The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  Savantes soeurs, soyez fidèles

  A ce que présagent mes vers:

  Par vous, de cent beautés nouvelles

  Les arts vont orner l’Univers.

  Par les soins que vous allez prendre

  Nous allons voir bientôt s’étendre

  Nos jours trop prompts à s’écouler;

  Et déjà sur la sombre rive

  Atropos en est plus oisive,

  Lachesis a plus à filer . . . [6]

  What a sense of triumph, of joyous expectancy, in that one word, Progress! It brought with it a feeling of conscious pride, that feeling which makes life so much more easy to live; and it opened up vistas of a future which, instead of differing from the present, was to prove, rather, its complement and its crown. Progressive are our methods, progressive is our science; our potentialities in the sphere of action increase. The quality, the texture of our minds grows finer. “The various sciences, the various arts, whose progress has been almost completely interrupted for two centuries past, have drawn new vigour from this one, and have entered, so to speak, on a new career.”[7] “We are now in an age which bids fair to become daily more and more enlightened, so much so that all preceding ages when compared with this will seem to be plunged in darkness . . .”[8] All anxieties, all agitations were to be removed. Man, weary of turning back, and looking behind him for some Golden Age in the distant past, man uncertain of the world to come, concentrates his hopes on a future less remote, a future which he himself may possibly live long enough to see, but which, at all events, his children will enjoy. . . .

  Even now Science was becoming an idol, an object of worship. Science and happiness were coming to be looked upon as one and the same thing, as also, were moral and material progress. It looked as if Science were going to usurp the place of Philosophy, to supersede Religion, and that it would supply the answer to all the longings of the human heart. But by way of reaction, there were even then audible some voices from the opposing side, some voices raised in protest. Upbraiding Science with attempting to overstep the limits which it had itself scrupulously laid down, they spoke of its overweening arrogance, they even proclaimed, so great was the need promptly to crush this budding myth— they even proclaimed that Science was bankrupt.[9]

  [1]Sorbière, quoted by G. Ascoli, La Grande Bretagne devant l’opinion française, 1930, II, p. 42.

  [2]L’Esprit des Cours de l’Europe, 1699, p. 25.

  [3]Léon Brunschvicg, Les étapes de la philosophie mathématique, 1912.

  [4]These, and the phrases which follow, are borrowed from the Hymn to Science chanted by Fontenelle in his preface to l’Histoire du renouvellement de l’Académie royale des Sciences, 1702.

  [5]A phrase from Leibniz’s Denkschrift über die Errichtung der Berliner Academie (Deutsche Schriften, B.II, p. 268). See also his general scientific plan: “De utilitate scientiarum et verae euriditionis efficacia ad humanam felicitatem” (Unpublished opuscula and fragments, Couturat’s edition, p. 218).

  [6]Houdar de la Motte, L’Académie des Sciences, Ode à M. Bignon. “Learned Sisters, be mindful of what my verses here foretell. With your aid the arts shall adorn the universe with countless new beauties; through you we shall soon see our days, now so few and fleeting, made many more. Even now, on the banks of the Dark River Atropos has longer leisure and Lachesis more to weave.”

  [7]Fontenelle, in the Preface already quoted.

  [8]Pierre Bayle, Nouvelles de la République des lettres, Avril 1684. Article XI.

  [9]Thomas Baker, Reflections upon Learning, by a gentleman, London, 1700.

  VII

  TOWARDS A NEW PATTERN OF HUMANITY

  THE Italian Courtier, having played his part as master of the ceremonies, made his bow, and the Gentleman took his place. On an age that was still far from settled, he inculcated the importance of prudence and moderation, and the lesson went home. He told people they should accept the existing religious, social and political order, which, after manifold experiments and much toil and trouble, did seem the best there was to be had. He exhorted everyone to try and fit himself into that framework without demur, so that they might all settle down together as happily, or at least as contentedly, as possible. He himself was made up of contrasts, but so cunningly were the contrasts welded together that he presented what seemed a perfectly harmonious whole. The philosophy of the Ancients had to be reconciled with Christian morals, the claims of the intellect with the exigencies of ordinary life, the aspirations of the soul with the demands of the body, the workaday with the Sublime. He taught politeness, a difficult virtue, which consists in pleasing other people in order to please oneself; he preached the avoidance of excess, even in well-doing, and said no one should ever pride himself on anything save on being a man of honour. He trained himself by constant discipline and kept an unremitting watch on himself. It was no easy matter for a man to prevent the ego from getting out of hand, and to realize that his importance in the scheme of things was not that of an individual but as one of a community. To live up to a standard such as that calls for a sort of quiet heroism and the Gentleman appears to be compounded of all the graces merely because he is perpetually controlling the forces within him and dispensing them in little harmonious doses.

  The century was drawing to a close, but a glow still lingered on the Gentleman’s figure. There were people who still looked on him with marked respect, and held him up as an example for young men to follow. Writers there were who, exploiting the success of their predecessors, gave liberally of counsel that was fast becoming threadbare. For example they portrayed the Gentleman as one who has a taste for social gatherings, and looks forward to them with pleasurable anticipation. He is a good judge of works that appeal to the intellect, and discusses them without prejudice, captiousness, or jealousy. . . .

  All this was behind the times; quite out of date. It was not a matter of accepting the status quo, and, having done so of your own free-will, of making the best of it. No; the business now was to reform things from top to bottom, and to do it quickly. The whole social and political structure needed overhauling. How could anyone possibly accept the idea of a State religion? The new men, the up-to-date men, like Lord Halifax in the maxims he gave his daughter for living a happy life, recommend the rising generation to make themselves a religion of their own; a kindly, easy-going, cheerful religion, free from fear and gloom. God rules His creatures no longer; it is they who have taken possession of Him. In a word, all the principles which made up the philosophy of the Gentleman have given way; the imposing statue is falling to pieces.

  Time was, long ago, when the idea of the Gentleman had been regarded as the creation of Reason. But that was the whole point; Reason meant something different now from what it did in those days. Reason was now no longer a mediating power, imposing an order based on accommodations, compromises, give-and-take. It was a critical force whose main duty was to enquire, to examine, to question. To this sort of Reason, which was never satisfied with things as they were, the “Gentleman” was not persona grata.

  He abdicated of his own accord. He had been reigning for a long time, and there had come to be a touch of the mechanical in the way people had of copying and obeying him. There were a good many people for whom the gentlemanly character had become, not so much a means to right living as an end in itself. It was now all a matter of elegant accomplishments, of intellectual adornment. So much was this the case, that such people travestied its very nature. “You know”, says the Chevalier de Grammont to his friend Matta, describing the sort of instruction he had received at the academy where he had been taught to bear arms, “you know that I am the most adroit man in France, so that I soon learnt all that is taught at such places, and at the same time I also learnt that which gives the finishing stroke to a young fellow’s education, and makes him a gentleman, viz: all sorts of games, both at cards and dice.”[1] He takes the chaff for the grain, and imagines that gaming, a pleasant enough way of passing the time with one’s acquaintances, ma
kes up the whole outfit of the Gentleman. And when, a little later, we learn that he used his skill to fleece a too ingenuous opponent, the conclusion is forced upon us that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, good manners and good morals were not necessarily concomitant any more. So now, the Gentleman had fallen from his high estate, and we must look elsewhere for our pattern of the good life.

  Surprisingly enough it was Spain that suggested the man, and the surprise was the greater because this Spanish hero was nobody very new; he seemed, rather, like one called back from the dead. In the year 1637, Fr. Baltasar Gracián of the Company of Jesus brought out a book entitled El Héroe. This was followed, in 1640, by El Político; in 1644, by El Discreto; in 1647, by El Oráculo manual; in 1651, 1653, 1657, by El Criticón; all of them works devoted to the study of man, and to constructing from his various attributes a model for all to imitate. However, as is always the case, particularly at this time when ideas were changing so fast, these books appear to have fallen out of date. How was it, then, that towards the close of the seventeenth century Baltasar Gracián began to be so widely translated, and his merits so widely extolled? Certainly he was not an unknown writer; people had heard of him; but how came it that he was thus, after several years in a sort of dim twilight of approbation, suddenly transported to the very pinnacle of fame and popularity? Possibly because a French translation by Amelot de la Houssaye, a work notable for the distinction and grace of its style (though it may have robbed the original of some of its native savour), bestowed on it a European character it had not previously possessed. Or it may have been that the Society of Jesus, forgetting the quarrels it had once had with the author, not only buried the hatchet, but was largely responsible for the book’s posthumous success. Or, again, it may have been that there was a vast public whom the latest trend of ideas failed to satisfy, and in whose mouths the food that was offered them, of the earth earthy, left a bitter taste behind it; there is, as Stendhal once remarked, a touch of the Spaniard in every human heart. It may have been for any of these reasons, or it may have been for others beyond our ken. There are some things that defy explanation. Be that as it may, the fact remains that, between 1685 and 1716, as many as fifteen different versions of Gracián appeared in France alone. Germany went positively mad over the Spanish moralist. Thomasius, in that resounding inaugural address of his, the address in which he inveighed so vehemently against servile imitation of the French, cites him as one of the masters of whom the Germans should seek inspiration, if they would lend refinement to their way of life; he quotes him with a great flourish both at the beginning and the end of his discourse. In England, in Italy, nay, everywhere, Gracián is held in the highest esteem.

  The ideal man, in his view of the matter, is not he who is content to exhibit a smooth blend of unexceptionable, middling, qualities. Middling virtues, however many you may have of them, never add up to anything but mediocrity. A loftier ambition than that kindles the ardour of the ideal man; his aim is to be greatest among the great. Endowed with brilliant intellectual gifts, with a firm and unerring judgment, with a fiery spirit and passionate ardour (for what avail brains, if the heart responds not?); making the utmost of his dominant faculty, trusting with instinctive intuition to the designs of Fortune, of Fortune that favours the brave; choosing for his models the loftiest exemplars in every field of action, not merely to rival, but to surpass them, the ideal man is he who would fain be unique and inaccessible in his solitary perfection. To that end, he must be secret, inscrutable, ready to bide his time, even to cloak and dissemble his actions, so important is it to reveal oneself by degrees, so that, at every successive stage, the common folk may look and marvel at the manifestation of powers that seem to have no limit. The Hero bears his tribulations like a Stoic; like a Stoic he endures humiliation; though there is but one real humiliation, and that is the humiliation he should inflict upon himself before the judgment-seat of his own conscience if, in his own eyes, he should chance to fall short. Victory is not an end in itself; the domination of the world is but a means to something beyond: the power and pride of his triumphant personality the Hero lays before God, in token of his homage; to Religion he consecrates the moral victory he has won. Greatly skilled is he, even to the point of using a little saintly finesse; he is proud, yet simple hearted; he reads in men’s inmost hearts, and yet remains a romantic; he is practical, yet hungers for ideal beauty; imperious, yet devout; loving difficulties for what is hard and grim in them; in short, a marvellous and brilliant compendium of contradictions—such is his portrait. The Gentleman, who was made to harmonize with the sedate colouring, the soft greys of the Ile de France, seems a faint and faded figure in comparison. The Hero needs that same brilliant sun which, on the highways of Castile, beat down upon Don Quixote and made the vision of Justice, Generosity and Love to glitter enchantingly before his eyes.

  He took the fancy of all Europe; but only for the moment. Europe might look on Gracián with interest, nay, with sympathy; Europe might read his books and derive profit and pleasure from the reading; but Europe was not going to take him for her guide. He came too late; her mind was made up now, and, for her, there was no turning back. If the Gentleman was no longer sufficiently up-to-date for her, how could she be expected to follow in the steps of the Hero, far less completely secularized than he?

  Society had now arrived at one of those epochs which are peculiarly interesting to study; one of those epochs where the screen grows misty and confused as different pictures invade it, one growing fainter and fainter yet loth to disappear, another supplanting it but still lacking in clearness and precision of outline. The Gentleman was gradually fading out, the Bourgeois was slowly taking form and colour. Till now it was the aristocrat that had taken the upper hand; but now he was over and done with. Goodbye to the Warrior! Past and gone were the days when the exploits of gallant captains—cities taken by storm, battles won in glorious combat, the foe routed by a dashing charge, the victor crowned with laurels—were the things, the only things that had excited admiration. Saint-Évremond pokes fun at that mighty man of valour, Maréchal d’Hocquincourt; Fénelon urges Idomeneus to impress upon Telemachus that the wise, and not the warlike, king is the proper object of admiration. Fontenelle, too, has his little jest: “Most fighting men perform their task with abundant courage, but few use their brains. Their arms work with all the vigour one could look for, the head remains dormant and gets caught out for nothing”. Bayle, in the name of common sense condemns “as weakness, or rather as downright lunacy, the vanity of those ambitious fighting men who care for nothing but their own reputation.” Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, when anything like that reached his ears, himself took up the strain: what are conquerors but Fortune’s minions, Fortune that glorifies the most outrageous crimes?

  Mais de quelque superbe titre

  Que tes héros soient revêtus,

  Prenons la Raison pour arbitre,

  Et cherchons chez eux leurs vertus.

  Je n’y trouve qu’extravagance,

  Faiblesse, injustice, arrogance,

  Trahisons, fureurs, cruautés;

  Étrange vertu qui se forme

  Souvent de l’assemblage énorme

  Des vices les plus détestés . . . [2]

  Even the mighty heroes of antiquity must be divested of the fame which they had so long, and so unjustly, enjoyed.

  Quoi! Rome, l’Italie en cendre,

  Me feront honorer Sylla!

  J’admirerais dans Alexandre

  Ce que j’abhorre en Attila!

  J’appellerais vertu guerrière

  Une vaillance meurtrière

  Qui dans mon sang trempe ses mains:

  Et je pourrais forcer ma bouche

  A louer un Héros farouche

  Né pour le malheur des humains![3]

  A conqueror is one whom the gods, enraged by the wickedness of man, send into the world to ravage kingdoms, to spread misery and terror far and wide around them, and to make slaves of all free men. Those
conquerors who are portrayed for us as crowned with glory are like rivers that have overflowed their banks, majestic, indeed, but bringing ruin to the fertile lands they were to irrigate. Who is it that speaks these words? Again, they are Fénelon’s, and they come from Book VIII of his Telemachus.

  Then there is that matter of honour. On that point, what extravagant ideas have been entertained! It is one of those ingrained fetishistic notions which prompt men to fight duels, that most outrageous of follies. Against the sort of things that were supposed to be smart and dashing, the sort of thing the aristocracy thought rather a feather in their caps, such as moral laxity, the craze for gambling, strong language—against all this, British Puritanism and French moderation presented a united front. And so, under a shower of maledictions, the Gentleman disappears into the shadows. In his place, on struts the Bourgeois, the Business Man, beaming with smiles, and already highly pleased with himself. Steele and Addison were his sponsors, both of them acute and sagacious observers of morals, whose only lack was perhaps a certain degree of concentration, a little dash, a spice of daring. However, they had taken it upon them to delineate a brave new type of human, for the delectation of the numerous readers they already had in England and were soon to have all over Europe. If it be true that a sociological element of some sort or other plays a part in all great literary successes, the latest instance was no exception to the rule, and this was the manner of it: The Tatler and The Spectator, in friendly collaboration, presented to an age that was feeling about for a rule of life, a code of behaviour, what they considered a model, an exemplar, of the human character. If they looked closely into man, it was, no doubt, that they were portrait-painters, and liked their work; they wanted to portray him, but they also wanted to reform him. Every time a new number from their printing-press started to go the round of the London coffee-houses and, a little later, to cross the Channel, they conveyed in it to a public seeking for a social order, a rule of conduct, a message that should enlighten them as to the proprieties, the amenities, the duties of life; and every time they did something, as the Tatler put it, to restore humanity to its place of honour. With irony, or upbraiding, and very deliberately, they would refute a falsehood here, rectify an abuse there, and, more important still, tell us what we ought to do, after telling us what we ought not. They knew their Classics from A to Z, and they revered them; they were familiar with the French moralists, Montaigne, Saint-Évremond, La Bruyère; they were familiar, too, with the most up-to-date specimens of the species they were studying, the Gentleman, the Dashing Blade, the Man of Breeding, the Dandy, the Wit; but they knew, also, that the human heart is at once changeless and changeful, and that we must ever be fashioning it anew. So they addressed themselves to the task. Castiglione and Benincasa, Nicolas Faret and the Chevalier de Méré—these Latins had all had their turn; now it was for a couple of Englishmen to try their hand.