II. Ancestral Tradition And Culture.

     Origin, nature and value of hereditary prejudice.—How far
     custom, religion and government are legitimate.

Nothing could be better had the new doctrine been complete, and if Reason, instructed by history, had become critical, and therefore qualified to comprehend the rival she replaced. For then, instead of regarding her as an usurper to be repelled she would have recognized in her an elder sister whose part must be left to her. Hereditary prejudice is a sort of Reason operating unconsciously. It has claims as well as reason, but it is unable to present these; instead of advancing those that are authentic it puts forth the doubtful ones. Its archives are buried; to exhume these it is necessary to make researches of which it is incapable; nevertheless they exist, and history at the present day is bringing them to light.—Careful investigations shows that, like science, it issues from a long accumulation of experiences; a people, after a multitude of gropings and efforts, has discovered that a certain way of living and thinking is the only one adapted to its situation, the most practical and the most salutary, the system or dogma now seeming arbitrary to us being at first a confirmed expedient of public safety. Frequently it is so still; in any event, in its leading features it is indispensable; it may be stated with certainty that, if the leading prejudices of the community should suddenly disappear, Man, deprived of the precious legacy transmitted to him by the wisdom of ages, would at once fall back into a savage condition and again become what he was at first, namely, a restless, famished, wandering, hunted brute. There was a time when this heritage was lacking; there are populations to day with which it is still utterly lacking.3304 To abstain from eating human flesh, from killing useless or burdensome aged people, from exposing, selling or killing children one does not know what to do with, to be the one husband of but one woman, to hold in horror incest and unnatural practices, to be the sole and recognized owner of a distinct field, to be mindful of the superior injunctions of modesty, humanity, honor and conscience, all these observances, formerly unknown and slowly established, compose the civilization of human beings. Because we accept them in full security they are not the less sacred, and they become only the more sacred when, submitted to investigation and traced through history, they are disclosed to us as the secret force which has converted a herd of brutes into a society of men. In general, the older and more universal a custom, the more it is based on profound motives, on physiological motives on those of hygiene, and on those instituted for social protection. At one time, as in the separation of castes, a heroic or thoughtful stock must be preserved by preventing the mixtures by which inferior blood introduces mental debility and low instincts.3305 At another, as in the prohibition of spirituous liquors, and of animal food, it is necessary to conform to the climate prescribing a vegetable diet, or to the race-temperament for which strong drink is pernicious.3306At another, as in the institution of the right of first-born to inherit title and castle, it was important to prepare and designate beforehand the military commander who the tribe would obey, or the civil chieftain that would preserve the domain, superintend its cultivation, and support the family.3307—If there are valid reasons for legitimizing custom there are reasons of higher import for the consecration of religion Consider this point, not in general and according to a vague notion, but at the outset, at its birth, in the texts, taking for an example one of the faiths which now rule in society, Christianity, Hinduism, the law of Mohammed or of Buddha. At certain critical moments in history, a few men, emerging from their narrow and daily routine of life, are seized by some generalized conception of the infinite universe; the august face of nature is suddenly unveiled to them; in their sublime emotion they seem to have detected its first cause; they have at least detected some of its elements. Through a fortunate conjunction of circumstances these elements are just those which their century, their people, a group of peoples, a fragment of humanity is in a state to comprehend. Their point of view is the only one at which the graduated multitudes below them are able to accept. For millions of men, for hundreds of generations, only through them is any access to divine things to be obtained. Theirs is the unique utterance, heroic or affecting, enthusiastic or tranquilizing; the only one which the hearts and minds around them and after them will heed; the only one adapted to profound cravings, to accumulated aspirations, to hereditary faculties, to a complete intellectual and moral organism; Yonder that of Hindostan or of the Mongolian; here that of the Semite or the European; in our Europe that of the German, the Latin or the Slave; in such a way that its contradictions, instead of condemning it, justify it, its diversity producing its adaptation and its adaptation producing benefits.—This is no barren formula. A sentiment of such grandeur, of such comprehensive and penetrating insight, an idea by which Man, compassing the vastness and depth of things, so greatly oversteps the ordinary limits of his mortal condition, resembles an illumination; it is easily transformed into a vision; it is never remote from ecstasy; it can express itself only through symbols; it evokes divine figures.3308Religion in its nature is a metaphysical poem accompanied by faith. Under this title it is popular and efficacious; for, apart from an invisible select few, a pure abstract idea is only an empty term, and truth, to be apparent, must be clothed with a body. It requires a form of worship, a legend, and ceremonies in order to address the people, women, children, the credulous, every one absorbed by daily cares, any understanding in which ideas involuntarily translate themselves through imagery. Owing to this palpable form it is able to give its weighty support to the conscience, to counterbalance natural egoism, to curb the mad onset of brutal passions, to lead the will to abnegation and devotion, to tear Man away from himself and place him wholly in the service of truth, or of his kind, to form ascetics, martyrs, sisters of charity and missionaries. Thus, throughout society, religion becomes at once a natural and precious instrumentality. On the one hand men require it for the contemplation of infinity and to live properly; if it were suddenly to be taken away from them their souls would be a mournful void, and they would do greater injury to their neighbors. Besides, it would be vain to attempt to take it away from them; the hand raised against it would encounter only its envelope; it would be repelled after a sanguinary struggle, its germ lying too deep to be extirpated.

And when, at length, after religion and custom, we regard the State, that is to say, the armed power possessing both physical force and moral authority, we find for it an almost equally noble origin. It has, in Europe at least, from Russia to Portugal and from Norway to the two Sicilies, in its origin and essence, a military foundation in which heroism constitutes itself the champion of right. Here and there in the chaos of tribes and crumbling societies, some man has arisen who, through his ascendancy, rallies around him a loyal band, driving out intruders, overcoming brigands, re-establishing order, reviving agriculture, founding a patrimony, and transmitting as property to his descendants his office of hereditary justiciary and born general. Through this permanent delegation a great public office is removed from competition, fixed in one family, sequestered in safe hands; thenceforth the nation possesses a vital center and each right obtains a visible protector. If the sovereign confines himself to his traditional responsibilities, is restrained in despotic tendencies, and avoids falling into egoism, he provides the country with the best government of which the world has any knowledge. Not alone is it the most stable, capable of continuation, and the most suitable for maintaining together a body of 20 or 30 million people, but again one of the most noble because devotion dignifies both command and obedience and, through the prolongation of military tradition, fidelity and honor, from grade to grade, attaches the leader to his duty and the soldier to his commander.—Such are the strikingly valid claims of social traditions which we may, similar to an instinct, consider as being a blind form of reason. That which makes it fully legitimate is that reason herself, to become efficient, is obliged to borrow its form. A doctrine becomes inspiring only through a blind medium. To become of practical use, to take upon itself the government of souls, to be transformed into a spring of action, it must be deposited in minds given up to systematic belief, of fixed habits, of established tendencies, of domestic traditions and prejudice, and that it, from the agitated heights of the intellect, descends into and become amalgamated with the passive forces of the will; then only does it form a part of the character and become a social force. At the same time, however, it ceases to be critical and clairvoyant; it no longer tolerates doubt and contradiction, nor admits further restrictions or nice distinctions; it is either no longer cognizant of, or badly appreciates, its own evidences. We of the present day believe in infinite progress about the same as people once believed in original sin; we still receive ready-made opinions from above, the Academy of Sciences occupying in many respects the place of the ancient councils. Except with a few special savants, belief and obedience will always be unthinking, while Reason would wrongfully resent the leadership of prejudice in human affairs, since, to lead, it must itself become prejudiced.