The art of succeeding envisions the knowledge of men as the first element of its calculations. One can only succeed through men and by using them, from whence comes the necessity of knowing them. This formula is dry; it is only the corollary of a well-known idea by a celebrated thinker who puts philosophy into action: men are the means.[1]

Here one will profess to not like crude words; the author has asked himself several times if it is with reason that there so many phrases about the human heart and the knowledge of men; female authors have quite spoiled these matters. If knowing men connotes the appearance of having the worst opinion of them and believing them capable of anything, thus who does not know them? One reflection, there is nothing serious in this impression of men. One will see.

Knowledge of men supposes:

The profound knowledge of a certain sum of innate feelings that one can consider as making up the basis of humanity everywhere.

Knowledge of the principle ideas, opinions and prejudices that are current.

Finally, the knowledge of a certain number of general types that constitute the community of men; and when one is here, what does one know? The baggage is not inconvenient; one knows nothing.

Innate feelings are moral dispositions spread through the masses of men like warmth and light spread through the body. They characterize the human spirit everywhere, in all the latitudes, in Asia as in Europe, among the Kanacs of the Pacific Islands as among the French, in Noukahiva as in Paris.

Thus, who has not remarked, for example, that the misfortunes of the great peoples and princes are practically all that is really interesting in history and that their falls, their exiles, the losses of their dignities that leave to them so many goods excite a more lively sympathy than the most horrible misfortunes of the common man?

If one wants to render this feeling, one will find that it signifies admiration, passion and enthusiasm for the people constituted with dignity, for the powerful, for the rich; scorn, indifference, distance and aversion for the people without power, credit and money. Here is a general and deep feeling for human nature, of which one could make varied studies.

In the monarchical States, scorn is openly shown. In the democratic (or so-called democratic) countries, one carefully hides one's disdain of the poor to prevent them from making revolutions or gathering the profits from those they have made or that they will make in the future.

The analysis of the general feelings and their influence is one of the branches of politics, not that which is studied in books, but occult politics, politics that yields [rapporte].

One must not expect to find here the development of the ideas that are in germ form in this chapter; the probe will only be launched here and there, at the will of the currents.

Fear en masse is still one of the profound feelings of which the mark is quite distinct. Men, even those who do not have fear individually, have fear en masse; it is the original character of the feeling; and this fear -- this is its beautiful side -- converts men; it gives them faith, the interior grace of a great efficacy. It is also true that fear is a mystery. We have a curious example of it during the French Revolution. Certainly, no one believes that France wanted the Reign of Terror? France did not want it. Nothing was simpler. After the massacres of September, France had only to vote for moderate men, because what human power can command individual free will? In 1793, all the elections were revolutionary; the country sent to the Convention the most exalted men, of whom seven-twelfths voted for the death of Louis XVI. One can draw the consequences.

In the first days of the Restoration, another oddity; the majority of the country was quite obviously Voltarian[2]; one only saw men of the Church in the Chamber of the Deputies. This country loves liberty; the Chamber is unfindable. Each time the vote is only an act of submission to the triumphant power. O publicists! Tell us what public opinion is from now on. You convert fear; you make [people] believe in institutions and men! Obviously the naivete of the good people is excessive.

Envy and distrust are still the feelings on which one can make a few precious observations. These passions are precisely the opposite of admiration and enthusiasm. They exist to the same degree, with the same force; it is the category [chapitre] of moral contradictions, [that is,] contradictions that explode in the depths of the human soul and render its physiognomy as ungraspable as the movements of the sea. The very masses who admire power, who so easily suppose genius, grandeur and disinterestedness among the ministers and statesmen: the masses believe those who govern them are capable of everything. They suppose monstrous motivations (and infamies that are not even probable) behind the actions of power. And thus unconceivable rumors, nameless anecdotes and calumnies that are attracted to reputations degrade them for a long time, sometimes forever.

Envy! And if you want to say it all, call it French envy: there is no other, because in France it explains what is hardest: revolution. One arranges oneself under a flag and one leaves it behind through envy. One does not seriously hate one's political adversaries, but the people of the same party cordially hate each other, one can believe that they envy each other.

Personal merit is, moreover, what is envied and, consequently, such envy is more odious. One envies poverty, one envies misfortune when the least dignity, the least grandeur, is joined to it, and here one has the key to an apparent contradiction. For example, an error of conduct, a mistake, have discredited the character of a politician. To hear the clamoring and banter that arise around him, one believe him to be isolated; this is an error. He is much less isolated than an honest man whom an unfortunate noble struck would be. It is quite simple. Envy is completely disinterested; it even finds its accounting with the first example; it has for partisans all those who, in his place, would have failed [just] like him, whereas the character of the other -- by distancing the envious -- does not even assure the cooperation of the small number of those who had imitated him.

Vanity is the sentiment that one must combine with envy so as to better judge the ensemble. In books, newspapers and the world [at large], one deplores misunderstood genius, deceived noble ambitions, and misunderstood beautiful souls; it is quite simple, one dreams of oneself and, in one's diverse roles, one only has one's own person in view; at the first occasion, one would close one's door to merit or one would bar it from the road.

A politician of some notoriety died: [there were] tears and speeches over his tomb; manifestations of sympathy; the erection of a statue; funds for the widow and orphans; all excellent means of introducing oneself and recalling one's name to the public.

The government is attacked in the newspapers; spirited orators perform Philippiques[3] in the Chambers; turn back the people you do not find hateful. They only aspire to signal their blows, they only dispute the glory of striking. The enemy is not the one who one attacks, but the one who attacks the best.

There are phrases that have a beautiful effect against prejudices, but it would at first be necessary to demonstrate that the social order can be based on something else. Then there is an embarrassing question: Would those who cry out against prejudice consent to its destruction? One could demonstrate that they live by it.

There are current and traditional manners of seeing politics, religion, morality and the governors; [there is] a small fortune of judgments, theories and critiques that form a second order of general notions about human nature. So as to be brief, one can proceed by the road of nomenclature.

One believes that merit is the surest means of making one's way.

One believes that one must have capability to obtain positions.

One imagines that public opinion governs the world.

One believes that politics is the science of business.

One believes that public men believe what they say at the rostrum and what they set down in their books.

One believes in the indefinite progress of humanity.

The people believe that, when they make a revolution, they will profit from it.

One believes that, to establish a government, it is sufficient to draft a constitution.

One believes that the world is led by ideas.

One believes that people can reform themselves.

One believes that there are new philosophical or social theories.

One believes that there will come a time when nations will no longer wage war.

One believes that one cannot be an ignoramus and an idiot because one has produced a book.

One believes that those who demand reforms desire them.

One believes that those who, today, support a government because it is strong will not be the first to bring it down if it happens to totter.

So that is one of good account, among those who attack prejudices, is it enough that one does not want them? One wonders what the social order would become if these vulgarities were not in circulation.

The ingenuity of societies in their corruption is a very good matter for government. One has seen in books that the greatest events are caused by small things; that politics is only a game of private passions and interests; and that, by a good fortune that is providential for the statesmen, the primary ministers, the princes and the men of genius who, thanks to God, hardly fail, the majority of the public cannot believe anything else. For them, revolutions are explosions of principles. One repeats in a scholarly fashion that one cannot stop revolutions; by God this depends on the hand, brave people! He wants that there is a national, international, philosophical or humanitarian idea in every war that can engage the life of a generation. The fecund blood, one thinks. Certainly, if one plants hemp or beets in the field where battle was thought.

[1] Emanuel Swedenbourg (1688-1772)?

[2] Francois-Marie Arout (aka "Voltaire), 1694-1778).

[3] Bellicose exhortations. See the three speeches made by Demosthene, the Athenian orator, in an attack against Philippe II of Macedonia (351-342 BCE).

(Anonymous [Maurice Joly], first published 1868 by Editions Amyot. Reprinted by Editions Allia, 1992. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2008.)