bought at the cost of the torture of one innocent child; but the
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arguments which Herzen employed i n defence of his pOsition, and
the description of the enemy whom he picked out for pillory and
destruction, were set forth in language which both in tone and substance had little in common with either the theological or the liberal eloquence of his age.
As an acute and prophetic observer of his times he is comparable,
perhaps, to Marx and Tocqueville; as a moralist he is more interesting
and original than either.
I I I
Man, it is commonly asserted, desires liberty. Moreover, human beings
are said to have rights, in virtue of which they claim a certain degree
of freedom of action. These formulas taken by themselves strike
Herzen as hollow. They must be given some concrete meaning, but
even then-if they are taken as hypotheses about what people actually
believe- they are untrue; not borne out by history; for the masses have
seldom desired freedom :
The masses want to stay the hand which impudently snatches from
them the bread which they have earned . . . They are indifferent
to individual freedom, liberty of speech; the masses love authority.
They are still blinded by the arrogant glitter of power, they are
offended by those who stand alone. By equality they understand
equality of oppression . . . they want a social government to rule
for their benefit, and not, like the present one, against it. But to
govern themselves doesn't enter their heads.1
On this topic there has been altogether too much 'romanticism for the
heart' and 'idealism for the mind'2- too much craving for verbal
magic, too much desire to substitute words for things. With the result
that bloody struggles have been fought and many innocent human
beings slaughtered and the most horrible crimes condoned in the name
of empty abstractions:
There is no nation in the world . . . which has shed so much blood
for freedom as the French, and there is no people which understands it less, seeks to realise it less . . . on the streets, in the courts, in their homes . . . The French are the most abstract and religious
people in the world; the fanaticism of ideas with them goes hand in
hand with lack of respect for persons, with contempt for their
1 'From the Other Shore': VI 1 24-.
I ibid.: VI 1 2].
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neighbours-the French turn everything into an idol, and then woe
to him who does not bow the knee to the idol of the day. Frenchmen fight like heroes for freedom and without a thought drag you to jail if you don't agree with their opinions . . . The despotic sa/us
populi and the bloody and inquisitorial pereat mundus et fiat justitia
are engraved equally in the consciousness of royalists and democrats
. . . read George Sand, Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Micheret, you will meet everywhere Christianity and romanticism adapted to our own morality; everywhere dualism, abstraction, abstract
duty, enforced virtues and official and rhetorical morality without
any relation to real life.1
Ultimately, Herzen goes on to say, this is heartless frivolity, the
sacrifice of human beings to mere words which inRame the passions,
and which, upon being pressed for their meaning, turn out to refer
to nothing, a kind of political gaminerie which 'excited and fascinated
Europe', but also plunged it into inhuman and unnecessary slaughter.
'Dualism' is for Herzen a confusion of words with facts, the construction of theories employing abstract terms which are not founded in discovered real needs, of political programmes deduced from abstract
principles unrelated to real situations. These formulas grow into
terrible weapons in the hands of fanatical doctrinaires who seek to
bind them upon human beings, if need be, by violent vivisection, for
the sake of some absolute ideal, for which the sanction lies in some
uncriticised and uncriticisable vision- metaphysical, religious, aesthetic,
at any rate, unconcerned with the actual needs of actual persons -in
the name of which the revolutionary leaders kill and torture with a
quiet conscience, because they know that this and this alone is- must
be-the solution to all social and political and personal ills. And he
develops this thesis along lines made familiar to us by Tocqueville
and other critics of democracy, by pointing out that the masses detest
talent, wish everyone to think as they do, and are bitterly suspicious
of independence of thought and conduct:
The submission of the individual to society-to the people-to
humanity- to the idea-is a continuation of human sacrifice . . . the
crucifixion of the innocent for the guilty . . . The individual who
is the true, real monad of society, has always been sacrificed to some
general concept, some collective noun, some banner or other. What
the purpose of . . . the sacrifice was . . . was never so much as asked. 2
1 'Letters from France and Italy', tenth letter: V l7 s-6.
I 'From the Other Shore': VI u s-6.
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Since these abstractions-history, progress, the safety of the people,
social equality-have all been cruel altars upon which innocents have
been offered up without a qualm, they are deserving of notice. Herzen
examines them in turn.
If history has an inexorable direction, a rational structure, and a
purpose (perhaps a beneficial one), we must adjust ourselves to it or
perish. But what is this rational purpose? Herzen cannot discern it;
he sees no sense in history, only the story of 'hereditary, chronic
madness':
It seems unnecessary to cite examples, there are millions of them.
Open any history you like and what is striking . . . is that instead
of real interests everything is governed by imaginary interests,
fantasies. Look at the kind of causes in which blood is shed, in
which people bear extreme sufferings; look at what is praised and
what is blamed, and you will be convinced of a truth which at first
seems sad-of a truth which on second thoughts is full of comfort,
that all this is the result of a deranged intellect. Wherever you look
in the ancient world, you will find madness almost as widespread
as it is in our own. Here is Curti us throwing himself into a pit to
save the city. There a father is sacrificing his daughter to obtain a
fair wind, and he has found an old idiot to slaughter the poor girl
for him, and this lunatic has not been locked up, has not been taken
to a madhouse, but has been recognised as the high priest. Here
the King of Persia orders the sea to be flogged, and understands the
absurdity of his act as little as his enemies the Athenians, who
wanted to cure the intellect and the understanding of human
beings with hemlock. What frightful fever was it that made the
emperors persecute Christianity? . . .
And after the Christians were torn and tortured by wild beasts,
they themselves, in their turn, began to persecute and torture
one another more furiously than they themselves had been persecuted. How many innocent Germans and Frenchmen perished just so, for no reason at all, while their demented judges thought