1. Chapter I: That Manners Are Softened As Social Conditions Become
More Equal
We perceive that for several ages social conditions have
tended to equality, and we discover that in the course of the
same period the manners of society have been softened. Are these
two things merely contemporaneous, or does any secret link exist
between them, so that the one cannot go on without making the
other advance? Several causes may concur to render the manners
of a people less rude; but, of all these causes, the most
powerful appears to me to be the equality of conditions.
Equality of conditions and growing civility in manners are, then,
in my eyes, not only contemporaneous occurrences, but correlative
facts. When the fabulists seek to interest us in the actions of
beasts, they invest them with human notions and passions; the
poets who sing of spirits and angels do the same; there is no
wretchedness so deep, nor any happiness so pure, as to fill the
human mind and touch the heart, unless we are ourselves held up
to our own eyes under other features.
This is strictly applicable to the subject upon which we are
at present engaged. When all men are irrevocably marshalled in
an aristocratic community, according to their professions, their
property, and their birth, the members of each class, considering
themselves as children of the same family, cherish a constant and
lively sympathy towards each other, which can never be felt in an
equal degree by the citizens of a democracy. But the same
feeling does not exist between the several classes towards each
other. Amongst an aristocratic people each caste has its own
opinions, feelings, rights, manners, and modes of living. Thus
the men of whom each caste is composed do not resemble the mass
of their fellow-citizens; they do not think or feel in the same
manner, and they scarcely believe that they belong to the same
human race. They cannot, therefore, thoroughly understand what
others feel, nor judge of others by themselves. Yet they are
sometimes eager to lend each other mutual aid; but this is not
contrary to my previous observation. These aristocratic
institutions, which made the beings of one and the same race so
different, nevertheless bound them to each other by close
political ties. Although the serf had no natural interest in the
fate of nobles, he did not the less think himself obliged to
devote his person to the service of that noble who happened to be
his lord; and although the noble held himself to be of a
different nature from that of his serfs, he nevertheless held
that his duty and his honor constrained him to defend, at the
risk of his own life, those who dwelt upon his domains.
It is evident that these mutual obligations did not
originate in the law of nature, but in the law of society; and
that the claim of social duty was more stringent than that of
mere humanity. These services were not supposed to be due from
man to man, but to the vassal or to the lord. Feudal
institutions awakened a lively sympathy for the sufferings of
certain men, but none at all for the miseries of mankind. They
infused generosity rather than mildness into the manners of the
time, and although they prompted men to great acts of
self-devotion, they engendered no real sympathies; for real
sympathies can only exist between those who are alike; and in
aristocratic ages men acknowledge none but the members of their
own caste to be like themselves.
When the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, who all belonged to
the aristocracy by birth or education, relate the tragical end of
a noble, their grief flows apace; whereas they tell you at a
breath, and without wincing, of massacres and tortures inflicted
on the common sort of people. Not that these writers felt
habitual hatred or systematic disdain for the people; war between
the several classes of the community was not yet declared. They
were impelled by an instinct rather than by a passion; as they
had formed no clear notion of a poor man's sufferings, they cared
but little for his fate. The same feelings animated the lower
orders whenever the feudal tie was broken. The same ages which
witnessed so many heroic acts of self-devotion on the part of
vassals for their lords, were stained with atrocious barbarities,
exercised from time to time by the lower classes on the higher.
It must not be supposed that this mutual insensibility arose
solely from the absence of public order and education; for traces
of it are to be found in the following centuries, which became
tranquil and enlightened whilst they remained aristocratic. In
1675 the lower classes in Brittany revolted at the imposition of
a new tax. These disturbances were put down with unexampled
atrocity. Observe the language in which Madame de Sevigne, a
witness of these horrors, relates them to her daughter: -
Aux Rochers, 30 Octobre, 1675.
"Mon Dieu, ma fille, que votre lettre d'Aix est plaisante!
Au moins relisez vos lettres avant que de les envoyer;
laissez-vous surpendre a leur agrement, et consolez-vous par ce
plaisir de la peine que vous avez d'en tant ecrire. Vous avez
donc baise toute la Provence? il n'y aurait pas satisfaction a
baiser toute la Bretagne, a moins qu'on n'aimat a sentir le vin.
. . . Voulez-vous savoir des nouvelles de Rennes? On a fait une
taxe de cent mille ecus sur le bourgeois; et si on ne trouve
point cette somme dans vingt-quatre heures, elle sera doublee et
exigible par les soldats. On a chasse et banni toute une grand
rue, et defendu de les recueillir sous peine de la vie; de sorte
qu'on voyait tous ces miserables, veillards, femmes accouchees,
enfans, errer en pleurs au sortir de cette ville sans savoir ou
aller. On roua avant-hier un violon, qui avait commence la danse
et la pillerie du papier timbre; il a ete ecartele apres sa mort,
et ses quatre quartiers exposes aux quatre coins de la ville. On
a pris soixante bourgeois, et on commence demain les punitions.
Cette province est un bel exemple pour les autres, et surtout de
respecter les gouverneurs et les gouvernantes, et de ne point
jeter de pierres dans leur jardin. [1]
"Madame de Tarente etait hier dans ces bois par un temps
enchante: il n'est question ni de chambre ni de collation; elle
entre par la barriere et s'en retourne de meme. . . ."
In another letter she adds: -
"Vous me parlez bien plaisamment de nos miseres; nous ne
sommes plus si roues; un en huit jours, pour entretenir la
justice. Il est vrai que la penderie me parait maintenant un
refraichissement. J'ai une tout autre idee de la justice, depuis
que je suis en ce pays. Vos galeriens me paraissent une societe
d'honnetes gens qui se sont retires du monde pour mener une vie
douce."
It would be a mistake to suppose that Madame de Sevigne, who
wrote these lines, was a selfish or cruel person; she was
passionately attached to her children, and very ready to
sympathize in the sorrows of her friends; nay, her letters show
that she treated her vassals and servants with kindness and
indulgence. But Madame de Sevigne had no clear notion of
suffering in anyone who was not a person of quality.
In our time the harshest man writing to the most insensible
person of his acquaintance would not venture wantonly to indulge
in the cruel jocularity which I have quoted; and even if his own
manners allowed him to do so, the manners of society at large
would forbid it. Whence does this arise? Have we more
sensibility than our forefathers? I know not that we have; but I
am sure that our insensibility is extended to a far greater range
of objects. When all the ranks of a community are nearly equal,
as all men think and feel in nearly the same manner, each of them
may judge in a moment of the sensations of all the others; he
casts a rapid glance upon himself, and that is enough. There is
no wretchedness into which he cannot readily enter, and a secret
instinct reveals to him its extent. It signifies not that
strangers or foes be the sufferers; imagination puts him in their
place; something like a personal feeling is mingled with his
pity, and makes himself suffer whilst the body of his
fellow-creature is in torture. In democratic ages men rarely
sacrifice themselves for one another; but they display general
compassion for the members of the human race. They inflict no
useless ills; and they are happy to relieve the griefs of others,
when they can do so without much hurting themselves; they are not
disinterested, but they are humane.
Although the Americans have, in a manner, reduced egotism to
a social and philosophical theory, they are nevertheless
extremely open to compassion. In no country is criminal justice
administered with more mildness than in the United States.
Whilst the English seem disposed carefully to retain the bloody
traces of the dark ages in their penal legislation, the Americans
have almost expunged capital punishment from their codes. North
America is, I think, the only one country upon earth in which the
life of no one citizen has been taken for a political offence in
the course of the last fifty years. The circumstance which
conclusively shows that this singular mildness of the Americans
arises chiefly from their social condition, is the manner in
which they treat their slaves. Perhaps there is not, upon the
whole, a single European colony in the New World in which the
physical condition of the blacks is less severe than in the
United States; yet the slaves still endure horrid sufferings
there, and are constantly exposed to barbarous punishments. It is
easy to perceive that the lot of these unhappy beings inspires
their masters with but little compassion, and that they look upon
slavery, not only as an institution which is profitable to them,
but as an evil which does not affect them. Thus the same man who
is full of humanity towards his fellow-creatures when they are at
the same time his equals, becomes insensible to their afflictions
as soon as that equality ceases. His mildness should therefore
be attributed to the equality of conditions, rather than to
civilization and education.
What I have here remarked of individuals is, to a certain
extent, applicable to nations. When each nation has its distinct
opinions, belief, laws, and customs, it looks upon itself as the
whole of mankind, and is moved by no sorrows but its own. Should
war break out between two nations animated by this feeling, it is
sure to be waged with great cruelty. At the time of their
highest culture, the Romans slaughtered the generals of their
enemies, after having dragged them in triumph behind a car; and
they flung their prisoners to the beasts of the Circus for the
amusement of the people. Cicero, who declaimed so vehemently at
the notion of crucifying a Roman citizen, had not a word to say
against these horrible abuses of victory. It is evident that in
his eyes a barbarian did not belong to the same human race as a
Roman. On the contrary, in proportion as nations become more like
each other, they become reciprocally more compassionate, and the
law of nations is mitigated.
[1]
To feel the point of this joke the reader should
recollect that Madame de Grignan was Gouvernante de Provence.