3.V.1.20. THE DEAD ARE IN THE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT IN
THE WRONG
THE death agony of the barricade was about to begin.
Everything contributed to its tragic majesty at that
supreme
moment; a thousand mysterious crashes in the air, the breath
of armed masses set in movement in the streets which were not
visible, the intermittent gallop of cavalry, the heavy shock
of artillery on the march, the firing by squads, and the
cannonades
crossing each other in the labyrinth of Paris, the
smokes of battle mounting all gilded above the roofs,
indescribable
and vaguely terrible cries, lightnings of menace
everywhere, the tocsin of Saint-Merry, which now had the
accents of a sob, the mildness of the weather, the splendor of
the sky filled with sun and clouds, the beauty of the day, and
the alarming silence of the houses.
For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses
in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious
walls, doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed.
In those days, so different from those in which we live,
when the hour was come, when the people wished to put an
end to a situation, which had lasted too long, with a charter
granted or with a legal country, when universal wrath was
diffused in the atmosphere, when the city consented to the
tearing up of the pavements, when insurrection made the
bourgeoisie smile by whispering its password in its ear, then
the inhabitant, thoroughly penetrated with the revolt, so to
speak, was the auxiliary of the combatant, and the house
fraternized
with the improvised fortress which rested on it.
When the situation was not ripe, when the insurrection was
not decidedly admitted, when the masses disowned the movement,
all was over with the combatants, the city was changed
into a desert around the revolt, souls grew chilled, refuges
were nailed up, and the street turned into a defile to help the
army to take the barricade.
A people cannot be forced, through surprise, to walk more
quickly than it chooses. Woe to whomsoever tries to force
its hand! A people does not let itself go at random. Then
it abandons the insurrection to itself. The insurgents become
noxious, infected with the plague. A house is an escarpment,
a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall hears, sees
and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is
a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal
things are closed houses. They seem dead, they are living.
Life which is, as it were, suspended there, persists there. No
one has gone out of them for four and twenty hours, but no
one is missing from them. In the interior of that rock, people
go and come, go to bed and rise again; they are a family
party there; there they eat and drink; they are afraid, a
terrible
thing! Fear excuses this fearful lack of hospitality;
terror is mixed with it, an extenuating circumstance. Sometimes,
even, and this has been actually seen, fear turns to
passion; fright may change into fury, as prudence does into
rage; hence this wise saying: "The enraged moderates."
There are outbursts of supreme terror, whence springs wrath
like a mournful smoke. — "What do these people want? What
have they come there to do? Let them get out of the scrape.
So much the worse for them. It is their fault. They are
only getting what they deserve. It does not concern us.
Here is our poor street all riddled with balls. They are a pack
of rascals. Above all things, don't open the door." — And the
house assumes the air of a tomb. The insurgent is in the
death-throes in front of that house; he sees the grape-shot
and naked swords drawing near; if he cries, he knows that
they are listening to him, and that no one will come; there
stand walls which might protect him, there are men who
might save him; and these walls have ears of flesh, and these
men have bowels of stone.
Whom shall he reproach?
No one and every one.
The incomplete times in which we live.
It is always at its own risk and peril that Utopia is
converted
into revolution, and from philosophical protest becomes
an armed protest, and from Minerva turns to Pallas.
The Utopia which grows impatient and becomes revolt
knows what awaits it; it almost always comes too soon. Then
it becomes resigned, and stoically accepts catastrophe in lieu
of triumph. It serves those who deny it without complaint,
even excusing them, and even disculpates them, and its
magnanimity
consists in consenting to abandonment. It is
indomitable in the face of obstacles and gentle towards
ingratitude.
Is this ingratitude, however?
Yes, from the point of view of the human race.
No, from the point of view of the individual.
Progress is man's mode of existence. The general life of
the human race is called Progress, the collective stride of the
human race is called Progress. Progress advances; it makes
the great human and terrestrial journey towards the celestial
and the divine; it has its halting places where it rallies the
laggard troop, it has its stations where it meditates, in the
presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiled on its
horizon, it has its nights when it sleeps; and it is one of
the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the
shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in
darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering
Progress.
"God is dead, perhaps," said Gerard de Nerval one day to
the writer of these lines, confounding progress with God,
and taking the interruption of movement for the death of
Being.
He who despairs is in the wrong. Progress infallibly
awakes, and, in short, we may say that it marches on, even
when it is asleep, for it has increased in size. When we
behold it erect once more, we find it taller. To be always
peaceful does not depend on progress any more than it does on
the stream; erect no barriers, cast in no boulders; obstacles
make water froth and humanity boil. Hence arise troubles;
but after these troubles, we recognize the fact that ground has
been gained. Until order, which is nothing else than universal
peace, has been established, until harmony and unity reign,
progress will have revolutions as its halting-places.
What, then, is progress? We have just enunciated it; the
permanent life of the peoples.
Now, it sometimes happens, that the momentary life of
individuals offers resistance to the eternal life of the human
race.
Let us admit without bitterness, that the individual has
his
distinct interests, and can, without forfeiture, stipulate for
his
interest, and defend it; the present has its pardonable dose of
egotism; momentary life has its rights, and is not bound to
sacrifice itself constantly to the future. The generation which
is passing in its turn over the earth, is not forced to abridge
it
for the sake of the generations, its equal, after all, who will
have their turn later on. — "I exist," murmurs that some one
whose name is All. "I am young and in love, I am old and
I wish to repose, I am the father of a family, I toil, I prosper,
I am successful in business, I have houses to lease, I have
money in the government funds, I am happy, I have a wife
and children, I have all this, I desire to live, leave me in
peace." — Hence, at certain hours, a profound cold broods over
the magnanimous vanguard of the human race.
Utopia, moreover, we must admit, quits its radiant sphere
when it makes war. It, the truth of to-morrow, borrows its
mode of procedure, battle, from the lie of yesterday. It, the
future, behaves like the past. It, pure idea, becomes a deed
of violence. It complicates its heroism with a violence for
which it is just that it should be held to answer; a violence
of occasion and expedient, contrary to principle, and for
which it is fatally punished. The Utopia, insurrection, fights
with the old military code in its fist; it shoots spies, it
executes
traitors; it suppresses living beings and flings them into
unknown darkness. It makes use of death, a serious matter.
It seems as though Utopia had no longer any faith in radiance,
its irresistible and incorruptible force. It strikes with
the sword. Now, no sword is simple. Every blade has two
edges; he who wounds with the one is wounded with the
other.
Having made this reservation, and made it with all
severity, it is impossible for us not to admire, whether they
succeed or not, those the glorious combatants of the future,
the confessors of Utopia. Even when they miscarry, they are
worthy of veneration; and it is, perhaps, in failure, that they
possess the most majesty. Victory, when it is in accord with
progress, merits the applause of the people; but a heroic
defeat merits their tender compassion. The one is magnificent,
the other sublime. For our own part, we prefer martyrdom
to success. John Brown is greater than Washington,
and Pisacane is greater than Garibaldi.
It certainly is necessary that some one should take the
part
of the vanquished.
We are unjust towards these great men who attempt the
future, when they fail.
Revolutionists are accused of sowing fear abroad. Every
barricade seems a crime. Their theories are incriminated,
their aim suspected, their ulterior motive is feared, their
conscience
denounced. They are reproached with raising, erecting,
and heaping up, against the reigning social state, a mass
of miseries, of griefs, of iniquities, of wrongs, of despairs,
and
of tearing from the lowest depths blocks of shadow in order
therein to embattle themselves and to combat. People shout
to them: "You are tearing up the pavements of hell!" They
might reply: "That is because our barricade is made of good
intentions."
The best thing, assuredly, is the pacific solution. In
short,
let us agree that when we behold the pavement, we think of
the bear, and it is a good will which renders society uneasy.
But it depends on society to save itself, it is to its own good
will that we make our appeal. No violent remedy is necessary.
To study evil amiably, to prove its existence, then to cure it.
It is to this that we invite it.
However that may be, even when fallen, above all when
fallen, these men, who at every point of the universe, with
their eyes fixed on France, are striving for the grand work
with the inflexible logic of the ideal, are august; they give
their life a free offering to progress; they accomplish the will
of providence; they perform a religious act. At the appointed
hour, with as much disinterestedness as an actor who answers
to his cue, in obedience to the divine stage-manager, they
enter the tomb. And this hopeless combat, this stoical
disappearance
they accept in order to bring about the supreme
and universal consequences, the magnificent and irresistibly
human movement begun on the 14th of July, 1789; these
soldiers are priests. The French revolution is an act of
God.
Moreover, there are, and it is proper to add this
distinction
to the distinctions already pointed out in another chapter, —
there are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called
revolutions; there are refused revolutions, which are called
riots.
An insurrection which breaks out, is an idea which is
passing
its examination before the people. If the people lets fall
a black ball, the idea is dried fruit; the insurrection is a mere
skirmish.
Waging war at every summons and every time that Utopia
desires it, is not the thing for the peoples. Nations have not
always and at every hour the temperament of heroes and
martyrs.
They are positive. A priori, insurrection is
repugnant to
them, in the first place, because it often results in a
catastrophe,
in the second place, because it always has an abstraction
as its point of departure.
Because, and this is a noble thing, it is always for the
ideal,
and for the ideal alone, that those who sacrifice themselves
do thus sacrifice themselves. An insurrection is an enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm may wax wroth; hence the appeal to
arms. But every insurrection, which aims at a government or
a regime, aims higher. Thus, for instance, and we insist
upon it, what the chiefs of the insurrection of 1832, and, in
particular, the young enthusiasts of the Rue de la Chanvrerie
were combating, was not precisely Louis Philippe.
The majority of them, when talking freely, did justice to this
king who stood midway between monarchy and revolution;
no one hated him. But they attacked the younger branch of
the divine right in Louis Philippe as they had attacked its
elder branch in Charles X.; and that which they wished to
overturn in overturning royalty in France, was, as we have
explained, the usurpation of man over man, and of privilege
over right in the entire universe. Paris without a king has
as result the world without despots. This is the manner in
which they reasoned. Their aim was distant no doubt, vague
perhaps, and it retreated in the face of their efforts; but it
was great.
Thus it is. And we sacrifice ourselves for these visions,
which are almost always illusions for the sacrificed, but
illusions
with which, after all, the whole of human certainty is
mingled. We throw ourselves into these tragic affairs and
become intoxicated with that which we are about to do. Who
knows? We may succeed. We are few in number, we have
a whole army arrayed against us; but we are defending right,
the natural law, the sovereignty of each one over himself
from which no abdication is possible, justice and truth, and
in case of need, we die like the three hundred Spartans. We
do not think of Don Quixote but of Leonidas. And we
march straight before us, and once pledged, we do not draw
back, and we rush onwards with head held low, cherishing as
our hope an unprecedented victory, revolution completed,
progress set free again, the aggrandizement of the human
race, universal deliverance; and in the event of the worst,
Thermopylae.
These passages of arms for the sake of progress often
suffer
shipwreck, and we have just explained why. The crowd is
restive in the presence of the impulses of paladins. Heavy
masses, the multitudes which are fragile because of their very
weight, fear adventures; and there is a touch of adventure
in the ideal.
Moreover, and we must not forget this, interests which are
not very friendly to the ideal and the sentimental are in the
way. Sometimes the stomach paralyzes the heart.
The grandeur and beauty of France lies in this, that she
takes less from the stomach than other nations: she more
easily knots the rope about her loins. She is the first awake,
the last asleep. She marches forwards. She is a seeker.
This arises from the fact that she is an artist.
The ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic,
the
same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of the true.
Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is
to see the light. That is why the torch of Europe, that is to
say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it
on to Italy, who handed it on to France. Divine, illuminating
nations of scouts! Vitaelampada tradunt.
It is an admirable thing that the poetry of a people is
the
element of its progress. The amount of civilization is measured
by the quantity of imagination. Only, a civilizing
people should remain a manly people. Corinth, yes; Sybaris,
no. Whoever becomes effeminate makes himself a bastard.
He must be neither a dilettante nor a virtuoso: but he must
be artistic. In the matter of civilization, he must not refine,
but he must sublime. On this condition, one gives to the
human race the pattern of the ideal.
The modern ideal has its type in art, and its means is
science. It is through science that it will realize that august
vision of the poets, the socially beautiful. Eden will be
reconstructed by A+B. At the point which civilization has
now reached, the exact is a necessary element of the splendid,
and the artistic sentiment is not only served, but completed
by the scientific organ; dreams must be calculated. Art,
which is the conqueror, should have for support science,
which is the walker; the solidity of the creature which is
ridden is of importance. The modern spirit is the genius of
Greece with the genius of India as its vehicle; Alexander on
the elephant.
Races which are petrified in dogma or demoralized by lucre
are unfit to guide civilization. Genuflection before the idol
or before money wastes away the muscles which walk and
the will which advances. Hieratic or mercantile absorption
lessens a people's power of radiance, lowers its horizon by
lowering its level, and deprives it of that intelligence, at once
both human and divine of the universal goal, which makes
missionaries of nations. Babylon has no ideal; Carthage
has no ideal. Athens and Rome have and keep, throughout
all the nocturnal darkness of the centuries, halos of
civilization.
France is in the same quality of race as Greece and Italy.
She is Athenian in the matter of beauty, and Roman in her
greatness. Moreover, she is good. She gives herself. Oftener
than is the case with other races, is she in the humor for self-devotion
and sacrifice. Only, this humor seizes upon her, and
again abandons her. And therein lies the great peril for those
who run when she desires only to walk, or who walk on when
she desires to halt. France has her relapses into materialism,
and, at certain instants, the ideas which obstruct that sublime
brain have no longer anything which recalls French
greatness and are of the dimensions of a Missouri or a South
Carolina. What is to be done in such a case? The giantess
plays at being a dwarf; immense France has her freaks of
pettiness.
That is all.
To this there is nothing to say. Peoples, like planets,
possess
the right to an eclipse. And all is well, provided that the
light returns and that the eclipse does not degenerate into
night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance
of the light is identical with the persistence of
the I.
Let us state these facts calmly. Death on the barricade
or
the tomb in exile, is an acceptable occasion for devotion. The
real name of devotion is disinterestedness. Let the abandoned
allow themselves to be abandoned, let the exiled allow
themselves to be exiled, and let us confine ourselves to
entreating
great nations not to retreat too far, when they do
retreat. One must not push too far in descent under pretext
of a return to reason.
Matter exists, the minute exists, interest exists, the
stomach
exists; but the stomach must not be the sole wisdom. The
life of the moment has its rights, we admit, but permanent
life has its rights also. Alas! the fact that one is
mounted does not preclude a fall. This can be seen in history
more frequently than is desirable: A nation is great, it tastes
the ideal, then it bites the mire, and finds it good; and if
it be asked how it happens that it has abandoned Socrates
for Falstaff, it replies: "Because I love statesmen."
One word more before returning to our subject, the
conflict.
A battle like the one which we are engaged in describing
is
nothing else than a convulsion towards the ideal. Progress
trammelled is sickly, and is subject to these tragic epilepsies.
With that malady of progress, civil war, we have been obliged
to come in contact in our passage. This is one of the fatal
phases, at once act and entr'acte of that drama whose pivot is
a social condemnation, and whose veritable title is
Progress.
Progress!
The cry to which we frequently give utterance is our whole
thought; and, at the point of this drama which we have now
reached, the idea which it contains having still more than
one trial to undergo, it is, perhaps, permitted to us, if not to
lift the veil from it, to at least allow its light to shine
through.
The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment
is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail,
whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the
march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from
night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to
life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. Point of
departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at
the beginning, the angel at the end.