The Proper Study of Mankind

by Isaiah Berlin

  Such Pyrrhonism grows with the century: it is characteristic of Montaigne, Charron, La Mothe le Vayer, and of course, later in the century, in a more extreme form, of Pierre Bayle, to take but a few examples. So long as history is regarded as a school of virtue, the purpose of which is to celebrate the good and expose the wicked, to show the unaltering character of human nature at all times, everywhere, to be simply moral and political philosophy teaching by examples, it may not matter greatly whether such history is accurate or not. But once a desire for truth for its own sake asserts itself, something more novel is born: the desire to create an advancing science, to accumulate knowledge, to know more than our predecessors and to be aware of this; which leads to the realisation that this can be achieved only if the reputable practitioners in the field recognise the validity of the same principles and methods and can test each other’s conclusions, as has been (and is) the case in physics or mathematics or astronomy and in all the new sciences. It is this new outlook that made the claims of history to be a province of knowledge seem so precarious.

  Much of the most formidable attack came from Descartes. His views are well known: true science rests on axiomatic premisses, from which, by the use of rational rules, irrefutable conclusions can be drawn: this is how we proceed in geometry, in algebra, in physics. Where are the axioms, the transformation rules, the inescapable conclusions in historical writing? The progress of true knowledge is the discovery of eternal, unalterable, universal truths: every generation of seekers after truth stands on the shoulders of its predecessors and begins where these others left off, and adds to the growing sum of human knowledge. This is plainly not the case in historical writing, or indeed in the field of the humanities in general. Where, in this province, is the single, ever-mounting edifice of science? A schoolboy today knows more geometry than Pythagoras: what do the greatest classical scholars of our time know about ancient Rome that was not known to Cicero’s servant-girl? What have they added to her store? What, then, is the use of all these learned labours? Descartes implies that he does not wish to prevent men from indulging in this pastime – they may find it agreeable enough to while away their leisure in these ways – it is no worse, he says, than learning some quaint dialect, say, Swiss or bas-Breton; but it is not an occupation for anyone seriously concerned with increasing knowledge. Malebranche dismisses history as gossip; this is echoed by other Cartesians; even Leibniz, who composed a sizeable historical work himself, gives a conventional defence of history as a means of satisfying curiosity about origins of families or States, and as a school of morals. Its inferiority to mathematics, and philosophy founded on the mathematical and natural sciences and the other discoveries of pure reason, must be obvious to all thinking men.

  These attitudes did not, of course, kill historical studies. Methods of scholarship had advanced greatly since the middle of the fifteenth century, especially by the use made of antiquities. Monuments, legal documents, manuscripts, coins, medals, works of art, literature, buildings, inscriptions, popular ballads, legends could be employed as aids to, and sometimes even substitutes for, unreliable narrative history. The great jurists of the sixteenth century, Budé, Alciati, Cujas, Dumoulin, Hotman, Baudouin and their disciples, and in the following century Coke and Matthew Hale in England, Vranck in the Low Countries, de Gregorio in Italy and Sparre in Sweden, performed major labours of reconstructing legal texts, both Roman and medieval. The school of universal historians in France – Pasquier, Le Roy, Le Caron, Vignier, La Popelinière, and, indeed, the polymath Bodin – originated at least the conception of cultural history;4 and were followed in the seventeenth century by writers like the abbé de Saint-Réal, Dufresnoy, Charles Sorel, Père Gabriel Daniel, and, of course, Boulainvilliers and Fénelon. These early outlines of cultural history, and in particular the growing awareness of the differences rather than the similarities between different societies, ages, civilisations, were a novel development, which, in due course, revolutionised historical notions. Nevertheless, their proponents showed a greater propensity for denouncing useless erudition, and for making up programmes of what historians should do, than for indicating precise methods of performing these tasks or, indeed, performing them. Much of this was meta-history, or theories of history, rather than concrete historical writing. Moreover, the scientific model (or ‘paradigm’) which dominated the century, with its strong implication that only that which was quantifiable, or at any rate measurable – that to which in principle mathematical methods were applicable – was real, strongly reinforced the old conviction that to every question there was only one true answer, universal, eternal, unchangeable; it was, or appeared to be, so in mathematics, physics, mechanics and astronomy, and soon would be in chemistry and botany and zoology and other natural sciences; with the corollary that the most reliable criterion of objective truth was logical demonstration, or measurement, or at least approximations to this.

  Spinoza’s political theory is a good example of this approach: he supposes that the rational answer to the question of what is the best government for men is in principle discoverable by anyone, anywhere, in any circumstances. If men have not discovered these timeless solutions before, this must be due to weakness, or the clouding of reason by emotion, or perhaps bad luck: the truths of which he supposed himself to be giving a rational demonstration could presumably have been discovered and applied by human reason at any time, so that mankind might have been spared many evils. Hobbes, an empiricist, but equally dominated by a scientific model, presupposes this also. The notion of time, change, historical development does not impinge upon these views. Furthermore, such truths, when discovered, must add to human welfare. Consequently the motive for the search is not curiosity, or desire to know the truth as such, so much as utilitarian – the promotion of a better life on earth by making man more rational and therefore wiser, more just, virtuous and happy. The ends of man are given: given by God or nature. Reason, freed from its trammels, will discover what they are: all that is necessary is to find the right means for their attainment.

  This is the ideal from Francis Bacon to H. G. Wells and Julian Huxley and many of those who, in our day, believe in moral and political arrangements based on a scientific theory of sociology and psychology. The most famous figure in this entire movement, not in that of science itself, but of the application of its discoveries to the lives of men – certainly its most gifted propagandist – was Voltaire. Its earliest and strongest opponent was the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico. The contrast between their views may serve to throw light upon the radical difference of attitudes which brought about a crucial parting of the ways.

  II

  Voltaire is the central figure of the Enlightenment, because he accepted its basic principles and used all his incomparable wit and energy and literary skill and brilliant malice to propagate these principles and spread havoc in the enemy’s camp. Ridicule kills more surely than savage indignation: and Voltaire probably did more for the triumph of civilised values than any writer who ever lived. What were these principles? Let me repeat the formula once more: there are eternal, timeless truths, identical in all the spheres of human activity – moral and political, social and economic, scientific and artistic; and there is only one way of recognising them: by means of reason, which Voltaire interpreted not as the deductive method of logic or mathematics, which was too abstract and unrelated to the facts and needs of daily life, but as le bon sens, good sense, which, while it may not lead to absolute certainty, attains to a degree of verisimilitude or probability quite sufficient for human affairs, for public and private life. Not many men are fully armed with this excellent faculty, for the majority appear to be incurably stupid; but those few who do possess it are responsible for the finest hours of mankind. All that is of value in the past are these fine hours: from acquaintance with them alone we can learn how to make men good, that is, sane, rational, tolerant, or, at any rate, less savage and stupid and cruel; how to enact laws and governments which will promote justice,
beauty, freedom and happiness and diminish brutality, fanaticism, oppression, with which the greater part of human history is filled.

  The task of modern historians is therefore plain: to describe and celebrate these moments of high culture and contrast them with the surrounding darkness – the barbarous ages of faith, fanaticism, folly, error and vice. In order to do this historians must give more attention than the ancients to ‘customs, laws, manners, commerce, finance, agriculture, population’:5 and also, trade, industry, colonisation and the development of taste. This is far more important than accounts of wars, treaties, political institutions, conquerors, dynastic tables, public affairs, to which historians have attached far too much significance hitherto. Madame du Châtelet, Voltaire tells us, said to him: ‘What is the point for a Frenchwoman like me … of knowing that in Sweden Égil succeeded King Haquin; or that Ottoman was the son of Ortogul?’6 She was perfectly right: the purpose of the work which he wrote ostensibly for the illumination of this lady (the famous Essai sur les moeurs) is, therefore, not ‘to know in which year one prince who doesn’t deserve to be remembered succeeded another barbarian prince of some uncouth nation’.7 ‘I wish to show how human societies came into existence, how domestic life was lived, what arts were cultivated, rather than tell once again the old story of disasters and misfortunes … those familiar examples of human malice and depravity.’8 He intends to recount the achievement of ‘the human spirit in the most enlightened of ages’,9 for only that is worthy of mention which is worthy of posterity.

  History is an arid desert with few oases. There are only four great ages in the West in which human beings rose to their full stature and created civilisations of which they can be proud: the age of Alexander, in which he includes the classical age of Athens; the age of Augustus, in which he includes the Roman Republic and the Empire at their best; Florence during the Renaissance; and the age of Louis XIV in France. Voltaire assumes throughout that these are élitist civilisations, imposed by enlightened oligarchies on the masses, for the latter lack reason and courage, want only to be amused and deceived, and so are naturally prey to religion, that is, for him, to abominable superstitions. Only governments can ‘raise or lower the level of nations’.10

  The basic assumption is, of course, that the goals pursued in these four great cultures are ultimately the same: truth, light are the same everywhere, it is only error that has myriad forms. Moreover, it is absurd to confine enquiry to Europe and that portion of the Near East whence sprang little but the cruelties, fanaticism and nonsensical beliefs of the Jews and the Christians who, whatever Bossuet may seek to demonstrate, were and remain enemies of truth and progress and toleration. It is absurd to ignore the great and peaceful kingdom of China, governed by enlightened Mandarins, or India, or Chaldaea and other parts of the world which only the absurd vanity of Christian Europe excludes from the orbit of history. The purpose of history is to impart instructive truths, not to satisfy idle curiosity, and this can be done only by studying the peaks of human achievement, not the valleys. The historian should not peddle fables, like Herodotus, who is like an old woman telling stories to children, but teach us our duties without seeming to do so, by painting for posterity not the acts of a single man but the progress of the human spirit in the most enlightened ages. ‘If you have no more to tell us than that one barbarian succeeded another barbarian on the banks of the Oxus or the Iaxartes, what use are you to the public?’11 Why should we be interested in the fact that ‘Quancum succeeded Kincum, and Kicum succeeded Quancum’?12 We do not wish to know about the life of Louis the Fat, or Louis the Obstinate, or even the barbarous Shakespeare and the tedious Milton: but about the achievements of Galileo, Newton, Tasso, Addison; who wants to know about Shalmaneser of Mardokempad? Historians must not clutter the minds of their readers with accounts of religious wars or other stupidities that degrade mankind, unless it be to show them how low human beings can sink: accounts of Philip II of Spain, or Christian of Denmark, are cautionary tales to warn mankind of the dangers of tyranny; or if, like Voltaire himself, one does write a lively and entertaining biography of Charles XII of Sweden, it is for the sole end of pointing out to men the dangers of a life of reckless adventure. What is worth knowing is why the Emperor Charles V did not profit more by his capture of King Francis I of France; or what the value of sound finance was to Elizabeth of England, or Henry IV or Louis XIV in France, or the importance of the dirigiste policy of Colbert compared with that of Sully. As for horrors, they too are to be detailed if we are to avoid another St Bartholomew’s Eve or another Cromwell.

  The task of the historian, he says again and again, is to recount the achievements of those regrettably rare periods when the arts and sciences flourished and nature was made to yield the necessities, comforts and pleasures of man. Meinecke rightly described Voltaire as ‘the banker of the Enlightenment’, the keeper of its achievements, a kind of scorer in the contest of light against darkness, reason and civilisation against barbarism and religion, Athens and the Rome of the virtuous Caesars against Jerusalem and the Rome of the Popes, Julian the Apostate versus the horrible Gregory of Nazianzus. But how are we to tell what actually happened in the past? Has not Pierre Bayle thrown terrible doubts on the authenticity of particular reports of facts, and shown how unreliable and contradictory historical evidence can be? This may be so, but it is not particular facts that matter, according to Voltaire, so much as the general character of an age or a culture. The acts of single men are of small importance, and individual character is too difficult to elucidate: when we can scarcely tell even what the true character of Mazarin was like, how can we possibly do this for the ancients? Soul, character, dominant motives – all that sort of thing is an impenetrable chaos which can never be firmly grasped. Whoever, after centuries, would disentangle this chaos simply creates more.

  How, then, are we to recover the past? By the light of natural reason – le bon sens. Anything not in keeping with natural science, with reason, with the nature [trempe] of the human heart is false – why bother with the ravings of savages and the inventions of knaves? We know that monuments are ‘historical lies’ and that there is not a single temple or college of priests, not a single feast in the Church, that does not originate in some idiocy. The human heart is the same everywhere; and good sense is enough to detect the truth.

  Le bon sens served Voltaire well: it enabled him to discredit much clerical propaganda and a good many naïve and pedantic absurdities. But it also told him that the empires of Babylon and Assyria could not possibly have coexisted next door to each other in so confined a space; that accounts of temple prostitutes were obvious nonsense; that Cyrus and Croesus were fictional beings; that Themistocles could not possibly have died of drinking ox-blood; that Belus and Ninus could not have been Babylonian kings, for ‘-us’ is not a Babylonian ending; that Xerxes did not flog the Hellespont. The Flood is an absurd fable: as for the shells found on tops of mountains, these may well have dropped from the hats of pilgrims. On the other hand, he found no difficulty at all in accepting the reality of satyrs, fauns, the Minotaur, Zeus, Theseus, Hercules, or the journey of Bacchus to India, and he happily accepted a forged Indian classic, the Ezour-Veidam. Yet Voltaire undoubtedly expanded the area of proper historical interest beyond politics, wars, great men, by insisting on the need to describe how men travelled, lived, slept, dressed, wrote, their social and economic and artistic activities. Jacques Coeur was more important than Joan of Arc. He complains that Pufendorf, who has had access to the State archives of Sweden, has told us nothing about the natural resources of that country, the causes of its poverty, what part it played in the Gothic invasions of the Roman Empire; these are novel and important demands. Voltaire denounced Europocentrism; he sketched the need for social, economic, cultural history, which, even though he did not himself realise his programme (his own histories are marvellously readable but largely anecdotal in character – there is no real attempt at synthesis), stimulated the interest of his successors in a wid
er field. At the same time he devalued the historical nature of history, for his interests are moral, aesthetic, social: as a philosophe he is part moralist, part tourist and and feuilletoniste, and wholly a journalist, albeit of incomparable genius. He does not recognise, even as a cultural historian – or cataloguer – the multiplicity and relativity of values at different times and places, or the genetic dimension in history: the notion of change and growth is largely alien to him. For Voltaire there are only bright ages and dark, and the dark are due to the crimes, follies and misfortunes of men. In this respect he is a good deal less historical than some of his predecessors in the Renaissance. He looks on history, in a loose fashion, as an accumulation of facts, casually connected, the purpose of which is to show men under what conditions those central purposes which nature has implanted in the heart of every man can best be realised: who are the enemies of progress, and how they are to be routed. Thereby Voltaire probably did more than anyone else to determine the entire direction of the Enlightenment: Hume and Gibbon are possessed by the same spirit.