III. The Mathematical Method.

     The philosophic method in conformity with the Classic Sprit.
    —Ideology.—Abuse of the mathematical process.—Condillac,
     Rousseau, Mably, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyès, Cabanis, and de
     Tracy.—Excesses of simplification and boldness of
     organization.

The natural process of the classic spirit is to pursue in every research, with the utmost confidence, without either reserve or precaution, the mathematical method: to derive, limit and isolate a few of the simplest generalized notions and then, setting experience aside, comparing them, combining them, and, from the artificial compound thus obtained, by pure reasoning, deduce all the consequences they involve. It is so deeply implanted as to be equally encountered in both centuries, as well with Descartes, Malebranche3238 and the partisans of innate ideas as with the partisans of sensation, of physical needs and of primary instinct, Condillac, Rousseau, Helvétius, and later, Condorcet, Volney, Sieyès, Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy. In vain do the latter assert that they are the followers of Bacon and reject (the theory of) innate ideas; with another starting point than the Cartesians they pursue the same path, and, as with the Cartesians, after borrowing a little, they leave experience behind them. In this vast moral and social world, they only remove the superficial bark from the human tree with its innumerable roots and branches; they are unable to penetrate to or grasp at anything beyond it; their hands cannot contain more. They have no suspicion of anything outside of it; the classic spirit, with limited comprehension, is not far-reaching. To them the bark is the entire tree, and, the operation once completed, they retire, bearing along with them the dry, dead epidermis, never returning to the trunk itself. Through intellectual incapacity and literary pride they omit the characteristic detail, the animating fact, the specific circumstance, the significant, convincing and complete example. Scarcely one of these is found in the "Logique" and in the "Traité des Sensations" by Condillac, in the "Idéologie" by Destutt de Tracy, or in the "Rapports du Physique et du Morale" by Cabanis.3239 Never, with them, are we on the solid and visible ground of personal observation and narration, but always in the air, in the empty space of pure generalities. Condillac declares that the arithmetical method is adapted to psychology and that the elements of our ideas can be defined by a process analogous "to the rule of three." Sieyès holds history in profound contempt, and believes that he had "perfected the science of politics"3240 at one stroke, through an effort of the brain, in the style of Descartes, who thus discovers analytic geometry. Destutt de Tracy, in undertaking to comment on Montesquieu, finds that the great historian has too servilely confined himself to history, and attempts to do the work over again by organizing society as it should be, instead of studying society as it is.—Never were such systematic and superficial institutions built up with such a moderate extract of human nature.3241 Condillac, employing sensation, animates a statue, and then, by a process of pure reasoning, following up its effects, as he supposes, on smell, taste, hearing, sight and touch, fashions a complete human soul. Rousseau, by means of a contract, founds political association, and, with this given idea, pulls down the constitution, government and laws of every balanced social system. In a book which serves as the philosophical testament of the century,3242 Condorcet declares that this method is the "final step of philosophy, that which places a sort of eternal barrier between humanity and its ancient infantile errors." "By applying it to morals, politics and political economy the moral sciences have progressed nearly as much as the natural sciences. With its help we have been able to discover the rights of man." As in mathematics, they have been deduced from one primordial statement only, which statement, similar to a first principle in mathematics, becomes a fact of daily experience, seen by all and therefore self-evident.—This school of thought is to endure throughout the Revolution, the Empire and even into the Restoration,3243 together with the tragedy of which it is the sister, with the classic spirit their common parent, a primordial, sovereign power, as dangerous as it is useful, as destructive as it is creative, as capable of propagating error as truth, as astonishing in the rigidity of its code, the narrow-mindedness of its yoke and in the uniformity of its works as in the duration of its reign and the universality of its ascendancy.3244

3201 (return)
[ Voltaire, "Dict. Phil.," see the articles on Language. "Of all the languages in Europe the French is most generally used because it is the best adapted to conversation. Its character is derived from that of the people who speak it. For more than a hundred and fifty years past, the French have been the most familiar with (good) society and the first to avoid all embarrassment. . . It is a better currency than any other, even if it should lack weight."]

3202 (return)
[ HIST: honnête homme means gentleman. (SR.)]

3203 (return)
[ Descartes, ed. Cousin, XI. 333, I. 121,. . . Descartes depreciates "simple knowledge acquired without the aid of reflection, such as languages, history, geography, and, generally, whatever is not based on experience. . . . It is no more the duty of an honest man to know Greek or Latin than to know the Swiss or Breton languages, nor the history of the Romano-Germanic empire any more than of the smallest country in Europe."]

3204 (return)
[ Molière, "Les Femmes Savantes," and "La Critique de l'école des femmes." The parts of Dorante with Lycidas and of Clitandre with Trissotin.]

3205 (return)
[ The learned Huet, (1630-1721), true to the taste of the sixteenth century, describes this change very well from his point of view. "When I entered the world of letters these were still flourishing; great reputations maintained their supremacy. I have seen letters decline and finally reach an almost entire decay. For I scarcely know a person of the present time that one can truly call a savant." The few Benedictines like Ducange and Mabillon, and later, the academician Fréret, the president Bouhier of Dijon, in short, the veritable erudites exercise no influence.]

3206 (return)
[ Nicole, "Oeuvres morales," in the second essay on Charity and Self-love, 142.]

3207 (return)
[ Voltaire, "Dialogues," "L'intendant des menus et l'abbé Grizel," 129.]

3208 (return)
[ Maury adds with his accustomed coarseness, "We, in the French Academy, looked upon the members of the Academy of Sciences as our valets."—These valets at that time consisted of Lavoisier, Fourcroy, Lagrange, Laplace, etc. (A narrative by Joseph de Maistre, quote by Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," IV. 283.)]

3209 (return)
[ This description makes me think of the contemporary attitudes pejoratively called "politically correctness." Thus the drawings-room audience of the 18th century have today been replaced by the "political correct" elite holding sway in teacher training schools, schools of journalism, the media and hence among the television public. The same mechanism which moved the upper class in the 18th century moves it in the 20th century.. (S.R.)]

3210 (return)
[ Today in 1999 we may speak of the TV mold forced by the measured popularity or "ratings" of the programs. (SR.]

3211 (return)
[ Vaugelas, "Remarques sur la langue française:" "It is the mode of speech of the most sensible portion of the court, as well as the mode of writing of the most sensible authors of the day. It is better to consult women and those who have not studied than those who are very learned in Greek and in Latin."]

3212 (return)
[ One of the causes of the fall and discredit of the Marquis d'Argenson in the eighteenth century, was his habit of using these.]

3213 (return)
[ Vaugelas, ibid.. "Although we may have eliminated one-half of his phrases and terms we nevertheless obtain in the other half all the riches of which we boast and of which we make a display."—Compare together a lexicon of two or three writers of the sixteenth century and one of two or three writers of the seventeenth. A brief statement of the results of the comparison is here given. Let any one, with pen in hand, note the differences on a hundred pages of any of these texts, and he will be surprised at it. Take, for examples, two writers of the same category, and of secondary grade, Charron and Nicole.]

3214 (return)
[ For instance, in the article "Ignorance," in the "Dict. Philosophique."]

3215 (return)
[ La Harpe, "Cours de Littérature," ed. Didot. II. 142.]

3216 (return)
[ A battle-axe used by the Franks.—TR.]

3217 (return)
[ I cite an example haphazard from the "Optimiste" (1788), by Colin d'Harleville. In a certain description, "The scene represents a bosquet filled with odoriferous trees."—The classic spirit rebels against stating the species of tree, whether lilacs, lindens or hawthorns.—In paintings of landscapes of this era we have the same thing, the trees being generalized,—of no known species.]

3218 (return)
[ This evolution is seen today as well, television having the same effect upon its actors as the 18th century drawing-room. (SR.)]

3219 (return)
[ See in the "Lycée," by la Harpe, after the analysis of each piece, his remarks on detail in style.]

3220 (return)
[ The omission of the pronouns, I, he, we, you, they, the article the, and of the verb, especially the verb to be.—Any page of Rabelais, Amyot or Montaigne, suffices to show how numerous and various were the transpositions.]

3221 (return)
[ Vaugelas, ibid. "No language is more inimical to ambiguities and every species of obscurity."]

3222 (return)
[ See the principal romances of the seventeenth century, the "Roman Bourgeois," by Furetière, the "Princess de Clèves," by Madame de Lafayette, the "Clélie," by Mme. de Scudéry, and even Scarron's "Roman Comique."—See Balzac's letters, and those of Voiture and their correspondents, the "Récit des grands jours d'Auvergne," by Fléchier, etc. On the oratorical peculiarities of this style cf. Sainte-Beuve, "Port-Royal," 2nd ed. I. 515.]

3223 (return)
[ Voltaire, 'Esay sur le poème épique', "Our nation, regarded by strangers as superficial is, with the pen in its hand, the wisest of all. Method is the dominant quality of all our writers."]

3224 (return)
[ Milton's works are built up with 8,000. "Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words and the Old Testament says all it has to say with 5,642 words." (Max Müller, "Lectures on the Science of language," I. 309.)—It would be interesting to place alongside of this Racine's restricted vocabulary. That of Mme. de Scudery is extremely limited. In the best romance of the XVIIth century, the "Princesse de Clèves," the number of words is reduced to the minimum. The Dictionary of the old French Academy contains 29,712 words; the Greek Thesaurus, by H. Estienne, contains about 150,000.]

3225 (return)
[ Compare together the translations of the Bible made by de Sacy and Luther; those of Homer by Dacier, Bitaubé and Lecomte de Lisle; those of Herodotus, by Larcher and Courrier, the popular tales of Perrault and those by Grimm, etc.]

3226 (return)
[ See the "Discours académique," by Racine, on the reception of Thomas Corneille: "In this chaos of dramatic poetry your illustrious brother brought Reason on the stage, but Reason associated with all the pomp and the ornamentation our language is capable of."]

3227 (return)
[ Voltaire, "Essay sur le poème épique," 290. "It must be admitted that a Frenchman has more difficulty in writing an epic poem than anybody else. . . . Dare I confess it? Our own is the least poetic of all polished nations. The works in verse the most highly esteemed in France are those of the drama, which must be written in a familiar style approaching conversation."]

3228 (return)
[ Except in "Pensées," by Pascal, a few notes dotted down by a morbidly exalted Christian, and which certainly, in the perfect work, would not have been allowed to remain as they are.]

3229 (return)
[ See in the Cabinet of Engravings the theatrical costumes of the middle of the XVIIIth century.—Nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of the classic drama than the parts of Esther and Brittannicus, as they are played nowadays, in the accurate costumes and with scenery derived from late discoveries at Pompeii or Nineveh.]

3230 (return)
[ The formality which this indicates will be understood by those familiar with the use of the pronoun thou in France, denoting intimacy and freedom from restraint in contrast with ceremonious and formal intercourse.—Tr.]

3231 (return)
[ See the parts of the moralizers and reasoners like Cléante in "Tartuffe," Ariste in "Les Femmes Savantes," Chrysale in "L'Ecole des Femmes," etc. See the discussion between the two brothers in "Le Festin de Pierre," III. 5; the discourse of Ergaste in "L'Ecole des Maris"; that of Eliante, imitated from Lucretius in the "Misanthrope," II. 5; the portraiture, by Dorine in "Tartuffe," I. 1.—The portrait of the hypocrite, by Don Juan in "Le Festin de Pierre," V. 2.]

3232 (return)
[ For instance the parts of Harpagon and Arnolphe.]

3233 (return)
[ We see this in Tartuffe, but only through an expression of Dorine, and not directly. Cf. in Shakespeare, the parts of Coriolanus, Hotspur, Falstaff, Othello, Cleopatra, etc.]

3234 (return)
[ Balzac passed entire days in reading the "Almanach des cent mille adresses," also in a cab in the streets during the afternoons, examining signs for the purpose of finding suitable names for his characters. This little circumstance shows the difference between two diverse conceptions of mankind.]

3235 (return)
[ "At the present day, whatever may be said, there is no such thing as Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, and Englishmen, for all are Europeans. All have the same tastes, the same passions, the same habits, none having obtained a national form through any specific institution." Rousseau, "Sur le gouvernement de Pologne," 170.]

3236 (return)
[ Previous to 1750 we find something about these in "Gil-Blas," and in "Marianne," (Mme. Dufour the sempstress and her shop).—Unfortunately the Spanish travesty prevents the novels of Lesage from being as instructive as they might be.]

3237 (return)
[ Interesting details are found in the little stories by Diderot as, for instance, "Les deux amis de Bourbonne." But elsewhere he is a partisan, especially in the "Religieuse," and conveys a false impression of things.]

3238 (return)
[ "To attain to the truth we have only to fix our attention on the ideas which each one finds within his own mind." (Malebranche, "Recherche de la Vérité," book I. ch. 1.)—"Those long chains of reasoning, all simple and easy, which geometers use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, suggested to me that all things which come within human knowledge must follow each other in a similar chain." (Descartes, "Discours de la Methode," I. 142).—In the seventeenth century In the 17th century constructions a priori were based on ideas, in the 18th century on sensations, but always following the same mathematical method fully displayed in the "Ethics" of Spinoza.]

3239 (return)
[ See especially his memoir: "De l'influence du climat sur les habitudes morales," vague, and wholly barren of illustrations excepting one citation from Hippocrates.]

3240 (return)
[ These are Sieyès own words.—He adds elsewhere, "There is no more reality in assumed historical truths than in assumed religious truths." ("Papiers de Sieyès," the year 1772, according to Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du lundi," V. 194).—Descartes and Malebranche already expressed this contempt for history.]

3241 (return)
[ Today, in 1998, we know that Taine was right. The research on animal and human behavior, on animal and human brain circuitry, and the behavior of the cruel human animal during the 20th century, confirmed his views. Still mankind persists in preferring simple solutions and ideas to complex ones. This is the way our brains and our nature as gregarious animals make us think and feel. This our basic human nature make ambitious men able to appeal to and dominate the crowd. (SR.)]

3242 (return)
[ Condorcet, "Esquisse d'un tableau historique de l'esprit humain," ninth epoch.]

3243 (return)
[ See the "Tableau historique," presented to the Institute by Chénier in 1808, showing by its statements that the classic spirit still prevails in all branches of literature.—Cabanis died in 1818, Volney in 1820, de Tracy and Sieyès in 1836, Daunou in 1840. In May, 1845, Saphary and Valette are still professors of Condillac's philosophy in the two lycées in Paris.]

3244 (return)
[ The world did not heed Taine's warnings. The leaders and the masses of the Western world were to be seduced by the terrible new ideologies of the 20th century. The ideology of socialism persists making good use of the revised 20th century editions of the Rights of Man, enlarged to cover the physical well-being and standard of living of man, woman, child and animal and in this manner allowing the state to replace all individual responsibility and authority, thus, as Taine saw, dealing a death blow to the family, to individual responsibility and enterprise and to effective local government. (SR.).]