French society

“ A certain aggregation of personages, actions, emotions and moods, ideas and works, which make their appearance in France, find expression in the French language, and influence French society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, form in my eyes a naturally coherent group, from the fact that they all centre round one idea, namely, the re-establishment of a fallen power. This fallen power is the principle of authority.
By the principle of authority I understand the principle which assumes the life of the individual and of the nation to be based upon reverence for inherited tradition. ”

“ A nation with a genius for society, like the French or the Athenians, is irresistibly drawn towards equality. From the first moment when the French people, with its congenital sense for the power of social intercourse and manners, came into existence, it was on the road to equality. When it had once got a high standard of social manners abundantly established, and at the same time the natural, material necessity for the feudal inequality of classes and property pressed upon it no longer, the French people introduced equality and made the French Revolution. ”

“ Mixed Society.—Influence of the English Clergy and their Families.—Importance of their station in Society.
Though I am still of opinion that French society, properly so called,—that is to say, the society of the educated ladies and gentlemen of France,—is the most graceful, animated, and fascinating in the world; I think, nevertheless, that it is not as perfect as it might be, were a little more exclusiveness permitted in the formation of it. ”

“ But under the French Empire they have become glaringly rampant, and I venture to predict that the day is not far off when the rot at work throughout all layers and strata of French society will insure a fall of the fabric at the sound of which the world will ring. ”

“ Old French society, founded on the right of property and the permanence of families and fortunes, rejected luxuries, superfluities, and useless expense. In everything, it had an eye to the solid and durable. ”

“ In France such matters are far better managed, and the love of art is a thousand times more keen; and (from this feeling, surely) how much superiority is there in French SOCIETY over our own; how much better is social happiness understood; how much more manly equality is there between Frenchman and Frenchman, than between rich and poor in our own country, with all our superior wealth, instruction, and political freedom! ”

“ If the conservative elements of French society know how to combine and to form a united body, if the party spirit which prevails among them shall give way to a large and enlightened political spirit, then France, and the democracy of France, are saved. ”

“ Nor should the Society forget the eloquent appeal of the French liberals, through the pen of Gasparin, to the nobler feelings of our people, or the loving kindness with which they pointed out to us the path of duty in the future, in that memorable letter which makes one of the series of publications of the Society. ”

“ Without a clear view of society in the olden time, of its laws, its faults, its prejudices, its sufferings, its greatness, it is impossible to understand the conduct of the French during the sixty years which have followed its fall. ”

“ In a discussion upon French manners, and the present condition of French society, it is impossible but that one great and leading observation must almost immediately present itself, and the truth of which, on whatever side, or to whatever class of society you may turn, becomes only the more apparent as you take the longer time to consider it ”

“ Do they exhibit an aristocracy opposed to a democracy; or a nobility, a bourgeoisie, and a so-called people? Would these diversities and inequalities of social and political{54} position form, or tend to form, a hierarchy of classes analogous to those which formerly existed in French society? ”

“ Now, if so much of the interest of the French Revolution depends on our minute knowledge of each passing incident, how much more necessary is such knowledge when we are dealing with the quiet nooks and corners of history—when we are seeking an introduction, let us say, into the literary society of Johnson or the fashionable society of Walpole! Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without intimacy, and no intimacy without interest in trifles. ”

“ POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PEACE IN FRANCE. Whenever it shall have been distinctly perceived and fully admitted that the different classes which exist among us, and the political parties which correspond to those classes, are natural and deeply-rooted elements of French society, a great step will have been made towards social peace. ”

“ A society devoted to letters and to conversation embraced and disseminated the speculative literature of the age, and thus the great literary men of the eighteenth century became in France what politicians sometimes strive to be in happier lands, the fountains of political inspiration, and the real leaders of public thought. ”

“ All serious discussion on matters on which opinions differ, being considered ill-bred, and the national deficiency in liveliness and sociability having prevented the cultivation of the art of talking agreeably on trifles, in which the French of the last century so much excelled, the sole attraction of what is called society to those who are not at the top of the tree, is the hope of being aided to climb a little higher in it ”

“ The individualism of the French Revolution, and very likely the necessities of that time, had caused it to object to the existence of all societies and associations of whatever kind, and right up to the end of the nineteenth century no society of more than twenty persons could exist in France without government permission. ”

“ It seems no difficult matter to ascribe most of the differences which we observe between the English and French character to the differences in the habits of the people, occasioned by form of government and various assignable causes: and the French character, in particular, has very much the appearance of being moulded by the artificial form of society which prevails among the people. ”

“ But the principle which actuated the French nobility, at the time alluded to, is an inherent one in the human mind, and would be likely to repeat itself in some shape or another, not so violently perhaps, but still to repeat itself, were it not kept in check by the known laws of society. ”

“ A part of the people engaged in an imitation that became here the shallowest nonsense, while the other portion of the community, which was hostile to French ideas, took up and propagated the notion that the welfare of civilized society lay with England and with English opinions. ”

“ The Social Question in France.—Socialism is the historical outcome of democracy; for political equality being secured, the next step was naturally towards social equality, or equality of opportunity At the same time theoretical social reform was quickened in France by the French fondness for the ideal. ”

“ When, through the force of events, and the natural laws of society, for the development of which France offers such free play, equality shall be established in functions and fortunes, then the beaux and the belles, the savants and the artists, will form new classes. ”

“ All this, in France, has been formed under the guardianship of society, and, in its progressive development, has uniformly been guided and determined by it—the guardianship of a society which zealously imitated the tone of the capital, which again took its direction from the reigning modes of a brilliant court. ”

“ It reminded me, as one is reminded at every turn, of the democratic conditions of French life: a man of the people, with a wife en bonnet, extremely intelligent, full of special knowledge, and yet remaining essentially of the people, and showing his intelligence with a kind of ferocity, of defiance. Such a personage helps one to understand the red radicalism of France, the revolutions, the barricades, the sinister passion for theories. ”

“ Who is there who, being thoroughly acquainted with our neighbouring friends over the Channel, will deny that, both at home and abroad, France will prove happier under less visionary theorists and less furious patriots? More hopefulness and quietude, at all events, more religion and morality therefrom, more oneness in feeling and interest between French people decidedly would grow speedily in the place of sensitive and selfish Babelites who grow nothing else but social disaffection and political Revolution. ”

“ All generous social irradiations spring from science, letters, arts, education. Make men, make men. Give them light that they may warm you. Sooner or later the splendid question of universal education will present itself with the irresistible authority of the absolute truth; and then, those who govern under the superintendence of the French idea will have to make this choice; the children of France or the gamins of Paris; flames in the light or will-o’-the-wisps in the gloom.
The gamin expresses Paris, and Paris expresses the world. ”

“ They risked their lives and happiness for its benefit! Had there been more of those men, France would not now be a beacon to warn us of the hazard and horror of Revolutions, but a pattern of society rapidly advancing to a state of perfection, and holding out an example for the gradual and peaceful regeneration of the world. I consider it to be one of the effects of a Philanthropic Association to assist in the production of such men as these, in an extensive development of those germs of excellence whose favourite soil is the cultured garden of the human mind. ”

“ The English enterprise found its vigorous life and animating spirit in working towards democracy, civil liberty, and soul-freedom. The French came here as soldiers, priests, and free-traders, with the range of the woods for their goods, and the natives as hunters in their service. But they wholly lacked that sturdy class — the bone and sinew of a community planting itself for new empire on virgin soil — of patient toilers on a reclaimed farm, with rights of severalty for homesteads; individuals in their efforts and success, but members of a commonwealth for mutual help and security. ”

“ The French nation, in their revolution, tried the experiment of abstracting from their history, of levelling all distinctions of culture, of enthroning a despotism of Reason, and of organizing itself as humanity, pure and simple. ”

“ To understand France in this and many other matters we must bear in mind that the whole tendency of modern French institutions is to produce, not what the English call the gentleman, but the middle-class man, or bourgeois, in enormous numbers. ”

“ All conventions are limitations on thought, feeling, and action; and, as such, are the enemies of originality and character—hateful, therefore, to men richly endowed with either. French conventions, however, have a specious air of liberality, and France offers to him who will be bound by them partnership in the most perfect of modern civilizations—a civilization, be it noted, of which her conventions are themselves an expression. ”

“ In this province, as in every other, the principle of authority has as its opponent the principle of free thought—in various forms. If we leave the socialistic theories (which we shall consider later in connection with the Saint-Simonists) altogether out of the question, we find authority confronted in the matter under discussion by free thought in the shape of the principle of individualism, as developed by English, French, and American thinkers. ”

“ So that today no more than before do the public or M. Arago, in spite of their somersault, know what they want.
What a herd is the French nation in this nineteenth century, with its three powers, its press, its scientific bodies, its literature, its instruction! A hundred thousand men, in our country, have their eyes constantly open upon everything that interests national progress and the country's honor. Now, propound to these hundred thousand men the simplest question of public order, and you may be assured that all will rush pell-mell into the same absurdity. ”

“ The more closely one looks into the social annals of France, the more amazing it is that the world should so long have swallowed the monstrous misrepresentations current in our century, as to the condition of the French people before 1789, and especially as to the organisation, under the ancien régime, of public charity and of public education in France. ”

“ Ah, Sir, the French Revolution has opened our eyes to a species of equality more rational, because more feasible, than that of lands or of rank; an equality not alone of mental sufferings, but of manual exertions. No state of life, however low, or however hard, has been left untried, either by the highest, or by the most delicate, in the various dispersions and desolation of the ancient French nobility. ”

“ But the Revolution taught France and some other people that a nation, like any other structure, is insecure when its foundation is agitated. The foundation of a nation is the enormous mass of working people, and that foundation the French have learned to respect and treat well. ”

“ Notwithstanding the world-wide advertisement of the French experiment, it has taken almost a century for the dogma of equality, at least outside of France, to filter down from the speculative thinkers into a general popular acceptance, as an active principle to be used in the shaping of affairs, and to become more potent in the popular mind than tradition or habit. ”