Louis Lambert, Honoré de Balzac [best fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

/> Moliere, inimitable; Voltaire, supremely witty; Bossuet and
Pascal, incomparable in argument. A professor of philosophy may
make a name by explaining how Plato is Platonic. Another
discourses on the history of words, without troubling himself
about ideas. One explains Aeschylus, another tells you that
communes were communes, and neither more nor less. These original
and brilliant discoveries, diluted to last several hours,
constitute the higher education which is to lead to giant strides
in human knowledge.

"If the Government could have an idea, I should suspect it of
being afraid of any real superiority, which, once roused, might
bring Society under the yoke of an intelligent rule. Then nations
would go too far and too fast; so professors are appointed to
produce simpletons. How else can we account for a scheme devoid of
method or any notion of the future?

"The _Institut_ might be the central government of the moral and
intellectual world; but it has been ruined lately by its
subdivision into separate academies. So human science marches on,
without a guide, without a system, and floats haphazard with no
road traced out.

"This vagueness and uncertainty prevails in politics as well as in
science. In the order of nature means are simple, the end is grand
and marvelous; here in science as in government, the means are
stupendous, the end is mean. The force which in nature proceeds at
an equal pace, and of which the sum is constantly being added to
itself--the A + A from which everything is produced--is
destructive in society. Politics, at the present time, place human
forces in antagonism to neutralize each other, instead of
combining them to promote their action to some definite end.

"Looking at Europe alone, from Caesar to Constantine, from the
puny Constantine to the great Attila, from the Huns to
Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Leo X., from Leo X., to Philip
II., from Philip II. to Louis XIV.; from Venice to England, from
England to Napoleon, from Napoleon to England, I see no fixed
purpose in politics; its constant agitation has led to no
progress.

"Nations leave witnesses to their greatness in monuments, and to
their happiness in the welfare of individuals. Are modern
monuments as fine as those of the ancients? I doubt it. The arts,
which are the direct outcome of the individual, the products of
genius or of handicraft, have not advanced much. The pleasures of
Lucullus were as good as those of Samuel Bernard, of Beaujon, or
of the King of Bavaria. And then human longevity has diminished.

"Thus, to those who will be candid, man is still the same; might
is his only law, and success his only wisdom.

"Jesus Christ, Mahomet, and Luther only lent a different hue to
the arena in which youthful nations disport themselves.

"No development of politics has hindered civilization, with its
riches, its manners, its alliance of the strong against the weak,
its ideas, and its delights, from moving from Memphis to Tyre,
from Tyre to Baalbek, from Tadmor to Carthage, from Carthage to
Rome, from Rome to Constantinople, from Constantinople to Venice,
from Venice to Spain, from Spain to England--while no trace is
left of Memphis, of Tyre, of Carthage, of Rome, of Venice, or
Madrid. The soul of those great bodies has fled. Not one of them
has preserved itself from destruction, nor formulated this axiom:
When the effect produced ceases to be in a ratio to its cause,
disorganization follows.

"The most subtle genius can discover no common bond between great
social facts. No political theory has ever lasted. Governments
pass away, as men do, without handing down any lesson, and no
system gives birth to a system better than that which came before
it. What can we say about politics when a Government directly
referred to God perished in India and Egypt; when the rule of the
Sword and of the Tiara are past; when Monarchy is dying; when the
Government of the People has never been alive; when no scheme of
intellectual power as applied to material interests has ever
proved durable, and everything at this day remains to be done all
over again, as it has been at every period when man has turned to
cry out, 'I am in torment!'

"The code, which is considered Napoleon's greatest achievement, is
the most Draconian work I know of. Territorial subdivision carried
out to the uttermost, and its principle confirmed by the equal
division of property generally, must result in the degeneracy of
the nation and the death of the Arts and Sciences. The land, too
much broken up, is cultivated only with cereals and small crops;
the forests, and consequently the rivers, are disappearing; oxen
and horses are no longer bred. Means are lacking both for attack
and for resistance. If we should be invaded, the people must be
crushed; it has lost its mainspring--its leaders. This is the
history of deserts!

"Thus the science of politics has no definite principles, and it
can have no fixity; it is the spirit of the hour, the perpetual
application of strength proportioned to the necessities of the
moment. The man who should foresee two centuries ahead would die
on the place of execution, loaded with the imprecations of the
mob, or else--which seems worse--would be lashed with the myriad
whips of ridicule. Nations are but individuals, neither wiser nor
stronger than man, and their destinies are identical. If we
reflect on man, is not that to consider mankind?

"By studying the spectacle of society perpetually storm-tossed in
its foundations as well as in its results, in its causes as well
as in its actions, while philanthropy is but a splendid mistake,
and progress is vanity, I have been confirmed in this truth: Life
is within and not without us; to rise above men, to govern them,
is only the part of an aggrandized school-master; and those men
who are capable of rising to the level whence they can enjoy a
view of the world should not look at their own feet.

"November 4th.

"I am no doubt occupied with weighty thoughts, I am on the way to
certain discoveries, an invincible power bears me toward a
luminary which shone at an early age on the darkness of my moral
life; but what name can I give to the power that ties my hands and
shuts my mouth, and drags me in a direction opposite to my
vocation? I must leave Paris, bid farewell to the books in the
libraries, those noble centres of illumination, those kindly and
always accessible sages, and the younger geniuses with whom I
sympathize. Who is it that drives me away? Chance or Providence?

"The two ideas represented by those words are irreconcilable. If
Chance does not exist, we must admit fatalism, that is to say, the
compulsory co-ordination of things under the rule of a general
plan. Why then do we rebel? If man is not free, what becomes of
the scaffolding of his moral sense? Or, if he can control his
destiny, if by his own freewill he can interfere with the
execution of the general plan, what becomes of God?

"Why did I come here? If I examine myself, I find the answer: I
find in myself axioms that need developing. But why then have I
such vast faculties without being suffered to use them? If my
suffering could serve as an example, I could understand it; but
no, I suffer unknown.

"This is perhaps as much the act of Providence as the fate of the
flower that dies unseen in the heart of the virgin forest, where
no one can enjoy its perfume or admire its splendor. Just as that
blossom vainly sheds its fragrance to the solitude, so do I, here
in the garret, give birth to ideas that no one can grasp.

"Yesterday evening I sat eating bread and grapes in front of my
window with a young doctor named Meyraux. We talked as men do whom
misfortune has joined in brotherhood, and I said to him:

"'I am going away; you are staying. Take up my ideas and develop
them.'

"'I cannot!' said he, with bitter regret: 'my feeble health
cannot stand so much work, and I shall die young of my struggle
with penury.'

"We looked up at the sky and grasped hands. We first met at the
Comparative Anatomy course, and in the galleries of the Museum,
attracted thither by the same study--the unity of geological
structure. In him this was the presentiment of genius sent to open
a new path in the fallows of intellect; in me it was a deduction
from a general system.

"My point is to ascertain the real relation that may exist between
God and man. Is not this a need of the age? Without the highest
assurance, it is impossible to put bit and bridle on the social
factions that have been let loose by the spirit of scepticism and
discussion, and which are now crying aloud: 'Show us a way in
which we may walk and find no pitfalls in our way!'

"You will wonder what comparative anatomy has to do with a
question of such importance to the future of society. Must we not
attain to the conviction that man is the end of all earthly means
before we ask whether he too is not the means to some end? If man
is bound up with everything, is there not something above him with
which he again is bound up? If he is the end-all of the explained
transmutations that lead up to him, must he not be also the link
between the visible and invisible creations?

"The activity of the universe is not absurd; it must tend to an
end, and that end is surely not a social body constituted as ours
is! There is a fearful gulf between us and heaven. In our present
existence we can neither be always happy nor always in torment;
must there not be some tremendous change to bring about Paradise
and Hell, two images without which God cannot exist to the mind of
the vulgar? I know that a compromise was made by the invention of
the Soul; but it is repugnant to me to make God answerable for
human baseness, for our disenchantments, our aversions, our
degeneracy.

"Again, how can we recognize as divine the principle within us
which can be overthrown by a few glasses of rum? How conceive of
immaterial faculties which matter can conquer, and whose exercise
is suspended by a grain of opium? How imagine that we shall be
able to feel when we are bereft of the vehicles of sensation? Why
must God perish if matter can be proved to think? Is the vitality
of matter in its innumerable manifestations--the effect