This inner view of human stupidity resulted in a mountain of notes too mixed ever to be published unabridged. He has classed them, however; but this classification should be revised, and half, at least, of this mass of documents suppressed. Nevertheless, here is the order in which he left these notes:
Morality.
Love.
Philosophy.
Mysticism.
Religion.
Prophecy.
Socialism. (Religious and political.)
Criticism.
Estheticism.
Specimens of style:
Periphrases.
Recantation.
Rococo.
Styles of great writers, journalists and poets.
Styles:
Classic.
Scientific: (Medical, Agricultural).
Clerical.
Revolutionary.
Romantic.
Realistic.
Dramatic.
Official, of Sovereigns.
Poetic-official.
HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC IDEAS.
FINE ARTS
BEAUTY:
On the part of order.
Of people of letters.
Of religion. Of sovereigns.
Opinions of great men.
The classics corrected.
Whimsicality. — Ferocity. — Eccentricities. — Injuries. — foolishness. — Cowardice. Exaltation of the low.
Official popularity:
Discourse.
Circulars.
IMBECILES.
The dictionary of accepted ideas.
The catalogue of chic opinions.
This then, is the history of human stupidity in all its forms.
Some quotations to make the purport and nature of these notes comprehended:
PHILOSOPHY, MORALITY, RELIGION.
The Greeks corrupted by their philosophic reasoners.
“This so brilliant people has founded nothing, established nothing lasting, and there remains of them only memories of crimes and disasters, books and statues. They always lacked reason.” — LAMENAIS: Essay upon Indifference, vol. 4, p. 171.
MORALITY.
“Sovereigns have the right to make changes in morals.”
— DESCARTES: Discourse on Method, part 6.
“The study of mathematics, comprising as it does, sensibility and imagination, sometimes causes a terrible explosion of the passions.”
— DUPANLOUP: Intellectual Education, p. 147.
“Superstition is a production put forth by religion, which there is no need of destroying.”
— DE MAISTRE: Evenings at St. Petersburg, No. 7, p. 234.
“Water is made for sustaining these prodigious floating edifices which we call vessels.”
— FENELON.
RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL BEAUTIES.
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
“In 1823, the inhabitants of the town of Lille, speaking in the name of rape-seed oil, exposed to the government the fact that a new product, gas, had begun to make itself known; that this mode of lighting, if put into general use, would leave all others behind, inasmuch as it appeared at once the best and the lowest in price, etc. By reason of which, they prayed humbly, but firmly, that his Majesty, the natural protector of their work, would be willing to protect them from all attack upon their rights by absolutely interdicting this perturbing product.”
— FREDERIC PASSY: Discourse upon Free Trade. Dec. 5, 1878.
“Shakespeare himself, crude as he was, was not without reading or without knowledge.”
— LA HARPE: Introduction to a Literary Course.
THE ECCLESIASTICAL STYLE.
“Ladies, in the march of Christian society, upon the railway of the world, woman is a drop of water whose magnetic influence, vivified and purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit, communicates movement to the social convoy under her beneficent impulse; it runs along the way of progress and advances towards the eternal doctrines.
“But if, instead of furnishing the drop of water of the divine benediction, woman supplies the pebble of derailment, some frightful catastrophes are the result.”
— MGR. MERMILLOD:
On Supernatural Life in the Soul.
PERIPHRASES.
IMBECILE.
“I should consider it bad for a not over-wise girl to live with a man before marriage.”
(Translation of Homer.) PONSARD.
ROMANTIC STYLE.
“Sibyl, playing on the harp, was generally adorable. The word angel came to the lips in looking at her.”
— Sibylle (p. 146) O. FEUILLET.
STYLE OF SOVEREIGNS.
“The riches of a country depend upon its general prosperity.”
— Louis NAPOLEON:
Quoted in the Rive Gauche, March 12, 1865.
THE CATHOLIC STYLE.
“Philosophic teaching makes youth drink of the rancour of the dragon in the chalice of Babylon.”
— Pius IX: Manifesto, 1847.
“The inundations of the Loire are due to the excess of pressure and the non-observance of Sunday.” — THE BISHOP OF METZ: Mandate, December, 1846.
SCIENTIFIC IDEAS.
NATURAL HISTORY.
“The women in Egypt prostituted themselves publicly to the crocodiles!” — PROUDHON: {On the celebration of Sunday, 1850.)
“Dogs are ordinarily of two opposite tints, the one light and the other dark, so that in whatever part of the house they may be, they can be seen upon the furniture, with the colour of which they might be confounded.”
— BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: Harmonies of Nature.
“Fleas throw themselves, wherever they are, upon a white colour. This instinct was given to them that we might catch them more easily.”
— BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: Harmonies of Nature.
“The melon is divided by nature into sections so as to be eaten in the family; the pumpkin, being much larger, can be eaten with the neighbours.”
— BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: Études de la Nature.
CARE FOR THE TRUTH.
“AU authority, especially that of the church, ought to oppose new things, without letting themselves be frightened at the danger of retarding the discovery of some new truths, which may be inconvenient, fleeting, and wholly useless as compared with the shocking of institutions and accepted opinions.”
— P. 283, vol. 2, DE MAISTRE, Exam. Phil. Bacon.
“A disease of potatoes was caused by the disaster at Monville. The meteor was most active in the valleys, where it drew off the heat. It had the effect of a sudden coldness.”
— RASPAIL: Hist. Health and Sickness, p. 246, 247.
FISHES.
“I notice in fishes that it is a marvel they are born and live in the waters of the ocean, which are salt, and that their race was not annihilated long ago.”
— GAUME: Catechism of Perseverance, 57.
CONCERNING CHEMISTRY.
“Is it necessary to observe that this vast science (Chemistry) is absolutely out of place in general teaching? Of what use is it to the minister, the magistrate, the sailor, or the merchant?”
— DE MAISTRE: Letters and unedited pamphlets.
SCORN OF SCIENCE.
“Many persons have thought that science in the hands of man dries up the heart, disenchants nature, leads the minds of the weak to atheism, and from atheism to crime.”
— CHATEAUBRIAND: Genius of Christianity, p. 335.
ZOOLOGY.
“It is, as it seems to us, a great pity to find man to-day ranked among the mammiferous (after Linnœus’s system) with the monkeys, the bats and the sloths. Is he not worthy to be left at the head of creation where Moses, Aristotle, Buffon, and Nature p!aced him?”
— CHATEAUBRIAND: Genius of Christianity, p. 551.
“His movements [of the serpent] differ from those of all animals. One does not know where to say the principle of his locomotion lies, for he has neither fins, nor feet, nor wings; neverthel
ess he flees like a shadow and vanishes magically.”
— CHATEAUBRIAND: Genius of Christianity, p. 138.
LINGUISTIC.
“If one had a dictionary of savage tongues, he might find there the remaining evidence of a language spoken before their day by an enlightened people, and, if we did not find it, the only conclusion would be that degradation had arrived at such a point that the last remnants had been effaced.”
— DE MAISTRE: Evenings at St. Petersburg.
THE NATURAL SCIENCES ARE SECONDARY.
“They belong to prelates, to the nobles, to the great officers of State, to be the depositories and the guardians of conserved truth, to téach nations what is good and what is bad, what is true and what is false, in moral and spiritual order. Others have no right to reason upon this kind of matter. They have the natural sciences to amuse them; of what can they complain?”
— 8th Conversation, p. 131. DE MAISTRE.
Evenings at St. Petersburg.
SCIENCE SHOULD BE PUT IN SECOND PLACE.
“If we do not look well to ancient maxims, if education be not given up to the priests, and if science is not put in the second place, the evils which await us are incalculable; we shall be brutalized by science, and that is the last degree of brutality.”
— DE MAISTRE: Essay on generating principles.
HISTORIC REVIEW.
Opinion on the study of history.
“The teaching of history may have, in my opinion, some inconvenient peril for the professor. It has some also for pupils.” — DUPANLOUP.
CRITICAL HISTORY.
“If we consider Napoleon in respect to his moral qualities, it is difficult to estimate him, because it is difficult to discover goodness in a soldier who is ever occupied with strewing the earth with the dead; friendship in a man who never has his equals about him; probity in a potentate who is master of the riches of the universe. At the same time, however outside the ordinary rules this mortal may be, it is not impossible to seize here and there certain traits of his moral physiognomy.”
— A. THIERS:
History of the Consulate and the Empire, vol. 22, p. 713.
“Many times have I heard deplored the blindness of the judgment of Francis I., who thrust away Christopher Columbus when he proposed the Indes.”
— MONTESQUIEU: The Mind of Louis XIV., Book 21, Chap. 22.
(Francis I. mounted the throne in 1515. Columbus died in 1506.)
A PIPE IN THE xv. CENTURY.
“Some steps from this very lively scene, the Spanish chief sat motionless smoking a long pipe.”
— VILLEMAIN: Lascaris.
ON THE EVE OF THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE.
“There has never existed a sovereign family whom one could connect with a plebeian origin. If this phenomenon should make its appearance, it would make an epoch in the world.”
— DE MAISTRE: Evenings at St. Petersburg.
PRUSSIA WILL NOT BE RE-ESTABLISHED.
“Nothing can establish the power of Prussia (1807). This famous edifice, constructed of blood, of filth, of false money and the leaves of pamphlets, has crumbled in the twinkling of an eye and gone forever.”
— DE MAISTRE: Letters and Pamphlets, p. 98.
SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, THE AFRICAN BOSSUET.
(St. John Chrysostom was born in Antioch, Asia.)
“The town of Cannes, doubly celebrated for the victory gained by Hannibal over the Romans and the landing of Bonaparte.”
“He accuses Louis XI. of having persecuted Abélard.” (Louis XI. was born in 1423. Abélard was born in 1079.)
“Smyrna is an island.”
— J. JANIN, in G. de Flotte, 1860.
EXALTATION OF THE LOWLY.
“It requires more genius to be a boatman on the Rhône than to reach the Orient.”
— PROUDHON.
STUPIDITIES OF GREAT MEN. CORNEILLE.
“His morals [Chlmène] are at least scandalous, if, in fact, not depraved. This pernicious example renders the work notably defective and destroys the aim of the poetry which would otherwise be useful.”
— Academy (On The Cid).
“Let one quote me an excerpt from the great Corneille that I would not have undertaken to do better myself than he has done it! Who is to be the judge? I should only do what any man is capable of doing, provided he believed as firmly in Aristotle as in me.”
— LESSING: Dramatists of Hamburg, p. 462, 463.
“In spite of the reputation which this writter [La Bruyère] enjoyed, there is much negligence in his style.”
— CONDILLAC: Treatise on the Art of Writing.
“A famous dreamer [Descartes], subject to flights of the imagination, whose name is made for a chimerical country.”
— MARAT: Concerning the Panthéon.
“Rabelais, filth of humanity.” — LAMARTINE, LULLI.
“His songs, so often repeated in the world, serve only to suggest passions the most irregular.”
— BOSSUET: Maxims on Comedy.
MOLIERE
“It is a pity that Molière did not know how to write.” — FENELON.
“Molière is an infamous actor.” — BOSSUET.
BYRON.
“Byron’s genius seems to me to be at bottom a little stupid.” — L. VEUILLOT: Free Thoughts, p. 11.
“In my opinion, Byron, after he had been very justly rejected by his family and his country, — that is to say, — put in a convict-prison for being a faithless husband and a scandalous citizen, — if he had been a man of sense, and truly great in mind and heart, he would have made the simplest reparation for the sake of recovering the right to bring up his daughter and serve his country.” — L. VEUILLOT: Free Thoughts, p. 11.
ABUSE OF GREAT MEN.
“He [Bonaparte] is in fact a great winner of battles; but aside from that the least General is more skilful than he.”
— CHATEAUBRIAND: Napoleon and the Bourbons.
BONAPARTE.
“It has been believed that he had perfected the art of war, while it is certain that he has retrograded toward the infancy of the art.”
— CHATEAUBRIAND: Bonaparte and the Bourbons.
BACON.
“Bacon is absolutely devoid of the spirit of analysis; not only does he not know how to resolve questions, but he does not know how to place them.”
— DE MAISTRE: Examination of Bacon s Philosophy, vol. i, p. 37.
“Bacon was a man ignorant of all the sciences, and all his ideas were fundamentally false.”
DE MAISTRE:
Examination of Bacon’s Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 82.
“Bacon had an eminently false mind, of a kind of falseness which never has belonged to any one but him. His absolute incapacity, essential, radical, was seen in all branches of natural science.”
— DE MAISTRE: Examination of Bacon’s Philosophy, vol. 1, p. 285.
VOLTAIRE.
“Voltaire is nothing as a philosopher, without authority as a critic and an historian, and antiquated as a scholar; daylight has been let in upon his private life, but through pride, the wickedness and little meannesses of his soul and character are discredited.”
— DUPANLOUP: High Intellectual Education.
GOETHE.
“Posterity, to whom Goethe has left his work to be judged, will do what it has to do. It will write on tablets of bronze:
‘Goethe, born at Frankfort in 1749, died at Weimar in 1852; a great writer, a great poet and a great artist.’ And then the fanatics, who are for form for the sake of form, and art for the sake of art, for love and materialism, will come and ask to have added: ‘Great man!’ and Posterity will answer: ‘No!’“
— A. DUMAS, fils.
July 23, 1873.
IDEAS OF ART.
IMBECILE.
“There is no doubt that extraordinary men, in whatever way it may be, owe a part of their success to the superior qualities with which they are endowed by organization.” — DAMIRON: Course of Philosophy, vol. 11, p. 3
5.
“The grocery shop is respectable. It is a branch of commerce. The army is more respectable still, because it is an institution whose aim is order. The grocery is useful, the army is necessary.”
— The News: JULES NORIAC.
Oct. 26, 1865.
JOCRISSES.
“As soon as a Frenchman has passed the frontier, he enters upon foreign territory.”
— L. HAVIN: Sunday Courier, Dec. 15.
“When the limit is overleaped, there are limits no longer.” — PONSARD.
There are in existence almost enough of these notes to fill three volumes. The aptitude of Gustave Flaubert for discovering this kind of stupidity was surprising. The following example is characteristic.
On reading the discourse of Scribe’s reception at the French Academy, he stopped short before this phrase, which he noticed immediately:
“Does Molière’s comedy instruct us in the great events of the Louis XIV. century? Does it tell us a word of the weaknesses or faults of the great king? Does it speak of the revoking of the Edict of Nantes?”
He wrote under this quotation:
“Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685.”
“Death of Molière, 1673.”
How was it that no one of the Academicians, meeting to listen to this discourse before it was delivered, happened upon this very simple comparison of dates?
Gustave Flaubert counted upon forming a volume of these justifying documents. In order to render the collection of stupidity less heavy and fastidious, there were to be at intervals two or three stories, of poetic idealism, also copied in Bouvard and Pechuchet.
Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert Page 554