Читать книгу The Modern Regime, Volume 1 - Taine Hippolyte - Страница 10

No faculty is more precious for a political engineer; for the forces he acts upon are never other than human passions. But how, except through divination, can these passions, which grow out of the deepest sentiments, be reached? How, save by conjecture, can forces be estimated which seem to defy all measurement? On this dark and uncertain ground, where one has to grope one's way, Napoleon moves with almost absolute certainty; he moves promptly. First of all, he studies himself; indeed, to find one's way into another's soul requires, preliminarily, that one should dive deep into one's own.1161

"I have always delighted in analysis," said he, one day, "and should I ever fall seriously in love I would take my sentiment to pieces. Why and How are such important questions one cannot put them to one's self too often."

"It is certain," writes an observer, "that he, of all men, is the one who has most meditated on the why which controls human actions."

His method, that of the experimental sciences, consists in testing every hypothesis or deduction by some positive fact, observed by him under definite conditions; a physical force being ascertained and accurately measured through the deviation of a needle, or through the rise and fall of a fluid, this or that invisible moral force can likewise be ascertained and approximately measured through some emotional sign, some decisive manifestation, consisting of a certain word, tone, or gesture. It is these words, tones, and gestures which he dwells on; he detects inward sentiments by the outward expression; he figures to himself the internal by the external, by some facial appearance, some telling attitude, some brief and topical scene, by such specimen and shortcuts, so well chosen and detailed that they provide a summary of the innumerable series of analogous cases. In this way, the vague, fleeting object is suddenly arrested, brought to bear, and then gauged and weighed, like some impalpable gas collected and kept in a graduated transparent glass tube.—Accordingly, at the Council of State, while the others, either jurists or administrators, see abstractions, articles of the law and precedents, he sees people as they are—the Frenchman, the Italian, the German; that of the peasant, the workman, the bourgeois, the noble, the returned émigré,1162 the soldier, the officer and the functionary—everywhere the individual man as he is, the man who plows, manufactures, fights, marries, brings forth children, toils, enjoys himself, and dies.—Nothing is more striking than the contrast between the dull, grave arguments advanced by the wise official editor, and Napoleon's own words caught on the wing, at the moment, vibrating and teeming with illustrations and imagery.1163 Apropos of divorce, the principle of which he wishes to maintain:

"Consult, now, national manners and customs. Adultery is no phenomenon; it is common enough—une affaire de canapé... There must be some curb on women who commit adultery for trinkets, poetry, Apollo, and the muses, etc."

But if divorce be allowed for incompatibility of temper you undermine marriage; the fragility of the bond will be apparent the moment the obligation is contracted;

"it is just as if a man said to himself, 'I am going to marry until I feel different.'"

Nullity of marriage must not be too often allowed; once a marriage is made it is a serious matter to undo it.

"Suppose that, in marrying my cousin just arrived from the Indies, I wed an adventuress. She bears me children, and I then discover she is not my cousin—is that marriage valid? Does not public morality demand that it should be so considered? There has been a mutual exchange of hearts, of transpiration."

On the right of children to be supported and fed although of age, he says:

"Will you allow a father to drive a girl of fifteen out of his house? A father worth 60,000 francs a year might say to his son, 'You are stout and fat; go and turn plowman.' The children of a rich father, or of one in good circumstances, are always entitled to the paternal porridge. Strike out their right to be fed, and you compel children to murder their parents."

As to adoption:

"You regard this as law-makers and not as statesmen. It is not a civil contract nor a judicial contract. The analysis (of the jurist) leads to vicious results. Man is governed by imagination only; without imagination he is a brute. It is not for five cents a day, simply to distinguish himself, that a man consents to be killed; if you want to electrify him touch his heart. A notary, who is paid a fee of twelve francs for his services, cannot do that. It requires some other process, a legislative act. Adoption, what is that? An imitation by which society tries to counterfeit nature. It is a new kind of sacrament.... Society ordains that the bones and blood of one being shall be changed into the bones and blood of another. It is the greatest of all legal acts. It gives the sentiments of a son to one who never had them, and reciprocally those of a parent. Where ought this to originate? From on high, like a clap of thunder!"

All his expressions are bright flashes one after another.1164 Nobody, since Voltaire and Galiani, has launched forth such a profusion of them; on society, laws, government, France and the French, some penetrate and explain, like those of Montesquieu, as if with a flash of lightening. He does not hammer them out laboriously, but they burst forth, the outpourings of his intellect, its natural, involuntary, constant action. And what adds to their value is that, outside of councils and private conversations, he abstains from them, employing them only in the service of thought; at other times he subordinates them to the end he has in view, which is always their practical effect. Ordinarily, he writes and speaks in a different language, in a language suited to his audience; he dispenses with the oddities, the irregular improvisations and imagination, the outbursts of genius and inspiration. He retains and uses merely those which are intended to impress the personage whom he wishes to dazzle with a great idea of himself, such as Pius VII., or the Emperor Alexander. In this case, his conversational tone is that of a caressing, expansive, amiable familiarity; he is then before the footlights, and when he acts he can play all parts, tragedy or comedy, with the same life and spirit whether he fulminates, insinuates, or even affects simplicity. When he is with his generals, ministers, and principal performers, he falls back on the concise, positive, technical business style; any other would be harmful. The keen mind only reveals itself through the brevity and imperious strength and rudeness of the accent. For his armies and the common run of men, he has his proclamations and bulletins, that is to say, sonorous phrases composed for effect, a statement of facts purposely simplified and falsified,1165 in short, an excellent effervescent wine, good for exciting enthusiasm, and an equally excellent narcotic for maintaining credulity,1166 a sort of popular mixture to be distributed just at the proper time, and whose ingredients are so well proportioned that the public drinks it with delight, and becomes at once intoxicated.—His style on every occasion, whether affected or spontaneous, shows his wonderful knowledge of the masses and of individuals; except in two or three cases, on one exalted domain, of which he always remains ignorant, he has ever hit the mark, applying the appropriate lever, giving just the push, weight, and degree of impulsion which best accomplishes his purpose. A series of brief, accurate memoranda, corrected daily, enables him to frame for himself a sort of psychological tablet whereon he notes down and sums up, in almost numerical valuation, the mental and moral dispositions, characters, faculties, passions, and aptitudes, the strong or weak points, of the innumerable human beings, near or remote, on whom he operates.