well-being and dignity, such as reason and above all the Christian religion teach, and you will form a good citizen; give false, exaggerated, absurd ideas, such as are entertained by perverted schools and promulgated by agitators at all times and in all countries, and you spread the fruitful seeds of disturbance and disorder.
"In order to complete the clearing up of the important point which we have undertaken to explain, we must apply this doctrine to the particular fact which now occupies us. If we fix our attention on the nations who invaded and overturned the Roman empire, confining ourselves to the facts which history has preserved of them, to the conjectures which are authorized by the circumstances in which they were placed, and to the general data which modern science has been able to collect from the immediate observation of the different tribes of America, we shall be able to form an idea of what was the state of society and of the individual among the invading barbarians. In their native countries, among their mountains, in their forests covered with frost and snow, they had their family ties, their relationships, their religion, traditions, customs, manners, attachment to their hereditary soil, their love of national independence, their enthusiasm for the great deeds of their ancestors, and for the glory acquired in battle; in fine, their desire of perpetuating in their children a race strong, valiant, and free; they had their distinctions of family, their division into tribes, their priests, chiefs, and government. Without discussing the character of their forms of government, and laying aside all that might be said of their monarchy, their public assemblies, and other similar points, questions which are foreign to our subject, and which besides are always in some degree hypothetical and imaginary, I shall content myself with making a remark which none of my readers will deny, viz. that among them the organization of society was such as might have been expected from rude and superstitious ideas, gross habits, and ferocious manners; that is to say, that their social condition did not rise above the level which had naturally been marked out for it by two imperious necessities: first, that complete anarchy should not prevail in their forests; and second, that in war they should have some one to lead their confused hordes. Born in rigorous climates, crowding on each other by their rapid increase, and on that account obtaining with difficulty even the means of subsistence, these nations saw before their eyes the abundance and the luxuries of ample and well-cultivated regions; they were at the same time urged on by extreme want, and strongly excited by the presence of plunder. There was nothing to oppose them but the feeble legions of an effeminate and decaying civilization; their own bodies were strong, their minds full of courage and audacity; their numbers augmented their boldness; they left their native soil without pain; a spirit of adventure and enterprise developed itself in their minds, and they threw themselves on the Empire like a torrent which falls from the mountains, and inundates the neighboring plains. However imperfect was their social condition, and however rude were its ties, it sufficed, nevertheless, in their native soil, and amid their ancient manners; if the barbarians had remained in their forests, it may be said that that form of government, which answered its purpose in its way, would have been perpetuated; for it was born of necessity, it was adapted to circumstances, it was rooted in their habits, sanctioned by time, and connected with traditions and recollections of every kind. But these ties were too weak to be transported without being broken. These forms of government were, as we have just seen, so suited to the state of barbarism, and consequently so circumscribed and limited, that they could not be applied without difficulty to the new situation in which these nations found themselves almost suddenly placed. Let us imagine these savage children of the forest precipitated on the south; their fierce chiefs precede them, and they are followed by crowds of women and children; they take with them their flocks and rude baggage; they cut to pieces numerous legions on their way; they form intrenchments, cross ditches, scale ramparts, ravage the country, destroy forests, burn populous cities, and take with them immense numbers of slaves captured on the way. They overturn every thing that opposes their fury, and drive before them multitudes who flee to avoid fire and sword. In a short time see these same men, elated with victory, enriched by immense booty, inured by so many battles, fires, sackings, and massacres, transported, as if by enchantment, into a new climate, under another sky, and swimming in abundance, in pleasure, in new enjoyments of every kind. A confused mixture of idolatry and Christianity, of truth and falsehood, is become their religion; their principal chiefs are dead in battle; families are confounded in disorder, races mixed, old manners and customs altered and lost. These nations, in fine, are spread over immense countries, in the midst of other nations, differing in language, ideas, manners, and usages; imagine, if you can, this disorder, this confusion, this chaos, and tell me whether the ties which formed the society of these nations are not destroyed and broken into a thousand pieces, and whether you do not see barbarian and civilized society disappear together, and all antiquity vanish without any thing new taking its place? And at this moment, fix your eyes upon the gloomy child of the North, when he feels all the ties that bound him to society suddenly loosened, when all the chains that restrained his ferocity break; when he finds himself alone, isolated, in a position so new, so singular, so extraordinary, with an obscure recollection of his late country and without affection for that which he has just occupied; without respect for law, fear of man, or attachment to custom. Do you not see him, in his impetuous ferocity, indulge without limit his habits of violence, wandering, plunder, and massacre? He confides in his strong arm and activity of foot, and led by a heart full of fire and courage, by an imagination excited by the view of so many different countries and by the hazards of so many travels and combats, he rashly undertakes all enterprises, rejects all subjection, throws off all restraint, and delights in the dangers of fresh struggles and adventures. Do you not find here the mysterious individuality, the feeling of personal independence, in all its philosophical reality and all the truth which is assigned to it by history? This brutal individuality, this fierce feeling of independence, which was not reconcileable with the well-being or with the true dignity of the individual, contained a principle of eternal war and a continually wandering mode of life, and must necessarily produce the degradation of man and the complete dissolution of society. Far from containing the germ of civilization, it was this that was best adapted to reduce Europe to the savage state; it stifled society in its cradle; it destroyed every attempt made to reorganize it, and completed the annihilation of all that remained of the ancient civilization."
The observations which have just been made may be more or less well founded, more or less happy, but at least they do not present the inexplicable inconsistency, not to say contradiction, of allying barbarism and brutality with civilization and refinement; they do not give the name of an eminent and fruitful principle of European civilization to that which a little further on is pointed out as one of the strongest obstacles to the progress of social organization. As M. Guizot, on this last point, agrees with the opinion which I have just stated, and shows the incoherence of his own doctrines, the reader will allow me to quote his own words. "It is clear," he says, "that if men have no ideas extending beyond their own existence, if their intellectual horizon is limited to themselves, if they give themselves up to the caprices of their own passions and wills, if they have not among them a certain number of common notions and feelings, around which they rally; it is clear, I say, that no society can be possible among them; that such individual, when he enters into any association, will be a principle of disturbance and dissolution. Whenever individuality almost absolutely prevails, or man only considers himself, or his ideas do not extend beyond himself, or he obeys only his own passions, society, I mean one with any thing of extent or permanency, becomes almost impossible. Now such was the moral condition of the conquerors of Europe at the period of which we speak. I have pointed out, in the last lecture, that we owe the energetic feeling of individual liberty and humanity to the Germans. Now, in a state of extreme rudeness and ignorance, this feeling is egotism in all its brutality, in all its unsociability. From the fifth to the eighth century, such was the case among the Germans. They consulted only their own interests, their own passions, their own wills; how could this accord with the social state? It was attempted to make them enter it; they attempted it themselves; they soon left it from some sudden act, some sally of passion or misunderstanding. Every moment we see society attempted to be formed; every moment we see it broken by the act of man, by the want of the moral conditions necessary for its subsistence. Such, gentlemen, were the two prevailing causes of the state of barbarism. As long as they lasted, barbarism continued." (Histoire Générale de la Civilisation en Europe, leçon 3.)
With respect to his
