principal truths with respect to the individual, to the family, and to society; it is to this that it owes all that it is and all that it has. Nowhere have the true nature, the true relations and object of these three things been better understood than in Europe; with respect to them we have ideas, sentiments, and views which have been wanting in other civilizations. Now, these ideas and feelings, strongly marked on the face of European nations, have inoculated their laws, manners, institutions, customs, and language; they are inhaled with the air, for they have impregnated the whole atmosphere with their vivifying aroma. To what is this owing? To the fact, that Europe, for many centuries, has had within its bosom a powerful principle which preserves, propagates, and fructifies the truth; and it was especially in those times of difficulty, when the disorganized society had to assume a new form, that this regenerating principle had the greatest influence and ascendency. Time has passed away, great changes have taken place, Catholicity has undergone vast vicissitudes in its power and influence on society; but civilization, its work, was too strong to be easily destroyed; the impulse which had been given to Europe was too powerful and well secured to be easily diverted from its course. Europe was like a young man gifted with a strong constitution, and full of health and vigor; the excesses of labor or of dissipation reduce him and make him grow pale; but soon the hue of health returns to his countenance, and his limbs recover their suppleness and vigor.
CHAPTER XXI.
OF THE INDIVIDUAL – OF THE FEELING OF INDIVIDUAL INDEPENDENCE ACCORDING TO M. GUIZOT
THE individual is the first and simplest element of society. If the individual is not well constituted, if he is ill understood and ill appreciated, there will always be an obstacle to the progress of real civilization. First of all, we must observe, that we speak here only of the individual, of man as he is in himself, apart from the numerous relations which surround him when we come to consider him as a member of society. But let it not be imagined from this, that I wish to consider him in a state of absolute isolation, to carry him to the desert, to reduce him to the savage state, and analyze the individuality as it appears to us in a few wandering hordes, a monstrous exception, which is only the result of the degradation of our nature. Equally useless would it be to revive the theory of Rousseau, that pure Utopianism which can only lead to error and extravagance. We may separately examine the pieces of a machine, for the better understanding of its particular construction; but we must take care not to forget the purpose for which they are intended, and not lose sight of the whole, of which they form a part. Without that, the judgment we should form of them would certainly be erroneous. The most wonderful and sublime picture would be only a ridiculous monstrosity, if its groups and figures were considered in a state of isolation from its other parts; in this way, the prodigies of Michael Angelo and Raffael might be taken for the dreams of a madman. Man is not alone in the world, nor is he born to live alone. Besides what is he in himself, he is a part of the great scheme of the Universe. Besides the destiny which belongs to him in the vast plan of creation, he is raised, by the bounty of his Maker, to another sphere, above all earthly thoughts. Good philosophy requires that we should forget nothing of all this. It now remains for us to consider the individual and individuality.
In considering man, we may abstract from his quality of citizen, – an abstraction which, far from leading to any extravagant paradoxes, is likely to make us thoroughly understand a remarkable peculiarity of European civilization, one of the distinctive characteristics, which will be alone sufficient to enable us to avoid confounding it with others. All will readily understand that there is a distinction to be made between the man and the citizen, and that these two aspects lead to very different considerations; but it is more difficult to say how far the limits of this distinction should extend; to what extent the feeling of independence should be admitted; what is the sphere which ought to be assigned to purely individual development; in fine, whatever is peculiar to our civilization on this point. We must justly estimate the difference which we find herein between our state of society and that of others; we must point out its source, and its result; we must carefully weigh its real influence on the advance of civilization. This task is difficult; I repeat it, – for we have here various questions, great and important, it is true, but delicate and profound, and very easily mistaken, – it is not without much trouble that we can fix our eyes with certainty on these vague, indeterminate, and floating objects, which are connected together by no perceptible ties.
We here meet with the famous personal independence, which, according to M. Guizot, was brought by the barbarians from the North, and played so important a part, that we ought to look upon it as one of the chief and most productive principles of European civilization. This celebrated publicist, analyzing the elements of this civilization, and pointing out the share which the Roman empire and the Church had therein, in his opinion, finds a remarkable principle of productiveness in the feeling of individuality, which the Germans brought with them, and inoculated into the manners of Europe. It will not be useless to discuss the opinion of M. Guizot on this important and delicate matter. By thus explaining the state of the question, we shall remove the important errors of some persons, errors produced by the authority of this writer, whose talent and eloquence have unfortunately given plausibility and semblance of truth to what is in reality only a paradox. The first care we ought to take, in combating the opinions of this writer, is not to attribute to him what he has not really said; besides, as the matter we are treating of is liable to many mistakes, we shall do well to transcribe the words of M. Guizot at length. "What we require to know," he says, "is the general condition of society among the barbarians. Now it is very difficult, now-a-days, to give an account of it. We can understand, without too much trouble, the municipal system of Rome, and the Christian Church; their influence has continued down to our times; we find traces of them in many institutions and existing facts. We have a thousand means of recognising and explaining them. The manners, the social condition of the barbarians, have entirely perished; we are compelled to divine them, by the most ancient historical documents, or by an effort of imagination."
What has been preserved to us of the manners of the barbarians is, indeed, little; this is an assertion which I will not deny. I will not dispute with M. Guizot about the authority which ought to belong to facts which require to be filled up by an effort of the imagination, and which compel us to have recourse to the dangerous expedient of divining. As for the rest, I am aware of the nature of these questions; and the reflections which I have just made, as well as the terms which I have used, prove that I do not think it possible to proceed with rule and compass in such an examination. Nevertheless, I have thought it proper to warn the reader on this point, and combat the delusion into which he might be led by a doctrine which, when fully examined, is, I repeat it, only a brilliant paradox. "There is a feeling, a fact," continues M. Guizot, "which it is above all necessary to understand well, in order to represent to ourselves with truth what a barbarian was: this is, the pleasure of individual independence – the pleasure of playing amid the chances of the world and of life, with power and liberty; the joys of activity without labor; the taste for an adventurous destiny, full of surprises, vicissitudes, and perils. Such was the ruling feeling of the barbarian state, the moral necessity which put these masses of men in motion. To-day, in the regular society in which we live, it is difficult to represent to one's self this feeling, with all the influence which it exercised over the barbarians of the fourth and fifth centuries. There is only one work, in my opinion, in which this character of barbarism is described with all its force, viz. The History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, of M. Thierry – the only book where the motives, the inclinations, the impulses which actuate man in a social state bordering on barbarism, are felt and described with a truth really Homeric. Nowhere do we see so clearly what a barbarian was, and what was his life. We also find something of this, although in a very inferior degree, in my opinion, in a manner much less simple, much less true, in the romances of Mr. Cooper on the American savages. There is in the life of the savages of America, in the relations and feelings which exist in those forests, something which reminds one, to a certain extent, of the manners of the ancient Germans. No doubt these pictures are a little ideal, a little poetical; the unfavorable side of barbarian life and manners is not displayed in all its crudity. I do not speak merely of the evils which these manners produce in the individual social condition of the barbarian himself. In this passionate love of personal independence, there was something
