We’re reposting here Gornahoor’s English translation of selections from Maurras’ My Political Ideas.
Principle I: Truth
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, of Mes Idées Politiques, by Charles Maurras.
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Yes sir, yes ma’am, because “speech is hard”, its efficacy will be sweet; because the book is “bitter to the tongue”, it will be invigorating and healing.
The signposts raised up on the road don’t show their direction in a sweet and florid style: they flaunt the style of their utility. Clear, direct, insistent, and authoritarian, they don’t say: “if I am mistaken”, they don’t doubt themselves, they do not excuse themselves from roughly throwing the direction arrows and the mile markers into the eyes of the people who pass. But does the traveler complain about it? As long as he has the heart of a philosopher, he gives thank to the author of profitable brutalities which he does not even feel tyrannized by.
It is his choice to slow down or step on the gas, to follow to change his direction. The milestone says what it is in clear terms, and what is necessary to take into account. The more that precise facts limit thought and, because of that narrow limit, the more that fantasies of the heart, wishes of the imagination, the needs, the amenities and personal interests will obtain safety and will be able to give themselves a career. An uncertain direction, a fact, whether vague or false, while appearing to flatter the arbitrariness of the walker, will restrict the freedom of his movements, of his rest, they will diminish his real powers, for the risks attached to the consequences of an indifferent or capricious itinerary will be increased by the insufficiency of his knowledge.
It is a great error to think that contingencies, as they say, accommodate themselves more easily to a lax and vacillating principle: to the contrary, all indecision of principles complicates the study of the facts, as well as their treatment; uncertainty thus is inserted at the sole point from where a little light could come to them, to the complexities of the earth shadows in the sky will be added.
Truth, a harsh but clear sun, is content to establish from above what is necessary to know and think before acting. It shows the good, it marks out the bad; it distinguishes the proportions following which the one and the other confront each other and mix in the infinite variety of our human events. Once so enlightened, man is far from having resolved the problems of practical life, but he has something to resolve them and if, as happens to him too frequently, he can choose only between evils, he will better discern which will be the least, his effort can be applied to avoiding the worst; that makes perhaps the greatest point of the government of oneself and others.
Not only is truth defended by what it has that is naturally general, elevated, abstract, and foreign to man, but in order to decide to ascend to it, a general impulse [élan] of thought beyond the present, a full calculation of the future, is necessary. In order to adhere to this truth that veils everything, in addition an effort of will imposing silence on many instincts is necessary.
Truth (I do not say sincerity, I say the whole truth, the agreement of language and thought with external realities), can still be something besides the highest delight of intelligence: it is the empowered sovereign, it is all powerful force.
Sincerity is not the truth. The most correct intention and the firmest will cannot create what it is not.
Let us not underestimate any virtue, but let us give justice to the obvious virtues. There is no smile, grimace, or chattering of beautiful spirits that can stand against them. The decisions that they lead to are serious, sometimes painful, in the life of the spirit; exterior life doesn’t always accommodate them, but the service that they render is such that they prevail over everything.
Truth is of value in itself. But there are bitter truths and sweet truths. There are useful and dangerous truths. There are those that are necessary to reserve only for the wise, and others which are suitable for the nourishment of all.
Some purely oratorical and mystical revolutionaries can believe that, fable or truth, it is always good enough for the people! We believe that the people have no needs less demanding than the elite. Truth is as necessary as bread. The historico-political lie poisons a people as absolutely as potassium cyanide.
A disdain which is not expressed does not take effect. To the contrary, an error and a lie that one does not take the trouble to unmask acquire little by little the authority of the true.
Principle II: Force
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, La Force, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras. To the principle of Truth, Mr. Maurras adds the principle of Force, without which the former is impotent. Yet, Force must be guided by sound judgment.
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There are despotic weaknesses, malicious stupidities, and losers worthy of being so, as there are beneficent winners, heroes of energy and power to whom humanity owes immense progress, giants of health and strength who have merited the blessing of the past and the future. Force in itself, bared of its adventitious and incidental characteristics, force which is still in the service of neither good nor evil, naked force and by itself a good, and very precious and very great since it is the expression of the activity of being. It is idiotic to want to ignore its benefits.
In order to deter harmful sophism, one cannot grow tired of repeating it: force by itself, reduced to itself, is a good. That does not mean that it always does good or there is not a greater good.
Good in itself, it is also capable of the greatest benefits like defending the country, punishing crime, avenging honor, or protecting innocence.
But as it is capable of everything, it needs a rule as the primary guaranty and, put into the service of the best cause, an order. Order contributes to render it entirely and completely effective. But order also restrains it in the service of what it claims to serve; order prevents it from turning against what is dear to it in spite of itself. All disordered force is exposed to this peril.
It is up to Reason to moderate force, that is to say, the sense of measure and intellectual proportions, there is this civic sense which adds to the higher orders of the spirit I don’t know what principle of cordiality, bonhomie, I would dare to say, of charity which does not desire the death of the guilty, but which desires, and very much desires, his rectification.
There remains also that clarity, that sincerity, the natural continuation of the rectitude of the spirit which permits neither hypocrisy nor disguise, but which marches straight ahead of ifself, head high and chest bare, this tranquil serenity which belongs to those who have freely assumed noble missions.
The theories of force are not at all in contradiction with the doctrine of solidarity and, anyway, human mutual aid needs to be strong to protect itself or to be protected against violence.
If there may be in the world force which is of value, it appears indispensable for it to be strong; if there is something else, if, as we think, there is something better, and much better, it is still more necessary to be strong and powerful to save or to develop these true goods.
Principle III: Order
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, L’Ordre, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras. Although he described himself as a pagan, the influence of Thomism on Charles Maurras is quite clear. Being and Order, for him, are coterminous. I don’t know the extent of Donoso Cortes’ influence on Maurras, but Maurras also rejects endless discussion, claiming that to debate order, which has a mathematical-like certainty, is a waste of time. To choose disorder (or chaos) is to choose death and annihilation. Man, such as he is, needs to hold firm to his fixed reference points (or road signs?); modernity, on the other hand, wants to knock over every one of them. Who is left to still remember them and celebrate them on the calendar?
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As no face could exist without the features that surround it and the line which contains it, as soon as the Being begins to move away from its opposite, as soon as the Being is, it has its form, it has its order, and it is that same thing from which it is limited that forms it. What existence is without essence? What is Being without law? In all the degrees of the scale, the Being weakens when order diminishes; it dissolves as soon as order no longer holds.
Order is only a means. It is a point of departure. To reestablish order restores an atmosphere favorable to the action of the spirit as well as that of the body. That order makes work possible or better. It guarantees it duration, supplies it with assistants or protectors.
Humane rule does not consist in killing, destroying, nor annihilating the subject whom it must, on the contrary, develop while maintaining him on his path.
The necessity to subordinate in order to coordinate and order, there is no rhetorical nonsense that can go against that mathematics!
To be conformed to order shortens and facilitates work. To contradict or debate order is to waste time.
Order, they say, is a higher justice.
For historical and political order, to have it is nothing, to hold it is nothing, if one is not also in a position to keep it.
In war as in peace, order is precious among all the goods. With its fake hardness, with its apparent strictness, it saves lives, as it measures and makes use of efforts.
The soldier who complains about the order is the enemy of himself. The blind kindness that joins in with this soldier is an enemy of the soldier. An unconscious and involuntary enemy; what does the intention matter if it sends him to his death?
Precisely because he is ungrateful and weak, because forgetfulness and fickleness are normal for him, man notices early on that it is necessary for him to look again, in Time that is constantly changing, for some points of fixed reference, for invariable points of support, whenever he wants to realize a plan of any importance, or he wants to be faithful to his goal and his love.
I deliberately write this last word, which only expresses the sentiment of persons; for if strong passions have their anniversary rites, if a return of certain dates leads to a natural return of thought to the joyful or sorrowful mysteries of the life of the heart, or even more so, when it is no longer a question of a sole being, but of a society, a religion, a cause, then will it be necessary to immortalize happy or gloomy memories on their dates.
Do not forget: this is the starting point of all order and all law.
Principle IV: Authority (Its Nature)
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, L’Autorité, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras. This principle will appear in three installments.
Nature of Authority
The idea that authority can be constructed from below would not have come into the head of our grandparents who were wise.
It is not made, in truth, from below nor from above.
Authority is born. In individuals, families, peoples, it is a gift which the will of men has very little to see.
The most vulgar observation is totally in accord here with the Catholic text omnis potestas a Deo [all power comes from God]. In one of the oldest “Letters to Françoise”, Mr. Marcel Prevost reminds his niece how, after having passed her baccalaureate, she knew she was obliged to show the secretary of the Faculty her notes, regardless of the rules of the University and the laws of the State. “You have a great gift, Françoise, it is authority,” observed Uncle Marcel sententiously. Did he believe so well what he observed. Did he follow through what he observed?
Authority, seized thus at its birth, is something simple and pure. Certain human types possess it, the others are devoid of it.
In leaving aside those who know only how to submit, the man of liberty, recognizable in the pride of a heart that nothing crushes, differs from the one who is characterized by dignity and inspires above all respect: the man of authority differs from the other two. His liberty imposes itself naturally on the liberty of others, his dignity is radiant, it leads and carries. It is neither respect nor admiration—inert feelings—it is an enthusiastic submissiveness which responds to him.
Far from being irrational, instinctive wishes move more quickly than conscious reason, and perceptive logic is not more lacking than the passions of a great love. The author of La Vita Nuova tells us that at his first sight of Beatrice his heart begins to beat in him impetuously, which Dante develops and explains in these terms:
The spirit of life that reside in the most secret vault of the heart begins to tremble with so much force that the movement is made to be felt again in my smallest veins and, trembling, it says these words: ‘Ecce deus fortiori me, qui veniens dominabitur me.’ Here is that God stronger than I, he is going to dominate me. Then, the animal spirit, which is hidden in its high vault where all sensitive spirits go to carry their perception, began to be greatly surprised and, addressing itself particularly to the spirits of the sight, says these words: ‘Apparuit jam beatitude nostra.’ Our bliss has appeared.
It is necessary to reread all that penetrating and poetic analysis which is of an age where the laziest sophisms from Germany and the Jews [Freud] had not imposed on the European West a ridiculous philosophy of the unconscious. What was unconscious, one brought it to consciousness. What eludes the first grasp of reason, a more subtle reason pulls out in the night.
This explanation of the strong premonitions of a loving heart, such as Dante gives us, can be applied to the instinctive transports of an obedient soul before the authority that he judges to suit him: a quick judgment grants him to conceive that it will be good for him to serve that force conceived as useful and beneficial, whose order presages protection, justice, or victory. There is a taste in it of the beginning of a mysterious good. By what sign is it known? That is the great difficulty. Certain military leaders make themselves obeyed by genius, others by bravery, others by a type of mystical faith. The exterior and brilliant gifts of a Condé can add the magic of the example to it, but some generals carried on litters have radiated the same prestige.
Henry Fouqier, who was part of the Thousand [who conquered Sicily as part of the unification of Italy], loved to tell that the aging Garibaldi inflamed his band by saying to them in a whisper, from the base of his carriage where rheumatism confined him, a simple: “Gentlemen, move ahead!” So many passions of hope and confidence sleep in the human soul! Little suffices a little in order to make them rise from it, but this nothing is indispensable and no convention, no arrangement, no artifice of will can take the place of the first natural gift.
Authority is of the same order as virtue or genius or beauty.
The most learned cogs have never replaced authority born …
The French of the tenth century had settled down around the race which, for a hundred years or more, had always defended them effectively. Where did that race come from, from what heaven had it fallen on the country? Immigrant Saxons or native rural lords or even descendants of bourgeois Parisians, scholarship does not stop discussing it. They do not discuss the authority acquired little by little by their fortuitous power nor the benefit of their dynasty nor its constant happiness.
It expresses for centuries a power or protection and increase, it represents everything that the heart and spirit of men, isolated or reunited, wait for, hope for, and believe about a true authority.
True authority is naturally wise; an insane authority is not conceivable. The idea of authority does not mean, indeed, only the power and the great power exercised by a man or a group of men, but all the more, it confines the knowledge of the object on which this power is exercised and applied. The more the authority believes, the more this knowledge itself is developed. The more authority is perfect, the more it assumes the clarity and the exactitude of that knowledge, and the more it proportions itself in it.
Authority would not be an eternal political necessity if, at the same time as that guiding instinct which constitutes the bottom of the soul of the leaders, there did not exist in the soul of the subjects and the citizens an instinct of obedience, “spirit of following,” said Richelieu, who is the living expression of the greatest interest of the crowds: to be governed and well governed, in a good sense, with firmness.
Authority (Its Conditions)
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, L’Autorité, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras.
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The development of what is called modern civilization tends increasingly favour material forces over moral forces.
If we rely on it in order to achieve social justice or the improvement of morals, we set ourselves up for considerable deceptions! That civilization equalizes neither wealth nor conditions: on the contrary, its complexity never ceases increasing the differences between men. It does not liberate: the authority of science and industry will tend instead to establish new races of slaves. Finally, far from pacifying and reconciling, its needs are so demanding that they seem to intersect at a right angle, to destroy or deny everything that is human.
Neither the game of supply and demand which continues capitalism, nor the principle of nationalities which created our armed peace, nor class warfare, by which the insurgent masses respond to the starvation brought by capitalism, would know how to spread in the modern world an ambiance of a sheepfold. We would be rather be pushed back among the antisocial wolves and pressured to live, by categories of class or race, according to the custom of the wolves. The inherited veneer of customs peels off little by little, the vestiges of general traditions disappear, and the statistics of criminality show what inevitably results from it.
Consider the progress of athletics (which could make, in a well ruled society, an admirable school of discipline and elegance), the passion (otherwise excellent in itself) of winning and prevailing in violent games, the new instruments created by science and those who apply them: this proliferation of ancient forces and these new means put in the service of powers without restraint only have to give their lessons: the moralist, with a thousand signs, sees brutality reborn.
As to the language of our contemporaries, I speak of the best, of those who are elevated, if not highly elevated, men and women, that it comes back to primitive onomatopoeia, if we “let come to grips with life”, forces, destinies.
In the regime of brutality, there are neither leaders nor orders, nor even order, without its necessary hierarchy which is lacking. The massacres of September had leaders. It is not orders that the executioner lacked from the Duke of Enghien or Bishop Darboy. It is not necessary to complain about our times in this regard.
Class differences are more marked than they have been for a half century, the arrogance and despotism of the authorities would rather be on the way to grandeur. What is lacking in the directing spirits is that light which is the sign of the right to lead. The leaders remain and their power increases, but those are barbaric leaders left to the impulses of passion or interest. They command, they lead, because their troops will it, but they command poorly and lead wrongly, the mistake being learned.
They themselves also are, still more than these proletarian masses for which they feign a very vivid interest, the really underprivileged.
The intellectual and moral treasure, whose task of collecting that inheritance belongs to them, was disdained and finally lost. Thus the spirit of liberal democracy used it, which disorganized the country from above; borrowing the language of progress, pretending to possess the promises of the future, it abandoned the sole instrument of progress, which is tradition, and the only seed of the future, which is the past.
The history of the Third Republic can suffice to show the harm that there can be to surrender legislation, armies, the economy, diplomacy, and all the forms of authority and influence to those spirits without direction and without culture, to those hearts without self-mastery and without dignity.
The symmetric history of conservative England, where everyone who governed and served in the top jobs had undergone the hard and long intellectual and moral preparation in the old universities, with a lot of Greek verses and Latin discourses, confirms how certain it is that the real happiness of the people depends on the good training of their leaders. The sword of the conqueror, the baton of the founder, even the pencil of the stockbroker, all these modalities of strength and cunning can and must bring about great benefits to the condition of having passed the necessary time under the strict rule of the educator. Everything that they take away from the rule, is not taken away from the rule nor from the authority which holds it: that is entrenched in the entire mass of the people; it is the nation and the human race who are the first dispossessed.
The lessening of the common intellectual and moral assets is a loss for everyone: the least will lose as much as the great.
They will even lose much more than the great, because that which perfects, refines, elevates the great, constitutes, to the profit of the others, the most precious, and often the only, guarantee against the abuses of power which greatness is precisely exposed to. Certain nuances of virtue and honor, certain beautiful persuasive accents of the voice which commands are the direct fruits of the sole education.
It is like that of religion.
Whoever said that a religion was necessary for the people spoke complete nonsense. Religion is necessary, education is necessary, a set of powerful brakes is necessary for the leaders of the people, for is advisors, its chiefs, due to the very function of direction and restraint that they are called to keep from it: if the passions of the human beast are to be feared for all, it will be to dread in the proportion that the beast will play with stronger powers and will be able to devastate a more extended field of action.
All liberty is not suitable in every State; each State depends on its historic antecedents and it geographic position like each man on his ancestors and his country. Salutary and tutelary dependencies, since they gave life, sustain it, and conserve it, and whoever rejects it, dies. Liberty varies with time and place, but this is no State which can last without a sovereign authority.
Therefore, if we want to speak with exactitude, it is not liberty which is general and necessary, an ecumenical, basic, and human right; it is authority.
Authority (Its Exercise)
From Chapter II, “Principles”, L’Autorité, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras.
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The property of power resembles other properties; it results from work, from work done and “done well”. Totally naked force can be applied for good and for evil, for construction, for destruction. When it did the good, when it constructed, it has merit from it, it has prestige and glory from it, it also sees the birth from it of this product which is called authority.
A power vacuum resembles the vacancy of a field. Whoever wants it, takes it; whoever is able to, holds onto it.
When there is a power vacuum it is, as Joan of Arc said, a great pity for the kingdom. And it is a great misfortune. To seize power in that case, if one has the strength, is simply an act of charity and humanity. A people needs a leader like a man needs bread. Not only, in such a hypothetical situation, is the right of first occupancy established, but there is a rigorous duty, a strict obligation for those who can occupy. When citizens are threatened by the enemy, it is necessary to command them if one can do it. When disorder is in the street, it is necessary to restore it back to order if one has the means.
Power is not an idea, it is a fact, and one believes in this fact when it makes itself felt; all criticism by the world can do nothing against the strength of a conqueror.
Most moralizers, who have confused minds, judged that power corrupted the heart of man. When power is elevated and lasts, when it lasts a little, the effect is totally the opposite; the learning of responsibilities matures and their experience perfects, rather than ruins, them.
Principle V: Freedom
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, La Liberté, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras.
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Freedom is not at the beginning, but at the end. It is not at the root, but in the flowers and the fruits of human nature or, better said, human virtue. A man is freer in the proportion that he is better. This evolution is necessary. Our men believed they credited themselves with the prize of the effort by a Declaration of their famous rights, by displaying in their city halls and their schools, in their ministries and churches that that prize is acquired without effort. But to display everywhere that that everyone is born a millionaire, would everyone earn a shadow of a million?
Will you say that it is a right to freedom? The right to the million would not be more futile.
Freedom, a metaphysical principle, is one thing: freedoms are something else. The will of the people, the sum of individual wills, is one thing; the general will, the expression of the general interest of a nation, a race, a country is another thing, totally different.
The freedom of the crowd is called folly, that of a stupid person, stupidity, that of the crook, crime, that of the traitor, treason, and so forth. To say that freedoms limit each other is totally correct in the savage state or the state of anarchy: that simply means that the strong oppress or exploit the weak as long as the weak do not revolt against the strong and that potential victims did not find a sure process to snipe at and strafe their tormenters at will. Freedom conceived as regime or as principle, is a generally painful chaos.
Citizens who have reflected a little therefore do not let themselves be intimidated by the effects of words. They define freedom as a power or a force, a force or power that is worth what its subjects and its object are worth. The eternal ridicule of the 18th and 19th century consists in taking freedom for a rule or for a goal when it is only a means or the material.
Freedom lives in few men.
Whoever says real freedom says authority. Testamentary freedom creates the authority of the head of the family. Communal or provincial freedom creates the real power of the social authorities who live and reside in the place. Religious freedom recognizes the authority of spiritual laws and the internal hierarchy of a religion. Trade union and professional freedom devotes the authority of the disciplines and rules to the interior of corporations and professional organizations.
These are the observable facts.
If, however, in place of observing, one withdraws into himself to reflect, he realizes that the very nature of positive freedom—that which is not conceived by the relationship to an obstacle to surmount—freedom is the power.
Social issues are exercised in society and have as their point of application not marble, as the power of a sculptor, nor the machine, as the power of a mechanic, but by men engaged with us in social life.
What then is a freedom? A power.
Whoever can do nothing at all is not free at all. Whoever can do rather poorly is poorly free. Whoever can do infinitely is also infinitely free. One of the forms of power is wealth. Another of its forms is influence, it is physical force, it is intellectual and moral force. On what are these various powers exercised in various ways? On men. And that power, to whom does it belong? To men. When human freedom is found at its highest point and it met human objects to which to apply and impose itself, what name does it take? Authority. An authority is therefore only a freedom reaching its perfection.
Far from the idea that authority contradicts the idea of freedom, it is, on the contrary, its completion and complement. The freedom of a father of a family is an authority. The freedom of a religious confession is an authority. There are still the authorities as freedom of an association, the freedom of a commune, of a given province.
When one wishes that the State respects private initiative in the economic order, one fundamentally demands that it respects what Le Play named with a beautiful expression: the social authorities. All real freedoms, defined and practical, are of authorities. Freedom opposed to authority; freedom which consists in not being affected by others, but also to not affect them, that neutral freedom is not compatible with nature nor with the order of life.
Principle VI: Rights and Laws
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, Le Droit et la Loi, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras. This is part one of two.
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I always believed that the privilege of rights also represents the privilege of duties.
The experience of the nature of things established that the domain of common law is very limited and that there is, on the contrary, a multitude of private rights. Each group of men, which has its distinctive life, deserves a distinctive treatment. Whoever “favors” himself wants to be treated for his own benefit, and when this wish is not granted, the subject suffers, first of all, in the body which he is a part of, and secondarily in himself, due to the disrepute and the slackening which, by all necessity, affects that body.
Right, in order to be imposed and even to subsist, requires that it be exercised, that it be sustained, that it be published. It presupposes activity or it fades, little by little, in the blood and ashes of massacred men and burnt buildings, then in the sublime cold of these empty spaces where the raised voice of the most passionate of the rhetors is going to die out.
That is what the rhetors will never understand. They spend their life personifying “the right”. But men of action and men of analysis ask themselves what this person without subject, this right without a living substrate, can be,: in their turn, by not understanding the antithesis that lingers everywhere, this right that they oppose to force, this force that they want to make the opposite of the right! It makes as much sense to put the triangle and a color in opposition. There are colored triangles, there can be colors spread on triangular surfaces. I do not conceive a right that would be abstract, which would be separated from a moral or material person in whom it exists, and that is to say, from a force.
There is force, more or less strong, which is right; there is force, more or less strong, which is wrong. But a rational being who, without any force, would be the right or would have the right: that is what I cannot conceive.
The right, which needs force in order to be recognized, needs it even more in order to be.
Legal reasoning starts from the principles of the Just and the Unjust, its first notions already represent the second or the third power of a high abstraction, and its definitions, if extensive, are necessarily fluctuating when it is about adapting their generality to practical life: among the multitude of particular facts, often very different, and which sometimes contradict each other, the spirit is more or less inevitably induced to lose sight of the impersonal reasons to stop its choice or even to lead its attention. It is then that, for lack of impersonal reasons, others appear: the personal motive suddenly appears, active and vigilant, and the idea of the right no longer remains clarified and guided except by the idea of the “me”, by this “me” which is not without rights, but which claims to have them all and which instinctively steers the processes of thought towards its sole interest, sometimes understood in a tyrannical sense but always, to some degree, unconcerned with a good order, unconsciously favorable to some anarchy.
May the heavens protect me from saying that the Right leads to anarchy, he who wants, on the contrary, to rule it and pacify it! But he is a born warrior. In my opinion, the preference given to the legal method over the empirical method must belong to flourishing societies, strongly based on the principles which erupt from all sides and are obeyed by everyone.
Separate man from his family, his nation, his trade, tell him that he is king, tell him that he is God, and intoxicate him with the idea of Justice, you will see from what heart he will count the wrongs which will be done to him and what will be able to be his leniencies for the wrongs that he will come to do to others! This judge is too partial, a party too interested and too impassioned for it to be reasonable of him to remand theoretically all litigation. The one who recognizes all rights begins by imposing on the entire world all duties, without forgetting the penalties which correspond to all negligence.
That is the true folly of revolutionary individualism, whether it is political, social, or moral. It is impossible that an animal as sensible, as sad, as vulnerable as man, once placed on the interior altar that the dogmatic liberal erects on him, does not believe, nine times out of ten, himself to be the creditor of his fellow men and of the universe, in the place that the most miserable is on the contrary their debtor to the infinite!
This illusion of the creditor on society can only be only encouraged by the absurd metaphysics of Rights.
Clarifications on the Nature of Law
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, Le Droit et la Loi, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras. This is part two of two.
According to a venerable [the Middle Ages] maxim [lex consensus populi et constitutione regis fit], the law is made by the action of the sovereign (constitutione regis) and by the acceptance of the subject (consensus populi). Without doubt our jurists poorly translate these words. They figure that consensus, this must be understood as the agreement of fact, as noisy as the acclamation which follows the coronation of kings, as the simple approving whisper which Homer had follow the word of the leaders, “Epeythymesan axaioi”. But, in the great majority of cases, in the case on which we do not make little stories about, the agreement consists in the fact of raising no important contradiction, of understanding, of carrying out.
To go on to say: “Mister Subject, here is a law that will legally bind you. Do you really want it? Are you sure you want it? We need your signature,” that is exactly to want to inspire him to say “no”, to argue endlessly in order not to agree. The hatred of the new and the spirit of contradiction are so strong in men that we do not put the public good at their mercy.
Yet it remains true that the law must be made to be easily obeyed. A law must be acceptable. The law is not the law when its pronouncement suffices to provoke the people to fear it. It needs a natural and prompt consent.
The party which attacks a law which no one defends can be wrong or right, that is not the question: the author of such a law will not have less committed that political fault of not waiting for the best conditions and most favorable arrangements of the public spirit. Its law is only a decree of a state of siege that it will have to support, arms in hand, without having the right to complain or be surprised.
The spirit of modern laws is far from the spirit of the laws which govern the deeds of real life, and these real deeds, unable to worry about the scraps of paper which distort them or the spider which weaves its web in the legislative mind, continued to develop following the weights, measures, and numbers which compose them.
It is said: “But the deed can be the crime! The deed can be the atrocity! The deed can be the error!”
Definitely: realistic politics and morals do not provide bare facts and beliefs as the types and models of life. But they recommend two points:
First of all, to consider laws depending on which real deeds are chained, for if deeds can be vicious or criminal, the laws of vice and crime are not; the order of causes and effects which preside over realities themselves flawed are not the least flawed in the world, it is even excellent to know and to calculate, knowledge and calculation which alone permit action.
Secondly, action has the chance to be serious and useful only on the condition of aiming for a definite and just goal. It is neither sufficient to have an “ideal” in mind, nor to make a second-rate idea of “right” and “duty”: this moralism, this legalism, this idealism must conform to the ideal, moral, and legal truth. In other words, it is first necessary to be right.
A false idea is a false idea. The will to impose on the world under the pretext that the world must be governed by ideas is an absurd pretence whose application will be forcibly criminal or fatal. Ideas are not equal to each other. All the claimed rights are not valuable. And not all ways of arranging mores are worthy of respect. The modern error comes from that sudden assimilation of contrary systems dreamed by the human mind. It is definitely an easy error for orators and litigants. It allows the latter to support all causes. It lets the former please all audiences. But the people who trust in them pay the price.
Principle VII: Property
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, La Propriété, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras.
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Property is the natural safeguard of man, an industrious animal still more than reasonable, for whom his needs, his weakness, the dissatisfaction that he brings from the cradle make a narrow duty of transforming what surrounds him. Pascal is wrong to scoff at those poor children who say: this coin is mine.
One would not say “me”, without saying “mine”. Without property, man is condemned to death.
To possess is to command, it is to dispose of oneself, it is to be able to resist others, it is to exercise an influence, were it only by reaction.
Property emancipates existence and confers an authority at least on the goods of the earth and the fruits of labor.
Principle VIII: Heredity
From Chapter II, “Principles”, La Hérédité, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras. In this insightful section, Maurras shows the importance of heredity, both in regard to progeny, but also with respect to the transmission of the “fruits” of a society through its bloodline. He points out that it is the society of those with faith who are most likely to understand this, and that it is due to God’s very law: Be fruitful and multiply. Those angst-filled existentialists can fulfill this task only paradoxically by making it a sacred task. As faith declines, men see no need to preserve and pass on their heritage.
Nature proceeds most commonly by imitation and repetition: but it also has innovations, caprices, initiatives. In that case it acts with an extreme vigor.
When it lets a soldier be born in the house of peaceable magistrates, or a marine in the descent of wine growers, the new vocation is marked rather strongly, it is served by a rather firm will so that all resistances are broken. But these resistances, these difficulties have some good. These hardships are natural tests, letting the predestined strong pass, but rejecting the others in the hereditary condition most suitable to them, because nature assures them defense and protection.
As the means of action towards a future, heredity is the most direct and the simplest of all.
Its general utility results from the destiny of the generator gifted with reason, who reproduces himself before dying.
Human life would be shamefully short if nature had not furnished societies with a procedure that transmits the fruits of its works through the blood.
The impersonal passion, whose deposit man holds, acts only through him in order to get to others, but delegates to the children which he procreates a power over the goods that he likewise procreated, very often for them. The inert posterity which comes from his hand will be vivified by his living posterity. When his great sons begin to enrich his heritage, all workers a little amorous of his work feel with some truth that he is going to conquer death twice. The power of bequeathing his remains gives to the activity of a well-filled life the highest natural laurels.
Let us note that the Christian societies of the Middle Age, penetrated by the supernatural sentiment of a future life, always proved themselves extremely sensitive to the terrestrial reward of the father in his sons. They sang, with all their soul, “Abraham et semini ejus in secula” [“to Abraham and to his sons forever”].
Our different royal or imperial races arise out of nations fervently convinced of the reality of the kingdom of heaven: how would less believing peoples pay less attention to the carnal wish of hereditary duration? It is their only defense against time; they have only that anchor to throw on the abyss of the future. In a pinch, hereditary ambitions should have weakened through a sudden flight of celestial hopes; would the opposite be understood?
We can reason this way:
If some God hidden in the secret of hearts or soaring on the interplanetary abyss assists, immobile and mute, ardent and all powerful, the development of the efforts of humanity, it is His own law that He confirms in things and men; He can only bless its increased effects.
But if the spaces are empty and if the human heart is itself not assisted by any “internal consolation”, all the happiness of the being and all the benefits of life appear more exposed to the erosion of time and the blow of death, their tradition, their transmission then seems more precious in its solitary immensity to perpetual destitution. All means of saving or prolonging the shaky personal effort becomes more sacred perhaps! The thought threatened is attached more closely to the philosophy of order and the knowledge of the laws of its preservation. Should this order succumb, the believers keep refuge in the divine City: he who no longer believes undergoes the catastrophe of everything that his dream vied with death.
Principle IX: The Duty of Heritage
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, Devoir de l’Héritage, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras. In this particularly beautiful passage, Maurras explains the duty of one generation to pass on its culture, customs, and traditions to the next, which in turn, has the duty to accept and develop that heritage. The loss of one’s traditions needs to be taken at least as seriously as the attention we pay today to the possible extinction of various fishes and insects. Unfortunately, the youth of today are the new disinherited, since their fathers have passed on little except a hatred for their own past. How that plays out is uncertain, unless and until they rise up to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.
In order to justify what common sense and custom maintain by force, let us not talk about rights, but instead duty.
The duty to bequeath and make a will.
The duty to inherit.
Those who are called disinherited or proletarian are sometimes understood to be preaching that that is not just in their point of view. That is just and beneficial for everyone.
The good that is established in a natural or legal family can have doubtful sources: it is redeemed and moralized by its fixity, by the firm benefit that it establishes around itself in stabilizing the conditions of life, in distributing work, in securing it, in preparing a point of solid support to the generations to come.
There is no difference between the damages caused to nature by the death of a beautiful animal, followed by the return of its elements to the universal dust, and the destruction of an ordinary fortune to the death of its creator.
There is a dead loss for society as for nature, the obligation to take up again a long and painful task.
Prosperous social organisations are those that prevent these realities from dissolving into the void and which help to keep them from a total death: these purveyors of life, being the born-enemies of destruction, made a respected institution from its heritage, and, one could say, a type of sacrament from its legacy.
Principle X: Tradition
Translator’s note: From Chapter II, “Principles”, La Tradition, of Mes Idées Politique, by Charles Maurras. Maurras concludes his list of fundamental principles with Tradition. This will be a disappointment to those who want to reduce everything to the rational, since traditional is beyond that. It is tied, as he says, to “blood and soil”, that is, one’s ancestors and the heritage they bequeathed. The deracinated modern mind is limited by the idea, the simulacra of the “proposition” nation. Yet, tradition is not blind. It successes serve as the paradigm for the future, it failures as lessons to be learned; there is no point to perpetuate errors. This is a living tradition, not stuck in the past through inertia. A true Tradition is never lost, it is only hidden. If it had one starting point, it can have a second. It will being anew only by men who know who they are.
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Tradition means handing down.
Tradition gathers the forces of blood and soil. It is retained even when leaving one’s country, as an eternal temptation to return to it.
True tradition is critical, and for lack of its distinctions, the past is no longer of use for anything, its successes stop being models, its setbacks stop being lessons.
In all tradition, as in all heritage, a reasonable being deducts and must deduct the liabilities.
Tradition is not inertia, its opposite; heritage is not nepotism, its counterfeit.
All traditions had a beginning and the sentiments of monarchistic fidelity, if they rise up very high, do not do so indefinitely: what began can begin again; what had one point of departure can find a second.
The opposition between reason and tradition, which is the same as the antithesis of reality and the idea, or art and nature, and that can be assimilated to the opposition of vinegar and oil, the sweet and the bitter, the fluid and the solid, in a cosmogony of infant peoples.