ON THE ART OF GETTING-ON.* AN English book of essays
and a French book of essays, how different they be ! an English author who should gather up the quintessence of his life-long experience into a series of such wicked observations as those set forth by the anonymous writer of L'Art de Parvenir would not find his work succeed, whether they were taken to represent his serious conclusions, or merely a brilliant tissue of ironic " chaff " of a highly intellectual
* Recherches stir PArt de P,rrrenir. Par an Contemporaia. Aukyot. 1545. kind. We don't understand irony beyond a certain point. Thackeray mingled at every turn a deep Germanic tenderness with his bitterest. speech. Arthur Helps' satire is of the mildest. Dickens indulges in delightful caricature, Carlyle laughs from the scorn of religious indignation. None of these can be doubted as holding by an ideal of excellence akin to that of the common con- science. But here is a Frenchman who dedicates to the Members of the Institute of France a work composed of numerous chapters on the separate acts which go to make up the one great act of Getting-On. As how, for instance, to succeed in politics, secure to yourself a nice lucrative post, floor your enemies, wind round your princes, and always ride the winning horse. Such is one part of the book, marked by a most uncomfortable cachet of practical experience ; copiously illustrated by historical examples which you are asked to admire, such as Richelieu, Mazarin, Potemkin, and Madame de Maintenon,—on whom, by the way, he presses rather hardly, painting her, on St. Simon's authority, as a mere successful intriguante. But for that quality he lauds her to the skies.
Prefacing the main purpose of the book as a didactic manual of the methods of success, the author starts with the amiable theory that society is a state of warfare regulated by law ; and he makes the just remark (his premiss being accepted) that under the demo- cratic conditions of modern life the whole population descends into the arena and shares the struggle and its chances. This is more true of France than of England ; in the former country, the road to fame and fortune has been at least open to all since the Great Revolution. And why, he asks, do not the mass of the unsuccessful rise up and scatter to the winds the more fortunate or more gifted winners of life's prizes? Why is not society one perpetual Jacquerie? Why is the Reign of Terror an isolated fact? What prevents hunger and thirst, and rags, and the more intangible impulses of envy and despair from rousing the disinherited to do battle ? Our author answers that we owe our safety to the natural instinct of subordination in mankind. Men group together in hierarchies according to the kind and degree of the forces which are in them. Equality, says he, is a dream ; human creatures are born with an infinite diversity of gifts, with an infinite gradation of powers ; and, except in those rare moments when all barriers are overthrown, when the ancient moulds are broken, and the resetting and recasting has all to be begun over again, people move in grooves which they themselves have cut by the daily movement of their natures, cling together in companies which have been formed by spontaneous attraction, and obey with the blindest devotion self-chosen masters in whose hands they have placed the snaffle and the curb.
From hence the author takes up this question of mastership. How in things large and little do the masters get recognized and chosen? By strength and divine election, says Carlyle ; not so, says the anonymous one. Is the race always to the swift and the battle to the strong ? Dots luck never turn up red fifteen times running ; did not chance help Napoleon, Caesar, and Queen Elizabeth? What was that timely displacement of the air cur- rents which wrecked the Spanish Armada? Ara that other storm which broke the invasion from Boulogne? Are not great men and great nations helped by the strangest of coincidences, and by the aptness of taking advantage thereof ; and do not men whom in other respects we should judge first-rate, sometimes fail by want of that very aptitude, being but as sucking babes in that great art wherein second-rate men are adepts,—l'art de parvenir
The history of France furnishes him with an endless store of illustration, as in a minor degree those of England and Russia ; he deduces the conclusion that it is far from worth while as a prac- tical speculation to take any pains about doing good, since the best Kings get no credit unless they be likewise victorious. Rulers, says he, are almost always estimated according to the brilliancy of their crimes ; and when they are overthrown it is never for the bad deeds of themselves or their dynasty, but always as the result of some weakness and in an hour-of apparent security. The fall of James IL of England, that of Louis XVI., Charles X., and Louis Philippe of France, all took place when no great grievance existed, and when the moments of danger appeared to have been tided over. " Don't mind squeezing and oppressing your people, 0 ye Princes !" says our essayist ; " all history proves that they will only like you the better for it. But do it firmly ; don't hesitate ; and, above all, don't have fits of squeamish and repentant philanthropy, which will prove the worse for you and for them. Men always prefer the severe and respect the inevitable. It is the most dangerous service which attracts the volunteers, it is the strictest order which is filled with penitents. If it is success which you are aiming at, don't—don't be soft ; it does not pay, it never did, and never will till the end of time."
Leaving the governmental and political sphere, this caustic pen ranges through various other fields of action. A chapter on finance, or rather on financing, is printed in Chinese hieroglyphics, and extremely queer they look in the middle of the handsomely got-up book. But the mysteries thereof are, he affirms, too sacred and too complex for the vulgar eye and the vulgar tongue ; and so he affixes merely a brief translation of the headings of the paragraphs, which are indeed a summary of the various modes by which you may dip your pen into the public ink and write a cheque upon your neighbour's balance. How, for instance, to make a hundred thousand francs without risking a half-sous, of the limita- tions of the penal code and a calculation of probabilities of escape. And a lucid exposition follows of the profound and daily-proved truth that the worst affairs produce the most money if only you know how to manipulate them, also of the principal combinations fcamd to answer in all that concerns the Stock Exchange and Banking System,—when you are not a shareholder ; physiology of the shareholder, his ideas, way of acting and probable calculations ; signs by which to recognize those with whom it is profitable to do business ; principal methods of testing the same, so as to discover unerringly the animals born to be fleeced, and who would indeed feel wounded if you did not fleece them. Such is the financial chapter ; and whatever examples may have been cited in the Chinese text, the use of names is, in the brief translation, scrupu- lously avoided.
The chapter on women is much inferior to the rest, owing to the extreme limitation of the point of view. How to take lovely woman in a snare, after the fashion of Gil Blas or Marivaux, may -demand a subtle science in the fowler, but novels founded on that sort of thing would be voted dull work at this time of day. The world-famous story of Lovelace and Clarissa is redeemed and rendered pathetically noble by the various passions of pity and remorse, hatred and aspiration wrought up in the wonderful tale. Had it consisted merely of Lovelace's plots, some men only would have read it in the past century, and none would have read it now. And considering the various parts played in the drama of French history by women of character and by women of no character, and considering the amount of ardent passion, of ambition, astuteness, and ruinous result exemplified by them in the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. alone, one would have thought our author might have supplied a series of caustic and sufficiently inhuman obser- vations, without descending to that lowest level of ignoble intrigue for merely material ends, which is now banished not alone from the conversation, but even from the lives of modern men.
With the exception of this chapter the book, however, cynical as it is, is really worth reading; and it must be read, to understand how apt, and in a certain sense how convincing, are the arguments and the illustrations that crop out on every page. It is true, unfortu- nately, that there is a very bad side to human life, and that when, according to George Eliot, old Harry has got his boots on, bare- footed innocence is no match fir him. Honesty may be the best policy in the long run ; but it's a very long run, and the truth of the proverb partly depends on what you want to get. The Rabbits were good little beasts, but woe to them when Reynard the Fox took to school-keeping ! for a mistake in the alphabet was punished by being eaten up. The limp and wretched state of mind induced by this expectation in the minds of the class may be seen in Kaulbach's rendering of that hero's life. Who can doubt that hedgehogs would have fared better !
In earthly things, the primary laws of success are pretty nearly as invariable as any other laws ; and many a homely proverb testifies to them. " Prudence " is a primary qualification for dealing with gold and silver, goods bought and goods sold. Aliss that, and the holiness of a saint or the purity of an angel will not help you to goods or gold. And so far, no harm. Were the problem merely to consist in this, that so much industry and self-denial brought so much riches, so much success, so certain a post of high ambi- tion, then would it, indeed, be a simple matter whether or no folk so chose to exert themselves. But the problem is far other ; there is a disturbing element ; and that element, to speak plainly, is the Devil. Imagine him, if you will, with horns and tail ; or brooding in satanic grandeur, the theological Devil who made our infant hair stand on end. Or imagine him only as disincarnate in the passions and selfishnesses of other people ; and lo ! he stands in the path of the peaceable, normal accumulations we desire. This is the ever present idea in the minds of men like Chesterfield, La Rochefoucauld, and the author of L'Art de Parvenir. They know, what we may all know by watching human life, that this Devil has a great chance of getting the better of us in the matter of success, unless we borrow his weapons. If we lag behind in dress, in equipage, in sharp bargaining, if we believe too much and lie in wait too little, then we run a fair chance of being worsted. And, let us add (with a feeling of relief), that in other countries, and notably in France, this is more true than with us in England, and was once more true of England than it is now. But in business circles the danger still lingers, and even in public life there is plenty of room for successful trick.
On this head no consolation can be given. There are plenty of receipt-books for cooking nice little dishes out of your friends and neighbours, your rivals and your enemies ; but they all demand a certain moral callousness on the part of the operator. The Gospel says nothing about making the best of both worlds ; Peter, Paul, Stephen.. and John were particularly unlucky men judged by any human standard ; putting aside the tragical deaths of three of the number, we feel sure that their private affairs rarely gave them a thought, and that they fed or starved, shivered or were clad, according to chance or the forethought of others. Yet it is by their code that we all profess to act, difference of circumstance considered. We have all of us sworn to be ready to renounce ; and so, when anyone volunteers to write a book on the " Art of Getting-On," such as the French work which has suggested these remarks, it is, perhaps, in the interests of morality, that the picture should be as ugly as possible, a moral reductio ad absurdum —the uglier the better. That it should be to some extent an exaggeration may be accounted for by the author's desire to draw a complete and telling picture, instead of a profound and subtle one. And also because, as hinted above, the conditions of modern French life induce an amount of petty intrigue to which our looser institutions do not lend themselves. Everything is divided and subdivided, and everybody insists on his share. But this subject, which enters into that of the morals of Continental democracy, is a wide one. Even allowing that the author, either seriously or ironically, takes too strong and bitter a view of human society, there still remains enough truth at the bottom of his cynicism to make the reader pause, and consider the possible price of success.
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