OW that M. Mazure, the archivist, had at last attained to academic honours, he began to regard the government with genial tolerance. But, as he was never happy unless he was at variance with someone, he now turned his wrath against the clericals, and began to denounce the scheming of the bishops. Meeting M. Bergeret in the Place Saint-Exupère, he warned him of the peril threatening from the clerical party.
“Finding it impossible,” said he, “to overturn the Republic, the curés now want to divert it to their own ends.”
“That is the ambition of every party,” answered M. Bergeret, “and the natural result of our democratic institutions, for democracy itself consists entirely in the struggle of parties, since the nation itself is not at one either in sentiments or interests.”
“But,” answered M. Mazure, “the unbearable246 part of this is that the clericals should put on the mask of liberty in order to deceive the electors.”
To this M. Bergeret replied:
“Every party which finds itself shut out from the Government demands liberty, because to do so strengthens the opposition and weakens the party in power. For the same reason the party in power curtails liberty as much as possible and it passes, in the sacred name of the sovereign people, the most despotic laws. For there is no charter which can safeguard liberty against the acts of the sovereign nation. Democratic despotism theoretically has no limits, but in actual fact, and considering only the present period, I grant that its power is not boundless. Democracy has given us ‘the black laws,’ but it never puts them in force.”
“Monsieur Bergeret,” said the archivist, “let me give you a piece of good advice. You are a Republican: then don’t fire on your own friends. If we don’t look out, we shall fall back into the rule of the Church. Reaction is making terrible progress. The whites are always the whites; the blues are always the blues, as Napoleon said. You are a blue, Monsieur Bergeret. The clerical party will never forgive you for calling Jeanne d’Arc a mascotte, and even I can scarcely pardon you for it, for Jeanne d’Arc and Danton are my two special idols. You are a free-thinker.247 Then join us in our anti-clerical campaign! Let us unite our forces! It is union alone that can give us the strength to conquer. The highest interests are at stake in the fight against the church party.”
“It is just party interest that I see mainly at work in that conflict,” answered M. Bergeret. “But if I were obliged to join a party at all, it must needs be yours, since it is the only one I could help without too much hypocrisy. But, happily, I am not reduced to this extremity, and I am by no means tempted to clip the wings of my mind in order to force it into a political compartment. To tell the truth, I am quite indifferent to your disputes, because I feel how empty they are. The dividing line between you and the clericals is a trifling matter at bottom. They would succeed you in office, provided there were no change in the position of the individual. And in the State it is the position of the individual that alone matters. Opinions are but verbal jugglery, and it is only opinions that separate you from the church party. You have no moral system to oppose to theirs, for the simple reason that in France we have no religious code existing in opposition to a code of civil morality. Those who believe that we have these two opposing systems of morality are merely deceived by appearances. I will prove this to you in a few words.
248 “In every era we find that there are habits of life which determine a line of thought common to all men. Our moral ideas are not the fruit of thought, but the result of habit. No one dares openly to resist these ideas, because obedience to them is followed by honours, and revolt against them by humiliation. They are adopted by the entire community without question, independently of religious creeds and philosophic opinions, and they are as keenly upheld by those whose deeds by no means conform to their dictates, as they are by those who constrain themselves to live according to the rules laid down by them. The origin of these ideas is the only point that admits of discussion: so-called free-thinkers believe that the rules which direct their conduct are natural in origin, whilst pious souls discern the origin of the rules they obey in their religion, and these rules are found to agree, or nearly so, not because they are universal, that is, divine and natural, as people delight to say, but, on the contrary, because they are the product of the period and clime, deduced from the same habits, derived from the same prejudices. Each epoch has its predominant moral idea, which springs neither from religion nor from philosophy, but from habit, the sole force that is capable of linking men in the same bond of feeling, for the moment we touch reason we touch the dividing principle in249 humanity, and the human race can only exist on condition that it never reflects on what is essential to its own existence. Morality governs creeds, which are ever matters of dispute, whilst morality itself is never analysed.
“And simply because a moral code is the sum-total of the prejudices of the community, there cannot possibly exist two rival codes at the same time and in the same place. I could illustrate this truth by a great number of examples, but none of them could be more to the point than that of the Emperor Julian, with whose works I have lately been making myself somewhat familiar. Julian, who fought on the side of the Pagan gods with such staunchness and magnanimity—Julian, who was a sun-worshipper, yet professed all the moral sentiments of the Christians. Like them, he scorned the pleasures of the flesh and vaunted the efficacy of fasting, because it brings a man into union with the divine. Like them, he upheld the doctrine of atonement and believed in the purifying effect of suffering. He had himself initiated, too, into mysteries which satisfied his keen desire for purity, renunciation and divine love, quite as efficaciously as the mysteries of the Christian religion. In a word, his neo-paganism was, morally speaking, own brother to the rising cult of Christianity. And what is there surprising in that? The two creeds250 were the twin children of Rome and of the East. They both corresponded to the same human habits, to the same deep instincts in the Asiatic and Latin worlds. Their souls wer............