General Character of the Eighteenth Century in France
De Sade called the eighteenth century "the age of complete corruption" (Justine 1, 2) and in another place had Noirceuil say: "It is dangerous to desire to be virtuous in a corrupt century" (Juliette 1, 261).
The consciousness of the general evil of the century was sufficiently impressed upon him as on others.
Hegel in his Philosophy of History has the most pertinent expression for this epoch: "The whole state of France at that time was a dissolute aggregation of privileges against idea and reason; in general, a mad state with which, at the same time, was bound the highest depravity of morals and spirit---an empire of injustice with the growing consciousness of that state."
The eighteenth century belongs to that frivolous era, whose essence was masterfully described by a student of Hegel, Kuno Fischer, in his Diotima: "Frivolous times are those which always conclude a moribund era and completely destroy the life of mankind so that it can start afresh." Fichte once called it "completed sinfulness." In all great turning points of history the traits of the different ages resemble one another. They are weakened and appear so flabby and impotent, that one despairs of new ones. And in fact, when an era has completely lived itself out, there remains from its customary life but the external shell, and this needs artistic charm to excite it again, for the inward power is lacking which alone can bring it forth in its youthful freshness.
"It is unrestrained and yet a feeble life; it is unfettered, and yet dull powers which complete the drama of life. There is no character, no formation in such times; everywhere the prose of selfishness without its power; the impotency of pleasure without its poetry." The world of the Caesars, the age of expiring popery, the French monarchy before the Revolution were all such periods. The second was the complete sinfulness of Catholicism; the last, the complete sinfulness of the monarchy.
Pleasure, à tout prix, was the watchword in the eighteenth century. But the man who wants enjoyment at any cost is the egoist. Never was egoism so prolific in France as in the ancien régime and during the Revolution. The minister Saint Fond, a true copy of a minister under Louis XV, said (Juliette 11, 37): "A statesman would be a fool if he did not let his country pay for his pleasures. What matters to us the misery of the people if only our passions arc satisfied? If I thought that gold might flow from the veins of people, I would have them bloodlet one after the other, that I might cover myself in their gore." De Sade found this expression characteristic of the ancien régime. Before the Revolution this egoism was encountered only in the ruling classes, monarch, nobility and clergy. In the Revolution it seized all ranks of the populace. Adolf Schmidt, who drew his description of the Revolutionary days from authentic contemporary documents, said: "It was the sharp expressed egoism, the selfishness and avarice, which not only pierced the higher ranks of society, but all classes of people and, foremost of all, the overwhelming number of peasants; indeed it was so powerful, that all other feelings, even those of country and of humanity, were deeply submerged and forgotten. It is astonishing and dreadful when one perceives how, amid all the gleaming declamations on liberty, equality and fraternity, on the rights of love and man, on sacrifice for the wellbeing of society, greatness and fame of the country, there was in almost all classes a race for wealth and property, a coldblooded reckoning on taking advantage of the circumstances, an avaricious speculation on the misfortunes of the state and the misery of their fellow creatures. Each wanted to outwit and impose on the other." We will have to study this egoism, this chief trait of the eighteenth century, in its various forms.
For it brought to a head the search for pleasure which reached its summit in sexual abandonments. The eighteenth century was the century of the systematizing of sexual pleasures and pursuits. Paul Moreau distinguished three epochs in the history of sexual debauchery and aberration. The first is the epoch of the Roman Empire; the second embraces those great epidemics de névropathie de toutes sortes in the middle ages, especially the belief in the existence of the incubus and succubus, the cult of the socalled "Devil's Church" with its horrible sexual monstrosities. The third period falls in the eighteenth century, luminous in its peculiar French individuality by the saturnalias of the regency and Louis XV.
Debauchery! That is the word for the eighteenth century, declare the best savants of that time, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. "That is its secret, its charm and its soul. Debauchery is the air on which it breathes and lives. It is its atmosphere, its element, its inspiration, its life and its genius. It circulates in its heart, nerves and brain. It gives its own peculiar charm and savor to in customs, morals and works.
Debauchery proceeds from the innermost being of the age and speaks from its mouth. From there it flies over this world, takes possession, is its fairy, its muse, the dictator of custom, style and art. And nothing has remained from this time, nothing from this century of woman, which was not created, moved and protected by debauchery."
What the French eighteenth century delineated, above all, in a manner never before nor after seen, was the systematizing of sexual love. It remained for this century to draw up a codex of machlosophy.
"The entire life strives for the sexual act: science, art, fashion, literature, gastronomy. Everything permeates the languishing breeze of purely physical love and leaves behind that heavy languor which enervates all spiritual energy. And as this arose in the great, glorious and unforgettable Revolution, which the new age had given birth to, that heavy perfume still hung on, carried the people again down, enslaved them and turned the heavily yoked forces into wild ferocity and pitiless bloodthirstiness." The main characteristics of this century of injustice, egoism and sexual immorality, are to be observed at their highest in the life and works of Marquis de Sade; we must henceforth always seek, in relation to the personality of de Sade, the origin of that frivolity, and to investigate the factors which combined to form the general character of the century.
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