Discarding the trash in one’s head is easier said than done. Social relations dump it there incessantly, depositing untold messages whose residues agglomerate and fill that inner zone, sonically too. Music at its best might be invited in to blow it clean; but whether with acoustic assistance or not, the emptying is less likely to misfire if it is superintended not simply on behalf of one’s selfhood, but with some concern for the plenitude whence all the rubbish hailed. Restoring the intellectual integrity of the self, provisionally, can improve the rapport to the surroundings; in so doing those who are not entirely of the world can manifest a more dextrous worldliness, somewhat in the way that they love life the most for whom living never becomes a highest good in its own right. And even the action of abiding within a little room, concentrating one’s own forces in order to reflect upon the minimum that as such is certain and unshaken (minimum quid quod certum sit & inconcussum),* even this act could be fulfilled better, if juxtaposed carefully with all that remains outside.
* René Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, Meditatio secvnda
– But how much rubbish there is!
– One does wonder whether removing it, that one may think clearly, without tilting at illusions, will go awry if the heaps have been permitted to accumulate mainly in order to afford oneself a chance to shunt them away, thus indicating to oneself and to others the higher degree of one’s power. Yes, the pursuit of power, taken for the intrinsic aim of every existence, is an idea mixed into the agglomerations of mental trash, even as glue; hence it should not be spared. By the intervention of this idea one’s efforts are often led astray, as when, for instance, it does appear before one alluringly as the belief that regaining a good is better than not having lost it at all (Bonum recipere quam non perdidisse, Melius), because then such a good could be more rightly valued on account of the memory of the misfortune (rectius æstimatur propter memoriam Mali), the latter regarded as needful so there could occur the recovery (convalescere)* signalling, even in spectacular fashion, how potent one is. There one would stumble, were such a notion of power retained while other bits of debris get thrown out. Soon the disposal-procedure itself tends to become rote, or an addiction; never could the mind then free itself of the refuse definitively.
* Thomas Hobbes, Elementorum philosophiæ sectio secunda de homine, ch. xi, 14
Society, the civil state which Hobbes anatomised so searchingly, is pervaded by the rumble of violence. The traces of the latter remain, for instance in the form of the thrills coursing through any social relation amongst persons mediated by images (rapport social entre des personnes, médiatisé par des images)* – these relations designated in the aggregate from the 1960s onwards as the society of the spectacle. The novelty of the verb “médiatiser” (think also of the prominence of “monetise”) can be described thus: in a vivid image or set of them, which need not be visual, the warfare never quite expunged from society, especially commercial society, may find a portal by which to break into the open, by a force of suggestion lurking in the thrill as transmitted. One who says: société du spectacle, also says: suggestibilité. While, for their part, in such a society, thrills face a terrible alternative: their own weakness primes them either to expire, or to explode. Moreover, only by the latter act will they really get noticed. Progression towards extremes, then, is incentivised.
* Guy Debord, La Société du spectacle, i, 4
Many do play along, with an unwariness or unawareness that itself delivers not a thrill but a shock, the further it is isolated and enlarged out of its context. Often, against their conformity, where a more voluble part of the opposition too accepts social relations that are “médiatisées par des images” and depend on uncountably many small bursts of energy which frissons of violence provide, one mulls over the idea that this society could only be supplanted in a single act, implemented at once.
[M]en will have to make someday an absolute break with their past, as dope addicts must with their habit, if war is to pass away.
— J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors, Conclusion
Transition from it to its successor, were this ever to occur, would resemble an intervention which breaks some deep-seated habit, a most decisive change that cannot be accomplished gradually.
This popular wish-fulfilment stuff makes it so hard for the real thing to come through, later.
— D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ch. iv
And yet, foretelling any such occurrence, even were it as far as anyone knows really possible, may be distinctly inadvisable, involving a type of effort one should refrain from when one can.
(qué palabra, ahora, qué estúpida mentira)
— Julio Cortázar, “Las babas del diablo”
There is always much to worry about now already, including now itself, without adding optative problems to the burden, isn’t there?
Here I turn around once more, to reflect further on the point I alleged earlier, namely, a tacit concordance between society in Western countries today and the domestic opposition which since last October has attacked them generally and the state of Israel particularly, in the most vehement of terms. That those ranks are not haunted by the past’s racism and attempting to break with it utterly, but rather do quite actively enshrine an inverse of it once again today and for the future, with the assistance of some elementary tools of marketing, affixing a duplicitous “anti-” to this re-branding, seemingly acceptant of the dishonesty of these procedures, nothing if not aware that hypocrisy does exert an extra appeal of its own, amidst present conditions especially: all this I take as read.* By now, so it seems to me, the onus of proof has shifted: let the “left” of today show by its actions, and not simply by some fine words, that it eschews racism, also as regards its own past, if it can. – That this very profile, however, aligns many, though fortunately not all, of these advocates substantially with the society which they attack so vehemently from within, such that one wonders frequently what meaning to assign to the outbursts: this point I do need to elucidate. – Perhaps, if I can describe this tacit concordance plausibly, then the appeal of the notion of race will be lessened, albeit minimally.
* The particular enjoyment taken when hypocrisy circulates half-openly under the guise of the latest ideal (“woke”), thus dragging down, defusing in advance, any objections situated on other planes with other standards to the lower level of these “progressives,” is no mere bagatelle. Rather, it represents one of the keys to their present success, such as it evidently is; various schools of ressentiment, in several locales of opinion, are gratified in different ways when this spectacle is observed: nor would the latter have opened up as it has since October in the absence of these responses, which it seems were indeed reckoned with. Referring to the historical record only as a source for epithets, voiding these terms of their sense in so doing and thus setting the stage for a repetition (not as farce): such a belligerent attitude towards Israel and the Jewish people strikes a chord in those who know something of the history and are tired of having found it necessary to disguise their ill-will, while in the masses of those who know little or nothing of it, the frivolity of these hostile gestures brings delight, occasioning the preening sentiment that by joining in one is smashing polite conventions and demeaning the powerful, when actually on both scores what these mobs are doing is nearly the opposite. In fact it is they, in a phrase one would need to read the history to understand, who have millions behind them. – During the 1930s, in Paris and elsewhere, literature enjoyed its “bagatelles pour un massacre”; ninety years later, ours have been médiatisées by the most up-to-date paraphernalia, and their horrid pleasures are encountered everywhere, along with less persuasive excuses made for the indulgence in them.
Modern society, in its beginnings the commercial society with which Hobbes concerned himself, did prompt the state to apply some expedients in order to restrain it, its main counterpart domestically in the pursuit of power, and one or two of these I addressed earlier, for example, the conception of law as being an instrument to solidify a consensus at home over against some “common enemy” which was posited for just this purpose, that a shared character be stamped on the citizens, assuaging in a roundabout way their internecine difficulties. So, by this expedient, the citizenry might have been thought of as a race in its first formation.
Yet any such result would remain indefinite; whereas the Civil Wars in England exposed fractures within the body politic, and these separate parts could each be comprehended in something like racial terms, due especially to the variations by locale and the differences of economic strata. Originally distinct and enduring continuously, many of these groups did seem to answer to the category of race.
Behind the concept of society, as Hobbes took it up in the idea of the “civil state,” stood the Roman experience with the city’s numerous allied tribes (socii), in the earlier republican periods. Order was to be maintained amongst them, in such a way that none would get overly comfortable in the arrangement, for then it might decide the moment had come to war against some others or against Rome itself; hence the task facing the latter was to uphold artfully the rivalries and animosities of its allies within certain limits, that they neither subside nor escalate too far. In this very notion of an ally, therefore, some element of antagonism was admixed.
Complex relations of allies and enemies typified the nexus of the civil state not merely as regards the citizens individually, but also at the level of its constituent groups and their interactions; of these the ethnic or racial aspect was accentuated by the parallels with the earlier history of Rome and its various confederates, a set of comparisons which the terms themselves seemed to announce.
Roman analogies became apposite from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards, as with the defeat of the Spanish threat the way was opened for England to become a colonial power in the New World. Exportation of people took place in different streams, according to locale and other economic factors, on both sides of the Atlantic, and so the mass-transfer did bring it about that various parts of the English populace were distinguished more frequently as endogamous groups, thus potentially as being races in much the way the socii of the Romans once had been; think here also of the indentured servitude and the transplantation of criminals.
Moreover, now with regard to race in the sense more usual today, awareness of it in the English colonies in North America was heightened by the encounter with the aboriginal tribes, and by dint of the slave-trade and slavery as an institution.
In the commercial society of the seventeenth century, the constituent groups, separate from one another while also linked in tangled alliances and animosities, evinced in these relations the covert varieties of warfare which Hobbes’ works described so incisively and indeed presciently, rhetorical caution of course being observed. How these nascent social arrangements would tend to cohere over the course of time, in tandem with the institutions of the state as it established itself, not despite but in some manner on account of the conflicts that permeated all of them and would break out occasionally, this he could anticipate as a philosopher able to reckon with consequences; yet even so, some passages outline conditions far off in the future with a simplicity of grasp which verges on the uncanny.
One such bears closely on the idea of race (though without using the term). Having affirmed that systems of charity should relieve the distress of those who could not sustain themselves by labouring, for such as have strong bodies, he averred, the case is otherwise – and launched into a passage best given integrally.
[T]hey are to be forced to work; and to avoyd the excuse of not finding employment, there ought to be such Lawes, as may encourage all manner of Arts; as Navigation, Agriculture, Fishing, and all manner of Manifacture that requires labour. The multitude of poor, and yet strong people still encreasing, they are to be transplanted into Countries not sufficiently inhabited: where neverthelesse, they are not to exterminate those they find there; but constrain them to inhabit closer together, and not range a great deal of ground, to snatch what they find; but to court each little Plot with art and labour, to give them their sustenance in due season. And when all the world is overchargd with Inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is Warre; which provideth for every man, by Victory, or Death.*
* Leviathan, pt. ii, ch. xxx
Much changed in the syntax and style of their prose from the Baconianism of not even thirty years prior (so accelerant of the transformations of literary language can the experience of war also prove), these lines should nonetheless not be read too quickly. As the first point to note, it was the initial formation of the English working class they recounted (whether the author did give his own endorsement, is not so easily ascertained). Quite clear during that period was the requirement of fostering physical strength, conceived as a reservoir upon which the quantum of labour-power might draw for some definite length of time in any individual case; the class of labourers was treated that this quality be augmented collectively, bred into it so far as was possible or feasible under the circumstances: an overarching aim which meant, in other words, that the group or groups had been thought of in racial terms. The endogamy became more marked as they grew in numbers; then the problem of the surplus population needed to be addressed. England’s array of colonies on the North American continent (including some acquired from rival European powers, New York first and foremost) provided outlets, setting up cities as centres and thus in the literal sense of the word civilising new territories.
The second point to remark is the forecast that commercial society would become a network stretching around the globe. Long before the trenchant analyses of the world-market which one finds in the writers of the nineteenth century, Hobbes espied how such a formation might develop. Specifically social relations, alliances and animosities amongst groups would be afforded an ambit never known before.
Thirdly, there is the undaunted leap over the intervening time to the very end, or rather culmination, of this society and its constituent relations once they should encompass all the world. (A move indeed bold; not the anodyne historiographies of today’s academics, but this audacious effort of a philosophical mind ought to be designated a Tigersprung.) What was for him but a distant prospect, evinces some verisimilitude now; yet leaving that matter aside, the ultimate catastrophe would take place not least because by then the various allies and enemies in the society would have become more definitively what they merely were incipiently earlier, namely, endogamous groups, that is, in other words, something like races. By virtue of their having cohered in such a way, when under the pressure of too great a population they happen to splinter, the ensuing bellum omnium contra omnes would flame up with results even more cataclysmic and fatal. Yet it is noticeable that his sentence about this last consequence seems to tremble not only with a shudder, but also with undertones of excitement at the anticipation; and on this point too one does well not simply to assume that it was the author’s own attitude. Instead he could well have been relaying what the members of such groups, at the early stages of their existence, felt obscurely when they reflected upon the society in which they found themselves and its likely albeit remote future: some mixture of intellectual consternation at its ending in a universal war and imaginative desire for that very finish. To be sure, this mixed attitude is odd, but the main question is whether it correlated to the fact of their membership in those groups, insofar as the latter were already akin to races. One rather surmises that it did.
The last point to note, is the implication that after the war which would be of an unprecedented scope, the world will revolve back to history’s beginnings, and humanity starts on the long course once again. Cataclysm and commencement seem to go together, therefore; the intuition ekes out a little meaning, even a small extra thrill, from the apprehension that time on the grand scale moves in circles.
All of this the passage conveys, compactly as it was phrased by Hobbes. On all four points, from the duplicity inherent in social relations to the inkling of how the society would reach its singular end, many “left” cohorts also agree and accept this is simply the way things have been, are, and shall be, comporting themselves in accordance with these arrangements as anatomised in broad outline by him. So the vehement denunciations of any item occlude the alignment in principle with the current order as its own exhaustion is pondered while awaiting whatever will supplant it. Thinking implicitly of most every matter under the aspect of race, pervades both such an opposition and the nexus against which it acts; therefore the quality of its stances becomes theatrical (or médiatisée by thrilling images).
Thinking, indeed conceiving of the participant groups in commercial society – or in the state – as though they were like races, in mutual relation now as allies, now as antagonists much as once was usual amongst the socii of the Romans, did not abate later in the seventeenth century. Early in the eighteenth, in literary London, the tendency was common enough to attract the notice of satirists. Famous works, notably the Modest Proposal, might yield novel lessons if consulted under this aspect. Yet, for my purposes, the linkage between a predominance of the category of race, on one side, and a sentiment that the laws forfeited their obligatory character and become weak conventions the citizens evaded, on another, a lesser-known text by John Arbuthnot best exemplifies.
His anonymous satire gave a synopsis of a work said to be appearing imminently on the literary market, a treatise in two volumes on the “art of political lying” – a timely undertaking, after the Glorious Revolution and the Acts of Union, given the more rapid development of commercial society in all areas, including the growth of the press and publishing. To be sure, writing is never a sine qua non of the lie, which circulates widely throughout the economy, a feature integral in the business of vending and purchasing (caveat emptor). No satire should be required to bring a point so obvious to awareness; yet it was from this economic condition, so it seems, that the fictional tome under discussion did formulate a thought-provoking metaphor: in recent years, lies had become commodities, produced on a scale of grades and prices, then retailed accordingly in the marketplaces of political life.
The war recently concluded had broadened the lie’s share in politics within the state. There had been shown how indispensable the usage was, for, such was the contention, without it the hostilities could not have been fought nor ended so fortunately. Resort to lies under those circumstances was licit, consequently; and then it was but a step to transfer this justification of lying over into the civil state too, considering the degree of belligerence admixed in that nexus of relations, and the weakness of the obligation to obey the laws, as per the Hobbesian analysis. When the use of lies was justified within the realm of domestic politics, conversely, it confirmed the idea that groups did face one another there as separate races.
Lying was warranted constitutionally. – That as the Government of England has a Mixture of Democratical in it, so the Right of Inventing and Spreading Political Lyes, is partly in the People; and their obstinate Adherence to this just Privilege has been most conspicuous, and shin’d with great Lustre of late Years: That it happens very often, that there is no other Means left to the good People of England to pull down a Ministry and Government they are weary of, but by exercising this their undoubted Right: That abundance of Political Lying is a sure sign of true English Liberty; That as Ministers do sometimes use Tools to support their Power, it is but reasonable that the People should employ the same Weapon to defend themselves, and pull them down.*
* Proposals For Printing a very Curious Discourse
When the pursuit of power had become the aim dominant throughout the state on one side, commercial society on the other, each become the other’s opponent, then the country’s constituent groups were typified as being like races; accordingly, in this satire, the distinct ethnic origins of the English people and of the authorities had only to be alluded to, along with the elements of violence in their antagonism. No more direct statement of any of these ideas was required or desirable.
Beyond a mere justification, however, it was the delight commonly taken in the display of lying practiced blatantly on all sides and on such a scale, which this satire adverted to. Through the broad appeal of the lie understood as a weapon or counter-weapon, more than a modicum of foul sentiment, even of ressentiment did circulate. What authorised the feeling, in the last instance? A self-righteous attitude, the assurance conveyed to members of the society’s constituent groups.
When they have laid these Foundations of Scurrility, it is no wonder that their Superstructure is every way answerable to them.
— Joseph Addison, The Spectator, no. cxxv (July 24, 1711)
Regarding this whole spectacle from the outside, one might think the duplicity underlying social relations arose thus into a dubious expression, up amidst the higher reaches of political life.
Lies taken for weapons or counter-weapons, suggests a certain over-estimation of what they do contribute in opposition to the reigning order. (Here especially one may fall under the sway of the concept of violence.) Hubris, however, the inflated idea of their possible efficacies is not. Rather, after the first enthusiasm that may well accompany their usage passes, the attitude tends to lapse into an acquiescence before the status quo, acceptance disguised by embracing mendacity which, on this account alone, can all too easily become a habit.
Dishonesty, unfortunately, can readily graduate from being a mere expedient into the permanency of a trait of character. The progression does hasten amidst the société du spectacle as it exists today.
Currently, those who do talk the loudest on a small predictable set of matters, may also make a more comfortable berth for themselves aboard the locomotive which (as they too could apprehend) is hurtling towards an atrocious crash, while failing to reach for the real emergency-brake (if there remains any still operable). Now, making excuses for this failure, at times also on one’s own behalf, is less difficult if lying has been found to be justified in principle, in the context of relations which are specifically social, in the fuller sense the term has accrued, which a careful analysis can disclose. And even less so during a period when, as has been patent since last October, terrible old lies return, pestilent once more.
Everywhere the morass of their stubborn appeal is spreading. An impasse difficult to chart. Let alone to resolve, in action or theory. Failing at it may be all one can do.
When the sense of obligation vis-à-vis the laws becomes a sham, the persistence of legality no longer guaranteeing the continuity of a body politic with its internal divisions, while each of the latter is conceived in racial terms, so that they come to oppose one another as distinct breeds, their various endeavours as though fated to circle within the limits of biotic existence, then a general sentiment of futility does set in, awareness that this way of life falls short of any ideal of perdurance, and soon enough many individuals succumb to that ancient malady, tædium vitæ.
Caught between commercial society and the state early in the eighteenth century, those who took no pleasure regarding either the condition of the civil laws or the character of the body politic, at times turned their minds to one possibility of thoroughgoing rejection – to weigh a severe and, it could so happen, a selfless manner of separating oneself from the world as it was. For this act, during those years, precedents in the annals of Roman history were found, though considered in retrospect it might also be thought to presage the “héroïsme de la vie moderne.”
Deeds of suicide such as I refer to, were carried out not from any personal motives strictly speaking, and especially not out of the conditions of mind one might today assess in psychological or psychiatric terms, but in accordance with dismay at the state of the world, augmented by doubt whether all of it would ever improve.
Across the Channel, a keen observer was struck by the relative frequency of the act in England in the earlier part of the century. The occurrence gave rise to a number of broad questions both political and philosophical, and these he pursued not once only, but in each of his three main works.
In the Lettres persanes, Montesquieu had his traveller mention the laws in Europe generally concerning suicide: the infamy visited upon the deceased, the confiscation of his estate, etc., and remark not only how unjust they were, but also how ineffective. Such measures did not augment the inner sense of obligation to obey the laws, but attenuated it still further. Nor did the change affect only the rapport with the letter of the law; its spirit too was followed or even heeded less.
Listen to his rhetorical question, both ironic and defiant. – Je suis obligé de suivre les Loix, quand je vis sous les Loix : mais, quand je n’y vis plus, peuvent-elles me lier encore ?
This statement led to the relevant matter. How had obligation become hollow?
One might seek the cause of it in the nature of commercial society. Though the country was not specified, the traveller seemed to have England in mind: there the society’s constituent groups were forming mainly as endogamous classes, in the instance of the labourers especially, being as it were bred for their labour-power, understood as a quantum best kept within a limited range, that it too be the more readily brought to the marketplace. Such arrangements, however, regarded coolly from within by the participants in them, had begun to support the continuation of their existence upon little more than sentimental attachments. For, beyond those, what would compensate anyone for the expenditure of vital energies in the mere business of life? Or, in other, more suggestive words, what else would, he asked, me condamner à recevoir des graces qui m’accablent ?
This weakness of commercial society, a result once its constituent groups were conceived as being something like races, also became manifest in a citizen’s rapport with the state. No longer would this tie, no less than that of the laws, evince a character that was strictly speaking obligatory.
Questions may then be posed in sharper terms, if the writer is bold enough.
Pourquoi veut-on que je travaille pour une Société, dont je consens de n’être plus ? Que je tienne malgré moi une convention, qui s’est faite sans moi ? La Société est fondée sur un avantage mutuel : mais, lors qu’elle me devient onereuse ; qui m’empêche d’y renoncer ? La vie m’a été donnée comme une faveur ; je puis donc la rendre, lors qu’elle ne l’est plus : la cause cesse ; l’effet doit donc cesser aussi.*
* vol. ii, Lettre lxxiv
Even here, though the sound of these lines may be plaintive, the passage à l’acte stems from concern not mainly with the self and its vicissitudes, but rather with the state of the world. – Or, at least, what seems to be at issue, are the calculations which guide anyone’s transactions with society. – Note, too, how the increasingly mechanical operations of the latter comprise a large array of dispensable parts.
The entire topic, it appears, Montesquieu never ceased to ponder. He returned to it in the Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, and indeed not merely once; during the year after the first edition was published, he augmented his treatment by a significant paragraph with which the whole chapter concluded in the second. Hence, readers can infer, the author did remain not quite satisfied and continued to delve into the matter.
Suicide amongst the Romans he cast as a heroic deed at a time when the possibility of other kinds of heroism was waning, towards the end of the Republic. Yet such acts did little to avert the transition to imperial rule, and may even, by dint of the resolve of those intent upon them, passion which engenders feeling but never vision (la passion fait sentir, & jamais voir), in some measure have brought on the decline – such was the point with which his text now concluded. Perhaps, by that moment in Rome’s history, nothing much more could have been done, apart from the turn to a potent symbolic act that would, despite everything, inscribe in the recollection of the city an example of a humanity unbowed.
Chaque décision est un refus.
— Karl Lagerfeld, interview with Léa Salamé
And yet this act eulogising the dignity of the human being, in the face of the degradation of the status of citizen, is replete with paradox.
Elevating one general feature of the human by the destruction of some other that was more particular: Montesquieu, taking note of this decision, sought to offer a summary of what the act could have meant then and might again come to mean.
L’amour propre, l’amour de notre conservation se transforme en tant de manieres, & agit par des principes si contraires, qu’il nous porte à sacrifier notre Être pour l’amour de notre Être ; & tel est le cas que nous faisons de nous-mêmes, que nous consentons à cesser de vivre par un instinct naturel & obscur qui fait que nous nous aimons plus que notre vie même.
A full devotion to something in the human condition, an element which anyone would identify as no more nor less than the “self,” either in the singular or in some version of the plural, only if he harboured the wish of being misunderstood, leaves behind itself once the act is complete, a large store of inspiration; it is one task for the thoughtful author that Montesquieu was, to discern this bequest by a higher variety of amour-propre and amplify the meaning of the deed for the benefit of the arrangements of political life of his time with their different principles of action (principes d’agir). For, though its example did continue to inspire posterity, by no means should anyone simply take it as a model to copy, while even as an object for some looser sort of emulation one ought to handle its heroism with caution.
Although the act’s motive pertained mainly to the conditions of the polity, not to the self, the freedom from the world it exemplified so conspicuously, did gradually join with a raft of other causes to impair the quality of political life.
Describing with exactitude the links between the decline generally, and the formal transition to imperial rule in Rome, is an important task, but in keeping with the author’s aim, it suffices to note the approximate simultaneity of all these changes.
When Roman citizens recurred to this inner power, in meditating and weighing the deed, whether it was subsequently carried out or not, they slowly detached themselves from outward involvements. Inward freedom then became for them a freedom from, to begin with at least, led on by that very tempting notion, escape. Whereas dexterity, skill, virtuosity by which they did move within the world, and often initiated something together, fell into an at first unperceived abeyance.
All this the final remark in the work’s second edition averred. – Il est certain que les hommes sont devenus moins libres, moins courageux, moins portés aux grandes entreprises qu’ils n’étoient, lorsque par cette puissance qu’on prenoit sur soi même, on pouvoit à tous les instans échaper à toute autre puissance.*
* ch. xii
Suicide, as an option, guaranteed a type of possible freedom, against the world’s powers. As such it too was called a power, though different in kind. Once it had eventuated in the deed some number of times, then, as last resorts will tend to do, this one also recommended itself sooner rather than later, thus helping to render other projects less lasting. Before long, the latter likewise found themselves dying.
Thus did Montesquieu position himself for the next move, a comparison of ancient suicide and modern. In the Esprit des Loix, the motive amongst the Romans was touched on briefly, recalling what was written in the earlier works; but in the case of the English, whom now he identified by name, the perplexity had to be faced that quite often no particular reason for it seemed patent, and so the act was perhaps best defined as akin to other reflex-motions of the organism. In the absence of any motive, a physical explanation remained. – Nous ne voyons point dans les Histoires que les Romains se fissent mourir sans sujet : mais les Anglois se tuent sans qu’on puisse imaginer aucune raison qui les y détermine ; ils se tuent dans le sein même du bonheur. Cette action chez les Romains étoit l’effet de l’education ; elle tenoit à leurs manière de penser & à leurs coutumes ; chez les Anglois elle est l’effet d’une maladie, elle tient à l’état physique de la machine, & est indépendante de toute autre cause.*
* vol. i, bk. xiv, ch. xii (footnote symbol omitted)
With the notions of an idling mechanism and the general distemper which results, suicide was characterised as a response to an insupportable bodily condition or a matter of constitution. The sentiment that existence itself had become too great a weight, did not pertain mainly to an individual’s mood or mind, but referred to some inherited physical quality; hence by the slaying of himself he would express some opposition to the whole antecedent lineage and its further continuation, severing the chain of the generations such that he could witness himself doing so, in a brief dispassionate moment of freedom: amidst the English circumstances, this is roughly speaking what the act had come to signify, suggested Montesquieu.
An utter break with society and its demands; and yet they were left mainly intact.