MELCHIOR DE VOGUE.* VISCOUNT E. M. DE VOGOi, diplomatist and
member of the French Academy, is completely revealed in each of the volumes of collected essays and reviews, of which Hewes d'Hiateire is the latest. Keenly attentive to the phases of literature, social ethics, and historical methods, and gifted with a delicate power of literary expression, he is not content to be merely an amiable dilettante. To him, questions of literature pale before social questions, and historical sciences, as M. Renan says, are "little con- jectural sciences, which break down almost as fast as they are built up." He would be a workman in the good cause ; be would add his quota to the " literature of good-will," which consoles and inspires hope. He judges a mission is imposed on him, a mission to renovate and restore social life ; his attitude is rather that of lay-confessor and guide, than of isolated artist in words and images. He finds a genera- tion grown up since the disastrous war, a generation which is not greatly interested in political questions. Forms of government, they think, can do so little for liberty, which is oppressed by natural laws. It is social problems that occupy their thoughts ; they are weary of the negations of the literature of analysis and doubt, and seek anxiously for a guide, a synthesis, for the bread of life. Their growing sense of human solidarity alienates them from the material positivism of the preceding generation, which bad thought to banish metaphysics and mystery. They feel that the science which was to make man the master of the universe, and to give him serenity, if not satisfaction, has only pushed back a little further the cause of causes, and furnishes nothing towards the all-important needs of the heart. " Periodically do the vast superstructures built on the foundations of reason • Howes d'Hisioiro. Par Melchior do Poet& Paris : Armand Cain et Cie. crumble and decay ; " once more, as after the great Revolu- tion, the pride of human reason is bowed down. " No positive instruction satisfies them. They have heard voices ; they know not whence; they set out to follow the vague calls ; they wander anxiously about the altar of the unknown God." To them, as representatives and protagonists of the democracy, which is the political force of the future, M.
de Vogii4 listens and appeals. The literature of " art for art's sake" is become an anachronism to them ; the literature of so-called realism disgusts them. What they demand is a literature that shall propose to itself a social aim, and be utilitarian in the best sense of the word, that shall nourish souls, " gather the crowd which eludes it in its present forms, touch the people by sim- plicity and sympathy." " In our state of society, it is inadmissible that the divorce should continue between the obscure multitude and the little sects of literary men." The intellectual minority may be " the guardian of the tradition of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful," as M. Renan says ; but if so, "we must then separate life from light, morality, and art, for this minority has not the secret of giving life,— a. secret of which the people is the sole possessor."
There are many signs in recent French literature which tend to show that M. de VogiiiS is fairly justified in signalising this change. History is full of records of the rise and fall of ideas, of the turns of the pendulum of the human mind ; and it is no wonder if the excesses in which French philosophy and literature have logically ended should be bringing about a corresponding reaction. France, says M. do Vogii6, has long suffered from an excess of intellectuality,— the heart has been sacrificed to the head, and the necessary result has been an. anomie of character, due to moral indiffer- ence, if not acceptance of fatalism. The documents and dissections of the realistic and naturalistic schools, the intel- lectual " filigree-work " of the artistic writers, the individual- istic ethics and exaltation of the Ego by the philosophers, the paralysing productions of the critical spirit, have at length reached their limit. Omnia in religionem desinunt, and France is beginning to see that it is not the German schoolmaster or drill-sergeant that won victory, but the deep spirit of national and divine faith. Though the " common inclination of the times solicits us to lean towards the people," the " vague pity" of the comfortably established is not likely to disarm the hatred of the poor, who begin to recognise their power, and find no great help in the education that is given to them. 1' You teach Caliban, and he uses his instruction to curse you." Or, to put it more mildly, Voltaire's " L'Homme aux Quarante Eons " said to his intellectual master : " Farewell, Sir. You have taught me. But my heart is saddened by your teaching. Such is often the fruit of knowledge." How are the classes to be reconciled in fraternity, and how is the education of character, rather than intellect, to be promoted P The litera- ture of realism is odious because destitute of charity; the multitude is athirst for the waters of life. " Reasons do not supply the place of sentiments, reasons do not lull a single pain." France rdust be vivified by moral precepts; France craves recomposition, and this can only be effected by simple ideas accessible to all. France that was sceptical, is now waking to the necessity of religion. During our author's diplomatic sojourn in Russia, he was naturally eager to further the mutual comprehension of the two peoples whose alliance seemed necessary to secure the balance of power. His Le Roman Busse was an admirable exposition of the mental state of Russia as delineated by its great realistic novelists, who are, for many reasons, the sole mouthpieces of Russia. But his book is also a condemnation of the French spirit, as revealed by its narrow-visioned realists. In the Russians, he found strongly developed that " latent evangelical spirit," the fermentation of which be dimly discerns in France. The Russians are pessimistic, it is true, but "pessimism is an instrument of progress, since the world is only ameliorated by those whom it does not satisfy." Their pessimism is dolorous and aggressive, but it " hides a hope beneath its maledictions," it is the " first symptom of a moral resurrection." It is no pessimism of Epicureans, resigned because their daily provender of pleasure is assured. The Russians are also half-Buddhists ; but "our second nature, civilisation, weighs ever more heavily on successive generations, and is inclining sensibly our Euro- pean races towards modes of thought which conditions of eoil have determined in India." But Christianity, by its principle of brave struggle, is a more complete agent of social life; and the Russians are Christians, their dominating feeling being one of renunciation and self-sacrifice. The Christianity of the Russian realists is often vague, but always latent. Hence the power of their works, which, like those of the English realists, are imbued with sympathy and full of pity,—" An emotional vision of strict truth." And our author proceeds to lament that not only has material power passed from the hands of the French, but their litera- ture of false realism no longer appeals to the world, because of its radical defect.
Thus M. de Vogue is convinced there is only one funda- mental question, that of religion. But, with all his diplo- matical respect for his national Church, he is reduced to an attitude of reserve and expectation. He cannot tell whether the Church, which history too often shows to bP occupied in resist- ing progress, and failing to recognise the elasticity of its creed, will readily accommodate itself to, and meet, the problems of the time. Will the Church be able to reconquer the multitude of the unfaithful and indifferent, and give a channel and direction to the rising tide of Socialism P " The historian must reserve his opinion on the school of Christian Socialism, which is very active already in Europe, because history has not yet pronounced." But there is another, wider-spread Socialism, which is materialistic only. " A speedy and com- plete fusion of these two currents seems hardly probable." And yet "the future of our race" depends on the question. If the fusion does not take place, " our people will slip more and more into that materialistic paganism, to the progress of which M. Taine lately called attention." M. Taine and M. Renan were both propagators of individualism, and yet both of them in their later works tried to stem the flood they had so greatly helped to let loose 1 What does M. Renan say P "The Church must always be with us ; otherwise life will be reduced to a desperate barrenness." We might add, however, that unfortunately M. Renan can be quoted on any and every side of a question.
The natural demand of M. de Vogiio's youthful disciples is for a remedy, a remedy in half-a-dozen words. But he replies that there are no empirical receipts for debilitated consti- tutions, such as is that of present-day France. He is an ob- server, and not a physician, or prophet. He is a historian, and as such states and explains only. " To describe evil is only an exercise of philosophy, and to recriminate against it is only the satisfaction of a political reactionary." He admires "those ideal, mystical and moral aspirations, which give to the choicer spirits of the new generation a physiognomy so attractive and confused." But he, like them, is in a state of expectation. " Society can apply to itself to-day the beautiful image of Plotinus : it resembles those travellers lost in the night, seated in silence on the shore of the sea, waiting for the sun to rise above the billows." He is not like Fontenelle, whose hand was full of truth, and yet was kept closed; he would be simple and sincere, and tell all he knows, He proclaims the ravages of individualism and the analytical spirit, with its " charming artificial lights coruscating over tombs ; " and he preaches faith, hope, and charity, without which all is vanity. " We are expelling from the world the Symbol by which it lives ; we are decreeing the falsehood of the ideal, which it is the mis- sion of the Symbol to create." He, too, craves for a spiritual guide, just as he craves for a hero to save France, a hero who shall be the voice and incarnation of the great and dumb masses. "Watchman, what of the night P " But his philo- sophy gives pause to his hopes and aspirations ; he fears there will never be a universal formula to reconcile the antinomies of the heart and the reason. And will not this reaction to- wards religion fare like all other reactions P Will not "the alternating balance of the human mind bring about another period of rationalism " P In the great spiritual movements, moreover, which have agitated men, history shows "a letting- loose of a great idea, soon exploited by gross appetites, and narrowed to secure earthly establishments." Nor can he forget that a humanitarian ideal, similar in its way to the religion of humanity which he is preaching, was preached by the philosophers before the great Revolution. "God forbid the omen !" is all he can cry. He finds Russia a " sphinx ;" and can no more solve its enigma than France can solve the enigma of Life, that greatest of Sphinxes. As for England, he can but cast a brief, envious glance at it. Scherer, and especially Mont6gut, had fully appreciated the realism of English literature, with its " superior beauty, due to moral inspiration." His diplomatic residence had restricted him to the study of a more doubtful, pessimistic, and yet sym- pathetic realism,—sympathetic, as sharing in the same moral inspiration. And as to politics, well, England is "that race of granite always sure of itself, which masters itself as it masters the ocean." And "Europe envies" its political Constitution. Alas 1 we might feel less inclined than M. de Vogile to put full trust in the democracy, might rather re- echo some of the mournful considerations of the late M. Scherer, who accepted democracy as inevitable, but sorrowed over the excesses to which it is prone ; for is not our democracy threatening the Constitution that "Europe envies "P
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