Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 3 The Revolution Breaks Down;
Romanticism is Born
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WE HAVE been considering the political revolution and the roles of Rousseau and Kant as philosophers of it. The former gave a popular vogue to its doctrines; the latter incorporated its principles into a speculative system. The undertaking of the revolution, as we have seen, was to substitute for the arbitrary authority of the old institutions one that was based upon rational principles; one which was found, as presented in the theory of Rousseau, in the rights of man. The assumption was that one could deduce from the essential rights of man the structure of political institutions to take the place of the older institutions. The rights of man were, as we have seen, universal in that the individual in asserting his own right, in the very nature of the case, recognizes and asserts the same right for others. In so far, then, as the legislation of a popular assembly is confined to the rights of men, one can reach that volonté générale, that general will of Rousseau in which the individuals are both subjects and sovereigns; the will which gives laws for all in the very form of the right as such; and which also recognizes that right, accepts it as that to which it must conform. The undertaking of the French Revolution was to establish a government, a state, a political society on the basis of such rights. The assumption was that it was possible to deduce the whole structure of the state from what were recognized as universal rights.
But the political revolution broke down. In France one constitution after another was undertaken without the result of a stable and secure government. Out of the insecurity arose the opportunity of Napoleon. By the exercise of military power, which he controlled for the time being, he was able to set
(52) up the imperialism which dominated France and Europe for fifteen years. The hold imperialism had on France was that, in a certain sense, Napoleon appeared as the champion of the Revolution. The opponents of France were undertaking to set up the old order again-the divine right of kings, the right of the church in its medieval claim-and Napoleon was the leader of the armies of France that defeated them one after the other. For this reason he was regarded as the champion of the Revolution. There was another sense also in which he was its champion-where the armies of France went, the old order broke down, particularly in Germany. The old medieval order had remained in the latter country more than in any other. In France, at least there had been an attempt to introduce administrative efficiency. At least the feudal power had been centered in the monarch. Although feudal privileges remained with the whole upper class, the power had passed over into the hands of the king, so that administrative efficiency became possible. In Germany, however, there was no central monarch. We must remember that Germany, more than any other country, had suffered from the conception of the Holy Roman Empire. The German monarchs of earlier centuries had tried to establish themselves as the Roman emperors; and, in doing that, their eyes were constantly fastened on the lands beyond the Alps. The interest which centered in this establishment of an empire, in the securing of the iron crown on the part of the German contestant, had detracted from the development of a national German state, so that Germany remained broken up into an indefinite number of little feudal states, with a few powerful states in the midst. And the monarchs of the little communities made the same claims for themselves that the monarchs of the larger communities-Prussia and -Austria-made. Now, wherever the armies of France went, this old order crumbled and people rejoiced at the freedom that came as a result of this breakdown. This was especially true in the Rhine Valley, so that there was a strong sympathy with the movements of Napoleon and even a strong feeling of attachment to him. In that
(53) sense we can speak of Napoleon as the champion of the Revolution as over against those who undertook to set up the old order again.
But the order that he set up was Imperialistic. It was an order in which he was a dictator, and it became more and more tyrannical in its character, particularly in suppressing popular institutions. It was identified with the militaristic regime. Only so long as Napoleon was fighting could it live. He could not establish himself in the sense of a French king, could not attach himself to the older traditions of the French monarch. There had to be fighting for him to maintain his place. And in the nature of the case, the regime broke down as France was worn out, as strong men were sacrificed on the battlefield.
This was the situation because of the failure of the French Revolution. And out of this failure arose the imperialism of Napoleon. To the extent that this imperialism did not go back to the old order, it regarded itself as supporting the Revolution. It went back to the acceptance of the community as such. That is, Napoleon had the support of France behind him in the form of a plebiscite. His imperial throne rested not upon the divine right of kings but on the support of the people themselves. But the constitution of his state depended upon his own will. He was the dictator. And yet, in very many respects he did carry out the Revolution. Particularly, he carried out the principles of political revolution involved in the dispossessing of the privileged classes, bringing the land back to the peasants themselves. This was the most important effect of the French Revolution and of the reformation under Louis XVIII. In that respect there is a parallelism between it and the Russian Revolution. The Russian Revolution put the land in the hands of the peasants, even though the communistic doctrine does not recognize private property. In the same way, we may say that the French Revolution put the ownership of land into the hands of the peasants; and, although the old order was reinstated, no attempt was made to change that fundamental reconstruction. Furthermore, we have seen that the imperialism of France was a
(54) military organization of France against her enemies, and one which was triumphant for fifteen years. It made France the dominating power in Europe and gave that glory to the French army and the French nation which was so sweet in the mouths of the Frenchmen of the period. But it was not an establishment of the state on the principles which were drawn from the social contract as Rousseau presented it. In that sense it was a failure; and after Napoleon finally was defeated, France went back in some sense to the old order, as did the rest of Europe.
The French had undertaken to establish a state, a political society on the bare principle of political equality, with such an ideal of universal form as that of truth or of property. As we know, they did not succeed. It is not necessary for us to follow out the history of the failures of the different constitutions which were established, or of the conflict of interests which led to the final collapse of the French Revolution in its political form. Out of it rose Napoleonism, the imperialism of France. First of all, it was a dictatorship which established order, security in the community, which was of primary importance. You can get an organization of all where you have one single lawgiver who has behind him a force to enforce the law. It is the simplest way of dealing with politically disturbed conditions. Napoleon was, first of all, able to make himself a dictator, by the somewhat ruthless use of power.
But, of course, Napoleon was also one of the world's greatest military geniuses, and France was attacked by the reactionary governments of Europe. The victories of Napoleon over these enemies, who were the enemies of the Revolution as well, were, in a certain sense, victories for the principle of revolution. Actuallv, there was dictatorship and tyranny as there had been before the Revolution. In some sense there was more severe political tyranny. But after all, Napoleon was fighting against the foes of the Revolution, that is, against those who wished to bring back the institution of the divine right of kings, of the old feudal order, of the ecclesiastical power. Those who wished to maintain this old order were fighting against the powers in
(55) France which gave expression to the Revolution. Even England joined with the others, although the English government was quite liberal in character, as indicated by Burke's reflections on the French Revolution, which were very influential. And Napoleon in fighting these powers was, from the point of view of France and liberals throughout the world, the champion of the Revolution, not because he himself was interested in establishing a democracy on the contrary, but because he was an enemy of those who were determined to have the Revolution wiped out. He was the enemy, at least, of the enemies of France; and he was the victor over their armies. His power, then, was, first of all, that of a dictator who established security. And in the second place, he had the enthusiasm of victorious France behind him.
Of course, it was not simply the principle of revolution that was involved here. It was the principle of nationalism as well. Medieval Europe and the remains of medieval Europe that we find in the eighteenth century had very little place for what we term "nationalism." Take Austria, for example. It was composed of an indefinite number of different communities, different races, speaking different languages. That which was common to most of them was their religion. But the different groups were racially, linguistically, historically, different; and yet they were all organized into a single monarchy. There was an economic ground for this organization which we are recognizing in the troubles of Europe at the present time. Those within the communities bought from and sold to each other, produced and distributed in such a fashion that the organization of-this Austrian empire did answer to certain very important economic demands. The process of setting up commercial treaties between the different communities and different states. that have arisen out of the Austrian empire is a very difficult thing. But still there was a single state, made up out of different groups which now make up a whole set of different societies, and societies which had a vivid sense of their own entities and of their hostility to others.
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The beginning of this nationalism can be found in the victories of Napoleon, in the sense of the superiority of the French armies and of the French nation. And this sense of superiority which comes with the conflict of a certain group that is united in its language, in its history-this sense of solidarity which we call "nationalism"-- might be said to have had its beginning in the imperialism of Napoleon. There had been nationalism before, but no such vivid nationalism as that characterizing the history of England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for example.
The breakdown of the old feudal institutions in France helped the development of this nationalistic spirit. In so far as it equalized everyone, it left everyone a Frenchman. The emigres, that belonged to the old regime, felt more at home with their own class abroad than among the Frenchmen who had driven them out. People of various classes might feel more at home among the same class abroad. just in so far as there had been a leveling process that had brought everyone to the same level, there was the opportunity for the development of nationalism. Nationalism is a leveling conception. Each one has his position simply as a member of a certain nation. We do not get the sense of nationalism in its most vivid form where castes, or classes, are present. We get the most vivid sense of it in situations where everyone can stand upon the same level. Revolution, in so far as it breaks down social castes, is favorable to the development of nationalism.
What gave Napoleon his power, then, was, first of all, his capacity for introducing order, security, into the state; in the second place, his victories over the enemies of France and the French Revolution, and, in the third place, the power that came with these victories over all the armies of Europe, the ability to stand as a dominant power on the Continent.
But the French Revolution as an undertaking had definitely broken down. If the armies of Napoleon had crushed the enemies of the Revolution, they had not established its principles in the French state. They had established another
(57) empire, the Napoleonic empire. There was a definite sense of defeat, then, as far as the Revolution was concerned. After the defeat of Napoleon the emperors of Russia and of Austria and the kings of Prussia and of England undertook to wipe out the Revolution and put things where they had been before. Of course, they could not do that; it was impossible to re-establish the old housekeeping after the breakdown of the old, moth-eaten furniture of the medieval period. But an attempt was made in that direction, going back to the old order of things.
There came a sense of defeat, after the breakdown of the Revolution, after the failure to organize a society on the basis of liberty, equality, and fraternity. And it is out of this sense of defeat that a new movement arose, a movement which in general terms passes under the title of "romanticism."
I have said it was impossible to re-establish the old order of things, passionately as many men wanted it. But that desire did lead to a very intense interest in that old order. England, of course, was unwilling to accept the power of France, the imperialism of Napoleon. Prussia, too, arose as a nation not simply to re-establish the old order but also to drive the French out of their country. Thus, owing to the revolution itself, nationalism had arisen in other communities. But they were putting down the French Revolution, for it was out of that Revolution that Napoleon had arisen. In England the sentiment for the revolution, as depicted in Dickens' The Tale of Two Cities and in the eloquence of Burke, was in peril. The revolution was supposed to be that which tore society down, the savageness of the Days of Terror. It was supposed to represent the actual disintegration of society, and people turned from it in terror and looked for those institutions which had been in existence before the French Revolution had amen. So there was a turning to the old world with a certain passionate attachment. There was a revival of medievalism.
This revival was one of the aspects of romanticism. You remember that from the barbarians who came in to destroy the Roman Empire we have kept the term "vandal" as a term ap-
(58) -plying to a barbarous community which destroys everything before it. The term "Goth" had exactly the same meaning, and "Gothic" was applied disparagingly to the architecture of the medieval period from the time of the Enlightenment as such, the time of the turning-away from the obscurantism of the medieval period. But in this latter period we find a return to the medieval attitude, and the term "Gothic" took on the same meaning that it has for us-that of a certain type of architecture which we consider very beautiful. This is just an illustration of the attitude that was taken at the time. With the breakdown of the revolution came this attempt to re-establish the old order. The clock was turned back; the Holy Alliance was established between the monarchs of Austria, Russia, Prussia, and England, in an attempt to safeguard this old order.
What I want to point out is that this return to the old order was very different from the old order as it had existed before the revolutionary upheaval. Men came back to something which was regarded through different eyes than before. It was, in the first place, treasured in so far as it represented a security which had been so rudely shaken in the revolutionary upheaval. It was precious in a sense in which it had never been precious before. Previously, it had been accepted as a matter of course, as the normal status of society. The evils of it had led to the revolution itself. But now it appeared as security, as that which seemingly had been lost and now was recovered. Thus it assumed a glamor.
But there was another aspect of this reaction, that which gives it its peculiar, its romantic, flavor: this is that men came back to it from the standpoint of new individuals, new selves. Europe had been through the revolution. As an undertaking to establish things on the basis of the new political entity, the citizen, the political individual who was supposed to stand on his own feet, so to speak, this movement was felt not simply in France but in all Europe as well. It was represented by such vivid imaginations as those of the young Wordsworth and Coleridge, by a feeling for a new life, an assertion of a self that could stand
(59) on its own feet, on its rights. There was the same movement in America, of course. Here had been the reflection of the gospel of Kant, of the skepticism of Voltaire. Here too had arisen a new individual. In liberal England the revolution did not appear in the violent form in which it took place in France. In the former, as we have already seen, the revolution had, in a certain sense, taken place in the Puritan upheaval which sent the Stuarts out, brought William and Mary in, and which established a representative institution, Parliament, as the final authority. Parliament went over to the people. It might put on the throne a monarch who ruled by divine right, but it was Parliament that put him there, and he could remain there only with the support of Parliament. Thus, in a certain sense the revolution had taken place in England, but it had left an organization of different interests. It was not yet a democratic structure. In France the attempt had been made to set up a democratic structure coming back to the political man -- a man with rights. The Englishman was still what he was by virtue of his social status, because of his connection with the great organizations of industry and of trade. He did not take his position as a human being who had political rights. The Americans came and presented that doctrine in England at that time. There were repercussions of the French Revolution in England, but it did not sweep over England in any such sense as it did over France. Still the sentiment was there and elsewhere in Europe --in Germany, in Italy, in Spain. And that spirit meant that the individual looked at himself as having his own rights, regarded himself as having his own feet to stand on. This gave him a certain independence which he did not have before; it gave him a certain self-consciousness that he never had before.
It is this self-consciousness that he took with him when he went back to consider again the old world to which he was returning. He came back with a different self-consciousness from that with which he had left it. He looked at it through different eyes. He did not look at it with hostile eyes; he wanted at
(60) least the order, the security, of the old order re-established. The attempt to set up a new state on a democratic basis had failed. People now wanted to get rid of that. They came back again to the old order; but they came back as different individuals, and they now looked at the old order from another point of view. They had become self-conscious in regard to it.
What the Romantic period revealed, then, was not simply a past, but a past as the point of view from which to come back at the self. One has to grow into the attitude of the other, come back at the self, to realize the self; and we are discussing the means by which this was done. Here, then, we have the makings of a new philosophy, the Romantic philosophy.
First of all, the discouraged self that had undertaken to rebuild the world on the basis of rights, the self that had followed out the gospel of Rousseau in attempting to reconstruct society on the basis of what was universal in the individual, on the basis not only of that which he found in himself but which he recognized in others, found that the undertaking had failed. It was not possible to build up a new community on the abstract rights of men. Of course, in a certain sense it may be said that America succeeded in this attempt where France had failed. One finds the same abstractions in the Declaration of Independence that one finds among the doctrinaires of the French Revolution. But the American community was not built up on the Declaration of Independence. This instrument was a banner of liberty flung forth to the world; but the government that was set up was based on the liberal institutions that had been carried over from England and had gone through the fire of the long colonial period. When the Constitution was finally formulated, it was an expression of the political institutions which were an inheritance from the mother-country, institutions the technique of which was to be found in the common law. The American government was not an institution built up on abstract rights. When the French undertook to do this, they found that they did not have the material with which to work. They broke down the imperialism of Napoleon and took charge
(61) of the chaotic situation which resulted. But they had no basis upon which to undertake to build up a new state whose authority should be based upon the reason of the individual; and their plans failed. The individuals who undertook it returned from the quest in the discouraged condition that characterizes the breakdown of revolutions. This was the situation all over Europe, for, while the revolution had centered in France, the movement spread over the whole continent.
But, though the self had failed in its undertaking, it was still there with its own point of view; and it now turned to the past. Its first, almost passionate, endeavor was to get back to this past, to get rid of the horrors of the imperialism of France and of the collapse of the Revolution, to set up the old order again, and thus get back the security that came with it, get back the values that seemed to have been lost. But when these were put in place again, the house refurnished, the process was undertaken from the point of view of a sophisticated self that was aware of its own defeats, that was interested not only in getting the house refurnished but interested in the inhabitant, in itself. There is a self-consciousness about the process which distinguishes this movement from the medieval situation that it was undertaking to re-establish. There is that bitter attitude about the beginning of the Romantic period, but with it there came unexpected treasures. The old world was discovered, and it was highly interesting, exciting, as presented, for example, in Goethe, and in Schiller's Die Rauber. Thus we come to a new interest in a medieval world that had been thought to be nothing but dust and ashes. Once again it becomes a living affair. It is portrayed in the attitude of the pageant, of the drama, the attitude of living over the old life where one assumes now one rôle and now another.
And with this came the further discovery, not only of the old world but of the self. Men had gotten the point of view from which to look at themselves, to realize and enjoy themselves. That is, of course, the attitude which we find in the romantic individual, in the romantic phases of our own existence. We
(62) come back to the existence of our self as the primary fact. That is what we exist upon. That is what gives the standard to values. In that situation the self puts itself forward as its ultimate reality. This is characteristic of the romantic attitude in the individual and of this period.
Of course, we have many illustrations of it. For example, the Byronic poetry; that affirmation of the self in which the eye is thrown aesthetically upon the heavens, in which the self swallows everything else. In Bryon this is presented with a certain cynicism. The attitude is expressed in a Mephistophelean experience, but in it the self asserts itself; it is there over against the world, against God, against the devil; it is there as the primary thought with reference to which everything else must be oriented. That is the starting-point in such Byronic experience, the attitude which is implied in the use of the term "Byronic."
The romantic experiences to which we have referred are also presented in Scott, and in the attitude toward Gothic architecture. Those attitudes are a result of the journey of the self into the past. It is a reconstruction of the self through the self's assuming the roles of the great figures of the past. That is what gives the peculiar flavor to romantic literature, a character that we recognize at once in contrasting the novels and poetry of Scott with Malory's Morte d'Arthur or his Chronicles. In these latter there is a simple, direct attitude, while in the hero of Scott you have a self-consciousness which is historically out of place but which gives a flavor to the whole romantic experience. There the self is used as the point of orientation in its own reconstruction. What we recognize in Scott, as over against the figures in the Chronicles, is self-consciousness, awareness of self, an attitude which is entirely our of place in the naiveté of those medieval knight-errants. The hero of the Scottish novel would have been perfectly at home in the period of Scott himself, had he taken his armor off. He has the consciousness, the background of a modern individual; and, largely for this reason, he was all the more picturesque when put into the garments of
(63) the medieval period. This whole thing is caricatured in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court.
Perhaps the most vivid and the most moving picture that we can get of this in English literature is to be found in the writings of Carlyle. He, as well as Coleridge, De Quincey, and a small group of Englishmen, came under the influence of Romanticism. His early contacts were with Goethe, who, like Schiller, was very much influenced by the Romantic philosophy. The influence which particularly moved Carlyle, though, was that of Schelling, although Fichte too had his influence, as is shown particularly in Sartor Resartus. If you read that, you will get a more or less emotional reflection of the Fichtean philosophy. The responsibility which is depicted as lying in man, and which makes him a creative center in the universe, which identifies the individual with the Absolute Self in the universe, is Fichtean.
Europe discovered the medieval period in the Romantic period, then; but it also discovered itself. In fact, it discovered itself first. Furthermore, it discovered the apparatus by means of which this self-discovery was possible. The self belongs to the reflexive mode. One senses the self only in so far as the self assumes the role of another so that it becomes both subject and object in the same experience. This is the thing of great importance in this whole historical movement. It was because people in Europe, at this time, put themselves back in the earlier attitude that they could come back upon themselves. When they had done this, they could contrast themselves with the earlier period and the selves which it brought forth. As a characteristic of the romantic attitude we find this assumption of roles. Not only does one go out into adventure taking now this, that, or another part, living this exciting poignant experience and that, but one is constantly coming back upon himself, perhaps reflecting upon the dulness of his own existence as compared with the adventure at an earlier time which he is living over in his imagination. He has got the point of view from which he can see himself as others
(64) see him. And he has got it because he has put himself in the place of the others.
From the standpoint of the earlier period the structure of things was moth-eaten, riddled with worms. It was breaking down and people were looking for something new to take its place. When, in its turn, this new order had proved itself to be a deception, they tried to go back to the past. But when they came back, they were different individuals. They were now looking for something in the old order that was precious, something that had never been recognized in it before. And, in doing this, they were in an essentially self-conscious attitude. That is, they were aware of themselves in the whole process. Now, it is this self-conscious setting-up of the past again that constitutes the romanticism of this period. It made the past a different past. In the first place, people who had hardly been willing to accept it before were willing to accept it now, and to accept it as a pageant. It gave them an emotional experience which was novel, exciting. It created a different past from that which had been there before -- a past which was discovered, into which a value had been put which did not belong there before. This value was security, the security of an old order which people thought they had lost and which they now had recovered again. But this was a value which had not been recognized there before, and it gave to the self which discovered it a content which it had not had before. That content, as I have said, was primarily an emotional one. It was the feel of the thing that men got out of this experience. And there was also the freedom that came to the self in traveling back into the past, assuming one role after another. I am particularly anxious to bring out this difference in the attitude of men toward the old order. They returned to it with a sense of relief because the French Revolution had meant disturbance, the most considerable war that had been waged in Europe for a long time, together with all that goes with continuous warfare. What followed it was a return to the security of the past, a setting-up of that again, so that men came back to the past with an appreciation which they did not
(65) have of it in the earlier period. Furthermore, the self that examined this past and savored it, enjoyed it, was a different self from that of the period of revolution.
We have been discussing the romantic period as a passage from the period of the revolution. The latter undertook to find in the rational nature of man the authority for institutions, as over against the arbitrary authority which belonged to the medieval conception of the institution-whether of the church, the state, the school, or the family. The revolution undertook, in its opposition to this arbitrary authority, to find an authority in the rational nature of man himself. Of course, this turned particularly about the political revolution. In this connection an attempt was made to set up a state on the basis of what were considered the rights of man; to develop rationally, from the theory of these natural rights, what the order of the state should be, to find that which was universal, which was recognized in the attitude of every member of the community. What do you find in the attitude of every member of the community which he asserts as his right and which he recognizes as the rights of others? What do you find there as the basis for the organization of the state? The answer to that question was the undertaking of the revolution, in an attempt to set up the state on the basis of universal rights. But, as we have seen, the revolution broke down and we find the Romantic period taking its place.
As representatives of this latter movement in Germany we have Schiller and Goethe, especially in their earlier productions. Their presentation of the medieval period which was so attractive, so vivid, so full of color, and, on the other hand, that sense of novelty in the self which came from the assumption of different roles, that, I say, is what constituted the romanticism of this period.
