Book Ⅲ
BEFORE speaking of the various forms of government, let us try to fix the precise meaning of this word, which has not hitherto been very well explained.
CHAPTER 1
Of Government in General
I MUST warn the reader that this chapter should be read with care, for I have not the skill to make myself clear to those who do not wish to concentrate their attention.
Every free action has two causes which concur to produce it, one moral — the will which determines the act, the other physical — the strength which executes it. When I walk towards an object, it is necessary first that I should resolve to go that way and secondly that my feet should carry me. When a paralytic resolves to run and when a fit man resolves not to move, both stay where they are. The body politic has the same two motive powers — and we can make the same distinction between will and strength, the former is legislative power and the latter executive power. Nothing can be, or should be, done in the body politic without the concurrence of both.
We have seen that the legislative power belongs, and can only belong, to the people. On the other hand, it is easy to see from principles established above [Book Ⅱ, Chapters 4 and 6] that executive power cannot belong to the generality of the people as legislative or sovereign, since executive power is exercised only in particular acts which are outside the province of law and therefore outside the province of the sovereign which can act only to make laws.
The public force thus needs its own agent to call it together and put it into action in accordance with the instructions of the general will, to serve also as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and in a sense to do for the public person what is done for the individual by the union of soul and body. This is the reason why the state needs a government, something often unhappily confused with the sovereign, but of which it is really only the minister.
What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.
The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say governors, and the whole body bears the name of prince. 【1】 Thus, those theorists who deny that the act by which a people submits itself to leaders is a contract are wholly correct. For that act is nothing other than a commission, a form of employment in which the governors, as simple officers of the sovereign, exercise in its name the power it has placed in their hands, a power which the sovereign can limit, modify and resume at pleasure, since the alienation of such a right would be incompatible with the nature of the social body and contrary to the purpose of the social union.
I therefore call 'government' or 'supreme administration' the legitimate exercise of the executive power, and I call 'prince' or 'magistrate' the man or the body charged with that administration.
It is in the government that we may discern those intermediary forces whose relations constitute those of all with all, or of the sovereign with the state. This last relation can be depicted as one between the first and last terms of a geometric progression, of which the geometric mean is the government. The government receives from the sovereign the orders which it gives to the people; and if the state is to be well balanced, it is necessary, all things being weighed, that the product of the power of the government multiplied by itself should equal the product or the power of the citizens who are sovereign in one sense and subjects in another.
Furthermore, no one of these three terms can be changed without destroying the ratio. If the sovereign seeks to govern, or if the magistrate seeks to legislate, or if the subjects refuse to obey, then order gives way to chaos, power and will cease to act in concert, and the state, disintegrating, will lapse either into despotism or into anarchy. Lastly, as there is only one geometrical mean between two extremes, there is only one good government possible for any state; but as a thousand events may change the relations within a nation, different governments may not only be good for different peoples, but good for the same people at different times.
To try to give some idea of the various relations which may exist between the two extremes, I shall take as an example the number of the people, as this is a relation easily expressed as a ratio.
Suppose the state is made up of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can only be considered collectively and as a body, but every member as a subject has to be considered as an individual. Thus the sovereign is to the subject as ten thousand is to one, that is to say, each single member of the state has as his own share only a ten-thousandth part of the sovereign authority, although he submits himself entirely to it. Now if the people is increased to a hundred thousand men, the position of each subject is unaltered, for each bears equally with the rest the whole empire of the laws, while as sovereign his share of the suffrage is reduced to one hundred-thousandth, so that he has ten times less influence in the formulation of the laws. Hence, while the subject remains always one single individual, the ratio of sovereign to subject increases according to the number of citizens. Whence it follows that the more the state is enlarged, the more freedom is diminished.
When I say that the ratio increases, I mean that it is farther removed from unity. So the greater ratio in the mathematical sense, the smaller the relationship in the popular sense; for in the former, the ratio, considered according to this, is measured by the quotient, whereas in the latter, the relationship, considered according to identity, is judged by similarity.
The smaller the relationship between the particular wills and the general will, that is, between the people's morals and the law, the more repressive force will have to be employed. Hence, for the government to be good, its strength must be increased to the extent that the people is more numerous.
In proportion as the enlargement of the state means offering the holders of public authority more temptations and more opportunities to abuse their power, it follows that the more power the government needs to control the people, the more power the sovereign needs, in its turn, to control the government. I am speaking here not of an absolute power, but of the relative power of the different elements in the state.
It follows from this dual relationship that the geometric progression between sovereign, prince and people is by no means an arbitrary idea, but a necessary consequence of the nature of the body politic. It follows further that one of the terms, namely the people as subject, is represented by unity, every time the square of the ratio is increased or diminished, the simple ratio increases or diminishes in the same way, and the middle term, the government, is in consequence changed. This shows that there is no one unique and absolute constitution of government, but that there may be as many different kinds of government as there are states of different sizes.
If anyone, wishing to ridicule this system, suggested that in order to find this geometrical mean and construct the body of the government one need only on my view take the square root of the number of the people, I should reply that I am here using numbers only as an example; and the ratios of which I speak are not measured merely by the number of men but more generally by the amount of activity, which results from the concurrence of innumerable causes; I should add that although I have borrowed momentarily for the sake of expressing myself in fewer words, the language of mathematics, I am still well aware that mathematical precision has no place in moral calculations.
The government is in small what the body politic (which includes it) is in large. It is a fictitious person endowed with certain faculties, active like the sovereign, passive like the state; and it can be broken down into similar relations; in consequence these relations yield a new ratio; and within each we can continue the process of analysis according to the order of the magistracies until we reach a single indivisible middle term, that is, a single chief or supreme magistrate, who may be shown at the centre of this geometrical progression, as the unifying term between the series of fractions and the series of whole numbers.
Without burdening ourselves with such a multiplication of terms, let us simply consider the government as a new body within the state, distinct from both people and sovereign and intermediary between the two.
There is this essential difference between the two bodies — the state exists in itself while the government exists only through the sovereign. Thus the dominant will of the prince is, or ought to be, only the general will or the law, and his force nothing other than the public force concentrated in his hands; as soon as he resolves to perform on his own authority some absolute and independent act, the union of all begins to slacken. And if in the end it comes about that the prince has a particular will more active than that of the sovereign, and if, to enforce obedience to this particular will, he uses the public force which is in his hands, with the result that there are, so to speak, two sovereigns, one de jure and the other de facto, then the social bond vanishes at once and the body politic is dissolved.
Even so, for the body of the government to have an existence, a real life distinct from the body of the state, and for all its members to be able to act in concert and serve the purpose for which the government has been set up, it must have a particular ego, a consciousness common to its members, a force, a will of its own tending to its preservation. Such a particular existence implies assemblies, councils, a power to deliberate and determine rights, titles, and privileges which belongs exclusively to the prince, and which should make the position of the magistrate the more honourable in proportion to the extent to which it is the more arduous. The difficulty is to find a method of ordering this subordinate whole within the greater whole, so that it does not weaken the general constitution while strengthening its own, and so that its private force, designed for its own preservation, shall always be distinct from the public force, designed for the preservation of the state; in short, so that it will always be ready to sacrifice the government to the people and not the people to the government.
Moreover, even though the artificial body of the government is the work of another equally artificial body, and even though it has only a kind of borrowed and subordinate life, this does not prevent its being able to act with greater or less vigour and speed, and enjoying, so to speak, a health that may be more robust or less. Lastly, without departing directly from the purposes for which it has been set up, it may deviate from them in varying degrees according to the manner in which it has been constituted.
It is all these differences which give rise to the various relations that ought to exist between the government and the body of the state, in accordance with the fortuitous and particular relations by which this same state is changed. For often the government which is in itself the best becomes the most evil unless its relations with the state are modified to meet the defects of the body politic to which it belongs.
CHAPTER 2
The Constitutive Principle of the Different Forms of Government
To explain the general reason for these differences, it is necessary to distinguish here between the prince and the government, as I have already distinguished between the state and the sovereign.
The body of the magistrates may be composed of a greater or lesser number of members. We have already observed that the ratio of sovereign to subjects is greater to the extent that the people are more numerous, and by an obvious analogy we can say the same of the government in relation to the magistrates.
As the total power of the government is at all times that of the state, it never varies; and from this it follows that the more force the government exerts over its own members, the less there remains for it to use over the whole people.
Hence the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government. As this principle is fundamental, let us try to make it clearer.
We may distinguish in the person of the magistrate three essentially different wills. First, there is the will which belongs to him as an individual, and tends only to his personal advantage. Secondly, there is the collective will of the magistrates; this is concerned only with the advantage of the prince, and might be called the corporate will, since it is general vis-à-vis the government and particular vis-à-vis the state of which the government is a part. Thirdly, there is the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both with regard to the state considered as a whole and with regard to the government considered as part of the whole.
In a perfect system of legislation, the individual or particular will would be nonexistent, the government's own corporate will very subordinate, and the general or sovereign will therefore always dominant and always the sole regulator of all the others.
In the order of nature, on the contrary, these different wills become the more active the more they are self-centred. Hence, the general will is always the weakest, the corporate will takes second place, and the particular will comes first of all; so much so, that within the government, each member is primarily a private self, secondly a magistrate, and thirdly a citizen. This sequence is exactly the reverse of what the social order demands.
That being so, let us suppose that the government is in the hands of a single individual. Then the particular will and the corporate will will be perfectly united, and the corporate will accordingly raised to its highest possible degree of intensity. Now, since the exercise of power depends on the degree of will, and since the absolute power of the government is invariable, it follows that the most active government is that of one man.
If, on the other hand, we combine the government and the legislative authority, make the prince the sovereign, and each citizen a magistrate — then the corporate will, being merged in the general will, will be no more active than the general will, and so leave the particular will to command the totality of power. Thus the government, having always the same absolute strength, will be left with a minimum of relative strength and activity.
These relations are indisputable, and other considerations add further confirmation. It is clear, for example, that each magistrate is more active within the body of the government than is each citizen within the body of the state, and hence that the particular will has more influence over the acts of the government than it has over those of the sovereign, for every magistrate is nearly always entrusted with some distinct function of government, while no citizen, taken singly, has any distinct function of sovereignty. Besides, the more the state expands, the more its real strength is increased, though not in proportion to its expansion; but if the state remains the same size, the magistrates can be multiplied without the government gaining thereby any real strength, since its strength is that of the state, which is always the same. In this way the relative strength or activity of the government diminishes without there being any possibility of its absolute or real power increasing.
Again, there is no doubt that the dispatch of public business becomes slower in proportion as there are more persons responsible for it; attaching too much importance to prudence, large bodies attach too little to luck; they miss opportunities, and they deliberate so long that they lose the profits of deliberation.
I have just shown that the government slackens to the extent that the magistrates are multiplied, and I showed earlier that the more numerous the people, the more the repressive force must increase. From this it follows that the ratio of magistrates to government should be the inverse of the ratio of subjects to sovereign; that is to say, the more the state is enlarged, the more the government must reduce its ranks, so that the number of magistrates diminishes in proportion to the increase of the people.
I should add that I am speaking here of the relative strength of the government and not the quality of its behaviour; for, on the contrary, the more numerous the magistrates, the closer their corporate will approaches the general will, while under a single magistrate that same corporate will is, as I have said, only a particular will. Thus there is lost on the one side what could be gained on the other; and the art of the lawgiver is to know how to settle the point at which the strength and the will of the government, which always stand in inverse ratio, can be combined in the proportion most beneficial to the state.
CHAPTER 3
Classification of Governments
IN the preceding chapter we saw why the different types or forms of government are distinguished according to the number of members who compose them; it remains to be seen in the present chapter how this classification is made.
First, the sovereign may put the government in the hands of the whole people, or of the greater part of the people, so that there are more citizen-magistrates than there are ordinary private citizens. This form of government is known as democracy.
Alternatively, the sovereign may confine the government to the hands of a few, so that there are more ordinary citizens than there are magistrates: this form of government is called aristocracy.
Yet again, the sovereign may concentrate the entire government in the hands of one single magistrate, from whom all the others will derive their power. This third form of government is the most common, and is called monarchy or royal government.
It should be noticed that all these forms, or at any rate the first two, can be had in greater or lesser degrees; they have a fairly marked elasticity. Democracy may include all the people or it may be limited so as to include only half. Aristocracy in its turn may extend to half the people or be limited to the smallest possible number. Even royal government can to some extent be shared. Sparta had always two kings according to its constitution, and the Roman Empire is known to have had as many as eight Emperors at once without it being true to say that the Empire was divided. Thus there is always a point at which each form of government overlaps the next form; and it is clear that although government has only three names, it is actually open to as many variations of form as the state has citizens.
Moreover, since a government is able in certain respects to divide itself into separate parts, one administered in one way and the other in another way, the three forms of government may be combined to yield a multitude of mixed forms, each of which it can multiply by the three simple forms.
Throughout the ages men have debated the question 'What is the best form of government?', and yet they have failed to see that each of the possible forms is the best in some cases and the worst in others.
If in each particular state the number of supreme magistrates should be in inverse ratio to the number of citizens, it follows that, in general, democratic government suits small states, aristocratic government suits states of intermediate size and monarchy suits large states. This rule follows directly from our axiom; but how are we to calculate the multitude of particular circumstances which may offer exceptions to the rule?
CHAPTER 4
Democracy
HE who makes the law knows better than anyone how it should be executed and interpreted. So it might seem that there could be no better constitution than one which united the executive power with the legislative; in fact, this very union makes that form of government deficient in certain respects, for things which ought to be kept apart are not, and the prince and the sovereign being the same person constitute, so to speak, a government without government.
It is not good that he who makes the law should execute it or that the body of the people should turn its attention away from general perspectives and give it to particular objects. Nothing is more dangerous in public affairs than the influence of private interests, and the abuse of the law by the government is a lesser evil than that corruption of the legislator which inevitably results from the pursuit of private interests. When this happens, the state is corrupted in its very substance and no reform is possible. A people which never misused the powers of government would never misuse independence, and a people which always governed itself well would not need to be governed.
In the strict sense of the term, there has never been a true democracy, and there never will be. It is contrary to the natural order that the greater number should govern and the smaller number be governed. One can hardly imagine that all the people would sit permanently in an assembly to deal with public affairs; and one can easily see that they could not appoint commissions for that purpose without the form of administration changing.
I believe indeed that one can lay down as an axiom that when the functions of government are divided between several commissions, those with the fewest members acquire sooner or later the greatest authority, if only because the facility of dispatching business leads naturally in that direction.
Besides, how many things that are difficult to have at the same time does the democratic form of government not presuppose? First, a very small state, where the people may be readily assembled and where each citizen may easily know all the others. Secondly, a great simplicity of manners and morals, to prevent excessive business and thorny discussions. Thirdly, a large measure of equality in social rank and fortune, without which equality in rights and authority will not last long. Finally, little or no luxury; for luxury is either the effect of riches or it makes riches necessary; it corrupts both the rich and the poor; it surrenders the country to indolence and vanity; it deprives the state of all its citizens by making some the slaves of others and all the slaves of opinion.
This is why a celebrated author has made virtue the cardinal principle of a republic; for all the conditions that I have named cannot prevail without virtue. But this same great genius, having failed to make the necessary distinctions, was often wrong and sometimes obscure, and failed to see that since the sovereign authority is everywhere the same, the same principles should have a place in every well-constituted state, though to a greater or lesser extent, assuredly, according to the form of the government.
We may add that there is no government so liable to civil war and internecine strife as is democracy or popular government, for there is none which has so powerful and constant a tendency to change to another form or which demands so much vigilance and courage to maintain it unchanged. It is under this constitution, more than others, that the citizen must be armed with strength and fidelity, and repeat from the bottom of his heart every day of his life the words a virtuous Palatine 【2】 once spoke in the Diet of Poland: 'Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium.' 【3】
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
CHAPTER 5
Aristocracy
WE have here two distinct artificial persons, namely the government and the sovereign, and therefore two general wills, one belonging to all the citizens, and the other to members of the administration only. Thus, although the government may regulate its interior discipline as it pleases, it can never speak to the people except in the name of the sovereign, that is, in the name of the people itself — something that must never be forgotten.
The first societies were governed aristocratically. The heads of families deliberated on public business among themselves; the young people yielded willingly to the authority of experience. Hence the names of priests, elders, the senate, gerontes. The savages of North America still retain today this method of government, and they are very well governed.
But to the extent that artificial inequality came to prevail over natural inequality, riches and power 【4】 came to be preferred to age, and aristocracy became elective. Lastly, the bequeathing of power together with property by fathers to their children made families patrician and so made government hereditary; and then there appeared senators aged twenty.
There are thus three types of aristocracy, natural, elective and hereditary. The first is suited only to primitive peoples; the third is the worst of all governments; the second is the best, and this is aristocracy in the true sense of the word.
Aristocracy has not only the advantage of distinguishing between the sovereign and the government, it has also the advantage of selecting its magistrates. Under popular government all the citizens are born magistrates, while this other system limits itself to a small number of magistrates, every one of whom is elected, 【5】 a method which makes honesty, sagacity, experience and all the other grounds of popular preference and esteem further guarantees of wise government.
Besides, assemblies can be more easily arranged, business can be better discussed and be dispatched with more order and diligence; the credit of the state is better upheld in the eyes of foreigners by venerable senators than it is by an unknown and despised multitude.
In a word, it is the best and most natural arrangement for the wisest to govern the multitude, if we are sure that they will govern it for its advantage and not for their own. One ought never to multiply devices uselessly, or employ twenty thousand men to do what a hundred picked men could do much better. But it must be noted that the corporate interest begins at this point to direct the forces of the state less strictly in accordance with the general will, and that a further inevitable tendency is for a part of the executive power to escape the control of law.
As for the circumstances which suit this form of government, it is not necessary to have the state so small or the people so simple and upright that the execution of the law follows directly from the public will, as is the case in a good democracy. Nor must the nation be so large that the magistrates, being widely scattered, have to take upon themselves some of the powers of the sovereign, each in his own region; and so begin by making themselves independent and end by becoming masters.
But if aristocracy calls for rather fewer virtues than does popular government, it still calls for virtues of its own, such as moderation among the rich and contentment among the poor; for it seems that strict equality would be out of place; it was not observed even in Sparta.
Moreover, if this form of government involves a certain inequality of wealth, it is good that the administration of public affairs be entrusted to those who can best give all their time to it, and not, as Aristotle asserted, so that the rich should always be chosen. On the contrary, it is necessary that an opposite choice should occasionally teach people that merit is a more important qualification than riches for preferment.
CHAPTER 6
Monarchy
So far we have considered the prince as a collective and artificial person, unified by the force of the law and acting as trustee of executive power in the state. We have now to consider that power being held in the hands of a natural person, a real man, one having the sole right to exercise it according to the law. Such a man is known as a monarch or king.
Contrary to the other administrations, where a collective being represents an individual, in this one an individual represents a collective being; so that the moral unity which constitutes the prince is at the same time a physical unity, bringing together naturally those faculties which the law brings together with such difficulty in the other forms of administration.
Thus the will of the people and the will of the prince, the public force of the state and the individual power of the government, all respond to the same mover; all the levers of the machine are in the same hands; all act towards the same end; there are no conflicting movements to counteract one another, and we cannot imagine any constitution where more action would be produced by less effort. Archimedes sitting quietly on the shore and effortlessly launching a large ship is the model of a skilful monarch governing his vast kingdom from his chamber and making everything move while he himself seems motionless.
But if there is no government more vigorous than monarchy, there is also none where the particular will has more command, and more easily dominates the other wills. Everything moves towards the same end, it is true, but that end is not the public happiness; and the very strength of the administration operates continuously to the disadvantage of the state.
Kings want to be absolute, and from afar men cry out to them that the best way of becoming absolute is to make themselves loved by their people. This is a fine precept; and even in some respects a very true one. Unfortunately, it will always be laughed at in courts. The power which rests on the love of the people is undoubtedly the greatest, but is precarious and provisional; and princes will never be satisfied with it. The best kings want to be able to be bad if they feel like it without ceasing to be masters; a political sermonizer may well tell kings that since the people's force is the king's force, a king's best interest is to have the people flourishing, numerous and formidable; but kings know very well that this is not true. Their personal interest is primarily that the people should be weak, wretched and never able to resist them. I admit that if the subjects were always perfectly submissive, then it would be to the interest of the prince for the people to be strong, so that the people's strength, being also the prince's strength, would make him feared by his neighbours; but since this is only a secondary and subordinate advantage, and since strength is incompatible with submissiveness, it is natural that princes always prefer the doctrine that is more immediately useful to them. This is what Samuel put forcefully to the Hebrews, and what Machiavelli has proved very clearly — under the pretence of instructing kings, he has taught important lessons to the people. Machiavelli's Prince is a handbook for republicans. 【6】
We have seen from the discussion of general proportions that monarchy is suited only to large states, and we find this again when we examine monarchy in itself. The more numerous the public administrators, the more the ratio between prince and subjects diminishes and approaches parity, coming to a point where the ratio is one to one, or equality itself, in democracy. This same ratio is greater to the extent that the government contracts, and reaches its maximum when the government is in the hands of a single man. Then there is too great a distance between the prince and the people and the state lacks bonds of union. For such bonds to be formed there must be intermediary ranks, with princelings, grandees, and a nobility to fill them. But all this is unsuited to a small state, which would be ruined by so many social orders.
But if it is difficult for a large state to be well governed, it is still more difficult for it to be well governed by a single man; and everyone knows what happens when a king rules through deputies.
An essential and inevitable defect, which will always make monarchical government inferior to republican government, is that whereas in republics the popular choice almost always elevates to the highest places only enlightened and capable men, who fill their office with honour, those who rise under monarchies are nearly always muddled little minds, petty knaves and intriguers with small talents which enable them to rise to high places in courts, but which betray their ineptitude to the public as soon as they are appointed. The people is much less often mistaken in such choices than is a prince, and a man of real merit is almost as rare in a royal ministry as a fool at the head of a republican government. Thus, when by some happy chance a born ruler takes the helm of affairs in a monarchy that is almost wrecked by swarms of egregious administrators, then everyone is amazed at the resources he discovers, and his reign marks an epoch in the history of the country.
For a monarchy to be well governed, its size and extent ought to be proportionate to the talents of those who govern. It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules. However small the state may be, princes are almost always inadequate. When, on the other hand, it happens that the state is too small for its ruler, a very rare thing, then it is even worse governed, because such a ruler, in following his own broad vision, forgets the people's interest; and he makes them no less miserable by the misuse of his superabundant abilities than a mediocre ruler would make them through the defects of an insufficient talent. It is as if kingdoms ought, so to speak, to expand or contract with each successive reign, according to the capacity of the prince. In a republic, on the other hand, where the talents of the senate are of a more settled measure, the state can have fixed boundaries without the administration working any less well.
The most perceptible disadvantage of government by one man is the lack of that continuity of succession which provides an uninterrupted bond of union in the other two systems. When a king dies, another is needed; elections leave a dangerous interval; they are stormy; and unless the citizens have more disinterestedness and integrity than is usual under such governments, there will be bribery and corruption. It is difficult for one to whom the state has been sold not to sell it in his turn, and recover from the weak the gold which the strong have extorted from him. Sooner or later, under such an administration everything becomes venal; and the peace which is then enjoyed under kings is worse than the disturbances of interregnums.
What has been done to prevent this evil? Thrones have been made hereditary in certain families, and an order of succession thus set up to prevent any dispute on the death of the king — that is to say, by substituting for the disadvantages of elections, the disadvantages of regencies, apparent peace has been preferred to wise administration, and the risk of having children or monsters or imbeciles for rulers preferred to having to dispute the choice of a good king. People do not realize that in exposing themselves to the hazards of these alternatives, they are gambling against all the odds. It was a very shrewd remark that the young Dionysus made to his father, when his father, reproaching him for a dishonourable action, said: 'Did I set you such an example?' 'Ah,' replied the son, 'your father was not a king.'
When someone is brought up to command others, everything conspires to rob him of justice and reason. Great pains are taken, we are told, to teach young princes the art of ruling; but it does not appear that this education does them any good. It would be better to begin by teaching them the art of obeying. The greatest kings known to history were not among those brought up to rule, for ruling is a science that is least well mastered by too much practice; it is one a man learns better in obeying than in commanding. Nam utilissimus idem ac brevissimus bonarum malarumque rerum delectus, cogitare quid aut nolueris sub alio Principe aut volueris. 【7】
One consequence of this lack of coherence is the instability of royal government, which, being sometimes directed according to one plan and sometimes according to another, depending on the personality of the king who rules, or of those who rule for him, cannot long have a fixed objective or a consistent policy; this unsettledness makes the state drift from principle to principle, and from project to project, a defect not found in those forms of government where the prince is always the same. Thus we see that, in general, if there is more cunning in a royal court, there is more wisdom in a republican senate, and that republics have a more stable and effective guidance — something which cannot obtain where every revolution in the administration means a revolution in the state — for it is the universal rule of all ministers and nearly all kings to reverse the policy of their predecessors.
This same lack of cohesion gives the lie to a fallacy which is very common among royalist political thinkers, that is, not only of comparing civil government to household government and the prince to the father of a family — a fallacy I have already refuted — but also of generously attributing to a royal ruler all the virtues he has need of, and always assuming that the prince is everything he should be. With the help of these assumptions, royal government becomes manifestly preferable to all other kinds, because it is incontestably the strongest, and needs only a corporate will more in harmony with the general will to be also the best form of government.
But if, according to Plato, a born king is a very rare being — how often do Nature and Fortune combine to enthrone such a man? And if a royal education necessarily corrupts those who receive it, what must be expected of a succession of men brought up to rule?
It is deliberate self-deception to confuse royal government with the government of a good king. To understand what this form of government is inherently, one must consider it as it is under mediocre or evil princes, for either princes will be such when they accede to the throne or such is what occupying the throne will make them.
Although these difficulties do not escape our authors, they have never been in the least embarrassed by them. The remedy, they say, is to obey without a murmur. God in his wrath inflicts bad kings on us, so they must be endured as a divine punishment. This argument is undoubtedly edifying; but I fancy it is more suited to the pulpit than to a book of political theory. What would be said about a physician who promised miracles, and whose whole art was to teach the sick to practise patience?
We all know that we have to put up with a bad government when it is bad; the problem is to find a good government.
CHAPTER 7
Mixed Forms of Government
STRICTLY speaking, no government of a simple form exists. A single head of state has to have subordinate magistrates; a people's government must have a head. Thus in the division of executive power there is always a gradation from the larger number to the smaller — with this difference, that sometimes the many submit to the few, and sometimes the few submit to the many.
Sometimes there is an equal division, either when the constitutive parts are mutually dependent, as in the government of England, or when the authority of each part is independent but imperfect, as in the case of Poland. This latter form is bad, because there is no unity in the government, and the state lacks bonds of union. Which is better: a simple form of government or a mixed one? This is a question much debated by political theorists, and one to which I myself must give the answer I gave earlier about all forms of government.
In itself, the simple form of government is the best, precisely because it is simple. But when the executive power is not sufficiently subordinate to the legislative — that is to say, when the ratio of prince to sovereign is greater than that of people to prince — this lack of proportion has to be remedied by dividing the government, for then all the diverse elements of the government will have no less authority over the subjects, but their separation will make them less powerful against the sovereign.
The same disadvantage can also be prevented by establishing intermediate magistrates who, separated from the government altogether, serve only to balance the two powers, and uphold their respective rights. Then the government is not mixed, it is tempered.
The opposite disadvantage can be remedied by similar means; and when the government is too slack, commissions can be set up to give it concentration. In the first case, the government is divided in order to weaken it; in the second, in order to strengthen it. This is the practice of all democracies. The maximum of strength and of weakness are equally found in the simple forms of government, whereas the mixed forms provide a moderate degree of strength.
CHAPTER 8
That All Forms of Government Do Not Suit All Countries
FREEDOM is not a fruit of every climate, and it is not therefore within the capacity of every people. The more one reflects on this doctrine of Montesquieu, the more one is conscious of its truth. And the more often it is challenged, the more opportunities are given to establish it with new evidence.
In every government in the world, the public person consumes but does not produce anything. Whence does it obtain the substance it consumes? From the labour of its members. It is the surplus of private production which furnishes public subsistence. From this it follows that the civil state can subsist only if men's work yields more than they themselves need.
But this surplus is not the same in every country of the world. In some it is substantial, in others middling, in some nil, in others a deficit. The proportion depends on the fertility of the climate, on the kind of labour which the soil requires, on the nature of its products, on the strength of the inhabitants, and on the degree of consumption that is necessary for them, and on various other factors which go to make up the whole proportion.
In addition, all governments do not have the same nature; some are more voracious than others; and their differences are based on this next principle — that the further public contributions are from their source, the more burdensome they are. This burden should not be measured by the quantity of the contributions exacted, but by the distance they have to go to return to the hands from which they come; when this circulation is rapid and well established, it does not matter whether much or little is paid; the people will always be rich and finances will flourish. Correspondingly, however little the people gives, when that little does not return to it, it soon exhausts itself in continuous payments; the state is never rich and the people is always penurious.
This demonstrates that the greater the distance between the people and the government, the more onerous the taxes become; so that in a democracy the people is least burdened, in an aristocracy more burdened, and in a monarchy it bears the greatest weight of all. Monarchy is thus suited only to opulent nations, aristocracy to those of moderate wealth and size, and democracy to small and poor countries.
Indeed, the more one reflects, the more one recognizes that in this matter there are differences between free states and monarchies: in the former everything is used for the common advantage, while in the latter, private power and public power are competitive, and the one is increased only by weakening the other. As for despotism, instead of governing the subjects in order to make them happy, it makes them miserable in order to govern them.
Thus in every climate there are natural factors on the basis of which one can determine the form of government to which that climate leads; and we can even say what sort of inhabitants each must have.
Mean and sterile places, where the product does not repay the labour, must remain uncultivated and deserted, or peopled only by savages. Places which yield only the bare necessities of men's lives must be inhabited by barbarous peoples, since no political society is possible. Places where the surplus of product over labour is moderate are suited to free peoples. Places where an abundant and fertile soil gives a lavish return for little labour will want monarchical government, so that the luxury of the prince may consume the surplus of the product of the subjects — for it is better that this surplus should be absorbed by the government than dissipated by private persons. There are exceptions, I know, but these exceptions themselves confirm the rule, in that sooner or later they produce revolutions which put things back into the order of nature.
We must always distinguish general laws from particular causes which can modify their effect. If all the South were covered with republics and all the North with despotic states, it would still be true that, in terms of climate, despotism suits hot countries, barbarism cold countries, and that a good polity suits temperate regions. I realize that this general rule may be admitted and its application disputed; it could be argued that there are very fertile cold countries and very barren southern ones. But this is a difficulty only for those who fail to see the thing in all its ramifications. One must, as I have already said, consider the factors of production, strength, consumption and so on.
Suppose there are two equal territories, one yielding five units, the other ten. If the inhabitants of the former consume four and those of the latter nine, the surplus of the one will be one-fifth and of the other one-tenth. The ratio of these two surpluses will then be the inverse of that of their products, so that the territory yielding five units will show a surplus double that of the territory yielding ten.
But there is no question of a double product, and I do not believe anyone could venture to equate the fertility of a cold country with that of a hot country. But let us assume such equality; let us, for example, compare England and Sicily, Poland and Egypt. Farther south there will be Africa and India; farther north, there will be nothing. What differences in agricultural technique will be needed to achieve this equality of product? In Sicily, it is enough simply to scratch the soil, while in England, how much effort is needed to work it! Now where more hands are required to obtain the same product, the surplus is necessarily less.
Note a further point, that the same number of men consume much less in hot countries. The climate requires a man to be abstemious to keep fit — and Europeans who try to live in hot countries as they live at home die of dysentry and stomach disorders. 'We,' says Chardin, 'are carnivorous beasts, wolves, compared to the Asians. Some attribute the abstemiousness of the Persians to the fact that their country is less cultivated; but I, on the contrary, believe that their country is less rich in foodstuffs because the inhabitants need less. If their frugality [he continues] were the effect of the poverty of the soil, it would be the poor alone who ate little; in fact everybody does; and instead of finding people eating less or more in each province according to the fertility of the land, one finds the same frugality throughout the kingdom. They are very proud of their way of life, and say that one has only to look at their complexions to see how superior their way is to that of other nations. And indeed, the complexion of the Persians is clear, their skin is fair, delicate and smooth, while that of the Armenians, their subjects who live in the European manner, is rough and blotchy, and their bodies are fat and heavy.'
The closer men are to the equator, the more frugally they live. They eat hardly any meat; rice, maize, couscous, millet and cassava are their daily food. In India there are millions of men whose food costs less than a penny a day. In Europe itself we notice a marked difference of appetite between the peoples of the north and those of the south. A Spaniard could live eight days on the dinner of a German. In countries where men are more gluttonous, luxury is turned towards the things men consume. In England, it shows itself in tables loaded with meats; in Italy one is regaled on sugar and flowers.
Luxury in clothing reveals similar differences. In countries where the changes of season are swift and violent, people have better and simpler clothes; in countries where they dress only for appearance, people care more for show than utility, and clothes themselves are a luxury. In Naples you will see men strolling daily along the Posillipo in gold-embroidered jackets and no hose. It is the same thing with buildings; people attach importance to magnificence when they have nothing to fear from the climate. In Paris or London people want to be housed warmly and comfortably. In Madrid, they have superb reception rooms, but no windows that close and their bedrooms are like rat holes.
Foodstuffs are more substantial and richer in hot countries — this is a third difference and it does not fail to influence the second. Why does one eat so many vegetables in Italy? Because they are good, nourishing and of excellent flavour. In France, where they get nothing but water, they are not at all nourishing, and count for nothing at the table; but even so they take up no less ground and cost just as much to cultivate. Experiment has shown that the wheats of Barbary, otherwise inferior to those of France, yield much more flour; and that the French wheats, in turn, yield more than those of the North. From this one can deduce that a similar gradation may be observed along a line from the equator to the pole. Now is it not a tangible disadvantage to have a smaller amount of nourishment in an equal quantity of produce?
To all these various considerations, I may add another which flows from, and which reinforces them, that is, that hot countries need fewer inhabitants than cold countries, and can feed more — which provides a double surplus to the advantage of despotism. The wider the area that is occupied by the same number of people, the more difficult revolts become; for the inhabitants cannot get together quickly and secretly, while it is always easy for the government to discover plots and to cut communications. On the other hand, the more a numerous people is packed together, the less easily can the government infringe on the sovereign; popular leaders deliberate as securely in their private rooms as the prince in his council, and the crowd gathers as swiftly in the public squares as the troops in their barracks. It is thus to the advantage of tyrannical government to act over great distances. With the aid of strongpoints to serve as fulcra, its strength increases with distance, on the principle of leverage. 【8】
The strength of the people, on the contrary, is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain. The least populous countries are thus the most fitted to tyranny; wild beasts reign only in deserts.
CHAPTER 9
The Signs of a Good Government
WHEN, therefore, one asks what in absolute terms is the best government, one is asking a question which is unanswerable because it is indeterminate; or alternatively one might say that there are as many good answers as there are possible combinations in the absolute and relative positions of peoples.
But if it is asked by what signs one can tell whether a given people is well or badly governed, that is another matter; and as a question of fact it could be answered.
Even so, it is not really answered, because everyone will want to answer it in his own way. Subjects prize public tranquillity; citizens the freedom of the individual — the former prefer security of possessions, the latter security of person; subjects think the best government is the most severe, citizens that it is the mildest; the former want crimes to be punished, the latter want them prevented; subjects think it is a good thing to be feared by their neighbours, citizens prefer to be ignored by them; the former are satisfied so long as money circulates, the latter demand that the people shall have bread. But even if there were agreement on these and suchlike points, should we be any more advanced? Moral dimensions have no precise standard of measurement; even if we could agree about signs, how should we agree on their value?
For myself, I am always astonished that people should fail to recognize so simple a sign, or be so insincere as not to accept it as such. What is the object of any political association? It is the protection and the prosperity of its members. And what is the surest evidence that they are so protected and prosperous? The numbers of their population. Then do not look beyond this much debated evidence. All other things being equal, the government under which, without external aids like naturalization and immigration, the citizens increase and multiply most, is infallibly the best government. That under which the people diminishes and wastes away is the worst. Statisticians, this is your problem: count, measure, compare. 【9】
CHAPTER 10
The Abuse of Government and its Tendency to Degenerate
JusT as the particular will acts unceasingly against the general will, so does the government continually exert itself against the sovereign. And the more this exertion increases, the more the constitution changes for the worse, and, as in this case there is no distinct corporate will to resist the will of the prince and so to balance it, sooner or later it is inevitable that the prince will oppress the sovereign and break the social treaty. This is the inherent and inescapable defect which, from the birth of the political body, tends relentlessly to destroy it, just as old age and death destroy the body of a man.
There are two common ways by which a government degenerates — when it itself contracts and when the state dissolves.
The government contracts when its members pass from a greater to a smaller number, that is, from democracy to aristocracy, or from aristocracy to royal government. This is its natural tendency. 【10】 If it were to move in the other direction from a smaller number to a greater, the government might be said to slacken; but such an inverse progression is impossible.
For indeed, a government never changes its form unless its exhausted energies are too feeble to maintain its original form. If it slackened while expanding, its strength would be absolutely null, and it would be even less likely to survive. It must therefore wind up and tighten the mechanism as it begins to slacken, for otherwise the state which depends on it will fall into ruin.
The dissolution of the state may take place in two ways.
First it takes place when the prince ceases to administer the state according to the law and usurps the sovereign power. Then a remarkable change occurs; for it is not the government but the state which contracts — by which I mean that the state as a whole is dissolved and another is formed inside it, one composed only of members of the government and having no significance for the rest of the people except that of a master and a tyrant, so that the moment the government usurps sovereignty, the social pact is broken, and all the ordinary citizens, recovering by right their natural freedom, are compelled by force, but not morally obliged, to obey.
The same situation occurs when the members of the government separately usurp the power which they ought only to exercise as a body; for this is no less an infraction of the law, and it produces an even greater disorder. For then there are, so to speak, as many princes as there are magistrates, and the state being no less divided than the government, perishes or changes its form.
When the state is dissolved, the abuse of government, whatever it may be, takes the general name of anarchy. More precisely democracy degenerates into ochlocracy, aristocracy into oligarchy, and I would add that royal government degenerates into tyranny, except that this last word is ambiguous and requires explanation.
In the commonly understood sense, a tyrant is a king who governs by force and without regard to justice and the law. In the exact sense, a tyrant is an individual who arrogates to himself royal authority without having any right to it. It is thus that the Greeks understood the word 'tyrant'. They applied it indiscriminately to good and bad princes whenever their authority was not legitimate. 【11】 Thus tyrant and usurper are perfectly syonymous words. To give different names to different things, I call a usurper of royal authority a 'tyrant' and the usurper of the sovereign power a 'despot'. The tyrant is one who intrudes, contrary to law, to govern according to the law; the despot is one who puts himself above the law. Thus the tyrant need not be a despot, but a despot is always a tyrant.
CHAPTER 11
The Death of the Body Politic
SUCH is the natural and inevitable tendency of the best constituted governments. If Sparta and Rome perished, what state can hope to last for ever? If we wish, then, to set up a lasting constitution, let us not dream of making it eternal. We can succeed only if we avoid attempting the impossible and flattering ourselves that we can give to the work of man a durability that does not belong to human things.
The body politic, no less than the body of a man, begins to die as soon as it is born, and bears within itself the causes of its own destruction. Either kind of body may have a constitution of greater or less robustness, fitted to preserve it for a longer or shorter time. The constitution of a man is the work of nature; that of the state is the work of artifice. It is not within the capacity of men to prolong their own lives, but it is within the capacity of men to prolong the life of the state as far as possible by giving it the best constitution it can have. And although even the best constitution will come to an end, it will do so later than any other, unless some unforeseen hazard fells it before its time.
The principle of political life dwells in the sovereign authority. The legislative power is the heart of the state, the executive power is the brain, which sets all the parts in motion. The brain may become paralysed and the individual still live. A man can be an imbecile and survive, but as soon as his heart stops functioning, the creature is dead.
It is not through the law that the state keeps alive; it is through the legislative power. Yesterday's law is not binding today, but silence gives a presumption of tacit consent and the sovereign is taken to confirm in perpetuity the laws it does not abrogate while it has power to abrogate them. Everything which it has once declared to be its will, it wills always — at least until it issues a revocation.
Why then do ancient laws command so much respect? Precisely because they are ancient. We must believe that it is only the excellence of such laws that has enabled them to last so long; if the sovereign had not continually recognized them as salutary, they would have been revoked a thousand times. This is why the laws, far from growing weaker, constantly gain new strength in every well-constituted state; the prejudice in favour of antiquity makes them every day more revered; in those cases, on the other hand, where the laws become weaker with age, this shows that there is no longer any legislative power and that the state is dead.
CHAPTER 12
How the Sovereign Authority Maintains Itself
THE sovereign, having no other force than the legislative power, acts only through the laws, and since the laws are nothing other than authentic acts of the general will, the sovereign can act only when the people is assembled. The people assembled, it will be said — what an illusion! It is indeed an illusion today; but two thousand years ago it was not. Has human nature so much changed?
The boundaries of the possible in the moral realm are less narrow than we think; it is our own weaknesses, our vices and our prejudices that limit them. Base minds do not believe in great men; low slaves jeer in mockery at the word 'freedom'.
In the light of what has been done, let us consider what can be done. I shall not speak of the ancient republics of Greece; but the Roman Republic was, it seems to me, a large state and the town of Rome a large town: the last census gave four hundred thousand men in Rome carrying arms, and the last census calculation under the Empire more than four million citizens without counting subjects, foreigners, women, children or slaves.
One would suppose that it must have been difficult to bring together frequently the numerous people of the capital and its surroundings. In fact, very few weeks passed without the Roman people being assembled, even several times in one week. This people not only exercised the rights of sovereignty, but also a part of the government. It dealt with certain business; it tried certain cases; and the entire people in the public assemblies enacted the role of magistrate almost as often as that of citizen.
Looking back to the earliest history of nations, we notice that the majority of ancient governments, even monarchical ones like those of the Macedonians and the Franks, had similar assemblies. In any case, the one indisputable fact I have cited answers our question; it seems to me good logic to reason from the actual to the possible.
CHAPTER 13
The Same — Continued
IT is not enough that the assembled people should have once determined the constitution of the state by giving sanction to a body of laws; it is not enough that it should set up a perpetual government, or that it should have provided once and for all for the election of magistrates. In addition to the extraordinary assemblies that unforeseen events may necessitate, there must be fixed and periodic assemblies which nothing can abolish or prorogue, so that on the appointed day the people is rightfully summoned by the law itself without any further formal convocation being needed.
But apart from these assemblies which are lawful by their date alone, any assembly of the people which has not been summoned by the magistrate appointed for that duty and according to the prescribed form must be held to be unlawful, and everything it does must be void, for the order to assemble should itself emanate from the law.
As to whether legitimate assemblies should be more or less frequent, this depends on so many circumstances that one cannot lay down in advance any precise rules. One can only say that in general the more strength the government has, the more frequently the sovereign should meet in assemblies.
This, I shall be told, may be good for one single town, but what is to be done if the state consists of several towns? Is the sovereign authority to be divided? Or should it be concentrated in one single town holding the others as subject? I answer that neither the one thing nor the other should be done. In the first place, the sovereign authority is simply one single unit; it cannot be divided without being destroyed. In the second place, a town cannot legitimately be subject to another any more than a nation may be, because the essence of the political body lies in the union of freedom and obedience so that the words 'subject' and 'sovereign' are identical correlatives, the meaning of which is brought together in the single word 'citizen'.
I should answer further that it is always an evil to unite several towns in one nation, and whoever wishes to form such a union should not flatter himself that the natural disadvantages can be avoided. It is no use complaining about the evils of a large state to someone who wants only small ones. But how are small states to be given enough strength to resist large states, as the Greek cities once resisted a great king and as, more recently, Holland and Switzerland resisted the House of Austria?
Nevertheless, if the state cannot be limited to reasonable boundaries, there remains one remedy, and that is to have no fixed capital, but to move the seat of government from one place to another and to assemble the estates of the country in each in turn.
People the territory evenly, extend the same rights to everyone, carry the same abundance and life into every quarter — it is by these means that the state will become at once the strongest and the best governed that is possible. Remember that the walls of towns are made only from the debris of rural houses. Every time I see a mansion being built in the capital I fancy I can see the whole countryside covered with hovels.
CHAPTER 14
The Same — Continued
THE moment the people is lawfully assembled as a sovereign body all jurisdiction of the government ceases; the executive power is suspended, and the person of the humblest citizen is as sacred and inviolable as that of the highest magistrate, for in the presence of the represented there is no longer any representation. Most of the disturbances which took place in the Roman assemblies were the result of this rule being either unknown or neglected. The consuls were no more than the presidents of the people; the tribunes were mere speakers; 【12】 the senate was nothing at all.
These intervals of suspension, when the prince recognizes — or ought to recognize — who is superior, are always alarming for princes; and the assemblies of the people, which are the shield of the body politic and the brake on the government, have always been the nightmare of magistrates; hence the latter spare no effort in raising objections, problems, promises to turn the citizens against assemblies. When the citizens are avaricious, cowardly, pusillanimous, and love repose more than freedom, they do not hold out against the redoubled efforts of the government. It is thus that, as the opposing force increases continuously, the sovereign authority atrophies in the end and the majority of republics fall and perish before their time.
But between the sovereign authority and arbitrary government there is sometimes interposed an intermediate power of which we must now speak.
CHAPTER 15
Deputies or Representatives
As soon as public service ceases to be the main concern of the citizens and they come to prefer to serve the state with their purse rather than their person, the state is already close to ruin. Are troops needed to march to war? They pay mercenaries and stay at home. Is it time to go to an assembly? They pay deputies and stay at home. Thanks to laziness and money, they end up with soldiers to enslave the country and deputies to sell it.
It is the bustle of commerce and the crafts, it is the avid thirst for profit, it is effeminacy and the love of comfort that commute personal service for money. Men give up a part of their profits so as to increase the rest at their ease. Use money thus, and you will soon have chains. The word 'finance' is the word of a slave; it is unknown in the true republic. In a genuinely free state, the citizens do everything with their own hands and nothing by means of money; far from paying for exemption from their duties, they would pay to discharge them in person. I am very far from sharing received ideas: I believe that compulsory service is less contrary to liberty than is taxation.
The better the state is constituted, the more does public business take precedence over private in the minds of the citizens. There is indeed much less private business, because the sum of the public happiness furnishes a larger proportion of each individual's happiness, so there remains less for him to seek on his own. In a well-regulated nation, every man hastens to the assemblies; under a bad government, no one wants to take a step to go to them, because no one feels the least interest in what is done there, since it is predictable that the general will will not be dominant, and, in short, because domestic concerns absorb all the individual's attention. Good laws lead men to make better ones; bad laws lead to worse. As soon as someone says of the business of the state — 'What does it matter to me?' — then the state must be reckoned lost.
The cooling-off of patriotism, the activity of private interest, the vastness of states, conquests, the abuse of government — all these have suggested the expedient of having deputies or representatives of the people in the assemblies of the nation. This is what in certain countries they dare to call the third estate — the private interest of two classes being there given first and second place, and the public interest only third place.
Sovereignty cannot be represented, for the same reason that it cannot be alienated; its essence is the general will, and will cannot be represented — either it is the general will or it is something else; there is no intermediate possibility. Thus the people's deputies are not, and could not be, its representatives; they are merely its agents; and they cannot decide anything finally. Any law which the people has not ratified in person is void; it is not law at all. The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moments of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.
The idea of representation is a modern one. It comes to us from feudal government, from that iniquitous and absurd system under which the human race is degraded and which dishonours the name of man. In the republics and even in the monarchies of the ancient world, the people never had representatives; the very word was unknown. It is remarkable in the case of Rome, where the tribunes were so sacred, that no one ever imagined that they might usurp the functions of the people; and in the midst of such a great multitude, they never attempted to pass on their own authority a single plebiscit-@ium. One can judge, however, the embarrassment the crowd sometimes caused from what happened at the time of the Gracchi, when a great part of the citizens voted from the rooftops.
Where rights and freedom are everything, inconveniences are nothing. Among these wise people, everything was given its just measure; the lictors were allowed to do what the tribunes would not have dared to do; the people were not afraid that their lictors would wish to represent them.
To explain how, even so, the tribunes did represent the people, it is enough to consider how the government represents the sovereign. Since the law is nothing other than a declaration of the general will, it is clear that there cannot be representation of the people in the legislative power; but there may and should be such representation in the executive power, which is only the instrument for applying the law. This indicates that if we look carefully, we shall find that very few nations have laws. However that may be, it is certain that the tribunes, having no part of the executive power, could never represent the Roman people by the rights of their own office, but only by usurping those of the senate.
Among the Greeks, all that the people had to do, it did itself; it was continuously assembled in the market place. The Greek people lived in a mild climate; it was not at all avaricious; slaves did the work; its chief concern was its freedom. Without the same advantages, how can the same rights be preserved? Your harsher climate creates more necessities; 【13】 six months of the year the public places are uninhabitable; your muted tongues cannot make themselves heard in the open air; you care more for your profits than your freedom; and you fear slavery less than you fear poverty.
What? Is freedom to be maintained only with the support of slavery? Perhaps. The two extremes meet. Everything outside nature has its disadvantages, civil society more than all the rest. There are some situations so unfortunate that one can preserve one's freedom only at the expense of the freedom of someone else; and the citizen can be perfectly free only if the slave is absolutely a slave. Such was the situation of Sparta. You peoples of the modern world, you have no slaves, but you are slaves yourselves; you pay for their liberty with your own. It is in vain that you boast of this preference; I see more cowardice than humanity in it.
I do not mean by all this to suggest that slaves are necessary or that the right of slavery is legitimate, for I have proved the contrary. I simply state the reasons why peoples of the modern world, believing themselves to be free, have representatives, and why peoples of the ancient world did not. However that may be, the moment a people adopts representatives it is no longer free; it no longer exists.
All things carefully considered, I do not see how it will be possible henceforth among people like us for the sovereign to maintain the exercise of its rights unless the republic is very small. But if it is very small, will it not be subjugated? No. I shall show later 【14】 how the defensive strength of a large people can be combined with the free government and good order of a small state.
CHAPTER 16
That the Institution of the Government is not a Contract
ONCE the legislative power is well established, it remains to establish similarly the executive power; for the latter, which operates only by particular acts, is essentially different from the former, and is naturally separate from it. If it were possible for the sovereign, considered as such, to have the executive power, then the de jure and the de facto would be so confused that people would no longer know what was law and what was not; and the body politic, thus perverted, would soon fall prey to that very violence it was instituted to prevent.
The citizens being all equal by the social contract, all may prescribe what all must do, instead of nobody having a right to demand that another shall do what he does not do himself. For it is precisely this right, indispensable for giving life and movement to the body politic, that the sovereign gives to the prince in instituting the government.
Several theorists have claimed that this act of institution is a contract between the people and the magistrates it sets over itself, a contract which stipulates between the two parties the conditions under which the one undertakes to command and the other to obey. It will be admitted, I am sure, that this is a strange way of contracting. But let us see if the theory is tenable.
First, the supreme authority can no more be modified than it can be alienated; to limit it is to destroy it. It is absurd and self-contradictory that the sovereign should give itself a superior; to undertake to obey a master would be to return to absolute freedom.
Furthermore, it is clear that this contract of the people with such or such persons would be a particular act. From this it follows that this contract could not be a law, or an act of sovereignty, and hence that it would be illegitimate.
We see further that the contracting parties would, between themselves, be subject only to natural law, and so without any guarantee of their reciprocal commitments — and this is wholly contrary to the civil state. Since the man who has force in his hand is always the master of what shall be done, this is like giving the name of 'contract' to the act of a man who says to another: 'I give you all my property on condition that you give me back what you please.'
There is only one contract in the state: that of the association itself, and this excludes all others. One cannot imagine any public contract that would not be a violation of the original contract.
CHAPTER 17
The Institution of the Government
IN what conceptual terms then should we think of the act by which the government is instituted? I shall explain first that this act is complex, or composed of two others, namely the establishment of the law and the execution of the law.
By the first, the sovereign enacts that there shall be a body of government established with such or such form; and it is clear that this act is a law.
By the second, the people names the magistrates who are to be invested with the government thus established. Since this nomination is a particular act, it is not a second law, but simply a sequel to the first and a function of government.
The difficulty is to understand how there can be an act of government before the government exists, and how the people, which is only sovereign or subject, can in certain circumstances become prince or magistrate.
Now it is here once more that the body politic reveals one of those astonishing properties by which it reconciles operations that seem to be contradictory. For this operation is accomplished by the sudden transformation of the sovereignty into democracy in such a way that without undergoing any visible change, and simply through a new relation of all to all, the citizens become magistrates and pass from general acts to particular acts, and from the law to its execution.
This change of relation is not a construction of speculative theory without example in practice; it happens every day in the English parliament, where the lower House on certain occasions transforms itself into a committee of the whole House the better to discuss affairs, and so becomes a simple committee of that sovereign court which it was itself a moment before; then later it reports to itself, in its capacity of House of Commons, on what it has just settled as a committee of the whole House, and again debates under one name what it has already decided under another.
It is the advantage peculiar to democratic government that it can be established in fact by a simple act of the general will. After this, the provisional government remains in office if such is the form adopted, or there is established in the name of the sovereign whatever government is prescribed by the law; and everything is then in order. It is not possible to institute the government in any other legitimate manner, without abandoning the principles established in earlier chapters.
CHAPTER 18
Means of Preventing the Usurpation of Government
FROM these explanations, it follows, in confirmation of Chapter 16, that the act which institutes the government is not a contract but a law, and that the holders of the executive power are not the people's masters but its officers; and that the people can appoint them and dismiss them as it pleases; and that there is no question of their contracting, but of obeying; and that in discharging the functions which the state imposes on them, they are only doing their duty as citizens, without having any sort of right to argue terms.
Thus when it happens that the people institutes a hereditary government, whether monarchical in one family, or aristocratic in a class of citizens, it does not enter into any undertaking; hereditary government is simply a provisional form that it gives to the administration until such time as it pleases to arrange it differently.
It is true that such changes are always dangerous, and that one should never touch an established government unless it has become incompatible with the public welfare; but such circumspection is a precept of politics and not a rule of law; and the state is no more bound to leave civil authority to its magistrates than military authority to its generals.
It is true again that in such cases one cannot observe with too great care all the formalities required to distinguish a correct and legitimate act from a seditious tumult, and the will of a whole people from the clamour of a faction. It is here above all that one must avoid yielding to socially harmful claims any more than is required by the strict application of the law; and it is from this obligation too that the prince derives a great opportunity of holding his power in defiance of the people, without it being possible to say that he has usurped it. For while appearing to exercise only his rights it is very easy for him to enlarge those rights and to prevent, on the pretext of public tranquillity, assemblies designed to re-establish good government; thus he exploits the silence which he prevents men breaking, and the irregularities which he makes them commit, to assume in his own favour the tacit consent of those whose mouths are closed by fear and to punish those who dare to speak. It was thus that the decemvirs, having been first elected for one year, and then continued for another, tried to retain their power in perpetuity, by no longer allowing the comitia to assemble. And it is by this simple means that all the governments of the world, once armed with the public force, sooner or later usurp the sovereign authority.
The periodic assemblies of which I have already spoken are the right means to prevent or postpone this evil, above all those assemblies where no formal convocation is needed; for then the prince cannot prevent their meeting without openly proclaiming himself a violator of the laws and an enemy of the state.
At the opening of these assemblies, of which the only purpose is the maintenance of the social treaty, two motions should be put, motions which may never be annulled and which must be voted separately:
The first: 'Does it please the sovereign to maintain the present form of government?'
The second: 'Does it please the people to leave the administration to those at present charged with it?'
I assume here what I believe I have demonstrated, namely, that there is not in the state any fundamental law which may not be revoked, not even the social pact; for if all the citizens assemble to end this pact by a common accord, one cannot doubt that it is very legitimately ended. Grotius indeed thinks that each citizen may renounce his membership of the state, and recover his natural liberty and his goods on withdrawing from the country. 【15】 And it would be absurd if all the citizens united could not do what each of them separately can do.
Note
【1】 Thus in Venice the ruling college is called the Most Serene Prince even when the Doge is not present.
【2】 The Palatine of Posen, father of the King of Poland and Duke of Lorraine.
【3】 Better freedom with danger than peace with slavery.'
【4】 It is clear that the word Optimates, for the ancients, did not mean the best but the strongest.
【5】 It is of the utmost importance that the law should regulate the procedure of election of magistrates, for if this is left to the will of the prince, there will be no avoiding a decline into hereditary aristocracy, as happened in the Republics of Venice and Berne. The first of these two states has long since fallen into decay, while the other preserves itself only by the extreme wisdom of its senate — a very honourable and very dangerous exception to the rule.
【6】 Machiavelli was a gentleman and a good citizen; but being attached to the house of Medici, he was forced during the oppression of his country to disguise his love of liberty. The very choice of an execrable hero reveals his secret intention, and the antithesis between his principles in his book The Prince and those in his Discourses on Livy and The History of Florence proves that this profound political thinker has so far had only superficial or corrupted readers. The Pope's court strictly prohibited his book, which I can well believe, since that was the Court he depicts most plainly.
【7】 'The best as well as the shortest way to find out what is good and what is bad is to consider what you would have wished to happen if someone other than yourself had been Prince.' (Tacitus, History, Book Ⅰ.)
【8】 This does not contradict what I said in Book Ⅱ, Chapter 9, about the disadvantages of a large state, for there I was dealing with the authority of the government over its own members, and here it is a question of the government's strength over the subjects. Its scattered members serve it as so many fulcra to exert pressure on the people from a distance, but it has no such fulcrum to exert pressure on its own members. Thus in the one case the length of the lever is its weakness; in the other, its strength.
【9】 One must judge on the same principle the centuries that merit preference in respect of the prosperity of the human race. People have too much admired those that have witnessed a flourishing of crafts and letters without penetrating the secret purpose of their culture, and without considering its fatal consequences, idque apud imperitos humanitas vocabatur, cum pars servitutis esset. Shall we never see behind the precepts of books the crude self-interest which prompts the authors to speak? No, whatever they may say, when, notwithstanding its brilliance, a country is depopulated, it is simply not true that all is going well; and it is not enough for a poet to have an income of 100,000 livres for his century to be the best of all. It is less important to consider the apparent repose and tranquillity of rulers than the wellbeing of whole nations and above all of the most populous states. A hailstorm may devastate a few cantons, but it rarely causes famine. Riots and civil wars may greatly alarm rulers, but they are not the true misfortunes of peoples, who can at least have a few months' respite during the quarrels as to who is to be the next tyrant. Their calamities and their happiness both arise from their permanent condition. When all remain supine under the yoke, it is then that everything decays, it is then that the rulers can destroy them at their ease, ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. When the quarrels of the state disturbed the kingdom of France, and the Coadjutor of Paris attended the Parlement with a dagger in his pocket, this did not prevent the French people living happily and multiplying in a free and decent ease. In ancient times, Greece flourished at the height of the cruellest wars; blood flowed in torrents, but the whole country was thickly populated. 'It appeared,' says Machiavelli, 'that in the midst of murder, proscription and civil wars, our republic became stronger than ever; the civil virtue of the citizens, their morals, and their independence, served more effectively to strengthen it than all their dissensions may have done to weaken it.' A little disturbance gives vigour to the soul, and what really makes the species prosper is not peace but freedom.
【10】 The slow formation and progress of the Republic of Venice in its lagoons provides a notable example of this progression; and it is really astonishing that after more than twelve hundred years, the Venetians seem still to be at the second stage, which began with the Serrar di Consiglio in 1198. As for the ancient Doges, for whom the Venetians are reproached, whatever may be said by the squittinio della libertà veneta, there is proof that the Doges were not their sovereigns.
People will not fail to quote against me the case of the Roman Republic, which is said to have followed a reverse sequence, from monarchy to aristocracy and from aristocracy to democracy. But I am very far from sharing this opinion.
The first constitution of Romulus was a mixed government, which promptly degenerated into a despotism. For special reasons, the state perished before its time, just as one sometimes sees an infant die before reaching the age of maturity. The expulsion of the Tarquins was the real moment of the birth of the Republic. But it did not at first assume a fixed form, because the failure to abolish the patriciate left the task half-finished. For the hereditary aristocracy, which is the worst of all legitimate administrations, remained in conflict with democracy, and the form of government, continuously uncertain and wavering, was not fixed (as Machiavelli has proved) until the establishment of the tribunes; only then was there a true government and a true democracy. For indeed the people then was not only sovereign, but also magistrate and judge; and the senate was no more than a subordinate commission to temper and concentrate the government, while the consuls themselves — in spite of their being patricians, chief magistrates and absolute commanders in war — were never more in Rome than presidents of the people.
From that time, the government was seen to follow its natural inclination, and tend strongly towards aristocracy. The patriciate having as it were abolished itself, the aristocracy was no longer seated in the body of the patricians, as in Venice and Genoa, but in the body of the senate composed of patricians and plebeians, even in the body of the tribunes, when they began to usurp the active power. For words do not alter things, and when the people have chiefs who govern on their behalf, this is still an aristocracy no matter what name those persons bear.
The abuse of aristocracy gave birth to civil war and the triumvirate. Sulla, Julius Caesar and Augustus became in fact as good as monarchs, and finally under the despotism of Tiberius the state was dissolved. Roman history, then, does not belie my principle: it confirms it.
【11】 'Omnes enim et habentur et dicuntur Tyranni qui potestate utuntur perpetua, in ea Civitate quae libertate usa est.' ('For all are thought and called tyrants who exercise perpetual power in a city accustomed to freedom.' Cornelius Nepos, Life of Miltiades.) It is true that Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, Ⅷ, 10) distinguishes between a tyrant and a king, saying the former governs for his own advantage while the latter governs only for the advantage of his subjects; but in addition to the fact that in general all the Greek authors used the word 'tyrant' in another sense, as we see above all in the Hiero of Xenophon, it would follow from Aristotle's criterion, that there had never yet been a single king since the beginning of the world.
【12】 The word is used here somewhat in the sense it has in the English parliament. The resemblance between these functions would have caused conflict between the Consuls and the Tribunes, even if all jurisdiction had been suspended.
【13】 To adopt in cold countries the luxury and softness of the orientals is to ask to have their chains, to make submission even more inevitable than theirs.
【14】 This is what I intended to do in the remaining part of this work, when, in dealing with foreign relations, I should have come to the subject of confederations. This subject is entirely new, and its principles have yet to be established.
【15】 It being understood that none may leave the country to evade his duty, or avoid saving his country when it needs him. In such a case, flight would be criminal and punishable; it would not be withdrawal but desertion.
Book Ⅳ
CHAPTER 1
That the General Will is Indestructible
So long as several men assembled together consider themselves a single body, they have only one will, which is directed towards their common preservation and general well-being. Then all the animating forces of the state are vigorous and simple; its principles are clear and luminous; it has no incompatible or conflicting interests; the common good makes itself so manifestly evident that only common sense is needed to discern it. Peace, unity, equality are enemies of political sophistication. Upright and simple men are difficult to deceive precisely because of their simplicity; strategems and clever arguments do not prevail upon them; they are not indeed subtle enough to be dupes. When we see among the happiest people in the world bands of peasants regulating the affairs of state under an oak tree, and always acting wisely, can we help feeling a certain contempt for the refinements of other nations, which employ so much skill and mystery to make themselves at once illustrious and wretched?
A state thus governed needs very few laws, and whenever there is a need to promulgate new ones, that need is universally seen. The first man to propose such a law is only giving voice to what everyone already feels, and there is no question either of intrigues or of eloquence to secure the enactment of what each has already resolved to do as soon as he is sure that all the others will do likewise.
What misleads theorists is that, as a result of looking only at states which are badly constituted from the beginning, they are struck by the impossibility of maintaining such a régime there. They laugh at the thought of all the follies that a clever knave or a sly orator could persuade the people of Paris or London to commit. They do not realize that Cromwell would have been put to forced labour by the people of Berne, and the Duc de Beaufort imprisoned by the Genevese.
However, when the social tie begins to slacken and the state to weaken, when particular interests begin to make themselves felt and sectional societies begin to exert an influence over the greater society, the common interest becomes corrupted and meets opposition; voting is no longer unanimous; the general will is no longer the will of all; contradictions and disputes arise; and even the best opinion is not allowed to prevail unchallenged.
In the end, when the state, on the brink of ruin, can maintain itself only in an empty and illusory form, when the social bond is broken in every heart, when the meanest interest impudently flaunts the sacred name of the public good, then the general will is silenced: everyone, animated by secret motives, ceases to speak as a citizen any more than as if the state had never existed; and the people enacts in the guise of laws iniquitous decrees which have private interests as their only end.
Does it follow from this that the general will is annihilated or corrupted? No, that is always unchanging, incorruptible and pure, but it is subordinated to other wills which prevail over it. Each man, in detaching his interest from the common interest, sees clearly that he cannot separate it entirely, but his share of the public evil seems to him to be nothing compared to the exclusive good he seeks to make his own. Where his private good is not concerned, he wills the general good in his own interest as eagerly as anyone else. Even in selling his vote for money, he does not extinguish the general will in himself; he evades it. The fault he commits is to change the form of the question, and to answer something different from what is asked him; so that instead of saying, with his vote, 'It is advantageous to the state', he says, 'It is advantageous to this man or to that party that such or such a proposal should be adopted.' For this reason the sensible rule for regulating public assemblies is one intended not so much to uphold the general will there as to ensure that it is always questioned and always responds.
I might say a great deal here about the simple right of voting in every act of sovereignty, a right of which nothing can deprive citizens, and also about the right of speaking, proposing, dividing and debating — a right which the government always takes great care to assign only to its own members — but this important subject would require a separate treatise, and I cannot put everything in this one.
CHAPTER 2
The Suffrage
IT will be evident from what has been said in the preceding chapter that the manner in which public affairs are conducted gives a sufficiently accurate indication of the moral character and the state of health of the body politic. The greater harmony that reigns in the public assemblies, the more, in other words, that public opinion approaches unanimity, the more the general will is dominant; whereas long debates, dissensions and disturbances bespeak the ascendance of particular interests and the decline of the state.
This will seem less evident when two or several orders enter into the constitution, as in Rome with its patricians and plebeians, whose quarrels often disturbed the comitia even in the finest days of the Republic; but this exception to the rule is more apparent than real, for in Rome, as a result of an inherent defect in the body politic, there were, in a manner of speaking, two states in one, and what is not true of both together is true of each separately. And, indeed, even in the most tumultuous times, the plebiscites of the people always proceeded peacefully when the senate did not interfere, and votes were given with large majorities. The citizens having only one interest, the people had only one will.
At the other extreme of the cycle, unanimity reappears. This is when the citizens, lapsed into servitude, have no longer either freedom or will. Then fear and flattery change voting into acclamation; people no longer deliberate, they worship or they curse. Such was the shameful manner in which the senate gave voice to its opinions under the emperors. Sometimes it did so with absurd precautions. Tacitus mentions that under Otho, the senators covered Vitellius with execrations, but took care at the same time to make a deafening noise, so that Vitellius would not be able to distinguish what each one of them had said, lest he should ever by any chance become master.
These various considerations suggest the principles by which the counting of votes and the comparing of opinions should be arranged, depending on whether the general will is more or less easy to recognize, and on whether the state is more or less in decline.
There is only one law which by its nature requires unanimous assent. This is the social pact: for the civil association is the most voluntary act in the world; every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.
If, then, there are opposing voices at the time when the social pact is made, this opposition does not invalidate the contract; it merely excludes the dissentients; they are foreigners among the citizens. After the state is instituted, residence implies consent: to inhabit the territory is to submit to the sovereign. 【1】
Apart from this original contract, the votes of the greatest number always bind the rest; and this is a consequence of the contract itself. Yet it may be asked how a man can be at once free and forced to conform to wills which are not his own. How can the opposing minority be both free and subject to laws to which they have not consented?
I answer that the question is badly formulated. The citizen consents to all the laws, even to those that are passed against his will, and even to those which punish him when he dares to break any one of them. The constant will of all the members of the state is the general will; it is through it that they are citizens and free. 【2】 When a law is proposed in the people's assembly, what is asked of them is not precisely whether they approve of the proposition or reject it, but whether it is in conformity with the general will which is theirs; each by giving his vote gives his opinion on this question, and the counting of votes yields a declaration of the general will. When, therefore, the opinion contrary to my own prevails, this proves only that I have made a mistake, and that what I believed to be the general will was not so. If my particular opinion had prevailed against the general will, I should have done something other than what I had willed, and then I should not have been free.
This presupposes, it is true, that all the characteristics of the general will are still to be found in the majority; when these cease to be there, no matter what position men adopt, there is no longer any freedom.
When I showed earlier in this essay how particular wills come to take the place of the general will in public deliberations, I made sufficiently clear what practical means may prevent that abuse, and I shall return to this subject later. As for the proportional number of votes required to declare the general will, I have also set forth the principles by which that number can be determined. A difference of a single vote destroys an equal division; a single opposing voice destroys unanimity; but between unanimity and an equal division there are numerous unequal divisions, and the desired proportion can be fixed at any of these points in accordance with the condition and on the needs of the body politic.
Two general maxims may serve to determine these ratios: the first, that the more important and serious the matter to be decided, the closer should the opinion which is to prevail approach unanimity; the second, the swifter the decision the question demands, the smaller the prescribed majority may be allowed to become; and in decisions which have to be given immediately, a majority of one must suffice. The first of these maxims might seem to be more suited to the enactment of laws, the second to the dispatch of administrative business. At all events, it is by a combination of the two maxims that we can determine the right size for the majority that is to decide on any question.
CHAPTER 3
Elections
ELECTIONS of the prince and magistrates, which are, as I have said, complex acts, can be arranged in two ways, by choice or by lot. Both means have been employed in different republics, and a very complicated mixture of the two can still be seen in the election of the Doge of Venice. 'Election by lot,' says Montesquieu, 'is natural to democracy.' I agree. But why is this so? 'Drawing lots,' he continues, 'is a method of election that wounds no one and gives every citizen a reasonable hope of serving his country.' But these are not good reasons.
If we remember that the election of magistrates is a function of government and not of sovereignty, we shall see why the method of lot is natural to democracy, where the administration is all the better in proportion as its acts are fewer.
In every true democracy, magistrature is not a privilege but a heavy responsibility, so that it cannot justly be imposed on one man rather than another. The law alone can impose this burden on the man to whom the lot falls. For in this case, since the conditions are equal for all and the choice does not depend on any human will, the universality of the law is not distorted by any particular application.
In an aristocracy the prince chooses the prince, the government perpetuates itself by its own actions; and then election by choice is appropriate.
The example of the election of the Doge of Venice, far from undermining this distinction, confirms it: such a mixed form suits a mixed government. It is a mistake to regard the government of Venice as a genuine aristocracy. For while the Venetian people has no part in the government, the Venetian nobility is itself a people. A multitude of poor Barnabites never comes near any magistrature, and its nobility rests on the empty title of Excellency and the right to attend the Great Council. And since this Great Council is as numerous as our General Council in Geneva, its illustrious members have no more privileges than our plain citizens. Hence there is no doubt that, apart from the extreme disparity between the two republics, the bourgeoisie of Geneva corresponds precisely to the patriciate of Venice; our natives and inhabitants correspond to the townsmen and the people of Venice, and our peasants to their subjects on the mainland; to sum up, from whatever point of view the Venetian Republic is considered, apart from its size, its government is no more aristocratic than our own. The whole difference lies in the fact that we have no head of state who holds office for life, and so we have not the same need for the method of election by lot.
Election by lot would have few disadvantages in a true democracy, for where all men were equal in character and talent as well as in principles and fortune, it would hardly matter who was chosen. But as I have already said, no true democracy exists.
When election by choice and election by lot are both employed, choice should be used to fill places that call for special skills, such as military commands, and lot for those where common sense, justice and integrity are enough, as in the case of political offices, for in a well-constituted state, such qualities are found among all the citizens.
Under monarchical government, neither election by lot nor election by choice has any place. Since the monarch is by right the sole prince and only magistrate, the choice of his lieutenants belongs to him alone. When the Abbé de St Pierre proposed to increase the Councils of the King of France and have their members elected by ballot, he did not realize that he was proposing to change the form of government!
I have yet to speak of the method of voting and collecting votes in the people's assembly, but perhaps the history of the Roman system would serve to demonstrate more forcefully all the principles that I might myself set forth. It will not be beneath the dignity of a thoughtful reader to consider in some detail how public and private business was conducted in an assembly of two hundred thousand men.
CHAPTER 4
The Roman Comitia
WE have no trustworthy records of the early history of Rome, and there is every likelihood that most of the tales we are told are fables; 【3】 indeed, in general, that most instructive part of the annals of peoples, which is the history of their institution, is the part we most lack. Experience teaches us daily the causes of revolutions in empires, but as peoples are no longer instituted, we have nothing better than conjecture to explain how they were once instituted.
The customs that we find established show at least that such customs must have had an origin. Traditions that recall these origins, that are supported by the best authorities, and confirmed by the best reasons, should pass for the most certain. Such are the principles I have tried to follow in enquiring how the freest and strongest people of the world exercised its supreme power.
After the foundation of Rome, the new-born Republic — that is, the founder's army, made up of Albans, Sabines and foreigners — was divided into three classes, which acquired by this division the name of tribes. Each of these tribes was further divided into ten curiae, and each curia subdivided into decuriae, with chiefs named curiones and decuriones placed at their head.
In addition to this, there was drawn from each tribe a body of a hundred equites or knights, called a century, which indicates that these divisions, hardly necessary in a city, were in the first place purely military. But it seems that an instinct for greatness led this little town of Rome to provide itself from the outset with a system well suited to the capital of the world.
However, this original division soon had one disadvantageous consequence. The tribes of Albans and Sabines remained constant, while the tribe of foreigners grew continuously as more foreigners were recruited, and it soon contained more members than the other two tribes combined. The remedy that Servius found for this dangerous fault was to alter the basis of the division, and in place of the racial distinction, which he abolished, he introduced one based on the district of the town occupied by each of the tribes. Instead of three tribes, he set up four, each occupying one of the hills of Rome and bearing its name. Thus he both corrected an existing inequality and forestalled any future inequality; and to ensure that the division should be one of men and not of places, he forbade the inhabitants of one district to move to another, and so prevented the races from merging together.
He also doubled the three original centuries of equites and added twelve new ones, but he let them keep their former names — a shrewd and simple means by which he succeeded in distinguishing the body of knights from that of the people without making the latter complain.
To these four urban tribes, Servius added fifteen others which were called rustic tribes, because they were formed of inhabitants of the country, arranged in so many cantons. Afterwards as many new tribes were formed, and the Roman people found itself divided into thirty-five tribes, a number which remained unchanged until the end of the Republic.
This distinction between tribes of the town and tribes of the country had one consequence worth noting since there is no other instance of it, and since Rome was indebted to it both for the preservation of her morals and for the growth of her empire. It might have been thought that the urban tribes would have soon monopolized the power and the honours and have been quick to diminish the standing of the rustic tribes. What happened was the contrary. The taste of the early Romans for a country life is well known. This taste came from their wise founder, who made freedom go together with rural labour and military service and, in a manner of speaking, relegated crafts, trades, intrigue, wealth and slavery to the city.
Since all the illustrious men in Rome thus lived in the country and cultivated the land, it became customary to look to the country for the mainstays of the Republic. And as this way of life was that of the most noble patricians, it was honoured by everyone; the simple and laborious life of villagers was preferred to the loose and idle life of the Roman bourgeois, and a man who would have been nothing but a miserable proletarian in the town became as a tiller of the soil a respected citizen. It was not without reason, says Varro, that our magnanimous ancestors established in the village the nursery of those robust and valiant men who defended them in time of war and nourished them in time of peace. Pliny states positively that the rustic tribes were honoured because of the men who belonged to them, and that whenever it was intended to degrade a coward, he was transferred in disgrace to one of the urban tribes. When Appius Claudius, the Sabine, came to set himself up in Rome, he was loaded with honours and inscribed as a member of a rustic tribe which afterwards took the name of his family. Finally, all the freed men joined the urban and never the rustic tribes, and throughout the Republic there was not a single example of any one of these freed men acceding to any magistrature, even though he had become a citizen.
This principle was excellent; but it was pushed so far that it finally produced an alteration, and certainly an abuse in the political system.
First, the censors, having long arrogated to themselves the right arbitrarily to transfer citizens from one tribe to another, allowed most men to enrol in the tribe of their choice, a concession which certainly did no good and which deprived the censorship of one of its great advantages. Moreover, the exalted and powerful men all had themselves enrolled in the rustic tribes, and the freed men remained with the common people in the urban tribes, so that the tribes generally ceased to have any local or territorial bases, and all were so muddled together that it was no longer possible to identify anyone without consulting the register; and this is why the word tribe came to have a personal instead of a territorial meaning, or rather came to be virtually fictitious.
It also came about that the urban tribes, being closer to the centre, often found themselves the strongest group in the comitia, and sold the state to such as deigned to buy the votes of the rabble who composed that assembly.
As for the curiae, since the founder had created ten in each tribe, the whole of the Roman people, at that time enclosed within the walls of the city, was composed of thirty curiae, each with its own temples, its Gods, its officials, its priests and its festivals called compitalia, which resembled the Paganalia later held by the rustic tribes.
When Servius introduced his new division, this number of thirty could not be divided equally between his four tribes, and he did not wish to alter it; in conse quence, the curiae, becoming independent of the tribes, formed another category of inhabitants of Rome. But there was no question of curiae in the rustic tribes or among the people who belonged to them; for after the tribes had become a purely civil institution, and another system introduced for the levying of troops, the military divisions of Romulus proved superfluous. Thus, although each citizen was enrolled in a tribe, there were many who were not members of a curia.
Servius made yet a third division, which had nothing to do with the first two, and which became by reason of its consequences the most important of all. He distributed the whole Roman people into six classes, arranged neither on a personal nor on a residential basis, but according to wealth; so that the first classes were filled with the rich, the last with the poor, and the intermediate classes with men of moderate fortunes. These six classes were subdivided into 193 other bodies called centuries, and these bodies were so distributed that the first class accounted for more than half of them, and the last class for a single one only. Thus it came about that the class with the fewest number of men had the greatest number of centuries, while the last whole class counted only as one single subdivision, although it contained more than half the inhabitants of Rome.
In order that the people should less well perceive the consequences of this division, Servius disguised it in a military form; he put into the second class two centuries of armourers and into the fourth class two centuries of weapon-makers. In each class, except the last, he differentiated between young and old, that is to say, between those liable to bear arms and those legally exempt on grounds of age; and this distinction, more than that of wealth, made it necessary to hold frequent censuses. Finally he prescribed that the assembly should be held in the Campus Martius, and that all those of military age should attend bearing arms.
The reason he did not make the same differentiation between young and old in the last class is simply that the common people who belonged to it did not have the honour of bearing arms in the service of their country; only those who owned hearths had the right to defend them. Among the countless hordes of beggars who ornament the armies of kings today there is perhaps none who would not have been expelled with disdain from a Roman cohort in the days when soldiers were the defenders of liberty.
In the last class, however, a distinction was made between proletarians and those who were called capite censi. The former, not wholly reduced to nothing, at least gave citizens to the state, even sometimes soldiers in times of pressing need. But those who possessed nothing whatever, and could be reckoned only by the counting of heads, were considered to be nonentities, and Marius was the first who condescended to enrol them.
Without deciding here whether this third classification was good or bad in itself, one can, I think, safely say that it was practicable only because of the simple habits of the early Romans, their taste for agriculture, and their contempt alike for commerce and for the pursuit of profit. Where is the modern people, whose devouring greed, unsettled hearts, intrigue, continual movement and constant reversals of fortune would have allowed such a system to last for twenty years without overturning the whole state? It should also be remembered that the morals of the Roman people and the office of censorship had the strength to correct the evils of this system, and that a rich man could find himself relegated to the class of the poor for making too ostentatious a display of his wealth.
From all this it is easy to understand why more than five Roman classes are hardly ever mentioned, even though there were actually six. The sixth, which provided neither soldiers for the army nor voters for the Campus Martius 【4】 and had therefore virtually no function in the Republic, was seldom given any thought.
Such were the different divisions of the Roman people. Let us now consider the effect the divisions had in the assemblies. The assemblies which were lawfully convened were called comitia, and generally met in the Roman forum or in the Campus Martius; they were distinguished as comitia curiata, comitia centuriata and comitia tributa, according to which form was employed. The comitia curiata was founded by Romulus, the comitia centuriata by Servius, and the comitia tributa originated in the tribunes of the people. No law was sanctioned and no magistrate elected except in the comitia, and as there was no citizen who was not enrolled in a curia, century or tribe, it follows that no citizen was excluded from the right to vote, and that the Roman people was truly sovereign, both in law and in fact.
For the comitia to be legally convened and for its decisions to have the force of law, three conditions had to be observed: first, the body or the magistrate convening the assembly had to be vested with the necessary authority; secondly, the assembly had to be held on one of the days permitted by law; thirdly, the auguries had to be favourable.
The reason for the first of these rules needs no explanation. The second was a matter of policy; the assembly was not allowed to meet on holidays or market days, because the country people, who came to Rome to do business, did not have time to spend the day in the forum. The third rule enabled the Senate to keep a restraining hand on a proud and restless people and temper the ardour of seditious tribunes — although the latter found more than one way of evading this check.
Laws and the election of chiefs were not the only matters submitted to the judgement of the comitia. Since the Roman people had usurped the most important functions of government, one could say that the fate of Europe was determined in those assemblies. The variety of public business explains the several forms which the comitia took, according to the matters which had to be decided.
To judge these various forms it is necessary only to compare them. Romulus, in establishing the curiae, aimed to balance the Senate against the people and balance the people against the Senate, while himself dominating both alike. Under this arrangement he gave the people all the authority of numbers to balance the authority of power and wealth which he left to the patricians. But true to the spirit of monarchy, he nevertheless gave the great advantage to the patricians, in that they could buy clients to influence numerical majorities. This admirable institution of patrons and clients was a masterpiece of politics and humanity, without which the patriciate, so contrary to the spirit of the Republic, could not have survived. To Rome alone belongs the honour of giving the world this noble example, from which no abuse has ever come, but which has never been followed elsewhere.
This same form of curiae continued under the kings up to Servius, and as the reign of the last of the Tarquins was not held to be legitimate, the royal laws were generally known by the name of leges curiatae.
Under the Republic, the curiae, which were still limited to the four urban tribes, and still included only the population of Rome, pleased neither the Senate, which led the patricians, nor the tribunes who, in spite of being plebeian, led the more moneyed citizens. Thus the curiae fell into discredit, fell so low indeed that their thirty lictors met to do what the comitia curiae should have done.
The division into centuries was so favourable to the aristocracy that it is not at first easy to see why the Senate did not always carry the day in the comitia which bore that name, and by which the consuls, censors and other cural magistrates were elected. For indeed, of the 193 centuries which formed the six classes of the entire Roman people, the first class contained ninety-eight, and since votes were counted by centuries only, this first class had a majority over all the others. When all these centuries were in agreement, the rest of the votes were not even counted; and what had been decided by a minority passed for a decision of the multitude; so it can be said that in the centuriate assemblies matters were decided by majorities of money rather than of votes.
But this excessive power was tempered in two ways. First, the tribunes ordinarily, and a large number of plebeians always, were in a class with the rich, and balanced the influence of the patricians in the first class.
Secondly, the centuries were not always summoned to vote in their order or rank, which would have meant beginning with the first class; instead, a century was chosen by lot 【5】 and that century alone went on to elect, after which the other centuries were convened on a different day by order of rank to repeat the election, and generally they confirmed it. Thus the authority of example was taken away from rank and given to chance, according to the principle of democracy.
This custom had yet another advantage; it meant that the citizens from the country had time between the elections to inform themselves of the merits of the candidates provisionally nominated, and therefore did not vote in ignorance. But under the pretext of speeding up procedure this custom was finally abolished, and both elections were held on the same day.
The comitia tributa was, strictly speaking, the council of the Roman people. It could be convened only by the tribunes; it was the assembly where the tribunes were elected and it was there that they passed their plebiscites. Not only had the Senate no status in the assembly, but no senator had even the right to attend, and being thus forced to submit to laws in the enactment of which they had no voice, the senators were to that extent less free than the humblest citizen. This injustice was altogether ill conceived, and alone sufficed to invalidate the decrees of a body to which all its members were not admitted. Had all the patricians attended the comitia, according to their rights as citizens, they would not, as simple individuals, have had any great influence on a vote taken by enumerating heads, and in which the humblest proletarian would count for as much as the prince of the Senate.
Thus, it will be seen that besides the order which emerged from the various systems of collecting the votes of so vast a people, these several methods were not in themselves insignificant, but that each had effects connected with the opinions that led to its being chosen.
Without going further into long details, it emerges from the explanation already given, that the comitia tributa was the assembly most favourable to popular government and the comitia centuriata to aristocracy. In the case of the comitia curiata, where the populace of Rome alone formed the majority, their tendency to favour tyranny and evil designs led them to fall into disrepute, so that even the seditious elements avoided these assemblies lest their presence should arouse suspicion concerning their conspiracies. There is no doubt that the whole majesty of the Roman people was to be seen only in the comitia centuriata; this alone was a full assembly, for the comitia curiata excluded the rustic tribes and the comitia tributa excluded the Senate and patricians.
The system of voting used by the Romans was as simple as were their manners and morals, if less simple than that of Sparta. Each man gave his vote by word of mouth, and a clerk recorded it; the majority of individual votes in each tribe determined the decision of that tribe, the majority of tribal votes the decision of the people; and the same thing was done in the curiae and centuriae. This was a good method so long as honesty prevailed among the citizens and everyone was ashamed to give his vote in public to an unjust cause or an unworthy candidate. But when the people grew corrupt and votes were bought, it became expedient for the ballot to be cast in secret, so that the buyers of votes might be restrained by mistrust of the sellers, and scoundrels given the chance of not being traitors also.
I am aware that Cicero condemns this change of method, and holds it partly responsible for the ruin of the Republic. But while I am mindful of the weight which the authority of Cicero ought to bear, I do not agree with him. On the contrary, I think that it was by having too few such changes that the ruin of the state was accelerated. For just as the diet of healthy people is unsuited to the sick, so one should not try to give to a corrupt people the same laws as those which suit a virtuous people. Nothing does more to bear out this principle than the long life of the Republic of Venice, which still retains a simulacrum of existence solely because its laws are uniquely suited to wicked men.
Now the Roman citizens had tablets distributed among them, so that each might cast his vote without anyone's knowing his opinion. New arrangements were also devised for the collection of tablets, the counting of votes, the comparison of numbers, and so forth. This did not prevent the officers entrusted with these functions from being suspected of dishonesty. Finally, edicts designed to prevent intrigue and the buying and selling of votes were passed in such numbers that their very multiplicity proclaims their ineffectiveness.
Towards the last years of the Republic, the Romans were often forced to resort to extraordinary expedients to make up for the inadequacy of the law. Sometimes miracles were invoked, but this device, if it could impose on the people, did not overawe those who ruled them. Sometimes assemblies were hurriedly convened, before candidates had time to pay out their bribes; sometimes a whole session was taken up with filibustering, when it was seen that the people had been seduced and was about to make a wrong decision. But ambition in the end overcame all obstacles; and the most incredible fact of all is that so numerous a people, in the midst of so many abuses, still continued, thanks to its ancient rules of order, to elect magistrates, to enact laws, to judge cases and to conduct private and public business with almost as much facility as the Senate itself might have commanded.
A wisely tempered tribunate is the strongest buttress of a good constitution, but if it has the least degree of power beyond what is necessary, it will overthrow everything. It is not by its nature prone to weakness, and if it is anything at all, it will never be less than it ought to be.
It degenerates into tyranny when it usurps the executive power of which it is only the moderator, and when it tries to make the laws it ought only to protect. The enormous power of the Ephors, which represented no danger so long as Sparta preserved its morale, sped corruption once corruption began. The blood of Agis shed by the tyrants was avenged by his successor; the crimes and the punishments of the Ephors equally hastened the collapse of the Republic, and after Cleomenes, Sparta was nothing. Rome perished in the same way, and the excessive power which the tribunes usurped by degrees finally served, with the aid of laws made to defend liberty, to protect the very emperors who destroyed liberty. As for the Council of Ten in Venice, it is a tribunal of blood, which is baneful as much to the patricians as to the people, and which, far from giving supreme protection to the law, serves only, now that the law has been debased, for the striking of stealthy blows that none dare look upon.
A tribunate, like a government, is weakened by the multiplication of its members. When the tribunes of the Roman people, originally two, then five, sought to double their number, the Senate gave its consent, confident of using one part to check the others; and this it did not fail to effect.
The best method of preventing the usurpations of such a formidable body — though it is a method which no government has ever yet employed — would be not to make the tribunate permanent but to prescribe the intervals during which it should remain suspended. These intervals, which should not be so great as to give abuses time to take root, could be specified by law in such a manner that in case of need they might be shortened by an extraordinary commission.
This method appears to me to have no disadvantages, for since, as I have said, the tribunate is in no sense a part of the constitution, it can be removed without detriment to it; this also seems to me an efficacious method, since a newly established magistrate would not enter office with the power that his predecessors had, but only with that given him by law.
CHAPTER 6
Dictatorship
THE inflexibility of the laws, which prevents them from bending to circumstances, may in certain cases make them injurious, and bring about in a time of crisis the ruin of the state. The ordered and slow procedures of legal formalities require a measure of time that circumstances do not always afford. There may be a thousand eventualities which the lawgiver has not foreseen, and it is a very necessary part of foresight to know that one cannot foresee everything.
For this reason, one should not seek to make political institutions so rigid that one is deprived of the power to suspend their operation. Even Sparta allowed its laws at times to lie dormant.
But it is only the greatest emergency that can counterweigh the dangers of tampering with the public order; and the sacred power of the laws should never be suspended except when the safety of the fatherland is at stake. In these rare and obvious cases, the public security is provided for by a special act making that security the responsibility of the person who is most worthy. This responsibility may be assigned in two ways, according to the nature of the emergency.
If increasing the activity of the government is adequate to counteract the danger, then this activity should be concentrated in the hands of one or two members of the government. In this case, it is not the authority of the laws which is being diminished, but only the form of the administration. But if the danger is such that the apparatus of law is itself an obstacle to safety, then a supreme head must be nominated with power to silence all the laws and temporarily suspend the sovereign authority. In such a case the general will is indubitable; for it is clear that the prime concern of the people is that the state shall not perish. Thus the suspension of the legislative authority does not abolish it; the magistrate who silences it cannot speak for it; he dominates it, without having the power to represent it; he can do everything, except make laws.
The first of these two methods was used by the Roman Senate when, according to a hallowed formula, it entrusted the consuls with the safety of the Republic; the second was used when one of the two consuls nominated a dictator 【6】 — a device that Rome had learned from Alba.
At the beginning of the Republic, the Romans often resorted to dictatorship, because conditions were not yet sufficiently settled for the state to maintain itself by the strength of its constitution. The people's moral character made unnecessary at that time many of the precautions which might have been needed at other times, so men did not fear that a dictator would abuse his position or that he would attempt to prolong his office beyond its term. It seemed, on the contrary, that so much power was a burden to those who wielded it; for they hastened to divest themselves of it, as if standing in the place of the laws made it altogether too onerous and perilous an office.
So it is not because there was a danger of its being abused, but because there was a danger of its being degraded that one condemns the imprudent employment of this supreme magistrature in the early days of the Republic. For while it was wasted on elections, dedications and purely formal things, there was reason to fear that it would become less forceful when it was really needed, and that the people would come to regard dictatorship as an empty title used only to give dignity to idle ceremonies.
Towards the end of the Republic, the Romans, becoming more circumspect, were as sparing in their use of dictatorship as they had once been prodigal, and with as little reason. It was easy to see that their fears were ill founded, and that the weakness of the capital was at that time its protection against the magistrates it had in its midst, that a dictator could in certain cases defend the public freedom without ever being able to invade it, and that the fetters of Rome were not forged in Rome itself, but in the Roman armies; the weak resistance that Marius offered Sulla, and Pompey Caesar, showed plainly what could be expected of internal authority faced with external force.
This mistake led the Romans to commit great wrongs. There was, for example, their failure to nominate a dictator in the Catilina affair; for since this was a matter which concerned only the city itself, or at most some Italian province, the unlimited authority which the law gave a dictator would have facilitated the ready crushing of that conspiracy, which was in fact suppressed only by a concurrence of lucky accidents, such as human prudence could never have expected.
Instead of naming a dictator, the Senate was content to transmit all its powers to the consuls, as a result of which Cicero, in order to act effectively, was obliged to exceed his powers on a crucial point; and though, in a first transport of joy, the Romans approved of his conduct, it was not without justice that he was afterwards asked to account for the blood of citizens shed in violation of the laws — a reproach which could not have been addressed to a dictator. But the consul's eloquence carried everything before him, and he himself, though a Roman, loved his own glory better than his country; and instead of seeking a lawful and certain means of serving the state, he sought all the honour of the affair for himself. 【7】 Thus he was justly honoured as the liberator of Rome, and no less justly punished as the violator of Roman laws. However splendid his recall from exile may have been, it was undoubtedly an act of pardon.
For the rest, in whatever manner this important commission of dictatorship is conferred, it is imperative to limit its duration to one short term that can never be prolonged; in the emergencies which call for its institution, the state is soon lost or saved, and once the urgent need is over, dictatorship becomes either tyrannical or useless. In Rome, where the term was of six months, most of the dictators abdicated before that time had expired. If the term had been longer, they might have been tempted to prolong it still further, like the decemvirs, who held office for a year. The dictator, having only the time to meet the need which had prompted his appointment, had none in which to meditate on further projects.
CHAPTER 7
The Censorial Tribunal
JUST as the general will is declared by the law, so is the public judgement declared by the censorial office; public opinion is that form of law of which the censor is the minister, and which he, on the model of the prince, merely applies to particular cases.
Far, then, from the censorial tribunal being the arbiter of the people's opinion, it is only the spokesman; and as soon as it departs from this, its decisions are void and without effect.
It is useless to separate the morals of a nation from the objects of its esteem; for both spring from the same principle and both necessarily merge together. Among all the peoples of the world, it is not nature but opinion which governs the choice of their pleasures. Reform the opinions of men, and their morals will be purified of themselves. Men always love what is good or what they think is good, but it is in their judgement that they err; hence it is their judgement that has to be regulated. To judge morals is to judge what is honoured; to judge what is honoured, is to look to opinion as law.
The opinions of a people spring from its constitution; although the law does not regulate morals, it is legislation that gives birth to morals; when legislation weakens, morals degenerate; and then the rulings of the censors will not accomplish what the law has failed to achieve.
From this it follows that the censorial office may be useful in preserving morals, but never in restoring morals. Set up censors while the laws are still vigorous; for as soon as the vigour is lost, everything is hopeless; nothing legitimate has any force once the laws have force no longer.
The censorial office sustains morals by preventing opinions from being corrupted, by preserving their integrity with wise rulings, and sometimes even by settling points on which opinion is uncertain. The use of seconds in duels, carried to an impassioned extreme in the kingdom of France, was abolished by a single edict of the King: 'as for those who are cowardly enough to name seconds'. This judgement anticipated that of the public, and settled it with one stroke. But when the same edicts sought to declare that it was also cowardice to fight duels — which is very true, but at variance with popular opinion — the public scoffed at this decision on a matter about which its mind was made up.
I have said elsewhere that since public opinion is not subject to constraint, there should be no vestige of constraint in the tribunal established to represent it. We cannot too greatly admire the skill with which this device, entirely alien to the moderns, was put into effect by the Romans and even better by the Lacedaemonians.
Once when a man of bad character put forward a good idea in the council of Sparta, the Ephors, ignoring him, had the same thing proposed by a virtuous citizen. What an honour for the one, what a disgrace for the other; yet neither praise nor blame was given to either. Certain drunkards from Samos once defiled the tribunal of the Ephors; the following day the Samians were given permission by public edict to be filthy. An actual punishment would have been less severe than such a form of impunity. When Sparta has pronounced on what is and what is not decent, Greece does not dispute its judgements.
CHAPTER 8
The Civil Religion
AT first men had no kings but the Gods, and their only government was theocratic. They reasoned like Caligula, and in the circumstances they reasoned rightly. A prolonged modification of feelings and ideas was needed before man could make up his mind to accept one of his own kind as master, and to persuade himself that in doing so he had done well.
From this single fact, that a God was placed at the head of every political society, it follows that there were as many Gods as peoples. Two peoples alien to one another, and nearly always enemies, could not long recognize the same master: two armies going into battle could not obey the same commander. Thus national divisions produced polytheism, and this in turn produced religious and civil intolerance, which are naturally the same, as I shall explain later.
The fanciful idea of the Greeks that they had discovered their own Gods being worshipped by barbarian peoples originated in the Greek habit of regarding themselves as the natural sovereigns of those same peoples. But in our own times, it is a ludicrous parody of learning which studies the identity of the Gods of different nations, as if Moloch, Saturn and Chronos could be the same God, as if the Baal of the Phoenicians, the Zeus of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans could be identical; as if there could be anything in common between chimerical beings with different names!
But if it is asked why under paganism, when each state had its own religious cult and its own Gods, there were no wars of religion, I answer that it was due to this very fact that each state, having its own faith as well as its own government, did not distinguish between its Gods and its laws. Political war was just as much theological war; the provinces of the Gods were determined, so to speak, by the frontiers of nations. The God of one people had no rights over other peoples. The Gods of the Pagans were in no sense jealous Gods; they divided the empire of the world between them; even Moses and the Hebrew people sometimes countenanced this idea by speaking of the God of Israel. It is true that they did not recognize the Gods of the Canaanites, a proscribed people who were doomed to destruction, and whose country they were to occupy; but consider how they spoke of the divinities of neighbouring peoples, whom they were forbidden to attack: 'Is not the possession of that which belongs to Chamos your God lawfully your due?' says Jephthah to the Ammonites. 'By the same title we possess the lands which our conquering God has taken.' 【8】
But when the Jews, subject to the Kings of Babylon, and afterwards to the Kings of Syria, stubbornly sought to recognize no other God but their own, this refusal was regarded as a rebellion against their conquerors, and it brought on the Jews those persecutions of which we read in their history, and of which we find no other example before the coming of Christianity. 【9】
Since each religion was thus attached exclusively to the laws of the state which prescribed it, and since there was no means of converting people except by subduing them, the only missionaries were conquerors; and since the obligation to change faith was part of the law of conquest, it was necessary to conquer before preaching conversion. Far from men fighting for the Gods, it was, as in Homer, the Gods who fought for men; each people asked its own God for victory, and paid for it with new altars. The Romans, before taking a town, called upon its Gods to abandon it; when they allowed the Tarentines to keep their angry Gods, it was in the belief that those Gods were subject to their own and obliged to pay them homage. They let the vanquished keep their own Gods just as they let them keep their own laws. A crown dedicated to Jupiter of the Capitol was often the only tribute they exacted.
In the end, when the Romans had spread their faith and their Gods with their empire, and often themselves adopted those of the vanquished in giving all and sundry the rights of citizenship, the peoples of this vast empire gradually found themselves with a multitude of Gods and faiths, which were everywhere almost the same; and this is how paganism became one and the same religion throughout the known world.
It was in these circumstances that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom on earth; this kingdom, by separating the theological system from the political, meant that the state ceased to be a unity, and it caused those intestine divisions which have never ceased to disturb Christian peoples. Now as this new idea of a kingdom of another world could never have entered the minds of pagans, they always regarded the Christians as true rebels who, under the cloak of hypocritical submission, only awaited the moment to make themselves independent and supreme, and cunningly to usurp that authority which they made a show of respecting while they were weak. Such was the cause of the persecutions.
What the pagans feared did indeed happen; then everything altered its countenance; the humble Christians changed their tune and soon the so-called kingdom of the other world was seen to become, under a visible ruler, the most violent despotism of this world.
However, since princes and civil laws continued to exist, the consequence of this dual power has been an endless conflict of jurisdiction, which has made any kind of good polity impossible in Christian states, where men have never known whether they ought to obey the civil ruler or the priest.
Many peoples, even in Europe or nearby, have tried to preserve or re-establish the ancient system, but without success: the spirit of Christianity has won completely. The religious cult has always kept, or recovered, its independence of the sovereign, and has lacked its necessary connexion with the state. Mahomet had very sound opinions, taking care to give unity to his political system, and for as long as the form of his government endured under the caliphs who succeeded him, the government was undivided and, to that extent, good. But the Arabs, in becoming prosperous, cultured, polite, effeminate and soft, were subjugated by the barbarians; then the division between the two powers was started afresh, and even though the division is less apparent among the Moslems than among the Christians, it nevertheless exists, above all in the sect of Ali and in states like Persia where it has never ceased to make itself felt.
Among us, the Kings of England have established themselves as heads of the church and the Czars have done the same. But with this title they have made themselves not so much masters as ministers, and have acquired not so much the right to change the church as the power to preserve it; they are not legislators, they are only princes. Wherever the clergy constitutes a body, 【10】 it is master and legislator in its own house. Thus there are two powers, two sovereigns, in England and in Russia, just as there are elsewhere.
Of all Christian authors, the philosopher Hobbes is the only one who saw clearly both the evil and the remedy, and who dared to propose reuniting the two heads of the eagle and fully restoring that political unity without which neither the state nor the government will ever be well constituted. But he should have seen that the dominant spirit of Christianity was incompatible with his system, and that the interest of the prince will always be stronger than that of the state. It is not so much the horrible and false parts of Hobbes's system that have made it hated, but the parts which are just and true. 【11】
I believe that if the historical facts were analysed from this point of view, we could easily refute the opposing beliefs of both Bayle and Warburton, the one holding that no religion is useful to the body politic, the other that Christianity is its best support. We could refute the first by showing that no state has ever been founded without religion as its base; and we could refute the second by showing that the Christian law is at bottom more injurious than serviceable to a robust constitution of the state. For this to be clearly understood, I think I have only to give a little more precision to the exceedingly vague idea of religion, as it bears upon my subject.
Religion, considered in connexion with societies, whether general or particular, can be divided into two categories, the religion of the man and the religion of the citizen. The first, without temples, altars or rituals, and limited to inward devotion to the supreme God and the eternal obligations of morality, is the pure and simple religion of the Gospel, the true theism, and might be called the divine natural law. The religion of the citizen is the religion established in a single country; it gives that country its Gods and its special tutelary deities; it has its dogmas, its rituals, its external forms of worship laid down by law; and to the one nation which practises this religion, everything outside is infidel, alien, barbarous; and it extends the rights and duties of man only so far as it extends its altars. Such were the religions of all the early peoples; and we might give it the name of civil or positive divine law.
There is a third and more curious kind of religion, which, giving men two legislative orders, two rulers, two homelands, puts them under two contradictory obligations, and prevents their being at the same time both churchmen and citizens. Such is the religion of the Lamas, such is that of the Japanese, and such is Catholic Christianity. One might call this the religion of the priest. It produces a kind of mixed and anti-social system of law which has no name.
From the political point of view, each of these three kinds of religion has its defects. The third kind is so manifestly bad that the pleasure of demonstrating its badness would be a waste of time. Everything that destroys social unity is worthless; and all institutions that set man at odds with himself are worthless.
The second kind of religion is good in that it joins divine worship to a love of the law, and that in making the homeland the object of the citizens' adoration, it teaches them that the service of the state is the service of the tutelary God. This is a kind of theocracy, in which there can be no pontiff other than the prince, and no priests except the magistrates. Then to die for one's country is to become a martyr, to break the law to be impious, and to subject a guilty man to public execration is to hand him over to the wrath of God: sacer esto.
But this kind of religion is also bad; since it is based on error and lies, it deceives men, and makes them credulous and superstitious; it buries the true worship of God in empty ceremonials. It is bad, again, when it becomes exclusive and tyrannical, and makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant, so that men breathe only murder and massacre, and believe they are doing a holy deed in killing those who do not accept their Gods. This puts the people concerned into a natural state of war with all others, and this is something destructive of its own security.
There remains the religion of humanity, or Christianity, not the Christianity of today, but that of the Gospel, which is altogether different. Under this holy, sublime and true religion, men, as children of the same God, look on all others as brothers, and the society which unites them is not even dissolved by death.
But this religion, having no specific connexion with the body politic, leaves the law with only the force the law itself possesses, adding nothing to it; and hence one of the chief bonds necessary for holding any particular society together is lacking. Nor is this all: for far from attaching the hearts of the citizens to the state, this religion detaches them from it as from all other things of this world; and I know of nothing more contrary to the social spirit.
It is said that a people of true Christians would form the most perfect society imaginable. I see but one great flaw in this hypothesis, namely that a society of true Christians would not be a society of men.
I would even say that this imagined society, with all its perfection, would be neither the strongest nor the most durable. Being perfect, it would be without bonds of union; its ruinous defect would lie in its very perfection.
Everyone would do his duty; the people would obey the law; the rulers would be just and moderate; the magistrates would be honest and incorruptible; the soldiers would scorn death; there would be neither vanity nor luxury; and all that is very fine. But let us look further.
Christianity is a wholly spiritual religion, concerned solely with the things of heaven; the Christian's homeland is not of this world. The Christian does his duty, it is true, but he does it with profound indifference towards the good or ill success of his deeds. Provided that he has nothing to reproach himself for, it does not matter to him whether all goes well or badly here on earth. If the state prospers, he hardly dares to enjoy the public happiness; he fears lest he become proud of his country's glory; if the state perishes, he blesses the hand of God that weighs heavily on His people.
For such a society to be peaceful and for harmony to prevail, every citizen without exception would have to be an equally good Christian. If, unhappily, there should appear one ambitious man, one hypocrite, one Catilina, for example, or one Cromwell among them, that man would readily exploit his pious compatriots. Christian charity does not allow us readily to think ill of our neighbours. When a man is cunning enough to master the art of imposing on others, and gains a part of the public authority, there, behold, is a man who is given honours; and God wills that he be respected; soon, we see a man of power, and God wills that he be obeyed. Suppose he abuses the power of which he is the trustee? Then he is the scourge with which God chastises his children. Christians would have scruples about expelling the usurper; for that would mean disturbing the public peace, using violence, shedding blood, and all this accords ill with Christian mildness. And after all what does it matter whether one is free or a slave in this vale of tears? The essential thing is to go to paradise, and resignation is but one more means to that end.
Suppose a foreign war breaks out. The citizens will march without reluctance to war; no one among them will think of flight; all will do their duty — but they will do it without passion for victory; they know better how to die than to conquer. It does not matter to them whether they are victors or vanquished. Does not providence know better than they what is needful? One can imagine what advantage a proud, impetuous and passionate enemy would draw from their stoicism. Set them at war against a generous people whose hearts are devoured by an ardent love of glory and their country; imagine your Christian republic confronted by Sparta or Rome, and your pious Christians will be beaten, crushed, destroyed before they have time to collect their wits, or they will owe their salvation only to the contempt which their enemy feels for them.
I myself think it was an excellent oath that was taken by the soldiers of Fabius; they did not swear to conquer or die, but to return as conquerors, and they kept their word. Christians would never have dared to do this; they would have felt that it was tempting God.
But I err in speaking of a Christian republic; for each of these terms contradicts the other. Christianity preaches only servitude and submission. Its spirit is too favourable to tyranny for tyranny not to take advantage of it. True Christians are made to be slaves; they know it and they hardly care; this short life has too little value in their eyes.
It is said that Christian troops are excellent. I deny it. Show me these Christian troops. Personally I know of none. You may mention the crusades. But without disputing the valour of the crusaders, I shall say that they were far from being Christians. They were soldiers of the priests. They were citizens of the Church; they were fighting for its spiritual homeland, which it had in some strange way made temporal. Strictly speaking, this comes under the heading of paganism; for since the Gospel never sets up any national religion, holy war is impossible among Christians.
Under the pagan Emperors, Christian soldiers were brave. All the Christian authors tell us this, and I believe them; but those soldiers were competing for honour against pagan troops. Once the Emperors became Christian, this emulation ceased; and once the cross had driven out the eagle, all Roman valour disappeared.
But leaving aside considerations of politics, let us return to those of right; and settle the principles which govern this important question. The right which the social pact gives the sovereign over the subjects does not, as I have said, go beyond the boundaries of public utility. 【12】 Subjects have no duty to account to the sovereign for their beliefs except when those beliefs are important to the community. Now it is very important to the state that each citizen should have a religion which makes him love his duty, but the dogmas of that religion are of interest neither to the state nor its members, except in so far as those dogmas concern morals and the duties which everyone who professes that religion is bound to perform towards others. Moreover, everyone may hold whatever opinions he pleases, without the sovereign having any business to take cognizance of them. For the sovereign has no competence in the other world; whatever may be the fate of the subjects in the life to come, it is nothing to do with the sovereign, so long as they are good citizens in this life.
There is thus a profession of faith which is purely civil and of which it is the sovereign's function to determine the articles, not strictly as religious dogmas, but as expressions of social conscience, without which it is impossible to be either a good citizen or a loyal subject. 【13】 Without being able to oblige anyone to believe these articles, the sovereign can banish from the state anyone who does not believe them; banish him not for impiety but as an anti-social being, as one unable sincerely to love law and justice, or to sacrifice, if need be, his life to his duty. If anyone, after having publicly acknowledged these same dogmas, behaves as if he did not believe in them, then let him be put to death, for he has committed the greatest crime, that of lying before the law.
The dogmas of the civil religion must be simple and few in number, expressed precisely and without explanations or commentaries. The existence of an omnipotent, intelligent, benevolent divinity that foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the punishment of sinners; the sanctity of the social contract and the law — these are the positive dogmas. As for the negative dogmas, I would limit them to a single one: no intolerance. Intolerance is something which belongs to the religions we have rejected.
In my opinion, those who distinguish between civil and theological intolerance are mistaken. These two forms of intolerance are inseparable. It is impossible to live in peace with people one believes to be damned; to love them would be to hate the God who punishes them; it is an absolute duty either to redeem or to torture them. Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it is bound to have some civil consequences, 【14】 and when it does so, the sovereign is no longer sovereign, even in the temporal sphere; at this stage the priests become the real masters, and kings are only their officers.
Now that there is not, and can no longer be, an exclusive national religion, all religions which themselves tolerate others must be tolerated, provided only that their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of the citizen. But anyone who dares to say 'Outside the church there is no salvation' should be expelled from the state, unless the state is the church and the prince the pontiff. Such a dogma is good only in a theocratic government; in any other, it is pernicious. The reason for which Henri Ⅳ is said to have embraced the Catholic religion is one which should make all honest men abandon it, above all any prince who knows how to reason.
CHAPTER 9
Conclusion
AFTER setting out the true principles of political right, and trying to establish the state on the basis of those principles, I should complete my study by considering the foreign relations of the state, including international law, commerce, the rights of war and conquest, public law, leagues, negotiations, treaties and so forth. But all this would represent a new subject too vast for my weak vision; and I ought always to keep my eyes fixed on matters more within my range.
Note
【1】 This should always be understood to refer only to free states, for elsewhere family, property, lack of asylum, necessity or violence may keep an inhabitant in the country unwillingly, and then his mere residence no longer implies consent either to the contract or to the violation of the contract.
【2】 In Genoa the word Libertas may be seen on the doors of all the prisons and on the fetters of the galleys. This use of the motto is excellent and just. In fact, it is only the malefactors of all states who prevent the citizens from being free. In a country where all such people were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.
【3】 The name 'Rome', which is said to derive from Romulus, is really Greek, and it means force; the name 'Numa' is also Greek, and it means law. Is it very probable that the first two kings of that city should have borne before they reigned names so clearly related to what they did?
【4】 I say 'Campus Martius' because this was where the comitia centuriata met. In the other two forms of assembly, the people met in the forum or elsewhere, and then the capite censi had as much influence and authority as the leading citizens.
【5】 The century thus drawn was called praerogativa because it was the first required to cast its vote; and this is the origin of our word 'prerogative'.
【6】 This nomination took place by night and in secret, as if they were ashamed to put a man above the law.
【7】 He could not have been sure of this if he had proposed appointing a dictator, for he did not dare to name himself, and he could not be sure that his colleagues would name him.
【8】 Nonne ea quae possidet Chamos deus tuus, tibi jure debentur? Such is the text of the Vulgate. Father de Carrières translates it thus: 'Do you not believe that you have a right to possess that which belongs to your God Chamos?' I do not know the bearing of the Hebrew text, but I notice that in the Vulgate, Jephthah positively recognizes the rights of the God Chamos, and that the French translation weakens this recognition by adding an 'according to you' which is not in the Latin.
【9】 It is clear beyond dispute that the Phocian war, called the Holy War, was not a war of religion. Its object was to punish sacrilege, and not to make unbelievers submit.
【10】 It should be noted that it is not so much the formal assemblies, like those of France, which bind the clergy together in a body, but rather the communion of churches. Communion and excommunication are the social compact of the clergy, one through which they will always be masters of both peoples and kings. All the priests who communicate together are fellow citizens, even though they are at opposite ends of the earth. This invention is a masterpiece of politics. There was nothing like it among the pagan priests; hence they never constituted a body of clergy.
【11】 See, among other things, in a letter of Grotius to his brother dated 11 April 1643, what that learned man approved of and what he disapproved of in Hobbes's De Cive. It is true that, being inclined to indulgence, he forgives that author the good points for the sake of the bad, but not everyone is so merciful.
【12】 'In the republic,' says the M(arquis) d'A(rgenson), 'everyone is perfectly free to do what does not injure others.' Here is the invariable boundary; one could not express it more exactly. I have not been able to deny myself the pleasure of quoting sometimes from this manuscript, although it is not known to the public, in order to pay homage to the memory of an illustrious and honourable man, who, even as a Minister of State, kept the heart of a true citizen, together with just and sound opinions on the government of his country.
【13】 Caesar pleading for Catilina tried to establish the dogma of the mortality of the soul. Cato and Cicero, to refute it, did not waste time with philosophy; they were content to show that Caesar was speaking like a bad citizen and advancing a doctrine that was injurious to the state. And this was what the Senate had to give judgement on, not any question of theology.
【14】 Marriage, for example, being a civil contract, has civil consequences without which it would be impossible for society itself to subsist. Let us suppose that in a given country the clergy reached the point of gaining the sole right of permitting marriage, a right which it is bound to usurp under any intolerant religion. Is it not then clear that in making the authority of the church supreme in this matter, it will nullify that of the prince, who will then have no subjects other than those the clergy allow him to have? Enable priests to decide whether to marry people according to their assent to this or that doctrine, their assent to this or that formula, or according to their being more or less devout, then is it not clear that if the clergy acts shrewdly and holds firm, it will in time alone dispose of inheritances, offices, the citizens and the state itself, since the latter could not endure if composed only of bastards? But, you may say, men will call upon the temporal power, issue summonses and warrants, seize church properties. What a sorry sight! If the clergy has even a little, I do not say courage, but common sense, it will allow everything to go its own way; it will quietly let the summonses, the warrants and seizures take place and still end up as master. It is no great sacrifice, I feel, to give up a part when you are sure of securing the whole.
目 录
企鹅口袋书系列·伟大的思想
忏悔录
(英汉双语)
奥古斯丁 著 R.S.派因-科芬 英译
任小鹏 汉译
中国出版集团
中国对外翻译出版公司
中文目录
第一卷
1
主啊!你是伟大的,任何赞美都当之无愧。你有无上的能力,无穷的智慧。主啊,人是你所造万物中的一分子,出于本性愿意赞美你。人遍体带着死亡的标记和原罪的记号,这是你要提醒他,你敌挡骄傲的人。但是,因为他是你所造的一部分,他仍愿意称颂你。一想到你,他就激动不已,如果不赞美你,他就无法获得满足。因为你造我们就是为了你自己,如不在你怀中安息,我们的心就不会安宁。
[……]
谁追寻主,谁就会赞颂主。因为凡追寻主的,就能寻见,寻见主的,就会赞颂主。主啊,我要追寻你,向你呼求,在我呼求的时候,我要相信你,因为你已经传授给了我们。主,我的信仰让我向你呼求,这信仰已经通过你道成肉身的爱子的感召和布道者的工作传递给了我们。
6
我虽然是尘土,但请让我乞求你的怜悯,因为我是在向你的慈爱说话,而不是向那嘲笑我的人说话。或许你也会嘲笑我,但你会动恻隐之心,然后怜悯我。主啊,我想告诉你的是,我不知道自己从何处来到这通向死亡的生命中,或者说,这通向生命的死亡中?对我来说,这些都是隐藏着的。虽然我已记不起这一切,但我知道,从我来到这个世间的那个时刻起,你的仁慈便时刻准备护佑我。这是我父母告诉我的,我父亲播下种子,母亲孕育了我,你用他们的身体在有限的时间内使我成形。从此女性的乳汁哺育了我。
[……]
我歌颂你,天地的主宰,从我降生起,在我记忆尚且模糊的时候,我就赞美你。但是,你允许人们通过观察别的婴儿来了解自己的这些事情,而且也从妇女的讲述中了解了许多。我知道即使在那时,我已是一个活生生的人,在婴儿期行将结束时,我已经试图寻找向别人表达感情的方法了。主啊,这样一个活生生的造物如不是从你而来,他还能来自何处呢?这是任何一个人的技能所能造出来的吗?除你以外还有任何其他渠道可供存在和生命流注到我们身上吗?当然我们只可能把这归结为你,我们的造物主,对你而言,活着与存在并非不同,因为无限的生命与无限的存在是同为一。因为你是无限的,和亘古不变的。你的“今天”永无止尽,而我们的“当下”因你而止步不前,因为时间,像其他事物一样存在于你里面。若非如此,就不会有时间的流逝。因为你的时间没有穷尽,时间因你而停留在“现在”。我们和我们的祖先在你的“当下”度过了无数的日子,并从中获得对人的生命和存在的准确衡量。未来的岁月也将照此流逝,但是你却亘古不易。在你的“今天”,你创造了明天和以后存在的一切,在你的“今天”,你创造了昨天和过去存在的一切。
如果有人对此难以理解,这与我何干?就让他们去探询其意义吧,让他们欣然地发问;但是他们可能对问题本身心满意足。因为对于他们来说,问题不得而解却找到你比找到答案却失去你更有益处。
7
上帝啊,请听我说。人的罪真是邪恶啊!一个人说了这话,你就怜悯他,因为你造了他,但你没有造他里面的罪。
谁能让我记起我儿时犯下的罪呢?在你的眼中没有一个人是无罪的,即使是刚刚出生才一天的婴儿也不例外。谁能展示我的罪呢?也许可以从婴儿身上看到我无从回忆的儿时的罪恶?那么,我儿时犯过什么罪呢?我哭闹着要吸乳是不是罪恶呢?我现在已经年龄大了,不能再吸乳了,但如果我哭闹着要我这个年龄的食物,一定会受到别人轻蔑的嘲笑和劝诫。所以这意味着我儿时的行为就应该受到斥责。因为我不懂斥责,斥责我的话就显得既不合情理,也不寻常。我们杜绝这些错误,并且在长大后将其摒弃,这足以证明那些行为是错误的,因为我从来没有看见一个人在清理错误时会有目的的抛弃好的方面。对于一个孩子来说,以下行为都不可能是正确的:哭着要可能会伤害他们的任何东西;对年长的人发脾气,以为年长者不需要服从他;尽其全力打击和伤害那些比他懂得更多的人,包括他自己的父母,原因是父母不但不顺从他们,而且拒绝迎合那些只会伤害他的奇思怪想。这表明,如果说婴儿是无罪的,就是说婴儿不是缺乏伤害他人的意愿,而是没有能力。
[……]
主啊,我记不起我的幼年生活了,但是我相信别人告诉我的,通过观察其他婴儿,我可以推断出我也像它们那样生活过。但是,尽管我的推断是正确的,我却不想把那段时间作为我现在度过的人生的一部分,因为那段生活晦暗模糊、记忆不清,而且,在这个意义上,它与我在母亲子宫里的时光没什么区别。但是,如果我生来有罪,并且在母胎时,我就有了罪。那么,主啊,我问你,我,你的仆人,在何时何地曾是无罪的呢?但是,我不会再谈论那段时光了,因为在我记忆中,它已经无处可寻,它不会再困扰我了。
9
但上帝啊,我的主,现在我正经历一段痛苦和羞辱的时期。别人告诉我,一个男孩必须听老师的话,这才是正确与合适的,只有这样才能学好语法,出人头地。这就是在世界上获得别人尊敬、为自己获得财富的途径。于是我被送到学校去读书。我年龄太小,不能领会学习的用处何在,如果我疏于学习,我就会挨打,因为传统上喜欢用责打来教育孩子。记不清曾经有多少男孩为我们铺成了这条心酸的道路,并且我们也必须走过这条路,为亚当的子孙增添劳累和悲伤。
但是我们发现一些人向你祷告,主啊,并且我们效法他们做同样的事情,用我们唯一能够理解的方式来思想你,把你想象成某些能够倾听并帮助我们的大人物,尽管我们不能看见你,不能听到你,也不能触摸到你。我第一次向你祷告时我还很小,你是我的帮助和避难所。我咿咿呀呀的向你祈求,尽管我还很小,但我却很虔诚地祈求你不要让我在学校挨打。有时,为了我自己的好处,你不应允我的祷告,然后我的兄长、甚至我的父母就会在我挨打时嘲笑我,他们当然希望我不会受到伤害——在那些日子里挨打是我最大的恐惧。
[……]
11
在我还很小的时候就被告知,上帝降卑来到我们这些骄傲的罪人中间,他给了我们永生的应许。作为一个望教者,我从出生起就经常被十字架的记号所祝福,并接受圣盐 【1】 的调理,主啊,我的母亲对你寄予了巨大的盼望。我童年时曾因突犯胃病几乎致死。是你,我的主啊,在那时就守护着我,你看见我怀着多么热切强大的信心,向我的母亲以及我们全体的母亲——你的教会,乞求为我施行你的儿子基督——我的主、我的上帝的洗礼。我的生身之母深深地担忧,因为在她心中纯洁的信仰里,从我一出生起,她为使我获得永久的拯救比以往付出了更大的努力。要不是我很快康复,她就会急于看看我是否获准接受获救的圣事,并因承认你主耶稣,而得洁净,因你饶恕了我的罪。于是,我的受洗推迟了,总而言之,只要我继续活着,我必定会让自己重新沾染罪恶,受洗之后,对沾染罪恶的负罪感就会更大、更危险。即便在那个年龄,我早已相信你,我的母亲和全家也都相信你,只有我父亲除外。但是,在我心中,他并没有超越我母亲的虔诚对我的影响,也没有因自己依然不信仰基督而阻止我信仰基督。主啊,我母亲竭尽全力,让你做我的父亲,而不是他。在这种情况下,你帮助她扭转了对丈夫的态度,她原本一直很顺从丈夫的,因为顺从丈夫就是顺从你的律法,她因此表现出比丈夫更好的美德。
我的主啊,我问你——如果是你的旨意,我希望知道——我当时受洗被推迟的原因是什么?是否是为了我的好处,放松了让我免于犯罪的羁绊?或者,事实上并没有放松羁绊?要不然,为什么我时至今日还经常听见别人这样说,“别管他,让他做吧,他不是还没有受洗吗”?但是当肉体的健康处于危险之中时,没有人会说:“让他恶化下去,他还没有痊愈呢”。如果我马上被治愈,如果我和我的家人竭尽所能,确保我的灵魂一旦被拯救,我就会在你的庇护中获得安全,因为拯救是源于你的,这样不是更好吗?但是我母亲很清楚,我在成长过程中需要经历诸多风浪,但是她宁愿让不成型的泥土去接受敲打,而不是让那被盖上洗礼印章的、已完全的形象去接受敲打。
17
让我告诉你,我的主,我是怎样在各种愚蠢的妄想上滥用你给予我的心智。我设立了一个很是困扰我的目标,如果我取得了成功,我会赢得赞誉。如果失败,我害怕会很丢脸甚至挨打。我必须背诵朱诺 【2】 的一段话,这是她因无法阻止埃涅阿斯前往意大利,在痛苦和愤怒之下说的。我早已获悉朱诺没有真的说过这些话,但是我们不得不假装事实如此,并跟随诗人的幻想,把原来诗歌里表达的内容改编为散文。哪个孩子采用了最适合意义的文字,最恰当地表达了悲伤和愤怒的感情,表现了他所模仿的人物的威严,他就赢得了比赛。
主啊,这一切对我真正的生命而言有什么意义呢?为什么我的朗诵会比班上很多其他男孩赢得更多的赞誉呢?这一切都只不过是过眼云烟吗?还有别的方法可以用来训练我的智慧和口才吗?主啊,我原本可以使用智慧和口才,用圣经上的语言来赞美你,那本是我心灵的支撑,可那时我却好像一株新生的葡萄枝,结出无意义的果实,仅供飞鸟啄食。向这些飞鸟、这些堕落天使献祭的方式可不止一种。
19
我小的时候就是站在这样一个世界的门槛上,面临着危险。我已经在准备应对各种挑战了,我接受一项训练,学会对语法错误深恶痛绝,而不是学会当自己犯了语法错误时,不要去嫉妒那些没犯错误的人。主啊,所有这一切,我都向你陈明,并向你忏悔。通过这些行为,我赢得了我所要找寻得好处的人的赞誉。因那时我以为,正确的生活方式就是如他们所愿地生活。我被蒙蔽了双眼,看不出邪恶的漩涡已经把我从你的眼前卷走。在你的眼中还有什么比那时的我更糟糕的呢?因为我甚至令那些我希望取悦的人头疼。我无数次地欺骗老师、家人和父母,因为我想玩游戏,或去看无益的表演,或是急于去模仿在舞台看到的场景。我甚至偷父母储藏室和餐桌上的东西,或是出于贪婪,或是为交换其他孩子所喜爱的玩具,他们也乐意与我交易。我与他们做游戏,为了当赢家,我经常搞欺骗,这仅仅是因为想赢的虚荣心浮上心头。当发现别人像我欺骗他们那样欺骗我时,我简直无法忍受,同他们激烈地争吵。同样,如果他们发现我搞欺骗并责备我时,我会勃然大怒,不愿退让。
这是儿童的天真无邪吗?主啊,不是这样的。但是我祈求你的原谅。长官和君主代替了家教和老师,胡桃和皮球以及小鸟让位于金钱、地产和仆人,但是这些相同的激情依然保留下来,只是由生命的一个阶段进入到了下一个阶段,就像更严厉的惩罚代替了学校的戒尺。仅仅因为他们小,所以你用小孩象征谦卑,我们的君王,你称赞说:“天国是属于他们的”。
20
主啊,即使你让我活不过童年,我也应该感谢你,因为你是我们的主,你是善的极致,宇宙的创造者和统治者。即便我只是作为一个小孩而存在,但我活着,我有感觉的能力,我有一种本能保护自身的安全和完好,保护我的存在,这是一个迹象,来自你这位独一的不可见者。我的内在感觉控制我身体的感觉,并保持它们完全的活力。而且即使在占据我思想的小事中,我也能因发现真理而快乐,我不喜欢被欺骗。我有良好的记忆力,我掌握了知识。我享受朋友的陪伴,并且远离痛苦、无知和悲伤。一个如此渺小的创造物得以拥有这么美好的品质,难道我还不应该感恩吗?但是它们都是上帝的礼物,不是给我自己的。他的礼物是好的,其总和就是我自己。因此,造我的上帝一定是善的,并且我身上所有的美善都是他的。我为着自己生命中的美善感谢他,赞美他,甚至为我童年中的美善也是如此。但是,我的罪在于,我不是从他那里而是在我自己和其他受造物中,追寻享乐、美丽和真理,我因此陷入了痛苦、混乱和谬误。我的上帝是我的快乐,我的荣耀和我的信靠,我感谢你的赐予并祈求你为我保留它们。请继续保守我,使你的赐予增长并达致完美,我应该和你在一起,我的存在都是你赐予的。
注释
【1】 在天主教中,盐是有特别的意义,盐加进水里制成圣水,很多仪式都会用到这种圣水。
【2】 罗马诸神之一,朱庇特的妻子。
第二卷
1
我现在必须回想我做过的极坏的事,那败坏了我灵魂的肉体之罪。主啊,我如此做不是我喜欢那些罪恶,而是为了爱你。因为爱你的爱,我将回顾那邪恶的过去。回忆是苦涩的,但是这将帮助我品尝你的甘甜,这甘甜不是欺骗性的,而是带来真正的喜乐,并且永不消逝。因为爱你的爱,我将从极大的堕落中重新找回自己,当我远离你时,这堕落将我撕碎,只有你是我本该追寻的,但我却因为许多不同的渴求而迷失了自己。当我进入成年以后,我因沉溺于地狱般的享乐而为欲望所驱使。我有勇无谋,迷失在纷繁复杂而又疯狂滋生的欲望中。在你看来,我的美丽褪去,我的灵魂腐烂发臭,然而我却满足于自身的状态,并力求取悦于人。
2
除了爱与被爱之外,我别无他求。但是我的爱超出了一个人对另一个人的感情,超出了友谊之光的纯度。肉体的欲望像泥沼,青春期的性欲在我身上膨胀,冒出迷雾,遮蔽并暗淡了我的心灵,以至于我不能从肉欲的阴暗中区别真爱的清晰光线。爱和肉欲在我里面混杂在一起。它们将我年轻的性情横扫至肉欲的悬崖边,企图将我淹没于罪恶的漩涡。你对我越来越愤怒,但我毫无意识。我死亡的铁链已经发出响声,振聋发聩,这是你对我心灵骄傲的惩罚。我离开你越来越远,你不约束我。我横冲直撞、不断摔跤,在淫乱的欲海中挣扎,你沉默不语。等到认识到你才是我真正的喜乐时,这是一个多么漫长的过程啊!你在那时沉默,而我却偏行己路,渐行渐远,以自己的痛苦为骄傲,在疲惫中无法安息,播下越来越多的种子,唯一收获的却只是悲伤。
[……]
3
在同一年中,我的学业被中断。我已经开始在附近的马都拉城 【1】 学习文法和雄辩术 【2】 ,但是我被带回家,我的父亲,一个塔加斯特城普通公民,他的决定十分坚定,要省钱送我去更远的迦太基 【3】 。我不必将这一切向你陈明,我的上帝,然而当着你的面我要向我的同类讲述,告诉那些可能会拿起这本书来读的人,尽管人数很少。这是为了使我和读者都能够意识到我们在怎样的深渊中向你哭求。你的耳朵一定听见了那忧伤痛悔的心的哭求,这心持守着信仰而活着。
[……]
4
主啊,偷窃无疑会受到你的律法的惩罚,尽管他们都是罪人,但律法是写在人们的心中并且不可能被擦掉。没有哪个小偷可以忍受另一个小偷对他的偷窃,即便他很有钱,而且另一个人是出于渴求的冲动。我之所以想偷窃,并去偷了,虽不是被匮乏驱使,无非是因为缺乏正义感,或是不喜欢正确的事情,并对做错事有一种贪婪的爱。我偷窃之前就已经拥有很多了,而且比那偷的还好,我并不愿享受这些贪求而偷来的东西,而仅仅是享受犯罪和偷窃本身。我家葡萄园附近有一棵梨树,结满了果子,无论是看起来还是尝起来都很诱人。一个深夜,包括我在内的一群无赖去把果子都摇下来带走,我们在外继续游玩直到深夜,这是我们的恶习。我们带走了大量的梨,自己没有吃,而是扔给了猪。也许我们吃了一些,但是我们真正的快乐是做了被禁止的事情。
[……]
6
如果十六岁的那天晚上我犯下的偷窃罪行是一个活生生的事实,我会对它说并问,到底我爱这可耻之事里面的什么?我毫无美善,因这是强盗行径。而我们所偷的梨是美的,因为它们是你所创造的,良善的天父,你是所有存在中最美的,是所有事物的创造者,是最高的善和我自己真正的善。那梨不是我闷闷不乐的心灵所渴求的。我有很多比这更好的东西,我偷梨只是为了偷窃。我把梨刚摘下来就扔掉了,我吃的只是我的罪,我品尝并享受着这种罪。如果这些梨中的任何一个经过我的口,那都是罪的味道。
[……]
那时,在偷窃中让我感到愉快的是什么呢?难道是用堕落的和邪恶的方式来模仿我主的能力?因为我没有真正的能力打破他的律法,于是我享受表面上这样做,就像囚犯不惧怕惩罚的时候,在对权力持有虚弱的幻觉之下,通过做错事来为他制造一种虚幻的自由?这是一个奴隶,从主人那里逃跑,转而去追逐自己的影子!这多么令人厌恶啊! 这是对生活多么拙劣的模仿!这是多么难以测度的死亡啊!除了那是错事以外,还能找到任何别的原因让我以做错事为乐吗?
注释
【1】 即今阿尔及利亚的末达乌路赫(Mdaourouch)。
【2】 古希腊时期出现了民主制度,公共言论成为了政治生活的一部分,因此演讲、辩论就很流行,于是出现了专门教授该技艺的老师,罗马也遗传了此风气。
【3】 位于非洲北海岸,今突尼斯境内。
第三卷
1
我去了迦太基,发现自己置身于一口嘶嘶做响的欲望大锅之内。我还没有坠入爱河,但是我渴求爱,并且当我感到失去了什么时,我会憎恨自己没有去热烈地满足这种需求。我环顾四周寻找爱的目标,因为我极度渴望爱上某物。我不喜欢脚下没有陷阱的人生,尽管我真正的需要是你,我的上帝,我心灵的食粮,我还没有意识到这种饥饿。我没有对不朽的食粮的需要,不是因为我已经拥有了,而是因为我越是饥饿,食粮越是不好吃。为此,我的灵魂病了,我得了溃疡并且极力寻找一些物质的东西,也就是说,企图用世界的方法,来解决溃疡引起的瘙痒。但是物质是没有灵魂的,不能作为我爱的真正对象。渴求爱与被爱是我心中的欲望,如果能够享受爱我之人的肉体,对当时的我而言,那将是最美的事。
[……]
3
然而,你的仁慈总是在高处信实地护庇着我。我在堕落和渎神的好奇心中筋疲力尽。我离弃你,沉入怀疑主义的最底层,还模仿魔鬼式的崇拜。我的罪是给魔鬼的献祭,为了这一切你责罚我。我竟然冒犯你,在教堂举行你神秘的盛典之时,我竟充满肉欲的思想,并从中获得满足。因这一行为我理应被判处死刑,你用重重的鞭打惩罚我。但是与我的罪相比,这惩罚算不得什么。主啊!你的慈爱是多么的无限,你是我所经之极危险之境的避难所,就是当我在高处走,却执意后退、更加远离你的时候。我喜欢我自己的方式,而不是你的,但我所爱的这种自由是不负责任的自由。
除了这些追求以外,我也学习法律。这样的抱负是被尊崇的,我决定继续下去。我越是无耻,我就越有名,人们都瞎眼了,以至于以其瞎眼为荣。那时我在雄辩学校名列前矛。我很满意自己高高在上的状态并且傲慢自大。尽管如此,主啊,你很清楚,我的行为比“破坏分子”安静很多,“破坏分子”是对喜欢恶作剧的人的称呼,这是当时流行的称号。我不参与他们突发的暴力行径,但我和他们在一起生活,我还有一些羞耻感,毕竟我不像他们。我与他们为伍,也经常从这种友谊中找到乐子,但是当他们做那些符合他们的称号的事情时,我也总会感到可怕。胆小的新人即便不招惹他们,他们也会捉弄他,无端地冒犯其尊严并以此为乐,并将其尴尬作为恶意玩笑的素材。如果这不是魔鬼自己的行为,也离魔鬼不远了。“破坏分子”是一个适合于他们的名字,他们放荡不羁,并完全伤害了他们自己。他们喜欢嘲笑和作弄别人,对别人设下魔鬼的秘密圈套,而这实则也是在嘲笑和作弄他们自己。
4
这些就是我在那个易动感情的年龄学习雄辩术时的同伴。我的抱负是成为一个优秀的演说家,为了满足人类虚荣心这个渎神且愚蠢的目的。西塞罗 【1】 的一部作品因着其中所宣扬的精神,成为了我必修课的一本读物。几乎人人都崇拜他的作品。这本书的书名是《荷尔顿西乌斯》(Hortensius),它建议读者学习哲学,它改变了我对人生的看法,使我转而向你祷告,主啊,它还给了我新的希望和理想。我所有空虚的梦在瞬间失去了魅力,我的心开始为永恒真理所搏动,这真理有迷惑人的激情。我开始从自己的沉沦中爬出来,希望重新回到你的身边。我不是用书作为我的磨刀石来使我变得伶牙俐齿。我之所以被它吸引不是因为形式而是内容,虽然母亲付给我的学费本来是要花在我的口才训练上的。我那时已经十九岁了,她还供养我,因为我父亲两年前已经去世。
[……]
但是,我心灵的光明,你知道在那个时候,尽管对保罗 【2】 的话我还一无所知,唯一让我高兴的事情就是西塞罗在书中建议不要简单崇拜哲学流派中的这个人或那个人,而是要爱智慧本身,无论它是什么,都要去探寻它、追求它、拥有它,并牢牢地将它占据。这些话使我感到万分地激动并在我心中燃起了烈火。只是在这燃烧的热情中没有提到基督的名字。主啊,出于你的怜悯,从我母亲哺育我时,我婴儿的内心就已经恭敬地吮吸了他的名字,你儿子的名字,我的救主。在我内心深处,他的名字保留着,无论有多少学问,多么正确清晰的表达,除非他的名字在里面,否则没有什么能够完全俘获我。
5
于是我下决心研究《圣经》,看一下这到底是什么书。我发现某些东西不是骄傲之人能够理解的,也不是小孩子可以掌握的。他的步伐是谦卑的,但是他所达到的高度是壮丽的。他被神秘所包裹,我不是那种可以进入的人,也不是可以低头遵从他引导的人。但是当我第一次读《圣经》时,我有一种前所未有的感觉。对我来说,他们好像根本不值得与西塞罗庄严的散文相比,因为我有太多的自负以至于不能接受《圣经》的质朴,并且也没有足够的洞察力去穿透其深度。无疑,《圣经》的意义是随着孩子的成长而丰满起来的。但是我太骄傲了,以至于不能把自己叫做小孩。我被自尊所充满,这使得我认为自己是一个伟大的人。
11
但是你从高天中伸手帮助我,从黑暗的深渊中将我的灵魂拯救。因为我的母亲,你虔诚的仆人,为了我向你哭诉,为我灵性的死亡比其他失去儿子肉身的母亲流了更多的眼泪。根据你给她的信仰精神,她视我如死亡一般。你听到她的哭泣,并没有因为她流泪而鄙视她,这些眼泪落下来,浇灌着她在各地祈祷时脸所贴近的土地。你聆听她,不然我怎样解释你安慰她的梦,故而她同意与我一同居住并与我同桌吃饭呢?在这之前她是拒绝这样做的,因为她厌恶并回避我错误信仰导致的渎神行为。
她梦见她站在一把木尺上,一个闪着神圣光芒的青年向她走来,尽管她自己悲伤的难以承受,然而那青年却快乐地向她微笑。青年问她每天悲伤流泪的原因,之所以问她不是因为他不知道,而是因为他有一些事情要告诉她,而这些事是他在异象中看见的。当她告诉青年,她是为了她唯一的儿子所丧失的灵魂而流泪时,青年告诉母亲要留意观察,如果她仔细观察的话,她将看见她在哪里,我也在哪里。于是她照着青年的话去做,果然她看见我正站在她的旁边,在同一把尺子上。
这个梦会从哪里来,除非你听了她内心的祷告?你的善是有大能的。你看顾我们每一个人,好像在你的关心中没有其他人,你看顾每一个人时也在看顾所有人。无疑,正是因为相同的原因,当她告诉我那个梦,我试图把它解释为她不用为我某一天成为那个样子而绝望时,母亲毫不犹豫地回答说:“不!他没有说‘他在哪里,你就在哪里’,而是说‘你在哪里,他就在哪里’”。
[……]
12
我记得当时你给了她另一个关于她祷告的回答,有一些无关的事情我忘记了,而且我要省略很多,因为我急于略去其它的事情,我急于向你忏悔。
你通过你的一个教士给了她回答,那个主教一生都住在教堂,并且熟悉《圣经》经文。我的母亲请他来与我谈一谈,或许他可以驳斥我的错误,把罪从我心中驱除,并用善来取代。当他发现合适的学生时他经常这样做,但是他拒绝为我这样做——这是一个明智的决定,我后来意识到这一点。他告诉我母亲我还没有达到接受这种教导的程度,因为就像母亲告诉主教的一样,我正因新近接受的异端思想而骄傲,并且用几个难题难倒了好些学问不高的人。主教说“让他一个人待着吧,你只要向上帝祷告就可以了, 他在阅读中会发现自己的错误和不虔诚的。”
同时,他告诉母亲,当他还是孩子的时候,他那迷失方向的母亲把儿子交给了摩尼教。他不仅读遍了摩尼教的书籍,还把它们抄写下来,没有任何人与他争论或是规劝他,他便自我觉醒,意识到必须离开这个教派,后来就真的离开了。听了这些之后,母亲依然不能平静,还是泪如泉涌地苦苦哀求他与我谈一谈。最后主教都有点不耐烦了,说道:“请走吧,就这样了,你流泪这么多,你是不会失去你的儿子的。”
几年后,当我与母亲谈话时,她常说当时她是将这些话当作来自天国的信息来接受的。
注释
【1】 西塞罗,公元前106年-前43年。古罗马著名政治家、演说家、雄辩家、法学家和哲学家。
【2】 保罗(3年—67年),原名扫罗。保罗是亚伯拉罕的后裔,属于便雅悯支派的以色列人,早年参与迫害基督徒,据《圣经》记载,耶稣曾向他亲自显现。保罗是第一个去非犹太人中传播福音的基督徒,对于早期基督教会发展作出巨大贡献,可称为基督教的第一个神学家,《圣经》新约中很多书卷均是出自保罗之手。
第四卷
1
在接下来的9年中,从我19岁到28岁,我迷失了自己,反过来也误导了别人。我们是一样的骗子,并且我们利用各自不同的目标和野心进行欺骗,当我们详细解释那些所谓的人文思想时,这都是公开的,而在我们为所谓的宗教服务时却是秘密的。我们在公开场合很自信,私下里却很迷信,在任何地方都是空虚和无意义的。一方面我们追求无意义的流行盛名和观众的喝彩、诗歌的荣誉以及比赛中转瞬即逝的花环。我们喜爱舞台上悠闲的消遣和不被约束的自我放纵。另一方面我们渴望通过向神圣选民的献祭,以净化这些低级的享乐,像他们说的那样,在他们肠胃的作坊中将这些东西加工成天使和神灵,使我们得到拯救。这就是我追求的目标,我和朋友都在同样的幻像之下完成自己的事情,这些朋友不仅像我一样,而且也与我犯同样的错误。
[……]
2
那时,我是一名讲授雄辩术的教师。对钱财的欲望征服了我,我又通过出售教人在论辩中取胜的技巧征服其他人。但是,主啊,你知道,我宁愿拥有最诚实的学生,即使当今诚实没有任何意义,我教会他们狡诈时并没有恶意,我从来不希望他们利用狡诈去伤害无辜的人;相反,如果时机合适,我希望他们去拯救有罪的人。我的上帝啊,你从远处看见我以这种背信弃义的理由失去了自己的立足之地,但是透过云雾,你依然看见我内心闪耀着美好信仰的火花。因为,虽然我在教导我的学生时,仅仅鼓动他们做徒劳的设计和欺骗的伎俩,但是我竭尽全力踏踏实实地教他们。
在这些日子里,我与一个女人同居,她不是我合法的妻子,而是一个情妇,我之所以选择她是因为我不安的欲望可以在她身上得到慰藉。但是她是我的唯一,而且我很忠实于她。与她同居的经验使我发现,婚姻盟约的约束与性伴侣间讨价还价的制约不同,前者是为生儿育女而进入的,而在后者中,孩子的出生是双方最不情愿的,尽管当真的有了孩子时,他们不得不爱他们。
12
如果这个世界的事物令你愉悦,为着它们赞美上帝吧,但要从它们那里转移你的爱,而把爱献给创造者,好让沉浸于这些美好的事情中的你不会令他不快。如果你的快乐在于灵魂,在上帝里爱它们吧,因为灵魂太脆弱了,唯有当灵魂紧紧抓住上帝,才能坚定不移。他们如果不这样做,就只能走自己的路而最终迷路。爱他们吧,并且在上帝里努力引导他们归向上帝吧。告诉他们“我们应该爱上帝,他创造了世界,并且上帝并不遥远。”他创造这个世界之后,并没有抛下这个世界不管。这个世界就是他创造的,而世界也是因他而存在的。哪里有真理,上帝就在那里。他在我们内心的最深处,但是我们的心却远离他。仔细想想吧,叛逆的心灵,抓住这个创造你们的主。与他站在一起你就不会跌倒,在他里面安息,你就会感到平安。在你面前有什么样的障碍和陷阱?你的脚步把你引向何方?你所喜爱的美好事物都是来自上帝,但是这些东西只有在你按照上帝的意愿来使用的时候才是美好的。如果抛开上帝而错误地去爱它们,它们就会理所当然地转变为苦涩。你为什么选择游荡在这艰苦而辛劳的路上呢?在其上你找不到可安息的地方。在死亡的土地上你试图找到一份幸福的生活:可是幸福的生活不在那儿。没有生命的地方怎么让生活幸福呢?
我们的生命(Life)他自己来到这个世界,带走了我们的死亡。他用他丰盛的生命扭转了死亡,他发出雷鸣般的声音让我们从这个世界回到他的天国。他从天上来到我们中间,先是进入童贞女马利亚的子宫,在那里,我们凡人的肉体与他结合,就永远也不会死亡。然后他如新郎走出洞房一般,又如勇士欣然奔向前程。他不是在路上徘徊而是奔跑,呼唤我们回到他身边,用他的言语和行为呼唤我们,通过他的生命和死亡,通过他降到地狱又升入天堂,来呼唤我们。他离开我们的视线,好让我们转向内心并在那里找到他。他离开我们,但是他又与我们在一起。他也许没有一起与我们相伴,但他却从未离开我们。他回到他从来没有离开过的地方,因为通过他这个世界得以被造,他存在于这个世界,他来到这世界是为了拯救罪人。我的灵魂向他忏悔,他是医治者,因为过犯是针对他的。人类的子孙啊,你们心灵还要愚顽多久?你的生命来自天国:你们还不愿意随他上升而活吗?然而,如果你们还站在高位并且争闹声上达天庭,你们如何上升呢?从这些高处下来,这个时候你才会攀到上帝那儿。如果你们上升却又对抗上帝,就会跌落下来。
[……]
13
那时我不明白这个道理。我爱上了低级的美丽,这种美丽使我沉沦。我经常问我的朋友:“我们会爱上任何不美丽的东西吗?到底什么是美,美是由什么组成的?到底是什么在吸引我们,并超过我们所爱的事物?除非在它们里面有美丽和优雅,否则它们没有能力赢得我们的心。”当我看一个东西时,我发现,事物本身整体的美和与其它事物搭配所形成的和谐之美有所不同,就好比身体的一部分相对于整个身体,或者是鞋子相对于穿鞋的脚。这一观念从我心中迸发,就像水从泉中涌出一样。我的大脑被这种观念充满,我写了一本书,名叫《美与适宜》,我记得大约有两三卷。主啊,你知道有多少卷,但是我已经忘记了,因为这书很快就弄丢了,我再也没有找到。
14
主啊,我的上帝,是什么原因促使我把书献给罗马伟大的雄辩家希埃利乌斯 【1】 呢?我从来没有见过他,但我敬佩他学识上的赫赫名气,并且深深地被他的演讲所打动。甚至除此以外,别人对他的崇拜都能给我留下深刻的印象。人们对他赞不绝口,因为他实在非同寻常。他生在叙利亚,最初用训练希腊语演讲,后来成为著名的拉丁语演说家,在哲学上也很有造诣。
如果我们听见人们赞美一个素未谋面的人,我们会敬佩他,但这并不意味着仅仅听到对他们的赞美就使得我们敬佩他们。然而,一个人的热情会点燃另一个人同样的热情之火。我们听到别人称赞一个人时,只有相信那些赞语是真心话,我们才会仰慕他,换句话说,就是真心称赞的人会仰慕他自己称赞的那个人。
[……]
但是希埃利乌斯是我仰慕其才华的那种人,我很希望拥有那样的才华。我的骄傲使我到处漂游,随风飘荡。你像一个舵手一样引导我,但是你驾驶的航线超出了我的理解。我现在知道,并且可以坦然承认,我仰慕希埃利乌斯,与其说是因为别人称赞他,不如说是因为他那些受到称赞的成就。我了解到这一点,是因为那同样的一群人不但不会称赞他,反而毁谤他。他们可能同样会说出他的一些才能,但又会吹毛求疵,鄙视那些才能。如果他们这样做,我的感情就不会被激发,我的仰慕之情也不会被点燃。然而,他的品质没有变化,他本人也没有什么不同。唯一不同的是他们对待他的态度。
我们可以从中看出灵魂是软弱无力的,除非它抓住了坚固的真理之石。人们表达自己的意见,但那只是他们自己的意见,像一阵阵风把灵魂吹向这里、吹到那里,晕头转向。光被遮蔽住了,使真理不被看见,尽管真理就在我们眼前。在我看来,带上我的书以及我完成的工作,可以引起这位大人物的注意,这对我而言是非常重要的。如果他欣赏我的作品,我的热情会更加高涨。如果他发现了缺点,我那空虚又缺失上帝坚定真理的心,一定会遭受到严重的打击。然而,我在思考“美与适宜”的问题时深得其乐,我把这本书献给了他。尽管再没有别的人欣赏这本书,但我却引以为豪。
15
[……]
我挣扎着去接近你,但是你把我推了回来,让我品尝死亡的滋味。因为你拒斥骄傲的人。我居然在奇怪的疯狂中宣称,我就是来自你的本性,还有什么比这更狂妄的呢?我很善变,我自己知道。如果我想成为一个有学识的人,这只是意味着我想要精益求精。同样的,我宁愿认为你也是善变的,也不愿相信我与你不同。这就是你拒绝我并粉碎了我膨胀的骄傲的原因,那时,我的想象力继续停留在物质形式之上。尽管我谴责肉欲,我自己却是一个充满肉欲和血气的人。我像呼出的气息一样善变,无法再回到你身边。我四处漂泊,努力走向在你那儿并不存在的事物,或是在我自己或在我体内不存在的事物。这些事物不是通过你的真理而为我创造的,它们只是我愚蠢的想像力作用于具体物质的结果。尽管我不知道,我从上帝之城属于我的地盘中被驱逐出来,在上帝忠诚的孩子——我的同胞中流放。但是我只会空谈,并愚蠢地问他们,“如果像你们说的,上帝创造了灵魂,为什么灵魂会犯错?”主啊,于是过去我宁愿认为你不变的本质是被迫犯错,而不愿承认我自己是善变的,并且由于自由意志而犯错,那错误就是对我的惩罚。
[……]
16
我20岁的时候,搞到一本亚里士多德的《论十个范畴》。我迦太基的老师和被誉为著名学者的人提到这本书时,他们的脸上就出现妄自尊大的表情,所以书名本身就足以让我目瞪口呆,就像我因一些奇妙的神秘而惊呆。那时我试图独自去阅读和理解这本书,虽然如今我问自己那样做我得到了什么益处。其他人告诉我,他们经历了重重困难才理解这本书,而且此前最博学的大师不仅给他们做了字面解释,还用大量图表来阐释。但是当我与他们讨论时,他们能够告诉我的不过是我通过自己的阅读已经发现了的东西。
[……]
我独立阅读和理解所有我能够找到的所谓自由学科的书籍,因为那时我一无是处,而且是一个有着肮脏野心的奴隶。我从中得到了什么呢?我阅读那些书时感到很愉悦,但却不知道书中确定无疑的事实的真正来源。我背对着光,我的脸朝向被它照亮的事物,于是我用来看光下的事物的眼睛却是黑暗的。不需要太多的努力和老师的指导,我就能理解所阅读的所有东西:辩论术、逻辑、地理、音乐以及数学。哦主啊,我的上帝,你是知道的,因为一个人理解迅速并且感知敏锐,是因为你给予他这些天赋。但是因为我没有把天赋奉献给你,我努力地将其大部分变成自己的能力,而不是为了你积蓄力量,我离开了你往远方去,挥霍你爱的赐予,并把它们换成了金钱。这么做坏处比益处大得多。如果不好好利用,能力对我有何益处呢?我拥有的能力,只有在我竭力教授给别人之后,我才意识到这些学科是很难掌握的,甚至对于勤奋、聪慧的学生也是一样,一个可以一贯地遵循我的教导的学生就可以被看做是一名非常好的学者。
然而,如果我只是认为你,主上帝,真理本身,是一个光明的、无限的身体,我只是其中掉出的一小块,那么我从阅读中能获得什么价值呢?这完全是歪曲真理!然而这曾经就是我的信仰;现在我可以毫不脸红地承认,主啊,你对我的怜悯,我不会命令你来帮助我,就像那些日子我大言不惭地去亵渎你,像一只狗一样对你狂吠。我聪慧的价值是什么?它可以带着这些学科大步向前,而且,所有的书,它们所缠绕的问题,我可以不用任何人类导师的帮助就可以解开,在你爱的教义中,我迷失在最丑陋的错误和邪恶的渎神行为中。你虔诚的孩子理解这些比我缓慢,可这是他们大的缺点吗?他们并没有抛弃你,而是在你教堂的安全巢穴中长大,用对你的信心作为食物来哺育他们仁慈的翅膀,这信心将拯救他们。
上帝,我们的主啊,让你翅膀的庇护给我们希望。保护我们并支持我们。你将支持我们,从儿时直到我们的头发变白都支持我们。当你是我们的力量时,我们强壮,但是当力量是我们自己的时候,我们便软弱,在你里面我们的善永远得到护佑,当我们偏离至善时,我们就转向了邪恶。主啊,让我们最终能回到你的家中,不要让我们迷路。我们的善在你那里得到护佑,不会出现问题,因为那就是你自己。我们也不担心没有我们可以返回的家园。我们曾经从中失落,但是我们的家园是你的永恒,它永远不会失落,因为我们已经离开罪恶。
注释
【1】 与奥古斯丁同时代的著名演说家。