The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  Now if Bossuet was carried away like that, the reason was that his imagination had been fired by memories of the past, and still more, perhaps, that he had read, pen in hand, the narrative of those lowly Capuchin missionaries who had journeyed deep into Upper Egypt. Aglow with enthusiasm, he hoped, on the strength of what they reported, that the day would come when the fair city of Thebes, Thebes with her Hundred Gates, would rise again in all her ancient glory. Was there not here an enterprise worthy of the Great King? “Had our travellers but pursued their way as far as the spot whereon the city stood of old, they would surely have found some priceless treasure amid the ruins there, for the works of the Egyptians were wrought to defy the ravages of time. Now that the King’s name is penetrating into the remotest corners of the earth, and that His Majesty is extending far and wide the researches he has ordered to be made for all that is fairest in Nature and in Art, would it not be a worthy object of this lofty curiosity to seek to lay bare the beauties which lie buried in the deserts of the Thebaid and to enrich the splendours of our buildings with all that ancient Egypt can supply?”

  But what he was not so willing to countenance was that a search should be made in those regions for a philosophy remarkable alike for its venerable antiquity and for its astounding novelty. There was a man of pregnant parts and quick, inventive brain, an adventurer, a free lance, one Giovanni Paolo Marana by name, a native of Genoa who, having quarrelled with the city of his birth, had come and taken service under Louis XIV, not, be it remarked, without a wary eye to his own advancement. Among other products of his enterprising imagination, this gentleman brought out, in the year 1696, a curious romance entitled Conversations of a Philosopher with a Solitary about divers matters appertaining to Morals and Erudition. This work depicts an aged man of ninety years who boasted a complexion more delicately pink and white than that of a young and comely maiden. What was the secret of this strangely youthful bloom? How was it thus preserved? The answer was that he had dwelt long years in Egypt. There, in Egypt, you may learn the secret of those magic potions which prolong a man’s life far beyond the ordinary span. And there, above all, you may acquire the true philosophy, which philosophy, be it noted, has nothing to do with Christianity. In this same romance, moreover, there figures a youthful Egyptian who is the very embodiment of virtue and of knowledge and is able to improvise on the spur of the moment the most marvellous dissertations on themes the most recondite and profound. Such is the wondrous quality of this pagan yet most favoured land.

  Here let us skip a few years. We shall now find the figures on the stage more clearly defined, more richly caparisoned, the scenery and accessories more elaborate—sistra, papyrus, ibis, lotus—and now at last behold the Wise Man of Egypt, the Sethos of the Abbé Terrasson, the destined idol of the eighteenth century! Sethos will not turn out to be a hero, but a philosopher; not a king, but a guardian of tradition and the things of the past; not a Christian, but an adept deeply versed in the mysteries of Eleusis; a pattern for rulers and all men to follow.

  The Mohammedan Arab did not seem destined to enjoy a like good fortune, and Mohammed heard himself called by some rather ugly names: rogue; base impostor; barbarian, who had laid waste the land with fire and sword; heaven’s sword of vengeance. But at this point, the men of learning arrived and brought their contribution, wherewith to supplement the tales of the explorers. These erudite gentlemen were particularly concerned with the science of chronology. To shedding a clearer light on the civilization of the East various men of eminence now devoted themselves; for example, M. d’Herbelot, professor at the Collège Royal, and his pupil M. Galland, who succeeded him in the professorial chair; Mr. Pococke, professor of Arabian studies at Oxford; M. Reland, professor of Oriental languages and ecclesiastical archaeology at Utrecht; Mr. Ockley, professor of Arabic at Cambridge. They studied the original texts and the result was that the Arab emerged in a completely new light.

  They pointed out, these learned men, that so vast a section of the human race would never have followed in the footsteps of Mohammed if he had been no more than a dreamer and an epileptic. Never would a religion, so crude and childish as his was reputed to be, have exhibited such vitality and have made such progress. If, instead of giving currency to the falsest and most misleading stories, people would go to the Arabs themselves for information, they would perceive that Mohammed and his followers were endowed with qualities of heart and mind that rendered them not a whit inferior to the most illustrious heroes of the other races of the world. Look at the evil things the Gentiles had reported of the Christian religion! Look at the absurdities that were promulgated concerning it! So it is always when things are judged solely from the outside. Doctrines which the Mohammedans never professed were triumphantly refuted, errors they never committed were exposed and condemned. But this sort of victory was too facile by half. In point of fact, their religion was as coherent as it was lofty and full of beauty. Nay more, their whole civilization was admirable. When the tide of barbarism swept over the face of the earth, who was it that had championed the cause of the mind and its culture? The Arabs . . .

  The change-over from repulsion to sympathy was the work of but a few years. By 1708, the process was complete. Then it was that Simon Ockley gave utterance to an opinion which, whether it was true or whether it was false, was, two hundred years later, still regarded as a matter for debate. Ockley denied that the West was to be regarded as superior to the East. The East has witnessed the birth of as many men of genius as the West; conditions of life are better in the East. “So far as the fear of God is concerned, the control of the appetites, prudence and sobriety in the conduct of life, decency and moderation in all circumstances—in regard to all these things (and, after all, they yield to none in importance) I declare that if the West has added one single iota to the accumulated wisdom of the East, my powers of perception have been strangely in abeyance.” This sort of thing gained ground. The Comte de Boulainvilliers, with due acknowledgements to Herbelot, Pococke, Reland and Ockley, compiled a Life of Mahomet in which the change of attitude is seen to be complete. “Every nation,” he says, “has its own peculiar type of wisdom. Mahomet symbolizes the wisdom of the Arabs. Christ symbolizes the wisdom of the Jews.”

  The satirical observer of our national foibles, shortcomings and vices; the curious foreigner who saunters about our streets noting and criticizing everything he sees; the “quiz,” at once amusing and exasperating, whose mission it is to remind a self-complacent nation that it does not monopolize the whole of truth nor enshrine all possible perfections, this character—indispensable apparently to European authors, since they adopt him as one of their favourite types and make him do duty again and again ere they finally discard him—in what country are they now going to look for him? Will it be Turkey? or will it be Persia?

  It looked as if the choice was going to light on Turkey. One side of it looked towards Europe, and it was more familiarly known. An Englishman, an ambassador’s secretary, Sir Paul Rycaut, had written such a vivid account of it that by 1666 his book had become a classic in the literature of travel. There was a constant stream of new editions. Everybody was devouring it. Rycaut’s book was followed by a number of others. That same Marana who had been so interested in Egypt, next turned his attention to Turkey. In 1684 he started bringing out what he called L’Espion du Grand Seigneur, which had a tremendous success. It was the parent of a numerous progeny of children and grandchildren. Memet the Spy, who took the name of Titus of Moldavia, was a squat, ungainly individual, ill-favoured and niggard of speech. Retiring, unobtrusive, he attracted no particular attention and lived forty-five years in Paris without exciting suspicion. In the daytime he went about out of doors. When darkness came he retired to his room, and there busied himself with writing to the Divan of Constantinople, his chief; or to Haznabardassy, head, and chief curator, of His Highness’s Treasury; or to the Agha of the Janissaries; or to Mehemet, eunuch-in-waiting to the dowager Sultana; or else to the invincible Vizir Azem
. His letters were full of scurrilous remarks, either about political persons and affairs, or about the Army, or the Church. Nothing escaped his ribald observations.

  Nevertheless, the Persian turned the tables on his rival. He regained the laurels, and he kept them. The reason for this was twofold. In the first place, nowhere are there to be found records of travel more engrossing, despite their leisurely style, than the narratives of Chardin. This man, a jeweller and the son of a jeweller, who went to Persia to look for a market for his watches, his bracelets, his necklaces and his rings, this Protestant who found himself an exile from France as a consequence of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, was by Nature of a roving disposition. He knew Ispahan better than he knew Paris, and, what was more, he liked it better. The upshot of it all was that any man, however narrow and unimaginative, must have had it borne in upon him from his narrative that far away in distant Asia there were human beings in no way inferior to himself, however widely their mode of life might differ from his own. The notion of “superiority” on which he had hitherto been brought up, as it were, was now no longer valid. Henceforth he must think in other terms. “Difference” not “superiority” was now the appropriate word; a striking psychological readjustment. Yes, in Persia everything is different; those meals you take by the roadside, the strange remedies prescribed by the native physician, the caravansary where you put up for the night, everything is different—clothes, festivals, funerals, religion, justice, laws, all different! Now, these Persians are not barbarians. On the contrary, they are people of extreme refinement, civilized, perhaps almost over-civilized, and, maybe, a little weary of having been so for so long. Chardin underlines the reality, the genuine character of this “other world”. He acquaints his reader “with everything that merits the attention of this Europe of ours concerning a country which we might well call another world, not only because it is so far away, but also because its customs, its standards of life, are so different from our own.”[8]

  The second reason which enabled the Persian to oust the Turk is so obviously sufficient that the mere mention of it renders any further explanation superfluous: after a number of “try outs,” of preliminary sketches by various hands, there appeared on the scene, in order to work on material that was now ripe for development, not a man of talent merely, but a man of genius. His name was Montesquieu!

  The Siamese, too, came very near to being added to the motley Oriental throng. Louis XIV was very anxious to open up trade relations with Siam and to encourage the spread of the true religion in that country. Feelers, pourparlers, were put out to that end. In 1684, the people of Paris beheld the arrival of a deputation of Siamese mandarins. A marvellous sight! In 1685, a French mission proceeded to Siam. A year later, a second Siamese mission came to France. Finally, in 1687, yet another French delegation visited Siam. Then came a number of narratives written by learned clerics and sundry diplomats engaged on the affair. Public curiosity was thus brought to boiling point; and now, by a psychological process which always functions with the regularity of clockwork, a highly advantageous presentment of the Siamese gained general currency: they were a god-fearing, wisdom-loving, enlightened people, every one of them! It was given out, for example, that when the King of Siam was exhorted to become a convert to Christianity, his answer was that had it been the will of Divine Providence that a single religion should prevail in the world, nothing could have been easier for Divine Providence than to execute its design. Inasmuch, however, as it had pleased the Almighty to suffer a host of dissimilar religions to flourish simultaneously, it was obvious that he preferred to be glorified by a prodigious number of his creatures, each worshipping him in his own way. When they heard this, men were filled with astonishment. What! had this Siamese, completely ignorant as he was of European science—had he thus clearly and forcibly expressed the most telling argument against the One True Faith that was to be found in the whole Pagan armoury?

  The conclusions which flow from things of that sort create an atmosphere highly favourable to the spread of heterodoxy. These Siamese allow a free field to all manner of religions, and their king gives Christian missionaries full leave to preach in all the towns and cities of his dominions. Are Europeans as generous and as tolerant as that? What would they say if the Talapoins (such is the name they give their priests) were to take it into their heads to come and preach their religion in France? The Siamese religion is, of course, quite preposterous; they worship an absurd deity called Sommonokhodom; yet their morals are strict to the point of austerity. A Christian would discover nothing to find fault with in their way of life. Whence it may be inferred—may it not?— that morals and religion are by no means necessarily connected.

  Unfortunately, changes in Siamese government circles frustrated the efforts of the French envoys. The King of Siam was not converted; the enterprise was abandoned; the Talapoins were eclipsed by the Chinese Sage.

  For in this panoramic survey of ideas, China holds the most conspicuous place.

  Because they had the most far-reaching ambitions, and because they hoped, by attenuating points of difference and smoothing away obstacles, to bring into the Christian fold—who could tell?—perhaps the whole mighty continent of Asia, those intrepid and learned Jesuits, who, in Pekin, had won the esteem of the Emperor himself, were doing their best to make the philosophy of China look so much like Catholicism that only a a little goodwill would be needed to bring the two together. According to their accounts, Confucius, who had moulded the spirit of his country, professed a doctrine so pure that one felt it was constantly informed by the breath of divine inspiration. He held that human nature had come from its heavenly home pure and unsullied, but that, from this state of perfection, it had afterwards declined, and that the task now was to restore to it the beauty it had lost; wherefore the Chinese, his disciples, should render obedience to God, and in all things act according to His will, loving their neighbours as themselves. Reading the precepts of Confucius, one might imagine oneself to have fallen in with a preacher of the new faith, rather than with one reared amid the corrupting influences of a state of nature; with a St. Paul born before his appointed time; with a St. Paul of China. Clearly, China had drawn her principles from the very fountain of Truth; the children of Noah, who had spread out over the eastern parts of Asia, had brought with them the seed which Confucius had had but to feed and water. Born 478 years before Christ, he was often heard to proclaim, as with the voice of a prophet: It is in the West that the true Holy One has His dwelling! Sixty-five years after the birth of Christ, the Emperor Mimti, interpreting this utterance of the Master, and urged on by a dream, sent forth into the West certain ambassadors from his court, commanding them to hold on their way until they should come face to face with this same saint. Now, it was at that time that St. Thomas was preaching the Gospel in the Indies; and if these mandarins had persevered in their mission, instead of halting at the first island they came to, by reason of their sore dread of the sea and its perils, it might well have come to pass that China would have been incorporated into the Church of Rome.

  So too, if the Jesuits had succeeded in their efforts of assimilation, the Far East might not have displayed so strange and outlandish an aspect to European eyes. It was in the year 1697 that the Jesuits made their last, their supreme, attempt. Then it was that they gave to the world that great work of theirs, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus. It was a work concerned less with science than with doctrine, less with facts, as such, than with the interpretation of facts, for it was intended, first and foremost, for the use of young missionaries who, being enlightened by it as to the points of possible agreement, might spread their nets to good advantage. Thus, then, were these soldiers of Christ armed with weapons calculated to serve them in good stead in the battles that lay before them.

  But it was not to be. Failure was their portion; and the year 1700 marked the epoch when it became clear that there was to be no fitting of these eastern novelties into the established Christian framework. The dispu
te regarding Chinese ceremonial lit up and defined two distinct attitudes of mind, and made it inevitable to choose between them. That quarrel was as old as the earliest missions to China, the other religious orders having ceaselessly reproached the Jesuits for their indulgence, their partiality, their over-readiness to minimize difficulties. When, however, these rival orders perceived how the Jesuits succeeded, how in the end they contrived to make the Chinese look like semi-Christians, nay, like Christians indeed, such was the vehemence of their protests that they drew not only the attention of the authorities, but also that of the general public, to the matter in dispute. And everyone knows the virulence which theological controversies assume when the public take them up. Do not be deceived, they cried, the Jesuits are throwing dust in your eyes. The Chinese are idolaters. The Chinese worship their ancestors. The Chinese worship Confucius. The Jesuits in China allow their neophytes to bow down before the altar of Chinoam, to pay honour to their dead with rites of the grossest superstition, to offer sacrifices to their teacher Cun-fu-zu. They veil from them the mystery of the Cross of the Redeemer; they forbear to administer to them the sacrament of Extreme Unction; they make light of the baptismal ceremonies. And in terms like these, the Fathers of the Foreign Missions denounce the writings of Fr. Le Comte and Fr. Le Gobien before the authorities at the Sorbonne and at Rome, accusing them, as the head and front of their offending, of selling the pass, of betraying the fundamentals of the Christian Faith.

  The battle was fierce—no quarter given, or taken. Rome decided to send a legate to China to open a fresh enquiry, but, before this could be done, the blow fell, the Sorbonne pronounced its condemnation of the Jesuits. No chance now of adjusting the unknown to the known, the religion of China to the Catholic Faith, or China itself to Christendom. Nothing now remained but to acknowledge the existence of an entity with which no terms could be made, yet an entity at once strange and majestic.