The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  Then leave complaints, fools only strive

  To make a great an honest hive.

  T’enjoy the world’s conveniencies,

  Be famed in war, yet live in ease

  Without great vices, is a vain

  Eutopia seated in the brain.

  Fraud, luxury and pride must live,

  Whilst we the benefits receive.

  What a spate of angry comment this fable provoked! What endless disputes! Bernard de Mandeville was a hard-bitten customer, and gave as good as he got. He lived long, but his fable lived longer, and people talk about it to this very day.

  [1]Adeisidaemon, 1709.

  [2]We borrow these expressions from the History of Cicero, by C. Middleton (London, 1741), translated by the Abbé Prévost in 1743.

  [3]Saint-Évremond: an article by Gustave Lanson, La transformation des idées morales (Revue du Mois, 1910).

  [4]This quotation, like the preceding one, is taken from the Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book I, chap. II.

  [5]Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book II, chap. XXVIII.

  V

  HAPPINESS ON EARTH

  AND happiness—must we still go on looking to the next world for that? Those adumbrations, those foreshadowings of the world to come, are altogether too vague, too hazy. Indeed, they are hardly even shadows now, but some sort of eternal substance of which no one can conceive the nature. Farewell to haloes, and harps and heavenly choirs! If we want happiness, we must get it in this world, and quickly. Time presses, and tomorrow—who knows what tomorrow has in store? Make the most of today. Only fools set their hopes on the time to come. Make the best of what our human state has to offer. Thus argued the apostles of the New Morality, who set out to seek happiness in the here and now.

  To live a happy and contented life, one thing, and the first thing, we have to do, is to reason calmly about things like sensible beings, and put a curb on our imagination when it would magnify our ills. When we set out to create troubles for ourselves, there is no limit to our ingenuity. We exaggerate them, we regard them as unprecedented and beyond all consolation. We even cherish a kind of love for sorrow; we nurse our grief and make much of it. There’s another awkward thing about this delusive imagination of ours: it tries to grasp at a heaven beyond its reach; it lures us on deceptively to mirage after mirage; we hasten to reach them, but always they elude us, and leave us with a sense of infinite frustration. Let us take life for what it really is, and not ask too much of it. We are dissatisfied with our humdrum, everyday existence, we call it dull; but suppose that, before we came into the world we were shown all the accidents, all the disasters, that might conceivably befall us, should we not recoil aghast? And considering the many perils we have escaped, ought we not to look on it as a mighty boon to have got off as cheaply as we have? “Slaves, unable to keep body and soul together, or who can only live by the sweat of their brow; others for whom life is one long malady—that is the fate of a great proportion of the human race. How came it that we were not one of these? Learn how dangerous it is to be a man, and count the misfortunes from which we are exempt as so many perils from which we have come off unscathed.”[1]

  And so, having thus adjusted our perspective, let us now apply ourselves to using what we have got to the best advantage: it is not much, but it is real. Let us give a wide berth to the passions; their violent motions do but end in sorrow and repining; let us study to be quiet. And if the people round about us say that that is a tame and insipid mode of life, shrug we our shoulders: “what sort of a notion has one of the human state who complains that his only boon is a holy calm?” Avoid attracting attention to ourselves, shun the limelight and ambition, all dangers which threaten the peaceful voyage of this humble barque of ours which we should gently steer towards the haven of rest. Let us come to an understanding with ourselves. A conscience that is sure of itself, that knows where it stands, is the best protection a man can have. Jealously, like a miser guarding his hoard, determined not to waste a jot or tittle of it, let us keep watch and ward over our humble treasure. True, a turn of fortune may always rob us of it, despite our most sedulous care. But if we take heed and keep a wary eye, the chances are we shall preserve it; for we are, in so far as we can keep within the bounds of reason, the artizans of our own lives.

  Little windfalls of pleasure, the small change of that blissful state that lies beyond our reach; such things as an agreeable conversation, a shooting-party, an engrossing book, these and the like are the stuff of our daily lives. Such pleasures are within our compass; let us make the most of them and forbear to set our hearts on uncertainties. “We grasp the present in our hands, but the future is a sort of conjuror that dazzles us with brilliant promises and then cheats us of the prize.” Let us then enjoy our simple pleasures like crumbs of contentment tossed to us by a lordly master who tomorrow may change his mind, and take them from us. We must seize our opportunities as they occur, nor underrate our pleasures. “It’s all a matter of calculation, and it is always wise to have the counters handy.”

  This metaphor of the accomplished card player who never loses interest in the game, who knows when to follow suit and when to pass, is rather an attractive one. All the same there is no doubt that it does not fit everybody; it needs an exceptionally clear head and a cool judgment. It looks on the passions as though all you had to do to control them was to argue with them; and, as for the imagination, that is a sort of obedient slave; further, it postulates easy circumstances, independence, leisure. The egoist’s paradise!

  But there was another one on offer. What we have to do if we want to be quite easy in our minds is to banish all sense of the tragedy of human life. If we let our minds dwell on that theme, we shall be miserable every hour of the day; and when the time for our own departure draws near, the pain becomes more intense than ever. Then the curtain goes up on yet another tragedy, the tragedy of eternity. Happy were they who set out for the farther shore with a jest and a smile on their lips.[2] They never knew that sombre enthusiasm which is the relentless foe of all inward peace, and which, not content with sowing unrest in the minds of its own victims, inspires them with a fanatical craving to torment the rest of mankind. Fanaticism, illuminism, endless mental torture, gloomy visions of hell and its torments—how could things like these be stamped out and done away with? The process was simple enough; it was to be done by cultivating an attitude of mind which goes by the name of good nature, good humour; you only had to put it to the test. Put a pair of benevolent spectacles, slightly rose-tinted, on your nose, and everything will take on a cheerful, smiling hue. If ever the human race were brought to be always ready with a smile, that day would mark the end of that sour and acrid state of mind which sharpens the edge of every woe. Do not underestimate the remedial effects of good humour; it does its work unfailingly and works a lasting cure. Mr. Spectator, who, as we are aware, undertook to administer a little mild corrective treatment to his contemporaries, dispenses a friendly dose of moral counsel in each issue of his journal. He tells them that good humour is a garment we ought to put on every day. What a far better place the world would be, if we did. This rather vague and intangible sentiment was not unknown in France, but it was more pronounced in England, because it tended to counteract, not only those fits of spleen to which the English were notoriously prone, but also the excessive austerity of the over-zealous Puritans. It found a refined and graceful exponent in the person of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury. It would be agreeable to let our gaze dwell for a few moments on this delicate and engaging figure. Shaftesbury had, beyond question, many reasons for optimism. Of illustrious lineage, he was the son of the statesman who had taken Locke under his wing, and Locke himself had superintended his education. As he was ill-equipped for a political career, he devoted himself to the tranquil pursuit of intellectual and artistic interests. Being a man of wealth, he had been able to travel and to surround himself with fine pictures and rare works of literature. He was also in a position
to alleviate the hardships of needy men of letters, such as Des Maizeaux, Bayle, or Le Clerc. Fortune had showered her gifts upon him; but she had forgotten one, and that was health. He was consumptive; so quitting his mansion, his estates, his friends, and his native land, he went abroad in search of a cure. His search was vain; he died at the age of forty-two. Thus he had many reasons to bless his stars, and only one—a decisive one—to curse them. However, he found life good and full of happiness, and his comments thereon, so cheerful and, despite his malady, so serene, have something strangely pathetic in their tone. Surrounded by the dignified amenities of a nobleman’s park, with its groves of immemorial trees; or on the shores of the sunlit Mediterranean, Shaftesbury held converse with his peers. His conversation was easy and agreeable, never ponderous or stilted. If it had a fault, it was that of being a little desultory, a little too leisurely. Sometimes, it contained a graceful and unforced allusion to a fine flower of the Greek or Latin classics, some ancient poet or philosopher; sometimes, it conjured up some aspect of the present, some current event, some personage of the day; its graces varied. It did not disdain a touch of irony, or, to be more precise, of humour, which is not exactly the same thing. What irony is with the French, humour is with the English. But whatever the theme of his graceful discourse, one thing was always close to his heart and that was to gain his point by charm and by persuasion. How should we seek for happiness?

  How, but by humanizing people, if one may be permitted the phrase, by divesting them of their affected gravity, their hypocrisy, of the sort of puffed-uppedness that blinded them to what their feelings really were. The enemy whom Shaftesbury attacks in a letter that has justly remained famous is Enthusiasm;[3] by which he meant not, of course, the creative impulse which leads to the birth of works of beauty and genius; but pious enthusiasm, the sort of thing that induces us to think that we have a spark of the divine in us, whereas, all the time, we are nourishing within us our worst defects: melancholy, mental inertia, morbid tastes, self-sufficiency, vainglory, and, over and above all that, a burning desire to interfere in other people’s business; to disturb their consciences, and to indulge in hatred and cruelty. Against this enthusiasm we must arm ourselves with the weapons of sound sense, of freedom of ideas, and—this was somewhat unlooked-for—a timely dose of ridicule.

  We must learn to laugh. There is no better moral remedy. What is the good of losing one’s temper and slinging mud at the mud-slingers? No good at all. Far better laugh at them. Deflate the pompous, chaff the dismal, and as for the enthusiasts, treat them with derision.

  Now, here come some poor devils of Frenchmen, Camisards from the Cévennes, who have fled for refuge to London. They are filled with a sort of sacred frenzy; they pour forth prophecies; they lie writhing on the ground in fanatical delirium. After a time, they come to be regarded as a public nuisance and the arm of the law takes them in hand. But what was to be done with them. Should they be flung into gaol? Or hauled off to the gallows? Were they to be made martyrs of? Or what? What did happen was that they were held up to ridicule in a puppet theatre; and that settled the business. Allowed to take its course, smiled at, laughed at, the eruptive malady with which they are afflicted will cure itself, of its own accord. So it was said, and that is what actually happened. Ah! if only people had taken that line from the first in these religious disputes, how many penal fires we should have been spared!

  Religion should be treated as something quite natural and ordinary. A good temper will bring you to sound religion; a bad one to atheism. If God is Love, as indeed He is, let us think on Him with peace in our hearts, not in fear and bitterness of mind. What strange aberration is it that leads us never to appeal to Heaven save when we are afflicted, anxious, or embittered?

  “In short, my Lord, the melancholy way of treating Religion, is that which, according to my apprehension, renders it so tragical, and is the occasion of its acting in reality such dismal Tragedies in the World. And my notion is, that provided we treat Religion with good Manners, we can never use too much Humour, or examine it with too much Freedom and Familiarity. For, if it be genuine and sincere, it will not only stand the Proof, but thrive and gain advantage from thence: if it be spurious, or mix’d with any Imposture, it will be detected and expos’d.”

  It was natural, and in a sense inevitable, that Shaftesbury should come to grips with the one man who, above all others, was most deeply imbued with a sense of the tragic element in life, that is to say, with Pascal. He knew all about the wager argument, but he would have none of it. To put your money on religion because, if there is a God you win everything, and if there isn’t, you lose nothing, is to copy those cunning beggar-men you see in the street who salute every passer-by as “Your Honour”. If the person thus accosted happens in fact to be a lord, he would not have liked it had he not received his proper title; if he was not a lord, he would be only too flattered to have been taken for one. In either case, the beggar gets his alms.

  About God Himself there is nothing of a tragic nature. Nor is God unjust, as those who believe in predestination would have Him to be. God does not harbour resentment, as those who fear eternal punishment aver that He does. God is not one who compels men to play the selfish hypocrite, as they who practise virtue with an eye on a future reward, suppose Him to be. God is all the goodness and charity that are scattered up and down the universe. Whoso is charitable and kindly disposed is united with Him.

  “To love the public, to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as lies within our power, is surely the height of goodness, and makes that temper which we call divine.”

  Controversies, logomachies, quarrels, angry commotions, these, as we have frequently remarked, were the distinguishing characteristics of the period, for as yet men had not reached a state of boredom, or of weary disillusionment; indeed, they hated indifferentism, misdoubted scepticism and were perpetually seeking, seeking. Shaftesbury, while just as firm in his convictions as any of his contemporaries, struck a milder note in what he had to say. His urbanity, his gentleness, his air of well-bred refinement, his kindliness and warmth of feeling, his philosophy, which he thought based on reason but which was often enough the outpouring of a generous heart—all these things are comforting to note and awaken our affections. What is quite remarkable about this moralist is that he never came to hate his fellow-men or even to judge them harshly; nor did he regard the times in which he lived as evil. No doubt there were extravagances, follies, but these were duly condemned and pilloried. The critics were abroad and unmuzzled, and that was a step towards salvation. If his remedies were looked on as too simple by half, if his recipe for happiness was criticized as insufficient, his philosophy (this plain homespun philosophy of looking into ourselves, this plain honest morality, as he puts it in his Letter) as too ordinary, too homely, he was not going to be discouraged by a trifle like that. With his feet well planted on the solid earth, he tries to catch a glimpse of Heaven through Beauty.

  Beauty and Good are one and the same, he tells us. Since the Universe is one great harmony, the idea that there are discords in it is inadmissible, and since our moral sense aims at realizing this harmony, it cannot but wish to make it complete. Vice is an aesthetic defect; wilfully to commit a sin is, in the first place, an offence against logic, in the next place against morals, and finally, against good taste. Just as art reproduces the splendours of the material world, splendours which are the outward and visible sign of the Idea which orders all things, so man cannot but seek to reproduce within his own being, that moral grace, that moral Beauty which is likewise a reflection of the same commanding Idea. He is the sculptor of his own statue. Out of himself he calls up true ideas, virtuous acts, and beautiful forms; and the union thus brought about by his creative will is what is termed happiness. The atheist voluntarily renounces this co-operation in the creation of order; he is in the wrong, he does harm, he propagates what is ugly, he is an object of pity.

  Such is the philosophy of
the man who has been rightly surnamed “the virtuoso of humanity”. To confirm him in his idea that morality is essentially a social matter, he turns to Locke, who was his tutor. For notions about happiness he consults Spinoza: and he (Spinoza), wholly discarding the idea of sin, counsels the wise man to enjoy the pleasures of life, the sweetness of perfumes, the beauty of plants, of music, the attractions of games, of the theatre: only a hostile divinity would take pleasure in the sorrows of man. It is not merely that Spinoza is flooded with a joy both secret and profound; joy, for him, was the feeling that he had attained to a higher order of being; sadness was a sense of a diminution of being, and he goes so far as to assign a high place and a philosophic value to gaiety. Shaftesbury concurs with him; but, always with an eye to the best, he takes good care not to leave Plato out of the account. If the period in which he lived was in more ways than one reminiscent of the Renaissance, how should Plato fail to be remembered? The Cambridge professors fostered his cult with pious zeal. Cudworth’s explanation of the world postulated the existence of certain plastic natures which played the part of intermediaries between ideas and creation; and Shaftesbury sped the hours gazing on the walls of our cavern and watching the interplay of the mighty shadows. He fancied that he had but to catch the harmony of the spheres to shut out the sound of our complaints and moanings.

  To sum up his message, happiness was to be sought no longer in Stoicism, which bears and despises the ills which it cannot avoid. Nor is happiness to be purchased at the price of asceticism and the constant repression of our corrupt nature. This earth is no longer a place of trial, where the ills that afflict us are more precious than joys, because they that weep shall be comforted.[4]

  No more shall men gaze upon the sorrowing Christ, who had died upon the Cross for the salvation of the world; no more shall they heed the mute appeal of His arms. Happiness is the growth, the upsurge, of a spontaneous force within us, which we have but to direct. To resign ourselves to pain, to yearn for self-sacrifice, to fight against our instincts, the wild idea of the Cross—these things are now called errors of judgment, old habits that ought to be eradicated. The god Reason forbids us to regard our mortal life as a preparation for a life to come.