But with that righteous voice will mingle another, most wicked, and yet, alas! most flattering to poor humanity--the voice of envy, simple and undisguised; of envy, which moralists hold to be one of the basest of human passions; which can never be justified, however hateful or unworthy be the envied man.And when a whole people, or even a majority thereof, shall be possessed by that, what is there that they will not do?
Some are surprised and puzzled when they find, in the French Revolution of 1793, the noblest and the foulest characters labouring in concert, and side by side--often, too, paradoxical as it may seem, united in the same personage.The explanation is simple.
Justice inspired the one; the other was the child of simple envy.
But this passion of envy, if it becomes permanent and popular, may avenge itself, like all other sins.A nation may say to itself, "Provided we have no superiors to fall our pride, we are content.
Liberty is a slight matter, provided we have equality.Let us be slaves, provided we are all slaves alike." It may destroy every standard of humanity above its own mean average; it may forget that the old ruling class, in spite of all its defects and crimes, did at least pretend to represent something higher than man's necessary wants, plus the greed of amassing money; never meeting (at least in the country districts) any one wiser or more refined than an official or a priest drawn from the peasant class, it may lose the belief that any standard higher than that is needed; and, all but forgetting the very existence of civilisation, sink contented into a dead level of intellectual mediocrity and moral barbarism, crying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."A nation in such a temper will surely be taken at its word.Where the carcase is, there the eagles will be gathered together; and there will not be wanting to such nations--as there were not wanting in old Greece and Rome--despots who will give them all they want, and more, and say to them: "Yes, you shall eat and drink; and yet you shall not die.For I, while I take care of your mortal bodies, will see that care is taken of your immortal souls."For there are those who have discovered, with the kings of the Holy Alliance, that infidelity and scepticism are political mistakes, not so much because they promote vice, as because they promote (or are supposed to promote) free thought; who see that religion (no matter of what quality) is a most valuable assistant to the duties of a minister of police.They will quote in their own behalf Montesquieu's opinion that religion is a column necessary to sustain the social edifice; they will quote, too, that sound and true saying of De Tocqueville's: {1} "If the first American who might be met, either in his own country, or abroad, were to be stopped and asked whether he considered religion useful to the stability of the laws and the good order of society, he would answer, without hesitation, that no civilised society, but more especially none in a state of freedom, can exist without religion.Respect for religion is, in his eyes, the greatest guarantee of the stability of the State, and of the safety of the community.Those who are ignorant of the science of government, know that fact at least."M.de Tocqueville, when he wrote these words, was lamenting that in France, "freedom was forsaken;" "a thing for which it is said that no one any longer cares in France." He did not, it seems to me, perceive that, as in America the best guarantee of freedom is the reverence for a religion or religions, which are free themselves, and which teach men to be free; so in other countries the best guarantee of slavery is, reverence for religions which are not free, and which teach men to be slaves.
But what M.de Tocqueville did not see, there are others who will see; who will say: "If religion be the pillar of political and social order, there is an order which is best supported by a religion which is adverse to free thought, free speech, free conscience, free communion between man and God.The more enervating the superstition, the more exacting and tyrannous its priesthood, the more it will do our work, if we help it to do its own.If it permit us to enslave the body, we will permit it to enslave the soul."And so may be inaugurated a period of that organised anarchy of which the poet says:
It is not life, but death, when nothing stirs.
