The annalist who contents himself with recording facts is tempted to regard the conception of deliverance as a dream or an error, but the true historian considers things from a different point of view; whenever he endeavours to find out what has been the influence of the Calvinist spirit on morals, law, or literature, he is always driven back to a consideration of the way in which former Protestant thought was dominated by the con- ception of the path to deliverance. The experience of this great epoch shows quite clearly that in this warlike excitement which accompanies this will-to-deliverance the courageous man finds a satisfaction which is sufficient to keep up his ardour. I am convinced that in the history of that time you might find excellent illustrations of the idea that you once expressed to me — that the Wandering Jew may be taken as a S3nnbol of the highest aspirations of mankind, condemned as it is to march for ever without knowing rest.
II My theses have shocked many people who are, to a certain extent, under the influence of the ideas of natural 1 If Socialism comes to grief it will evidently be in the same way, because it will have been alarmed at its own barbarity.
\ i6 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE justice implanted in us by our education; very few educated men have been able to free themselves from these ideas. While the philosophy of natural justice is in perfect agreement with that of force (understanding this word in the special meaning that I have given it in Chapters IV. and V.), it cannot be reconciled with my conception of the historical function of violence. The scholastic doctrines of natural right contain nothing but this simple tautology — ^what is just is good, and what is unjust is bad; as if in enunciating such a doctrine we did not implicitly admit that the just must adapt itself to the natural order of events. It was for a reason of this kind that the economists for a long time asserted that the conditions created under the capitalist regime of competition are perfectly just, because they result from the natural course of things; and inversely the makers of Utopias have always claimed that the actual state of the world was not natural enough) they have wished, consequently, to paint a picture of a society naturally better regulated and therefore juster.
I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting some of Pascal's Pensees which terribly embarrassed his con- temporaries, and which have only been understood in our day. Pascal had considerable difficulty in freeing himself from the ideas of natural justice which he found in the philosophers; he abandoned them because he did not think them sufficiently imbued with Christianity. " I have passed a great part of my life believing that there was justice, and in this I was not mistaken, for there is justice according as God has willed to reveal it to us. But I did not take it so, and this is where I made a mistake, for I believed that our justice was essentially just, and that I possessed means by which I could know this and judge of it " (fragment 375 of the Braunschvieg edition). ** Doubtless there are natural laws; but this good reason once corrupted, LETTER TO DANIEL HALEVY 17 has corrupted all''^ (fragment 294); " Veri juris. We have it no longer " (fragment 297).
Moreover, mere observation • showed Pascal the ab- surdity of the theory of natural right; if this theory was correct, we ought to find laws which are imiversally ad- mitted; but actions which we regard as criminal have at other times been regarded as virtuous. ** Three degrees of latitude nearer the Pole reverse all jurisprudence, a meridian decides what is truth; fundamental laws change after a few years of possession, right has its epochs, the entry of Saturn into the constellation of the Lion marks to us the origin of such and such a crime. A strange justice that is bounded by a river 1 Truth on this side of the Pyrenees becomes error on the other...We must, it is said, get back to the natural and fundamental laws of the State, which an imjust custom has abolished. This is a game certain to result in the loss of all; nothing will be just on the balance" (fragment 294; cf. fragment 379).
As it is thus impossible for us to reason about justice, we ought to appeal to custom; and Pascal often falls back on this precept (fragments 294, 297, 299, 309, 312). He goes still further and shows how justice is practically dependent on force: " Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognised and is not disputed. Thus it is not possible to attribute might to justice, because might has often contradicted justice, and said that it itself was just. And thus not being able to make what was just strong, what was strong has been made just " (fragment 298; cf. fragments 302, 303, 306, 307, 311).
This criticism of natural right has not the perfect clearness that we could give it at the present day, because we know now that it is in economics we must seek for a ^ It seems to me that Pascal's editors in 1670 must have been alarmed at his Calvinism. I am astonished that Sainte-Beuve should have said nothing more than that there " was in Pascal's Christianity something which they could not understand, that Pascal had a greater need than they had of Christian faith (Port Royal, vol. iii. p. 383).
i8 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE type of force that has attained absolutely uncontrolled development, and can thus be identified naturally with right, whilst Pascal under the one heading confuses together all the manifestations of force. ^ Pascal was vividly impressed by the changes that the conception of justice has experienced in the course of time, and these changes still continue to embarrass philosophers exceedingly. A well-organised social system is destroyed by a revolution and is replaced by another system, which in its turn is considered to be perfectly just; so that what was just before now becomes unjust. Any amount of sophisms have been produced to show that force has been placed at the service of justice during revolutions; these arguments have been many times shown to be absurd. But the public is so accustomed to believe in natural rights that it cannot make up its mind to abandon them.
There is hardly anything, not excepting even war, that people have not tried to bring inside the scope of natural right: they compare war to a process in which one nation reclaims a right which a malevolent neighbour refuses to recognise. Our fathers readily acknowledged that God decided battles in favour of those who had justice on their side; the vanquished were to be treated as an unsuccessful litigant: they must pay the costs of the war and give guarantees to the victor in order that the latter might enjoy their restored rights in peace. At the present time there are plenty of people who propose that international conflicts should be submitted to arbitration; this would only be a secularisation of the ancient mythology. ^ 1 Cf. what I say about force in Chapter V.
« I cannot succeed in finding the idea of international arbitration in fragment 296 of Pascal, where several people claim to have discovered it; in this paragraph Pascal simply points out the ridiculous aspect of the claim made in his time by every belligerent — to condemn the conduct of his adversary in the name of justice.
LETTER TO DANIEL HALEVY ig The people who believe in natural right are not always implacable enemies of civil struggles, and certainly not of tumultuous rioting; that has been sufficiently shown in the course of the Dreyfus question. When the force of the State was in the hands of their adversaries, they acknowledged, naturally enough, that it was being employed to violate justice, and they then proved that one might with a good conscience " step out of the region of legality in order to enter that of justice " (to borrow a phrase of the Bonapartists); when they could not over- throw the government, they tried at least to intimidate it. But when they attacked the people who for the time being controlled the force of the State, they did not at all desire to suppress that force, for they wished to utilise it some day for their own profit; all the revolu- | tionary disturbances of the nineteenth century have \ ended in reinforcing the power of the State.
Proletarian violence entirely changes the aspect of all the conflicts in which it intervenes, since it disowns the force organised by the middle class, and claims to suppress the State which serves as its central nucleus., Under such conditions, it is no longer possible to argue *|\ about the primordial rights of man. That is why our parliamentary socialists, who spring from the middle classes and who know nothing outside the ideology of the State, are so bewildered when they are confronted with working-class violence. They cannot apply to it the commonplaces which generally serve them when they speak about force, and they look with terror on movements which may result in the ruin of the institutions by which they live. If revolutionary syndicaHsm triumphs, there will be no more brilliant speeches on immanent Justice, and the parliamentary regime, so dear to the intellectuals, will be finished with — ^it is the abomination of desolation! We must not be astonished, then, that they speak about violence with so much anger.
20 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE Giving evidence on June 5, 1907, before the Cours d' Assises de la Seine, in the Bousquet-Levy case, Jaur^s said, '* I have no superstitious beUef in legality, it has already received too many blows; but I always advise workmen to have recourse to legal means, for violence is the sign of temporary weakness.'* This is clearly a remini- scence of the Dreyfus question. Jaur^s remembered that his friends were obliged to have recourse to revolu- tionary manifestations, and it is ezisy to understand that, as a result of this affair, he had not retained very great respect for legality. He probably likened the present position of the syndicalists to the former position of the Dreyfusards; for the moment they are weak, but they are destined ultimately to have the force of the State at their own disposal; they would then be very imprudent to destroy by violence a force which is destined to become theirs. He may even regret at times that the State has been so severely shaken by the Dre5^us agitation, just as Gambetta regretted that the administration had lost its former prestige and discipline.
One of the most elegant of Republican ministers ^ has made a speciality of high-sounding phrases directed against the upholders of violence. Viviani charms deputies, senators, and the employes assembled to admire his excellency on his official tours, by telling them that violence is the caricature, or rather ** the fallen and degenerate daughter," of force. After boasting that he has, by a magnificent gesture, extinguished the lamps of 1 The Petit Parisien, that one always quotes with pleasure as the barometer of democratic stupidity, teUs us that " this scornful definition of the elegant and immoral M. de Morny — Republicans are people who dress badly — seems to-day altogether without any foundation." I borrow this philosophical observation from an enthusiastic description of the marriage of the charming minister Cl^mentel (October 22, 1905). This well-informed newspaper has accused me of giving the workers hooligan advice (April 7, 1907).
LETTER TO DANIEL HALEVY 2t Heaven, he assumes the attitudes of a matador, at whose feet a furious bull has fallen.^ If I were more vain about my literary efforts than I am, I should like to imagine that he was thinking of me when he said in the Senate, on November i6, 1906, that '* one must not mistake a fanatic for a party, nor rash statements for a system of doctrine." There is only one pleasure greater than that of being appreciated by in- telligent people, and that is the pleasure of not being understood by blunderheads, who are only capable of expressing in a kind of jargon what serves them in the place of thought. But I have every reason to suppose that, in the brilliant set which surrounds this charlatan,^ there is not one who has ever heard of the Mouvement Socialiste. It is quite within the comprehension of Viviani and his companions in the Cabinet that people may attempt an insurrection when they feej themselves solidly organised enough to take over the State; but 1 " I have seen violence myself," he told the Senate on November 16, 1906, " face to face. I have been, day after day, in the midst of thousands of men who bore on their faces the marks of a terrifying exaltation. I have remained in the midst of them, face to face and shoulder to shoulder." He boasted that in the end he had triumphed over the strikers in the Creusot workshops.
2 In the course of the same speech, Viviani strongly insisted on his own Socialism, and declared that he intended " to remain faithful to the ideal of his first years of public hfe." If we are to judge by a brochure in 1897 by the Allemanistes, under the title La Viriti sur I' union socialiste. this ideal was opportunism; when he left Algeria for Paris, Viviani was transformed into a Socialist, and the brochure then asserts that his new attitude is a he. Evidently this work was edited by fanatics with no understanding of the manners of polite society.
[Allemanistes: this was the name given to the members of the " Revolutionary Socialist Workmen's Party " because Allemanc was the best-known member of the group. They did not wish (in principle at any rate) to admit any but workmen into the party; they were for a long time very hostile to the parhamentary Sociahsts. During the Dreyfus affair they went with the rest and demanded a retrial; to-day they have disappeared, but they had some influence in the formation of the Syndicalist idea. — Trans. Note.]
22 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE working-class violence which has no such aim, seems to them only folly and an odious caricature of revolution. Do what you like, but don't kill the goose.
Ill In the course of this study one thing has always been present in my mind, which seemed to me so evident that I did not think it worth while to lay > much stress on it — that men who are participating in V a great social movement cdways picture their coming \; action as a battle in which their cause is certain to 1 triumph. These constructions, knowledge of which is so important for historians, I propose to call myths; ^ the syndicalist " general strike *' and Marx's catastrophic revolution are such myths. As remarkable examples of such myths, I have given those which were constructed by primitive Christianity, by the Reformation, by the Revolution and by the followers of Mazzini. I now wish to show that we should not attempt to analyse such groups of images in the way that we analyse a thing into its elements, but that they must be taken as a whole, I as historical forces, and that we should be especially careful not to make any comparison between accomplished fact and the picture people had formed for themselves before action.
I could have given one more example which is perhaps still more striking: Catholics have never been discouraged even in the hardest trials, because they have alwa5rs pictured the history of the Church as a series of battles between Satan and the hierarchy supported by Christ; every new difficulty which arises is only an episode in a war which must finally end in the victory of Catholicism.
^ In the Introduction d, Viconomie moderne, I have given the word myth a more general sense, which closely corresponds to the narrower meaning given to it here.
LETTER TO DANIEL HALEVY 23 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the revolu- tionary persecutions revived this myth of the struggle with Satan, which inspired so many of the eloquent pages in Joseph de Maistre; this rejuvenation explains to a large extent the religious renascence which took place at that epoch. If Catholicism is in danger at the present time, it is to a great extent owing to the fact that the myth of the Church militant tends to disappear. Ecclesiastical literature has greatly contributed to render- ing it ridiculous; thus in 1872, a Belgian writer recom- mended a revival of exorcisms, as they seemed to him an efficacious means of combating the revolutionaries.^ Many educated Catholics are horrified when they discover that the ideas of Joseph de Maistre have helped to encourage the ignorance of the clergy, which did not attempt to acquire an adequate knowledge of a science which it held to be accursed; to these educated Catholics the myth of the struggle with Satan then appears dangerous, and they point out its ridiculous aspects; but they do not in the least understand its historical bearing. The gentle, sceptical, and, above all, pacific, habits of the present generation are, moreover, unfavourable to its continued existence; and the enemies of the Church loudly proclaim that they do not wish to return to a regime of persecution which might restore their former power to warlike images.
In employing the term myth I believed that I had made a happy choice, because I thus put myself in a position to refuse any discussion whatever with the people who wish to submit the idea of a general strike to a detailed criticism, and who accumulate objections * p. Bureau, La Crise morale des temps nouveaux, p. 213. The author, a professor of the Institut Catholique de Paris, adds: " This recom- mendation can only excite hilarity nowadays. We are compelled to believe that the author's curious proposition was then accepted by a large number of his correUgionists, when we remember the astonishing success of the writings of L60 Taxil after his pretended conversion."
C 94 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE against its practical possibility. It appears, on the contrary, that I had made a most unfortunate choice, for while some told me that myths were only suitable to a primitive state of society, others imagined that I thought the modem world might be moved by illusions analogous in nature to those which Renan thought might usefully replace religion.^ But there has been a worse misunderstanding than this even, for it has been asserted that my theory of myths was only a kind of lawyer's plea, a falsification of the real opinions of the revolu- tionaries, the sophistry of an intellectualist.
If this were true, I should not have been exactly fortunate, for I have always tried to escape the influence of that intellectualist philosophy, which seems to me a great hindrance to the historian who allows himself to be dominated by it. The contradiction that exists between this philosophy and the true understanding of events has often struck the readers of Renan. Renan is continually wavering between his own intuition, which was nearly always admirable, and a philosophy which cannot touch history without falling into platitudes; but, alas, he too often beUeved himself bound to think in accordance with the scientific opinions of his day.
The intellectualist philosophy finds itself unable to explain phenomena like the following — the sacrifice of his life which the soldier of Napoleon made in order to have had the honour of taking part in " immortal deeds *' and of living in the glory of France, knowing all the time that " he would always be a poor man **; then, again, the extraordinary virtues shown by the Romans who resigned themselves to a frightful inequality and who suffered so much to conquer the world \^ '* the beUef in 1 The principal object of these illusions seems to me to have been the calming of the anxieties that Renan had retained on the subject of the beyond (cf. an article by Mgr. d'Hulst in the Correspondani on October 25, 1892, pp. 210, 224-225).
* Renan, Histoire du pguple d' Israel, vol. iv. p. 191.
LETTER TO DANIEL HALEVY 23 glory (which was) a value without equal," created by Greece, and as a result of which " a selection was made from the swarming masses of humanity, life acquired an incentive and there was a recompense here for those who had pursued the good and the beautiful." * The intellectualist philosophy, far from being able to explain these things, leads, on the contrary, to an admiration for the fifty-first chapter of Jeremiah, " the lofty though profoundly sad feeling with which the peaceful man contemplates these falls of empires, and the pity excited in the heart of the wise man by the spectacle of the nations labouring for vanity, victims of the arrogance of the few." Greece, according to Renan, did not experience anything of that kind, and I do not think that we need complain about that.* Moreover, he himself praises the Romans for not having acted in accordance with the conceptions of the Jewish thinker. ** They laboured, they wore themselves out for nothing, said the Jewish thinker — yes, doubtless, but those are the virtues that history rewards."'
Religions constitute a very troublesome problem for the intellectualists, for they can neither regard them as being without historical importance nor can they explain them. Renan, for example, has written some very strange sentences on this subject. " Religion is a necessary imposture. Even the most obvious ways of throwing dust in people's eyes cannot be neglected when you are dealing with a race as stupid as the human species, a race created for error, which, when it does admit the truth, never does so for the right reasons. It is necessary then to give it the wrong ones." * Comparing Giordano Bruno, who ** allowed himself to be burnt at Champ -de - Flore " with Galileo, who * Renan, loc. cit. p. 267. « Renan, loc. cit. pp. 199-200.
• Renan. op. cit. vol. iii. pp. 458-459. « Renan, op. cit. vol. v. pp. 105-106.
26 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE submitted to the Holy See, Renan sides with the second, because, according to him, the scientist need not bring anything to support his discoveries beyond good argu- ments. He considered that the Italian philosopher wished to supplement his inadequate proofs by his sacrifice, and he puts forward this scornful maxim: " A man suffers martyrdom only for the sake of things about which he is not certain." ^ Renan here confuses conviction, which must have been very powerful in Bruno's case, with that particular kind of certitude about the accepted theories of science, which instruction ultimately produces; it would be difficult to give a more misleading idea of the forces which really move men.
The whole of this philosophy can be summed up in the following phrase of Renan's: "Human affairs are always an approximation lacking gravity and precision "; and as a matter of fact, for an intellectualist, what lacks precision must also lack gravity. But in Renan the conscientious historian was never entirely asleep, and he at once adds as a corrective: "To have realised this truth is a great result obtained by philosophy; but it is an abdication of any active role. The future lies in the hands of those who are not disillusioned." ^ From this we may conclude that the intellectualist philosophy is entirely unable to explain the great movements of history.
The intellectualist philosophy would have vainly endeavoured to convince the ardent Catholics, who for 1 Renan, Nouvelles ttudes d'histoire religieuse, p. vii. Previously he had said, speaking of the persecutions: " People die for opinions, and not for certitudes, because they believe and not because they know...whenever beliefs are in question the greatest testimony and the most efficacious demonstration is to die for them " {L'^glise chrSiienne, p. 317). This thesis presupposes that martyrdom is a kind of ordeal, which was partly true in the Roman epoch, by reason of certain special circumstances (G. Sorel, Le SysUtne historique dt Renan, p.
2 Renan, Histoire du peupU d'Israil, vol. iii. p. 497.
LETTER TO DANIEL HALEVY 27 SO long struggled successfully against the revolutionary traditions, that the myth of the Church militant was not in harmony with the scientific theories formulated by the most learned authors according to the best rules of criticism; it would never have succeeded in persuading them. It would not have been possible to shake the faith that these men had in the promises made to the Church by any argument; and so long as this faith remained, the myth was, in their eyes, incontestable. Similarly, the objections urged by philosophy against the revolutionary myths would have made an impression only on those men who were anxious to find a pretext for abandoning any active role, for remaining revolutionary in words only.
I can understand the fear that this myth of the general strike inspires in many worthy progressives} on account of its character of infinity; * the world of to-<iay is very much inclined to return to the opinions of the ancients and to subordinate ethics to the smooth working of public affairs, which results in a definition of virtue as the golden mean; as long as socialism remains a doctrine expressed only in words, it is very easy to deflect it towards this doctrine of the golden mean; but this transformation is manifestly * impossible when the myth of the " general strike " is introduced, as this implies an absolute revolution. You know as well as I do that all that is best in the modem mind is derived from this " torment of the infinite "; * Translator's Note. — In French^ " 6mo«s gens." Sorel is using the words ironically to indicate those naive, philanthropically disposed people who believe that they have discovered the solution to the problem of social reform — whose attitude, however, is often complicated by a good deal of hypocrisy, they being frequently rapacious when. their own personal interests are at stake.
• Parties, as a rule, define the reforms that they wish to bring about; { but the general strike has a character of infinity, because it puts on one | side all discussion of definite reforms and confronts men with a! catastrophe. People who pride themselves on their practical wisdom J are very much upset by such a conception, which puts forward no | definite project of future social organisation.
28 REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE you are not one of those people who look upon the tricks by means of which readers can be deceived by words, as happy discoveries. That is why you will not condemn me for having attached great worth to a myth which gives to socialism such high moral value and such great sincerity. It is because the theory of myths tends to produce such fine results that so many seek to dispute it.
IV The mind of man is so constituted that it cannot remain content with the mere observation of facts, but always attempts to penetrate into the inner reason of things. I therefore ask myself whether it might not be desirable to study this theory of myths more thoroughly, utilising the enlightenment we owe to the Bergsonian philosophy. The attempt I am about to submit to you is doubtless very imperfect, but I think that it has been planned in accordance with the only method which can possibly throw light on the problem. In the first place, we should notice that the discussions of the moralists hardly ever come into contact with what is truly fundamental in ouf individuality. As a rule, they simply try to appraise our already completed acts with the help of the moral valuations formulated in advance by society, for the different types of action commonest in contemporary life. They say that in this way they are determining motives; but these motives are of the same nature as those which jurists take account of in criminal justice; they are merely social valuations of facts known to everybody. Many philosophers, especially the ancients, have believed that all values cotdd be deduced from utility, and if any social valuation does exist, it is surely