Latest / The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille / 035 - Book 6 Chapter 1 Make the Constitution

Transcript

035 - Book 6 Chapter 1 Make the Constitution · The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The French Revolution, A History by Thomas Carlyle, Volume one,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Book six, Consolidation, Chapter one, Make the Constitution. This LibriVox
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Read by Peter Dan
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Book six, Chapter one, Make the Constitution. Here perhaps is
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the place to fix a little more precisely what these
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: two words French revolution shall mean. For strictly considered, they
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: may have as many meanings as there are speakers of them.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: All things are in revolution, in change from moment to moment,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: which becomes sensible from epoch to epoch. In this time
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: world of ours, there is probably nothing else but revolution
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: and mutation, and even nothing else conceivable. Revolution, you answer,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: means speedier change. Whereupon one has still to ask, how speedy,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: at what degree of speed, in what particular points of
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: this variable course which varies in velocity but can never
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: stop till time itself stops. Does revolution begin an end,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: cease to be ordinary mutation, and again become such. It
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: is a thing that will depend on definition more or
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: less arbitrary. For ourselves, we answer that French revolution means
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: here the open, violent rebellion and victory of disimprisoned anarchy
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: against corrupt, worn out authority. How anarchy breaks, prison bursts
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: up from the infinite deep, and rage is uncontrollable, immeasurable,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: enveloping a world in faces after faces of fever frenzy,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: till the frenzy burning itself out, and what elements of
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: new order it held, Since all force holds such developing themselves,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: the uncontrollabill be got if not re imprisoned, yet harnessed,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: and its mad forces made to work towards their object
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: as sane, regulated ones. For as hierarchies and dynasties of
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: all kinds, theocracies are aristocracies. Autocracies, strump patocracies have ruled
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: over the world. So it was appointed in the decrees
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: of Providence that this same victorious anarchy, Jacobinism, sans collotism,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: French Revolution, horrors of French Revolution, or what else mortals
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: name it should have its turn, the destructive wrath of
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: sans collotism. This is what we speak, having unhappily no
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: voice for singing. Surely a great phenomenon, Nay, it is
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a transcendental one, overstepping all rules and experience, the crowning
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: phenomenon of our modern time. For here again, most unexpectedly
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: comes antique fanaticism in new and newest vesture miraculous as
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: all fanaticism is. Call it the fanaticism of making away
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: with formulas. De humur le fumule. The world of formulas,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the formed, regular world, which all habitable world is, must
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: needs hate such fanaticism like death, and be at deadly
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: variance with it. The world of formulas must conquer it,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: or failing that, must die, execrating it. Anathematizing it can nevertheless,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: in no wise prevent its being and its having been.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: The anathemas are there, and the miraculous thing is there.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Whence it cometh, whither it goeth? These are questions when
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the age of miracles lay faded into the distance as
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: an incredible tradition, and even the age of conventionalities was
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: now old, and man's existence had for long generations rested
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: on mere formulas, which were grown hollow by course of time,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and it seemed as if no reality any longer existed,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: but only phantasms of realities and God's universe were the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: work of the tailor and upholsterer mainly, and men were
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: buckram masks that went about becking and grimacing. There on
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: a sudden the earth yawns asunder, and a mid tartarian
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: smoke and glare of fierce brightness rises sanse collotism, many
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: headed fire breathing, and asks what think ye of me? Well?
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: May the buckram masks start together, terror struck into expressive,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: well concerted groups. It is, indeed, friends, a most singular,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: most fatal thing. Let whosoever is but buckram and a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: phantasm look to it ill verily. May it fare with
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: him here methinks he cannot much longer be well, Also
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to many a one who is not wholly Buckram, but
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: partially real and human, The age of miracles has come back.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Behold the world phoenix in fire, consummation and fire creation
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: wide are her fanning wings, loud as her death melody
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: of battle thunders, and falling towns skyward lashes, the funeral
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: flame enveloping all things. It is the death burn of
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: a world. Whereby, however, as we often say, shall one
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: unspeakable blessing seem attainable, this, namely, that man and his
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: life rest no more on hollowness and a lie, but
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: on solidity and some kind of truth. Welcome the beggarliest truth,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: so it may be one in exchange for the royalist sham,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Truth of any kind breeds of a new and better truth.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Thus hard granite rock will crumble down into soil under
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the blessed sky influences, and cover itself with verdure, with
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: fruitage and umbrage. But as for falsehood, which in like
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: contrary manner grows ever falser, what can it or what
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: should it do but decease, being ripe, decompose itself gently
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: or even violently, and return to the father of it too,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: probably in flames of fire. Sansclotism will burn much, But
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: what is incombustible it will not burn. Fear not, sans colotism,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: recognize it for what it is, the portentous, inevitable end
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: of much, the miraculous beginning of much. One other thing,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Thou mayst understand of it, that it too came from God.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: For has it not been from of old? As it
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: is written I His goings forth in the great deep
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: of things, fearful and wonderful, now as in the beginning
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: in the whirlwind. Also he speaks, and the wrath of
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: men is made to praise him, but to gage and
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: measure this immeasurable thing. And what is called, account for it,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and reduce it to a dead logic formula. Attempt not
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: much less shalt thou shriek thyself hoarse, cursing it for
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: that to all needful lengths has been already done as
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: an actually existing son of time. Look with unspeakable and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a fold interest, oftenest in silence, at what time did
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: bring therewith, edify, instruct, nourish thyself? Or were it but
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: to amuse and gratify their self? As it is given thee.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Another question, which at every new turn will rise on us,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: requiring ever new reply, is this where the French Revolution
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: specially is in the King's palace, in his majesties or
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: her Majesty's managements and maltreatments, cabals, imbecilities and woes. Answer
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: some few, whom we do not answer. In the National Assembly,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: answer a large mixed multitude, who accordingly seat themselves in
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the reporter's chair and therefrom Noting what proclamations, acts, reports,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: passages of logic, fence, bursts of parliamentary eloquence seem notable
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: within doors, and what tumults and rumors of tumult become
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: audible from without produce volume on volume and aiming it
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: history of the French Revolution contentedly publish the same, to
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: do the like to almost any extent. With so many
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: filed newspapers, schua de rapport istla parliamentaire as there are,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: amounting to many horse loads were easy for us, easy
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: but unprofitable. The National Assembly named now Constituent Assembly goes
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: its course making the constitution, but the French Revolution also
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: goes its course in general. May we not say that
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: the French Revolution lies in the heart and head of
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: every violent speaking of every violent thinking french Man. How
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the twenty five millions of such, in their perplexed combination
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: acting and counteracting, may give birth to events which event
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: successively is the cardinal one? And from what point of
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: vision it may best be surveyed? This is a problem,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: which problem the best insight, seeking life from all possible sources,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: shifting its point of vision, whether soever vision or glimpse
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: of vision can be had, may employ itself in solving,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: and be well content to solve in some tolerably approximate way.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: As to the National Assembly, in so far as it
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: still towers eminent over France. After the manner of a
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: carborne Carroccio though now no longer in the van and
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: rings signals for retreat or to advance. It is and
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: continues a reality among other realities. But in so far
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: as it sits making the constitution, on the other hand,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: it is a fatuity and chemera mainly alas in the
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: never so heroic building of Montesque marble card castles. Though
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: shouted over by the world, what interest is there occupied
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: in that way? An August National Assembly becomes for us
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: little other than a sanhedron of pedants, not of the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: gerond grinding, yet of no fruitful oers, and its loud
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: debatings and recriminations about rights of man, rights of peace
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: and war Vito suspensive, vito absolut. What are they but
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: so many pedants? Curses? May God confound you for your
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: theory of irregular verbs. A constitution can be built constitutions
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: in our phallowcia, but the frightful difficulty is that of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: getting men to come and live in them. Could c
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: A have drawn thunder and lightning out of heaven to
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: sanction his constitution? It had been well, but without any thunder,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: nay strictly considered, is it not still true that without
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: some such celestial sanction given visibly in thunder or invisibly Otherwise,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: no constitution can, in the long run, be worth much
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: more than the waste paper it is written on. The Constitution,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: the set of laws or prescribed habits of acting that
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: men will live under, is the one which images their convictions,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: their faith as to this wondrous universe, and what rights, duties,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: capabilities they have there which stand sanctioned therefore by necessity itself,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: if not by a seene deity, then by an unseen one.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Other laws, whereof there are always enough ready made, are
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: usurpations which men do not obey, but rebel against, an
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: abolished by their earliest convenience. The question of questions, accordingly were,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: who is it, that, especially for rebellers and abolishers, can
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: make a constitution? He that can image forth the general
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: belief when there is one that can impart one, when
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: as here there is none a most rare man. Ever,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: as of older god missioned man. Here, however, in defect
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: of such transcendent supreme man, time, with its infinite succession
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: of merely superior men, each yielding his little contribution, does
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: much force. Likewise, for as antiquarian philosophers teach the royal
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: scepter was from the first something of a hammer to
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: crack such heads as could not be convinced, will all
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: along find somewhat to do, and thus in perpetual abolition
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: and reparation, rending and mending with struggle and strife, with
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: present evil, and the hope and effort towards future good.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Must the Constitution, as all human beings do, build itself
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: forward or unbuild itself and sink as it can, and
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: may of c A and the other committeemen and twelve
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: hundred miscellaneous individuals from all parts of France. What is
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the belief of France and yours? If ye knew it properly,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: that there shall be no belief that all formulas be
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: swallowed the Constitution which will suit that alas too clearly
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: a no constitution an anarchy, which also in due season
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: shall be vouchsafed you. But after all, what can an
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: unfortunate national assembly do? Consider? Only this, that there are
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: twelve hundred miscellaneous individuals, not a unit of whom but
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: has his own thinking apparatus, his own speaking apparatus. In
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: every unit of them is some belief and wish different
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: for each both at France should be regenerated, and also
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: that he individually should do it twelve hundred separate forces
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: yoked miscellaneously to any object, miscellaneously to all sides of it,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: and bid pull for life? Or is it the nature
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: of national assemblies generally to do with endless labor and
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: clangor nothing? Are representative governments mostly at bottom tyrannies too,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: shall we say? The tyrants, the ambitious, contentious persons from
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: all corners of the country, do, in this manner get
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: gathered into one place, and there, with motion and countermotion,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: with jargon and hubbub, cancel one another like the fabulous
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: kill Kenny cats, and produce for net result zero. The
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: country meanwhile governing or guiding itself by such wisdom recognized
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: or for the most part unrecognized, as may exist in
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: individual heads here and there. Nay, even that were a
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: great improvement for of old, with their Guelph factions and
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Ghibbelin factions, with their red roses and white roses, they
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: will wont to cancel the whole country as well. Besides,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: they do it now in a much narrower cockpit, within
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the four walls of their assembly house. And here and
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: there an outpost of hustings and barrel heads. Do it
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: with tongues too, not with swords, Or which improvements in
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the art of producing zero are they not great? Nay
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: best of all? Some happy continents, as the Western one,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: with its savannahs, where whosoever has four willing limbs finds
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: food under his feet and an infinite sky over his head,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: can do without governing what sphinx questions which the distracted
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: world in these very generations must answer or die. End
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: of Book six, Chapter one,