The Psychology of Socialism
Book 3: Socialism As Affected By Race
Chapter 7: The Present State of the Latin Peoples
Gustave Le Bon
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1. Weaknesses of the Latin nations:-The result of the conceptions already treated of-The dangers with which the development of Socialism threatens them-The Latin nations can no longer make experiments or venture on revolutions save under penalty of disappearing -Modern necessities. 2. The Latin Republics of America. Stain and Portugal :Present condition of the Spanish-American republics-They represent the lowest level of Latin civilisation-Their destiny-Spain and Portugal-Their state of decadence-Colonial government of the Spaniards-Why they have lost their colonies-The Spanish-American war considered from a psychological point of view-Influence of the character of the two opposing races-Incidents of the war. 3. Italy and France:-Present condition of Italy-Disorganised state of her administration, army, and finances-The revolutions which threaten her-Near triumph of Socialism-Why the triumph of Socialism threatens Italy far more than France-General lowering of morality among the Latin nations-Present condition of France-Symptoms of fatigue and indifference. 4. The results of the adoption of the Latin concepts by peoples of different race :-The modern Greeks, since the time of the Independence, have adopted the conceptions of the Latin nations ear bloc, and notably the Latin conception of education-Results produced in fifty years-Complete disorganisation of finances, administration, and army-Progress of Socialism-The Graeco-Turkish war-European illusions with regard to Greece. 5. The future which threatens the Latin nations:-The present phase of the evolution of the world will not allow the feeble nations to continue their existence-Predictions of Lord Salisbury-The grave dangers of Socialist experiments for the Latin nations.
I. WEAKNESSES OF THE LATIN NATIONS.
WE have already seen the consequences produced among the Latin nations by the gradual extension of their conception of the State: that is to say, of a central power substituting itself for the initiative of the citizen and acting for him. It is of no significance
192) whether this power be a collectivity or a monarchy ; the fundamental conception remains the same under these meaningless external forms.
From a practical point of view, Socialism represents merely the extension of the same conception. What may still remain of initiative and strength of will in the citizen mind will very soon be entirely broken by the regulation of labour, and the perpetual interference of functionaries in all the acts of life.
A large number of persons who dislike conflict seem to be more and more disposed to allow Socialism to develop. Having no second sight by which to pass the horizon that surrounds them, they have no idea of what is beyond. But that which lies beyond is menacing and terrible. If they wish their existence to continue, the Latin nations must risk no more experiments, no more revolutions. New economic conditions are in process of overturning the conditions of national life, and there will very soon be no place for the weaker nations. Now the weakness of the greater number of the Latin nations will very soon have reached that extreme limit below which no recovery is possible. They will not prevent things from being what they are by intoxicating themselves with brilliant phrases, abandoning themselves to futile discussions, or boasting of the exploits of their grandfathers. The age of chivalry, of heroic and superb sentiments, of ingenious dialectic, has long passed away. We are more and more hedged about with implacable realities, and the subtlest arguments, the most sonorous dithyrambics on right and justice, have as much effect on these realities as had the rods of Xerxes on the sea that he had beaten as a punishment for having destroyed his vessels.
To make my argument clearer I shall attempt to present in a general view the present condition of the Latin nations, and some of its consequences.
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2. THE LATIN REPUBLICS OF AMERICA. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.
Let us first of all consider the nations at the lowest level of the scale of Latin civilisation : the twenty-two Latin republics of America. They have often afforded me an example to demonstrate the small influence of institutions on national life, and it would be useless to return to the consideration of their condition in any detail. All, without a single exception, have reached that state in which decadence manifests itself by the completest anarchy, and in which a people can only gain by being conquered by a nation strong enough to rule it.
Peopled by exhausted races, without energy, without initiative, without morality, without strength of will, the twenty-two Latin republics of America, although situated in the richest countries of the earth, are incapable of making use of their immense resources. They live on European loans, which are divided amongst bands of political pirates, who are associated with other pirates of European finance, who make it their business to exploit the ignorance of the public, and are doubly guilty in that they are too well informed to believe that their loans will ever be repaid. Pillage is general in these unhappy republics, and, as every one wishes to take part in it, civil wars are a permanent institution, and the presidents are systematically assassinated in order to allow a new party to arrive in power and enrich itself in turn. This state of things will doubtless continue until the day when some talented adventurer shall place himself at the head of a few thousand well-disciplined men, undertake the easy conquest of these unhappy countries, and subject them to an iron rifle, the only rule of which nations deprived of virility and morality, and incapable of governing themselves, are worthy.
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All these degenerate countries would long ago have returned to a state of pure barbarism had there not been established in the capitals a few foreigners-English and Germans-attracted by the natural riches of the soil. The only one of these republics which to some extent maintains itself, the Argentine Republic, has escaped the general ruin merely because it has been gradually invaded by the English.
Before becoming republics all these provinces were under the rule of Spain. They succeeded, by revolution, in shaking off the gloomy government of her monks and rapacious governors, but it was too late. The bias was set, the mind was formed, and recovery was impossible ; besides which the monks had for a long period been charged with the duty of suppressing all persons manifesting any trace of intelligence and independence.
From the Latin republics of America let us pass to the Latin monarchies of Europe. Their condition is certainly less melancholy, but very far from brilliant.
We know what is the present condition of Spain and Portugal ; the least observant traveller can ascertain it by a short stay in those countries. The few industries that prosper are in the hands of strangers, or have been created by strangers. These countries, of old so powerful, are to-day as incapable of governing themselves as of governing their colonies, which they are losing one by one. To Spain remained Cuba and the Philippines; she subjected them to such rapacious exploitation, to administrators so corrupt and ferocious, as to provoke an exasperated rising on the part of the natives, and the intervention of strangers.
Dr. Pinto de Guimaraes, in a book published under the title The Spanish Terror in the Philippines, has recently furnished details which show what the Spanish domina-
195) -tion was in the Colonies, and how legitimate was the horror it inspired. I cite the following lines from this book :
" One thing that appears at the first glance is that the intervention of the United States was no less necessary in the Pacific than in the Atlantic. The Spanish rule weighed on the Philippines as heavily as on Cuba, and if the cruelties committed there have remained more secret it is not that the Filipinos are more long-suffering than the Cubans ; it is because of their absolute isolation, far from the civilised world, and because of the pains taken by the local governors to stifle all complaints and intercept all demands. But the truth, which is stronger than all despotisms, end by making itself heard ; and the Filipinos, despite the Spanish gag, have succeeded in crying so loud that the world has heard them.
"It is impossible to imagine what vexations, what shifty formalities, what ruinous inventions can emanate from the brain of a Spanish functionary. All these gentry have but one object : to make, during their three or six years in the Philippines, the largest possible fortune, and to return home in order to escape the concert of the maledictions of the inhabitants . . . . Every governor whose future is not largely assured after two years of office is universally regarded as an imbecile. The celebrated General Weyler was enabled to deposit, as much in the London as in the Parisian banks, a sum which his own compatriots reckoned to be no less than £500,000 or £600,000. How did he conduct himself in order to save £600,000 in three years, with an annual pay of £8,000 ?
" And yet one cannot refrain from pondering over the marvellous resources of these islands, and of the splendid results which they would assuredly have afforded any other power than Spain. Robbed, oppressed, ruined, tortured,
(196) the Philippines nevertheless manage to exist. The character of the functionaries and the fiscal jugglers of the country keep away all those who might contribute to the development of its prosperity."
The clergy, together with the officials, constitute one of the most pernicious plagues of the Philippines. They number six thousand, and their greed[1] is equalled only by their ferocity. They have rehabilitated all the tortures of the Inquisition.
Dr. de Guimaraes gives details of the cruelty exercised toward the natives by the Spaniards which make one shiver. There is notably the story of the hundred prisoners who were confined in a dungeon called the "Death Hole," half full of putrid water, and infested with rats and venomous serpents of all kinds ; altogether worthy of the imagination of a romancer. "They passed a terrible night; they were heard howling in agony and praying that some one would ' finish' them. Next day all were dead."
" In the presence of such facts," concludes Dr. Guimaraes, " no one will be surprised by the joy felt by the insurgents at the American successes. Spain has for centuries, in these unhappy isles, displayed a spectacle of ferocity that the heroism of her defence cannot atone for." I am of the same opinion.
Naturally the Spanish rule in Cuba has been the same as in the Philippines, and there too the people have finally revolted. The insurgents formed only a few ill-equipped bands whose number never exceeded 10,000 men. Against them Spain sent 150,000 men, commanded by numerous generals, and spent in four years to conquer them nearly
(197) £80,000,000. But all these generals, with their blasting proclamations, could not, after years of conflict, and despite their implacable cruelties, succeed in triumphing over these ill-armed bands of insurgents. The cruelties of the Spaniards and the massacres of inoffensive populations in which they indulged on an extensive scale, gave the United States an excellent reason for intervention. All those who have a care for humanity have loudly acclaimed their success.
The Spanish-American war is full of instruction for him who studies it from a psychological point of view. Never has the part played in the life of the nations by character, and therefore by race, been more clearly manifested. The world had never yet seen such a spectacle as this of an entire fleet, heavily armoured, annihilated in a few minutes without succeeding in doing the slightest harm to the enemy. In two engagements twenty Spanish vessels were destroyed without even having planned a defence. To die like a stoic is a poor excuse for incapacity, and the world has never seen the results of indecision, lack of foresight, carelessness, and want of coolness better than at Manila and in Cuba. At Manila, where the American fleet entered by night, the Spaniards had forgotten to light the beacons which should have signalled its presence, and had also forgotten to defend the channel by means of mines. At Santiago de Cuba they neglected to send for reinforcements, which were not lacking in the island, and would have made the defence an easy matter ; at Porto Rico there were not even any defenders. When the fleet annihilated itself by voluntarily steaming on to the rocks without one of its projectiles having reached the enemy it afforded a lamentable spectacle. . By throwing itself at the enemy instead of running away it might assuredly have done some damage, and would at least have saved its honour.
(198) "One might say," very justly writes M. H. Depasse on this subject, " that the two adversaries belong to different civilisations, or rather to different periods of history ; the one master of its means and of itself through education, the other obeying only the impulsive movements of nature." It would be impossible better to denote, in a few lines, one of the principal differences between the Anglo-Saxon and Latin education.[2]
The natives will gain by this war in that they will pass under an infinitely better rule. Spain herself will not lose over-much by it, since her colonies brought nothing to the State, and since her defeat will serve her as a pretext to imitate Portugal and the Spanish-American republics by suppressing the payment of the interest on her National Debt, and on the stock she has disposed of abroad. By one of those fantastic chances so frequent in modern times, it will really be France who will pay the expenses of this war, since she will almost certainiy lose the £120,000,000 of Spanish bonds which she holds. Capitalists will therefore discover that a knowledge of the psychology of nations is a science which possesses a highly practical value. I doubt if a single capitalist knowing a little of the psychology of the Spaniards would ever have risked the slightest sum either in Spain or in any dependency of Spain.
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3. FRANCE AND ITALY.
Italy,[3] although she has not fallen as low as Spain, is not in a much better condition, and her disorder is betrayed by her finances. She is the victim not only of the Latin conceptions which have shaped her soul, but also of that fatal idea of unity which has sprung up in the minds of her politicians. In uniting, under a central power, populations as profoundly dissimilar as the Piedmontese, the Lombards, the Sicilians, &c., Italy has undertaken the most ruinous and disastrous of experiments. In thirty years she has passed from a very enviable condition to the completest disorganisation of her politics, administration, finances, and military services.
Her finances are not in such a miserable state as those of Spain, but she is already forced to have recourse to a paper currency, and has established a duty on rent which has gradually, by increase after increase, mounted to 20 per cent., and which in rising further will lead her to a failure like that of Portugal. At a distance she gives the illusion of a great people, but her power is only a thin show, incapable of resisting the least of shocks. Despite the millions spent in creating an army permitting her to figure among the great Powers, Italy has for the first time in the world afforded the melancholy spectacle of an army of 20,000 Europeans annihilated in set battle by savage hordes, and of a great civilised country being obliged to pay an indemnity to a petty African king,
(200) whose capital had been so easily taken a few years before by a small force of Englishmen. She drags herself along at the apron-strings of Germany, and is obliged to submit without a murmur to the disdain which the German papers incessantly pour on her. The wastefulness and carelessness to be observed in Italy are incredible. She erects useless monuments, such as that of Victor Emmanuel, which will cost more than £1,600,000, while at the same time, in Sicily, she has provinces plunged into the blackest misery, whose villages are abandoned by their inhabitants and invaded by brambles.[4] We may judge of the quality of her administration by the banking scandal, or by the lamentable process of Palermo, in which it was proved that all the Government agents, from the director to the least of the employés, had for years lived by the most brazen pillage of the finances of their province. In the face of the proofs of disorganisation and demoralisation which Italy daily presents, and which show her to be on the eve of revolution, one can understand the scathing judgment which one of the most remarkable of Italian scientists, Signor Lombroso, has pronounced, in a recent work, on his own country ; a judgment which we should like to believe too severe.
" We must be ten times blind not to see that with all our love of boasting, we in Italy form the last but one, if not the last, of the European nations; the last in morality, the last in education, the last in agricultural and industrial activity, the last in integrity of justice, and, above all, the
(201) last in respect of the relative comfort of the lower classes."[5]
Italy would appear to be destined to inevitable revolutions, and very soon to see accomplished that fatal cycle of which I have already often spoken : Socialism, Caesarism, and dissolution.
M. A. Suissy has very well shown in the following lines how weary is Italy already of her parliamentary régime, which is yet the only one that can guarantee her liberties.
"The Italian people are losing confidence in the virtue of the parliamentary régime. The debates and intrigues to which their representatives are given up appear to them to be more often than not opposed to the general interests of the country. They have some intuition of the dangers which are gathering, and they have no hope of finding in the parliamentary system, as it is practised, any weapon of defence against them.
" In Rome we are beginning to see all the gravity of lassitude on the one side and exasperation on the other. The poor classes, who suffer the most from the crisis, are goaded to revolution. The middle and commercial classes, on the contrary, cry out for a saviour who shall deliver them from the trouble of defending themselves. The state of siege in Milan, Florence, and Naples offers no objection to their minds. The love of liberty is dying in the hearts of those who pretend to belong to the directing classes."
A factor which has created a problem for Italy, of which the solution is not apparent, is the fact that her desire to imitate the wealthy nations has led her into creating for herself a host of needs in the matters of comfort and luxury which her poverty does not allow her to satiety.
"The majority of Italians," writes Signor Guglielmo
202) Ferrero, "are on the threshold of a superior civilisation ; they have developed new wants, and aspire to embellish their lives with a certain degree of comfort and culture, but their means are insufficient . . . . Italy cannot regard fine and beautiful things without wishing to enjoy them. What disillusions, what rage, what vexation, must enter into the daily existence of the majority of men living under such conditions ! . . . Reckon what a prodigious sum of irritability is gathering itself up in the whole of society, and you will have little trouble in comprehending the terrible instability of its equilibrium."
It is among individuals whose needs are very great, and who have neither the capacity nor the energy to acquire the means to satisfy them, that Socialism most easily develops. It offers itself as a remedy for all evils, and for this reason Italy would seem fatally destined to suffer the most dangerous Socialistic experiments.
This craving for luxury, enjoyment, and splendour constitutes one of the greatest differences between Italy and Spain. In all that concerns the external aspect of civilisation, Spain is evidently very far below Italy, but the middle and lower strata of the population have very little to complain of, for their requirements have not multiplied, and so continue to be easily satisfied. As the means of communication, and railways in especial, are little developed in Spain, whole provinces are still isolated from the world, and have been able to retain their ancient manner of existence. Life has remained incredibly easy there ; for as their needs are very small, and luxury is unknown to them, the produce grown on the spot is sufficient for the people. If we leave out of account large towns and external luxury-which are, it is true, the only thins we know, because they are the only ones that make themselves heard-Spain possesses a degree of civilisation which is doubtless little refined, but entirely suited to her
(203) mental evolution and its requirements. Socialism, therefore, cannot seriously threaten her.
Among the greater number of the Latin peoples few but the so-called directing classes are becoming more eager for the expensive refinements of civilisation. This aspiration is quite allowable when one is confident of the intelligence and energy necessary to procure these refinements. It is far less allowable when the development of energy and intelligence are very inferior to the development of requirements. When people wish to make a fortune at any price, and their capacities do not permit them to satisfy their desire, they have little regard for the means they employ ; honesty becomes elastic, and demoralisation very soon becomes general ; as it has, indeed, in the case of most of the Latin nations. In them, indeed, we increasingly perceive the disquieting fact that the morality of the directing classes is often far below that of the populace. This is one of the most dangerous symptoms of the decadence that could appear, for if it is through the upper classes that civilisations advance, it is also through them that they perish.
This term "morality" is so vague, and embraces such dissimilar things, that its use necessarily results in serious confusion. I employ it here in the sense of simple honesty, the habit of respecting engagements, and the sentiment of duty, that is to say, in the sense in which an English author whom I have already quoted employs it, in the passage in which he shows that it is owing to these qualities, so modest in appearance, but in reality so important, that the English have so rapidly revolutionised the credit of Egypt and rendered the finances of their colonies so prosperous.
We must not go to criminal statistics, which register only extreme cases, to determine the degree of morality of a nation. It is indispensable to enter into details.
204) The financial bankruptcy of so many of the Latin peoples is a barometrical sign which indicates nothing less than a final state reached by successive steps. To form an opinion which shall repose on a reliable basis, we must enter into the intimate life of each country ; we must study the administration of financial societies ; we must consider commercial manners, the independence or venality of justice, the probity of lawyers and officials, and many other symptoms which call for direct observation, and are not to be studied in any books. These are subjects on which a few dozen persons at most in Europe are perfectly informed. Would you, however, without too laborious research, gain an exact idea of the morality of the various nations ? 'Merely consult a few leading men of business-contractors, manufacturers, engineers--who have close relations with the commerce, administration, and legislatures of various countries. A contractor, who builds railways, tramways, gas and electric light works, in many countries, will tell you, if he cares to speak on the subject, which are the countries in which every one may be bought-ministers, magistrates, officials, and all-which are the countries in which few people are to be bought, and which are the countries in which absolutely no one is to be bought ; those in which commerce is honest, and those in which it is not in the least honest. If, however varied your sources of information be, you find them perfectly concordant, you may evidently convince yourself of their exactitude.[6]
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Our rapid examination of the Latin peoples is not complete until we turn to France, whose part in the world was of old so brilliant and preponderant. She still holds out against decadence, but she is badly shaken to-day. In one century she has known all a nation can know ; the bloodiest revolutions, glory, disaster, civil war, invasion, and but little repose. That which she most visibly experiences to-day is a fatigue and indifference which seemingly amount to exhaustion.
Compared with the same class in England and Germany," recently -,wrote a German pamphleteer quoted by la France extérieure, " the French bourgeoisie give one the impression of a person well advanced in years. Individual initiative is gradually decaying ; the spirit of enterprise appears paralysed ; the craving for repose and for sedentary occupations is increasing ; the investments in State funds increase; the number of functionaries increases ; energy, and the sentiment of authority, justice, and religion are diminishing ; the interest in public affairs is diminishing ; expenditure is increasing ;imports are increasing all along the line ; the infiltration of foreigners is increasing."
Presently, in studying the commercial and industrial struggles of the Western peoples, we shall see to what degree these assertions are unhappily justified.
4.THE RESULTS OF THE ADOPTION OF THE LATIN CONCEPTS BY PEOPLES OF DIFFERENT RACE.
Examples of peoples in an inferior state of civilisation adopting suddenly and in entirety the institutions of other
206) peoples are rare in modern times. I can cite no such examples except those of Greece and Japan. Greece presents the interesting phenomenon of a nation that has adopted the Latin concepts era bloc, and notably that of education. The results produced are extremely striking, and it is all the more important that they should be given here inasmuch as they have not yet attracted the notice of any writer.
The modern Greeks, as we know, have no relationship to the Latins, nor for that matter with the ancient Greeks. Modern anthropology has shown that they are brachycephalous Slavs, while the ancient Greeks were dolichocephalous, which fact is sufficient to establish an absolutely fundamental separation between the modern Greeks and their pretended ancestors.[7]
The inhabitants of Greece, although unrelated to the Latins, present several analogies to the latter in their character. They also possess, with little strength of will, and little constancy, much levity, mobility, and irritability.
(207) They have the same horror of prolonged effort, the same love of phrases, the same love of speechifying, the same craving for equality, the same habit of confounding dreams with realities.
However, I do not mention them here on account of these analogies, but simply in order to show, by means of an example full of instructiveness, the effects produced on a nation, in less than fifty years, by the adoption of Latin concepts, and notably by that of education.
Scarcely escaped from a long servitude, truly no school for the spirit of initiative or for strength of will, the modern Greeks imagined that they would be able to raise themselves by means of instruction. In a few years the country was sprinkled with three thousand schools and educational establishments of all sorts, in which were carefully applied our disastrous Latin programmes of education. "The French language," writes M. Fouillée, "is taught everywhere in Greece, concurrently with Greek itself ; our national spirit, our literature, our arts, and our education are far more in harmony with the Greek genius than those of any other nation could be."
This theoretical and bookish education being good for nothing but the production of functionaries, professors, and lawyers, naturally produced nothing else : "Athens is a great factory of useless and noxious lawyers." While industry and agriculture have remained in a rudimentary state, diplomés without employment are swarming, and, as with men of Latin race subjected to the same education, their sole ambition is to gain a Government berth.
" Every Greek," writes M. Politis, " believes that the chief mission of the Governme it is to give a berth either to himself or to a member of his family." If he does not obtain it he immediately becomes a reactionary, a Socialist, and raves against the tyranny of capital, although capital is hardly known in Greece. The principal
(208) function of the deputies is to find places for graduates of the colleges.
Favouritism, insubordination, and general disorganisation have soon resulted from such a system of education. Two generations of such outclassed persons have sufficed to lead the country to the last degree of moral and material ruin. Cultured Europe, who regarded the little nation across the classic memories of the time of Pericles, only began to lose her illusions when she beheld the perfect cynicism with which the Greek politicians, after having raised loans all over the continent, suppressed their debt with a stroke of the pen by refusing to pay interest and resuming the profits of the monopolies which had been solemnly set aside as guarantees to the creditors, on the very day when they found no more lenders.[8] Europe was completely enlightened as to the demoralisation and disorganisation of all these brave prattlers when she saw the fortunes of the Graeco-Turkish war unfolded, and beheld the spectacle of whole armies at the mercy of the wildest panics, the most inordinate, helter-skelter flights, as soon as a mere Turkish detachment was espied at a distance. Without the intervention of Europe the Greeks would once more have disappeared from history, and the world would have been no loser by it. We were shown what things could exist under a deceptive veneer of
(209) civilisation. Our young university men, so enthusiastic over Greece, must at the same time have acquired a few notions more serious than those to be found in their textbooks. Such of them as had escaped from the Ecole normale with a few traces of the spirit of observation must have made some melancholy reflections on the results of Latin education, at perceiving to what a depth of abasement the system had sunk a nation in fifty years.
5. THE FUTURE WHICH THREATENS THE LATIN NATIONS.
Such is, without, I trust, too great inaccuracy, the present state of the Latin nations, and those that have adopted the Latin concepts. While waiting till they shall have found some means of raising themselves they must not forget that in the new phase of evolution through which the world is passing, there is room for none but the strong, and that every nation which becomes weakened is quickly destined to become the prey of its neighbours, more especially at a period when the distant markets are closing one by one.
This point of view is absolutely fundamental. It was extremely well presented in a recent and famous speech of Lord Salisbury's, from which I shall reproduce a few extracts, in view of its importance and the authority of the speaker. It points out with great clearness those consequences of a lowered morality of which I have treated further back, and which form an excellent barometer of national decadence. The protests which this speech excited in Spain cannot affect the exactitude of the propositions enounced by this eminent statesman, nor of the conclusions which he draws from them."
You may roughly divide the nations of the world as the living and the dying. On one side you have great
(210) countries of enormous power growing in power every year, growing in wealth, growing in dominion, growing in the perfection of their organisation. Railways have given to them the power to concentrate upon any one point the whole military force of their population and to assemble armies of a magnitude and power never dreamt of in the generations that have gone by. Science has placed in the hands of those armies weapons ever growing in their efficacy of destruction, and, therefore, adding to the power-fearfully to the power-of those who have the opportunity of using them. By the side of these splendid organisations, of which nothing seems to diminish the forces and which present rival claims which the future may only be able by a bloody arbitrament to adjust-by the side of these there are a number of communities -which I can only describe as dying, though the epithet applies to them of course in very different degrees and with a very different amount of certain application. They are mainly communities that are not Christian, but I regret to say that is not exclusively the case, and in these States disorganisation and decay are advancing almost as fast as concentration and increasing power are advancing in the living nations that stand beside them. Decade after decade they are weaker, poorer, and less provided with leading men or institutions in which they can trust, apparently drawing nearer and nearer to their fate and yet clinging with strange tenacity to the life which they have got. In them misgovernment is not only not cured but is constantly on the increase. The society, and official society, the Administration, is a mass of corruption, so that there is no firm ground on which any hope of reform or restoration could be based, and in their various degrees they are presenting a terrible picture to the more enlightened portion of the world-a picture which, unfortunately, the increase in the means of
211) our information and communication draws with darker and more conspicuous lineaments in the face of all nations, appealing to their feelings as well as to their interests, calling upon them to bring forward a remedy. How long this state of things is likely to go on of course I do not attempt to prophesy. All I can indicate is that that process is proceeding, that the weak States are becoming weaker and the strong States are becoming stronger. It needs no specialty of prophecy to point out to you what the inevitable result of that combined process must be. For one reason or for another-from the necessities of politics or under the pretence of philanthropy-the living nations will gradually encroach on the territory of the dying, and the seeds and causes of conflict among civilised nations will speedily appear."
Are nations as shaken, as divided, as unprogressive as the Latin nations of to-day to be subjected to Socialism ? Is it not evident that such a fate would merely increase their weakness, and render them a still easier prey to the stronger nations? Alas ! the politicians do not foresee this, any more than the theologians of the Middle Ages, absorbed, in the depths of their convents, by religious controversies, were aware of the barbarians who were breaking down their walls and preparing to massacre them.
Must we, however, entirely despair of the future of the Latin nations ? I still hope we need not. Necessity is a mighty prince, and is able to change many things. It is possible that, after a series of such profound calamities and upheavals as history has hardly known, the Latin peoples, wiser for experience, and having successfully escaped from the covetousness of the watchful Powers, will attempt the difficult undertaking of acquiring the qualities in which they are now lacking, in order thence forth to succeed in life. Only one means is in their
(212) power : entirely to change their system of education. We cannot too highly praise those few apostles, such as Jules Lemaitre and Bonvalot, that have applied themselves to such a task. And these apostles can perform a great deal ; they succeed in altering public opinion, and public opinion is all-powerful to-day. But it will be no easy task to sweep away the stubborn prejudices of the universitaires and the intellectuels through which our system of education is maintained in its present state. History shows us that a dozen apostles have often been sufficient to found a religion ; but religions, beliefs, and opinions have failed in propagating themselves for want of being able to reconcile the dozen.
But let us not be too pessimistic. History is so full of unforeseen occurrences, and the world is on the eve of undergoing such profound modifications, that it is impossible to-day to forecast the destinies of the nations. And in any case the duty of the philosopher is performed when he has pointed out to the nations the dangers which threaten them.
