Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 15

Lectures on the true, the beautiful and the good Part 15

[163] Mellan not only made portraits after the celebrated painters of his time, he is himself the author of great and charming compositions, many of which serve as frontispieces to books. I willingly call attention to that one which is at the head of a folio edition of the _Introduction a la Vie Devote_, and to the beautiful frontispieces of the writings of Richelieu, from the press of the Louvre.

[164] This was the opinion of Winkelmann at the end of the eighteenth century; it is our opinion now, even after all the discoveries that have been made during fifty years, that may be seen in great part retraced and described in the _Musio real Barbonico_.

[165] There was doubtless sculpture in the middle age: the innumerable figures at the portals of our cathedrals, and the statues that are discovered every day sufficiently testify it. The _imagers_ of that time certainly had much spirit and imagination; but, at least in everything that we have seen, beauty is absent, and taste wanting.

[166] Go and see at the Museum of Versailles the statue of Francis I., and say whether any Italian, except the author of the _Laurent de Medicis_, has made any thing like it. See also in the Museum of the Louvre, the statue of Admiral Chabot.

[167] Sarazin died in 1660, Lesueur in 1655, Poussin in 1665, Descartes in 1650, Pascal in 1662, and the genius of Corneille did not extend beyond that epoch.

[168] Lenoir, _Musee des Monuments Francais_, vol. v., p. 87-91, and the _Musee Royale des Monuments Francais_ of 1815, p. 98, 99, 108, 122, and 140. This wonderful monument, erected to Henri de Bourbon, at the expense of his old intendant Perrault, president of the _Chambre des Comptes_, was placed in the Church of the Jesuits, and was wholly in bronze. It must not be confounded with the other monument that the Condes erected to the same prince in their family burial-ground at Vallery, near Montereau, in Yonne. This monument is in marble, and by the hand of Michel Anguier; see the description in Lenoir, vol. v., p.

23-25, and especially in the _Annuaire de l'Yonne pour_ 1842, p. 173, etc.

[169] Rue d'Enfer, No. 67.

[170] The Museum of the Louvre possesses only a very small number of Sarazin's works, and those of very little importance:--a bust of Pierre Seguier, strikingly true, two statuettes full of grace, and the small funeral monument of Hennequin, Abbe of Bernay, member of Parliament, who died in 1651, which is a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of elegance.

[171] These three statues were united in the Museum des _Pet.i.ts-Augustins_, Lenoir, _Musee-royal_, etc., p. 94; we know not why they have been separated; Jacques-Auguste de Thou has been placed in the Louvre, and his two wives at Versailles.

[172] Francois Anguier had made a marble tomb of Cardinal de Berulle, which was in the oratory of _Rue St. Honore_. It would have been interesting to compare this statue with that of Sarazin, which is still at the Carmelites. Francois is also the author of the monument of the Longuevilles, which, before the Revolution, was at the Celestins, and was seen in 1815 at the museum des _Pet.i.ts-Augustins_, Lenoir, _ibid._, p. 103; it is now in the Louvre. It is an obelisk, the four sides of which are covered with allegorical bas-reliefs. The pedestal, also ornamented with bas-reliefs, has four female figures in marble, representing the cardinal virtues.

[173] Now at Versailles. Lenoir, p. 97 and 100. See his portrait, painted by Champagne, and engraved by Morin.

[174] Group in white marble which was at the Celestins, a church near the _hotel_ of Rohan-Chabot in the _Place Royale_; re-collected in the Museum _des Pet.i.ts-Augustins_, Lenoir, _ibid._, p. 97; it is now at Versailles. We must not pa.s.s over that beautiful production, the mausoleum of Jacques de Souvre, Grand Prior of France, the brother of the beautiful Marchioness de Sable; a mausoleum that came from Saint-Jean de Latran, pa.s.sed through the Museum _des Pet.i.ts-Augustins_, and is now found in the Louvre. The sculptures of the porte Saint-Denis are also owed to Michel Anguier, as well as the admirable bust of Colbert, which is in the museum.

[175] At first at Notre-Dame, the natural place for the tombs of the Gondis, then at the Augustins, now at Versailles.

[176] In the Church St. Germain des Pres.

[177] At the Capuchins, then at the Augustins, then at Versailles.

[178] See, on these monuments, Lenoir, p. 98, 101, 102. That of Mazarin is now at the Louvre; that of Colbert has been restored to the Church of St. Eustache, and that of Lebrun to the Church St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, as well as the mausoleum, so expressive but a little overstrained, of the mother of Lebrun, by Tuby, and the mausoleum of Jerome Bignon, the celebrated Councillor of State, who died in 1656.

[179] Quatremere de Quincy, _Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de plus Celebres Architectes_, vol. ii., p. 145:--"There could scarcely be found in any country an _ensemble_ so grand, which offers with so much unity and regularity an aspect at once more varied and picturesque, especially in the facade of the entrance." Unfortunately this unity has disappeared, thanks to the constructions that have since been added to the primitive work.

[180] In order to appreciate the beauty of the Sorbonne, one must stand in the lower part of the great court, and from that point consider the effect of the successive elevation, at first of the other part of the court, then of the different stories of the portico, then of the portico itself, of the church, and, finally, of the dome.

[181] Quatremere de Quincy, _Ibid._, p. 257:--"The cupola of this edifice is one of the finest in Europe."

[182] We do not speak of the colonnade of the Louvre by Perrault, because in spite of its grand qualities, it begins the decline and marks the pa.s.sage from the serious to the academic style, from originality to imitation, from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth.

[183] See the engraving of Perelle. Sauval, vol. ii., p. 66 and p. 131, says that the _hotel_ of Conde was _magnificently built_, that it was _the most magnificent of the time_.

[184] Notice of Guillet de St. Georges, recently published (see the APPENDIX):--"Nearly at the same time the Princess-dowager de Conde, Charlotte-Marguerite de Montmorency, mother of the late prince, had an oratory painted by Lesueur in the _hotel_ of Conde. The altar-piece represents a _Nativity_, that of the ceiling a _Celestial Glory_. The wainscot is enriched with several figures and with a quant.i.ty of ornaments worked with great care."

[185] The Pantheon is an imitation of the St. Paul's of London, which is itself a very sad imitation of St. Peter's of Rome. The only merit of the Pantheon is its situation on the summit of the hill of St.

Genevieve, from which it overlooks that part of the town, and is seen on different sides to a considerable distance. Put in its place the Val-de-Grace of Lemercier with the dome of Lemuet, and judge what would be the effect of such an edifice!

[186] In the first rank of the intelligent auditors of this course was M. Jouffroy, who already under our auspices, had presented to the _faculte des lettres_, in order to obtain the degree of doctor, a thesis on the beautiful. M. Jouffroy had cultivated, with care and particular taste, the seeds that our teaching might have planted in his mind. But of all those who at that epoch or later frequented our lectures, no one was better fitted to embrace the entire domain of beauty or art than the author of the beautiful articles on Eustache Lesueur, the Cathedral of Noyon, and the Louvre. M. Vitet possesses all the knowledge, and, what is more, all the qualities requisite for a judge of every kind of beauty, for a worthy historian of art. I yield to the necessity of addressing to him the public pet.i.tion that he may not be wanting to a vocation so marked and so elevated.

PART THIRD

THE GOOD.

LECTURE XI.

PRIMARY NOTIONS OF COMMON SENSE.

Extent of the question of the good.--Position of the question according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the good, the natural belief of mankind?--The natural beliefs of humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of nature.--Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages, in life, in consciousness.--Disinterestedness and devotedness.--Liberty.--Esteem and contempt.--Respect.--Admiration and indignation.--Dignity.--Empire of opinion.--Ridicule.--Regret and repentance.--Natural and necessary foundations of all justice.--Distinction between fact and right.--Common sense, true and false philosophy.

The idea of the true in its developments, comprises psychology, logic, and metaphysics. The idea of the beautiful begets what is called aesthetics. The idea of the good is the whole of ethics.

It would be forming a false and narrow idea of ethics to confine them within the inclosure of individual consciousness. There are public ethics, as well as private ethics, and public ethics embrace, with the relations of men among themselves, so far as men, their relations as citizens and as members of a state. Ethics extend wherever is found in any decree the idea of the good. Now, where does this idea manifest itself more, and where do justice and injustice, virtue and crime, heroism and weakness appear more openly, than on the theatre of civil life? Moreover, is there any thing that has a more decisive influence over manners, even of individuals, than the inst.i.tutions of peoples and the const.i.tutions of states? If the idea of the good goes thus far, it must be followed thither, as recently the idea of the beautiful has introduced us into the domain of art.

Philosophy usurps no foreign power; but it is not disposed to relinquish its right of examination over all the great manifestations of human nature. All philosophy that does not terminate in ethics, is hardly worthy of the name, and all ethics that do not terminate at least in general views on society and government, are powerless ethics, that have neither counsels nor rules to give humanity in its most difficult trials.

It seems that at the point where we have arrived, the metaphysics and aesthetics that we have taught evidently involve such a doctrine of morality and not such another, that, accordingly, the question of the good, that question so fertile and so vast, is for us wholly solved, and that we can deduce, by way of reasoning, the moral theory that is derived from our theory of the beautiful and our theory of the true. We might do this, perhaps, but we will not. This would be abandoning the method that we have hitherto followed, that method that proceeds by observation, and not by deduction, and makes consulting experience a law to itself. We do not grow weary of experience. Let us attach ourselves faithfully to the psychological method; it has its delays; it condemns us to more than one repet.i.tion, but it places us in the beginning, and a long time retains us at the source of all reality, and all light.

The first maxim of the psychological method is this: True philosophy invents nothing, it establishes and describes what is. Now here, what is, is the natural and permanent belief of the being that we are studying, to wit, man. What is, then, in relation to the good, the natural and permanent belief of the human race? Such is, in our eyes, the first question.

With us, in fact, the human race does not take one side, and philosophy the other. Philosophy is the interpreter of the human race. What the human race thinks and believes, often unconsciously, philosophy re-collects, explains, establishes. It is the faithful and complete expression of human nature, and human nature is entire in each of us philosophers, and in every other man. Among us, it is attained by consciousness; among other men, it manifests itself in their words and actions. Let us, then, interrogate the latter and the former; let us especially interrogate our own consciousness; let us clearly recognize what the human race thinks; we shall then see what should be the office of philosophy.

Is there a human language known to us that has not different expressions for good and evil, for just and unjust? Is there any language, in which, by the side of the words pleasure, interest, utility, happiness, are not also found the words sacrifice, disinterestedness, devotedness, virtue?

Do not all languages, as well as all nations, speak of liberty, duty, and right?

Here, perhaps, some disciple of Condillac and Helvetius will ask us whether, in this regard, we possess authentic dictionaries of the language of savage tribes found by voyagers in the isles of the ocean?

No; but we have not made our philosophic religion out of the superst.i.tions and prejudices of a certain school. We absolutely deny that it is necessary to study human nature in the famous savage of Aveyron, or in the like of him of the isles of the ocean, or the American continent. The savage state offers us humanity in swaddling-clothes, thus to speak, the germ of humanity, but not humanity entire. The true man is the perfect man of his kind; true human nature is human nature arrived at its development, as true society is also perfected society. We do not think it worth the while to ask a savage his opinion on the Apollo Belvidere, neither will we ask him for the principles that const.i.tute the moral nature of man, because in him this moral nature is only sketched and not completed. Our great philosophy of the seventeenth century was sometimes a little too much pleased with hypotheses in which G.o.d plays the princ.i.p.al part, and crushes human liberty.[187] The philosophy of the eighteenth century threw itself into the opposite extreme; it had recourse to hypotheses of a totally different character, among others, to a pretended natural state, whence it undertook, with infinite pains, to draw society and man as we now see them. Rousseau plunged into the forests, in order to find there the model of liberty and equality. That is the commencement of his politics.

But wait a little, and soon you will see the apostle of the natural state, driven, by a necessary inconsequence, from one excess to an opposite excess, instead of the sweets of savage liberty, proposing to us the _Contrat Social and Lacedemone_. Condillac[188] studies the human mind in a statue whose senses enter into exercise under the magic wand of a systematic a.n.a.lysis, and are developed in the measure and progress that are convenient to him. The statue successively acquires our five senses, but there is one thing that it does not acquire, that is, a mind like the human mind, and a soul like ours. And this was what was then called the experimental method! Let us leave there all those hypotheses.

In order to understand reality, let us study it, and not imagine it. Let us take humanity as it is incontestably shown to us in its actual characters, and not as it may have been in a primitive, purely hypothetical state, in those unformed lineaments or that degradation which is called the savage state. In that, without doubt, may be found signs or _souvenirs_ of humanity, and, if this were the plea, we might, in our turn, examine the recitals of voyages, and find, even in that darkness of infancy or decrepitude, admirable flashes of light, n.o.ble instincts, which already appear, or still subsist, presaging or recalling humanity. But, for the sake of exactness of method and true a.n.a.lysis, we turn our eyes from infancy and the savage state, in order to direct them towards the being who is the sole object of our studies, the actual man, the real and completed man.

Do you know a language, a people, which does not possess the word disinterested virtue? Who is especially called an honest man? Is it the skilful calculator, devoting himself to making his own affairs the best possible, or he who, under all circ.u.mstances, is disposed to observe justice against his apparent or real interest? Take away the idea that an honest man is capable, to a certain degree, of resisting the attractions of personal interest, and of making some sacrifices for opinion, for propriety, for that which is or appears honest, and you take away the foundation of that t.i.tle of honest man, even in the most ordinary sense. That disposition to prefer what is good to our pleasure, to our personal utility, in a word, to interest--that disposition more or less strong, more or less constant, more or less tested, measures the different degrees of virtue. A man who carries disinterestedness as far as devotion, is called a hero, let him be concealed in the humblest condition, or placed on a public stage. There is devotedness in obscure as well as in exalted stations. There are heroes of probity, of honor, of loyalty, in the relations of ordinary life, as well as heroes of courage and patriotism in the counsels of peoples and at the head of armies. All these names, with their meaning well recognized, are in all languages, and const.i.tute a certain and universal fact. We may explain this fact, but on one imperative condition, that in explaining we do not destroy it. Now, is the idea and the word disinterestedness explained to us by reducing disinterestedness to interest? This is what common sense invincibly repels.

Poets have no system,--they address themselves to men as they really are, in order to produce in them certain effects. Is it skilful selfishness or disinterested virtue that poets celebrate? Do they demand our applause for the success of fortunate address, or for the voluntary sacrifices of virtue? The poet knows that there is at the foundation of the human soul I know not what marvellous power of disinterestedness and devotedness. In addressing himself to this instinct of the heart, he is sure of awakening a sublime echo, of opening every source of the pathetic.

Consult the annals of the human race, and you will find in them man everywhere, and more and more, claiming his liberty. This word liberty is as old as man himself. What then! Men wish to be free, and man himself should not be free! The word nevertheless exists with the most determined signification. It signifies that man believes himself a free being, not only animated and sensible, but endowed with will, a will that belongs to him, that consequently cannot admit over itself the tyranny of another will which would make, in regard to him, the office of fatality, even were it that of the most beneficent fatality. Do you suppose that the word liberty could ever have been formed, if the thing itself did not exist? None but a free being could possess the idea of liberty. Will it be said that the liberty of man is only an illusion?

The wishes of the human race are then the most inexplicable extravagance. In denying the essential distinction between liberty and fatality, we contradict all languages and all received notions; we have, it is true, the advantage of absolving tyrants, but we degrade heroes.

They have, then, fought and died for a chimera!

All languages contain the words esteem and contempt. To esteem, to despise,--these are universal expressions, certain phenomena, from which an impartial a.n.a.lysis can draw the highest notions. Can we despise a being who, in his acts, should not be free, a being who should not know the good, and should not feel himself obligated to fulfil it? Suppose that the good is not essentially different from the evil, suppose that there is in the world only interest more or less well understood, that there is no real duty, and that man is not essentially a free being,--it is impossible to explain rationally the word contempt. It is the same with the word esteem.

Esteem is a fact which, faithfully expressed, contains a complete philosophy as solid as generous. Esteem has two certain characters: 1st, It is a disinterested sentiment in the soul of him who feels it; 2d, It is applied only to disinterested acts. We do not esteem at will, and because it is our interest to esteem. Neither do we esteem an action or a person because they have been successful. Success, fortunate calculation, may make us envied; it does not bring esteem, which has another price.