The Quotable Haller, p.2
Another miscellany of Hallerisms
Trees have all their roots in the ground and branches in the air, that's the fact; but according to the rationalist conception, the branches should have been in the ground and the roots in the air, or at least philosopher-gardeners should try to bring trees into as close an approximation as possible to this most rational ideal.
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Every man is a subject from infancy; nobody is born free and equal in rights, as the Declaration of the Rights of Man would have it. For nine months before his birth, the infant already lives as a prisoner in his mother's womb. Even as he has just barely come into the world, he is bound by various ties, and subjected to two superiors he in no way appointed, and also to various subaltern masters who, one and all, give him laws, execute them themselves, settle his disputes, and punish his wrongs, with no jury and no civil code. In the games of childhood and the military sports of youth, he obeys a general who appointed himself to this office. Upon his arrival at public or private school, he finds himself under a theocratic government, subjected to masters he in no way made, and who unite sacerdotal, legislative, executive, and judicial power in their persons. He enters his adolescent years, in which he hopes to enjoy more liberty. On the contrary; he only gets a change of chains and superiors. At the theatre, he can't always be first; he finds men there who are bigger, older, or more distinguished than he, and have already taken the best places. At parties, it is female superiors who assign the young man to this or that table or gaming-group, without asking him. In the ballroom, dancing-masters determine his rank and place at their will; they go as far as to dictate the very movements of his body to him. If he commits himself to the service of the State, Church, Army, etc. he has only fallen out of one frying-pan and into another. All around him he finds superiors he didn't make; he is obliged to work and act according to their orders. If he sometimes commands, it is in conformity with the will of a superior. Does love lead him to marriage? He is often forced to give in; a thousand new ties bind him; and he himself contributes to perpetuating the exact same dependence. Finally, make him what you call a free republican, even taking position in the government; in it he still finds senators he didn't make and can't dismiss; he must submit to their majority; and there he is, a subject once again. In short, Man is born in the greatest dependence, and his liberty increases only by degrees; he changes ties, he passes through every type of social relation, he encounters patriarchal, military, and spiritual authority; corporations or republics, with or without representation; but everywhere there are superiors who came before him, and he never becomes absolutely free or independent until there is no longer anyone above him and, in order to defend this liberty, he additionally can command a great number of men. The latter state is the height of human fortune, that is to say, sovereignty, where there is no longer any superior but God. But this superior higher still, was He made by Man?
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Vim potentiorum soevientem natura moderatur -Ivo. For Man in general has a unique love for those who, by his own authority, are gathered under his wings.
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That such men of intellect as Boehmer, et al. could have maintained that justice alone would suffice to keep the peace between men, is proof of the grave errors into which one falls by occupying oneself with only one branch, whatever it may be, of a science, and not consulting the nature of things. Without benevolent acts, without a reciprocity of ethical obligations, neither the smallest family, nor indeed any social relation would last a day or even a quarter of an hour; those who doubt this can try it, if they are able to.
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It is in the very nature of things, and history confirms it everywhere, that individual liberty, the private rights of citizens (the preservation of which is supposed to be the only goal of civil society), are nowhere less respected or less secure than in great popular assemblies; for there is no power more terrible than one against which no resistance whatsoever is possible; than one that can commit the most execrable crimes with the combined forces of all, or whitewash them as the will of all.
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That the state of nature therefore, by force of nature alone, has, and must have, social relations within it, is a truth not only proven by reason and experience, but moreover generally well-known. Just as nature forms these ties between men through the diversity of their means and needs, of necessity she also establishes the lordship and dependence, liberty and subjection without which these relations could not endure. As a consequence of the unequal distribution of means between men, and for their mutual advantage, she makes some dependent, others independent, some servants, others free. Are not small children, the weak, the ignorant subjected by their nature, in proportion to their needs? Are not the powerful, the rich, the wise by contrast naturally free in proportion to the means they have received from nature?
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Lordship and dependence, liberty and subjection, are and always will be two correlated things, inasmuch as men are never endowed with the same abilities, and depend on one another for mutual needs. No free man can do without assistants in his service, nor assistants or servants without one or more free men; one can neither conceive of a master without a servant, nor a servant without a master. Making all liberty or all dependence vanish from Earth, attempting to make all men equally free or equally dependent; these two endeavours would be equally contrary to nature, equally impossible, and equally self-contradictory, the first and the second alike. Thus human society in general, with its subordination and its necessary correlation, is as old as the world.
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Nobody on Earth suffers the rule of his equal or inferior, that is to say, someone less powerful than him, without revulsion. Everyone wants to serve a real superior alone, and from the lowliest jobber to the ministers and generals of the armies of the greatest monarchs, everyone voluntarily obeys only those they recognize as above them.
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Do you perhaps think that in republics, at least, it isn't the strongest who rule, and that it's possible to exempt oneself from the law of nature? But consider, then, every corporation, every republic, from the smallest rural municipality to Rome, once mistress of the world; and you'll find without exception that everywhere the great and the most important, the richest, most notable, and famous citizens, those who are first among equals, and therefore the most powerful, are chosen as heads of affairs.
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It is precisely in order to make abuse less common, in order that there should be less injustice and violence on Earth, that nature has remitted power to the most powerful. For, in order to do good, it isn't enough to know and to wish; power is needed above all. How much wisdom and elegance there is in the Divine institute, that none command except by virtue of real superiority; that he alone protects his fellows, who can actually protect them; that when an order is needed, it will be given only by someone who has the means to make his will effectual; and finally, that superior power rules only because it provides for the needs of others, and can rescue from evil or procure good! This way, the strong becomes the friend of the weak, and the weak, in turn, the friend of the strong.
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So much is written against the abuse of power by the strong, but one could just as easily write volumes on the abuse of force or the use of fraud by the weak.
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In any case, these tyrants of one or many heads, these scourges of a mass of slaves, what were they themselves? Consult history, and you'll find that they were always weak men who, with no personal superiority, were only by chance burdened with the heavy load of a power they weren't accustomed to carrying.
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Seeking to thwart evil as much as possible, above and beyond limiting oneself to not doing any, is what advances the reign of justice on Earth; and a so-called civil State, in which all personal defense would be forbidden, would be the height of dementia and not reason; it would make the dreams of gangsters come true, not those of good people.
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We [...] maintain that not only do human and Divine laws, as well as reason and experience, allow men to help themselves in just causes, and that this ability is necessary and useful for the safety of good people, but additionally that its exercise is a duty of a certain sort, and that throughout time it has with good reason been regarded as a virtuous act, because it in fact advances and upholds the rule of God's law. A man who doesn't try to help himself first, doesn't deserve to be afforded redress; somebody who can prevent evil, but doesn't, should be regarded as having authorized it; and the harm he suffers is further joined with the just reproach of cowardice or ineptitude. In everyday life, does one not already see children and grown men alike scorn those who can never stand on their own two feet, and bother other people with their whining and crying for help with each trivial complaint they have? How could, or would, somebody never able to protect himself protect his fellow man in turn?
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A ridiculous assertion of our modern jurisprudents is supposing that, by permitting personal defense, there would be no judges at all, or that the existence of a judicial power entails the prohibition of personal defense. One helps oneself, one does justice for oneself when one can; and when one can't, or doesn't want to, one petitions a superior for relief. Likewise, ever since the beginning of the world, self-help and judicial recourse have coexisted together.
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But to presume to prevent or thwart, through human institutions, all abuse of sovereign power, that is to say, a power which has no superior other than God, is an idea that could only have occurred to the conceit of our times; it is a problem that is radically impossible to solve, and whose very definition implies contradiction. For in order to guarantee against the abuse of supreme power, it would be necessary to oppose it with, and thus create, a superior power; but then the latter would be the supreme power, and there would be abuse on its own part to fear. How to thwart it this time, without continuing the operation into infinity, forever encountering the same problem, and perpetually spinning about in the same vicious circle?
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It will forever be true, then, that the abuse of supreme power can only be prevented by religion and morality, that is to say, by respect for the natural law of justice and charity, and voluntary submission to what they prescribe. [...] This is another reason why it is so necessary, so indispensable to spread religious sentiment everywhere. All the sages of ancient times recognized this truth; it was reserved to the dementia of our pathetic times to pretend one could do without this mother and root of all justice, this foundation and pillar of all security, by means of legal forms and dead letters.
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Schloezer, professor at Goettingen, said that men invented States as they did fire insurance. But how, then, does it come about that States are found everywhere, fire-insurance firms, not so much?
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It is also completely inappropriate (as has been done for the last thirty years) to simply term princes and republics governors and governments. These semi-revolutionary expressions, by design substituted for tried-and-true terminology, first of all have the defect of having been deduced, not at all from the main phenomenon itself, but only from a secondary consequence; for the government is by no means a thing-in-itself, but a mere emanation of the personal rights of whoever reigns, the natural effect of his power and property, which governing authority can exist separately from no more than the shadow from the body. In addition, this false expression, government, also leads to dangerous errors in practice. For on the one hand, it must necessarily lead every prince and every republic towards despotism, given that, by a natural effect of the word, they think it incumbent on themselves to govern all private affairs, while as a rule, they ought to govern their own affairs alone, and with respect to everything else limit themselves to providing judicial recourse to those under their protection. On the other hand, this same expression, government, makes all superior authorities odious to their subjects, for nothing is more insufferable to the self-respect of a man than the thought of being governed in all things for all time.
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Revolutionaries and would-be philosophers always think they emerge triumphant whenever they ask the following loaded question: "Was the prince made for the people, or the people for the prince", as though only one of these positions can possibly be taken. They think nobody would dare take the second, and if one comes out in support of the first, then they win the day. But one need only reply: Neither. Such questions are but frivolous hair-splitting, cheap sophisms that bog down the simple-minded. One might as well ask whether the merchant exists for his wares, or his wares for the merchant. In one relation, every man exists for himself, in another, he exists for his fellows. Everybody looks out for themselves; but they help each other too.