3 March 1879 – 9 March 1879

The sensible politician is governed by considerations of social utility, the public good, the greatest attainable good; the political windbag starts from the idea of the rights of the individual—abstract rights, of which the extent is affirmed, not demonstrated, for the political right of the individual is precisely what is in question. The revolutionary school always forgets that right apart from duty is a compass with one leg. The notion of right inflates the individual fills him with thoughts of self and of what others owe him, while it ignores the other side of the question, and extinguishes his capacity for devoting himself to a common cause. The state becomes a shop with self-interest for a principle—or rather an arena, in which every combatant fights for his own hand only. In either case self is the motive power. Church and state ought to provide two opposite careers for the individual; in the state he should be called on to give proof of merit—that is to say, he should earn his rights by services rendered; in the church his task should be to do good while suppressing his own merits, by a voluntary act of humility. Extreme individualism dissipates the moral substance of the individual. It leads him to subordinate everything to himself, and to think the world; society, the state, made for him. I am chilled by its lack of gratitude, of the spirit of deference, of the instinct of solidarity. It is an ideal without beauty and without grandeur. But, as a consolation, the modern zeal for equality makes a counterpoise for Darwinism, just as one wolf holds another wolf in check. Neither, indeed, acknowledges the claim of duty. The fanatic for equality affirms his right not to be eaten by his neighbor; the Darwinian states the fact that the big devour the little, and adds—so much the better. Neither the one nor the other has a word to say of love, of eternity, of kindness, of piety, of voluntary submission, of self-surrender. All forces and all principles are brought into action at once in this world. The result is, on the whole, good. But the struggle itself is hateful because it dislocates truth and shows us nothing but error pitted against error, party against party; that is to say, mere halves and fragments of being—monsters against monsters. A nature in love with beauty cannot reconcile itself to the sight; it longs for harmony, for something else than perpetual dissonance. The common condition of human society must indeed be accepted; tumult, hatred, fraud, crime, the ferocity of self-interest, the tenacity of prejudice, are perennial; but the philosopher sighs over it; his heart is not in it; his ambition is to see human history from a height; his ear is set to catch the music of the eternal spheres.