Émile Faguet

“ HERDER.—Herder was the Vico of Germany. Here was the historical philosopher, or rather the thoughtful philosopher on history. He did everything: literary criticism, works of erudition, translations, even personal poems, but his great work was Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind. This was the theory of progress in all its breadth and majesty, supported by arguments that are at least spacious and imposing. From Michelet to Quinet, on to Renan, every French author who has at all regarded the unity of the destinies of the human race has drawn inspiration from him. ”

“ At first sight does it not appear a privilege most delightful and convenient that we cannot be forced to accept any public office however eligible we may be, that we need not submit to authority and that every one of us can become a judge or magistrate as our fancy dictates? Is there not something delightful in the benevolence shown to criminals? Have you ever noticed how, in such a State as this, men condemned to death or exile remain in the country and walk abroad with the demeanour of heroes? ”

“ The passions are our imperfections, omissions, gaps in a soul which is not full of the idea of God and of universal order and the love of God and of universal order, and which, in consequence, lives individually—that is, separated from the universe.
The passions are infinite in number and Spinoza, in a bulky volume, furnished a minute and singularly profound description of the principal ones alone, into the details of which we regret that we cannot enter. The Ethics of Spinoza is an incomparable masterpiece. ”

“ The truth is that will is an evil and is the evil. What is needed for happiness is to kill the will, to destroy the wish to be.—But this would be the end of existence?—And in fact to be no more or not to be at all is the true happiness and it would be necessary to blow up the whole world in an explosion for it to escape unhappiness. ”

“ Don Quixote is a realistic romance traversed by a frenzied idealist: here are the manners of the populace, of innkeepers, muleteers, galley-slaves, monks, petty traders, peasants, and amid them passes a man who views the entire world as a romance and who believes he finds romance at every turn of his road. This perpetual contrast is, first, effective and supremely artistic in itself, then is of a reality superior to that of any realism, since it is the complete life of humanity which is thus painted and penetrated to its very foundations and shown in all its aspects. ”

“ He is a convinced democrat and a sentimental democrat. His conviction forms a solid basis for his sentiment, and his sentiment [193] kindles to a white heat his conviction. His conviction makes him turn a deaf ear to every objection, his sentiment inspires him with hatred for his adversary. For him the man who is not a democrat is wrong, and further, to him an object of hatred. In his eyes the distance between himself and the aristocrat is as the distance between truth and error, nay between good and evil, between honour and dishonour. The schoolmaster is the fanatic vassal of democracy. ”

“ Behind every phenomenon, behind every thought as well, every feeling, every institution—behind everything, no matter what it be, Plato perceived an idea, immortal, eternal, indestructible, and incorruptible, which existed in the bosom of the Eternal, and of which all that comes under our observation is only the vacillating and troubled reflection, and which supports, animates, and for a time preserves everything that we can perceive. Hence, all philosophy consists in having some knowledge of these Ideas. ”

“ At another time, Nietzsche asks whether we ought not to respect the right, which after all belongs to the multitude, to direct itself according to an ideal—there are of course many ideals—and according to the ideal which is its own. Ought we to refuse to the masses the right to search out truth for themselves, the right to believe that they have found it when they come upon a faith that seems to them vital, a faith that is to them as their very life? The masses are the foundation on which all humanity rests, the basis of all culture. ”

“ Imbued with the spirit of Socrates, even when more or less unfaithful to him, Plato, psychologist, moralist, metaphysician, sociologist, marvellous poet in prose, seductive and fascinating mythologist, really created philosophy in such fashion that even the most modern systems, if not judged by how much they agree or differ from him, at least invariably recall him, whether they seem a distant echo of him or whether they challenge and combat him. ”

“ There is therefore no free-will in the soul, the soul is determined to will this or that by a cause which is itself determined by another and that by another, and so on to infinity.
Nevertheless we believe ourselves to be free and according to the principle of evidence we are; for nothing is more evident to us than our liberty. We are as intimately convinced of our liberty as of our existence and we all affirm, I am free,—with the same emphasis that Descartes affirms: I am. I am and I am free are the two things it is impossible for man to doubt, no matter what effort he makes. ”

“ But democracy will not allow that it needs a corrective, and the old man, to it, is only an enemy. The old man upholds tradition and has no enthusiasm for progress, but beyond this he appeals for respect, first for himself, then for religion, for glory, for his country and for the history of his nation. Democracy is indifferent to the sentiment of respect, or rather it lives in constant fear that the sentiment may be applied elsewhere. ”

“ Man rises not to comprehension of Him but to the perception of Him by a series of degrees which are, as it were, the progressive purification of faith, and which lead us to a kind of union with Him resembling that of one being with another whom he could never see, but of whose presence he could have no doubt. Matter, that is, the universe, is an emanation from God, as perfume comes from a flower. All is not God, and only God can be God, but all is divine and all participates in God, just as each of our thoughts participates of our soul. ”

“ THE RAMAYANA.—The Mahabharata (that is, the great history of the Bharatas) is a legend or a novel in verse intersected with moral digressions, with episodes vaguely related to the subject, with discourses and prayers. There are charming episodes full of delicate sensibility, of moving tenderness—that is to say, of human beauty, comparable to the farewells of Hector and Andromache in Homer; and everywhere, amid tediousness and monotony, is found a powerful and superabundant imagination. ”

“ What do we understand by the principle of a government? It is not that which makes it be such and such a thing, but that "which makes it act" in a particular way, as Montesquieu has remarked; that is, "the human passions which supply the motive forces of life." It is clear then that the passion for sovereignty, for equality, for incompetence, is not sufficient to give to a government a life which is at once complete and strong. ”

“ WAR.—But, as each people will always find its own idea finer than that of another, how is this to be recognized?—By victory itself. It is victory which proves that a people ... was stronger than another!—Not only stronger materially but representing a greater, more practical, more fruitful idea than the other; for it is precisely the idea which supports a people and renders it strong. ”

“ This was the golden age of English literature: the epoch in which, awakened or excited by the Renaissance, her genius gave forth all its development in fruits that were marvellous.
First, there was Spenser, alike impregnated with the Italian Renaissance and gifted with the slightly fantastic imagination of his own countrymen, who wrote eclogues, in his Shepheard's Calender, in imitation of Theocritus and Virgil as well as of the Italians of the sixteenth century, and who gave charming descriptions in his Faerie Queene. ”

“ But they would not have it; so here I am, a man who knows the law and applies it. So much the worse for them!"
"By making a man a slave Zeus took from him half his soul." So Homer. By making a man a politician, Demos takes from him his whole soul, and in omitting to make him a politician, it is foolish enough to leave him his soul.
This is why Demos hates a permanent civil service. An irremovable magistrate or functionary is a man whom the constitution sets free from the grip of the populace. An irremovable official is a man enfranchised, a free man. Demos does not love free men. ”

“ His philosophy was Platonic, or rather the bent of his mind was Platonic. God is the absolute Being; He is unnamable, since any name is a delimitation of the being; He is absolutely and infinitely. As the creator of all and uncreated, He is the cause per se; as the goal to which all things tend, He is the supreme end. The human soul is of impenetrable essence like God Himself; accordingly, it is God in us. We have fallen through the body and, whilst in the flesh, we can, by virtue and more especially by the virtue of penitence, raise ourselves to the height of the angels. ”

“ What is there within us which commands respect, which does not ask for love or fear, but for respect alone? He has given us the answer. The feeling of respect is the only thing that we can trust, and that will never fail us.
In society the only feelings we obey are those which win our respect, and the men to whom we listen, and whom we honour, are those who inspire respect. This is the only criterion which enables us to gauge correctly the men and things to whom we owe, if not absolute obedience, at least attention and deference. ”

“ THE ILIAD.—The Iliad is the story of the wrath of Achilles, of his retreat far from his friends who were endeavouring to capture Troy and of his return to them.
It is the poem of patriotism. It is filled with the spirit that when a people is divided against itself, all misfortunes fall on and overwhelm it. Achilles, unjustly offended, deprived his fellow-countrymen of his support; they are all on the point of perishing ”

“ David Hume believes in nothing, and, in consequence, it may be said that he is not a philosopher; he has no philosophic system. He has no philosophic system, it is true; but he is a critic of philosophy, and therefore he philosophizes. Matter has no existence; as we know nothing about it, we should not say it exists. But we ourselves, we exist. All that we can know about that is that in us there is a succession of ideas, of representations; but we, but I, what is that? Of that we know nothing. We are present at a series of pictures, and we may call their totality the ego ”

“ His was a charming soul, tender and gentle, infinitely capable of friendship, very pure and white, as Horace said, with a tendency to melancholy. The two sources of his inspiration were Homer and love of Rome; add, for a time, Theocritus. Lover of the country and of moral life, he first wrote those delicious Bucolics wherein he did not venture to be as realistic as the Sicilian poet, but in which there is not only infinite grace and delicate sensibility, but also, in certain verses, admirable descriptions that arouse memories of those of La Fontaine. ”

“ So entirely does democracy choose its legislators, because they are dominated by passion, and not in spite of the fact, chooses them indeed precisely for the reasons for which it ought to reject them, that any moderate, clear-headed, practical man who wants to be elected and make use of his powers, has to start by dissembling his moderation, and by making a noisy display of factious violence. If he wants to be nominated to a post where it will be his business to defend and guarantee public security, he has to begin by advocating civil war: to become a peacemaker he must first pose as a rebel. ”

“ Socrates had been poor, had scorned wealth, had derided pleasure, and poured contempt on science. The cult of poverty, the contempt for pleasures, for honours, for riches, and the perfect conviction that any knowledge is perfectly useless to man—that is all the teaching of Antisthenes. That can lead far, at least in systematic minds. If all is contemptible except individual virtue, it is reversion to savage and solitary existence which is preached: there is no more civilization or society or patriotism. Antisthenes in these ideas was surpassed by his disciples and successors ”

“ We deplore that democracy surrenders itself to politicians, but from its own point of view, a point of view which it cannot avoid taking up, it is absolutely right. What is a politician? He is a man who, in respect of his personal opinions, is a nullity, in respect of education, a mediocrity, he shares the general sentiments and passions of the crowd, his sole occupation is politics, and if that career were closed to him, he would die of starvation. ”

“ Does the understanding furnish the idea of "you ought"? By no means; it gives us ideas of quantity, of quality, of cause and effect, etc., and that is all; there is no "you ought" in all that. Therefore this "you ought" is purely human; it is the only principle which comes exactly from ourselves only. It might therefore well be the very foundation of us.—It may be an illusion.—No doubt, but it is highly remarkable that it exists, though nothing gives it birth or is of a nature to give it birth. ”