Nationalism and Culture (31 page)

They believed that all the failings of mankind could be cured by law, and thus they laid the foundation of a new miraculous faith in the infalli-

bility of authority, which proved even more disastrous in its consequences than the reactionary dogmatism of Bonald, Chateaubriand, and de Maistre. These tried in vain to breathe new life into a dead phantom, to awaken to a new existence a past that lay irrevocably buried in the dust of the ages. The men of the Convention, however, prepared the way for a new reaction J and they did it, not in the name of legitimist succession, but under the sign of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The uncanny belief in the omnipotence of the law and the almost superhuman wisdom of the lawmaker run through all the speeches and public utterances of the Jacobin statesmen and makes them indigestible for anyone who is capable of libertarian feeling. And with the belief in the miraculous power of the law there developed a desire to make every expression of individual and social life subject to the nation. Everything was centralized: government, legislation, public administration, religion, language—and legal murder in the form of the "revolutionary terror."

It is true that the revolutionary forces of the people in the city and, more especially, in the country, opposed this universal leveling with great energy i and the contest of the central power with the communities often assumed a violent character, especially in Paris where the communal administration had a strong influence on the course of revolutionary events. We have to thank this resistance of the communal corporations to the national administration that the revolution did not stop halfway, and that the old regime was utterly destroyed. But with the growing influence of Jacobinism all resistance against the centralized state was gradually overcome. The Convention interfered more and more in all the affairs of local administration and subjected the course of all social events to its control. All local independence was systematically inhibited, or even abolished, according to a definite plan. All provincial and communal life had to disappear or be reduced to a definite uniformity. The old communal administrations were replaced by the state prefecture, which directed everything from Paris, crippling all local initiative.

Thus the weal and woe of millions was entrusted to the higher wisdom of a central body whose members felt themselves to be the "mechanics of the machine"—to use Rousseau's term—and quite forgot that it was living men whom they used as guinea pigs in their experiments to prove the political wisdom of the "citizen of Geneva." The actual deeds and purposes of these elect always remain hidden from the simple mind of the average citizen, and it is precisely this hidden activity which becomes the unquenchable source of a blind belief in the unalterability of a political providence—a belief which grows correspondingly more powerful as man's confidence in his own power diminishes. The purely human pales before the radiant halo of political institutions. Just as the devout believer fails to recognize the man In the priest and sees him illumined with the

splendor of divinity, so also the lawgiver appears to the simple citizen in the aureole of a terrestrial providence which presides over the fate of all.

This belief is fatal not only to the common man of the people, but also to the chosen herald of the "common will." The very part which he has been given to play causes him to become constantly more estranged from actual life. As his whole thought and action are set on unison in all social matters, the dead gear-work of the machine, obedient to every pressure of the lever, gradually becomes for him the symbol of all perfection, behind which real life with its endless variety completely disappears. For this reason he feels every independent movement, every impulse emanating from the people themselves, as an antagonistic force dangerous to his artificially drawn circle. When this uncontrollable power which transcends all calculations of the statesman will not listen to reason, or even refuses to yield due obedience to the lawgiver, it must be silenced by force. This is done in the name of the "higher interests," which are always in question when something happens outside the range of bureaucratic habits. One feels oneself the chosen guardian of these higher interests, the living incarnation of that metaphysical common will, which has its uncanny existence in Rousseau's brain. In trying to harmonize all manifestations of social life with the tune of the machine, the lawgiver gradually becomes a machine. The man Robespierre once spoke great words against the institution of capital punishment} the dictator Robespierre made the guillotine "the altar of the fatherland," made it a means of purification of patriot virtue.

In reality the men of the Convention were not the inventors of political centralization. They only continued after their fashion what the monarchy had left to them as an heirloom and developed to the utmost the tendency toward national unification. The French monarchy had since the time of Philip the Fair left no means untried for removing opposing forces in order to establish the political unity of the country under the banner of absolute monarchy. In doing this the supporters of royal power were not particular as to ways and means j treason, murder, forgery of documents, and other crimes were quite acceptable for them, if they promised success. The reigns of Charles V, Charles VII, Louis XI, Francis I, Henry II, are the most prominent milestones in the development of unlimited monarchy, which, after the preliminary labors of Mazarin and Richelieu, shone in fullest glory under Louis XIV.

This splendor of the "Sun King" filled all lands. An army of venal sycophants, poetasters, artists, living by the favor of the court, had as their special task to cause the fame of the megalomaniac despot to glow with brightest colors. French was spoken in all courts. All strove to be intellectually brilliant according to Parisian fashion and imitated French court

manners and ceremonies. The most unimportant little despot in Europe was consumed by the sole aim of imitating Versailles, at least in miniature. Small wonder that a ruler entirely unaffected by any inferiority complex considered himself a demi-god and was intoxicated by his own magnificence. But this blind devotion to the king's person gradually intoxicated the whole "nation," which venerated itself in the person of the king. As Gobineau significantly remarks:

France became in its own eyes the Sun Nation. The universe became a planetary system in which France, at least in its own opinion, had the first place. With other peoples it could have nothing in common except to shed light on them at its pleasure, for it was quite convinced that all were groping in the fog of densest darkness. France, however, was France, and as, in its view, all the rest of the world daily sank into a joyless distance, it gradually satisfied itself more and more with veritable Chinese ideas. Its vanity became a Chinese Great Wall.^

The men of the Convention, therefore, not only took over the idea of political centralization from the monarchy, but the cult which they carried on by means of the nation likewise had there its beginning. It is true, however, that in the age of Louis XIV the nation was considered to consist only of the privileged classes, tht nobility, the clergy, the prosperous citizens j the great masses of the peasants and the city workers did not count.

It is related that Bonaparte, a few days before the coup d'etat had a talk with the Abbe Sieyes—then one of the five members of the Directory —and on this occasion flung these words at the clever theologian who had weathered successfully all the storms of the revolution: "/ have created the Great Nation!" Whereupon Sieyes smilingly replied: "Y^i-, because we had first created the Nation.^' The clever Abbe was right, and spoke with greater authority than Bonaparte. The nation had first to be born, or, as Sieyes so significantly said, to be created, before it could become great.

It is significant that it was Sieyes who at the beginning of the revolution gave the concept of the nation its modern meaning. In his essay, What Is the Third Estate? he raised and answered three questions of paramount importance: "What is the third estate?—Everything. What has it been up to now in the political order of things?—Nothing. What will it become?—Something." But in order that the third estate might become something entirely new, suitable political conditions had first to be created in France. The bourgeoisie could become dominant only if the so-called "Estates General" was replaced by a national assembly based

' From a manuscript uncompleted at his death. German translation by Rudolf Schlosser in "Frankreichs Schicksal im Jahre 1870." S. 34 Reclam-Verlag.

on a constitution. Hence the political unification of the nation was the first demand of the beginning revolution looking toward the dissolution of the Estates. The third estate felt itself ready, and Laclos declared in the Deliberationsy to which the Duke of Orleans had only lent his name: "The Third Estate; that is the nation!"

In his essay Sieyes has described the nation as a "community of united individuals subject to the same law and represented by the same legislative body." But, influenced by the ideas of Rousseau, he extended the meaning of this purely technical definition and made the nation the original basis of all political and social institutions. Thus the nation became the actual embodiment of the common will in Rousseau's sense: "Her will is always lawful, for she is herself the embodiment of the law."

From this concept all other conclusions followed quite obviously. If the nation was the embodiment of the common will, then it had to be in its very nature one and indivisible. In this case, however, the national representative assembly had also to be one and indivisible, for it alone had the sacred task of interpreting the nation's will and making it intelligible to the citizens. Against the nation all separate efforts of the estates were futile; nothing could endure beside it, not even the separate organization of the church. Thus Mirabeau declared in the Assembly a few days after the memorable night of August 4th:

No national law has instituted the clergy as a permanent body in the state. No law has deprived the nation of the right to investigate whether the servants of religion should form a political corporation existing of itself and capable of acquiring and possessing. Could simple citizens by giving their possessions to the clergy and the clergy by receiving them give them the right to constitute themselves a separate order within the state? Could they rob the nation of the right to dissolve it? All the members of the clergy are merely officials of the state. The service of the clergy is a public function; just as the official and the soldier, so also the friesty is a servant of the nation.

Not without reason had the king's brother, the Comte d'Artois, with the rest of the royal princes, in his Memoirs ■presentes au Roiy etc., protested against the new role which had been assigned to the nation and warned the king that his approval of such ideas would inevitably lead to the destruction of the monarchy and the church, and of all privileges. Indeed, the practical consequences of this new concept were too plain to be misunderstood. If the nation as representative of the communal will stood above all and everything, then the king was nothing more than the highest official of the national state and the time was past, once and for all, when a "most Christian king" could say with Louis XIV: "The nation

constitutes in France no corporation j it exists exclusively in the person of the king."

The court recognized very clearly the danger that hung over it and aroused itself to make some threatening gestures; but it was already too late. On the i6th of June, 1789, the representatives of the third estate, who had been joined by the lower clergy, on the motion of Abbe Sieyes declared themselves to be the National Assembly, with the argument that they constituted 96 percent of the nation anyhow, and that the other 4 percent were at any time free to join them. The storming of the Bastille and the march to Versailles soon gave this declaration the necessary revo lutionar}' emphasis. With that the die was cast. An old faith was buried, giving place to a new. The "sovereignty of the king" had to strike its flag before the "sovereignty of the nation." The modern state was lifted from the baptismal font and anointed with the democratic oil—fitted to achieve the importance assigned to it in the history of the modern era in Europe.

The situation was still not fully clarified, however, for in the National Assembly itself there was an influential section which recognized Mirabeau as its leader and with him advocated a so-called "kingdom of the people." These sought to rescue as much of the royal sovereignty as was possible under the circumstances. This became especially noticeable in the discussions concerning the formulation of "human and civil rights," where the disciples of Montesquieu and Rousseau stood often in sharp opposition. If the former could record a success when a majority of the Assembly declared for the representative system and the partition of powers, then the adherents of Rousseau had their success when the third article in the Declaration announced: "The principle of all sovereignty rests by its very nature in the nation. No corporation and no individual can exercise an authority which does not openly emanate from it."

It was true that the great masses of the people had little understanding of these differences of opinion in the bosom of the National Assembly j just as they have always been indifferent to the details of political theories and programs. In this instance as in most, events themselves, especially the ever more apparent treachery of the court, contributed much more to the final solution of the question than the dry dogmatism of Rousseau's disciples. Anyway, the slogan, "the sovereignty of the nation" was short and impressive. Particularly, it brought the contrast between the new order of things and the old into the foreground of all discussions—in revolutionary times a matter of great importance. After the royal family's unsuccessful attempt at flight, the internal situation became increasingly acute, until finally the storming of the Tuileries put an end to all half-measures, and the people's representatives entered seriously upon the discussion of the abolition of royalty. Manuel stated the whole problem in one sentence: "It is not enough to have declared the dominance of the