it, that doctrine which one of our contemporaries has reduced to a formula in three words: "Property is theft:" a negative doctrine which is common to several sects, in other respects extremely opposed to each other.

Nothing is easier than to suppose a just and friendly society, perfect in heart, pure moreover and abstinent (an essential condition), which would found and maintain an absolute community of wealth. That of wealth is very easy, when one has that of hearts. Who, indeed, in love or friendship, is not a communist? Such a thing appeared between two persons in the last century, Pechméja and Dubreuil, who lived and died together. Pechméja attempted, in a poem in prose (the Télèphe, a work unfortunately weak and by no means interesting) to make others partake of the sweet emotion that he felt in having nothing of his own but his friend.

Pechméja's "Télèphe” did not teach community more efficaciously than Morelly's "Basiliade" and his Code of Nature had done already. All the poems and systems that can be made on this doctrine suppose, as a starting point, what is the most difficult thing of all, and would be the supreme aim, the union of human will. This scarce condition, found at most in a few select souls, such as a Montaigne or a La Boétie's, would dispense with all the rest. But this condition is indispensable. Without Christianity, with resources which these men by no means possess, aimed at it, but failed. If it was unable to associate souls either vanquished or trained on purpose, good heavens! how difficult will be the task with the unconquerable modern mind! Forced community has no real chance in a country where twenty-four millions of souls partake of property. It may be attempted, by force of arms, in this or that town, but never throughout the whole country.

No doubt but in case of a revolution, or should present France, for instance, seriously revolt against England, that foreign power would find this an excellent advantage. It would be its best chance, if it succeeded in prolonging these interior struggles, for lowering France to a level with Ireland. This art is well known; it has succeeded perfectly well with the English in reducing Holland to nothing, and placing her under an English prefect. The party that had organised the great Dutch navy, braved England, and forced the Thames with their cannon, has been accused (not without cause) of egotistical cupidity, and conquered by the party called the people, a cosmopolite party, made up of a multitude of foreigners, and urged on by the English.

Let us take warning by this example. No class will gain anything by dividing France and leaving her exposed to the enemy. It would be a sad thing to fight to the death for a bit of land, when the earth is so vast, still desert, and so badly cultivated! On the other hand, it is necessary that the State and the citizen should become noble-hearted, that we should open our arms to our brethren, that property should be more accessible to them, that education be given to all, and open to everybody the world and life, and that the laws of inheritance especially should be modified. I refrain from touching, in this note, so vast and serious a subject. There is a time for everything. Let it suffice to say here, that I should wish human will to be more respected by the law for instance, that a father, having endowed his daughter and given his son a trade, should be free to bequeath what he possesses to the State or the poor, &c., &c.

HAS HE PRACTICAL VIEWS?

539

it community would be a permanent struggle, or, if imposed by law, by a Reign of Terror (which cannot last long), it would paralyse all human activity.

To return to Marat, he appears nowhere to suspect the extent of these questions. He places them on his title-page, as though to attract the crowd, to beat the drum, and gain a hearing; and then leaves everything unsolved. All we can see is that he wishes for an extensive social charity, especially at the expense of the rich: a thing certainly reasonable, only it would be better to state the mode of execution. Doubtless it is a thing odious and impious to see a certain tax oppressing the poor and sparing the rich; taxation ought to be applied only to those who possess. But the politician ought not, like Marat, to confine himself to complaints, outcries, and prayers; he ought to propose means. It is not a way of clearing up difficulties to refer the matter, as do all the Utopians of this kind, to the presumed excellence of the functionaries of the future; to say, for instance: "Let the direction be given to some honest man, and let an upright magistrate be the inspector." (Marat's Criminal Legislation, p. 26).

Does he show, in his journal, more practical intelligence, in presence of the necessities of the times? No. We find nothing but vague and unconnected ideas, nothing new by way of expedient, nothing that can be termed a theory.

At the time when the municipality was entering into possession of the convents and other ecclesiastical edifices, he proposed to establish_in them workshops for the poor, to lodge poor families in the cells, and in the beds of the monks and nuns (June 11th and 14th, 1790). But there is no general conclusion relative to work directed by the State.

When the law on patents, the misery of Paris, and demands for an increase of salaries, attract his attention, does he propose any new remedy? No other than to revive long and rigorous apprenticeships, to require proofs of capacity, to fix a fair price to workmen for their daily task, and to give to workmen who behave themselves properly, for three years, the means of setting up in business; those who do not marry are to pay back this sum at the expiration of ten years.

Where are the funds vast enough to endow such numerous classes of the population? Marat does not explain himself on this point; only, on another occasion, he advises the indigent to associate themselves with the soldiers, to get assigned to themselves wherewith to live out of the national properties, to divide among themselves the lands and riches of the villains who have buried their gold in order to force them by famine to return to the yoke, &c.

I wanted, first of all, to examine whether Marat, in 1790, when he assumes so terrible an authority over the minds of the people, laid down a general theory, a principle which founded this authority. The examination being made, I am obliged to say No. There exists no theory of Marat's.

I can now resume, at my ease, his previous career, and seek whether, in the works of his youth, he may, by chance, have laid down this principle, whence perhaps he thought he had but to draw its consequences.

Marat was from the environs of Neufchâtel, as Rousseau from Geneva.

He was ten years of age, in 1754, at the time when his glorious fellowcountryman published his "Discourse on Inequality," and twenty, when Rousseau, having conquered the royalty of public opinion, together with persecution and exile, returned to seek an asylum in Switzerland, and took refuge in the principality of Neufchâtel. The ardent interest of which he was the object, the eyes of the world fixed upon him, the phenomenon of a literary man causing every king to be forgotten (not excepting Voltaire), and the emotion of women weeping for him (we might say in love with him) all this made a profound impression on Marat. His mother, as he himself describes her, was a very susceptible and enthusiastic woman, who, buried in a remote village of Switzerland, and being both virtuous and romantic, directed all her energies to form a great man, like Rousseau. She was very ably seconded by her husband, a worthy, learned, and industrious minister, who crammed very early all he could of his science into the head of his child. The natural result of this concentration of efforts was to overheat the youth's brain beyond measure. Pride, Rousseau's infirmity, turned to vanity in Marat, only exaggerated to a tenfold degree. He became Rousseau's ape.

We must hear his own account of himself (in the Ami du Peuple of 1793): "At five years of age I wanted to be a schoolmaster; at fifteen, a professor; at eighteen, an author; and a creative genius at twenty.' Further, after having spoken of his works in the natural sciences (twenty volumes, says he, of discoveries in physics), he coolly adds: "I think I have exhausted every combination of the human mind, on morality, philosophy, and politics."

Like Rousseau, and most of the people of his country, he started early in quest of fortune, carrying with him, together with his ill-arranged store of different kinds of knowledge, the more profitable talent of deriving from simples a few empiric remedies; for, all these Swiss mountaineers are more or less botanists, druggists, &c.

Marat generally gives himself the title of doctor of medicine: I have not been able to discover whether he really possessed it.

This uncertain resource not supplying him sufficiently, he was occasionally, like Rousseau, like the hero of the Nouvelle Héloïse, a teacher, a master of languages. In this capacity, or as a physician, he had an opportunity of ingratiating himself with ladies; and was for some time the Saint-Preux of a certain Julia whom he had cured. This Julia, a marchioness abandoned by her husband, who had been the cause of her malady, was captivated by the young physician's zeal, rather than by his personal qualities. Marat was very diminutive in stature, with a wide, bony, flat-nosed countenance. Nevertheless, he certainly pos sessed indubitable qualities,-disinterestedness, sobriety, indefatigable industry, and much, too much ardour; his vanity spoilt all the rest.

Switzerland has always furnished England with governesses and masters of languages; accordingly, in 1772, we find Marat teaching French at Edinburgh. He was then twenty-eight years of age, and had acquired, read, and written much, but published nothing. That very year, the publication of the Letters of Junius,-those famous yet mysterious pamphlets, the author of which has never been known, and which gave so terrible a blow to the ministry of that time, was then

MARAT'S FIRST WORKS.

541

drawing to a close. The new elections were imminent, and England was in the utmost agitation. Marat, who had seen the terrible riot in favour of Wilkes (he speaks of it twenty years afterwards); Marat, who admired, and doubtless envied the triumph of the pamphleteer, suddenly become sheriff and lord mayor of London, composed in English a pamphlet which he made (like Junius) more piquant by publishing it anonymously: The Chains of Bondage, 1774. This book, much of which was suggested by Raynal, who had just appeared, is, as the author says, an extemporaneous composition, full of facts and various quotations; its plan is not bad; but unfortunately it is very weakly executed, and of an insipid declamatory style. It contains but few, and only limited views, no true perception of England; Marat thinks all the danger lies on the side of the crown ; and is entirely ignorant that England is especially an aristocracy.*

There had just appeared in London, in 1772, a French book that made some sensation, a posthumous work of Helvetius,-a sort of sequel to his book on the Mind, and entitled Man. Marat lost no time; in 1773, he published in English a volume in opposition, which, developed and spun out so as to form three volumes, was published by him, in 1775, with the following title: On Man, or the principles and laws of the influence of the soul on the body, and of the body on the soul, (Amsterdam).

The feeble and fluctuating eclecticism which we have remarked in Marat's political books and journals, appears singularly evident in this work of physiology and psychology. He seems to be a spiritualist, since he declares that the soul and the body are two distinct substances; but the soul has hardly any advantage. Marat places it in an entire dependency on the body, declaring that what we call moral and intellectual qualities, as courage, candour, tenderness, wisdom, reason, imagination, sagacity, &c., are not qualities inherent in the mind or the heart, but the soul's manners of existing, dependent on the state of the corporal organs (ii., 377). Contrary to the spiritualists, he believes that the soul occupies a place; and he places it in the meninges. He has an utter contempt for Descartes, the master of modern spiritualism. In psychology, he follows Locke, and copies him without quoting him (vols. ii. and iii., passim). In morality, he esteems and praises Larochefoucauld (Disc. prélim., p. vii., xii.). He does not believe that pity or justice are natural sentiments, but acquired and factitious (vol. i., pp. 165, and 224, note). He assures us that man, in a state of nature, is necessarily a cowardly being; and he thinks he proves "that there are no strong souls, since every man is irresistibly subject to sentiment, and the slave of passions' (vol. ii., p. 187).

As to the connecting link between the two substances, he promises

* Singular to relate, Marat, who had lived in England, knew the language and had studied the writers, the historians, does not at all understand that people; and Sièyes, though ignorant in comparison, yet by the extraordinary penetration of his mind, discovers, with respect to England, of which he knows so little, things both just and profound, which the most attentive study of facts alone would seem to have been able to dictate.

542

MARAT WITH THE COUNT D'ARTOIS.

new and decisive proofs. However, he gives none; nothing but the vulgar hypothesis of a certain nervous fluid. He only informs us that this fluid is not entirely gelatinous, and the proof is that spirituous liquors, which so powerfully renew the nervous fluid, contain no gelatin (i., p. 56).

All the rest is of the same stamp. We learn therein that a melancholy man delights in melancholy, and other things equally novel. On the other hand, the author assures us that a wound is not a sensation ; " that reserve is the virtue of souls united to organs woven with lax or compact fibres," &c. Generally speaking, he emerges from banalities only by the help of absurdities.

If the work deserved criticism, that which might be brought against it is especially its indecision. Marat by no means assumes the attitude of a courageous disciple of Rousseau against the philosophers. He ventures a few feeble attacks against their old leader, Voltaire, inserting him in a note among the authors who make man an enigma: "Hume, Voltaire, Bossuet, Racine (!), Pascal." To this attack the arch old man replied by a witty, amusing, and judicious article, wherein, without expressing an opinion on the matter, he merely shows the author, as he is, a ridiculous quack; "such is the fashion," says he, "we perceive everywhere a Harlequin throwing summersets to amuse the pit." (Mélanges litt., tom. xlviii., p. 234, 8vo, 1784).

Although Marat speaks much of the prodigious success of his books in England, and of the gold boxes sent to him, he returned very poor; and it was at this period that he is said to have been sometimes reduced to the necessity of selling his remedies in the streets of Paris. However, his last book was calculated to recommend him ; a would-be spiritualist physician could not be displeasing to the Court; a book on Médecine Galante (I had forgotten just now to mention this character of the book On Man) was likely to be successful among young men at the court of the Count d'Artois. Indeed, the book has often a gallant tone, equivocal or sentimental scenes, confessions surprised, enjoyments, &c., &c., not to mention certain useful advice on the effect of excesses. Marat entered the establishment of the young prince, first in the humble capacity of physician to his stables, and later with the more dignified title of physician to his body-guards.

It is one of the melancholy features of the old system, that few, very few scholars or learned men, who afterwards became politicians, had been able to dispense with lordly protection: they all needed patronage. Beaumarchais was first employed by the princesses (Mesdames), and afterwards at Duverney's; Mably, at the Cardinal de Tencin's; Chamford, at the Prince de Conde's; Rhulières, at Monsieur's; Malouet, at Madame Adélaïde's; Laclos, at Madame de Genlis'; and Brissot, at the house of the Duke of Orleans, &c., &c. Vergniaud was brought up by the protection of Turgot and Dupaty; Robespierre by the Abbe of Saint-Waast, Desmoulins by the Chapter of Laon, &c., &c. Marat had recourse to the protection of the Count d'Artois only late in life, and when compelled by misery; and he remained in this establishment for twelve years.

In this new situation, he refrained from every kind of political or philosophical publication, and turned the whole of his attention to the