poor; thus the poorer classes had been reduced to utter destitution, and the whole country was hurrying to its doom.[3] Something must be done, and that quickly, to readjust the incidence of taxation, said Vauban, in his turn. A system of tithes established on an equitable basis would bring in more and be cheaper to run. Now, Boisguilbert and Vauban were anything but revolutionaries; their object was to put the national finances on a sound basis, and to furnish the King with the resources
of which he was so desperately in need; however, they were looked upon as trespassing on ground hitherto regarded as a close preserve, and the Dîme royale was ordered to be publicly burnt.[4]

  But how much bolder, how far more bitter is Fénelon. The questions which Telemachus puts to Idomeneus, those same questions, in the same sorrowing tone, Fénelon puts to his pupil, the Duc de Bourgogne, against the day when he will have to take over the royal power: Do you understand the constitution of kingship? Have you acquainted yourself with the moral obligations of Kings? Have you sought means of bringing comfort to the people? The evils that are engendered by absolute power, by incompetent administration, by war, how will you shield your subjects from them? And when, in 1711, the same Duc de Bourgogne became Dauphin of France, it was a whole string of reforms that Fénelon submitted to him in preparation for his accession.

  Finally, to complete the credit items of Fénelon’s account, we must put his defence of Human Rights. Thus he speaks: “A people is no less a member of the human race, which is society as a whole, than a family is a member of a particular nation. Each individual owes incomparably more to the human race, which is the great fatherland, than to the particular country into which he was born. As the family is to the nation, so is the nation to the universal commonweal; wherefore it is infinitely more harmful for nation to wrong nation, than for family to wrong family. To abandon the sentiment of humanity is not merely to renounce civilization and to relapse into barbarism, it is to share in the blindness of the most brutish brigands and savages; it is to be a man no longer, but a cannibal.”[5]