Society And its Purpose
Book 4 - Psychological Laws and the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 19
Continuation — The third system, in addition to the systems of resistance and movement
665. The systems of resistance and movement were applied, and experience judged them. The effect of the system of resistance was to pave the way for the system of movement. Though seemingly contradictory, this is true. If we want human beings to give themselves up to unbridled freedom, all we need do is over-restrain them. If we want them to produce insane, convulsive movements, we need only insist on perfect quiet. Whether they are restrained or forcibly kept quiet, the effect of their movement and of their freedom from unnatural repressions will be violent, disordered and blind. They can be subdued only much later, after working off the powerful will for action that everyone feels. In the meantime, unrest will seem the best thing in the world, and become the political system of movement. This was the system in the last century; the system of resistance belonged to preceding centuries
666. If the system of resistance naturally produces the system of movement, what does movement produce? In practice, it produces a third political system, a declared enemy of all progress towards civilisation and of society, the system of Rousseau.
First of all, authors conceived the principle that becoming civilised consists in perpetual motion. It was then thought that this movement of all the people would suffice to achieve the perfection of society; it did not matter whether they moved forwards or backwards, straight ahead or sideways, in an orderly way or jammed together.
Next, the theory became reality. No one could remain quietly at their work any longer : everybody without exception had to be up and about replacing their neighbour, hyperactive, confused and driven by the intense stimuli of their ardent, implacable passions. After seeing all this, what thoughts will eventually penetrate the hearts of the exhausted actors and spectators? Having often heard what everyone was already thinking - that perfection, civilisation and progress is simply the rough conflict of the perpetual motion they see, whose knocks and unpleasantness they experience, and to which they retaliate as much as they can - it will be quite natural for them to become enemies of human perfectibility, social progress and the attainment of civilisation.
It was in the 18th century that the system of movement produced its effects in the human spirit and in a dissolute society that vainly passed off its profound moral corruption as civilised refinement. It should come as no surprise therefore that Rousseau, the perfect 18th century man, `was forced to agree that this distinctive, almost unlimited faculty of perfectibility was the source of all human troubles.' It was impossible for him not to have the confused idea of perfectibility common to his century; he could define perfectibility only as `the faculty which, with the passage of time, reveals the insights and errors, the vices and virtues of human beings, and ultimately turns people into tyrants over themselves and nature.(298)
We see here how perfectibility is confused with deteriorability. Rousseau is defining the general motion and development of human beings and society rather than the motion and development which perfect people. Once again, we are not surprised to find that human beings, saddened and disillusioned by all that is called the way to civilisation (it was really corruption), should regret the faculty, so badly understood by their times, of perfecting themselves.
This faculty had drawn human beings out of their innate stupidity and ignorance, a primitive state in which they would not have differed from animals. Like animals, however, they would have roamed the forests at least contented and innocent.(299)
667. We can now see the link between the three exclusive systems under discussion, each of which successively dominates. Human beings take care first of all to preserve what they have. Those who possess good things and power want to stop time; they fight energetically against it in order not to lose what in fact time will carry off. This is the system of resistance which, while it tends to conserve, sins both through excessive desire to preserve everything old and through the means used for this end. The means employed become more and more stringent and arbitrary and therefore more violent and hostile to the natural, legitimate progress of human affairs. Eventually, humanity in its unbearable frustration sunders its bonds like a maddened beast and leaps forward.
668. Immediately, however, the system of movement appears. Engendered by anger rather than reason, it also sins through excess, making society function without any moral purpose. Because the restrictions have been shattered, everybody thinks that all has been achieved; they are content with movement (the means), but neglectful of good (the end). The fact that they are moving is sufficient to make them think they have all that is necessary for the journey. But their hopes are not fulfilled: the most they obtain from the random movement is only an apparent, superficial refinement. Interiorly they remain deeply corrupt; the entire society, dressed outwardly like a society lady in fine, delicate attire, conceals its open, infected wounds.
These wounds are levity, pride, falsity and rank, calculated dissolution. But the society has a thousand courtesans who praise its practices and enjoy its wayward customs. Finally someone, perhaps from among those who had been happy to go along with society, is disaffected and weary of its smug appearances. He loudly proclaims the hidden defects of his former lover, revealing the rotten, decaying interior under cover of the finery. All are invited to witness the corruption. For Rousseau and people like him, the cities are like fetid tombs, which they desert contemptuously for the ancient forest. And from their contempt they form a political system, stranger but no more culpable than the other two, claiming that they must completely destroy the illegitimate system produced by movement.
669. The first of these three systems can be called the system of excessive conservation, the second, the system of excessive production, and the third, the system of destruction. We need not stop to consider the last, which is more a lamentation than a system. We will take the first two and continue to consider them relative to contentment of spirit.
Notes
(298) Discours sur l'inégalité. - Rousseau was greatly blamed for having said, `Human beings are born good; society corrupts them'. Understood literally, the statement certainly contains two exaggerations. On the one hand, it exalts exaggeratedly the origin of human beings; on the other, it undervalues society by recognising its power to debase, but not perfect human beings. But we must remember that the words of Jean Jacques are those of an impassioned orator; we cannot expect to find philosophical exactitude or the rigour of truth in them. Wishing to debase society, he exalts the human being; straightaway, forgetting or not caring what he has said, he acknowledges initial human corruption. If he thinks he has an opportunity to let his eloquence shine, he does not fail to exaggerate the innate corruption of our species. In the discourse I have quoted (Discours à l'Académie de Dijon) he says, `Human beings are wicked. They would have been worse if they had the misfortune to be born learned.' Elsewhere: `Before art had purified our behaviour and taught our passions to speak becoming language, our mores were primitive but natural. Difference in behaviour indicated at first sight a difference in character. BASICALLY, HUMAN NATURE WAS NOT AT ALL BETTER, but people found their safety in the ease with which they knew each other. This benefit, whose value we do not appreciate, protected them from many vices.'
(299) Ibid.