The Quotable Haller.

A Miscellany of Hallerisms.

Source: Restoration of Political Science, or Theory of the Natural Social State against the Fiction of the Artificial Civil State, Volume One: Exposition, History, and Critique of False Academic Systems. General Principles of the Natural or Divine Order, against these Systems. Lyon and Paris: Lusand, 1844. Trans. mine.

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I soon knew beyond any doubt that [the French] revolution produced precisely the exact opposite of what it had aimed for, or better yet, what it had promised and proclaimed with such insistence- that is to say, it destroyed all liberty and property, instead of securing them with stronger protections. But I still didn't see that the cause lay in the principles themselves, in the idea of delegated popular power, and the dissolution of almost all natural social relations. Once I finally heard it affirmed that all princes, all governments in the world, were, by nature or their very essence, usurpers and illegitimate (something that, mind you, is a rigorous conclusion of the pseudo-philosophical system), and that men had never been capable of distinguishing between justice and injustice in matters that concern their own most pressing interests, though any child is able to discern an attempt carried out against his liberty; to me this argument always seemed shocking and strangely arrogant, with the result that I was soon led to suspect that that the entirety of the political theory then in vogue rested on some basic and insidious error, and that what had to be done was to destroy it and replace it with a more solid foundation.

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I saw from the outset that, if princes and republics had to limit themselves to their natural rights or those acquired through agreements, forcible conscription and arbitrary taxation could no longer take place, something that didn't seem like a very bad thing to me; and right away history and experience proved to me that conscription is really a modern invention, and owes its rise only to revolutionary principles, which make everything derive from the people, and likewise seek to refer everything back to it. Originally, no taxes were levied either; later on, and only in case of necessity, voluntary subsidies were requested, but it was the general rule that princes have to live by their own means. The same goes for the mania for governing the affairs of every private individual, a mania that always shocked me, and in which I had long intuited the wellspring of all despotism. It would end the moment that, no longer regarding sovereigns as having received their authority from the people, their own proprietary or personal rights were established as the foundation and limit of their power.

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Among various titles that came to me, I chose the one that seemed to me to indicate the sense and goal of the work as a whole with the most precision and exactitude. The words, Restoration of Political Science connote, on the one hand, the destruction of false and usurpatory principles, and on the other hand, the restoration of those that are true or legitimate, two things that are indeed united here. This title may arouse interest from those who, disgusted with revolutionary doctrines and their ruinous effects, but not knowing what to replace them with, always fail in the face of new stumbling-blocks, and incessantly fall from error to error.

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Yes, we will be impartial between the conflicting claims and interests of men; we will have regard neither for the purple robes of kings nor the rags of poverty when it comes to seeing to it that the law of the Eternal reigns over all; but by no means will we be impartial, that is to say, tepid and indifferent, between this law and those who negate it, between truth and lies, between justice and iniquity. There can be neither peace nor alliance here, and it isn't possible to obey the commandments of God and the doctrines of Satan at the same time. There will be perpetual combat between them as long as this world exists. Trying to stay neutral in this war, in my eyes, is infamous cowardice; it is indifference towards what is most sacred, a felony against God and our duty.

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It isn't modifying every natural relation, but inverting them, that makes up the characteristic trait of modern revolutions.

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There are thus masters and servants on Earth according to this [Liberal] system too; only the new philosophers would put the latter in the place of the former.

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Modern writers speak incessantly about the duties of princes and the rights of peoples, never the other way around. This language has even been transposed into family relations; at present the only question is about the duties of parents and the rights of children, as though parents have no rights of their own, and were appointed by their children.

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A man, as a rule, needs no tutor to manage his affairs; an entire nation can't have one. But princes are by no means tutors of their peoples; they are, as we will prove, independent lords who, like other men, in essence govern nothing but their own affairs, and don't get involved in those of their subjects, other than those bound up with their own.

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It is remarkable that the new, so-called philosophical [i.e. Liberal-democratic] constitutions, far from reducing the number of government positions, have everywhere doubled or tripled it, and this could not have been otherwise; for from the outset they created or imagined a host of new needs; and moreover the system they gave birth to additionally sought to divide administrative functions of all sorts into infinity, with the result that it now took ten employees, and sometimes more, where previously one would have sufficed.

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A famous author has said, with very good reason: "It is the most unbearable despotism to be tormented under the pretext of a liberty that doesn't even exist at all". Peoples presently groan under its yoke, and this is punishment from God, or the natural consequence of false doctrines; a punishment that will endure until the world returns from its errors, until it opens its eyes to this fraudulent wisdom, and until a more solid science has replaced it.   

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With all of these so-called philosophical works, it invariably resulted that the disciples were worse than the masters; each one added a bunch of new errors to the errors of his predecessors, and that's what was called perfecting the science.

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A single false idea, conceived by design in bad faith, or owing to chance, that has found favour through the charm novelty always has to offer; been propagated in every social class through education and writings; become, through exact exposition of its logical implications, a system entirely made up of errors; and finally won acceptance by way of the gullibility of the greatest number, can cast roots so deep in their minds that it is no longer possible to extirpate them. Happy would be men, if such doctrines were always harmless, if they were nothing but a pasture for their vanity! But in practical sciences which concern the most precious and sacred bonds of humanity, starting from false principles is no matter of indifference; sooner or later, ripe for application, they bear their fatal fruits; they shake the foundations and safeguards of the dignity and well-being of all, and bring with them the most terrifying calamities for peoples and realms.

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As to absolute power or the full complement of sovereign authority, it is nothing other than that perfect liberty, which consists in not being subject to coercion by the will of others, and that comprises the essential characteristic of every sovereign prince. But this would never be to say that princes are freed from the duty to obey natural law; for in this sense, no human power is limitless. We are all subjects of God.    

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To hope to free men from all external authority in spiritual and scientific matters, is to presuppose in each individual such superiority of mind, knowledge so vast and varied, and such a degree of perspicacity and judgment, as to render him able to do without guidance, see everything by his own wits, and serve as his own authority; a type of intellectual independence infinitely more rare than temporal independence or sovereignty, a veritable spiritual royalty that truly comprises the summit of all scientific studies, but which is bequeathed only to the most eminent men of extraordinary genius- and yet not all of them reach it in more than one branch of human knowledge, and none in all of them. The rest of men, lacking natural faculties, that is to say, capacity of mind enough to see everything for themselves, or the opportunity to acquire it, continue to need certain principles, certain forms of knowledge to serve as the standard of their conduct, and are forced to believe in the authority of others; and in practice, they always believe, whether in a wise man, or a fool passing himself off as wise.

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From the chimerical idea of making each man's reason independent of all authority, or destroying all faith whatsoever, to the no less ridiculous project of freeing men from all temporal authority, or destroying all external servitude, even voluntary, there is but one easy and unavoidable path. [...] If, for spiritual authority, and above all in religious matters, every individual could or should be a sage of the first order, an independent high priest, why couldn't he likewise be a temporal sovereign, taking no orders from anyone on Earth? And if it were to be thought possible to make men perfectly equal in reason and intellect, by extension independent of one another, why shouldn't or couldn't they be equal in external power, in wealth and other gifts of fortune? The natural association of ideas drew these conclusions by necessity; and this also explains how the war against altar and throne, against Church and State, against priests and kings, always marched along the same path, led down it simultaneously by the same men and on the basis of the same principles.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau seems to have wanted to model the entire world along the lines of his native town, where the general council of the electorate as a whole exercised supreme power- and yet this constitution couldn't be any less in keeping with his principles. For the citizenry of Geneva governed only its own affairs and those its members shared in common, just as the king of France governed only his; it didn't administer those of private individuals at all. Considered as a corporate body, it was in miniature what a king is in every other way in large. Moreover, citizens alone made up this collective government, and other inhabitants and subjects had no right to meddle in it.

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If the last king is to be strangled, whoever was able to strangle him with impunity would incontrovertibly be king; for in order to have succeeded, he would have needed assistance and obedience from others. By the same token, if one would slaughter the last priest, it could only be done by establishing a new doctrine able to crush the old one, strip it of credence, and put itself up in its place. But then the heads of the new doctrine, e.g. Diderot, d'Alembert, et al. would be the true priests. Thus there will always be priests and kings, and the question boils down to discerning just who the best priests are: those of ancient wisdom or those of novel paradoxes; those who preach a law of love and justice, a Divine law engraved in the hearts of men, or those who deny this law and its author; who preface their doctrine by inverting the order of nature; who preach, in the name of reason, the hallucinations of their delirious minds, or the whims of a diseased will, and teach others to strangle and disembowel the original benefactors of Mankind.       

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And so in Germany as elsewhere, declamations in favour of reason, independence of mind, and the progress of illumination, had no other aim, or led to no other result, than the subjugation of letters, and the birth of a new spiritual authority opposed to the old one, and much more intolerant. For ultimately freedom of thought or personal opinion was restricted more than ever in making it the slave of so-called public opinion. The broad masses at all times uncritically believed in the authority of others- not, to be sure, that of the wisest, but of the party that screamed the loudest.

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But if the Illuminati showed, on the one hand, great zeal for spreading their doctrines subversive of religion and States by every possible means, they deployed no less to fight or better yet, render impossible any rebuttal that might be made against them. Clamouring with full force for freedom of the press for themselves, they just couldn't allow any to their enemies. Wherever censorship hadn't been abolished, they sought to have themselves put in charge of it, and then exercise it for their sole benefit, giving preferential treatment to partisan writings, putting all sorts of obstacles in the way of the writings of their enemies, and even having them banned under other pretexts wherever possible. It was one of the fundamental rules of the order to give the greatest praise to all the works of its members, and by contrast constantly decry those of their antagonists. This is what a whole slew of new journals, literary magazines, and periodical writings devoted to universal criticism, all clearly written from the slant of the sect, were there for. This led not just every young author eager to make a name for himself, but older scholars with established reputations as well, to cravenly conform to this dominant tone that was called the spirit of the times, and to take, in their books, a line hostile to religion and governments, to all authority spiritual or temporal, thus turning them into vehicles of the new doctrine, even in those arts and sciences least related to it.

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False ideas must be opposed with true ideas, and the fanaticism of error with the enthusiasm of truth. But if one of these parties is driven by spirit, however evil, while the other has none at all, it is impossible for the latter to prevail; it would be like having the dead fight the living. If, by contrast, there had been some such spirit among the intellectuals, and by their means a vigorous struggle among peoples between the idea of a natural social state and an artificial civil state; freely-formed private agreements, and a social contract, the work of coercion; Divine law and the will of the people; individual private liberty and national collective liberty (an impossible liberty); governing one's own affairs and mania for governing everything; in short, the spirit of tradition and that of the new, then one would have seen different results. 

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The grand sophist of Koenigsberg (Kant) said somewhere, with great consistency, that "even a State made up entirely of demons could live in peace, since each demon would want at least some safeguards against the others". According to him, it would be no more than a matter of finding an organization that allows nobody to harm others, but he forgot to give us the blueprints for this machine.

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It is well-known that several German (and even French) philosophers took the conclusions of the [Liberal] system to the point of maintaining that the State must incessantly work towards its own destruction. "The end goal of all government", said Fichte, "is to make all government useless". These gentlemen could spare themselves the bother. The human race is much more advanced than they think; for the sort of States imagined by philosophists, which never existed and never will, were superfluous in the past, are superfluous now, and always will be superfluous. But the sort of States that exist in real life- that is to say, independent and natural social relations based on commitments of service and mutual aid- have always existed, and will necessarily exist for as long as men have needs related to the preservation of their lives, and depend on one another through the diversity of their means and abilities; that is to say, they will exist exactly as long as the world does. No man can do without such States; as to the rest, they are indeed useless. 

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If one were to suddenly introduce, in a vast empire, a philosophical republic, a corporation of equal citizens in which none would be superior to the others, it would above all be absolutely necessary to institute equality of wealth to the extent possible. Baboeuf (the first modern Socialist- trans.) and his cohorts were the most logically consistent of their sect here. It would indeed require the power to abolish the aristocracy of talent and knowledge, since it, in turn, entails authority that hasn't been delegated by others once again. Thus it was that, in France, over the course of eighteen months, those who distinguished themselves by their minds, virtues, knowledge, and the esteem and confidence they inspired, had their heads chopped off.

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     The entire philosophist system on the origin and nature of States rests on the following four propositions:

     1.° Men originally lived without social relations, in a state of perfect liberty and equality.

     2.° This state of affairs provided no protection for their rights.

     3.° For this reason they united with one another, and delegated to one or several among them a power sufficient for the maintenance of general security.

     4.° Through the formation of such a civil society, individual liberty finds itself better secured than before, or as best it could be.

     At first glance it will be noted that all of these propositions are so many statements of principle. and assertions devoid of proof. Considering this system as a whole, the first thing to be objected against it, and in fact has often been objected against it, is that it stands in manifest contradiction with the history of all times and peoples. This contradiction with universal experience is by no means a point of indifference. It should have furnished a clue to the absurdity of the system, if not proof, and encouraged thinkers to do more research. No State in the world was ever formed by a simultaneous association of individuals and delegation of power; for historical evidence shows that even republics and corporations that became independent had a completely different origin and purpose. State formation is a fact; how dare philosophists, in spite of the basic rules of logic, and by extension, reason, seek to prove facts with argumentation and not evidence, and resort to hypotheses to explain things whose origin is known? [...]

     Modern partisans of philosophical public law concur, to be sure, that this supposed origin of States is historically false; but, even more stupidly than their predecessors, they nonetheless defend its necessity as an hypothesis or legal fiction, and in doing so imagine themselves to have made a great discovery. They distinguish between the historical origin of States and what they call their juridical origin, that is to say, an historically false origin, asserting with singular arrogance that, even though no State was ever the product of a social contract, they nonetheless could have or should have formed this way. We will not pause here to consider just how to characterize this type of reasoning and philosophy, just what name should be given to the pigheadedness that presumes to base science on falsehoods recognized as such, persists in hypotheses even after they have been falsified, or constructs ideas to which nothing on earth corresponds.

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It is the height of stupidity to pretend to prevent men from being able to abuse their power. God Himself didn't will that; otherwise He wouldn't have allowed us any liberty, and instead of engraving a rule of conduct in our hearts, would have subjected everyone to laws followed by necessity. There would no longer be any difference between good and evil; and all religion, all legal science, and all prudence would be superfluous, if it were possible to invent a machine that would make injustice impossible. But a so-called rational State, as philosophists imagine it; a social contract formed specifically for the purpose of securing the maintenance of justice, would not only be plagued with infinite problems, but would itself cause incalculably greater injustice, and in the final analysis, could not offer any more security than natural social relations. Far from it: it would only augment evil, and bring new and greater dangers in place of those that existed before.

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But why must one obey this [democratic] majority? Is someone free, can it be said that he has none but the master of his choice, if he is made to submit to the yoke of a majority he didn't create, and which assigns him a superior in spite of himself? In the state of nature, each man was free to either stay free or choose a master that fed and protected him; he had the ability to enter his service voluntarily and leave it as he saw fit. In the so-called civil state, he must by contrast receive his master at the will of others; and that's what they call liberty, perfection, or a better life!

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Strange liberty indeed, which demands that heads of household sacrifice their independence; renounce the right to defend themselves; despoil themselves of their own intellects and will; submit their persons and goods to indefinite servitude; allow themselves in advance to be robbed of a part their property and keep their wallets open for the next round; all this, not to obtain guaranteed advantages, but ultimately to leave it up to chance or the good will of the new master to decide whether or not he can or will protect them, or hopes to oppress them himself. Can anyone imagine that a State was ever formed this way? And what difference would there be between such liberty and absolute slavery?

(to be cont'd)