Si j'avais à caractériser d'un seul trait le génie de Joseph de Maistre, je l'appellerais, avant tout, le Génie de l'Aperçu. Quand on lit ses œuvres, c'est d'abord cela qui frappe; et, quand on ferme le livre, c'est de cela que longtemps après, on reste frappé. Bonald, Lamennais, par exemple, révèlent des qualités différentes par l'emploi de procédés différents. Ils posent des principes, et il les enchaînent; ils élèvent des édifices, ce sont des architectes de vérités. Mais de Maistre, pourrait-on me dire quel fut son système, et, dans le sens humain du mot, quelle fut sa philosophie? Dans le sens divin, dans le sens des principes doninateurs de toutes les philosophies, il en a une, je le sais, et il n'est pas difficile de la dégager de l'ensemble de ses écrits ; mais jamais il n'a tenté d'en dresser les assises à l'aide de toutes les organisations de la science et du raisonnement. Possédant à un degré éminent cette faculté de croyance qui est le premier attribut des grands penseurs, — ou, pour dire mieux en disant davantage, des grands hommes, — il vit trop dans la lumière de sa foi; il en respire trop les a priori sublimes, pour contester par hypothèse et examiner philosophiquement cette grande et unique vérité de tradition qui est devenue la vérité catholique; et c'est avec ce fait indiscuté, indiscutable, irréfragable et générateur de tous les autres, qu'il aborde l'étude des diverses questions sur lesquelles il a montré toutes les flexibilités de la force.
Monté à cette hauteur, ou plutôt placé naturellement à cette hauteur, sans y être monté, par le fait de ses facultés supérieures; il voyait bien, il apercevait. Mais pourquoi voyait-il? pourquoi avait-il cette force de projection visuelle, qui est de l'aperçu dans l'ordre de l'intelligence et qui semble le cachet de son génie? C'est qu'il regardait d'une bonne place. L'aigle que le vent a roulé dans un gouffre n'a plus besoin de son regard de feu; il ne lui sert que quand il plane. La sagacité de Joseph de Maistre tient plus à son point de vue qu'à sa vue même. Or, son point de vue, c'est la révélation historique, la tradition. Je me rappelle une phrase qu'il a écrite et qui est une clarté sur sa pensée. Il parle du christianisme, ce point de départ d'où il s'est [é]lancé sur toute idée. «Depuis dix-huit siècles,—dit-il,—il règne sur la partie la plus éclairée du globe, et cette religion ne s'arrête pas même à cette époque antique. Arrivée à son fondateur, elle se noue à un autre ordre de choses, à une religion typique qui l'a précédée. L'une ne peut être vraie sans que l'autre le soit; l'une se vante de promettre ce que l'autre se vante de tenir: en sorte que celle-ci, par un enchaînement qui est un fait visible, remonte à l'origine du monde. ELLE NAQUIT LE JOUR OU NAQUIRENT LES JOURS.» On le voit, pour ce génie d'État, en matière de philosophie, l'esprit humain commence par un fait en dehors de lui-même, de ses propres jugements et de ses propres puissances. De règles de fausse position a élevcr contre Dieu, même pour la [plus] grande gloire de sa démonstration, de Maistre a toujours dédaigné d'en poser. Il est d'un trop mâle esprit pour jouer à ces petites mathématiques innocentes. Il n'essaye pas de prouver par le raisonnement la légitimité de la vérité enseignée; il l'affirme, sachant qu'à une certaine profondeur, rien ne prévaut contre l'histoire, et que la philosophie, réduite à ses seules forces psychologiques et ontologiques, est incapable de faire autre chose de ces vérités premières, qu'une vague probabilité. [note 1]
Ainsi, rien de plus vrai, on un sens, que ce mot d'Homme du Passé appliqué à Joseph de Maistre. Il est du passé, en ce sens que la notion de Dieu, cette notion première, n'est donnée, pour lui, dans sa plénitude vivifiante que par l'histoire, et que, donnée une fois, le temps ne peut plus changer, par ses évolutions et révolutions, la loi qui en sort et qui gouverne le monde. En partant de cette base, la seule qui ne tremble pas sous le pied, de Maistre a un critérium certain, absolu (tout critérium qui manque de ces deux qualités n'étant qu'une toise d'à peu près, un bâton d'aveugle pour sonder les fondrières du chemin), et il peut dire, comme il le dit, sans que le prophète soit beaucoup plus qu'un logicien: Tel fait contrarie la vérité enseignée, c'est un désordre. Il doit donc passer, et sur la trace de son passage, qu'il laisse beaucoup de ruines ou seulement un peu de fumée, les faits normaux, un instant contrariés ou suspendus, doivent se rétablir dans la tranquille majesté de leur force éternelle. C'est cette règle, ce critérium que de Maistre a appliqué avec là justesse du regard et la sûreté de la main à tous les faits soit historiques, soit philosophiques de son temps. Comme il est de l'essence de la philosophie, cette chercheuse d'esprit el de disputes, de discuter jusqu'à la légitimité même de la discussion, je laisserai là les faits théoriques, métaphysiques, [qui sont de l'ordre de la pensée pure,] et sur lesquels on peut chicaner jusqu'à l'heure où ils tombent dans les réalités de l'histoire et s'y incarnent, et je prendrai les faits historiques, devant lesquels, patents et palpables comme les faits physiques, la Philosophie n'a plus qu'à baisser ses yeux de taupe et son orgueil encore plus aveugle que ses yeux.
De tous les livres de Joseph de Maistre, le plus marqué, le plus brillant du rayon prophétique qu'on voudrait éteindre aujourd'hui sous le souffle d'un mot menteur, c'est le livre de ses Considérations sur la France. Écrit en 1797 et publié au moment où la France s'échappait, aveuglée de sang et hébétée de coups, de l'abattoir révolutionnaire, ce livre produisit dans la partie de ce pays qui vivait encore par la pensée, et surtout dans la haute société de l'Europe, une impression vive et profonde. Mais ce fut plus tard qu'on en reconnut la portée; car on la mesura, cette portée, avec une mesure infaillible, celle des événements accomplis. Il se trouva qu'à dix-sept ans de distance, de Maistre les avait aperçus. Lui seul, alors comme depuis, fut plus fort que l'espérance qui commençait à renaître de tant de désespoir, et jugea avec cette froideur de l'esprit, à qui, selon Machiavel, le monde appartient, mais à qui les choses de la pensée appartiennent bien davantage, ces organisations impuissantes d'une société lasse d'anarchie, qui cherchait à s'organiser. Écoutons ce qu'il dit, dès 1797, de la constitution de 1795: «Y a-t-il une seule contrée de l'univers où l'on ne [1889, omet. ne] puisse trouver un conseil des Cinq-Cents, un conseil des Anciens et cinq Directeurs? Cette constitution peut être présentée à toutes les associations humaines, depuis la Chine jusqu'à Genève. Mais une constitution faite pour toutes les nations n'est bonne pour aucune. C'est une pure abstraction, une œuvre scolastique faite pour exercer l'esprit dans une hypothèse idéale... Toutes les raisons imaginables se réunissent donc pour établir que le sceau divin n'est pas sur cet ouvrage, qui n'est qu'un thème, et qui est déjà marqué de tous les caractères de la destruction.» Ce jugement, tombé de si haut, les faits, à quelque temps de là, le ramassèrent et le changèrent en vérité. De Maistre avait vu clair, mais tout près de lui. Attendez : trois pages plus bas, il va voir loin et non moins clair. Déjà préoccupé de l'éven-tualité d'une restauration, qui recula de toute l'épaisseur éblouissante du règne de Napoléon, le comte Joseph de Maistre, qui la provoquait comme toutes les intelligences d'ordre en Europe, écrivait ces mots, qui furent des oracles sans en avoir l'obscurité: «Toutes les factions réunies de la révolution française ont voulu l'avilissement, la destruction même du christianisme universel et de la monarchie: d'où il suit que tous leurs efforts n'aboutiront qu'à l'exaltation du christianisme et de la monarchie.» Certes ! [1889 om. !] c'était assez net; et cependant, au point de vue de l'ordre, entendu dans ce qu'il a de plus apparent, la Révolution était terminée. Elle se refaisait des institutions. Mais, pour de Maistrc, l'ordre factice qui imposait à tant d'esprits n'était pas l'ordre vrai. Aussi disait-il, à quelques lignes de celles que je viens de citer: «Tout annonce que l'ordre de choses établi en France ne peut pas durer, et que L'INVINCIBLE NATURE DOIT RAMENER LA MONARCHIE.»
Peu de temps après, en effet, l'invincible nature la ramenait de concert avec un autre Invincible; et, chose digne de cette intelligence qui voyait par-dessus les événements les plus hauts, les plus inattendus, les plus escarpés aux yeux vulgaires, ce ne furent pas même les prodiges de cet autre Invincible qui empêchèrent la Restauration prévue de se produire dans les termes que l'illustre publiciste avait fixés et décrits par avance jusque dans leurs moindres détails. Tout ce qui sait lire n'a pu oublier l'admirable chapitre IX, cette suite d'éclairs, des Considérations sur la France, intitulé: Comment finit une contre-révolution [«Comment se fait une contre-révolution»]. Les grandeurs et les folies de l'homme qui avait, en ressuscitant la monar-chie, comme écrit avec son épée sous la dictée du prophète politique qui l'avait proclamée nécessaire et inévitable, ne modifièrent qu'à peine l'histoire qu'il avait tracée de si loin de la Restauration future. On le comprend. Qu'y avait ajouté cet homme qui représentait encore la Révolution, quoiqu'il se fût tourné contre elle? Ses propres fautes et ses malheurs. La prédiction de Joseph de Maistre n'en était point affaiblie. Au contraire, elle n'en brilla que mieux, et les paroles qui l'exprimaient restèrent entières sans qu'aucun événement en effaçât seulement une lettre. Vraies avant Bonaparte, plus vraies encore depuis Bonaparte, elles semblent un arrêt de la Providence, qui étonne, quand on se reporte à sa date, les esprits les plus rompus aux prévisions politiques: «C'est donc bien en vain, disaient ces paroles, que tant d'écrivains insistent sur les inconvénients du rétablissement de la monarchie; c'est en vain qu'ils effrayent les Français sur les suites de la contre-révolution; et lorsqu'ils concluent de ces inconvénients que les Français, qui les redoutent, ne souffriront jamais le rétablissement de la monarchie, ils concluent très-mal; car les Français ne délibéreront point, et c'est peut-être de la main d'une femmelette qu'ils recevront un roi.» La dédaigneuse expression n'était pas une injure, et l'intuition allait ici jusqu'a la nuance. Les Français ne délibérèrent point. Ils crièrent pour qu'on les délivrât, et leurs libérateurs délibérèrent. Rien donc n'a manqué à cette divination prodigieuse, pas même la femmelette; car Mme de Krüdner, qui jouait le mysticisme, et n'avait pas le cœur et la tête assez grands pour le contenir, Mme de Krüdner, qui mit les petitesses de son âme dans les décisions d'Alexandre, ne serait-elle pas cette femmelette-là?...
Du reste, une vue si droite et si perçante qui aidait à sa force et la décuplait en mettant le pur milieu des principes entre elle et les événements lointains, comme la science place de merveilleux cristaux entre elle et les objets qui échappent à la faiblesse des organes humains, pour mieux les voir; cette vue éclairée, affermie, élevée à sa plus haute puissance par l'habitude de la contemplation supérieure, ne se troubla jamais, même devant ce qui trouble tant le regard des hommes, le succès. Bien au-dessus des partis et de leurs passagères fortunes, Joseph de Maistre, qu'on a cru, aux ardeurs de sa parole, en partager les passions, n'épousa aucune des illusions de la victoire, quand la Restauration y'accomplit. Il vit qu'au lieu de rompre avec une révolution qui avait été elle-même une rupture avec la vérité et avec l'histoire, elle se nouait à cette révolution par une constitution philosophique, et il prévit ce qu'il arriverait de cette dernière, comme il était arrivé déjà à celles qui l'avaient précédée. Il ne biaisa pas sur la faute de Louis XVIII, et sur le sort de cette monarchie un instant relevée pour retomber. Deux ans après le retour de la maison de Bourbon, une inspiration, née déjà de beaucoup d'embarras, lui fit offrir le ministère, mais il refusa en disant qu'il était trop tard. Il sentait que la conception de l'ordre vrai pour la France sacrifiée à une égoïste et fausse politique, ne pouvait plus se réaliser, du moins par le simple fiat d'un homme. Quelques années plus tard, en 1821, il mourait, et, le regard toujours aussi lucide, aussi ferme: «Je meurs avec l'Europe,» disait-il. Mot cruel et lugubre; mais franchement, depuis 1821, quel événement a montré que ce mot-là ne fût pas juste?
Ainsi, — comme on le voit maintenant et par ses écrits et par sa vie,— ce Prophète du Passé, ainsi que diraient les insolents Nostradamus de notre âge, a toujours prévenu et annonce l'avenir voilé qui allait suivre. Il avait, et dans ses Considérations sur la France et dans son Principe générateur, proclamé le néant des constitutions faites de main d'homme, et, coup sur coup, les faits successifs de l'histoire contemporaine lui donnèrent raison en brisant, les unes après les autres, ces constitutions! Que dis-je? l'avenir qu'il avait vu ne s'est point circonscrit dans une période de l'histoire. La sentence de mort qu'il a portée contre les constitutions, le Temps, cette Table de Marbre qui rejuge les jugements humains, ne l'a point cassée. Il a frappé également l'œuvre de 1795, de 1815, de 1830, comme il frappera toutes les œuvres pareilles de fabrique humaine, estampillées du même nom. Plus tard, quand je parlerai de Chateaubriand, dont l'œil fut trop souvent ébloui par les illusions am¬biantes de son époque, je montrerai que l'impossibilité de vivre, — le petit empêchement d'être, eût dit Fontenelle, — de ces œuvres futiles ne venait pas seulement du principe même sur lequel elles portent, mais aussi du système de gouvernement que ces constitutions créaient. Seulement pour de Maistre, ce penseur original, qui expliquait tout par l'origine, le péché originel suffisait. Quand une institution est vaine dans son principe, ce n'est plus qu'une ruine suspendue sur ceux qu'elle couvre de son apparente solidité. Les myopes seuls ont cru, par exemple, le roi Charles X chassé du trône par de vieilles rancunes contre sa noble race; mais pour ceux qui élèvent leur regard vers des causes plus réelles, il a été surtout chassé par les principes mêmes consentis dans cette Charte, qui sera jugée par nos fils, s'ils ne sont pas aussi faibles que leurs pères, une vile concession à l'ennemi. Louis-Philippe n'avait point, lui, les souvenirs de sa race à craindre. Fils de régicide, grandi sur les genoux des clubs, libéral de ce faux libéralisme, de cette tartufferie de liberté dont la spirituelle France a été si longtemps la madame Pernelle et l'est encore ; Louis-Philippe, ce roi de la Halle, a été chassé à son tour par les gamins, fils de ces gamins qui lui avaient donné la couronne. Mais, comme Charles X, c'était encore, au fond, la constitution qui le chassait, ou du moins l'esprit qui couvait dans son sein. La monarchie de 1830 a péri comme la monarchie de 1815, parce que ni l'une ni l'autre n'était, en fin de compte, la monarchie. Toutes les deux sont mortes de leurs constitutions. De Maistre avait pressenti ces ruines comme il en a pressenti bien d'autres que la France n'a pas vues, mais qu'elle verra... Et ne peut-on dire qu'elle a commencé de les voir?... Avouons que ce n'est pas trop mal pour un homme toujours les yeux attachés au passé, comme le lui reprochent ses adversaires. Enfin il a mérité cette gloire qu'à plus de quarante ans de distance, un ministre d'une expérience presque séculaire, aussi grand par la pratique et par l'action que lui, de Maistre, l'était par la théorie et par la pensée, conclut, après les événements, comme l'illustre écrivain avait prévu, avant qu'ils eussent éclaté. Les paroles rapportées dernièrement du prince de Metternich, à Londres [note 2], sont un corollaire expérimental à l'a priori de l'auteur des Considerations sur la France. Lorsque les Bohémiens politiques de notre époque, éclos tout à coup au gouvernement des États, comme des champignons sur du fumier, dans la nuit du 24 février 1848 ; lorsque tous ces poétiques diseurs de bonne aventure à la France auront pour garantie de leurs prédictions un ensemble de faits comme celui que je n'ai pu qu'indiquer dans ce chapitre, et l'adhésion à leurs prophéties d'un homme qui a depuis quarante ans la main, — et une assez puissante main, — dans les affaires de ce monde, alors... oh! alors... je ne les croirai pas davantage, mais je me regarderai au moins comme tenu de déduire les raisons de mon incrédulité.
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[Note 1] Pour ne citer qu'un seul exemple de cette fîère méthode abrégée de Joseph de Maistre, qu'on se rappelle les premières pages de son plus grand livre, Le Pape. Il y pose souverainement l'infaillibilité théologique, et il en déduit aussitôt l'infaillibilité politique par l'expérience et par l'histoire, laissant pour toute ressource à ceux qui sont piqués de la tarentule de la discussion de s'ouvrir la tête sur les faits, si bon leur semble. Et puisque j'ai cité le livre du Pape, qu'il me soit permis d'ajouter en passant qu'il est à lui seul, sous sa forme historique, toute une Prophétie que le temps se chargera de justifier, et plus prochainement qu'on ne croit. Les peuples chrétiens, qui ne le sont actuellement que de nom et de baptême, doivent revenir, dans un temps donné, à cette théorie du Pape, qui est la théorie de l'unité dans le pouvoir et qui a fait pousser à l'Erreur le cri qu'on pousse quand on est frappé. Lorsque nous serons las, et cette fatigue commence déjà, des pouvoirs fictifs, conventionnels, et remis en question tous les matins, nous reviendrons au pouvoir vrai, religieux, absolu, divin; à la Théocratie exécrée, mais nécessaire et bienfaisante, ou nous sommes donc destinés à rouler, pour y périr, dans les bestialités d'un matérialisme effréné. La notion du droit devrait donc s'éteindre dans l'esprit de l'homme; car qui dit droit, dit droit absolu, et il n'y en a pas en dehors du catholicisme. Il n'y a que des convenances: or les grandes convenances font fléchir les petites,—comme certaines existences qui, tuant pour être, dévorent des existences inférieures. Le droit public ne serait plus alors qu'une question d'Anthropologie. Les droits des peuples, vis-à-vis les uns des autres, seraient leurs facultés, l'on sait de quoi cette notion de facultés se compose! Ainsi, la bout de toutes les philosophies, le système du Pape de Joseph de Maistre et de toute l'Église, ou le Léviathan de Hobbes! Ou le droit absolu avec son Interprète infaillible qui juge, condamne et absout, ou des luttes sans fin, sans dernier mot, sans apaisement; le vivier de sang de la force (car l'intelligence n'est qu'une force) et le pauvre Esprit humain, secoue par ses passions comme un arbre ébranché et fendu, [et la force] pour toute mesure du droit et du devoir des hommes! Voilà l'alternative. On verra comme le monde s'en tirera, mais il faudra choisir.
[Note 2] Voici les propres paroles du prince de Metternich: "Le Progrès politique,"—dit-il, — "suit un cercle. Plus il marche, plus il se rapproche de son point de départ." C'est toute la théorie catholique qui ne conçoit pas l'homme autrement qu'il n'est;—qui ne rève jamais, mais qui observe toujours. Un grand esprit qui, comme le prince de Metternich, lutte avec les faits depuis quarante ans, et conclut, au nom des faits, comme les plus redoutables utopistes, au nom des idées, montre bien que l'utopie n'est plus qu'une avance de la Vérité. L'Infaillibilité est pour M. de Metternich aussi nécessaire que pour Joseph de Maistre. Et ce n'est pas la seule analogie qui existe entre le grand Penseur debout et le grand Penseur assis. Tous deux, ils ont la même théorie providentielle. Tous deux croient que la Révolution de 1789 n'a été que le châtiment des Classes Élevées et que la Bourgeoisie et le Peuple [le Peuple et la Bourgeoisie] doivent avoir aussi leur 1789. Après le coup de guillotine sur la tête du trop révolutionnaire Louis XVI, il doit y avoir le massacre et la faim pour les peuples révolutionnaires. L'Expiation, l'Expiation pour tous, en bas comme en haut. Les peuples y perdront l'esprit de révolte; les Aristocrates et les Rois, l'esprit de faiblesse et d'illusion, plus dangereux et plus honteux encore.—Telle est l'opinion d'un homme dont le long ministère fut un règne, et qui, sur la fin de sa vie toute-puissante, a trouvé la révolution armée contre lui, parce qu'il avait mis tout son patient et calme génie à l'endomir plutôt qu'à la tuer.
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Anointing of King Charles X in 1825 at Rheims
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Joseph de Maistre, Prophet of the Past.
If I had to characterize in a single trait the genius of Joseph de Maistre, I would call it, above all, the genius of the Apperception. It is initially this, when one reads his works, which impresses; and, when one closes the book, it is this that one remains impressed with long after. Bonald and Lamennais, for example, reveal different qualities by the use of different procedures. They set out principles and connect them; they build edifices; they are the architects of truths. But, with Maistre, who can tell me what his system was and, in the human sense of the word, what his philosophy was? In the divine sense, in the sense of dominant principles common to all philosophies, he had one, I know; and it is not hard to distill it from the ensemble of his writings. But he never tried holding assizes with the help of all the faculties of science and reasoning. Possessing to an eminent degree that faculty of belief which is the first attribute of great thinkers—or, to say better by saying more, of "great men"—he lived too much by the light of his faith; he breathed too much the sublime a priori's to contend by means of hypothesis and to examine philosophically that grand and unique truth of tradition, which has become the catholic truth; and it is with this fact, undisputed and indisputable, the irrefragable generator of all others, that he addresses all the diverse questions upon which he displays the flexibility of his powers.
Raised to this height, or rather placed naturally at this height without having been raised, by the fact of his superior faculties, he saw well: he apperceived. But why did he see? Why did he have this power of visual projection which, within the hierarchy of intelligence belongs to that of the apperception and is the stamp of his genius? Because he looked out from a happy prospect. The eagle that the wind has hurled into an abyss has no longer need of his flashing eye; for it serves him only while he planes. The sagacity of Joseph de Maistre pertains more to his vantage point than to his vision itself. Now his vantage point is the historic revelation, the tradition. I recall a sentence he wrote, which is a key light upon his thinking. He speaks of Christianity, that point of departure from which he launches himself upon every idea. "After eighteen centuries," he says, "it reigns over the most enlightened portion of the globe, and [the time line of] this religion does not terminate even at that ancient period. Having gone back to its founder, it ties itself to another order of things, to a religion typical of that which preceded it. One could not be true without the other; the one boasts a promise which the other boasts to hold, in such a way that this one, by a link which is a visible fact, goes back to the origin of the world. IT WAS BORN ON THE DAY THAT DAYS WERE BORN." One sees philosophically that, for this genius of the State, the human mind begins with a fact outside of itself, outside its own judgments and its own abilities. According to the rules by which one raises a specious position against God, even for the great glory of deducing Him, Maistre always disdained to posit such a thing. He has too much manly spirit to play with those little mathematical problems. He does not attempt to prove the legitimacy of received truths by reasoning; he testifies to them, knowing at a certain depth that nothing prevails against history, and that philosophy, reduced to its psychological and ontological forces alone, is incapable of making anything out of those primary truths but a vague probability. [note 1]
Hence there is nothing truer, in a sense, than to apply the title Man of the Past to Joseph de Maistre. He is of the past in the sense that the notion of God, this primary notion, is given for him in its quickening fullness only by history, and that the law which follows from it and which governs the world, given once, cannot change anymore through time's evolutions and revolutions. As he moves from this base, which alone does not tremble underfoot, Maistre has a certain and absolute criterion (every criterion lacking these two qualities is nothing but an approximate measure, a blind-man's stick for sounding the potholes in the road) and he can speak, as he does speak, without the prophet being much more than a logician: such a fact contradicts the truth that is taught, and this is disorder, He must then pass through; and, in the trail of his passage, which leaves many ruins or only a little smoke, normal facts, for a moment contradicted or suspended, must re-establish themselves with the tranquil majesty of their eternal strength. It is this rule, this criterion, which de Maistre has applied with a justness of regard and a sure hold to all the facts of his age, be they historical or philosophical. As it is of the essence of Philosophy, that searcher of the mind and of disputes, to debate right up to the legitimacy itself of the debate, I would leave there the theoretical and metaphysical facts, upon which one may cavil right up to the hour when they fall amidst the realities of history and are fleshed out there; and I would prefer the historical facts, before which, manifest and palpable as physical facts, Philosophy may only lower her grey eyes, and her pride, even more blind than her eyes.
Of all Joseph de Maistre's books, the most remarked, the most brilliant with its prophetic gleam that would have been extinguished by the breath of a single lying word,— is his Considerations on France. Written in 1797 and published in the moment that France forgot herself, blinded with blood and dazed with blows in the revolutionary slaughterhouse, this book produced a vivid and profound impression among the portion of this country that lived still by thought, and especially among Europe's aristocracy. Yet it was much later that one recognized the consequences; for one measured these consequences with an infallible measure—the completed events. It was found that at a distance of seventeen years, Maistre had perceived them. He alone, at that time as much as ever since, was stronger than the hope that was beginning to be reborn out of such despair, and judged—with that cool-headedness which, since Machiavelli, owns the world but owns the realm of thought even more—the impotent structures of a society left in anarchy, seeking to organize itself. Listen to what he said in 1797 of the constitution of 1795: "Is there a single country in the universe where one is not able to find a Council of Five Hundred, a Council of Ancients and five Directors? This constitution could be presented to all human associations from China to Geneva. But a constitution made for all nations is no good for any. It is a pure abstraction, a scholastic problem made to exercise the mind in an ideal hypothesis... All imaginable reasons then unite to establish that there is no divine seal upon this work, which is nothing but an essay and is already marked with all the characters of destruction." A little while later the facts gathered up this judgment, fallen from on high, and turned it into truth. Maistre saw clearly, yet very close to where he was. But wait; three pages down he will see far yet not less clearly. Already preoccupied with the eventuality of a restoration, which leaves behind the blinding turbidity of the reign of Napoleon, Count Joseph de Maistre, who instigated it along with all the intellects in Europe on the side of order, wrote these words, oraculous though without an oracle's obscurity; "All the united factions of the French Revolution have wanted the degradation, the destruction of universal Christianity and of monarchy alike: whence it follows that all their efforts will result only in the exaltation of Christianity and monarchy." Indeed! it was sufficiently clear, and yet from the point of view of order, understood in what was most apparent, the Revolution was at its endpoint. It had recovered itself by its institutions. But to Maistre, the artificial order which imposed itself upon so many minds was not the true order. Likewise he said, a few lines down from those I am going to quote, "Everything declares that the order of affairs set up in France cannot last, and that INVINCIBLE NATURE MUST BRING BACK THE MONARCHY."
A little later, in effect, invincible nature did bring it back in concert with another Invincible; and, as was worthy of this intellect which saw beneath events that were the most profound, the most unexpected, and the most precipitous to vulgar eyes, likewise the prodigies of this other Invincible did not impede the foreseen Restoration from manifesting itself in the terms which the illustrious publicist had fixed and decreed in advance almost down to its slightest details. Everyone who knows how to read cannot forget the admirable Chapter IX, that train of brilliances from the Considerations, entitled, "How a Counter-Revolution Will End." The grandeurs and follies of the man who, in reviving the monarchy, had written as though with his own sword under dictation from the political prophet who proclaimed it necessary and inevitable would hardly modify the history of the future Restoration which he had traced from so far away. One understands that. What did this man add thereto, who still represented the Revolution, although he would, turn against it? His own faults and his own griefs. The prediction of Joseph de Maistre wasn't in the least weakened. Rather it could only shine brighter, and the words expressing it would remain whole without a single event erasing even one letter. True before Bonaparte, even truer after Bonaparte, these words seem a stay of Providence, which, when one refers back to the date, astonishes minds well inured to political conjectures: "It is then truly in vain," these words said, "that so many writers insist upon the inconveniences of re-establishing the monarchy; it is in vain that they frighten the French with the consequences of the Counter-Revolution; and inasmuch as they conclude that these inconveniences, feared by the French, would never permit the re-establishment of the monarchy, they conclude very badly; for the French would not hesitate at all, and it could be from the hand of a silly, weak woman that they will receive a king," The disdainful expression was not an injury, and intuition here went as far as nuance. The French did not hesitate at all. They cried out for someone to deliver them, and their deliverers hesitated. Nothing was missing from this prodigious prophecy, not even the "silly, weak woman": for Madame de Krüdner, who played at mysticism without a heart or a head big enough for it, who imposed the littlenesses of her soul upon the decisions of Alexander—was she not this the "silly, weak woman"?...
Moreover a vision so correct and so piercing, which augmented its force and increased it tenfold, by placing the pure medium of principles between itself and far-off events—just as science puts the marvelous crystal between itself and objects which elude the weakness of human organs, the better to see them—this vision, clarified, established, elevated to its highest power by the habit of superior contemplation, never confused itself, even when facing what so often confuses the vision of mankind, success. So far above the parties and their passing fortunes, Joseph de Maistre, as one had believed, amidst the ardencies of his language, while partaking of their passionateness, espoused none of the illusions of victory when the Restoration was achieved. He saw that, instead of breaking with a revolution which had in itself been a rupture with truth and history, the Restoration tied itself to this revolution by a philosophical constitution; and he foresaw what would come of this latest one, as had already come of its predecessors. He was not evasive on the fault of Louis XVIII and on the fate of this monarchy, momentarily resurrected only to fall again. Two years after the House of Bourbon returned, the inspiration came, born of many embarrassments already, to offer him the ministry; but he refused, saying that it was too late. He sensed that the conception of the true order for France, sacrificed to an egotistical and false politics, could no longer be realized, at least by the simple fiat of one man. Some years later, in 1821, he died; and with his vision ever lucid and firm he said, "I die with Europe." A cruel and dismal saying, but frankly, what has happened since 1821 to show that this saying was not just?
Thus—as one sees now by both his works and his life—this Prophet of the Past, or as the insolent called him, the Nostradamus of our age, always foresaw and announced the veiled future which then came to pass. In his Considerations on France and his Generative Principle, he had proclaimed the nothingness of constitutions made by the hand of man, and, blow by blow, the successive facts of contemporary history gave him reason for smashing, one after another, these constitutions! What can I say? The future which he saw is not at all circumscribed within a historical period. Time, that Court of the Marble Table which rejudges human judgments, has hardly annulled the death-sentence which he levied against constitutions. It has banged the gavel equally upon the work of 1795, of 1815, of 1830, as it will upon all similar works of human fabrication, stamped with the same name. Much later, when I speak of Chateaubriand, whose eye was often dazzled by the ambient illusions of his epoch, I will show that the impossibility of living,— the small hindrance of existing, as Fontenelle said—under these futile works derived not only from the common principle on which they rested, but also from the system of government which these constitutions created. Only for Maistre, this original thinker, who explained everything by its origin, original sin sufficed. When an institution is vain in its foundation, it is only a ruin suspended above those whom it covers with its apparent solidity. The near-sighted alone believed, for example, that King Charles X was chased from the throne by ancient rancors against his noble race; but for those who raise their vision towards more substantial causes, he was, above all, chased out by the very principles authorized in the Charter, which will be judged by our sons (if they are not as feeble-minded as their fathers) a vile concession to the enemy. Louis-Philippe had none of the memories of his race to fear. Son of regicide, fostered in the lap of clubs, liberal of that false liberalism, of that Tartuffery of liberty to which France's spirit has long played Madame Pernelle and does so again; Louis-Philippe, that king of the bean market was chased to his tower by urchins, sons of the urchins who had handed him the crown. But, as with Charles X, it was once again, fundamentally, the constitution that chased him out, or at least the spirit brooded in its bosom. The monarchy of 1830 perished just as the monarchy of 1815 did, because neither the one nor the other, in the final reckoning, was the monarchy. Both died by their constitutions. Maistre presaged these disasters just as he foresaw many others which France has not yet lived to see, but which she shall... And can't one say that she has begun to see them?... We own that it is not so bad for a man always to have his eyes fixed on the past, for which his adversaries reproach him. At last he has merited this glory, that—at more than forty years' distance—a minister with an almost epochal experience, an experience as vast in practice and in action as he, Maistre, possessed in theory and in meditation, infers the course of events, just the way the illustrious writer had foreseen them, before they had broken out. The words reported lately of Prince Metternich at London [note 2] are an experimental corollary to the a priori of the author of Considerations on France. When the political Bohemians of our epoch, hatched all at once by the government of the Estates, like mushrooms on manure, in the night of 24 February 1848; when all the poetical fortune-tellers in France will have for a guarantee of their predictions an ensemble of facts such as that which I could only point out in this chapter, and the adherence to their prophecies of a man who has after forty years a grasp—and so powerful a grasp—upon the affairs of this world, then... oh! then... I would not believe these men any longer, yet I would regard myself as obliged at least to deduce reasons for my incredulousness.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Note 1] To cite only one example of the proudly abridged method of Joseph de Maistre, one recalls the opening pages of his great book, The Pope. There he sovereignly posits theological infallibility, and therefrom he deduces immediately political infallibility through experience and through history, granting leave for every resource to those who have been stung by the tarantula of discussion, for the opening of minds to the facts, if they think fit. And since I have cited The Pope, permit me to add in passing that it is this book alone, under its historic form, whose every prophecy the times are charged with vindicating, and sooner than one thinks. The Christian peoples [nations, classes], though not actually such except in name and by baptism, must return at a given time to this theory of the Pope, which is the theory of unity through power and which has squeezed from Error the cry one vents when one is struck. When we are weary—and this fatigue commences already—of powers which are imaginary and conventional and which are brought in question every morning, we will return to the true power: religious, absolute, divine; to the abhorred Theocracy, but necessary and salutary—or else we are destined to turn to the bestialities of unrestrained materialism, there to die. The notion of right would then have to be extinguished in the spirit of man; for whoever speaks of right means absolute right, since there is none outside Catholicism. Outside there are only conventions: for the large conventions bend the small ones, as certain existences which, killing in order to live, devour inferior existences. The public right would then be nothing but a question of Anthropology. The rights of the peoples with respect to one another would then be their faculties [powers], and one knows what this notion of faculties consists of! Thus at the end of all philosophies, either the system of the Pope of Joseph de Maistre and of the whole Church, or else the Leviathan of Hobbes! Either the absolute right with its infallible Interpreter who judges, condemns and absolves, or struggle without end, without the last word, without appeasement: the blood-pool of force (for intelligence is only a force) and the poor human Spirit, shaken off by its passions as a tree pruned of its branches and riven, and the force for every measure of right and of human need! There is the alternative. We will see how the world comes out of this, but it is necessary to choose.
[Note 2] Here are Prince Metternich's exact words: "Political progress follows a circle. The more it moves the more it approaches its point of departure." This is entirely the catholic theory which perceives man not otherwise than as he is; which never dreams, but observes always. A great mind who, like Prince Metternich, struggles with the facts for forty years, and concludes in the name of the facts—just as the most redoubtable Utopians would in the name of ideas—shows indeed that Utopia is nothing more than an advance of the Truth. Infallibility is for M. de Metternich as necessary as for Joseph de Maistre. And that is not the only analogy which exists between the great Thinker standing and the great Thinker seated. Both have the same providential theory. Both believe that the Revolution of 1789 was nothing but the chastisement of the Upper Classes and that the Bourgeoisie and the People ought also to have their 1789. After the stroke of the guillotine upon the neck of the too-revolutionary Louis XVI, there must be a massacre and a famine for the revolutionary people. The Expiation, the Expiation for all, for those below as well as those on high... In this the people will lose the spirit of revolt; the Aristocrats and the Kings [will lose] the spirit of weakness and of illusion [which is] more dangerous and more shameful still.—Such is the opinion of a man whose long ministry was a reign, and who, at the end of his all-powerful life, found the revolution armed against him, because he had put all his patient and calm genius to sleep rather than to death. He should have killed it.
Raised to this height, or rather placed naturally at this height without having been raised, by the fact of his superior faculties, he saw well: he apperceived. But why did he see? Why did he have this power of visual projection which, within the hierarchy of intelligence belongs to that of the apperception and is the stamp of his genius? Because he looked out from a happy prospect. The eagle that the wind has hurled into an abyss has no longer need of his flashing eye; for it serves him only while he planes. The sagacity of Joseph de Maistre pertains more to his vantage point than to his vision itself. Now his vantage point is the historic revelation, the tradition. I recall a sentence he wrote, which is a key light upon his thinking. He speaks of Christianity, that point of departure from which he launches himself upon every idea. "After eighteen centuries," he says, "it reigns over the most enlightened portion of the globe, and [the time line of] this religion does not terminate even at that ancient period. Having gone back to its founder, it ties itself to another order of things, to a religion typical of that which preceded it. One could not be true without the other; the one boasts a promise which the other boasts to hold, in such a way that this one, by a link which is a visible fact, goes back to the origin of the world. IT WAS BORN ON THE DAY THAT DAYS WERE BORN." One sees philosophically that, for this genius of the State, the human mind begins with a fact outside of itself, outside its own judgments and its own abilities. According to the rules by which one raises a specious position against God, even for the great glory of deducing Him, Maistre always disdained to posit such a thing. He has too much manly spirit to play with those little mathematical problems. He does not attempt to prove the legitimacy of received truths by reasoning; he testifies to them, knowing at a certain depth that nothing prevails against history, and that philosophy, reduced to its psychological and ontological forces alone, is incapable of making anything out of those primary truths but a vague probability. [note 1]
Hence there is nothing truer, in a sense, than to apply the title Man of the Past to Joseph de Maistre. He is of the past in the sense that the notion of God, this primary notion, is given for him in its quickening fullness only by history, and that the law which follows from it and which governs the world, given once, cannot change anymore through time's evolutions and revolutions. As he moves from this base, which alone does not tremble underfoot, Maistre has a certain and absolute criterion (every criterion lacking these two qualities is nothing but an approximate measure, a blind-man's stick for sounding the potholes in the road) and he can speak, as he does speak, without the prophet being much more than a logician: such a fact contradicts the truth that is taught, and this is disorder, He must then pass through; and, in the trail of his passage, which leaves many ruins or only a little smoke, normal facts, for a moment contradicted or suspended, must re-establish themselves with the tranquil majesty of their eternal strength. It is this rule, this criterion, which de Maistre has applied with a justness of regard and a sure hold to all the facts of his age, be they historical or philosophical. As it is of the essence of Philosophy, that searcher of the mind and of disputes, to debate right up to the legitimacy itself of the debate, I would leave there the theoretical and metaphysical facts, upon which one may cavil right up to the hour when they fall amidst the realities of history and are fleshed out there; and I would prefer the historical facts, before which, manifest and palpable as physical facts, Philosophy may only lower her grey eyes, and her pride, even more blind than her eyes.
Of all Joseph de Maistre's books, the most remarked, the most brilliant with its prophetic gleam that would have been extinguished by the breath of a single lying word,— is his Considerations on France. Written in 1797 and published in the moment that France forgot herself, blinded with blood and dazed with blows in the revolutionary slaughterhouse, this book produced a vivid and profound impression among the portion of this country that lived still by thought, and especially among Europe's aristocracy. Yet it was much later that one recognized the consequences; for one measured these consequences with an infallible measure—the completed events. It was found that at a distance of seventeen years, Maistre had perceived them. He alone, at that time as much as ever since, was stronger than the hope that was beginning to be reborn out of such despair, and judged—with that cool-headedness which, since Machiavelli, owns the world but owns the realm of thought even more—the impotent structures of a society left in anarchy, seeking to organize itself. Listen to what he said in 1797 of the constitution of 1795: "Is there a single country in the universe where one is not able to find a Council of Five Hundred, a Council of Ancients and five Directors? This constitution could be presented to all human associations from China to Geneva. But a constitution made for all nations is no good for any. It is a pure abstraction, a scholastic problem made to exercise the mind in an ideal hypothesis... All imaginable reasons then unite to establish that there is no divine seal upon this work, which is nothing but an essay and is already marked with all the characters of destruction." A little while later the facts gathered up this judgment, fallen from on high, and turned it into truth. Maistre saw clearly, yet very close to where he was. But wait; three pages down he will see far yet not less clearly. Already preoccupied with the eventuality of a restoration, which leaves behind the blinding turbidity of the reign of Napoleon, Count Joseph de Maistre, who instigated it along with all the intellects in Europe on the side of order, wrote these words, oraculous though without an oracle's obscurity; "All the united factions of the French Revolution have wanted the degradation, the destruction of universal Christianity and of monarchy alike: whence it follows that all their efforts will result only in the exaltation of Christianity and monarchy." Indeed! it was sufficiently clear, and yet from the point of view of order, understood in what was most apparent, the Revolution was at its endpoint. It had recovered itself by its institutions. But to Maistre, the artificial order which imposed itself upon so many minds was not the true order. Likewise he said, a few lines down from those I am going to quote, "Everything declares that the order of affairs set up in France cannot last, and that INVINCIBLE NATURE MUST BRING BACK THE MONARCHY."
A little later, in effect, invincible nature did bring it back in concert with another Invincible; and, as was worthy of this intellect which saw beneath events that were the most profound, the most unexpected, and the most precipitous to vulgar eyes, likewise the prodigies of this other Invincible did not impede the foreseen Restoration from manifesting itself in the terms which the illustrious publicist had fixed and decreed in advance almost down to its slightest details. Everyone who knows how to read cannot forget the admirable Chapter IX, that train of brilliances from the Considerations, entitled, "How a Counter-Revolution Will End." The grandeurs and follies of the man who, in reviving the monarchy, had written as though with his own sword under dictation from the political prophet who proclaimed it necessary and inevitable would hardly modify the history of the future Restoration which he had traced from so far away. One understands that. What did this man add thereto, who still represented the Revolution, although he would, turn against it? His own faults and his own griefs. The prediction of Joseph de Maistre wasn't in the least weakened. Rather it could only shine brighter, and the words expressing it would remain whole without a single event erasing even one letter. True before Bonaparte, even truer after Bonaparte, these words seem a stay of Providence, which, when one refers back to the date, astonishes minds well inured to political conjectures: "It is then truly in vain," these words said, "that so many writers insist upon the inconveniences of re-establishing the monarchy; it is in vain that they frighten the French with the consequences of the Counter-Revolution; and inasmuch as they conclude that these inconveniences, feared by the French, would never permit the re-establishment of the monarchy, they conclude very badly; for the French would not hesitate at all, and it could be from the hand of a silly, weak woman that they will receive a king," The disdainful expression was not an injury, and intuition here went as far as nuance. The French did not hesitate at all. They cried out for someone to deliver them, and their deliverers hesitated. Nothing was missing from this prodigious prophecy, not even the "silly, weak woman": for Madame de Krüdner, who played at mysticism without a heart or a head big enough for it, who imposed the littlenesses of her soul upon the decisions of Alexander—was she not this the "silly, weak woman"?...
Moreover a vision so correct and so piercing, which augmented its force and increased it tenfold, by placing the pure medium of principles between itself and far-off events—just as science puts the marvelous crystal between itself and objects which elude the weakness of human organs, the better to see them—this vision, clarified, established, elevated to its highest power by the habit of superior contemplation, never confused itself, even when facing what so often confuses the vision of mankind, success. So far above the parties and their passing fortunes, Joseph de Maistre, as one had believed, amidst the ardencies of his language, while partaking of their passionateness, espoused none of the illusions of victory when the Restoration was achieved. He saw that, instead of breaking with a revolution which had in itself been a rupture with truth and history, the Restoration tied itself to this revolution by a philosophical constitution; and he foresaw what would come of this latest one, as had already come of its predecessors. He was not evasive on the fault of Louis XVIII and on the fate of this monarchy, momentarily resurrected only to fall again. Two years after the House of Bourbon returned, the inspiration came, born of many embarrassments already, to offer him the ministry; but he refused, saying that it was too late. He sensed that the conception of the true order for France, sacrificed to an egotistical and false politics, could no longer be realized, at least by the simple fiat of one man. Some years later, in 1821, he died; and with his vision ever lucid and firm he said, "I die with Europe." A cruel and dismal saying, but frankly, what has happened since 1821 to show that this saying was not just?
Thus—as one sees now by both his works and his life—this Prophet of the Past, or as the insolent called him, the Nostradamus of our age, always foresaw and announced the veiled future which then came to pass. In his Considerations on France and his Generative Principle, he had proclaimed the nothingness of constitutions made by the hand of man, and, blow by blow, the successive facts of contemporary history gave him reason for smashing, one after another, these constitutions! What can I say? The future which he saw is not at all circumscribed within a historical period. Time, that Court of the Marble Table which rejudges human judgments, has hardly annulled the death-sentence which he levied against constitutions. It has banged the gavel equally upon the work of 1795, of 1815, of 1830, as it will upon all similar works of human fabrication, stamped with the same name. Much later, when I speak of Chateaubriand, whose eye was often dazzled by the ambient illusions of his epoch, I will show that the impossibility of living,— the small hindrance of existing, as Fontenelle said—under these futile works derived not only from the common principle on which they rested, but also from the system of government which these constitutions created. Only for Maistre, this original thinker, who explained everything by its origin, original sin sufficed. When an institution is vain in its foundation, it is only a ruin suspended above those whom it covers with its apparent solidity. The near-sighted alone believed, for example, that King Charles X was chased from the throne by ancient rancors against his noble race; but for those who raise their vision towards more substantial causes, he was, above all, chased out by the very principles authorized in the Charter, which will be judged by our sons (if they are not as feeble-minded as their fathers) a vile concession to the enemy. Louis-Philippe had none of the memories of his race to fear. Son of regicide, fostered in the lap of clubs, liberal of that false liberalism, of that Tartuffery of liberty to which France's spirit has long played Madame Pernelle and does so again; Louis-Philippe, that king of the bean market was chased to his tower by urchins, sons of the urchins who had handed him the crown. But, as with Charles X, it was once again, fundamentally, the constitution that chased him out, or at least the spirit brooded in its bosom. The monarchy of 1830 perished just as the monarchy of 1815 did, because neither the one nor the other, in the final reckoning, was the monarchy. Both died by their constitutions. Maistre presaged these disasters just as he foresaw many others which France has not yet lived to see, but which she shall... And can't one say that she has begun to see them?... We own that it is not so bad for a man always to have his eyes fixed on the past, for which his adversaries reproach him. At last he has merited this glory, that—at more than forty years' distance—a minister with an almost epochal experience, an experience as vast in practice and in action as he, Maistre, possessed in theory and in meditation, infers the course of events, just the way the illustrious writer had foreseen them, before they had broken out. The words reported lately of Prince Metternich at London [note 2] are an experimental corollary to the a priori of the author of Considerations on France. When the political Bohemians of our epoch, hatched all at once by the government of the Estates, like mushrooms on manure, in the night of 24 February 1848; when all the poetical fortune-tellers in France will have for a guarantee of their predictions an ensemble of facts such as that which I could only point out in this chapter, and the adherence to their prophecies of a man who has after forty years a grasp—and so powerful a grasp—upon the affairs of this world, then... oh! then... I would not believe these men any longer, yet I would regard myself as obliged at least to deduce reasons for my incredulousness.
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[Note 1] To cite only one example of the proudly abridged method of Joseph de Maistre, one recalls the opening pages of his great book, The Pope. There he sovereignly posits theological infallibility, and therefrom he deduces immediately political infallibility through experience and through history, granting leave for every resource to those who have been stung by the tarantula of discussion, for the opening of minds to the facts, if they think fit. And since I have cited The Pope, permit me to add in passing that it is this book alone, under its historic form, whose every prophecy the times are charged with vindicating, and sooner than one thinks. The Christian peoples [nations, classes], though not actually such except in name and by baptism, must return at a given time to this theory of the Pope, which is the theory of unity through power and which has squeezed from Error the cry one vents when one is struck. When we are weary—and this fatigue commences already—of powers which are imaginary and conventional and which are brought in question every morning, we will return to the true power: religious, absolute, divine; to the abhorred Theocracy, but necessary and salutary—or else we are destined to turn to the bestialities of unrestrained materialism, there to die. The notion of right would then have to be extinguished in the spirit of man; for whoever speaks of right means absolute right, since there is none outside Catholicism. Outside there are only conventions: for the large conventions bend the small ones, as certain existences which, killing in order to live, devour inferior existences. The public right would then be nothing but a question of Anthropology. The rights of the peoples with respect to one another would then be their faculties [powers], and one knows what this notion of faculties consists of! Thus at the end of all philosophies, either the system of the Pope of Joseph de Maistre and of the whole Church, or else the Leviathan of Hobbes! Either the absolute right with its infallible Interpreter who judges, condemns and absolves, or struggle without end, without the last word, without appeasement: the blood-pool of force (for intelligence is only a force) and the poor human Spirit, shaken off by its passions as a tree pruned of its branches and riven, and the force for every measure of right and of human need! There is the alternative. We will see how the world comes out of this, but it is necessary to choose.
[Note 2] Here are Prince Metternich's exact words: "Political progress follows a circle. The more it moves the more it approaches its point of departure." This is entirely the catholic theory which perceives man not otherwise than as he is; which never dreams, but observes always. A great mind who, like Prince Metternich, struggles with the facts for forty years, and concludes in the name of the facts—just as the most redoubtable Utopians would in the name of ideas—shows indeed that Utopia is nothing more than an advance of the Truth. Infallibility is for M. de Metternich as necessary as for Joseph de Maistre. And that is not the only analogy which exists between the great Thinker standing and the great Thinker seated. Both have the same providential theory. Both believe that the Revolution of 1789 was nothing but the chastisement of the Upper Classes and that the Bourgeoisie and the People ought also to have their 1789. After the stroke of the guillotine upon the neck of the too-revolutionary Louis XVI, there must be a massacre and a famine for the revolutionary people. The Expiation, the Expiation for all, for those below as well as those on high... In this the people will lose the spirit of revolt; the Aristocrats and the Kings [will lose] the spirit of weakness and of illusion [which is] more dangerous and more shameful still.—Such is the opinion of a man whose long ministry was a reign, and who, at the end of his all-powerful life, found the revolution armed against him, because he had put all his patient and calm genius to sleep rather than to death. He should have killed it.
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