The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  The Camisards of the Cévennes, hounded and hunted by a ruthless soldiery, tortured and martyred for their faith, had even more excuse for displaying an emotionalism that grew and grew in intensity till it reached the point of hallucination, of insane delusion. Take, for instance, the case of one of their leaders, Abraham Mazel, who has left us his life story, or perhaps we should call it his confession: “A few months before I took up arms, before I even dreamt of doing so, I had a vision in which I saw a number of black oxen in a garden. They were very fat, and were devouring the cabbages that were growing there. Someone whom I did not know bade me drive them from the garden, but I refused. Then, seeing that he grew more and more insistent, I did his bidding and drove the beasts from the garden. Thereupon, the spirit of the Lord descended upon me and seized hold of me as a strong man might have done, and, unsealing my lips, caused me to declare, among other things, that the garden I had seen was really the Church, and that the fat, black beeves were the priests who were devouring her, and that I had been called to complete the moral of the picture. I was visited many times by the spirit which made known to me that I was to make ready to take up arms so that I might fight side by side with the brethren against my persecutors, that I must assail the priests of the Romish Church with fire and sword, and burn down their altars.” The spirit it was that bade them hold their meetings in the woods, and the spirit came upon them in so terrible a manner that they were seized with trembling in all their limbs, a trembling so violent that all who beheld it were overcome with fear. It was in obedience to the spirit that they took up arms, the spirit it was that told them when to set out on the march, when to attack, and when to scatter. It was the spirit that ordered them to set fire to the presbyteries and to slaughter the priests. Taken prisoner at length, Mazel was shut up in the Tower of Constance at Aigues-Mortes. He began to saw through one of the stones of the tower in order to escape, and “every time he set to work he felt that he was filled with the Holy Ghost”.

  Élie Marion’s case was more perplexing still. “On the first day of this year, 1703, God honoured me with a visit from His Spirit, and in the first words which my lips uttered under the influence of that inspiration, it was made known to me among other things that God had chosen me, while I was yet in my mother’s womb, to serve Him for the advancement of His glory.” Élie Marion is the Chosen One, the forerunner of Christ’s glorious reign. Without going into the details of his various conflicts and his ultimate undoing, we will give a brief account of his behaviour in London when he sought refuge there in 1706. He saw visions; he gave utterance to prophecies; the spirit of God descended upon him and sent him into a trance; he hurled his thunders, not so much at the heathen, at the unbelievers, as at the lukewarm, and at the pastors. He had already castigated the Genevans because they would not believe that the coming of Christ was at hand. “For them, this Second Advent is like a sun whose face they are unable to look upon, whose brightness makes them blind. Let them take heed that they be not cast aside, even as the Jews.” In London he fulminates against the pastors, both French and Anglican, against everything and everyone; whereby hangs a strange and lamentable story. With the doors of all the various churches shut in their faces, mocked and booed at by the rabble, taken into custody, haled before the magistrate and branded as criminals, these prophesying Camisards seem to feel as if they were surrounded by a ring of fire that kept growing fiercer and fiercer. They gained some adherents among the English, for the disease was catching, and one of their acquisitions was a crack-brained Englishwoman. At last they gave out that the fateful day was at hand, that fire and brimstone were about to consume the city and all the ungodly ones within it; only those who believed would escape the doom; and, in order that the Destroying Angel might recognize them when he saw them, they were recommended to wear a strip of green ribbon, either as an armlet, or as a fillet round their brows. Another time they declared that before six months were past and gone, the persecution of the prophets would cease, and that the truth of their teaching would be made manifest. Six months went by, and nothing happened. On another occasion, they boasted that they had power to bring back the dead to life. The great majority of the English people thought they were lunatics, and looked on them with amazement. At first they merely showed annoyance, but after a time they set the machinery of the law to work. Élie Marion was put in the pillory with a placard above his head, which read: “Élie Marion found guilty of attempting to pass himself off as a prophet, the same being a blasphemous lie, and of printing and uttering divers statements, which he alleges were dictated and revealed to him by the spirit of God, with intent to spread alarm among the Queen’s subjects.” At last, however, Élie Marion took his departure, and with him went a few disciples who refused to quit his side. From country to country, the little band of companions journeyed on, even to Constantinople, and, farther still, to Asia Minor, for ever preaching, prophesying, and foretelling woe; persecuted, sometimes cast into prison, but carrying with them that fantastic light of theirs with which, they said, they would lighten all nations: the Beam of Light coming down from Heaven to illumine the night of the peoples of the earth, and show them the corruption that was concealed in their dark places.

  Up to a point, Spinoza’s fatalism is in a line with the inflexible character of reason. But logic apart, there is an undeniable attraction in feeling oneself merging into, and becoming one with Universal Being. In order to be fully effective, integration into the order which governs the world, which is the world, which is God, which is the All in All, should proceed from a conscious act of the will. Nevertheless, it is possible, by an easy transition, to decline from an active and intentional, into a merely passive acquiescence, which is but another name for surrender. It need cause us therefore no surprise to see the Ethics engendering a mysticism of a kind that gained considerable ground both in Holland and Germany. Nevertheless, it is a far cry from these Spinozists to mysticism in its later and most ardent manifestations.

  Since the Lutheran pastors were reproached for the very faults they had imputed to the Catholics; since they were slaves to the letter and careless of the spirit; since they had not charity, and the faith was not in them; since they took payment for performing the offices of religion, and even allowed penitents to redeem their sins with money; since their sermons, so far from being fountains of living truth, were but homilies learned by rote and spiced with popular pleasantries, having nothing to do with spreading the Word of God, there came into being, to combat all these things, what is known as pietism, or the religion of the heart. Piety; the heart; these words recur again and again in the writings and in the speeches of the man through whose influence German sensibility, so long repressed, was enabled to emerge into the light of day. His name was Philip Jacob Spener. It was in 1670, when he was a pastor at Frankfort, that he conceived the idea of instituting Colleges of Piety. The work of ministers of religion had nothing to do with polemics, with bawling and bluster. But theirs it was to kindle and to foster the inward life. Of an evening, therefore, twice a week, he gathered round him a number of earnest, god-fearing men to read the Bible, to join together in prayer, and to suffer the divine spirit to work within them. That was the first step; the second he accomplished in 1675 when he published his Pia desideria oder herzliches Verlangen nach gottgefôlliger Besserung der wahren evangelischen Kirche. Thereafter his influence extended to the pastorate as a whole, and to religious folk in general, whom he exhorted to return to a lively and active faith, a faith founded on love. In 1688, he went to Dresden, in the capacity of select preacher and chaplain to the Elector of Saxony, and as a member of the Higher Consistory. The significance of these honours lies in the light they throw on the measure of his influence and success. Students and women listened enraptured to his grave and ardent words. At his instigation, groups were formed for the purpose of Bible study. The name “pietist”, once a term of derision, became an appellation to be proud of. A pietist was that August Hermann Francke who, just as he was about t
o hold forth on the subject of faith, realized suddenly that the faith was not in him. He was overwhelmed with despair, and falling on his knees implored the Almighty to help him in his desperate extremity. God suffered His light to shine upon him and from that day forth he resolved to do all that in him lay to pass on that light to others. Pietists were those princesses and nobles who sought by their own efforts to find the way of salvation; of pietists, too, there were many among the middle and the lower classes; Germany was once more awakening to the faith. Pietism, contagion-like, spread far and wide. In due time, Spener left Dresden and went to Berlin, where he won over the Elector of Brandenburg; and when, in 1694, the latter promoted the Halle Academy to the status of a University, it was Spener who became its moving spirit. Thus arose the Citadel of Pietism, girt about with works of Christian charity. What did they stand for, these zealots, so fiery and, here, so triumphant? What was it that moved them? In the first place it was something they inherited. That was Boehme’s mysticism, which was still alive within them. In the second place, it was a denial, a revolt against the tendency to crystallize, to freeze the current of the inward religious life. Or, to go a little deeper, they maintained that the analytical and rationalistic approach was not the only way of arriving at knowledge; they held by intuition; they maintained that it was possible to enjoy immediate and absolute communion with the Eternal Source of Life—The Ego; and, within the Ego, the force of the emotive faculties, faculties more personal, more individual than any others. Lastly, there was the belief in a primary, underlying bond, which the customary forms of religious civilization threatened to destroy.

  Countless nuances of sentiment go to the enrichment of their lives. They feel withered, sterile, cast aside; they feel the agony of one vainly crying in the wilderness; what can be more grievous than this long waiting for grace? Then comes the time for confession, for unburdening the heart—and now, behold a miracle! The light! An instantaneous revelation! And then the infinite sweetness of a more than earthly love, the losing of Self in the Being who knows all things, wills all things, and imparts to life a foretaste of Eternity. After that, what more is there to seek? What can philosophers avail? Or theologians? Or Biblical exegetists, seeing that the Word is plainly writ for all to read? Unum est necessarium: to do everything in God. But that carries the implication of action, of doing. And that, too, the quietists will eliminate.

  How are we to explain the quarrel which set at odds the two most illustrious prelates of the Church of France, leading them to hurl reproaches and accusations one against the other, and ending in an appeal to Rome, and the condemnation of one of them— how are we to explain it all, unless we recognize in this great combat a particular manifestation of a general tendency. Quietism was but one example of the many forms of the flowing tide of mysticism, which, in the name of the emancipation of the feelings, was sapping the foundations of organized religion. With what dreams did Fénelon not beguile himself? Behold him about to set forth on a journey. The whole of Greece lies open before him; the Sultan recoils in terror. Already he sees—these are his own words—the end of the Great Schism and the reconciliation of East and West. “Asia I behold, the sound of her sighs reaching even to the far-off Euphrates, as she sees the day dawning again now that the long night is over.” Or else he imagines, and portrays in glowing language, a land of dreams, an ideally beautiful Boetica, where the winters are always mild and the summers never torrid, so that Spring and Autumn, wedded one to the other, walk hand in hand through all the year. So rich and fertile is the soil that it yields a double harvest. Pomegranates, laurels, jasmines and other flowering trees befringe the scented highways. Or he sets to work to build with his own hands the ideal city, Salentum. There vice and misfortune shall be no more. Not even the boon countries of the South offer such happiness to the sons of men. At Salentum, peace shall reign, and justice, and social order, and abundance. Riches shall be borne in upon a flowing tide, and, as the tide recedes, it will leave other riches behind it. Every problem finds a ready solution. At a wave of the magic wand, everything is transformed, the town-dwellers are happy, the peasants, the women, the little children and the old men—all are happy. “The old men, amazed to behold what they had never dared to hope for all through their long life, wept for very joy and tenderness, and lifted up their trembling hands to heaven.” Abroad, there will be peace. To halt the advancing foe, it will suffice to stand in their midst and hold discourse with them. The warriors will fling away their arms, and they will all embrace with tears.

  Fénelon has a liking for tears; the heroes of his Télémaque shed tears in abundance. The whole book is bathed in them. Calypso, Eucharis and Venus; Telemachus, Mentor, Philocles, Idomeneus, shed oceans of these precious tears. He must needs be amiable, gentle, tender. “I prefer the agreeable, to the startling, to the breath-taking”, he says in his Lettre sur les occupations de l’Académie; he also declared that he would willingly agree to admit into the language any term that it lacked, provided it did not sin against euphony. He was charitable and generous; he knew, and freely practised, all the divers ways of winning hearts, coy, or willing.

  But he knew, also, perfectly well that he had ambitious and exacting ideas; he was not content to live in the clouds. He knew he had it in him to be haughty and abrupt; that he had no inconsiderable capacity for downright hatred. Ah, how far he was from perfection. What misery the thought of these incongruous shortcomings made him feel. This tortured soul, this heart so prone to weariness and sadness brooded with sorrow on something he could not explain, deep down in his moral nature. The sight turned him sick, for what he saw was a swarm of reptiles.

  How he longed for some clear spring to relieve his thirst; he longed for the grace that should cleanse him from his worldliness, his scheming, his ambitions and his play-acting. But the perfection which he aspired to he could not reach unaided. The thought of his anxiety made him more anxious still. This no doubt explains the power that Mme. Guyon wielded over him. The reason, the sole reason, of her great ascendancy was the crying need he felt within him to melt and destroy in the fires of mysticism the chains which dragged him down. Madame Guyon had won over the young ladies of Saint-Cyr, the great ladies of the Court, aye, and Madame de Maintenon herself. A short-lived triumph, for it took but little to make them slip back again. She had also tried to add Bossuet to her conquests, but he had not been in the least impressed; his religious faith had no need of such a dubious ally. This woman, this quite ordinary woman, who had such a great idea of herself, who boasted of her prophesyings, her visions, her miraculous powers, made his gorge rise. When she persisted in saying that prayer should involve a total annihilation of self, that she could ask nothing of God, not even the forgiveness of her sins, that was enough for him; Madame Guyon was a heretic, and not another word from her would he consent to listen to. But to Fénelon, that tortured, anxious heart, to that spirit great and lofty enough to read its own defects, yet too deeply committed to the world to have courage enough to forsake it—to Fénelon came Madame Guyon with her doctrine of perfect love, and did not come in vain.

  Those intermediaries between man and his Creator, those channels, some of them solid and material, others refined and well-nigh insubstantial, are hindrances none the less, hindrances that become the more wearisome the nearer we get to our goal and never so wearisome as when we are within an ace of our heart’s desire and all that is asked of us is a sigh or a prayer—these barriers betwixt God and His creature, Madame Guyon would do away with, one and all. Herself a proselyte, fired with a passionate desire to give spiritual help to others, she tells us what we must do to gain the highest peaks of the spiritual life. Learn to pray, she cries; you should live in prayer, even as you should live in love. Come, famished hearts, come poor suffering ones; come, ye sick and ailing; ye sinners, come and draw near to God; if you have hearts, come, oh, come!

  You bring yourself into God’s presence by a fervent act of faith; you begin by reading a few lines of some devotional book,
not to reason thereon, but simply to keep your mind from wandering. Then withdraw deep down into yourself, gathering all your senses within you. When affection is awakened, suffer it to remain at rest, and in peace. To move it still further at this point would be to deprive the soul of its nourishment. It must assimilate, in a brief period of repose, loving and full of trust, that whereof it has tasted.

  When you have grown used to this, the second degree of intuition begins: the prayer of simplicity. Less effort is required; the end grows more attainable, the presence of God is more easy to feel, and seems to be more intense. Above all, let the soul bring to its prayer love in all its purity, love that is freed from everything other than love itself, and is therefore wholly unselfish. Let the soul ask nothing for itself; let it pray, not in order that it may obtain something from God, for a servant who measures his service to his master by the recompense he receives from him is not worthy to be rewarded. Implore not, but wait. Let it suffice that your prayer should bring you into a state of recollection, for prayer is none other than the warmth of love which melts and dissolves the soul.

  The Christian that climbs the sacred mountain thus arrives at complete self-surrender, the putting off of every thought of self, resigning himself wholly to God’s guidance. No more reasoning; no more excogitating. Renouncement of the will, of desire, however good the object. Indifference to all things, whether of the body or the soul; indifference to our welfare, whether temporal or eternal. Resign the past to Oblivion, the future to Providence, but the present give to God. Whoso has learnt the secret of complete surrender to God, will soon reach perfection.