APPENDIX: MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS

Great Questions to be Discussed Philosophically.—It seems to me that it is only by treating the matter in its whole length and breadth, and by developing in their natural order all the principles involved, that we can determine what is the best; for it is always with the best that we must concern ourselves in theory. To neglect this research, under the pretext that the best is not practicable in existing circumstances, is attempting to solve two questions at one operation; it is to miss the advantage of placing the questions in the simplicity that can alone render them susceptible of demonstration; it is to throw ourselves without a clue into an inextricable labyrinth, or rather it is to shut our eyes wilfully to the light, by placing ourselves in the impossibility of finding it. (Memoir "Sur les impositions,” 1764.)

Freedom of Thought.—In directing the forces of your mind to the discovery of new truths, you fear to go astray. You prefer to remain quietly in the opinions most generally received, whatever they may be. That is as much as to say that you should not walk beyond doors, for fear that you might stumble and break your legs. But in that case you are in the position of him whose legs are already lamed, for yours are useless to you. And for what has God given limbs to man, if not to walk with them; or given him reason, if not to make use of it?

It is not error that opposes so much the progress of truth; it is indolence, obstinacy, the spirit of routine, everything that favors inaction.

I do not admire Columbus merely for having said: “The earth is round; then in advancing toward the west I shall meet the land again,” because the most simple things are often the most difficult to find. But what characterizes a great soul is the confidence in which it abandons itself to an unknown sea on the faith of a reasoning. What genius and enthusiasm there would be in that man to whom a recognized truth gave such courage! In many other careers the tour of the world is still to be made. Truth is for us everywhere, in like manner, on our road; glory and the happiness of being useful are at the end.

Political Doctrines Subject to Modification.—Every kind of light comes to us only through time. The slower its progress is, the further the object (carried along by the rapid movement that distances or approaches all existing things) is already distant from the place in which we think we see it. Before we have learned to deal with things in a fixed position, they have already changed several times. Thus we always perceive events too late, and policy has always the necessity to foresee, so to speak, the present.

Discoveries Made by Accident.—The observation, by a thinking man, of a fact which strikes him, and from which he knows how to draw the useful consequences—this is what produces discoveries. We call the meeting of this fact with this man a chance. It is evident that these chances would be always more frequent if men were better instructed and had their reasoning powers more cultivated…. It is 2,500 years since medals were struck by first engraving, the reverse way, the inscriptions desired to be made on them, and it is only three hundred years since it was thought of to print on paper, with characters engraved, in the same way. The step seems very short; it took twenty-two centuries.

The End of Government.—Since it is admitted that the interests of nations and the success of a good government reduce themselves to a sacred respect for the liberty of persons and of labor, to the inviolable maintenance of the rights of property, to justice between all, from which conditions necessarily result a greater production of things useful to man, the increase of wealth, and of enjoyments, and of enlightenment and all the means of happiness, may we not hope that some day all the present chaos will evolve into some distinct cosmos, in which the elements will have become co-ordinated, and that the science of government will then become easy, and will cease to be beyond the reach of men endowed with only ordinary good sense? This is the term to which we should arrive. (“Pensées et fragments,” 1750.)

Mere Physical Courage.—We err in judging the merit of actions by their apparent difficulty, and in preferring the courage of a soldier, who exposes his life, to that of a man who follows reason in spite of prejudice. We do not realize that the effort of the latter comes entirely from himself. He walks, and often alone; the former is carried, and along with others. Men are children, who cannot take a step quite alone on the smoothest road. And whither may they not be led, through what dangerous paths, to what precipices, by the leading-strings of fashion and of public opinion! One may have sufficient courage of mind, and yet not desire to expose himself to a useless death. And those who have enough good sense not to desire a useless death for themselves, and enough virtue not to inflict it on other innocent people, are generally the most fit to brave death and to receive it nobly when the service of their fellow-creatures and the defense of their country are really concerned.

Certainty Attainable in all Sciences.—We are never deceived in mathematics. If by inadvertence a geometer falls into an error, it is easy to convince him of it, or at least no one will be deceived after him. I venture to believe that, with more pains taken, we may arrive at the same point in the other sciences; that there is no dispute on which, in time, men cannot come to an agreement—for a dispute would be at an end when demonstrated to be incapable of decision…. There is no reason to doubt that new discoveries or further advancement of the human mind will some day render very clear the contested points and will, over them, arrive at evident and irresistible science. (“Observations et pensées diverses,” n.d.)

Study of Languages the Best Lesson in Logic.—The study of languages, well carried out, would be perhaps the best of logics. In analyzing, in comparing the words of which they are composed, in following them from their formation up to the different significations which have been afterward attributed to them, we recognize the thread of ideas, we see by what degrees, by what shades of meaning, men have passed from one to the other; we seize the connection and analogy which exist between them, we succeed in discovering which of them were presented first to man’s thought, and what order they kept in the combination of the primitive ideas. This kind of experimental metaphysics is at the same time the history of the mind of the human race and of the progress of its ideas, always proportioned to the needs which have called them forth. (“Réflexions sur les langues,” 1756.)

Geography and History.—If we include in geography the state of nations, as the title of political geography seems to require, there is very little to add to geography of the different epochs, to form from them universal history, beyond the names and actions of some special men. In a word, history and geography place men in their different distances. The one expresses the distances of space, the other those of time. The bare description of a country on the one side, and the dry record of successive years on the other, are as the canvas on which objects are to be represented. Ordinary geography and chronology determine their situation; history and political geography paint them in their true colours. Political geography is, if I may call it so, the coupe of history. (“Géographie politique,” 1750.)

Paternal Government.—The comparison between the magistrate and the father of a family, legitimate in some respects, ought not to be pushed too far. The father is necessarily the tutor of his children, he ought not only to direct them in all things belonging to social duties, but in those things which belong to private life. The magistrate leaves, and ought to leave, to private individuals the choice of the advantages personal to them. They have no need of him, and it would be impossible for him rightly to direct them there; the exercise of his authority is limited [to checking the encroachments of the individual upon the rights of others]. Besides, in those things having no relation to general society, where the private happiness of children is concerned, I shall always maintain that the duty of parents is limited to simple advice. It is the fashion of thinking otherwise which has made the young so unhappy for the rest of their life, which has brought about so many forced marriages, without reckoning the many unsuitable vocations. Every exercise of authority that goes beyond what is really necessary is a tyranny.

Clerical Intolerance.—The dogma of infallibility is certainly false, or inapplicable, when the exercise of infallibility is conferred on those who are certainly not infallible, that is to say, on princes or on governments, for then spring forth two necessary consequences, intolerance and the oppression of the people by the clergy, and the oppression of the clergy by the Crown. The Albigensian wars and the Inquisition established in Languedoc, the St. Bartholomew, the League, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the raid against the Jansenists,—see what has come from that maxim: one law, one faith, one king. I acknowledge the good that Christianity has given to the world, but the greatest of its benefits has been in having enlightened and propagated natural religion. Besides, the greatest number of Christians maintain that Christianity is not Catholicism, and the most enlightened, the best Catholics, admit that it is still less intolerance. They are in this in accord with other sects truly Christian, for the characteristic signs of Christianity are, and are bound to be, gentleness and love.

Church and State.—You ask me to what I reduce protection which the State ought to accord to the dominant religion. I reply that, to speak accurately, no religion has any right to exact any other protection than liberty. It follows from the principle of tolerance that no religion has any right except on the submission of the [individual] conscience. The interest of each man is isolated with regard to salvation, he has in his conscience only God for witness and for judge. The laws of society have no relation but to those interests in pursuit of which men can help each other, where they can balance one interest against another. But in [actually determining one’s own] religion the help of other men is impossible, and the sacrifice of one’s own interest in this respect is a crime. The State, society, men incorporated, have as such no right to adopt arbitrarily a religion, for a religion is founded only on a personal conviction.

The Religion of Humanity.—Natural religion formed into a system and accompanied by a worship.

Individual Freedom.—Laws (according to some thinkers) are the articles of a treaty by which the parties who form it are united. The laws are the result of the interest of the greater or the stronger number, who compel the smaller or the weaker number to observe these laws, that is to surrender themselves to the will of the stronger. Laws, they say, approach the nearer to perfection by the degree in which they embrace the interests of the greater number of men, and in which they favor all more equally, because it is only then that the equilibrium is established between all the interests and all the forces. According to this system, to say that a man has not the right to oppress another man is to say that this other has the strength to resist the oppression. True morality knows other principles. It regards all men with the same eye. It recognizes in all an equal right to happiness, and recognizes this equality of right, not as founded on the struggle of forces between different individuals, but as founded on the destination of the nature of man and on the goodness of Him who has formed man. Hence, whoever oppresses another opposes himself to the divine order. The use he makes of his power is but an abuse. Hence the distinction between might and right—in a word, all intelligent beings have been created for an end; this end is happiness, and on this is founded the right of everyone to the heritage. It is according to the exercise of these divine rights to fulfil man’s destiny that God judges men, and not according to their powers…. Thus the strong has no right over the weak…. Every convention contrary to these natural rights has no other authority than the right of the stronger; it is a real tyranny. We may be oppressed by a single tyrant, but we may, quite as much and as unjustly, be oppressed by a multitude. Liberties, like properties, are limited, the one by the others. The liberty to injure has never been sanctioned by conscience. The law ought to interdict it, because the conscience of mankind condemns it. On the other side, the liberty to act while not injuring can be restrained only by laws really tyrannical.

In matters of government we are too much given to sacrifice the happiness of individuals to the presumed rights of society. We forget that society is made up of individuals, that it is instituted to protect the rights of all, by insuring the fulfilment of all the relative duties. (“Lettres sur la tolérance,” 1753.)

Free Trade.—The idea that the duties we put, either on our own commodities exported, or on foreign commodities imported, are paid by the foreigner is a chimera, for the foreigner sells his merchandise to any one nation at the same price he gets for it from other nations, the duty of import resting necessarily at the charge of the nation establishing it. A government intending to establish certain national manufactures by laying duties on merchandise or raw materials imported, favors these manufactures only at the expense of all others of the nation [and of all consumers]. The manufacturing interest in general is not promoted, because, by placing obstructions to commerce, the development of manufactures is restrained…. All the presumed advantages of these combinations of duties in favor of national commerce against foreign commerce are illusory; all their disadvantages are reciprocal and are increased, the one side by the other. Foreigners employ the same means against our commerce. This “mercantile” and jealous policy is injurious to all States, without being useful to any; it makes of commerce, which should be a tie between nations, a new source of divisions and of wars. It is the interest of all peoples that commerce should be everywhere free and exempt from duties. The first nation giving to others the example of this enlightened and humane policy, by liberating its productions, its industry, its commerce from all prohibitions and all duties, will raise herself rapidly to the very highest prosperity, and will soon compel other nations to imitate her, to the great advantage of the whole world.

The American War.—M. de Vergennes places the problem before us, whether France and Spain should desire to see the subjection or the independence of the English colonies, and he observes that it is not within ordinary human foresight to prevent or to divert the dangers that must result from either event. This remark appears to me to be very just, because I believe that whatever may be, in this respect, the desire of the two crowns, nothing can hinder the course of events which must certainly lead, sooner or later, to the absolute independence of the English colonies, and by an inevitable consequence to a total revolution in the relations of Europe and America.

All Colonies Must Sooner or Later Make their own Laws.—To this all European nations with colonies must come, sooner or later, by agreement or by force. The independence of the English colonies will precipitate this inevitably. Then that delusion, which for two centuries has rocked the cradle of our politicians, will be dissipated. It is then we shall appreciate the exact value of colonies, called par excellence ”Colonies of Commerce,” all the wealth of which European nations believed they would appropriate by reserving for themselves the selling to them and buying from them exclusively. We shall see how precarious and how fragile was the power founded on this system of monopoly…. Wise and happy will be that nation the first to bend its policy to the new circumstances, to see in its colonies only allied provinces, and no longer subject to the mother-country. Wise and happy the nation the first to be convinced that all policy in point of commerce consists in employing all lands in the ways most advantageous for the possessors of the land, all hands in the way the most useful to the individual who works—that is to say, the way in which each man, guided by his own interest, would employ them if let alone—and that all else is illusion and vanity. When the total separation of America shall have compelled all the world to recognize this truth, and shall have corrected European nations of the jealousy of commerce, there will exist among men one great cause of war the less, and it is dù¾ difficult not to desire an event [the independence] which must bring about this benefit for the human race.

The Future of Colonies.—I firmly believe that all the mother-countries will be forced to abandon all empire over their colonies, to leave to them entire freedom of commerce with all nations, to content themselves in partaking along with the others this liberty, and in maintaining with their colonies the ties of friendship and fraternity. If it be an evil, I believe there exists, at all events, no means of preventing it, and that the only part to take is to submit to absolute necessity and to make the best of it. For those powers who should be so obstinate as to resist the course of events, there would be the very great danger that, after having been ruined by efforts beyond their means, they would see their colonies escape them all the same, and become their enemies instead of remaining their allies.

A Warning for Spain.—Unhappily there is reason to fear that Spain has less facility than any other power to abandon a road which she has followed for two centuries, and now to form a new system, adapted to a new order of things. Until now she has given her whole policy to maintain the multiplied prohibitions with which she has harassed her commerce…. Neither the ideas of her ministers, nor the opinions of the nation, nor the actual condition of her agriculture and her commerce, nor the constitution and administration of her colonies, nothing, in short, is prepared in advance in order to seize upon that opportunity of power of resolving to change, while change can be made, and of modifying the shock of change, and of the consequences it entails…. Nothing would be worthier the wisdom of the King of Spain and his council than to fix at present their attention on the possibility of this forced separation and on the measures to be taken to prepare for it.

Confidence in the Public Spirit of British America.—It is possible, if the war is prolonged, that the generals may take too much ascendancy by the glory they have acquired, by the enthusiasm they have inspired in their army. It is possible that, not daring to form projects to master a people intoxicated with liberty, recently gained through their courage, the leaders may still try to perpetuate their power and to prepare for a higher fortune at a future time, by insinuating the taste for conquests into their young republic…. We can, however, predict from the prudence that has as yet presided at the conduct of the Americans, from the courage and enlightenment diffused among them, and from their confidence in the wise counsels of the celebrated Franklin, that they have foreseen that danger, that they mean to protect themselves against it, and that they have decided, before all, to give a solid form to their government, and that consequently they will love peace and will seek to preserve it.

Reform for France Depends, “Perhaps For Ever,” on War Being Now Avoided.—The king knows the situation of his finances. He knows that in spite of the economies and the ameliorations already made since the commencement of his reign, there is between the revenue and the expenditure a deficiency of twenty millions…. There are three means of clearing off this deficit: an increase of taxes; a bankruptcy, more or less decided, more or less disguised; and a considerable economy in the expenditure as well as in the cost of tax-collection. The first economy ought to be that of expenditure…. While the king finds his finances involved and in disorder, his military and his marine are in a state of weakness difficult to be imagined….

By making a premature use of our strength we risk the perpetuating of our weakness…. War we ought to shun as the greatest of evils, since it will render impossible for a very long time, and perhaps for ever; the reform which is absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the State and for the relief of the people. (“Turgot’s last written State Paper,” 1776.)

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