The following are extracts (for review purposes) from The Treason of the Intellectuals, Julien Benda, 1927, tr. Richard Aldington, 1928, Transaction Publishers, 2014. At the end I provide a complete list of persons mentioned.
" 'The world is suffering from lack of faith in a transcendental truth.' [–] Renouvier." – p. v
Translator's Note
"The title of M[r]. Benda's book is La Trahison des Clercs. The word 'Clercs,' which occurs throughout the book, is defined by M[r]. Benda
"I should add that the words 'real'[, 'realist'] and 'realism' are nearly always used in this book as the antithesis to 'ideal'[, 'idealist'] and 'idealism.' " – pp. xxv–xxvi
Author's Foreword
"Those who lead men to the conquest of material things have no need of justice and charity.
"Nevertheless I think it important that there should be men—even if they are scorned—who urge their fellow beings to other religions than the religion of the material. [But m]ost of the influential moralists of the past fifty years in Europe, particularly the men of letters in France, call upon mankind to sneer at the Gospel and to read Army Orders [instead].
"This new teaching seems to me all the more deserving of serious attention because it is addressed to a humanity which of its own volition is now established in materialism with a decisiveness hitherto unknown." – p. xxvii
Chapter 1: The Modern Perfecting of Political Passions
"We are to consider those passions termed political, owing to which men rise up against other men, the chief of which are racial passions, class passions and national passions....
"When
Note A
A-1 - " 'The peasants,' says M[r]. R[o]mier, 'were only really converted where it was to their interests to be so
A-2 - "Contemporaries mention the indifference of the people of Paris to the Peace of Westphalia[, etc.]" – p. 147
"They have also attained coherence. Thanks to the progress of communication and, still more, to the group spirit, it is clear that the holders of the same political hatred now form a compact impassioned mass, every individual of which feels himself in touch with the infinite numbers of others, whereas a century ago such people were comparatively out of touch with each other and hated in a 'scattered' way.
"This is singularly striking with respect to the working classes who, even in the middle of the nineteenth century, felt only a scattered hostility for the opposing class, attempted only dispersed efforts at war (such as striking in one town, or one union), whereas to-day they form a closely-woven fabric of hatred from one end of Europe to the other. [T]he passion of the individual is strengthened by feeling itself in proximity to these thousands of similar passions[.] Let me add that the individual bestows a mystic personality on the association of which he feels himself a member, and gives it a religious adoration, which is simply the deification of his own passion, and no small stimulus to its intensity.
"The coherence just described might be called a surface coherence, but there is added to it a coherence of essence. For
"Wars between nations lasted for years, but not hatred—even if we may say that it existed. To-day we have only to look every morning at any daily paper and we shall see that political hatreds do not cease for a single day. At best some of them are silent a moment for the benefit of one among them which suddenly claims all the subject's strength. This is the period of 'national unions,' which do not in the very least herald in the reign of love, but merely of a general hatred which for the moment dominates partial hatreds. To-day political passions have acquired continuity, which is so rare a quality in all feelings....
"Twice during the nineteenth century, in Germany and in Italy, the age-old hatreds of petty States disappeared in favor of a great national passion. In the same period (more precisely, at the end of the eighteenth century) in France, the mutual hatred of the Court nobles and the country nobles was extinguished in the greater hatred of both parties for all who were not nobles; the hatred between the military and legal nobles disappeared in the same impulse; the hatred between the upper and lower ranks of the clergy vanished in their common hatred of laicality; the hatred between clergy and nobility expired to the profit of their mutual hatred for the commons. And in our times the hatred between the three orders has melted into one hatred, that of the possessing classes for the working class." – p. 4
"An apostle of the modern mind clamors for 'politics first.' He might have observed that nowadays it is politics everywhere, politics always and nothing but politics.
"[T]hen
"Political passions rendered universal, coherent[,] preponderant—every one can recognize there
"[L]argely owing to the influence of the newspaper, it is clear that the mind affected by political hatred to-day becomes conscious of its own passion, formulates it
"The first is what I shall call a certain Jewish nationalism. In the past, when the Jews were accused in various countries of forming an inferior race, or at any rate a peculiar people not to be assimilated, they replied by denying their peculiarity, by trying to get rid of all appearance of peculiarity, and by refusing to admit the reality of race. But in the last few years we see some of them laboring to assert this peculiarity[,] taking a pride in it, and condemning every effort at assimilation with their opponents[.]
"The other impulse I am thinking of is 'bourgeoisism' by which I mean the passion of the bourgeois class in asserting itself against the class by which it is threatened. [T]he bourgeois temporized with this egotism, would not admit even to themselves that it existed, tried to convince themselves and others that it was a form of interest in the common good. The bourgeois replied to the dogma of the class war by denying that there really are any classes, thereby showing that while they felt an inalterable opposition to the adverse party, they were unwilling to admit
"The progress of political passions in depth during the past century seems to me most remarkable in the case of national passions.
"[T]o-day when this national feeling is continually experienced by common minds, it consists chiefly in the exercise of pride. Every one will agree that nationalist passion in the modern citizen is far less founded on a comprehensive knowledge of the national interests (he has an imperfect perception of these interests[)] than on the pride he feels in his nation, on his will to feel himself one with the nation, to react to the honors and insults he thinks are bestowed on it. No doubt he wants his nation to acquire territories, to be prosperous and to have powerful allies; but he wants all this
"Another considerable deepening of national passions comes from the fact that the nations are now conscious of themselves
"It is impossible to over-stress the novelty of this form of patriotism in history. It is obviously bound up with the adoption of this passion by the masses of the populace, and seems to have been inaugurated in 1813 by Germany, who is apparently the real teacher of humanity in the matter of democratic patriotism, if by this word is meant the determination of a nation to oppose others in the name of its most fundamental characteristics. (The France of the Revolution and the Empire never dreamed of setting itself up against other nations in the name of its language or of its literature.)
Note B
"It was not until 1768 that the Monarchy thought of setting up schools in Alsace, 'where French is to be taught.' Vidal de la Bla[c]he
"Another strengthening of national passions comes from the determination of the peoples to be conscious of their past [.] This Romantic patriotism is also
"Those who wish to estimate the increase of violence given to national passion by this
"[N]ational passions, owing to the fact that they are now exerted by plebeian minds, assume the character of mysticism, of a religious adoration almost unknown in these passions in the practical minds of the great nobles." – p. 12
"[S]everal very powerful political passions, which were originally independent of nationalist feeling, have now become incorporated with it. These passions are: (a) The movement against the Jews; (b) the movement of the possessing classes against the proletariat; (c) the movement of the champions of authority against the democrats. To-day each one of these passions is identified with national feeling and declares that its adversary implies the negation of nationalism. I may add that when a person is affected by one of these passions he is generally affected by all three; consequently nationalist passion is usually swelled by the addition of all three. Moreover this increase is reciprocal, and it may be said that to-day capitalism, anti-semitism and the party of authority have all received new strength from their union with nationalism. [See note C.]" – pp. 12–13
Note C
"[Although] the conservative passions fully comprehend their immense interest in identifying themselves with national passion and thereby benefiting by its popularity[, i]t is easy to imagine that the French bourgeoisie would turn against France if they thought their patrimony was being too seriously threatened by the legislation of the Republic.
"[T]he bourgeoisie have another interest in keeping up nationalism and the fear of war. These feelings
C-1 - "Machiavelli
"In all nations the number of persons who feel a direct interest in belonging to a powerful nation is incomparably greater now than in the past. In all the great States to-day I observe that a considerable number of small tradesmen, small bourgeois, doctors, lawyers, and even writers and artists, and working men too, feel that for the sake of the prosperity of their own occupations it is essential for them to belong to a powerful group which can make itself feared. [I]t is certainly something new to hear artists constantly girding at the government of their country because it 'does not give the nation enough prestige to impose their art on foreigners.' The feeling that from a professional point of view they have an interest in belonging to a powerful nation is also very recent among the working classes. The party of 'Nationalist Socialists,' which seems to exist everywhere except in France, is a quite modern political development." – pp. 13–14
"To-day I notice that every political passion is furnished with a whole network of strongly woven doctrines, the sole object of which is to show the supreme value of its action from every point of view, while the result is a redoubling of its strength as a passion.
"Ever since these systems have been in existence, they have consisted in establishing for each passion that it is the agent of good in the world and that its enemy is the genius of evil. But to-day these passions desire to establish this not only politically, but morally, intellectually and esthetically. Anti-semitism, Pangermanism, French Monarchism, Socialism are not only political manifestations; they defend a particular form of morality, of intelligence, of sensibility, of literature, of philosophy and of artistic conceptions. Our age has introduced two novelties into the theorizing of political passions, by which they have been remarkably intensified. The first is that every one to-day claims that his movement is in line with 'the development of evolution' and 'the profound unrolling of history.' All these passions of to-day
"To-day political passions
Chapter 2: Significance of this Movement—Nature of Political Passions
"[W]hat is the nature of political passions[?]
"[T]he[y] can be reduced to two fundamental desires: (a) The will of a group of men to get [or] retain
"[T]hese fundamental desires of political passions [are] the two essential composites of man's will to situate himself in real life. To want real life is to want (a) to possess some material advantages, and (b) to be conscious of oneself as an individual. Every life which despises these two desires, every life which pursues only spiritual advantage or sincerely asserts itself in the universal, situates itself outside the real. Political passions, especially national passions insofar as they unite the two desires mentioned, seem to me essentially realist passions." – pp. 21–22
"[T]he national
6 - "[I]n words like the following, uttered at Venice on the 11th December, 1926, by the Italian Minister of Education and Fine Arts: 'Artists must prepare themselves for the new imperialist function which must be carried out by our art. Above everything, we must categorically impose a principle of Italianita. Whoever copies a foreigner is guilty of
"[W]hen the individual transfers these desires to the body of which he is a part, he does not thereby alter their nature[. A]ll he does is simply to increase their dimensions immeasureably[.] To wish to possess material advantages in one's nation, to want to feel distinct from other men in one's nation, is still the desire to possess material advantages, still the desire to feel distinct from other men. It only means that, if you are a Frenchman, you want to possess Brittany, Provence, Guyenne, Algeria, Indo-China; and you want to feel yourself distinct from other men in Jeanne d'Arc, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Racine, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Pasteur. Add to this that at the same time you attach these desires, not to a transitory and precarious single existence, but to an 'eternal' existence, and feel them in that way. Not only does national egotism not cease to be egotism because it is national, but it becomes 'sacred' egotism. Let me complete my definition by saying that political passions are realism of a particular quality, which is an important element of strength in them: They are divinized realism. [See note 2.]" – p. 23
2 - "[I]n the 'Addresses to the German People [sic—Nation', 1808] (Eighth Address): Fichte attacks religion[:] 'It is an abuse of religion to force it, as Christianity has
"[M]en to-day are displaying, with a hitherto unknown knowledge and consciousness, the desire to situate themselves in the real or practical manner of existence, in opposition to the disinterested or metaphysical manner. [T]he nationalist mind
7 - " 'Discipline from the lowest to the highest must be essential and of a religious type.' (Mussolini, 25th October, 1925.) This is new language in the mouth of a statesman, even of the most realist kind; it may be asserted that neither Richelieu nor Bismarck would have applied the word 'religious' to an activity whose object is exclusively materialistic." – p. 26
"[T]he national passions[,] the most perfectly realist of all political passions[,] have [the] most absorbed all other passions[. See note D.]" – p. 24
Note D
"[T]he attitude of the German Catholics in the past twenty years
"The '[Catholic] Centre' [political party, 1870–1933] began by declaring itself 'a
"Thus
"[While] M[r]. Bloud [notes] the 'declericalization of the Centre'[,] the
"[T]wo protests which M[r]. Bloud quotes [are,] first[,] Father Weiss[,] the eminent theologian[:] 'The worst
"[And Mr. Bloud quotes] Cardinal Kopp [from] 1887: 'Unhappily a gust of madness is blowing over us. Formerly we held to the principle: Faith first, politics afterwards. Now they say: Politics first!' " – pp. 150–152
Chapter 3: The "Clerks"—The Great Betrayal
"[H]itherto I have been considering only masses
"Side by side
"[ I. A]t the end of the nineteenth century a fundamental change occurred: the 'clerks' began to play the game of political passions. The men who had acted as a check on the realism of the people began to act as its stimulators." – pp. 27–28
First: The "Clerks" Have Adopted Political Passions
"[T]hroughout Europe to-day the immense majority of men of letters and artists, a considerable number of scholars, philosophers, and 'ministers' of the divine, share in the chorus of hatreds among races and political factions. [Certainly] they adopt national passions.
Note E
"The serious disorganization in the modern world is that the 'clerks' do not denounce the realism of States, but on the contrary approve of it[.]
"When the 'clerk' performs the layman's task, the result is anarchy; but there is also anarchy when the layman acts and speaks as a 'clerk,' when those whose duty is to defend the nation display their cult for the abolition of frontiers, universal love, or other spiritual things." – p. 153
"[T]here exists a certain criterion by which we may know whether the 'clerk' who takes public action does so in conformity with his true functions; and that is, that he is immediately reviled by the laymen, whose interests he thwarts (Socrates, Jesus). We may say beforehand that the 'clerk' who is praised by the laymen is a traitor to his office." – p. 32
"After the violation of Belgium and other excesses of the Germans, in October, 1914, a German teacher said: 'There is nothing for which we need make excuses.' Now, if their own countries had been in a similar position, the same thing would have been said by most of the spiritual leaders of that time[.] I am quite ready to agree that this sort of blind patriotism makes powerful nations[.] It remains to determine whether the function of 'clerks' is to secure empires." – p. 34
"This adhesion of the 'clerks' to national passion is particularly remarkable among those whom I shall call 'preëminently clerks'; I mean the Churchmen. In all European countries during the past fifty years, the immense majority of these men have not only given their adhesion to the national feeling [see note F] and therefore have ceased to provide the world with the spectacle of hearts solely occupied with God—but they seem to have adopted this feeling with the same passion as that I have pointed out as existing among men of letters, and they too appear to be ready to support their own countries in the most flagrant injustices. During the last war this could be most clearly seen in the German clergy, from whom no one could drag the shadow of a protest against the excesses committed by their nation, and whose silence does not appear to have been caused solely by prudence. In contrast to this attitude I refer the reader to that of the Spanish theologians of the sixteenth century[,] earnestly denouncing the cruelties committed by their compatriots in the conquest of America. I do not claim that similar behavior was then the rule among Churchmen, but I should like to ask whether there is a single country to-day where they would do likewise, or where they would even wish to be permitted to do so?" – pp. 34–35
Note F
"[T]he modern 'clerks' have ceased to understand that the sign of an attitude truly in harmony with their function is that it should be unpopular with the laymen." – p. 154
"[T]he Dictionnaire apologetique de la foi catholique (Art[icle:] 'Paix et Guerre') [declares] that bearing arms, even by 'clerks' in holy orders, is in no sense contrary to Christian law." – p. 155
"In Le Songe du Verger, a kind of summary of moral doctrines current in France in the fourteenth century[,] a soldier urg[es] a minister of the spiritual to perform his true function[,] seeming to think that the performance of this function is necessary to the good order of the world. [See F-2.]" – p. 156
F-2 - "[This] passage express[es] the feelings of most modern laymen on the subject of the patriotic loyalty of the priests: 'The clergy of France is ardently patriotic; it serves gallantly under fire; it absolves and glorifies every action of the soldier[.] It is not for me to say whether it is in accord with the Gospels. We are simply Frenchmen and patriots; we can only approve and admire the French patriotic monks and priests. The French priest has no pardon for a German, the German priest and pastor have no pardon for a Frenchman. Mother-country first! Kill! Kill! In the name of the God of the Christians, we absolve you, we glorify you for killing Christians!' (Urbain Go[h]ier, 'La Vieille France,' quoted by Grillot de Givry, Le Christ et la Patrie[)]." – p. 156
"I shall point out another characteristic of patriotism in the modern 'clerk': xenophobia.
"[D]uring the past fifty years, and especially during the twenty years before the war, the attitude of foreigners to France was such that the most violent national partiality was forced upon all Frenchmen who wished to safeguard the nation, and that the only true patriots were those who consented to this fanaticism. I say nothing to the contrary; I only say that the 'clerks' who indulged in this fanaticism betrayed their duty, which is precisely to set up a corporation whose sole cult is that of justice and of truth, in opposition to the peoples and the injustice to which they are condemned by their religions of this earth. It is true indeed that these new 'clerks' declare that they do not know what is meant by justice, truth, and other 'metaphysical fogs,' that for them the true is determined by the useful, the just by circumstances....
"It must be admitted that the German 'clerks' led the way in this adhesion of the modern 'clerk' to patriotic fanaticism. The French 'clerks' were, and long remained, animated with the most perfect spirit of justice towards foreign cultures (think of the cosmopolitanism of the Romantics!), when already Lessing, Schlegel, Fichte, G[ö]rres were organizing in their hearts a violent adoration for 'everything German,' and a scorn for everything not German. The nationalist 'clerk' is essentially a German invention. This, moreover, is a theme which will frequently recur in this book, i.e. that most of the moral and political attitudes adopted by the 'clerks' of Europe in the past fifty years are of German origin, and that in the world of spiritual things the victory of Germany is now complete.
"It may be said that Germany, by creating for herself the nationalist 'clerk' and thereby acquiring the additional strength we know she has acquired, made this species of 'clerk' necessary to all other countries.
"[I]t would be much less serious if we found that the 'clerks' deplored it while they submitted to it, if they felt how much their own value is diminished by it, how greatly civilization is menaced by it, to what an extent the universe is rendered ugly by it. But this is exactly what we do not see. On the contrary, we see them joyfully carrying out this realism; we see them believing that they are rendered greater by their nationalist fury, that it is a service to civilization[.]" – p. 37
"[The following] lines [were] written by an author of the fifteenth century[:] 'All cities,' says Guicciardini, 'all States, all Kingdoms, are mortal; everything comes to an end, either by accident or by the course of nature.'
"It was reserved for the moderns to make of their City a tower which defies the heavens, and to do it with the aid of their 'clerks.' " – pp. 37–38
"[Also new with] the modern 'clerks' is a desire to relate the form of their own minds to a form of the national mind, which they naturally brandish against other national forms of mind. We all know how, during the last fifty years, so many men of learning on both banks of the Rhine have asserted their views in the name of French science, of German science. We know how acridly so many of our writers in the same period have vibrated with French sensibility, French intelligence, French philosophy. Some declare that they are the incarnation of Aryan thought, Aryan painting, Aryan music[. See note 14.]" – pp. 38–39
14 - "The systematic nationalization of the mind is undoubtedly an invention of modern times. As regards the men of learning, this nationalizing has undoubtedly been favored by the disappearance of Latin as the scientific language; and no one will ever be able to say to what an extent this disappearance was an element of arrest in civilization." – p. 105
"[T]his abdication of the individual in favor of 'a great impersonal and eternal Whole' satisfies a
"I cannot better bring out all the novelty of this attitude of the 'clerk' than by quoting the remark of Renan, which would be signed by all men of thought from Socrates onwards: 'Man belongs neither to his language nor to his race; he belongs only to himself, for he is a free being[:] that is, a moral being.'...
"The modern 'clerks'
"I am only denouncing this desire of the 'clerk' to feel himself determined by his race and to remain fixed to his native soil to the extent that it becomes in him a political attitude, a nationalist provocation." – pp. 39–40
Second: They Bring Their Political Passions into Their Activities as "Clerks"
"The 'clerks' have not been content simply to adopt political passions
"We must not ask the poets to separate their works from their passions. The latter are the substance of the former, and the only question to ask is whether they write poems to express their passions or whether they hunt for passions in order to write poems. [P]olitical passion, as it is expressed by Claudel or d'Annunzio, a conscious and organized passion lacking all simplicity, coldly scornful of its adversary, a passion which in the second of these poets displays itself as so precisely political, so cunningly adapted to the profound cupidity of his compatriots and the exact point of weakness in the foreigner[,] is something different[.] A work like La Nave, with its national plan as exact and practical as that of a Bismarck[, and] wherein the lyric gift is used to extol this practical character, seems to me something new in the history of poetry, even of political poetry. The result of this new departure on the minds of laymen may be judged by the present state of mind of the Italian people. But in our day the most remarkable example of the poets' applying their art to the service of political passions is that literary form which may be called 'lyrical philosophy,' the most brilliant symbol of which is the work of Barrès. It begins by taking as its centers of vibration certain truly philosophical states of mind
"[I]nstead of making their heroes feel and act in conformity with a true observation of human nature[,] the novelists and dramatists
"[T]here are other 'clerks' in whom this derogation from the disinterested activity of the mind is far more shocking, 'clerks' whose influence on the laymen is much more profound by reason of the prestige attached to their functions. I mean the historians. [T]he true novelty here is the admission of this spirit of partiality, the expressed intention to employ it as a legitimate method. 'A true German historian,' declares a German master, 'should especially tell those facts which conduce to the grandeur of Germany.' The same scholar praises Mommsen (who himself boasted of it) for having written a Roman history 'which becomes a history of Germany with Roman names.' Another (Treitschke) prided himself on his lack of 'that anemic objectivity which is contrary to the historical sense.' Another (G[ie]sebrecht) teaches that 'Science must not soar beyond the frontiers, but be national, be German.'
"Let me say, however, that indeed men like Treitschke and his French equivalents are not historians; they are men of politics who make use of history to support a cause whose triumph they desire.
Note H
"[T]he champions of authority are not the only persons who make history serve their own interests. Condorcet
"[M]any of those whom I am here accusing of betraying their Spiritual ministry, that disinterested activity which should be theirs by the mere fact of their being historians, psychologists, moralists, would [secretly] reply[:] 'We are not in the least the servants of spiritual things; we are the servants of material things, of a political party, of a nation. Only, instead of serving it with the sword, we serve it with the pen. We are the spiritual militia of the material.' – p. 46
"I shall also mention the critics. Every one knows that innumerable critics to-day consider that a book is only good insofar as it serves the party which is dear to them, or as it manifests 'the genius of the nation,' or as it illustrates a political doctrine in harmony with their own political system, or for other reasons of the like purity. The modern 'clerks,' I said before, insist that the just shall be determined by the useful. They also want the useful to determine the beautiful, which is not one of their least originalities in history. Nevertheless, here again those who adopt such a form of criticism are not truly critics, but men of politics, who make criticism serve their practical designs.
"But the most remarkable thing about the modern 'clerk' in his desire to bring political passion into his work, is that he has done so in philosophy, more precisely, in metaphysics.
Third: The "Clerks" Have Played the Game of Political Passions by Their Doctrines
"[W]here the 'clerks' have most violently broken with their tradition and resolutely played the game of the laymen in their eagerness to place themselves in the real, is by their doctrines, by the scale of values they have set up for the world. Those whose preaching for twenty centuries had been to humiliate the realist passions in favor of something transcendental, have set themselves (with a science and a consciousness which will stupefy history) to the task of making these passions
A. The "Clerks" Praise Attachment to The Particular and Denounce The Feeling of The Universal
"[T]he 'clerks' have set out to proclaim as contemptible every tendency to establish oneself in a universal. [The] teaching
"What will especially amaze history in this movement of the 'clerks' is the perfection with which they have carried it out. They have exhorted the peoples to feel conscious of themselves in what makes them the most distinct from others, in their poets rather than in their scientists, in their legends rather than in their philosophies[.] They have exhorted the peoples to honor their poets' characteristics insofar as they are peculiar to them and are not universal. Recently a young Italian writer praised his language because it is only used in Italy, and poured scorn on French because it is employed universally. They have exhorted the peoples to feel conscious of themselves in everything which makes them distinct from others, not only in their language, art, and literature, but in their dress, houses, furniture, and food.
"This glorifying of national particularism, so unexpected among all 'clerks' is especially so among those whom I described as 'preëminently clerks'—the Churchmen. Those who for centuries have exhorted men, at least theoretically, to deaden the feeling of their differences in order to take cognizance of each other in the divine essence which brings all men together, have now come to praise them, according to where the sermon is given, for their 'fidelity to the French soul,' for 'the immutability of their German consciousness,' for the 'fervour of their Italian hearts.' " – p. 52
"Could anything better symbolize the determination of the modern 'clerks' to place their credit and their activities at the service of lay passions than
"These strange Christians express themselves thus:
" 'Jesus does not look beyond the frontiers of his own country with the idea of bestowing his benefactions upon other nations'[; and]
" 'One of the most important characteristics of Jesus' teaching is its absolutely national character[.]' " – pp. 54–55
"The modern 'clerk' denounces the feeling of universalism, not only for the profit of the nation, but for that of a class.
"We see certain Catholic teachers striving to prove that, by encouraging the bourgeois class, in the name of morality, to feel conscious of themselves as distinct from the opposing class[,] these teachers are merely acting in conformity with the teaching of the Church.
"[T]he Church never exhorted
44 - "The essential position of the Church on this point
"Let me point out another and remarkable form of this extolling of particularism by the 'clerks': the extolling of particular systems of morality and the scorn for universal morality. During the past half century a whole school, not only of men of action but of serious philosophers, has taught that a people should form a conception of its rights and duties from a study of its particular genius, its history, its geographical position, the particular circumstances in which it happens to be, and not from the commands of a so-called conscience of man in all times and places. Moreover, this same school teaches that a class should construct a scale of good and evil, determined by an inquiry into its particular needs, its particular aims, the particular conditions surrounding it, and should cease to encumber itself with such sensibilities as 'justice in itself,' 'humanity in itself' and other 'rags and tatters' of general morality. To-day with Barrès, Maurras, Sorel, even Durckheim we are witnessing the complete bankruptcy among the 'clerks' of that form of soul which, from Plato to Kant, looked for the notion of good in the heart of eternal and disinterested man. The example of Germany in 1914 shows the results of this teaching which exhorts a group of men to set themselves up as the sole judges of the morality of their actions, shows what deification of their appetites it leads to, what codification of their violence, what tranquillity in carrying out their plans. [See note 46.]" – pp. 57–58
46 - " 'Germany is the sole judge of her methods.' (Major von Disfurth, November, 1914.) The philosophy of national moralities seems essentially German. Is it not very remarkable to see Hegel and Zeller desiring at all costs to prove that Plato in his Republic defined a state of good which was only valid for the Greeks, and not for all peoples?" – p. 110
"[T]he indignation of certain French moralists at the action of Germany in 1914 surprises me[. S]ome sixteen years earlier
47 - "Barrès wrote in 1898: 'The professors are still arguing about justice and truth, when every self-respecting man knows that he must limit himself to inquiring if there is justice in the relations between two given men, at a given time, under specified circumstances.' That is exactly what the Germany of 1914 said in answer to those who brought accusations against her. Not a single moralist in France before Barrès
"If a man exhorts his compatriots to recognize only a personal morality and to reject all universal morality, he is showing himself a master of the art of encouraging them to want to be distinct from all other men, i.e. of the art of perfecting national passion in them, at least in one of its aspects. The desire to take none but oneself as a judge of one's actions and to scorn every opinion [from] other people is undoubtedly a source of strength to a nation, as every exertion of pride is a source of strength to an institution, whose fundamental principle
"But the modern 'clerks' have held up universal truth to the scorn of mankind, as well as universal morality. Here the 'clerks' have positively shown genius in their effort to serve the passions of the laymen. It is obvious that truth is a great impediment to those who wish to set themselves up as distinct; from the very moment when they accept truth, it condemns them to be conscious of themselves in a universal. What a joy for them to learn that this universal is a mere phantom, that there exist only particular truths, 'Lorrain truths, Provençal truths, Britanny truths, the harmony of which in the course of centuries constitutes what is beneficial, respectable, true in France' [see note 48] (the neighbor similarly speaks of what is true in Germany)[.] Humanity hears the same teaching about the classes and learns that there is a bourgeois truth and a working-class truth; better still, that the functioning of our minds should be different according to whether we are working men or bourgeois." – pp. 59–60
48 - "It must not be thought that dogma of national truths aims only at moral truth. Recently certain French thinkers waxed indignant that the doctrines of Einstein were accepted by their compatriots without more resistance." – pp. 110–111
"The cult for the particular and the scorn for the universal is a reversal of values[.] The metaphysics adopted in the last twenty years
49 - "Renouvier
"I should like to point out another form, not the least remarkable, which this preaching of particularism assumes among the 'clerks.' I mean their exhortations to consider everything only as it exists in time, that is as it constitutes a succession of particular states, a 'becoming,' a 'history'[.] I mean especially their assertion that this view of things in their historical aspect is the only serious and philosophical view, and that the need to look at them in their eternal aspect is a form of the child's taste for ghosts, and should be merely smiled at. Need I point out that this conception inspires the whole of modern thought? It exists among a whole group of literary critics, who, on their own showing, inquire far less whether a work is beautiful than whether it expresses 'the present' aspirations of 'the contemporary soul.' It may be seen in a whole school of moralist-historians who admire a doctrine, not because it is just or good, but because it embodies the morality of its time, the scientific spirit of its time. [A]ll our metaphysicians
51 - "[F]or certain Christians dogma is only valid relative to a time. There again particularism seems to have been started by the Germans: 'No exposition of morality can be the same for all periods of the Christian Church; each possesses full and complete value for a certain period only.' (Sch[l]eiermacher.)" – p. 111
B. The "Clerks" Praise Attachment to The Practical, and Denounce Love of The Spiritual
"[T]he 'clerks' with their doctrines have inflamed the realism of the laymen in other ways[.] At the very top of the scale of moral values they place the possession of concrete advantages, of material power and the means by which they are procured; and they hold up to scorn the pursuit of truly spiritual advantages, of non-practical or disinterested values.
"This they have done, first of all, as regards the State. For twenty centuries the 'clerks' preached to the world that the State should be just; now they proclaim that the State should be strong and should care nothing about being just.
"[Q]uoting the famous answer of Socrates to the realist in the Georgias:
" 'In the persons of Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles, you praise men who made their fellow citizens good cheer, by serving them with everything they desired without caring to teach them what is good and right in food. [A] swelling, a tumour filled with corruption
"Up to our own times[,] the supremacy of the spiritual proclaimed in those words has been adopted by all those who
"[T]he modern 'clerks' have preached that the State should be strong and care nothing about being just; and in fact the 'clerks' do give this assertion the characteristic of preaching, of moral teaching. I cannot insist too often that in this lies their great originality. When Machiavelli advises the Prince to carry out the Machiavellian scheme of action, he invests those actions with no sort of morality or beauty. For him morality remains what it is for every one else, and does not cease to remain so because he observes (not without melancholy) that it is incompatible with politics. 'The Prince,' says Machiavelli, 'must have an understanding always ready to do good, but he must be able to enter into evil when he is forced to do so'[. But t]he modern realists are the moralists of realism. For them, the act which makes the State strong is invested with a moral character by the fact that it does so, and this whatever the act may be. The evil which serves politics ceases to be evil and becomes good. This position is evident in Hegel[;] it is no less evident among realists like M[r]. Maurras[.] For them as for Hegel, the practical in politics is the moral, and if what the rest of the world calls moral is in opposition to the practical, then it is the immoral.
56 - "Maurras' work makes the passion of man to found the State (or to strengthen it) an object of religious adoration; it is really the worldly made transcendental. This displacing of the transcendental is the secret of the great influence exerted by Maurras on his contemporaries. These persons, especially in irreligious France, were plainly eager for such a doctrine, if one may judge by the outburst of gratitude with which they greeted it, and which seem[ed] to say: 'At last we are delivered from God; at last we are allowed to adore ourselves in our will to be great, not in our will to be good; we are shown the ideal in the real, on earth and not in heaven.' " – p. 112
"[These] innovations may be judged by the fact that up till our own times men had only received two sorts of teaching in what concerns the relations between politics and morality. One was Plato's, and it said: 'Morality decides politics'; the other was Machiavelli's, and it said: 'Politics have nothing to do with morality.' To-day they receive a third. M[r]. Maurras teaches: 'Politics decide morality.' However, the real departure is not that this doctrine should be put before them, but that they should accept it.
"Formerly, leaders of States practiced realism, but did not honor it[.] With them morality was violated, but moral notions remain intact; and that is why, in spite of all their violence, they did not disturb civilization. Signor Mussolini proclaims the morality of his politics of force and the immorality of everything which opposes it. Like the writer, the man of government, who formerly was merely a realist, is now the apostle of realism; and the majesty of his function—if not of his person—gives weight to his apostleship.
"The modern governor, owing to the fact that he addresses crowds, is compelled to be a moralist, and to present his acts as bound up with a system of morality, a metaphysics, a mysticism.
60 - "No one writes with impunity in a democracy. Moreover, a political activity which is supported by moral activity proves that it understands the true conditions of its success. A master in these matters says: 'There can be no profound political reform unless religion and morality are also reformed.' (Hegel.)" – p. 113
"The preachers of political realism often claim to base themselves on the teaching of the Church, and call her a hypocrite when she condemns their theses.
" 'Glaringly unjust is the war of him who declares war only from ambition'[. Yet] there are an immense number of works to-day which need only a little twisting to make them justify every attempt at conquest. For instance, the view that a war is just 'if it can invoke the necessity of safeguarding the common good and public tranquillity, the recapture of things unjustly carried off, the repression of rebels, the defence of the innocent.' And the view which asserts that 'war is just when it is necessary to a nation[,] either to defend itself against invasion, or to overthrow the obstacles thwarting the exercise of its rights. At the beginning of the last century the Church still taught that war could only be just for one of the two belligerents. [See note 64.] It is heavy with consequences that she has now abandoned this position and to-day asserts that war may be just on both sides at once[. T]o-day it may be declared just if it is directed against a material injury caused without any malice, for instance, an accidental violation of frontier. It is certain that to-day Napoleon and Bismarck could find in the teaching of the Church more justification than ever for their incursions." – pp. 67–68
64 - "According to
"The modern 'clerks' have preached this realism to the classes as well as to the nations. They say to the working class as well as to the bourgeois class: 'Organize yourselves, become the stronger, seize on power or exert yourself to retain it if you already possess it; laugh at all efforts to bring more charity, more justice or any other "rot" into your relations with the other class, you have been cheated long enough by that sort of thing.' And here again they do not say: 'Become so, because necessity demands it.' They say, and that is the novelty of it: 'Become so, because morality, esthetics demand it; to wish to be powerful is the sign of an elevated soul, to wish to be just [is] the sign of a base soul.' This is the teaching of Nietzsche [see note K], of Sorel, applauded by a whole thinking (so-called) Europe; this is the enthusiasm of Europe, when it is attracted by Socialism, for the doctrines of Marx[.] The 'clerks' have said the same thing to the parties contending within the same nation. 'Make yourself the stronger, and do away with everything which obstructs you; free yourself from the foolish prejudice which exhorts you to make allowances for your adversary, to establish with him a system of justice and harmony.' We all know the admiration professed by a whole army of 'thinkers' in all countries for the Italian government, which simply outlaws all citizens who do not approve of it. Until our own times the educators of the human soul, disciples of Aristotle, urged mankind to denounce as infamous any State which was an organized faction. The pupils of Signor Mussolini and M[r]. Maurras learn to reverence such a State." – pp. 68–69
Note K
"Is it not the criterion of a philosophy which may be called rational
"[ II. C]ertain teachings [of] the modern 'clerks'
"(a) The affirmation of the rights of custom, history, the past
"(b) The extolling of policy founded on experience[. T]he recommendation
Note L
"Taine
"Nevertheless
"[In his Le] Régime Moderne [(1893) Taine] argu[es via a] 'young man [who] is tempted to say to us: "[W]e curse and despise the whole of your world, and reject your pretended truths, which for us are lies, including those elementary and primary truths which you say are evident to common sense"[.] That is what contemporary youth have been telling us aloud for fifteen years'[.]" – pp. 164–165
" 'Taine comes to use words similar to those of the adversaries of ancient literature [see L-2] and of disinterested culture even. The only object would then be to prepare persons for an empirical world, people taught to know the world as it is[. E]ven if it were true that the comparison[,] between the general principles of reason, morality and beauty, and empirical life[,] engendered more disgust with the realities than it has done in the past, it would be a sad paradox to ask that this danger should be averted by banishing from education all elevated views and all idealism.' (Renouvier[.)]" – p. 165
L-2 - "Jules Lemaître was explicitly this adversary." – p. 166
Note M
"[T]he superstition of science, held to be competent in all domains, including that of morality[,] is an acquisition of the nineteenth century. [T]he dogma that history is obedient to scientific laws is preached especially by partisans of arbitrary authority. This is quite natural, since it eliminates the two realities they most hate, i.e. human liberty and the historical action of the individual." – p. 166
"(c) The assertion that political forms should be adapted to 'man as he is and always will be' (viz. unsocial and bloody, therefore eternally needing systems of coercion and military institutions). This effort of so many modern teachers to assert the imperfectibility of human nature appears as one of their strangest attitudes, if you realize that it tends towards
"The dogma of the incurable wickedness of man has another root among some who profess it. This is a Romantic pleasure in picturing the human race as walled in by an inevitable and eternal woe. [T]his Romanticism of Pessimism [is] as false in its absoluteness as the optimism of Rousseau and Michelet, in hatred of whom it has arisen, while its haughty and so-called scientific attitude is most impressive to simple souls. [A]t its voice there has arisen a humanity which believes in nothing but its egotisms and merely laughs at the naive persons who still think that it might become better." – p. 72
"[T]he modern 'clerks'
79 - "Such a group logically comes to declarations like the following, which every supporter of 'integral nationalism' is bound to admire: 'From to-night onwards let there be an end to the silly Utopia where every one thinks with his own head.'
Note N
"[W]hat is new in this crusade against individualism (the great apostle of which is M[r]. Maurras) is not the recognition that 'the individual is only an abstraction,' that to a great extent, he is formed by his race, his surroundings, his nation, a thousand things which are not himself. The novelty is the cult for this servitude, the order given to mankind to submit entirely to it, the contempt shown for any attempt to get free from it. Once again this is the cult (so strange in French thinkers) for the inevitable part of the human being, the hatred for its free part.
"Note that those who to-day preach obedience of the mind, not only demand it from the uncultured masses but
"The cult for the collective soul, with all its violation of human consciousness, seems to me admirably denounced by a passage of Maine de Biran, quoted by M[r]. L. Brunschvicg[:]
" 'According to M[r]. Bonald, it is not the human mind, it is not the individual understanding which is the seat, the true subject of inherence of the n[o]tions or (universal) truths under discussion; but it is society, which, gifted with a kind of collective understanding different from that of individuals, was from its origin imbued with them through the gift of speech and by virtue of a miraculous influence exerted on the mass alone, independent of its parts. The individual, the man, is nothing; society alone exists; society is the soul of the moral world, it alone exists, while individual persons are only phenomena.
"M[r]. Brunschvicg
"This cult of the strong State and the moral methods which ensure it have been preached to mankind by the 'clerks' far beyond the domain of politics, and on a wholly general plane. This is the preaching of Pragmatism whose teaching during the past fifty years by nearly all the influential moralists of Europe is one of the most remarkable turning points in the moral history of the human species. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of a movement whereby those who for twenty centuries taught Man that the criterion of the morality of an act is its disinterestedness, that good is a decree of his reason insofar as it is universal[,] should begin to teach him that the moral act is the act whereby he secures his existence against an environment which disputes it, that his will is moral insofar as it is a will 'to power,' that the part of his soul which determines what is good is its 'will to live' wherein it is most 'hostile to all reason,' that the morality of an act is measured by its adaptation to its end[.]
"[T]he modern 'clerks' teach man
"Formerly man was divine because he had been able to acquire the concept of justice, the idea of law, the sense of God; to-day he is divine because he has been able to create an equipment which makes him the master of matter." – pp. 73–75
"Moreover, the modern 'clerks' extol Christianity insofar as it is supposed to have been preëminently a school of practical, creative virtues, adjusted to the support of the great human institutions. This amazing deformation of a doctrine which in its precepts is so obviously devoted to the love of the spiritual alone, is not only taught by laymen, who are quite within their rights in trying to place their practical desires under the patronage of the highest moral authorities; it is also professed by the ministers of Jesus themselves. Pragmatist Christianity, as I mean it here, is preached to-day from all Christian pulpits." – p. 75
"This exhortation to concrete advantages and to that form of soul which procures them, is expressed by the modern 'clerk' [through] praise of the military life and the feelings which go with it, and [through] contempt for civil life and the morality it implies. We know
"[T]he cult of the warlike instinct is [referenced] by [certain] assertions of Nietzsche[, e.g.:]
" 'The superb blond beast wandering in search of prey and carnage'[.]
"The moralist who quotes those remarks (Sorel, Reflexions sur la Violence[)] adds
"[H]ere again, the moral presentation dominant among the world's educators is essentially Germanic, and shows the bankruptcy of Graeco-Roman thought[.] Before our times you do not find in France a single serious moralist (including de Maistre) or even a poet (if you consider only the great ones) who praises the 'pleasures of victory and cruelty.' And it is the same for ancient Rome[.] I do not find a single passage which puts forward the instincts of prey as the supreme form of human morality[.] On the other hand, I find a great many which attribute this rank to the instincts on which civil life is based.
"[T]hese passages from Nietzsche praise the military life apart from any political aim[. T]he modern 'clerks' teach men that war implies a morality in itself and should be exercised even apart from any utility. This thesis
" 'In my country [w]e make war for the sake of making war, with no other purpose.' [See note 87.]" – pp. 76–78
87 - "Ernest Psichari[,] through the mouth of a character [having his] sympathies[:] 'I think it necessary that there should be in the world a certain number of the men who are called soldiers and
"This teaching leads the modern 'clerk' (we have just seen it in Nietzsche) to confer a moral value upon physical exercise and to proclaim the morality of sport—a most remarkable thing indeed among those who for twenty centuries have exhorted man to situate good in states of the mind.
"[ III.] The preaching of realism leads the modern 'Clerk' to certain
"(a) The extolling of courage, or more precisely the exhortation to make the supreme virtue Man's aptitude to face death
"(b) The extolling of honor, by which is meant all those impulses which cause a man to risk his life
"[T]he most remarkable thing about all this is that the cult of [M]an for his own glory is currently preached by the Churchmen as a virtue which leads Man to God. Is it not amazing to hear words like the following from a Christian pulpit? 'The love of grandeurs is the path to God, and the heroic impulse which fully coincides with the search for glories in their cause, permits him who had forgotten God or who thought he knew not God to re-invent Him, to discover this last summit[. See note 93.]" – pp. 79–80
93 - "The sermons of the Abbé Sertillanges ('La Vie Héroique') should be read entire, as a monument of a Churchman's enthusiasm for warlike instincts. It is positively the manifesto of a helmed 'clerk.' You can find in them such emotions as the following which, mutatis mutandis, might be an extract from the Regimental Orders of a Colonel of the Death's Head Hussars: 'Behold Guynemer, the young hero, the simple soul with the eagle glance, the slim Hercules, the Achilles who does not retire to his tent, the Roland of the clouds and the Cid of the French sky: was there ever a wilder and more furious paladin, more careless of death whether his own or that of an enemy? This 'kid,' as his comrades called him, only enjoyed the savage pleasure of attack, of the hard fight, of the clear victory, and in him the arrogance of the conqueror was at once charming and terrible.' " – pp. 119–120
"One cannot forbear quoting the lesson given by a true disciple of Jesus[:]—
" 'Have you noticed that
94 - "Let me recall Thomas Aquinas' definition of honor[:] 'Honour is good (like the love of human glory) on condition that charity is its principle, and the love of God or the good of one's neighbor is its object.' " – p. 120
"Let me observe that I am not reproaching the Christian preacher for giving their due to glory and other earthly passions, I am only reproaching him for trying to pretend that he is in harmony with his institution when he does so. We do not ask that the Christian shall not violate the Christian law; we only ask him to know that he is breaking it when he does break it.
"I am not deploring the fact that the cults of honor and courage should be preached to human beings; I am deploring the fact that they are preached by the 'clerks.' Civilization, I repeat, seems to me possible only if humanity consents to a division of functions, if side by side with those who carry out the lay passions and extol the virtues serviceable to them there exists a class of men who depreciate these passions and glorify the advantages which are beyond the material. What I think serious is that this class of men should cease to perform their office, and that those whose duty was to quench human pride should extol the same impulses of soul as the leaders of armies.
"[W]hat amazes me is not so much that I see the 'clerks' preaching in this manner, as to see them do it with such docility, such absence of disgust, such enthusiasm, such joy[.]" – pp. 80–81
"(c) The extolling of harshness and the scorn for human love—pity, charity, benevolence. Here again, the modern 'clerks' are the moralists of realism. They are not content to remind the world that harshness is necessary in order 'to succeed' and that charity is an encumbrance[. Indeed t]hey proclaim the moral nobility of harshness and the ignominy of charity. This teaching, which is the foundation of Nietzsche's work, need not surprise one in a country which has not provided the world with a single great apostle, but it is very remarkable in the land of Vincent de Paul[.] When Machiavelli declares that 'a Prince in order to maintain his power is forced to govern in a manner contrary to charity and humanity,' he is simply saying that to act contrary to charity may be a practical necessity, but he does not in the least touch that charity is a degradation of the soul. This teaching is the contribution of the nineteenth century to the moral education of mankind." – pp. 81–82
"[For] Spinoza[,] pity is depreciated, not to the benefit of inhumanity, but to the benefit of humanity guided by reason, because reason alone 'enables us to give aid to others with certainty.' [He] adds: '[I]f a man is never led by reason or by pity to go to the assistance of others, then assuredly he deserves the name of inhuman, since he retains no resemblance to a man.' [See note 99.]" – pp. 82–83
99 - " 'The man of justice subordinates passion to reason, which seems regrettable if his heart is cold, but will appear sublime if he is capable of love'[.] (Renouvier[.)]" – p. 120
"[T]he great majority of the (so-called) thinking young men have a cult for doctrines which respect nothing but force, pay no attention to the lamentations of suffering and proclaim the inevitability of war and slavery, while they despise those who are revolted by such prospects and desire to alter them. I should like these cults to be compared with the literary esthetics of these young men[.] I should like you to observe the gloomy gravity and arrogance with which these young men subscribe to these 'iron' doctrines. It seems to me that the modern 'clerks' have created in so-called cultivated society a positive Romanticism of harshness.
"They have also created a Romanticism of contempt [. I]n recent times contempt has been practiced in France for reasons quite other than esthetic. These peoples have come to see that by feeling contempt for others they are not only obtaining the pleasure of a lofty attitude, but that when they are really expert in expressing contempt they harm what they despise, do it a real damage. And in fact the kind of contempt which Barrès expresses for the Jews[,] and which certain royalist teachers have displayed for democratic institutions every morning for the past twenty years, do really harm their victims, at least among those very numerous artistic minds for whom a superbly executory gesture is as good as an argument. The modern 'clerks' deserve a place of honor in the history of realism; they have come to understand the practical value of contempt.
"It may also be said that they have created a cult for cruelty. Nietzsche proclaims that 'every superior culture is built up on cruelty'[.] Nevertheless, the cult of cruelty
"(d) The cult of success. I mean the teaching which says that when a will is successful that fact alone gives it a moral value, whereas the will which fails is for that reason alone deserving of contempt. This philosophy which is professed by many a modern teacher in political life (it may be said, by all in Germany since Hegel[)] is also professed in private life, and has borne its fruits there." – p. 84
"[(e)] The cult of practical activity[.]" – p. 85
"[T]he modern moralists
Note O
"The new thing
"To-day this desire inspires
106 - "Notice
"During fifty years
"[S]ince the Greeks[, m]ost thinkers
111 - "[S]ee Note P[. W]ith
Note P
"This manifesto [was] signed by fifty-four French writers[. I]t contains
" 'Nationalism
" 'We believe—and the world believes with us—that it is part of the destiny of our race to defend the spiritual interests of humanity.
" 'Victorious France means to take her place again in the order of the mind, the only order whereby a legitimate domination may be exercised.'
"Hence the desire to found
"Victory under arms conferring the right to command in the intellectual order—th[is] is professed to-day by French thinkers! [T]he German teachers of 1871
P-1 - " 'Germany is the protector and the support of European civilization.' (Lamprecht.) 'After the war Germany will again take up her historic task, which is to be the heart of Europe and to prepare European humanity.' (Wilhelm II [.)]" – p. 173
"In a letter concerning this document, Marcel Proust deplores the proclamation of 'a kind of "Frankreich ueber alles," the policeman of the literature of all nations.' [H]e goes on: 'Why take this peremptory attitude towards other countries in such matters as literature, where a man only reigns by persuasion?' " – pp. 172–173
"Then the modern 'clerks' have preached to men the religion of the practical by means of their theology, through the image of God they have set before them. First, they determined that God, who since the Stoics has been infinite, should once more become finite, distinct, endowed with a personality, that He should be the affirmation of a physical and not a metaphysical existence. Anthropomorphism
116 - "According to Hegel, God constantly grows at the expense of His opposite; His activity is essentially that of war and victory." – p. 124
"For half a century, such has been the attitude of men whose function is to thwart the realism of nations, and who have labored [instead] to excite it with all their power and with complete decision of purpose. For this reason I dare to call this attitude 'The Treason of the Intellectuals.' " – p. 91
"[T]he 'clerk' may well retort that his nation claps a soldier's pack on his back if she is insulted, and crushes him with taxes even if she is victorious. If shame is cried upon him because he does not rise superior to social hatreds, he will point out that the day of enlightened patronage is over[. I]t is not his fault if he is eager to support the class which takes a pleasure in his productions.
"[I]t may be argued that the 'clerk's' new faith is caused by the changes of the nineteenth century, which by giving national groups a consistency hitherto unknown furnishes food to a passion which in many countries before that period could have been little more than potential. Obviously, attachment to the world of the spirit alone was easier for those who were capable of it when there were no nations to love. And, in fact, it is most suggestive to notice that the true appearance of the 'clerk' coincides with the fall of the Roman Empire, i.e. with the time when the great nation collapsed and the little nations had not yet come into existence. It is equally suggestive to notice that the age of the great lovers of spiritual things, the age of Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Galile[o], Erasmus, was the age when most of Europe was in a state of chaos and the nations were unknown; that the regions where pure speculation endured longest seem to be Germany and Italy, i.e. the regions which were the last to be nationalized[, yet] practically ceased to produce pure speculation from the moment when they became nations." – pp. 92–93
"The practice of the life of the spirit seems to me to lead inevitably to universalism, to the feeling of the eternal, to a lack of vigor in the belief in worldly conventions.
"[D]uring the past two centuries most of the men of letters who have attained wide fame in France assumed a political attitude—for instance, Voltaire, Diderot, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Anatole France, Barrès. With some of them, real fame dates from the moment when they assumed that attitude. This law has not escaped the attention of their descendants, and it may be said to-day that every French writer who desires wide fame (which means every writer endowed with the real temperament of a man of letters) also desires inevitably to play a political part....
"These observations
"[A] very general novelty [is] the consciousness of
"[T]he modern writer
"The reasons I have just mentioned for the new political attitude of [the] men of letters arise from the changes in their social status. Those I am about to mention arise from changes in the structure of their minds[.]
"First of all, we have their Romanticism, taking that word to mean the desire which arose in the writers of the nineteenth century [(]greatly perfected in the last thirty years) to treat themes which lend themselves
"[A]nother transformation of the literary soul in men of letters
126 - "[A] sensibility to equilibrium is far more intellectual than truly artistic. See Note Q[.]" – p. 125
Note Q
"Th[e] artistic origin of the political attitudes of so many men of letters has been pointed out with great ability by M[r]. Daniel Halévy in the case of M[r]. Maurras.
" '[In] his classical way of thought, things are beautiful
"There could be no better definition of the type of man for whom things are good insofar as they satisfy his artistic sensibility. Let me place in opposition
" 'For the perfection of things should be measured by their nature alone, and things are not more or less perfect because they flatter or wound our senses.' (Spinoza.)" – pp. 173–174
"This attitude also seems to me to result from the decline of the study of classical literature in the formation of their minds.
"Among the causes of this new attitude among men of letters I must point to their thirst for sensations, their need to experience things, which in recent times have grown stronger and have caused them to adopt a political attitude which gave them emotions and sensations. [N]umbers of our moralists who sneer at pacific civilization and extol a warlike life, do so because the former seems a dull sort of a life to them and the latter an opportunity for sensations. [See note 132.] There are many thinkers of the past fifty years who
132 - "[A]rt, science, and philosophy offer sufficient opportunities for 'amusement' without one asking of it doctrines which set the world on fire. But that is the view of a man who is not wildly eager for sensation." – p. 126
"[M]any modern 'clerks' have adopted these realist doctrines because they want to have done with the moral disarray into which they are thrown by the spectacle of philosophies, 'none of which bring certainty'[. T]he 'clerk's' political attitude is the result of a great decline in his intellectual discipline, whether we consider that this decline is shown by his belief that any philosophy can bring certainty, or whether we think that it lies in his inability to stand upright on the ruins of the schools, devoting himself to reason, which is above all the schools, and is their judge." – p. 101
"[O]ne other cause of realism in the modern 'clerks' [is] the irritation produced in them by the teaching of some of their predecessors—I mean certain masters of the year 1848, with their visionary idealism, their belief that justice and love were suddenly about to become the essence of the soul of nations
"The political realism of the 'clerks'
Chapter 4: Summary—Predictions
"If I look at contemporary humanity from the point of view of its moral state as revealed by its political life, I see
"Imagine an observer of the twelfth century[. H]e would see groups of men attaining consistency
"[I]f we ask ourselves what will happen to a humanity where every group is striving more eagerly than ever to feel conscious of its own particular interest[,] and makes its moralists tell it that it is sublime to the extent that it knows no law but this interest—a child can give the answer. This humanity is heading for the greatest and most perfect war ever seen in the world, whether it is a war of nations, or a war of classes." – pp. 128–129
"Peace
2 - "[For] example: 'Universal peace will come about one day, not because men will become better (one cannot hope for that) but because a new order of things, new science, new economic needs, will impose a state of peace on them, just as the very conditions of their existence formerly placed and maintained them in a state of war.' (Anatole France, Sur la pierre blanche.) Note the refusal
"I can point to other sorts of pacifism, whose chief result I dare to say is to weaken the cause of peace, at least among serious-minded persons:—
"(a) First, there is
3 - "This observation applied to nearly all anti-militarist literature up to our own times." – p. 142
"(b) Mystic pacifism, by which I mean the pacifism which is solely animated by a blind hatred of war and refuses to inquire whether a war is just or not, whether those fighting are the attackers or the defenders, whether they wanted war or only submit to it. This
"[A]nother motive in the French writers who in 1914 adopted the [same] attitude [is] the fear that they would fall into national partiality if they admitted that their nation was in the right. [T]hese strange friends of justice say: 'I always maintain my country is in the wrong, even if it is right.' There again we see that the frenzy of impartiality, like any other frenzy, leads to injustice.
[On] the severities of these 'justiciaries' towards France's
"(c) Pacifism claiming to be patriotic, by which I mean the pacifism which claims to exalt humanitarianism, to preach the abatement of the militarist spirit and of national passion, and yet not to harm the interests of the nation nor to compromise its power of resistance to foreign nations. This attitude
"[A] very general fact
"I think it a bad thing that the 'clerk's' religion should possess the lay world[. But] I think it still more to be dreaded that it should not be preached to the layman at all[.] This is the
"Is this adoption of 'integral realism' by the human species permanent, or merely temporary?
"I set [a] limit to my pessimistic outlook and admit that such a Renaissance is
"[T]here are always only a very tiny number of instances in history on which are built up a 'law,' which claims to be valid for the whole past and future evolution of humanity. Vico
"People forget that Hellenic rationalism only really enlightened the world during seven hundred years[,] and has begun to shine again for barely four centuries; so that the longest period of consecutive time in human history on which we can found inductions is, upon the whole, a period of intellectual and moral darkness. [H]umanity lives generally in darkness; while literatures live generally in a state of decadence and the organism in disorder. And the disturbing thing is that humanity does not seem to mind these long periods of cave-dwelling." – p. 138
"I wonder whether humanity, by adopting this
"[M]y remarks on realist desires and their violent perfecting do not blind me to the immense growth of gentleness, justice, and love written to-day in our customs and laws[.] There is an immense improvement in the relations between man and man within the groups which fight each other[.] The denial of progress, the assertion that barbarity of heart has never been worse, are natural themes for poets and those who are discontented[.] But the historian
"[T]he logical end of the 'integral realism' professed by humanity to-day is the organized slaughter of nations or classes.
Persons mentioned
Achilles (c.1200 BCE) Greek warrior
Annunzio, Gabriele d', General (1863–1938) Italian poet, novelist, dramatist, journalist, soldier and politician
Bachem, Karl (1858–1945) German politician
Bacon, Roger (c.1210–c.1292) English friar, philosopher and educational reformer, developer re: science
Barrès, Maurice (1862–1923) French novelist, journalist and politician
Benda, Julien (1867–1956) French philosopher, novelist, essayist and culture critic
Bergson, Henri (1859–1941) French philosopher
Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald von (1856–1921) German empire chancellor
Bismarck, Otto von (1815–1898) German empire chancellor
Bloud, Edmond (1876–1948) French publisher and politician
Bonald, Louis de, vicomte (1754–1840) French philosopher and politician, developer re: sociology
Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne (1627–1704) French bishop and theologian
Brunetiére, Ferdinand (1849–1936) French writer and critic
Brunschvicg, Léon (1869–1944) French philosopher
Caesar, Julius (100–44 BCE) Roman general and dictator
Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de (1768–1848) French novelist, diplomat and historian
Çid, El, El Campeador, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c.1043–1099) Spanish knight and ruler
Cimon (c.510–450 BCE) Greek general, admiral and politician
Claudel, Paul (1868–1955) French poet, dramatist and diplomat
Comte, Auguste (1798–1857) French philosopher, mathematician and sociologist
Condorcet, Nicolas de, Marquis (1743–1794) French philosopher, mathematician and political scientist
Descartes, René (1596–1650) French philosopher, scientist and mathematician
Diderot, Denis (1713–1784) French philosopher, writer and encyclopedist
Disfurth, von, Major General (c.1914) German soldier
Dreyfus, Alfred, Captain (1859–1935) French soldier
Durckheim, Émile (1858–1917) French sociologist
Erasmus, Desiderius (1469[6?]–1536) Dutch humanist
Fichte, Johann (1762–1814) German philosopher and political philosopher, developer re: German idealism and German nationalism
France, Anatole, Thibault (1844–1924) French poet, journalist and novelist
Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis (1830–1889) French historian
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, developer re: science
Georgias (c.380 BCE) Greek rhetorician
Giesebrecht, Wilhelm von (1814–1889) German historian
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832) German poet, dramatist, novelist, scientist, politician and critic
Gohier, Urbain (1862–1951) French lawyer, journalist, editor and pamphleteer
Görres, Joseph von (1776–1848) German journalist and theologian
Grillot de Givry, Émile-Jules (1874–1929) French translator, occultist and pacifist
Guicciardini, Francesco (1483–1540) Italian historian, essayist, general and governor
Halévy, Daniel (1872–1962) French historian
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831) German philosopher and theologian
Hercules, Greek divine hero
Herriot, Édouard (1872–1957) French politician
Hugo, Victor, vicomte (1802–1885) French novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist and politician
James, William (1842–1910) American philosopher and psychologist
Jeanne d'Arc (c.1412–1431) French patron saint
Joly, Henri (1839-1925) French philosopher and sociologist
Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) German philosopher
Kipling, Rudyard (1865–1936) English journalist, novelist, poet and short-story writer
Kopp, Georg von, Cardinal (1837–1914) German priest
Lamartine, Alphonse de (1790–1869) French poet and politician
Lamprecht, Karl (1856–1915) German historian
Lemaître, Jules (1853–1914) French critic and dramatist
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–1781) German dramatist, essayist and critic
Lotze, Hermann (1817–1881) German philosopher
Louis XIV (1638–1715) French king
Luther, Martin (1483–1546) German priest, theologian and hymnwriter
Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527) Italian diplomat, political philosopher and historian
Maine de Biran, Pierre (1766–1824) French philosopher
Maistre, Joseph comte de (1753–1821) Sardinian polemical author, moralist, lawyer, diplomat and magistrate
Malebranche, Nicolas (1638–1715) French philosopher, theologian and priest
Marx, Karl (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist and revolutionary
Maurras, Charles (1868–1952) French author, politician, poet and critic
Michelet, Jules (1798–1874) French historian
Mommsen, Theodor (1817–1903) German philologist, classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician and archaeologist
Mussolini, Benito (1883–1945) Italian politician, journalist and dictator
Napoleon I, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) French general, first consul and emperor
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900) German philologist, philosopher, poet and critic
Pasteur, Louis (1822–1895) French chemist, pharmacist and microbiologist, developer re: microbiology
Péguy, Charles (1873–1914) French poet, essayist and editor
Pericles (c.495–429 BCE) Greek politician, orator and general
Plato (428/423–348/347 BCE) Greek philosopher
Proust, Marcel (1871–1922) French novelist, literary critic and essayist
Prudentius, Aurelius (348–c.413) Roman poet, lawyer and governor
Psichari, Ernest (1883–1914) French novelist, religious thinker, soldier and Catholic convert
Pythagoras (c.570–c.500–490 BCE) Greek philosopher, mathematician and founder
Racine, Jean (1639–1699) French dramatic poet and historian
Renan, Ernest (1823–1892) French philosopher, Orientalist, historian of religion, philologist, biblical scholar and critic
Renouvier, Charles (1815–1903) French philosopher
Richelieu, duc de, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal (1585–1642) French priest and minister
Roland (d.778) Frankish military commander
Rolland, Romain (1866–1944) French dramatist, novelist, essayist, music historian and pacifist
Romier, Lucien (1885–1944) French historian, journalist and minister
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778) French philosopher, novelist and political theorist
Roustan, Désiré (1873–1941) French philosopher and cabinet member
Saint-Simon, duc de, Louis de Rouvroy (1675–1755) French memoirist
Sand, George, Aurore Dupin de Francueil (1804–1876) French novelist, dramatist and essayist
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775–1854) German philosopher and educator
Schlegel, Friedrich von (1772–1829) German poet, critic, philosopher, philologist, Indologist and Catholic convert
Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768-1834) German philologist, theologian and preacher, developer re: modern liberal theology
Sertillanges, Antonin-Dalmace, Abbé (1863–1948) French priest, philosopher, teacher and theologian
Socrates (c.470–399 BCE) Greek philosopher and educator
Sorel, Georges (1847–1922) French engineer, social thinker, political theorist, historian, journalist and revolutionary
Spinoza, Baruch (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher
Stendhal, Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842) French novelist, biographer and essayist
Taine, Hippolyte (1828–1893) French critic and historian
Themistocles (c.524–c.460 BCE) Greek politician and admiral
Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274) Italian philosopher and theologian
Tolstoy, Leo, Lev Nikolayevich, Count (1828–1910) Russian novelist
Treitschke, Heinrich von (1834–1896) German historian, professor, political writer and politician
Vico, Giambattista (1668–1744) Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian and jurist, developer re: cultural anthropology
Vidal de la Blache, Paul (1845–1918) French developer re: geography
Vincent de Paul, Saint (1581–1660) French priest
Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778) French author, historian and philosopher
Wagner, Richard (1813–1883) German composer and essayist
Weiss, Johannes, Father (1863–1914) German theologian
Wilhelm II (1859–1941) German emperor
Zeller, Eduard (1814–1908) German philosopher, theologian and historian
Copyright (c) 2025 Mark D. Blackwell.