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Page 53
B. This is very serious; the more so, from the syllogism being so
admirably formed. I should very much like to be enlightened on the
subject. But, alas! I can no longer command my attention. There is such
a confusion in my head of the words _cash_, _money_, _services_,
_capital_, _interest_, that, really, I hardly know where I am. We will,
if you please, resume the conversation another day.
F. In the meantime, here is a little work entitled _Capital and Rent_.
It may perhaps remove some of your doubts. Just look at it, when you are
in want of a little amusement.
B. To amuse me?
F. Who knows? One nail drives in another; one wearisome thing drives
away another.
B. I have not yet made up my mind that your views upon cash and
political economy in general are correct. But, from your conversation,
this is what I have gathered:--That these questions are of the highest
importance; for peace or war, order or anarchy, the union or the
antagonism of citizens, are at the root of the answer to them. How is it
that, in France, a science which concerns us all so nearly, and the
diffusion of which would have so decisive an influence upon the fate of
mankind, is so little known? Is it that the State does not teach it
sufficiently?
F. Not exactly. For, without knowing it, it applies itself to loading
everybody's brain with prejudices, and everybody's heart with
sentiments favourable to the spirit of anarchy, war, and hatred; so
that, when a doctrine of order, peace, and union presents itself, it is
in vain that it has clearness and truth on its side,--it cannot gain
admittance.
B. Decidedly, you are a frightful grumbler. What interest can the
State have in mystifying people's intellects in favour of revolutions,
and civil and foreign wars? There must certainly be a great deal of
exaggeration in what you say.
F. Consider. At the period when our intellectual faculties begin to
develop themselves, at the age when impressions are liveliest, when
habits of mind are formed with the greatest ease--when we might look at
society and understand it--in a word, as soon as we are seven or eight
years old, what does the State do? It puts a bandage over our eyes,
takes us gently from the midst of the social circle which surrounds us,
to plunge us, with our susceptible faculties, our impressible hearts,
into the midst of Roman society. It keeps us there for ten years at
least, long enough to make an ineffaceable impression on the brain. Now
observe, that Roman society is directly opposed to what our society
ought to be. There they lived upon war; here we ought to hate war. There
they hated labour; here we ought to live upon labour. There the means of
subsistence were founded upon slavery and plunder; here they should be
drawn from free industry. Roman society was organised in consequence of
its principle. It necessarily admired what made it prosper. There they
considered as virtue, what we look upon as vice. Its poets and
historians had to exalt what we ought to despise. The very words,
_liberty_, _order_, _justice_, _people_, _honour_, _influence_, _&c._,
could not have the same signification at Rome, as they have, or ought to
have, at Paris. How can you expect that all these youths who have been
at university or conventual schools, with Livy and Quintus Curtius for
their catechism, will not understand liberty like the Gracchi, virtue
like Cato, patriotism like C�sar? How can you expect them not to be
factious and warlike? How can you expect them to take the slightest
interest in the mechanism of our social order? Do you think that their
minds have been prepared to understand it? Do you not see that, in order
to do so, they must get rid of their present impressions, and receive
others entirely opposed to them?
B. What do you conclude from that?
F. I will tell you. The most urgent necessity is, not that the State
should teach, but that it should _allow_ education. All monopolies are
detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.
The Law.
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