Cahiers de la Quinzaine

ANATOLE FRANCE

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By the same author, Calmann-Levy publisher, volumes at three francs fifty, on sale at the bookshop of the cahiers:

Balthasar. The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard. The Mother-of-Pearl Case. The Garden of Epicurus. Jocasta and the Lean Cat. My Friend’s Book. The Red Lily. The Opinions of Jerome Coignard. The Well of Saint Clare. The Rotisserie of Queen Pedauque. Thais. The Literary Life, four volumes.

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

I. The Elm on the Mall. II. The Wicker Mannequin. III. The Amethyst Ring. IV. Monsieur Bergeret in Paris.

In the third cahier of the first series, dated February 5, 1900, now out of print, we published, from the newspapers of Thursday November 23, 1899, the speech given by Anatole France at the inauguration of Emancipation, the popular university of the fifteenth arrondissement. We reproduce this speech today:

FREEDOM THROUGH STUDY

Citizens,

The association we inaugurate today is formed for study. It is a group of men who come together to think in common. You wish to acquire knowledge that will give your ideas exactitude and breadth and that will thus enrich you with an interior and true wealth. You wish to learn in order to understand and retain, unlike those sons of the rich who study only to pass examinations and who, the test over, hasten to rid their brains of their knowledge, as of a cumbersome piece of furniture. Your desire is nobler and more disinterested. And as you propose to work at your own development, you will seek what is truly useful and what is truly beautiful.

The kinds of knowledge useful to life are not only those of trades and arts. If it is necessary that everyone know his trade, it is useful for everyone to question the nature that formed us and the society in which we live. Whatever our station among our fellows, we are above all men and we have a great interest in knowing the conditions necessary to human life. We depend on the earth and on society, and it is by seeking the causes of this dependence that we shall be able to imagine the means of making it easier and gentler. It is because the discoveries of the great physical laws that govern the worlds have been slow, tardy, long confined to a small number of intelligences, that a barbarous morality, founded on a false interpretation of the phenomena of nature, could impose itself on the mass of men and subject them to imbecile and cruel practices.

Do you believe, for example, citizens, that if scientists had known sooner the true situation of the terrestrial globe turning in the company of a few other globes, its brothers, around a sun that swims itself in infinite space, peopled with a multitude of other suns, ardent and luminous fathers of a multitude of worlds, do you think that if in ancient centuries a great number of men had had this just idea of the universe and had sufficiently attached their thought to it, it would have been possible to frighten them by making them believe there is beneath the earth a hell and devils? It is science

FREEDOM THROUGH STUDY

that frees us from these gross imaginings and these vain terrors, which you have certainly rejected far from you. And do you not see that from the study of nature you will draw a host of moral consequences that will make your thought more assured and more tranquil?

The knowledge of the human being is no less profitable. By following the transformations of man since the time when he lived naked, armed with stone arrows, in caves, up to the present age of machines, in the reign of steam and electricity, you will embrace the great phases of the evolution of our race.

The knowledge of the progress accomplished will allow you to foresee, to solicit future progress. Perhaps you will wish to remain by preference in times near our own and to seek in a recent past the origin of the present state of society. There too, there above all, study will be of great profit to you. By searching how the capitalist force was formed and grew, you will better judge the means that must be employed to master it, after the example of those great inventors who enslaved nature only after having perfectly observed it.

You will study the facts in good faith, without prejudice or preconceived system. True scholars --- and I see some here --- will tell you that science wants to keep its independence and its liberty, and that it submits to no foreign power. Is this to say that you will pursue your researches without direction or determined goal? No. You undertake a vast but defined work, immense but precise. You propose to work mutually to develop your intellectual and moral being, to make yourselves more sure of yourselves and more conscious of your forces through a more exact knowledge of the necessities of life on the planet and of the particular conditions in which each finds himself in present society. Your association is constituted to solicit one another to think and reflect in place of the privileged who no longer take the trouble, and to assure yourselves thus a part in the elaboration of a new and better order of things, since, despite forcible blows, it is thought that leads the world, as the compass in the tempest still shows the route to ships.

Your association seeks what there is most useful to know in science. It will reveal to you what there is most agreeable to contemplate in art. Do not refuse to mingle in your studies the agreeable with the useful. Besides, how separate them, if one has a little philosophy? How mark the point where the useful ends and the agreeable begins?

FREEDOM THROUGH STUDY

A song, is that not useful for anything? The Marseillaise and the Carmagnole overthrew the armies of kings and emperors. Is a smile useless? Is it so little to please and to charm?

You sometimes hear moralists tell you that nothing should be granted to enjoyment in life. Do not listen to them. A long religious tradition that still weighs upon us teaches that privation, suffering and pain are desirable goods and that there are special merits attached to voluntary privation. What an imposture! It is by telling peoples that one must suffer in this world to be happy in the next that one has obtained from them a pitiful resignation to all oppressions and all iniquities. Let us not listen to the priests who teach that suffering is excellent. It is joy that is good!

Our instincts, our organs, our physical and moral nature, our whole being counsels us to seek happiness on earth. It is difficult to encounter. Let us not flee it. Let us not fear joy, and when a happy form or a smiling thought offers us pleasure, let us not refuse it. Your association is of this opinion. It is ready to offer you, with useful thoughts, agreeable thoughts, which are useful too. It will make known to you the great poets: Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare. Thus nourished, your minds will grow in force and beauty.

And it is time, citizens, that your force be felt, and that your will, clearer and more beautiful, impose itself to establish a little reason and equity in a world that obeys no longer but the suggestions of selfishness and fear. We have seen in recent times bourgeois society and its chiefs incapable of assuring us justice, I do not say ideal and future justice, but only the old limping justice, survivor of harsh ages. That one, which protected them in their folly, they have just dealt a mortal blow. We have seen them triumph in falsehood, aspire to the most brutal of tyrannies, breathe in the streets civil war and hatred of the human race.

To you, citizens, to you, workers, to raise your minds and your hearts, and to make yourselves capable, through study and reflection, of preparing the advent of social justice and universal peace.

In the same cahier we published, from the Figaro, several articles of the Contemporary History. We do not reproduce them today.

In the seventh cahier of the second series, now out of print, we published the speech given by Anatole France for the Celebration of Diderot.

We publish below, from the author’s copy, and with his very kind consent, several fragments of the Contemporary History. The fragments one is about to read have never been collected in a volume.

THE LAW IS DEAD, BUT THE JUDGE IS ALIVE.

“It was in the spring of 1895, I was twenty. Newly arrived in Paris, I was going through difficult times. That night I had stretched out in a thicket of the Bois de Vincennes, without having eaten for thirty-six hours. I was not suffering; I was in a state of gentleness and lightness, crossed at moments by an impression of unease.”

M. Goubin wiped the lenses of his pince-nez. He had tender eyes and a hard gaze. He minutely examined Jean Marteau and said to him with more surprise than sympathy:

“You say you had not eaten for thirty-six hours?”

“It is true,” replied Jean Marteau; “I had not eaten for thirty-six hours. But I was wrong. It is not proper to lack bread. It is an impropriety. Hunger should be a crime like vagrancy. But in fact the two crimes are confused and article 269 punishes with three to six months of prison those who have no means of subsistence. Vagrancy, says the Code, is the state of vagabonds, of people without avowal, who have neither certain domicile nor means of subsistence and who habitually exercise no trade, no profession. They are great culprits.”

“It is remarkable,” said M. Bergeret, “that the state of these vagabonds, liable to six months of prison and ten years of surveillance, is precisely the state in which the good Saint Francis placed his companions, at Saint-Mary-of-the-Angels, and the daughters of Saint Clare. Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Anthony of Padua, if they came to preach today in Paris, would risk going in the police van to the headquarters of the Prefecture.”

“They are respectable since they are rich,” said Jean Marteau, “and begging is forbidden only to the poor. If I had been found under my tree, I would have been put in prison, and it would have been justice. Possessing nothing, I was a presumed enemy of property, and it is just to defend property against its enemies. The august task of the judge is to assure to each what is his due, to the rich his wealth and to the poor his poverty.”

“I have meditated the philosophy of law,” said M. Bergeret, “and I have recognized that all social justice rests on these two axioms: Theft is condemnable. The product of theft is sacred. These are the principles that assure the security of individuals and maintain order in the State.”

“But finally,” said M. Goubin, “there are just laws.”

“Do you think so?” asked Jean Marteau.

“M. Goubin is right,” said M. Bergeret. “There are just laws. But the law, being instituted for the defense of society, cannot be, in its spirit, more equitable than this society. So long as society is founded on injustice, laws will have the function of defending and supporting injustice.”

“But they are corrected,” said M. Goubin.

“They are corrected,” replied M. Bergeret. “The Chamber and the Senate work at it when they have nothing else to do. But the substance remains: it is harsh. To tell the truth, I would not much fear bad laws if they were applied by good judges. The law is inflexible, they say. I do not believe it. There is no text that cannot be solicited. The law is dead. The magistrate is alive; it is a great advantage he has over it.”

DOMESTIC THEFT

There are about ten years, perhaps more, perhaps less, I visited a women’s prison. It was an old chateau built under Henri IV. The director of this prison seemed to be approaching the age of retirement. He was an extraordinary director. He thought for himself and had humane feelings.

“I interpret the regulations,” he told me, “before applying them. And I explain them myself to the detainees. The regulations prescribe, for example, absolute silence. Now, if they kept absolutely silent, they would all become idiots or mad. I think, I must think, that is not what the regulations want. I tell them: the regulations order you to keep silence. What does that mean? It means the wardens must not hear you. If you are heard, you will be punished; if you are not heard, there is no reproach to make to you.”

I asked him if his hierarchical superiors approved this interpretation of the regulations.

He answered that the inspectors often reproached him; that then he would lead them to the outer door and say: “You see that gate; it is made of wood. If one locked up men here, at the end of a week there would not be one left. Women do not have the idea of escaping. But it is prudent not to drive them mad.”

He showed us a young peasant, rather pretty, with a simple, nice and gentle air.

“I have good news to announce to you,” the director told her. “The President of the Republic, informed of your good conduct, remits the rest of your sentence. You will leave on Saturday.”

She listened, mouth half-open, hands clasped on her belly. But ideas did not enter her head quickly.

“You will leave Saturday next. You will be free.”

This time she understood, her hands rose in a gesture of distress, her lips trembled:

“Is it true I must go? Then what will become of me? Here I was fed, clothed, and everything. Couldn’t you tell that good gentleman that it’s better I stay where I am?”

I asked what she had done.

He leafed through a register:

“503. She was a servant for farmers… She stole an apron from her masters… Domestic theft. You know, the law severely punishes domestic theft.”

THE UPRIGHT JUDGES

“I have seen,” said Jean Marteau, “upright judges. It was in painting. I had crossed into Belgium to escape a curious magistrate, who wanted me to have conspired with anarchists.”

And there follow the two judges on horseback from a painting by Mabuse, conversing about the nature of law. The first judge holds to the written word; the second to its spirit. They debate whether law is divine and immutable, or human and perfectible; whether justice should be literal or spiritual.

FIRST JUDGE. --- The law is stable. SECOND JUDGE. --- At no moment is the law fixed. FIRST JUDGE. --- Proceeding from God, it is immutable. SECOND JUDGE. --- A natural product of social life, it depends on the changing conditions of that life.

And the two judges, having spoken, dismounted and went to their tribunal. Their horses, tied to a post under a great elm, conversed together. Blanchet, the horse of the first judge, spoke of the day when the earth would belong to horses; Roussin, mount of the second judge, wanted equine laws favorable to horses, for the hippic good. They debated the nature of the celestial horse who created all horses, and whether laws must make horses suffer to please this celestial horse.

CANINE MORALITY THOUGHTS OF RIQUET

Having penetrated several thoughts of my dog Riquet, I have put them into human language. There is interest in knowing the moral ideas of dogs and in comparing them with those of men.

Men, animals, stones grow larger as they approach and become enormous when they are upon me. Not I. I remain always as large wherever I am.

The odor of dogs is delicious.

I speak when I want. From the mouth of the master there also come sounds that form meanings. But these meanings are far less distinct than those I express by the sounds of my voice.

Eating is good. Having eaten is better. For the enemy who watches you to take your food is swift and subtle.

Everything passes and succeeds itself. I alone remain.

One sees in sleep men, dogs, houses, trees, agreeable forms and terrible forms. And when one wakes, these forms have vanished.

An action for which one has been struck is a bad action. An action for which one has received caresses or food is a good action.

Prayer. O my master Bergeret, god of carnage, I adore you. Terrible, be praised! Be praised, favorable! I crawl at your feet; I lick your hands. You are very great and very beautiful when you devour, before the set table, abundant meats.

A dog who has no piety toward men and who despises the fetishes assembled in the master’s house leads a wandering and miserable life.

Men exercise this divine power of opening all doors. I can open by myself only a small number. Doors are great fetishes that do not willingly obey dogs.

One never knows if one has acted well toward men. One must adore them without seeking to understand them. Their wisdom is mysterious.

There are carriages that horses pull through the streets. They are terrible. There are carriages that go all by themselves, puffing very hard. Those too are full of enmity. Men in rags are hateful, and also those who carry baskets on their heads or roll barrels. The world is full of hostile and redoubtable things.

Finally our subscribers will be happy to have in this volume format the speech delivered by M. Anatole France, member of the Academie Francaise, President of the Section of the quarter of the Porte-Dauphine (sixteenth arrondissement), at the extraordinary general assembly of April 20, 1902, of the French League for the Defense of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

Citizens,

There is a little nursery tale that one finds among all peoples. It is that of the marvelous wrestler. In a Lorraine version, I believe, of this tale, the wrestler, when he is vanquished in his natural form, metamorphoses into a dragon; then, felled under this new form, he changes into a duck. I remembered the marvelous wrestler while reading the programs posted on the walls by the nationalists. We had seen them, in the streets and boulevards, these nationalists, spewing flames from their eyes, their jaws and their nostrils. Dreadful dragons, they spread their wings and their horrible claws. Yet they were vanquished, and now they are reborn, for another fight, with smooth feathers, an air of familiarity, a domestic and peaceful voice. What a marvelous transformation!

Under their first figure, you remember, citizens, they were Hippogriffs and Tarasques; they were giants, ogres hungry for human flesh. They spoke only of “debraining” peaceful citizens. They went through the streets bludgeoning republicans, under the friendly gaze and tender smile of M. Meline. And under this fecund smile, nationalism grew.

How, in so little time, have the nationalists been able to change so completely their manners and language? They are no longer recognizable; they no longer wish to kill anyone; they no longer speak of debraining citizens. They are seen with no more clubs. They respect parliamentary institutions.

Citizens, it is the procession of the League that passes. You have seen, three years ago, the first banners file past. Monks wearing armor over their hitched-up frocks, sorbonagres hurling demagogic pamphlets at the stunned crowd. Now it is the candidates who file past, sweet, honeyed, unctuous and small, small, small to slip through the slot of the ballot boxes.

It is the procession of the League that passes. It is the army of monks. These people are all in the service of monks. When they tell you they are republicans, it is the Republic of the monks they intend to give you; when they claim liberty, it is the liberty for monks to escape the law.

Citizens, you will vote, against the nationalists, for the candidates who are truly and inwardly republican. You will give your votes to the candidate who, radical, radical-socialist or socialist, claims true liberty, the one that recognizes no liberty against itself. You will carry them boldly to those who endeavor to institute social justice in its fullness and to prepare universal peace through the union of workers.

You will vote for the candidates of reason and science, of peace and justice, of noble hopes and high thoughts.

Finished printing three thousand copies for the first edition on Thursday May 1, 1902, at the Imprimerie de Suresnes (E. Payen, administrator), 9, rue du Pont.

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