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Europe-including, M. Guizot. But the difference of time is too, many as great or greater intellects than only one of the elements of diversity in human judgments.

Of this habitual diversity there are two general causes. The one consists in the variety of circumstances in which the same subject is seen by different persons. The other, in the variations of condition under which the subject itself may exist at different times. To the class of influences which affect the vision belong, preeminently, education, religion, the several passions, the particular pursuits, the personal interests. Now these are all so many packets of judgments made up by other parties-whether man, or God, or nature and imposed upon each individual who is born into society. The process by which he applies them is therefore not judgment, but mere association. At the impression of a particular fact, the opinion originally attached to it springs up spontaneously. The man-machine does but take the labeled judgment from his packet and deposit it -much like the Laputan philosophers who conversed by means of bundles of sticks. Such is, however, the judgment of most men upon most subjects from the cradle to the grave. It is necessarily the judgment of all men, and of all ages of mankind, until they have attained that intellectual manhood which fits and sets them to review the provisional teachings of their nonage, and to transform into principles what had been hitherto but prejudices. We mean by "prejudices," not necessarily errors; but, according to the etymology, simple pre-judgments, or judgments without examination.

But the transformation will evidently be more difficult, more imperfect, in proportion as the prejudices are reinforced by each other. Thus, if the religion second the passions, as in some infamous superstitions of antiquity, it will be more difficult to rectify the perversions of either than if they stood opposite or even isolated. Harder still must be the task, if not quite hopeless, when the early inculcations of religion are followed up by the routine of profession, and fortified by the instincts of interest. For if a statesman has devoted his life to the inculcation of a certain form government, has risen to public honors hits temporary ascendancy, has in

vested in its triumph the sole passion of his nature, and the most obstinate of the human heart, which is pride—we need not be surprised to find him not very perspicacious into the errors of that system; especially at the hour of its downfall and his own. But this was the predicament of the standard-bearer of the Doctrinaires and ex-minister of the ex-royalty of France.

Yet the more fundamental error of Guizot's book does not proceed from the distortions of those prejudices precisely. It has its root rather in the second of our general causes of misjudgment—the inadvertence to, not to say ignorance of the variation of conditions. Guizot reasons as if men were composed of the same mental and moral elements to-day, as upon descending from the ark. He recognizes no normal progression in man or in government. He employs, indeed, the word; but it is only with a tone of resignation or an air of derision. "Order," as the end, "power" as the means, and the eternal statu quo which would be their necessary consequence-this is the hopeful triad of his govermental providence ;—a psychological phenomenon truly wonderful in a French philosopher of the present day, and which requires a large combination and intensity of the above influences to confirm it; but stranger still in a man who had lectured long on the history of civilization. For the principle of civilization is quite incompatible with the theory in question, which considers man, we repeat, as fixed a quantity as a metal or a stone, of which the properties are eternally the same in all circumstances.

It is needless to state that this is not the case with any organized being. On the contrary the normal condition of this form of existence is continual change. And the change becomes more intense and indefinite in proportion as the object ascends in the scale of organization, from the vegetable to man, and from man himself to society. It is thus that during childhood, the individual and the state are governed respectively by the pedagogue and the priest. On advancing to maturity they demand different rulers. This continual progression of govermental forms, resulting from the aggregate and accumulated progressions of the governed, is the key,

as it has been the cause, of the late European revolutions; and not only these in particular, but the key to the whole history, the laws, the destinies of society. It is then against this history, these laws, that destiny, that M. Guizot has had the hardihood to erect the sandbank of his book, after their indignant flood had just submerged the barricades of his master.

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the consideration of the Whig party, policy is already proficient in combining firmness of principle with flexibility of modification. There remains in fact little else than to substitute gradually the guidance of science for the sure, indeed, but less systematic impulses of patriotism and the effete phraseology of past politics. These things have served us tolerably hitherto. In the light of these general remarks While confined to the native bays and inrespecting the nature and occasion of the land seas of our political infancy, we errors suggested, we now proceed to exem- might, as did the ancient mariners, conplify in a careful and consecutive analysis. trive to get along by coasting in view of First, however, it seems proper to advise the promontories of precedent, marking the the reader, on the other hand, that it is rocks and quicksands of party opposition, not errors alone which it will be our duty and looking aloft for our last bearings to the to point him out. The excellencies of de- familiar stars of the Revolutionary Fathers. tail are a good deal more numerous, and of But this state of things is changed. We incontestible truth and importance. At are fast and irresistibly drifting out into a present these lie lost in a great degree to shoreless ocean, where other principles of all parties. By the progressives they are steerage are perilously indispensable. They included in the general prejudice against must be something independent of all inthe known politics of the author. To the dividuals, of all examples, of all times, conservatives they teach no lesson, being because embracing them all. This new represented as concessions or casualties, compass is the application of political or instead of general and providential causes. social science. And the party whose To the impartial they bring no firm con- statesmen shall have first appropriated it viction, because of their incongruity with in this country may reasonably count upon the spirit and purpose of the publication. a long possession of the helm of affairs. Now, by exposing this incongruity; by de- Better and higher than this, by breaking taching this vigorous undergrowth of prac- loose from red-tape, and routine, and rastical truths from the rotten trunk of "or-cality of the present practice, they would der," upon which Guizot would engraft them; by distinguishing both in his doctrines and in the principles which he combats, the chaff to be given to the fire from the grain to be stored for use, the latter may be rendered acceptable as well as instructive to all.

But it would be particularly available to the American people-because the only people that have yet appeared upon the stage of the world in the condition to organize deliberately into an harmonious and enduring system, the adverse movements that are now distracting and long shall disorder the social peace and prosperity of Europe; and not only of Europe, but after it of Asia, and so outward to the most torpid extremities of humanity. This we owe as an inheritance to our own posterity, as an example to mankind, as a debt to divine Providence, who has placed the attainment peculiarly not only within our reach, but athwart our path. It is a pride to this Journal to commend it especially to

introduce into the art of goverment a revolution no less remarkable, perhaps, than was effected by the magnet in the art of navigation.

But, in the third place, the mode proposed of examining the book of Guizot, will afford us also the pleasure of doing justice, amidst his faults, to a writer to whom, after all, both the letters and politics of the age are quite as much indebted as to any other individual thinker. A man whose soul, still loftier than his genius, does honor to the literary character-so much in need, heaven knows, of an occasional redemption. A man of that sublime, because self-centred dignity, which the petty stigmatize as pride, and which remained the same through his wide vicissitudes of fortune; the same when a nameless student he wrote for the newspapers from the purlieus of Paris, as when after he stood forth at the head of the French nation, that is to say, the official leader of modern civilization. And the same still in his fall,

when left by his lofty integrity to write for bread again. This is a heart that might have covered a thousand faults of head in even the most magnanimous ages of the world. How should it then be prized in an age like the present, of universal turmoil aud trimming, when so many beggars get on horseback and fulfil the proverb, and statesmen of rank descend into jacketed monkeys in order to ensconce themselves upon the flat back of the multitude, seldom failing to ride it in the same dark direction!

And now to the book. It is distributed into seven or eight chapters, arranged and entitled as follows: "Sources of the evil. Government in a Democracy. The Democratic form of Republic. The Socialist Republic. The Real and Essential Elements of Society in France. Political Conditions of Social Equality in France. Moral Conditions of the Same, and-Conclusion.

quences no less monstrous than the following: That civilization itself can be no boon, for it has been baptized at every successive transformation, in the blood of individuals, and even nations; that it is, moreover, an accident not contemplated in the scheme of Providence, who could have designed no evil; or if designed, why, then that the Creator has been less competent to execute his own plans, than the sect of the Doctrinarians, who could arrive, it seems, at the same goal by the stagnant policy of "Order," that civilization has attained by the turbulent career of progress.

But, again, what is, in general, to be considered evil, public or private? If every partial and temporary suffering, then the medicine that afflicts, the knife that mutilates to prevent disease or death, and the patriotism that makes war to protect right or prevent dishonor, are perpetrators of evil; while the pleasure that ends by killing, and the peace that begins by corOur analysis will proceed step by step in rupting are, on the contrary, to be called this order: good. The public profession and perpetuWhence comes the evil? (of the presentation of the former practices have, howevtimes.) M. Guizot answers peremptorily, it proceeds from what he terms, in his preface, the "idolatry of democracy." The expression is proper and profound. Every affection, every aspiration of the human heart has, no less than the religious, its stated period of idolatry. The medi-æval chivalry, generally, (as well as the worship of the Virgin,) was the idolatry of love, in the person of emancipated woman. The avarice of commercial ages is the idolatry of low vanity, paid to the physical object of crime, the " graven image" of dollars. Ambition is the idolatry of power, in the similarly concrete shape of public office. So, then, is there, undoubtedly, an idolatry of liberty, under the symbol of democracy. But is this an evil itself, that it should be the source of all the others? And evil or not, was it an event to be avoided? That it is both one and the other the author begins by quietly taking for granted; a procedure that reveals already his mode of argument and philosophy.

To account the insurrections in question evils because they occasion suffering and bloodshed-for this can be the only plausible ground-involves a number of conse

*By riding to the d-1.

er, decided differently. The decision is affirmed by philosophy, which teaches that all evil is relative. Human language has named things evil or good, as they affected the percipient-not as they operate in the general system. It was this verbal fallacy that misled the stoics to hold those qualities to have no exterior existence, but are creations of the mind, and therefore controllable by the will. Viewing them as mere sentiments, the paradox would have some truth: but as causes and effects they certainly have an objective operation. To ascertain it the sole rosort is, as in all things, to experience. The inductive process, in this instance, might be imaged by the arithmetical rule of subtraction. The

particular facts, whether physical or social, observed habitually to cause pain, are set down in a distinct line. The correlative facts for there must be always such, either of action or omission-the correlative facts observed to produce pleasure are ranged in a parallel order. In this condition the two series have the same neutral character; they have yet no moral denomination; they are mere facts-mere figures. It is in virtue of this community of character that they neutralize each other in the process of subtraction, to the extent

of their numerical equivalence. But the overplus of either series at once acquires a denominational value. This differential value constitutes, in terms of human action, the real, the essential, the objective test of "good" or "evil."

If the computation be confined to the occurrences of individual life, the result would give not only the portion of positive happiness or misery in the general sum, but also the proportions of good and evil under each term of the series, in that particular life. But it would evidently apply to no other; for these proportions must vary with each individual in a community, with each community in an age, with every age of a civilization-in fine, with every partial civilization in the complete development of the race. The account must therefore be modified by aggregating the more particular sums, by extending the basis of average, by generalizing the moral residue from step to step of this progression. Now, at no one of these stages could the empirical rule-all formed though it might be upon the soundest experiencepretend to dictate to any other the law of evil or good. Hence the endless diversity of all times and countries, and even classes, in this respect, which led Montaigne and other sceptics to doubt a moral rule at all. Its scientific establishment will rise, at last, from the chaos, with the supreme generalization just suggested. The consummation will probably shew-as the progression does in part already-that most things previously accounted evil, were of an opposite tendency. Amongst them will be, we doubt not, the revolutionary spirit of France. This, the historical calculation just described, would suffice to settle. This process, however, we offered but for the purpose of illustration; or at most, as a short method of estimating large events. As a means of guaging the quality of actions, it may prove more or less impracticable; though it is not the less certainly the procedure of the general intellect in the instinctive inductions of moral science. But with this science we had not the smallest intention to meddle here, farther than to show that it gives no countenance, by either fact or philosophy, to the fundamental postulate of this book.

But revelation, you may say; the Bible? Perhaps the condemnation of war and rev

olution has been proclaimed or practised in the inspired volume, which records the administration of God himself upon earth? By no means; but directly the reverse. This divine administration had its very origin and foundation in an act not merely of rebellion against a ruler, but also of robbery from a master. For this would be the character of the Exode according, we mean, to the political philosophy of M. Guizot. And as to the subsequent government of this "chosen people," it is wellknown to have been the most insubordinate and blood-stained on the pages of history. We should not have availed ourselves, however, of this sacred authority, if M. Guizot was not a professed believer in the Bible. Not merely this, but he finds some consolation for the calamity of his times and country, by inclining to deem it a special dispensation of Providence. Indeed, he approximates, in this conservative piety, to the high standard of the Bishop of London; he who recently has had the liturgical front to insult the reason—and we will venture to say, the God, of the nineteenth century-by affecting to impute to the wrath of heaven, the starvation of the Irish people; and then, to appease this pretended wrath, putting the profane prayer of a politician in the mouth of a nation who had itself brought about the atrocity thus charged to the Deity, by trampling for ages on His laws-economical, physical, moral, and divine.

Civilization, then, progression, reformation, revolution, war-these are naturally conditional of each other in this order. They cannot, therefore, be accounted evil, but, on the contrary, good, so far as cach may be really necessary to the accomplishment of the proceeding. To disavow this concatenation, attested in fact by all history, is, we repeat, the fundamental perversity of Guizot's reasoning. And the "idolatry of democracy," which he denounces in the present chapter, is but a consequence of the same salutary civilizing principle.

Not, however, that the idolatry is salutary itself. It is pregnant, in fact, with most of the dangers which the author so well describes, and so wisely deprecates. But the way to avert these dangers would be, to explain them as to what they really are-the natural excesses, the necessary il

lusions, incidental to a movement entirely legitimate in its tendency. Instead of this equally rational and conciliatory course, our historian of civilization denies effectually that any such movement belongs to the natural system of society; though much more manifest at the present day than the astronomical motion of the earth. And he not only denounces the notion as no better than the idolatry of a mere name, but also stigmatizes the idolaters as irretrievable anarchists, or dupes. It would be more to the purpose-alike of peace and progress to point them out the true divinity they grope for; to interpret them His will, as laid down in the laws of society. But perhaps M. Guizot is inconsistently philosophical enough to have attempted this in the ensuing chapter.

Government in a Democracy. No; not in this, at least. It begins with examining the two radical theories of the day. The one is represented as asking but the negative condition of no restraint, and believing that human nature will go right of itself. The other contends, moreover, for a reorganization of society, which shall leave to men's propensities their natural play, and thus put an end to all occasion of evil and unhappiness. In the former will be recognized the doctrines of the ultra democracy, American as well as French. The latter is the scheme of the Socialists, especially of the Fourierite section. The first, says Guizot, do not know man; the second do not know man, and, moreover, deny God.

To support this emphatic sentence, to refute the competency of society to govern itself, he refers to each one's own consciousness of incapacity to control his conduct. But the conclusion thus suggested is, we must say, an old and bald sophism. There is no parity between the cases. The ratio between the elements of wisdom and of disorder, in the aggregate of citizens individually, does not remain the same in even the most radically representative government. On the contrary, it is rather reversed-and by the very process of representation. The common occasions of dissension being the selfish interests or passions, are in their nature individualantagonistic; they have thus the effect of neutralizing each other in the consolidated action of the State. The elements of wis

dom, being intellectual, have the contrary tendency to combine and to cumulate their influences. So far from analogy, therefore, there is a certain opposition between the means of self-government in a society and in each of its citizens.

Nor is this all. It is not, moreover, the degree of wisdom in the citizens which, even thus collected and defecated of selfish discrepancies, determines alone the degree of wisdom in the government. The latter is not simply a sum of the former quantities. Intelligence does not increase in government, any more than elsewhere, by addition; it increases by classifications, by quality. It operates not so much by warrant, as by order. But this order, in all cases, must copy the processes of nature. Now, the intelligence, in proportion as it is augmented in amount, and until it has obtained the complete copy we call science, finds it more and more difficult to keep to the original pattern, especially in a subject, like society, of great complexity. Hence it is that a nation of savages, say twenty millions numerous (were it possible for such to act in common at all), would produce, we have no doubt, a wiser body of laws, that is to say, one more suitable to their own sentiments and condition, than could be prepared for them by all the lawgivers of history together. Nay, wiser, in the sense defined, than, perhaps, these legislators would constitute for themselves, if formed into the community of philosophers imagined by Bayle. The reason was above indicated. The community of philosophers would be a thing out of nature, and therefore destitute of her guidance. Its legislation would, besides, be prompted less by the social wants than the speculative opinions of the citizens. With the savages, on the contrary, every suffrage would be a legislative fact; every law, the strict expression of the aggregate of facts, in as far as they corroborated each other; and the body of the laws, in fine, by the multiplied conflict of the discrepancies, be kept down to the solid ridge of reality, utility, simplicity. The former, in short, would be a government by syllogism. The latter, a government by induction. But it is a rule of logic, that the broader the induction, the more multiplied and various the instances, the surer will be the basis; the sounder the scientific law. It is precisely the

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