Recollections of My Youth | Page 4

coming to an end in our time, and we
cannot be surprised if some disturbance ensues. There are no longer
masses which believe; a great number of the people decline to
recognise the supernatural, and the day is not far distant, when beliefs
of this kind will die out altogether in the masses, just as the belief in
familiar spirits and ghosts have disappeared. Even if, as is probable, we
are to have a temporary Catholic reaction, the people will not revert to
the Church. Religion has become for once and all a matter of personal
taste. Now beliefs are only dangerous when they represent something
like unanimity, or an unquestionable majority. When they are merely
individual, there is not a word to be said against them, and it is our duty
to treat them with the respect which they do not always exhibit for their
adversaries, when they feel that they have force at their back.
There can be no denying that it will take time for the liberty, which is

the aim and object of human society, to take root in France as it has in
America. French democracy has several essential principles to acquire,
before it can become a liberal _régime_. It will be above all things
necessary that we should have laws as to associations, charitable
foundations, and the right of legacy, analogous to those which are in
force in England and America. Supposing this progress to be effected
(if it is Utopian to count upon it in France, it is not so for the rest of
Europe, in which the aspirations for English liberty become every day
more intense), we should really not have much cause to look regretfully
upon the favours conferred by the ancient _régime_ upon things of the
mind. I quite think that if democratic ideas were to secure a definitive
triumph, science and scientific teaching would soon find the modest
subsidies now accorded them cut off. This is an eventuality which
would have to be accepted as philosophically as may be. The free
foundations would take the place of the state institutes, the slight
drawbacks being more than compensated for by the advantage of
having no longer to make to the supposed prejudices of the majority
concessions which the state exacted in return for its pittance. The waste
of power in state institutes is enormous. It may safely be said that not
50 per cent of a credit voted in favour of science, art, or literature, is
expended to any effect. Private foundations would not be exposed to
nearly so much waste. It is true that spurious science would, in these
conditions, flourish side by side with real science, enjoying the same
privileges, and that there would be no official criterion, as there still is
to a certain extent now, to distinguish the one from the other. But this
criterion becomes every day less reliable. Reason has to submit to the
indignity of taking second place behind those who have a loud voice,
and who speak with a tone of command. The plaudits and favour of the
public will, for a long time to come, be at the service of what is false.
But the true has great power, when it is free; the true endures; the false
is ever changing and decays. Thus it is that the true, though only
understood by a select few, always rises to the surface, and in the end
prevails.
In short, it is very possible that the American-like social condition
towards which we are advancing, independently of any particular form
of government, will not be more intolerable for persons of intelligence

than the better guaranteed social conditions which we have already
been subject to. In such a world as this will be, it will be no difficult
matter to create very quiet and snug retreats for oneself. "The era of
mediocrity in all things is about to begin," remarked a short time ago
that distinguished thinker, M. Arniel of Geneva. "Equality begets
uniformity, and it is by the sacrifice of the excellent, the remarkable,
the extraordinary that we extirpate what is bad. The whole becomes
less coarse; but the whole becomes more vulgar." We may at least hope
that vulgarity will not yet a while persecute freedom of mind. Descartes,
living in the brilliant seventeenth century, was nowhere so well off as
at Amsterdam, because, as "every one was engaged in trade there," no
one paid any heed to him. It may be that general vulgarity will one day
be the condition of happiness, for the worst American vulgarity would
not send Giordano Bruno to the stake or persecute Galileo. We have no
right to be very fastidious. In the past we were never more than
tolerated. This tolerance, if nothing more, we are assured of