Traité de la propriété: VOL I
CHAPITRE PREMIER. De l'influence des doctrines des peuples possesseurs d'esclaves sur les idées des
Enlightenment Charles Comte FrenchCHAP. 1: CHAPTER ONE. On the influence of the doctrines of slave-possessing peoples on the ideas of civilized nations.
WHEN the darkness of the Middle Ages began to dissipate, studious men did not have the bold thought of acquiring enlightenment by observing the phenomena that offered themselves to their gaze; they studied the works in which Greek or Roman writers had deposited their systems and the results of their observations; they sought, not to form for themselves exact ideas of the nature of things, but to steep themselves in the thoughts of the men who had preceded them.
This manner of instructing oneself has been abandoned by the men who occupy themselves with the physical sciences: it is by the observation of facts, and not by the study of books, that they acquire knowledge. The works of scholars are no longer considered by persons who possess a true instruction, other than as guides, whose mission is to direct those who wish to devote themselves to the study of things. They serve, in the hands of people who aspire to instruct themselves, the office that itineraries or geographical maps serve in the hands of a traveler. The man who would pretend to combat the result of a scientific observation with the authority of Aristotle or Pliny would make himself ridiculous in the eyes of the least enlightened people.
At the renaissance of the moral sciences, one proceeded, to acquire instruction, as one proceeded for the physical sciences: it is not by the study of the phenomena of nature that one instructed oneself, it is by the reading of the books of the first moralists and the first metaphysicians, or by the study of the laws of the first peoples whose history one possessed; the institutions of the Greek and Roman peoples, and those of the peoples of the Middle Ages have been, so to speak, the patterns on which scholars have attempted to form the ideas and mores of nations.
But the revolution that has taken place in the study of the physical sciences has not yet extended to the study of all branches of the moral sciences: the professor who, in our day, would teach as truths the doctrines of the first physicists, would make himself ridiculous; it would not be the same for one who would teach the philosophical systems of the Greek writers. One would fear to go astray if one blindly followed the doctrines of Aristotle; one does not experience this fear in studying the opinions of Papinian. In the physical sciences, he who would venture to substitute the authority of books for the authority of facts would be considered a narrow and false mind; but in the science of law or of morals, he who would venture to substitute the authority of facts for the authority of books would perhaps not be understood by many people who claim to be instructed.
The ideas that we have on laws and on morals not being, in general, the results of our own observations on the nature of things, it is important for us to note at least what are the sources from which we go to draw them. We draw them generally from the institutions of the first peoples of Greece and Italy, from the decisions of the Roman jurists, or from the rescripts of the emperors, and from the laws or institutions of the Middle Ages. We thus form our understanding upon that of peoples who were barely emerging from barbarism, and who had all the prejudices and all the passions that servitude and the savage state engender. It is quite clear that it is here a question only of those among us who study morals and laws as sciences: those who do not have the pretension of being or becoming scholars always have a certain number of ideas that they owe only to their own observations and to their natural good sense.
There exists, however, almost no analogy between the social state in the midst of which we live, and the social state of the peoples from whom we borrow ideas to form our sciences. Our natural tendency leads us to act immediately upon things to appropriate them to our needs, and to withdraw ourselves from the violent action that our fellow men would like to exercise over us, to compel us to become the instruments of their pleasures or their caprices. The men from whom we borrow ideas, on the contrary, acted upon things only through the intermediary of other men whom they had appropriated, and of whom they made the instruments of their labors. Among the civilized peoples of our age, man struggles ceaselessly with physical nature, to direct its forces in the direction of his interests. This struggle also existed in ancient times; but there was moreover a continual struggle of man against man.
The legislators or philosophers, whose opinions or principles serve to form ours, were all, in effect, possessors of slaves. Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Papinian, Paul, Ulpian, possessed, as proprietors, a more or less considerable number of men, children, and women. They did not doubt that this kind of property was very legitimate, and they would have regarded as a bad citizen anyone who would have attacked the institutions proper to guaranteeing the duration of slavery. The Roman emperors and those of Constantinople, whose decrees have come down to us, did not possess only a few men, they possessed entire nations, and believed they had the property of them. Finally, under the feudal regime, slavery existed as among the Romans: the cultivator was considered as forming part of the field to which he was attached. Later, nations were considered as family properties, which were disposed of by treaties or by testament, as we dispose of our flocks [^2].
Thus, while we are led, by the nature of our social state, to make the last vestiges of servitude disappear, we steep ourselves in the doctrines of domestic slavery, of feudal servitude, of military despotism, and of the savage state. The domination that the Roman patricians exercised over their slaves has ceased to exist for centuries; the various races of barbarians who had attached the cultivators to the soil have died out or have lost a great part of their power: but the doctrines of the ones and the others are still full of life; we make of them an essential part of the teaching of laws and of morals; we learn them from our childhood in our schools; we invoke them in our courts of justice.
However, all their laws were not vicious, all their doctrines were not errors; one finds, on the contrary, in their codes decisions full of justice, and in their books maxims full of truth. But the order of things in the midst of which they were placed did not permit them to go back to the true principles of laws and of morals, and to follow their consequences. They could not have founded the rights and duties of each individual on the very nature of man, without putting their doctrines in opposition with their practices, and without proclaiming the illegitimacy of slavery. They were thus under the necessity of admitting certain principles which they made the foundation of their rights, and of which they could not have demonstrated the truth.
How, for example, could men who considered the greater part of their fellow men as things they could use and abuse without violating any right, have admitted in practice that rights and duties inherent in human nature existed? How could they have admitted that the duties of a wife toward her husband, or of a husband toward his wife, resulted from their own nature, when they proclaimed that men or women whom force had subjugated had neither duties to fulfill, nor rights to exercise? How could they have, without contradicting themselves, recognized the duties of a mother toward her children, those of children toward their mother, when they proclaimed that no family duty existed for human beings born or fallen into servitude?In the eyes of all men who have attentively observed how peoples develop, it is evident, as will be seen further on, that property is born of labor. If one does not admit that a man can legitimately have no other master than himself, and that each is the proprietor of the fruit of his labors, so long as he has not voluntarily alienated it, it is impossible to find a solid foundation for property. It must be made to rest exclusively on the acts of governments, to which the name of laws is given; but on what basis will these acts be made to rest, and by what sign will their justice be recognized? It is quite evident, however, that the peoples whose laws and maxims have come down to us did not admit, and could not even admit, that, according to the laws of our nature, each is master of the product of his labors. They existed, on the contrary, only by means of the labors of the men they had made slaves; and this manner of living had nothing illegitimate in their eyes.
To discover the laws according to which nations prosper or perish, and the rights and duties that are inherent in our nature, it was therefore necessary to observe the various states through which nations have passed, before arriving at the point where we see them, and thus to substitute the observation of facts for the study of doctrines, or of the systems imagined to justify them. In following this method, I have shown that there is neither progress nor prosperity possible, whether in the state that some writers have called of nature, or in the state of domestic or political slavery; I have demonstrated, moreover, that a state in which men would attempt to hold in common the goods that result from their labors would differ but little from slavery properly so called. It now remains for me to observe what happens when each has no other master than himself, and when none can appropriate with impunity the fruits of another's labor. As it is impossible to discover the laws to which human nature is subject, other than by an exact observation of facts, and as liberty is an essential condition of the exercise of our rights and the accomplishment of our duties, it is important to convince ourselves thoroughly that there is nothing more contrary to our nature than servitude, and to form for ourselves very exact ideas of what constitutes liberty. Let me be permitted, therefore, to recall, in the following chapter, the effects that are the inevitable consequence of the various kinds of slavery to which men can be subjected. If these effects were contested, there would be no way to advance in the search for the laws to which we are submitted by our nature; there would be no way, above all, to find the true foundations of property.
Notes
[^2]: In our days, nations are still considered, in the greater part of Europe, as the property of the princes who govern them. One need only read the treaties they make among themselves to be convinced of this.