The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  When, however, in 1672, Leibniz attempted to secure the adherence of France to his great design, war had lately broken out with Holland, and it cannot be stated with certainty whether Louis XIV ever actually saw the philosopher, who was to have come from Germany to put his views before him. When, forty years later, the Abbé de Saint-Pierre began to pile up, one upon another, his cloud-girt castles in the air, his contemporaries just let him go on dreaming his untimely dreams in undisturbed tranquillity. The Abbé de Saint-Pierre, fired with redoubled ardour, and looking about him for support, expounded his ideas to Leibniz, the ageing champion of the great cause of peace, and Leibniz replied a little sadly. He told him that what men chiefly needed, if they were to obtain deliverance from the evils that oppressed them, was will, determination. At a pinch, a resolute ruler might keep pestilence or famine away from his borders, but the prevention of war was a far more difficult matter, for it depended, not on the will of one man alone, but on the unanimous concurrence of all Kings and Emperors. There was not a minister, he declared, who would feel like taking it upon himself to advise the Emperor to renounce his claim to Spain or the Indies. The hope that the Spanish monarchy might be won for the French royal house had been the cause of fifty years of war; and it looked as if the hope of recovering it was going to account for fifty more. Look where you would, it seemed as though “some sinister fate was always interposing betwixt man and the attainment of his happiness”.[2]

  What, once more, is this Europe? A living paradox, something at once rigid and fluctuating; a jig-saw of barriers, and at each barrier, a body of officials whose business it is to exact all manner of dues and tolls: every imaginable obstacle to hinder man’s free intercourse with his brother man. . . . There are tracts of country round which their proprietors are so busy putting up fences that they have no time left to till them. Not an acre but has been a bone of contention for ages past, and every time a new owner gets possession, he too must put a rampart round his property. The wide open spaces are things of the past. Every scrap of land is meted, delimited, parcelled out. “I’ve come into the world so late, I’ve hardly found room enough to dig myself a grave, let alone build a house.”[3] These frontiers are rigidly defined, yet you cannot rely on them. Conquests change them; treaties change them; a piece of barefaced land-grabbing changes them. They are shifted forwards, they are shifted back; they are done away with altogether, and then put up anew. Geographers, just putting the finishing touches to the latest maps, look up to find they are already out of date.[4] Some people would like to see whole kingdoms welded into one, and to treat the Pyrenees as non-existent. Hence this inveterate instability. Europe claims to be completely patterned out, and says that no one must meddle with that pattern; yet she herself is always meddling with it.

  On the West, the state of affairs is quieter. No more will fleets of hostile barbarians come sailing over the sea; no invaders from alien lands will lay waste those ancient villages. If there is fighting, it will, thank God, be among brothers—English, French, Portuguese, Spanish. In the Mediterranean, the Turks are making trouble for travellers and the people along their borders, but there is at least this to be thankful for, they do not constitute a vital danger. But to the East—ah! that is another matter. In the old days, the great thing was to defend the Cross against the Crescent, whose forces were planted on the very border-line of civilization. But to-day the problem was not so simple. Now, at the gateway of the East, are gathered millions who, obedient to the orders of their Czar, are demanding to be integrated into Europe, to be looked on as Europeans. They must needs have goods sent them from Amsterdam, from London, from Paris; they clamour for models to copy from, and for people to instruct them how to do it. They trim their beards and cut their hair; they change their style of dress; they learn to speak German. So much for the outward man; but what of the inward one? Will that be changed as readily? Will they be like backward schoolchildren and tamely swallow whatever their teachers tell them. If their petition is granted (and how can that be avoided?), won’t they insist on our importing their ideas in exchange for ours? Ideas, shall we call them? Or rampant madness? That is the question we shall have to face one of these days. Even now, Europe is a little uncomfortable, a little shaken in the saddle, by this competitor, this rival, this simulacrum, this spurious imitation of the real Europe, which is now raising its head on the confines of the East.

  Europe, land of envy, hatred, and strife, of feuds and rancours! The Latins despise the Germans for their loutish bodies, coarse behaviour and dull wits. The Germans despise the Latins, calling them effete, worn out, corrupt in mind and body. The Latins wrangle among themselves. You would think it positively pained them to be forced to recognize any decent qualities in their neighbours, and that they only had an eye for defects. One cannot help being reminded of the cloak of Asmodeus, le Diable Boiteux, with its host of portraits done in Indian ink. There’s not an honest face among them. All of them are smirking, putting on some expression or other: a Spanish donna wrapt in her mantilla ogling some foreigner who is walking at her side; a French lady practising some new-fangled airs and graces before a pier-glass, while a young abbé stands at the door holding some patches and a pot of rouge; some rough-looking German fellows, their doublets all unbraced, reeking of wine and stained with tobacco-juice, sprawling round a table befouled with the remnants of their late debauch; an Englishman gallantly proffering his lady-love a pipe and a mug of beer.[5]

  Now glance at the garden of Mr. Spectator. When the flowers are looked on as the symbols of the different countries they lose all their scent and beauty. “The scent of Italian flowers is observed to be too strong, and to hurt the brain, that of the French with glaring, gaudy colours, yet faint and languid, German and Northern flowers have little or no smell, or sometimes an unpleasant one.”[6]

  But wait. After a time, as we listen to the plaints and laments that rise up from these tormented lands, we catch, amid the confused clamour, strains of loftier tone, strains of pride and glory. Listen attentively, and you will gradually recognize the sound of voices hymning the praises of a Europe whose strength, and intelligence and charm and splendour no other region in the world can rival.

  True, Europe is the smallest of all the four divisions of the globe; but she is the fairest, the most fertile and the most richly cultivated, without deserts or barren tracts. In Europe the liberal and the useful arts flourish with incomparable splendour. People may say what they like about China and the marvels to be seen there, the fact remains that “there is a certain specific quality of mind or genius which you meet with nowhere but in Europe, or at any rate not far beyond it. It may be that it cannot, from its very nature, expand at once over an extended area, and that some decree of fate compels it to keep within a more or less restricted sphere. Be that as it may, let us make the most of it while it is ours. The great thing is, it is not confined to matters of science and arid philosophical speculation, it embraces art, and taste, and beauty, in which spheres I doubt if there is any race in the world to equal us.”[7] Divided against herself she may be, nay, she is, but Europe always closes her ranks and stands four-square when she has to confront continents she has brought beneath her sway before, and which she would subdue again, if the need should arise. In the minds of her people there ever lives on the tradition of heroic voyages, of new discoveries, of galleons laden with gold, of glorious banners floating proudly over the ruins of barbaric empires. And they feel that they are still a power to be reckoned with, that they still have plenty of spirit left in them. “If Europe wanted to overawe East and West, it were no sooner said than done. Let the rulers but give the word, they would find more men ready and eager to fly to arms for the mere glory of the thing, than the Asiatics or the Africans could get together by lavish bribes of gold and silver.”[8] Torn asunder, indeed, she is, and pierced with the poignant consciousness, not of her misfortunes alone, but of her faults, and of all her deprivations lamenting most bitterly the loss of that unity of faith that onc
e was hers, realizing as she does that now no more, as of old, can she refer to herself as Christendom. Nevertheless, in spite of all, Europe prides herself that she still retains a privilege which is hers of right, a distinction, an originality that comparison with other peoples brings out into stronger relief, a noble heritage at once inalienable and unique.

  And now, yet once again, what is this Europe? A spirit that is for ever seeking. Unsparing of herself, she is ceaselessly pursuing two goals: one of them is Happiness; the other—and this she holds the more vital and more dear—is Truth. No sooner does she make some discovery that seems to her to satisfy her twofold need, than she suspects, nay, she knows, that what she grasps, all too precariously, is, after all, but a temporary, an imperfect thing. And so she sets forth once more on her unending quest, at once her pride and her enduring pain.

  Beyond her borders, untouched by her civilizing graces, whole masses of the human race live on from day to day, never bestirring themselves to think, satisfied simply to be. Others, weighed down by the heaviness of age, turning a deaf ear to all importunate questionings, shut themselves up in a passive immobility which they call wisdom, in a self-centred calm which they call perfection. Yet others, tired of thinking for themselves, are satisfied to continue for all time doing as they have done hitherto. Not so in Europe. There the web that is woven by day is unravelled again at night. New threads are discovered and tested on a different woof. Every morning the air resounds with the hum of looms vibrating and trembling as they turn out the latest pattern.

  If ever there was a time when the seeker deemed for once in a way that she might cease from her quest because she had reached her goal at last it was at the classical age. Could she hope to create forms more beautiful, more time-defying; things so perennially fair that we admire them to this day, so eternally beautiful that they will remain as models for our children and our children’s children and for generations yet undreamt of. But this same beauty postulates a pre-existing peace of mind in those who created it. In this cult of the classic spirit it was found possible to live in accordance with the precepts of Christianity without forgoing the wisdom of the ancients, of duly balancing the several functions of the mind, of establishing an order based on civilization and culture and of bringing to pass countless other marvellous things all of which, summed up in a single word, meant putting up before mankind a pattern of life bordering on perfection, and on the peace that comes of it.

  And so it came to pass that Europe, lost in contemplation of this wonder, did in fact pause for a moment. For a moment the illusion possessed her that she could cease her toil as she looked on a creation so graceful and so stately that anything more noble in concept, more exquisite in execution she could never hope to behold.

  The illusion was short-lived, and very soon belied. Perhaps, after all, it had been a temptation to stop, rather than an actual standstill, for Europe can scarcely be said, even for a moment, to have eluded her ineluctable destiny. Before ever the philosophers of a school whose system was based on a free acceptance of Authority had had time so much as to adumbrate their doctrines, a rival school was already denouncing the perils, the abuses, the defects of that same Authority, and, pointing out what they considered excessive in the idea, finally came to the conclusion that it had no validity at all. And so, beneath the surface, beneath the illusory semblance of tranquillity, the quest began again. A start was made towards a different kind of happiness, a different brand of truth. The restless ones, the seekers, once scorned, persecuted, driven underground, now began to show themselves in broad daylight, pushing their way to the fore, making a name for themselves, demanding to be recognized as guides and leaders. That is the crisis, moral and spiritual, which we have seen developing between the 17th and the 18th centuries.

  But this critical urge, whence came it? Who fostered it? What made it at once so daring and so strong? Where, in a word, did it originate? The answer is that it came from afar, from very far indeed: it came from ancient Greece; from this, that or another heretical doctor of the Middle Age; from many another distant source, but beyond all doubt or question, it came from the Renaissance. Between the Renaissance and the period we have just been studying, the family likeness is unmistakable. There is the same refusal on the part of the more daring spirits to subordinate the human to the divine. In both cases a like importance is assigned to man, to man who has no rival, man who limits the boundary of the knowable, resolves all problems that admit of solution, regarding the rest as null and void, man the source and centre of the hopes of the world. Now and then, Nature comes in, not very clearly defined, but powerful, Nature no longer regarded as the work of a Creator, but as the upsurge of life as a whole, and of human life in particular. And there are the same cleavages; the abortive attempt to unite the Churches which marked the end of the seventeenth century did but set the seal on the schism of the century before, whose finality some tried, and tried in vain, to contest. There were the same endless disputes concerning matters of chronology, about soothsayers and witchcraft. Rugged, strenuous, forthright age, when men turned their eyes into their very souls, when assailants and defenders alike felt they were fighting for their dearest convictions; when sceptics still resembled proselytes; when everyone felt that the real point at issue was to seek, and find, the key to the enigma of life—this age bears upon it all the characteristics of a second Renaissance but a Renaissance sterner, more austere, and, in a measure, disillusioned, a Renaissance without a Rabelais, a Renaissance without a smile.

  It is no vague similitude which we are here suggesting, but a very definite and easily recognizable historical parallel. These furious toilers, these patient compilers of huge folios, these indefatigable and insatiable bookworms may have had scant respect for the poets, to whom the Renaissance owes its grace and charm, but, if they neglected the poets, they at least studied the philosophers who moulded its daring and adventurous intellect, and made it free of the delights and despairs of limitless speculation. To them they gave ear, them they admired, and in their footsteps they followed. Bayle is the heir of the freethinking brood who carried the sixteenth century well on into the seventeenth. He speaks with approval of La Mothe Le Vayer whose Dialogues “contain a number of extremely bold statements about religion and the existence of God”. He refers to Lucilio Vanini as the glorious martyr of scepticism. Further on in time, he makes acquaintance with Jean Bodin, Charron, Michel de L’Hospital, and, needless to say, with Montaigne; who gave him to understand in his old-style manner of putting it that there are a lot of folk who let go their hold on things to go running after causes; a true saying which was conspicuously exemplified in the matter of the comets. He knew, as did most of his principal contemporaries, Giordano Bruno, who “was a man with plenty of brains which, however, he misapplied because not only did he attack Aristotle’s philosophy at a time when to do so was to gather a hornets’ nest about you, but he also attacked the most fundamental truths of the Christian faith”. He knew Cardan, “one of the foremost thinkers of his age”, “a man of curious mentality”, “who says that those who hold that the soul dies with the body are, so far as their principles are concerned, much better people than the others”. He knew Pomponazzi—heavens, whom did he not know! He knew Palingenius the Heretic, the Sieur Naudé’s favourite author. Speaking generally, he knew all the people who declined to acknowledge any other guide than Reason.[9]

  On a par with him, there was Richard Simon, who was not unacquainted with any of those who, before him, had pored upon the Scriptures, and who, as he said of Guillaume Postel, had but one aim, and that was “to measure the whole universe by the yard-stick of reason”. Textual criticism, familiarity with the learned tongues, new developments in philology—all the writers who lighted him on his way were connected with the Renaissance. Going back a considerable distance in time, he took a leaf out of the book of the College Royal. “I have here”, he writes, “the official report of an action at law which the Theological Faculty in Paris brought against th
e royal professors of Hebrew and Greek, four years after their appointment”.[10]

  This very evident alliance was noted and commented upon at the time. Bossuet involves in one sweeping condemnation “Erasmus and Simon, who, on the pretext of some alleged superiority possessed by them in the sphere of languages and polite letters, presume to pronounce judgment between St. Jerome and St. Augustine”;[11] while Bayle’s admirers consider that a statue ought to be put up in his honour at Rotterdam, alongside the statue of Erasmus.[12]

  The opponents of the philosophical school include in one wholesale condemnation Spinoza, Bruno, Cardan, and the Italian Renaissance, which had revived the errors of the Pagan world and assisted the world-wide dissemination of atheism.[13] Its friends, on the other hand, looked with admiration on the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, whence a new source of light sent out its rays.[14]

  And so the trend of modern thought can be charted more or less accurately as follows: starting from the Renaissance, an eagerness for invention, a passion for discovery, an urge to play the critic, traits all so manifest that we may call them the dominant elements in the European mentality. Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century, there was a temporary pause, when a truce, wholly unlooked for, was entered into by the opposing forces, an entirely unpredictable reconciliation. This phenomenon, which was nothing short of miraculous, was what is called the Revival of Learning, the revival of the classical spirit, and the fruit of it was peace and tranquil strength. It was an example of an equilibrium deliberately pursued and consciously agreed upon by men who, though acquainted with the passions and uncertainties which are the common lot of human kind, were but too mindful of the tribulations that had afflicted the preceding generation, and therefore sought some sort of modus vivendi, that should fend off a return of them. Not that the spirit of enquiry was extinguished. It persisted among the partisans of the classics themselves, so disciplined, so regulated, whose aim was to put the finishing touch of perfection on works which demanded untiring patience in the making if they were to win the crown of immortality. It endured among the rebels, quietly biding their time; and among certain people who, while secretly sapping their foundations, paid eloquent lip-service to the political and social institutions to which they were indebted for all that contributed to the comfort and adornment of their lives; men like Saint-Évremond and Fontenelle, those aristocrats of revolution.