In these last days science has retrograded and been driven back. It has
been bent and twisted under the obligation imposed upon it, if I may so
speak, of denying the existence of Evil under pain of being convicted of
denying the existence of God.
Writers whose business it is to display exquisite sensibility, unbounded
philanthropy, and unrivaled devotion to religion, have got into the way of
saying, “Evil cannot enter into the providential plan. Suffering is no
ordinance of God and nature, but comes from human institutions.”
As this doctrine falls in with the passions that they desire to cherish,
it soon becomes popular. Books and journals have been filled with
declamations against society. Science is no longer permitted to study facts
impartially. Whoever dares to warn men that a certain vice, a certain habit,
leads necessarily to certain hurtful consequences is marked down as a man
devoid of human feelings, without religion, an Atheist, a Malthusian, an
Economist.
Socialism has carried its folly so far as to announce the termination of all
social suffering, but not of all individual suffering. It has not ventured to
predict that a day will come when man willno longer suffer, grow old, and
die.
Now, I would ask, is it easier to reconcile with the infinite goodness of
God, evil that assails individually every man who comes into the world, than
evil that is extended over society at large? And then is it not a
contradiction so transparent as to be puerile to deny the existence of
suffering in the masses, when we admit its existence in individuals?
Man suffers, and will always suffer. Society, then, also suffers, and will
always suffer. Those who address mankind should have the courage to tell it
this. Humanity is not a fine lady, with delicate nerves, and an irritable
temperament, from whom we must conceal the coming storm, more especially when
to foresee it is the only way to ensure our getting out of it safely. In this
respect, all the books with which France has been inundated, from Sismondi
and Buret downward, appear to me to be wanting in virility. Their authors
dare not tell the truth; nay, they dare not investigate it, for fear of
discovering that absolute poverty is the necessary starting point of the
human race, and that, consequently, so far are we from being in a position to
attribute that poverty to the social order, it is to the social order that we
must attribute all the triumphs we have already achieved over our original
destitution. But, then, after such an avowal, they could no longer constitute
themselves tribunes of the people, and the avengers of the masses oppressed
by civilization.
After all, science merely establishes, combines, and deduces facts; she
does not create them; she does not produce them, nor is she responsible for
them. Is it not strange that men should have gone to the length of announcing
and disseminating the paradox that if mankind suffers, its sufferings are due
to Political Economy? Thus, after being blamed for investigating the
sufferings of society, Political Economy is accused of engendering those
sufferings by that same investigation.
I assert that science can do nothing more than observe and establish
facts. Prove to us that humanity, instead of being progressive, is
retrograde; and that inevitable and insurmountable laws urge mankind on to
irremediable deterioration. Show us that the law of Malthus and that of
Ricardo are true in their worst and most pernicious sense, and that it is
impossible to deny the tyranny of capital, or the incompatibility between
machinery and labor, or any of the other contradictory alternatives in which
Chateaubriand and Tocqueville have placed the human race; then I maintain
that science ought to proclaim this, and proclaim it aloud.
Why should we shut our eyes to a gulf that is gaping before us? Do we require
the naturalist or the physiologist to reason upon individual man on the
assumption that his organs are exempt from pain or not liable to destruction?
Pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris; such is the declaration of anatomical
science backed by universal experience. No doubt this is a hard truth for us
to receive—not less hard than the contested propositions of Malthus and
Ricardo. But are we for this reason to spare the delicate sensibility that
has sprung up all at once among our modern publicists, and has given
existence to Socialism? Is medical science for the same reason, to affirm
audaciously that we are constantly renewing our youth and are immortal? Or if
medical science refuse to stoop to such juggling, are we to foam at the mouth
and cry out, as has been done in the case of the social sciences— “Medical
science admits the existence of pain and death; it is misanthropical; it is
cruel; it accuses God of being malevolent or powerless; it is impious; it is
atheistical; nay, more, it creates the evil the existence of which it refuses
to deny”?
I have never doubted that the Socialist schools have led away many
generous hearts and earnest minds, and I have no wish to humiliate anyone.
But the general character of Socialism is very whimsical, and I cannot help
asking myself how long such a tissue of puerilities can continue in vogue.
In Socialism all is affectation.
It affects scientific forms and scientific language, and we have seen what
sort of science it teaches.
In its writings it affects a delicacy of nerve so feminine as to be unable
to listen to a tale of social sufferings; and while it has introduced into
literature this insipid and mawkish sensibility, it has established in the
arts a taste for the trivial and the horrible; in ordinary life, a sort of scarecrow
fashion in dress, appearance, and deportment—the long beard, the grim and
sullen countenance, the vulgar airs of a village Titan or Prometheus. In
politics (where such puerilities are less innocent), Socialism has introduced
the doctrine of energetic means of transition, the violence of revolutionary
practices, life and material interests sacrificed en masse to what is ideal
and chimerical. But what Socialism affects, above all, is a certain show and
appearance of religion! This is only one of the Socialist tactics, it is
true—such tactics are always disgraceful to a school when they lead to
hypocrisy.
These Socialists are perpetually talking to us of Christ; but I would ask
them, how it is that while they acknowledge that Christ, the innocent par
excellence, prayed in His agony that “the cup might pass from Him,” adding,
“Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done,” they should think it strange
that mankind at large should be called upon to exercise resignation also.
No doubt, had God willed it, He might have so arranged His almighty plans
that just as the individual advances toward inevitable death, the human race
might have advanced toward inevitable destruction. In that case, we should
have had no choice but to submit, and science, whether she liked it or not,
would have to have admitted the somber social denouement, just as she now
admits the melancholy individual denouement.
But happily it is not so.
There is redemption for man, and for humanity.
The one is endowed with an immortal soul; the other with indefinite
perfectibility.
