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chapter seven: The Result of These Differences between the Ancients and the Moderns - Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments [1815]

Edition used:

Principles of Politics Applicable to a all Governments, trans. Dennis O’Keeffe, ed. Etienne Hofmann, Introduction by Nicholas Capaldi (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003).

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Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


chapter seven

The Result of These Differences between the Ancients and the Moderns

Because of all these differences, freedom cannot be the same among the moderns as it was among the ancients. The freedom of ancient times was everything which assured the citizens the biggest share in the exercise of political power. The freedom of modern times is everything which guarantees the citizens independence from the government. The character of the ancients gave them above all the need for action, and this need sits very well with a great extension of political power. Moderns need calm and various satisfactions.23 Calm is found only in a small number of laws preventing its being disturbed, satisfactions in an expansive individual freedom. Any legislation demanding the sacrifice of these satisfactions is incompatible with the present state of the human race. In this respect nothing is more curious to observe than the speeches of French demagogues. The wittiest of them, Saint-Just, delivered all his speeches in short sentences, proper to arouse tired souls. And while he seemed to suppose the nation capable of the most painful sacrifices, in his very style he recognized it as incapable even of attention. One must not demand of modern peoples the love and devotion the ancients had for political freedom; it is civil freedom which men in our era cherish above all. This is because not only has civil freedom gained in advantages, owing to the multiplication of private decision making, but political freedom has lost them, owing to the size of societies. The only group among the ancients to demand a sort of individual independence were the philosophers. Their independence, however, was in no sense like personal freedom, which [433] seems desirable to us. Their independence consisted in renouncing all the joys and affections of life. Ours on the contrary is precious to us only in guaranteeing us these joys and permitting us these affections. The progress of mankind resembles the individual’s. The young man believes he loves his country more than his family and sometimes the world more than his country. But as he gets older, the scope of his feelings narrows, and as if warned by instinct of the weakening of his powers, he no longer tires himself loving faraway things. He keeps close to him what remains of his power to feel. Similarly, as the human race ages, home-based affections replace grand political interests. What needs to be done, therefore, is to purchase political freedom as cheaply as possible, that is, to leave as much personal freedom as possible,24 in all its forms, and in every respect. The tolerance of the ancients would not suffice for us, being purely national. Each nation’s religion was respected, but each member of a given State was forced to abide by his country’s religion.25 The religious freedom civilization demands today is of a different kind. It is an individual freedom each man wants to be able to practice privately. Laws on morals, celibacy, or idleness are intolerable. These laws assume a subjugation of the individual to the body politic of a kind we could no longer tolerate.26 Even the laws against begging, however necessary they might be, are difficult and odious to operate, involving something against the grain of our practices.

For the same reason life must not be subject to many shocks. The social ramifications are much greater than before. Even groups which seem to be enemies are joined by imperceptible but indissoluble links. Banishments, confiscations, spoliation by the state, unjust in all eras, have today become absurd and pointless as well. Property, having assumed a much more stable nature and having identified itself more intimately with human existence, demands [434] much more respect and much more freedom. Man having lost in imagination what he has gained in positive knowledge and for this very reason being less given to enthusiasm, legislators no longer have the same power over him. They must renounce any disruption of settled habits, any attempts to affect opinion powerfully. No more Lycurgus, no more Numa, no more Mahomet.27 M. de Pauw’s observations on music apply to legislation. “The most inferior of music,” he says, “produces among barbarian peoples sensations incomparably stronger than the sweetest melody can excite among civilized peoples.” He continues, “The more the Greeks wished to perfect music, the more they saw its marvels weakening.”28 This was precisely because they wished to perfect music, that is to say, were judging it. All their savage ancestors had done was listen to it.29 I would not want to affirm that modern man is not given to enthusiasm for certain viewpoints, but he certainly no longer is for men. The French Revolution is very remarkable in this regard. Whatever one may have been able to say about the inconstancy of the peoples of the ancient republics, nothing compares with the volatility we have witnessed. Study carefully, even in the violence of the best-prepared unrest, the obscure ranks of the blind, submissive populace, and you will see them, just as they are following their leaders, fix their gaze in advance on the moment when the latter must fall. You will spot in their meretricious exaltation a bizarre mix of analysis and mockery. Though they strive to numb themselves by their acclamations, and recoup themselves by their raillery, at the same time they will seem to you to distrust their own conviction, to have a personal presentiment, so to speak, of the time when the prestige will be dissipated. People are astonished that the most marvelous enterprises, the most unexpected successes, prodigious actions of courage and skill, today cause almost no sensation. This is because the good sense of the human race warns it that all this is not done on its behalf. This is governmental display. Since governments alone find [435] pleasure in it, they alone can bear the costs. The activity of those in power has become much less necessary since contentment, for most men, is now based on private relationships. When conditions were essentially warlike, people admired courage particularly, because courage was the most indispensable quality in the leaders of the peoples. Today, conditions being essentially pacific, what those in government are asked for is moderation and justice. When they lavish countless great spectacles of heroism and creation and destruction on us, we are tempted to reply to them: the least grain of benevolence would be far more to our liking. All the moral institutions of the ancients have become inapplicable to us. The institutions I call moral, as opposed to purely political ones, are those which like censorship or ostracism attributed to society, or some number of men or other, a discretionary jurisdiction operating not according to legal and judicial principles but on the vaguely conceived idea of the moral character of certain individuals, of their intentions and of the danger they could pose to the State. I call the practice which made all the citizens of the ancient republics prosecutors a moral institution. This was an honorable function. People sought to distinguish themselves in the pursuit and denunciation of the guilty. In our times the function of the prosecutor is odious. A man would be dishonored if he exercised it without legal remit. All this results from the same cause. Formerly public interest went before safety and individual freedom. Today safety and individual freedom come before the public interest.

Peace, calm, and domestic contentment being the natural and invincible tendency of modern peoples, more sacrifices have to be made for that calm than the ancients made. Disorder is not always incompatible with political freedom, but it always is with civil and individual freedom.

Political freedom offering less satisfaction than formerly and the disorders it can entail being more unbearable, we must conserve only what is absolutely necessary in it. To claim today to console men with political freedom for the loss of their civil freedom is to go in the opposite direction from the present-day spirit of the human race. Far from opposing one of these freedoms to another, [436] we should present the former only as the guarantee of the latter. I would be misunderstood, nevertheless, if it were claimed that arguments against political freedom could be drawn from this conclusion. Many men today would like to draw this inference from it. Because the ancients were free, their inference is that we are destined to be slaves. They would like to constitute the new social State with a small number of elements they claim to be uniquely adapted to the situation of the modern world. These elements are: prejudices to frighten men, greed to corrupt them, frivolity to stupefy them, coarse pleasures to degrade them, despotism to rule them, and, of course, positive knowledge and exact science to serve the despotism more adroitly. It would be bizarre were such to be the end point of forty centuries during which the human race has mastered more moral and physical means. I cannot believe it. The inference I draw from the differences which mark us off from antiquity is absolutely not that we should abolish public safeguards but that we should extend satisfactions. It is not political freedom that I want to renounce, but civil freedom that I am demanding along with other forms of political freedom.

Governments have no more right than before to arrogate to themselves illegitimate power; but legitimate governments have less right than in former times to fetter individual freedom.30 We still possess today the rights we owned at all times, the eternal rights to justice, equality, and safeguards, because these rights are the purpose of human societies. But governments, which are only the means of attaining this purpose, have new duties. The progress of civilization, the changes effected by the centuries in the predisposition of the human race, require of them more respect for the habits and affections, in a word for the independence of individuals. They must handle these sacred things more prudently and more gently every day. [437]

[23. ][The French word “jouissances,” which Constant uses, can mean both private pleasures and the enjoyment of property tenures and so on. Translator’s note]

[24. ]See Constant’s Note P at the end of Book XVI.

[25. ]See Constant’s Note Q at the end of Book XVI.

[26. ]See Constant’s Note R at the end of Book XVI.

[27. ]See Constant’s Note S at the end of Book XVI.

[28. ]See Constant’s Note T at the end of Book XVI.

[29. ]See Constant’s Note U at the end of Book XVI.

[30. ]See Constant’s Note V at the end of Book XVI.

[P. [Refers to page 362.]]Speaking of republics before and after their corruption, M. de Montesquieu says: “One was free with the laws, and wishes to be so against them.” This could be said in another sense of the ancients and the moderns.

[Q. [Refers to page 362.]]Plato in his tenth book of The Republic upheld as legitimate the accusations of impiety.59 The first philosophers who adopted true principles of tolerance were the neo-Platonists.

[R. [Refers to page 362.]]In Athens the law of Solon against idleness fell rapidly into disuse, as violating the rights of a free people. Freedom consists, Socrates said, in working or not as one wishes.60

[S. [Refers to page 363.]]“Ancient legislators excelled in the formation of public spirit. But their political miracles must be attributed less to the wisdom of some people than to the weakness of others. They were speaking to humanity in its infancy. The modern legislator, [449] relying solely on the authority of reason, may well demand belief, but he cannot enforce it.” Toulongeon, De l’esprit public.61

[T. [Refers to page 363.]]Recherches sur les Grecs. Partie III, 6.62

[U. [Refers to page 363.]]The Athenians, who may be regarded in many respects as moderns in the bosom of antiquity, were of all the Greeks the ones who attached least importance to music. Xenophon tells us in his République d’Athènes63 that they did not set great store by men committed solely to harmony. The fact is that the taste for music is a passion only among simple peoples, not far advanced in civilization. The Athenians, more advanced than any other ancient people, had this taste less than any other; but their philosophers, who, as we have said, wrote endlessly and in the opposite direction from the national mores and inclinations, did not on this account recommend or praise music any the less.64

[V. [Refers to page 365.]]“In the present state of civilization and in the commercial system under which we live, all public power must be limited and an absolute power cannot subsist.” Ganilh, Histoire du revenu public, I, 419.

[Q. [Refers to page 362.]]Plato in his tenth book of The Republic upheld as legitimate the accusations of impiety.59 The first philosophers who adopted true principles of tolerance were the neo-Platonists.

[R. [Refers to page 362.]]In Athens the law of Solon against idleness fell rapidly into disuse, as violating the rights of a free people. Freedom consists, Socrates said, in working or not as one wishes.60

[S. [Refers to page 363.]]“Ancient legislators excelled in the formation of public spirit. But their political miracles must be attributed less to the wisdom of some people than to the weakness of others. They were speaking to humanity in its infancy. The modern legislator, [449] relying solely on the authority of reason, may well demand belief, but he cannot enforce it.” Toulongeon, De l’esprit public.61

[T. [Refers to page 363.]]Recherches sur les Grecs. Partie III, 6.62

[U. [Refers to page 363.]]The Athenians, who may be regarded in many respects as moderns in the bosom of antiquity, were of all the Greeks the ones who attached least importance to music. Xenophon tells us in his République d’Athènes63 that they did not set great store by men committed solely to harmony. The fact is that the taste for music is a passion only among simple peoples, not far advanced in civilization. The Athenians, more advanced than any other ancient people, had this taste less than any other; but their philosophers, who, as we have said, wrote endlessly and in the opposite direction from the national mores and inclinations, did not on this account recommend or praise music any the less.64

[59]Plato, La république, X, XIII, 615c, in Oeuvres complètes, t. VII, 2e partie, text edited and translated by Emile Chambry, Les Belles Lettres, 1934, p. 115. See also Plato’s other great work on politics, Les lois, Livre X, in ibid., t. XII/1, text edited and translated by A. Dies, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1956, pp. 141–148. The same example is found in Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. II, p. 46.

[60]Ibid., p. 62: “Solon had the advance and prosperity of Athenian manufactories so much at heart that he took it upon himself to make a law against idlers, one which soon fell into disuse . . . The true freedom, said Socrates, consists in working when one wishes and not working when one does not.” There is another note by Constant on this law of Solon in Annexe I, Principes de politique (Hofmann’s edition), p. 654.

[61]François-Emmanuel d’Emskerque, vicomte de Toulongeon, De l’esprit public. Mémoire désigné pour être lu à la dernière séance de l’Institut national, Paris, Impr. de Du Pont, 1797, pp. 9–10: “We are astonished by the ease of domination the ancient legislators had: it is because they were talking to the human mind still in its infancy. People believed in apparitions, political miracles, and auguries. The strong, simple man listened and believed. The mature human mind no longer believes on trust. To give it laws you have to persuade it, which is more difficult than giving it to believe something.”

[62]Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. II, pp. 121–122.

[63]Xenophon, La république des Athéniens, I, 13, in Xenophon, Anabase . . . , éd. cit., p. 512.

[64]This remark on music among the Athenians, and the reference to Xenophon, come from Cornelius de Pauw, op. cit., t. I, p. 225.