!"#$%&#'$()$*#+'&#,+#$-,$.

"#$/#+(,&$012-3#
45."(36789$:(#,3''&$;<$/='3.
/(53+#9$!"#$>#?-#=$()$@(A-.-+7B$C(A<$DEB$F(<$G$6H',<B$GIJG8B$22<$KKLID
@5MA-7"#&$MN9$O'1M3-&P#$Q,-?#37-.N$@3#77$)(3$."#$Q,-?#37-.N$()$F(.3#$*'1#$&5$A'+$(,$M#"'A)
()$>#?-#=$()$@(A-.-+7
/.'MA#$Q>R9$http://www.jstor.org/stable/1405379
4++#77#&9$DDSTKSDTGT$TG9UT

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics and Cambridge University Press are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of Politics.

http://www.jstor.org
The Idea of Decadence in the Second Empire
Koenraad W. Swart

IN 1860 French liberal Charles de Remusat noticed that pessi-

mism had made rapid progress during the preceding ten
years and that his period, which was once reputed to be proud
of its accomplishments, then counted more censors than admirers.1
A similar observation had been made in 1852 by the distinguished
Catholic historian of democratic convictions, Frederic Ozanam,
who stated that the best minds believed in decadence and that the
idea of progress had become a discredited notion.2
This pessimism was not representative of the mood of the
French in general, which was rather one of regained confidence
in the strength of the nation and of high expectations as to the
future of mankind. The Second Empire was a period of rapid
industrialization and rising prosperity in which modernized Paris
acquired a world wide reputation of gaiety and in which the
French people took pride in the leading role their country once
again played in European politics. Above anything else, these
were years of spectacular technological inventions and scientific
discoveries which were accepted by many people as convincing
evidence of the idea of progress. Optimistic ideologies like Com-
tian Positivism, Hegelian philosophy, evolutionism, and socialism
enjoyed increased prestige or popularity. "If there is any idea
that belongs properly to our century," wrote a French publicist
of this time, ". .. it is the idea of Progress conceived as the gen-
eral law of history and the future of humanity." 3 This optimistic
philosophy also pervaded the new encyclopedia edited by Pierre
Larousse. "With the exception of morose or blind minds abso-
lutely ignorant of history or dreaming of an impossible return to
a definitely irrevocable past," it asserted, "our period believes that
4
progress is the very law of the development of mankind."
1 Charles de R6musat, "Du pessimisme politique," Revue des Deux-Mondes,
August 1, 1860, 729-744.
2 Freddric
Ozanam, "Du progres dans les siecles de decadence," Cor-
respondant, XXX (1852), 257.
3 Auguste Javary, De l'idee de progres (Paris, 1851), p. 1; cf. also p. 74.
4 Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siecle (Paris, 1867-
1878), XIII, 225; cf. ibid., I, lxxiv; for other contemporary statements on the
universality of the idea of progress see: P. J. Proudhon, De la justice dans la
Revolution et dans l'Sglise, Oeuvres completes (new ed., Paris, 1923- ), XI,
511; Henri de Ferron, Theorie du Progres (Paris, 1867), I, 162-165, 300.
77
78 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Many of these "morose and blind minds," however, have been

admired by posterity for their perspicacity or literary talent.
Among litterateurs, scholars, and philosophers the prevailing mood
was one of disillusionment and deep apprehension, in sharp con-
trast not only to the optimism and complacency of the general
public, but also to the outlook of many of these same men of let-
ters prior to the Revolution of 1848. Convinced that France was
seriously sick or in a state of decadence, they no longer accepted
the doctrine of progress without reservations, sometimes rejecting
it altogether and replacing it by cyclical theories of civilization.

I
Pessimism, although far from uncommon among intellectuals
of liberal or democratic convictions, was most widespread and in-
tense among writers holding conservative or reactionary views.
The revolution of 1848 had fully revealed to the latter the strength
of the revolutionary sentiment, which they considered the primary
cause of the breakdown of the sound social order and the decline
of their country's position in the world. The fear of socialism
which was rampant among the property-owning classes in the
years following the Revolution was the major theme of a widely
read pamphlet, Le spectre rouge de 1852. Its author, Auguste
Romieu, maintained that his period was the most ominous since
the barbarian invasion at the end of the Roman Empire. He
ridiculed the idea of progress and stated that the feudal regime
had been the best Europe had ever known. "The French nation,"
he wrote, "no longer exists; only restless bourgeois and greedy
barbarians are left on the ancient soil of Gaul." 5
It is not surprising that in the 1850's the anti-revolutionary
ideas of the so-called "prophets of the past" (Maistre and Bonald)
for the first time enjoyed a certain popularity.6 The most influen-
tial spokesman of this philosophy, the journalist Louis Veuillot,
carried on a vehement campaign against the ideas of freedom and

5 Auguste Romieu, Le spectre rouge de 1852 (3rd ed., Paris, 1851), pp. 25-
26, 43, 47, 63; see also Henri Guillemin, Le coup du deux decembre (Paris,
1951), passim and Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Les debuts du catholicisme social en
France (1822-1870) (Paris, 1951), pp. 483-487.
6 Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Les prophetes du passe (Paris, 1851); Antoine
Blanc de Saint-Bonnet, De l'affaiblissement de la raison en Europe (Paris,
1861); various works by Maistre and Bonald were re-edited or published for the
first time in the 1850's; see also the articles by Sainte-Beuve on the two authors
in Causeries du lundi (4th ed., Paris, n. d.), IV, 192-216, 427-449.
 DECADENCE IN THE SECOND EMPIRE 79

progress, words that, according to him, are always found as

incendiary fuses in societies on the brink of explosion.7 Another
staunch admirer of reactionary ideas, Charles Baudelaire, charac-
terized the belief in progress as "a highly fashionable error of
which I want to beware as Hell, . . . a grotesque idea which has
flourished on the rotten field of modem self-conceit, ... an infatua-
tion which is the diagnosis of an all too evident decadence." The
poet held that what people called progress actually was "the me-
chanization and Americanization of the world, which means the
end of all higher civilization." 8
The reactionary philosophy in a slightly more liberal version
also inspired the work of Claude Marie Raudot, La decadence de
la France (1850), which had the merit of presenting the first syste-
matic analysis of various symptoms of social and political disorgani-
zation from which, it was held, French society was suffering. The
author emphasized a number of factors seriously weakening the
strength of France: the revolutionary sentiment, the slow growth
of the population, the decline of the merchant marine, the back-
wardness of agriculture, the weakening of the armed forces, the
deterioration of the physique, and the increase in criminality. He
admitted that France had made some progress in various fields but
asserted that, as other nations had advanced more rapidly, the
French position in the world had suffered. He saw the highly
centralized form of government as one of the main reasons for the
unsatisfactory state of the nation and expected a recovery not from
further industrialization or more political freedom, but solely from
a return to the old principles of society. In spite of its obvious
political bias Raudot's treatise was one of the best documented and
balanced discussions published on the problem during this period.
It was widely read and commented upon at the time, but it was
not written with enough literary talent to stir public opinion.9
7 Louis Veuillot in
l'Univers, Dec. 25, 1857, as quoted by Henri Guillemin,
Histoire des catholiques franfais au XIXe siecle (Geneve, 1947), p. 273; cf.
Louis Veuillot, Les odeurs de Paris (Paris, 1866) and J. Maurain, La politique
ecclesiastique du Second Empire (Paris, 1930), pp. 23-24.
8 Charles Baudelaire, "Exposition universelle de 1855," Oeuvres completes,
ed. de la Pleiade (Paris, 1928), II, 148 ff.; cf. his Correspondance gene'rale
(Paris, 1947), IV, 95, 99, 180.
9 Claude-Marie Raudot, De la decadence de la France (4th ed., Paris, 1850)
and De la grandeur possible de la France faisant suite a la decadence de la
France (Paris, 1851); cf. A. Mothere Reponse a l'ouvrage de M. Raudot (Paris,
1850); Ch. Coquelin, "De la pretendue decadence de la France et de l'Angle-
terre et des ouvrages de MM. Raudot et Ledru-Rollin," Journal des economistes,
Aug. 15, 1850, pp. 56-68.
80 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Other conservative authors attempted to place the reactionary

philosophy on a modem, scientific basis. The most successful
effort in this direction was undertaken by the well-known sociol-
ogist, Frederic Le Play, a rejuvenated, progressive and scientific
Bonald, as he has been called.10 His interpretation of history as
presented in La reforme sociale (1864) was not, like that of the
theocrats, based on belief in a Divine Providence, but on an analysis
of social forces, especially of the family structure. Believing in a
cyclical development of history rather than in progress, Le Play
warned his complacent compatriots that despite material prosperity
and regained international preponderance France continued to be
undermined by the erroneous principles of 1789. Like many con-
servatives and liberals of the nineteenth century, he favored decen-
tralization of government and held the old regime partly respon-
sible for the destruction of local autonomy. The poison, according
to Le Play, had started to penetrate the French social system as
early as 1661, when the monarchy had triumphed over the French
aristocracy. He preached a moral reform based on the Ten Com-
mandments but privately expressed the opinion that a catastrophe
was necessary - and inevitable - to cure the national corrup-
tion.11
An even more daring attempt to lend the reactionary point of
view scientific prestige was made by Comte Arthur de Gobineau,
whose well-known Essai sur l'inegalite des races humaines (1853-
55) was partly written with the purpose to explain the alleged
retrogression of France. Rejecting all theories which held moral
corruption, religious fanaticism, economic decline, or certain poli-
tical institutions responsible for the fall of nations, Gobineau came
to the conclusion that the sole reason should be seen in racial decay
resulting from mixture of superior races with inferior ones. Ap-
plied to France, this theory accounted for the greatness of the
country in the past by the dominant position held by Teutonic in-
vaders of the so-called superior Aryan race and explained its grad-
ual decline by the increasingly important role which inferior Celtic
and Roman racial stock of Southern France had played since the
accession of Henry of Navarre. As a result, the highly centralized
form of government, Roman in origin, had gradually broken the in-
10
Charles-AugustinSainte-Beuve,Nouveaux Lundis (Paris, 1907), IX, 18.
11 Frederic Le Play, La reforme sociale en France dgduite de l'observation
comparee des peuples europlens (6th ed., Tours, 1878), I, 92-93, 190; IV, 382;
Louis Thomas, Frederic Le Play, 1806-1882 (Paris, 1943), pp. 8, 41, 63.
 DECADENCE IN THE SECOND EMPIRE 81

fluence of the feudal aristocracy and with the Revolution of 1789

the anarchistic South had taken its full revenge.12 In his own
days, Gobineau held, the superior race was obliterated in France
to a larger degree than in any other European country, and he
predicted that France had only thirty years more to live.13 At
the time of the Franco-Prussian War he felt that his prophecy
had been fulfilled. "One thing is certain," he wrote, "for France
the bell of doom has tolled." 14

II
French reactionaries had been raising their warning voices
since the outbreak of the Revolution of 1789, and the events of
1848 and following years merely intensified their apprehensions.
Among liberal intellectuals, on the other hand, pessimism was a
new phenomenon-until 1848 most of them had believed in
progress and looked with confidence on the political development
of their country.
The Revolution of 1848, which in the words of Tocqueville
aimed not only "at changing the form of government, but at alter-
ing society," converted many professed liberals to political and social
conservatism.15 One of their leaders, the Duc de Broglie, believed
that the end of society was close at hand, and the most prominent
liberal Catholic, Montalembert, declared that the Revolution of
1789 had been nothing but a bloody and useless event.16 Among
the younger generation of liberals the revolutionary idea also lost
its halo. Ernest Renan, the most intelligent spokesman of this
group, stated that France had become profoundly sick by seeking
to create a perfect kingdom in this world. He called the Revolu-
tion of 1848 a crime and criticized the Revolution of 1789 because
it contained the hidden poison of belief in violence.17

12
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, Essai sur l'inegalite des races humaines
(Paris, 1853-1855), I, passim.
13 Correspondance entre Alexis de Tocqueville et Arthur de Gobineau, 1843-
1859 (Paris, 1908), letter of Jan. 15, 1856; Michel Mohrt, Les intellectuels
devant la defaite, 1870 (Paris, 1942), p. 149.
14
Gobineau, Frankreichs Schicksale im Jahre 1870 (Leipzig, 1917), p. 18.
15 Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections (New York, 1896), p. 106.
16 Ibid., p. 187; Maurain, op. cit., p. 24; cf. Cousin's statement reported by
Renan in his Reforme intellectuelle et morale de la France (1871), Oeuvres
completes (Paris, 1947-), I, 342.
17Ernest Renan, "La monarchie constitutionnelle en France" (1869),
Oeuvres completes, I, 496-497; and Essais de morale et de critique, Oeuvres
completes, I, 16-17.
82 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Liberal anxiety about the future of France found its most

explicit expression in Prevost-Paradol's essay, La France nouvelle
(1868), in which the author urged his fellow countrymen to give
up their predilection for utopias and revolutionary methods and
to imitate instead the English in their respect for tradition and
political compromise. Paradol, however, lacked confidence that
the French people would heed his suggestions and predicted an
era of Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the world. Viewing the position
of France among the great powers, he pointed out that France
was gradually falling behind other nations in number of inhabi-
tants. He held a contest between France and Germany inevitable
and a French defeat highly probable. "There is no middle road,"
was his pessimistic comment, "for a nation that has known great-
ness and glory, between maintaining her prestige and complete
impotence." 18
Considerable difference, however, continued to exist between
the liberal and reactionary points of view. Whereas the latter
considered moder science and philosophy the handmaiden of the
dangerous revolutionary spirit, the liberals blamed the obscuran-
tism of the clergy and the backwardness of France's educational
system as important factors in the weakness of the country. More-
over, the liberals, criticizing the Revolution for its methods, rather
than for its principles, and basing their opposition to a centralized
powerful state on a philosophy of freedom for the individual, did
not fully renounce a progressive philosophy.19 Unlike the reac-
tionaries they did not advocate a return to the old regime but
hoped to introduce the English or American form of government.20
Renan pointed out that England, without resorting to a revolu-
tion, had made more progress in establishing political freedom
than France, which had passed through ten revolutions during the

18 Lucien Anatole Prevost-Paradol, La France nouvelle (Paris, 1868), esp.

part III; on Prevost-Paradol, see the authoritative work by Pierre Guiral,
Prevost-Paradol (1829-1870): pensee et action d'un liberal sous le Second
Empire (Paris, 1955).
19 Charles de Remusat, Politique libe'rale ou fragments pour servir a la de-
fense de la Revolution Francaise (Paris, 1860); Renan, Questions contempo-
raines (1868), Oeuvres completes I, 13-14.
20 E. Scherer, ?tudes sur la litterature contemporaine, III (Paris, 1885),
273; Henri de Ferron, op. cit., I, 165; E. Montegut, "Du genie de la race
anglo-saxonne et de ses destinees," Revue des Deux-Mondes, Sept. 15, 1851, p.
1035; ibid., XXVII (1857), 140; Pfdouard de Laboulaye, Paris in America
(New York, 1863).
 DECADENCE IN THE SECOND EMPIRE 83

last century. He traced the evils of modern France back to medi-

aeval times, when the ideals of freedom and honor, introduced
into France by Germanic tribes, had been destroyed by unscrupu-
lous kings like Philip the Fair and Louis XI.21
Liberal pessimism was largely due to the conviction that real
freedom had no roots in France nor had the individual as such
ever existed there.22 Followers of Tocqueville, the liberals were in-
clined to accept his prediction that for the time being France was
doomed "to drag a miserable existence amid alternate reactions
of license and oppression." 23
III
Intellectuals with democratic or socialistic sympathies were
despondent because their dreams had failed to come true in 1848.
Many of the Republican leaders, heartbroken, withdrew from the
public scene and admitted the error of their youthful idealism,
their naive faith in the political instincts of the French people, and
their illusions as to the speedy regeneration of mankind.24 Com-
paring the record of the French people in 1848 with that in the
great revolution of 1789, they concluded that the present genera-
tion at least was decadent. Edgar Quinet, who had declared in
1848 that "Right, truth, freedom and brotherhood are henceforth
the true kings of the earth, the only rulers whom no physical force
can overthrow," wrote nineteen years later: "Thank God, for six-
teen years I have clearly seen that nothing can be expected from
this rotten nation for a number of generations." 25 Similarly
Proudhon confided to a friend in 1862 that he no longer believed
in France. "Her role," he wrote, "is finished; she is the home of
all corruptions which spoil the old world, and just as she has been
the standard-bearer of liberty and right, she now promotes uni-
versal destruction. France is now where Spain was after Philip

21 Ernest Renan, "La Farce de Patelin" (1856), Oeuvres completes, II,

211-212.
22
Hippolyte Taine, Sa vie et sa correspondance (Paris, 1903-1907), II,
332 ff.
23 Tocqueville, Recollections, p. 87.
24 Cf.
Ferron, op. cit., I, 16; on Michelet's pessimism see: M. Leroy, His-
toire des idees sociales en France, III (2nd ed., Paris, 1954), 67; on Lamar-
tine's: E. Petit, Eugene Pelletan, 1813-1884 (Paris, n. d.), pp. 79-87.
25 H.
Monin, "Etude critique sur le texte des Lettres d'exil d'Edgar Quinet,"
Revue d'histoire litteraire de la France, XV (1908), 484; Albert Guerard,
French Prophets of Yesterday: a Study of Religious Thought under the Second
Empire (London, 1913), p. 95.
84 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

II.... Her decadence goes on at an accelerated pace; conscience,

intelligence, character, everything is dying out." 26
The despair about the decadence of France led one of Proud-
hon's disciples, the anarchist Ernest Coeurderoy, to expect the re-
generation of his country from an invasion of the Russian army.
It was not until after the total destruction of the present, corrupt
civilization, according to him, that the cause of the Revolution had
a chance to triumph. "We are the female races," he wrote, "full
of grace, delicacy, and voluptuous sensuality. They are the male
races who hunt the female races, rape them, and fertilize them." 27
Other Republican intellectuals, in their disillusionment, pro-
fessing a complete lack of interest in politics, withdrew into their
ivory tower. Leconte de Lisle wrote as early as April, 1848: "How
stupid the lower classes are. . . . Let them die of hunger and cold,
these masses who are easily misled and will soon start to massacre
their real friends." He advised his friend, the versatile Louis
Menard, not to waste his youth and intelligence on sterile efforts
to regenerate his decadent country. 28
Menard, although remaining loyal to his democratic and re-
publican convictions, gradually came to the conclusion that his
ideal had never been fully realized since ancient Greece and that
modern France was headed for an irremediable decadence.29 It
was perhaps partly under his influence that the philosopher Charles
Renouvier, in many respects the sharpest mind of the period, re-
nounced his earlier optimistic views on history and started his
vigorous and thoughtful campaign against the doctrine of neces-
sary and continuous progress. In a number of works written partly
under the Second Empire (Introduction a la philosophie analytique
de l'histoire and Uchronie) this eminent thinker subjected the in-
terpretations of history expounded by Saint-Simon, Comte, Hegel,
Marx, Spencer, and other influential nineteenth-century writers
to a critical analysis pointing out how progressive forces had fre-
quently been defeated in the past and how a doctrinaire belief in
progress, by minimizing the role played by human responsibility
26 Proudhon, Correspondance (Paris, 1875), XI, 453; cf. ibid., XII, 48,
and E. Dolleans, Proudhon (Paris, 1948), pp. 7, 25, 275-276.
27 Hans Kohn, Panslavism, its History and Ideology (Notre Dame, 1953),
pp. 92 ff.
28 Ramon Guthrie, French Literature and Thought Since the Revolution
(New York, 1942), p. 312; Henri Peyre, Louis Menard (1822-1901) (New
Haven, 1932), p. 78.
29
Peyre, op. cit., pp. 183, 189-190, 367, 371-372, 375-376, 377.
 DECADENCE IN THE SECOND EMPIRE 85

and initiative, tended to undermine morality. Without denying

that progress had occurred in the past and might take place in the
future, Renouvier considered the religious faith which many of
his contemporaries placed in the idea a harmful illusion impairing
the chances of bringing about any real improvement in man's
condition.30
The pessimism professed by most Republicans was even less
absolute than that of the liberals.31 Proudhon, for example, al-
though admitting that exalted idealism, which, in the form of Ro-
man Catholicism, he blamed for extended periods of decadence in
the past, may delay continued progress in the future and that his
own country was not necessarily destined to lead humanity on the
road to greater freedom and equality, did not recant his firm belief
in progress itself.32 The greatest of all Republican opponents of the
Second Empire, Victor Hugo, remained entirely faithful to the
humanitarian optimism and the belief in the mission of France
which had been current among so many French intellectuals prior
to the Revolution of 1848. The great author gave the classic
expression of this optimistic and nationalistic ideology in his
Legende des siecles (1859) and Miserables (1862). 33 The same
attitude was also common among younger Republicans, who be-
lieved that by avoiding the mistakes made by their elders they
could assure the triumph of the revolutionary principles on which,
in their view, the regeneration of France was dependent.34

IV
Intellectuals were not only appalled by the political develop-
ments of their time; they also viewed with alarm the rapid indus-
30 Charles
Renouvier, Introduction a la philosophie analytique de l'histoire
(first publ. as vol. IV of his Essais de critique gene'rale) (Paris, 1864); Uchro-
nie; esquisse historique apocryphe du developpement de la civilisation euro-
pe'enne tel qu'il n'a pas ete', tel qu'il aurait pu etre (Paris, 1876); 0. Hamelin,
Le systeme de Renouvier (Paris, 1927), pp. 421 ff.; P. Mouy, L'idee de progres
dans la philosophie de Renouvier (Paris, 1927); cf. also note 33.
31 E. Pelletan, La profession de foi du dix-neuvieme siecle (Paris, 1852); E.
Quinet, La cre'ation (Paris, 1870).
32 Proudhon, Philosophie du progres (Paris, 1853), De la justice dans la
Revolution et l'Pglise (Paris, 1858), Neuvieme etude.
33 Victor Hugo, La legende des siecles (largely written before 1859), esp.
"Plein ciel"; Les miserables (Paris, 1864), part 4, VII, 4; cf. Charles Renou-
vier, Victor Hugo, le philosophe (2nd ed., Paris, 1912), pp. 139 ff.
34Auguste Vermorel, Les hommes de 1848 (Paris, 1869); M. Dessal,
Charles Delescluze, 1809-1871, un revolutionnaire jacobin (Paris, 1952); Allain
Targ;, Lettres. La Re'publique sous l'Empire (Ed. S. de la Porte, Paris, 1939).
86 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

trialization which took place during the Second Empire and which,
in their eyes, threatened to undermine the moral and spiritual
foundations of civilization. They inveighed against the spirit of
materialism which was rampant in France, the wild speculations
on the stock market, the widespread corruption in politics, and the
commercialization of art and literature. Manifestations of the new
industrial spirit, like the Great Exhibitions of 1855 and 1867, or
the modernization of Paris under the direction of Baron Hauss-
mann, often provoked sour comments on their part.35
Reactionaries were, of course, leading in this attack on the
materialistic spirit of modem civilization, but liberals like Renan
and Montegut, republicans like Pelletan and Quinet, and a social-
ist like Proudhon also deplored the loss of idealism which the quest
of material possessions seemed to entail.36 They had the feeling,
as Renan put it, that they were living in a "world of Lead and
Tin" and that they were heading for an age of mediocrity in which
mankind would no longer have the time to devote itself to artistic
and intellectual pursuits.37
The ultimate implications of increased mechanization and
rational organization were most sharply foreseen by Antoine Cour-
not, a philosopher whose original insight was not fully appreciated
until the twentieth century. He predicted that everything would
be reduced to figures and facts, and man would become a dehu-
manized robot losing his spontaneity. "What is commonly called
progressive civilization," he wrote, "does not constitute the triumph
of the spirit over matter, but rather the triumph of rational and
general principles of matter over the energy and abilities inherent
in living organisms...." 38 "From king of creation which he was,
or believed to be, man has ascended or descended (according to

35 Ernest Renan, "La poesie de l'Exposition" (1855), Oeuvres completes, II,

239 ff.: Baudelaire, "Exposition universelle," Oeuvres completes, II, 148 ff.;
Louis Veuillot, Les odeurs de Paris (Paris, 1866); G. Duveau, Histoire du
peuple francais de 1848 a nos jours (Paris, 1953), p. 251.
36 E. Montegut, "De la maladie morale du XIXe siecle," Revue des Deux-
Mondes, III (1849), 671-686; Richard H. Powers, Edgar Quinet, a Study in
French Patriotism (Dallas, 1957), pp. 160-161; E. Pelletan, La Nouvelle Baby-
lone, lettres d'un provincial en tournee a Paris (Paris, 1862); Dolleans,
Proudhon, pp. 321 ff., 402.
37 Renan, op. cit., II, 250.
8 Antoine A. Cournot, Traite de l'enchatnement des ide'es fondamentales
dans les sciences et dans l'histoire (Paris, 1861), par. 330; cf. R. Ruyer, L'hu-
manite de l'avenir d'apres Cournot (Paris, 1930); Leroy, op. cit., III, 122-124.
 DECADENCE IN THE SECOND EMPIRE 87

one's interpretation) to the role of concessionaire of a planet." 39

The approaching vulgarity, it was feared, also threatened the
finest product of French civilization, literature, which would lose its
raison d'etre in a utilitarian society.40 A number of leading literary
critics were convinced that they were witnessing the corruption
of all literary standards. Reviewing Baudelaire's work, some of
them denied this poetry all artistic value and called the fact that
this type of literature was taken seriously a sign not only of literary
decadence but of a general lowering of the intellectual level as
well;41 other critics, while appreciating the literary qualities of
this poetry, nonetheless considered it as "a flower of evil in the
hothouse of decadence" (Barbey d'Aurevilly) or as "art arrived
at the point of maturity and the product of an aging civilization"
(Theophile Gautier).42 Among his admirers Baudelaire became
known as the "Prince of the Decadents." "He realized," wrote
Paul Bourget, "that he was a latecomer in an ageing civilization,
and instead of deploring this late arrival . . . he considered it a
delight, almost an honor. He was a man of decadence, and he
made himself a theorist of decadence." 43
The corruption of literature was, according to many censors
of the Second Empire, more than a mere symptom of decadence,
it constituted its very cause. Literature, in their view, had ener-
vated people's mind and was to a large extent responsible for the
moral crisis from which French society was suffering. Many critics
felt that Romanticism was at the root of France's misfortunes.44
This attitude was not only taken by dignified bourgeois or conserva-
tive academicians; a socialist like Proudhon blamed Romanticism
for the failure of the Revolution of 1848, asserting that the Ro-

39 Cournot, Considerations sur la marche des ide'es et des e've'nements dans

les temps modernes (Paris, 1872), p. 230.
40Renan, op. cit., II, 18, 240-251; Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis, IX,
62 ff.
41 William T.
Bandy, Baudelaire Judged by his Contemporaries (Nashville,
1933), pp. 35-36, 38, 53, 126; Edmond Scherer, Atudes sur la litterature con-
temporaine (Paris, 1885-95), IV, 280-281, 291.
42
Bandy, op. cit., pp. 137, 168; Alphonse Sech6, La vie des Fleurs du mal
(Amiens, 1928), p. 194; Theophile Gautier, ?crivains et artistes romantiques
(Paris, 1929), p. 179.
43 Paul Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine (Paris,
1912), I, 19 ff.
44 Maxime Du Camp, Chants modernes
(Paris, 1855), p. 8; Ch. Menche de
Loisne, Influence de la littMrature franfaise de 1830 a 1850 sur l'esprit public
et sur les mceurs (Paris, 1852); Eugene Poitou, Du theatre et du roman et de
leur influence sur les mceurs (Paris, 1851).
88 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

mantic school by repudiating the rules of justice had destroyed all

moral concepts.45 A rising younger scholar, Hippolyte Taine, de-
fined the features of the Romantic disease as "dishonesty, brutish-
ness, impotence, madness, and suicide, at best exultation and febrile
declamation." 46 Leading figures in the new school of Realism,
mostly former Romantics themselves, joined in the campaign
against Romanticism. Flaubert wrote some of his novels with this
purpose in mind, and claimed in 1871 that the French people
could never have committed the folly of the Commune had they
understood his novel Education sentimentale.47
Among other factors held responsible for the supposed deca-
dence of France (such as the decline of religious sentiment48 and
the unsatisfactory development of French economy49) special men-
tion should be made of the slow increase in population. Raudot
in 1850 was the first author to call attention to the dangerous
implications of French demographic trends, but it was not until
after the publication of the census of 1856 that the problem be-
came a topic of discussion in newspapers and periodicals and that
a number of publicists like Le Play, Tocqueville, Leonce de La-
vergne, and Prevost-Paradol began to question the prevailing Mal-
thusian views on the subject.50 Public opinion, however, remained
apathetic. It showed but slightly more concern ten years later,
when after the census of 1866, in a year of rapid deterioration of
France's international position, the alarmists once again tried to
shake the complacency of the French people.51
45 Proudhon, Les majorats litte'raires (Paris, 1863); De la justice dans la
Re'volution et l'Iglise, Oeuvres completes XI, 489; L. Maigron, Le Romantisme
dans les mceurs (Paris, 1907), p. 493.
4 Maigron, op. cit., p. 96.
47 Ibid., p. 460; Leroy, op. cit., III, 250.
48 Abbe Gaume, Le ver rongeur dans les societes modernes ou le paganisme
dans l'action (Paris, 1851); Felix-Antoine Dupanloup, Les malheurs et les signes
du temps (Paris, 1866) and L'atheisme et le pre'sent pe'ril social (Paris, 1866);
Guerard, op. cit., pp. 64-65.
49 Arthur L. Dunham, The Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1860
(Ann Arbor, 1930), pp. 125 ff., 204; G. Duveau, La vie ouvriere en France
sous le Second Empire (Paris, 1946), p. 25, and Histoire du peuple franfais
de 1848 a nos jours, p. 251.
50 Raudot, De la decadence de la France and his article in the Correspon-
dant of May, 1857 and the Gazette de France of July 1, 1866; Charles de
Ribbe, Le Play d'apres sa correspondance (Paris, 1884), pp. 56-62; Tocque-
ville, Oeuvres completes, VII (Paris, 1866), 447; Lionce de Lavergne, Revue
des Deux-Mondes, April 1, 1857, pp. 481-501; Guiral, op. cit., pp. 158 ff.
51 Cf. J. Spengler, France Faces Depopulation (Durham, N. C.,
1938), pp.
118-120; Guiral, op. cit., pp. 513 ff.
 DECADENCE IN THE SECOND EMPIRE 89

The way the French public reacted toward the population issue
was characteristic of their attitude toward the ideas of the pessimists
in general. The great mass of the French people, fairly satisfied
with the state of the nation, convinced of the invincibility of the
army, refused to take the somber predictions seriously. During
the very last years of the Empire an attitude of alarm became
more general, but even at that time the warnings fell on deaf
ears.52 "Some enormous errors are dragging our country to the
abyss," wrote Ernest Renan in 1869. "Those to whom they are
pointed out reply with a smile." 53

V
The sentiment of political and cultural decline, although not
representative of French public opinion of this period, deserves
the attention of the historian. The belief in progress has exercised
a true tyranny over moder civilization against which even his-
torians have not been immune. Its history has been traced in great
detail, whereas its counterpart, the idea of decadence, has been
relatively neglected. Especially the importance of the French con-
tribution to the development of the idea has not been fully rec-
ognized.54
The pessimism of this period, of course, contained many ele-
ments besides the idea of decadence. Many of the derogatory
remarks were merely a form of political agitation against a de-
tested regime.55 The Second Empire deprived the intellectuals of
the influence they had exercised during the preceding period; it
curtailed intellectual freedom; it imprisoned some authors and
forced others into exile. It was therefore not surprising that, as
Napoleon III complained to a British ambassador, there existed a
conspiracy of men of letters against his regime.56 Yet, one would
52Maurain, op. cit., p. 757; Guiral,op. cit., pp. 568-579.
53Renan, Saint-Paul (dedication), Oeuvres completes, IV, 708.
54Ernst R. Curtius's article in the Internationale Monatsschrift,XV (1921),
35-52, 147-166, "Entstehungund Wandlungendes Dekadenzproblemsin Frank-
reich," does not do much more than raise the problem; suggestive works on an
earlier period are Walther Rehm's Der Untergang Roms, ein Beitrag zum
Dekadenzproblem (Leipzig, 1930) and Henry Vyverberg'sHistorical Pessimism
in the French Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).
55 Cf. Sainte-Beuve, "Les regrets," Causeries du lundi, VI, 397-413; Mohrt,
op. cit., 225; a good example of the handling of the term "decadence" as a
political weapon is Henri Rochefort's Les Franfais de la Decadence (Paris,
1866).
56 Charles C. F. Greville, Memoirs 1814-1860 (London, 1938), VII, 385.
90 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

underestimate the significance of the pessimistic mood by merely

considering it as a form of personal revenge or political propa-
ganda. Pessimism was not only prevalent among opponents of
the regime, but was also common among many writers who were
politically indifferent or even in sympathy with the Empire. It
was not only expressed in political pamphlets but also in the works
of clear-headed scholars like Renan and Tocqueville, and of pro-
found philosophers like Cournot and Renouvier.
The pessimism of this period, even where it corresponded to
deeply rooted convictions, did not always imply the belief in deca-
dence. Many writers did reject the idea of progress, yet did not
make any invidious comparisons between their own age and the
past, and their pessimism was therefore of a philosophical rather
than a historical nature. This form of pessimism was, as is known,
common among intellectuals in many European countries at this
time, especially in Germany, where it found its fullest expression
in the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann.57
The pessimism of the Second Empire, as far as it was his-
torically oriented, assumed in many instances the form of a mythi-
cal belief in the "good old days." As such, it has been current
among disillusioned idealists or narrow-minded moralists of all
societies, even in periods which posterity remembers for their cul-
tural brilliance or political stability.58 Yet, the significance of the
French speculations lies in in the fact that they involved more
than vague idealizations of the past. In many cases at least, the
French ideas of decadence were based on a fairly accurate and
detailed knowledge of history and a sharp analysis of contem-
porary social and political trends. Even reactionaries adduced
the findings of some solid research on the old regime in support
of their glorification of the past.

57 Cf. Friedrich Ueberweg, Grundriss des Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. by

Max Heinze (9th ed., Berlin, 1902), IV, 203; Schopenhauer's philosophy had
few French followers in this period; cf. A. Baillot, "Schopenhauer im Urteil
seiner franzoesischen Zeitgenossen. Fruehe Dokumente," Jahrbuch der Schopen-
hauer-Gesellschaft, XIX (1932), 252-279; A. Baillot, L'influence de la philo-
sophie de Schopenhauer en France (1860-1890) (Paris, 1927).
58 C. Edmund Pfleiderer, Die Idee eines goldenen Zeitalters, ein geschichts-
philosophischer Versuch mit besonderer Beziehung auf die Gegenwart (Berlin,
1877); H. Delbrueck, "Die gute alte Zeit," Preussische Jahrbuecher, LXXI
(1893) and L. Wuelker, "Das Lob der guten alten Zeit," ibid., CXXX, 324-
329; cf. also Voltaire's statement: "People are always crying that the world is
in the process of degeneration," Oeuvres completes (Paris, 1877-1885), XVI,
140.
 DECADENCE IN THE SECOND EMPIRE 91

This realistic form of historical pessimism was not an entirely

new phenomenon. Since the Renaissance the topic of moral,
literary, and artistic decline had been the subject of heated discus-
sions, in which lowering standards had been frequently blamed on
luxury or science.59 Even more revelant to this study, the problem
of contemporary political decline had been debated by numerous
European intellectuals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
especially by Spanish publicists complaining about the decadence
of their country.60 However, the French pessimists in the Second
Empire (in this respect partly preceded by writers in France and
elsewhere in the first half of the nineteenth century) added im-
portant new elements to the ideas presented by the Spanish authors.
The French writers profited from the advance in social science
and political analysis made since the beginning of the nineteenth
century, and were, because of a greater freedom of expression,
able to discuss the problem of decadence more openly than had
been possible under the Spanish absolute monarchy. The French
pessimists, moreover, were less exclusively concerned with decline
in political power and showed interest in many other aspects of
the development of their society, broaching the topic of cultural
decline. Although primarily preoccupied with the future of their
own country and in many instances willing to admit that other
nations (England, Germany, the United States, or Russia) might
take over the leadership of world civilization, they were also of
the opinion that the same disintegrating forces which had sapped
the vigor of France threatened to corrupt civilization in other
countries. Whereas the Spanish decline of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries had not been held symptomatic of the develop-
ment of Europe in general, and men of letters outside Spain had
not been afflicted with the gloom prevalent among Spanish intellec-
tuals, the course of events in nineteenth-century France was con-
sidered as foreshadowing the fate of the entire West not only by
many Frenchmen, but also by numerous observers in other Euro-
pean countries.
Without attempting to discuss here historical pessimism outside

59Cf. Vyverberg, op. cit., esp. chs. 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20.
60 Pedro Sainz y Rodriguez, La evolucion de las ideas sobre la decadencia
espaiiola (Madrid, 1925); Vicente Palacio Atard, Derrota, agotamiento, deca-
dencia en el Espaia del siglo XVII; un punto de enfoque para su interpreta-
cion (Madrid, 1949); Jose Martin Blasquez, "Anotaci6nes sobre un ensayo de
la decadencia espafiola," Cuadernos de historia de Espaia, XVII (1952).
92 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

France in the period of the Second Empire, it may be said that

many, if not most, European prophets of doom of this time illus-
trated their theories of cultural decline by citing the development of
modem France. Conservative publicists like the Spaniard Donoso
Cortes and the German Karl Friedrich Vollgraff, who predicted
the collapse of civilization, considered France the country closest
to its downfall.61 More liberal-minded authors like Alexander
Herzen and Jacob Burckhardt likewise came to their gloomy views
about the future of Europe largely on the basis of observation of
the French scene.62 Finally, another group of European intellec-
tuals firmly convinced of the decadence of the West, the Russian
Slavophiles, most vehemently denounced the French society of
their time.63
The pessimism of these foreign men of letters owed much to
the influence of French authors discussed in this article: Tocque-
ville, Le Play, Renan, Gobineau, Prevost-Paradol, and Proudhon.64
Also the French literary school of decadence found disciples among
writers in other European countries, who introduced the terms
"decadence," "decadent," or their derivatives into their lan-
guages.65 The ideas of the French writers of the Second Empire,
furthermore, set the tone for much of the pessimism current in
the Third Republic. The French prophets of doom, who were
not honored by their contemporaries, have in this way played an
important role in the development of the idea of decadence in
Western civilization.
61
Juan Donoso Cortes, Der Abfall vom Abenland, Dokumente (Wien,
1948), pp. 44, 67, 76; H. J. Schoeps, Vorlaeufer Spenglers, Studies zum Ge-
schichtspessimismus im 19. Jahrhundert (Leiden, 1955).
62 R. Hare, Pioneers of Russian Social Thought (London, 1951), pp. 233-
245; Wilhelm Krueger, Das Dekadenzproblem bei Jacob Burckhardt (Koeln,
1929).
63 N. V. Riasanovsky, Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavo-

philes (Cambridge, Mass., 1952).

64 See three preceding notes.
65 Although some European languages adopted the term "decadence" as
early as the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the general use of the word dates
in most countries from the second half of the nineteenth century. Cf. James A.
H. Murray (ed.), A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford,
1888-1928), III, 84; J. Corominas, Diccionario critico etimologico de la lengua
castellana (Berna, 1954), I, 574; Hanz Schulz, Deutsches Fremdwoerterbuch
(Strassburg, 1913), I, 129.