The Divinity of War, Joseph De Maistre (1753 - 1821)
This is a excerpt from Joseph De Maistre, an influential reacionairy romantic catholic from the 18th century. This piece is found in: "St Petersburg Dialogues: Or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence" published in 1821. Some of his writings influenced the reactionairies in the early 20th century.
People might know one of his most famous quotes:
... This is the larger context. You can also find the book for free online in PDF format if you wish.
On the bottom... I've added a youtube video, made by a person discussing Isaiah Berlin view on De Maistre. Berlin believed that De Maistre, vieuwed "War and revolution" were part of Gods' divine plan... and we shouldn't question it.
If this gives you the creeps... that's okay, it means you aren't fascistic enough in your thinking. It echoes what Tomasso Marinetti wrote in Italy under the "futurist" label before the first world war, and before the Italian futurists joined the fascist coalition.
[media=https://youtu.be/ccOlnHu7Bd0]
[media=https://youtu.be/IzR4rae6KDM]
People might know one of his most famous quotes:
Thus, from the maggot up to man, the universal law of the violent destruction of living things is unceasingly fulfilled. The entire earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be immolated without end, without restraint, without respite, until the consummation of the world, until the extinction of evil, until the death of death.
... This is the larger context. You can also find the book for free online in PDF format if you wish.
On the bottom... I've added a youtube video, made by a person discussing Isaiah Berlin view on De Maistre. Berlin believed that De Maistre, vieuwed "War and revolution" were part of Gods' divine plan... and we shouldn't question it.
If this gives you the creeps... that's okay, it means you aren't fascistic enough in your thinking. It echoes what Tomasso Marinetti wrote in Italy under the "futurist" label before the first world war, and before the Italian futurists joined the fascist coalition.
We will glorify war-the world's only hygiene - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.
- Tomasso Marinetti, The Futuris Manifesto (1909)
- Tomasso Marinetti, The Futuris Manifesto (1909)
Above all these numerous animal species is placed man, whose destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to nourish himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills to kill: a superb and terrible king, he needs everything and nothing resists him. He knows how many barrels of oil he can get for himself from the head of a shark or a whale; with his sharp pins he mounts for museum display the elegant butterfly he caught in flight on the summit of Mount Blanc or Chimborazo;10 he stuffs the crocodile and embalms the hummingbird; at his command, the rattlesnake dies in preserving fluids to show itself intact to a long line of observers. The horse carrying its master to the tiger hunt struts under the skin of this same animal. Man demands everything at the same time; he takes from the lamb its entrails to make his harp resound, from the whale its bones to stiffen the corset of the young girl, from the wolf its most murderous tooth to polish his pretty works of art, from the elephant its tusks to make a child's toy; his tables are covered with corpses. The philosopher can even discover how this permanent carnage is provided for and ordained in the great scheme of things. But will this law stop at man? Undoubtedly not. Yet who will exterminate him who exterminates everything else? Man! It is man himself who is charged with slaughtering man.
But how can he accomplish this law, he who is a moral and merciful being, who is born to love, who weeps for others as for himself, who finds pleasure in weeping and who even invents fictions to make himself weep, and finally, to whom it has been said that whoever sheds blood unjustly, by man shall his blood be shed. It is war that accomplishes the decree. Do you not hear the earth itself crying out and demanding blood? The blood of animals does not satisfy it, nor even that of criminals spilled by the sword of the law. If human justice struck down all criminals, there would be no war, but it can catch only a few of them, and often it even spares them, without suspecting that this cruel humanity contributes to the necessity of war, especially if at the same time, another blindness no less stupid and no less blind works to extinguish atonement in the world. The earth did not cry out in vain; war breaks out. Man, suddenly seized by a divine fury foreign to both hatred and anger, goes to the battlefield without knowing what he intends nor even what he is doing. How can this horrible enigma be explained? Nothing is more contrary to man's nature, yet nothing is less repugnant to him; he does with enthusiasm what he holds in horror. Have you never noticed that men never disobey on the field of death. They might well massacre a Nerva or a Henry IV, but what the most abominable tyrant, the most insolent butcher of human flesh, will never hear is: "We no longer want to serve you". A revolt on the battlefield, an agreement to unite to repudiate a tyrant, is an unheard-of phenomena. Nothing can resist the force that drags men into combat; an innocent murderer, a passive instrument in a formidable hand: he plunges headfirst into the abyss he has dug for himself; he bestows and receives death without suspecting that he himself prepared it.
Thus, from the maggot up to man, the universal law of the violent destruction of living things is unceasingly fulfilled. The entire earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be immolated without end, without restraint, without respite, until the consummation of the world, until the extinction of evil, until the death of death.
But the anathema must strike down man most directly and most visibly: the exterminating angel circles this unhappy globe like the sun, and allows one nation a respite only to strike down others. When crimes, and especially crimes of a certain kind, accumulate to a designated point, the angel relentlessly quickens its tireless flight. Like a rapidly turning burning torch, the immense speed of his movement allows him to be simultaneously present everywhere in his formidable orbit. He strikes all the peoples of the earth at the same time. At other times, a minister of a precise and infallible vengeance, he pursues particular nations and bathes them in blood. Do not expect them to make any effort to escape or alleviate their sentence. It is as if we saw these great criminals, enlightened by their consciences, requesting the punishment and accepting it for the sake of their atonement. So long as they have any blood left they will come to offer it, and soon a sparse youth will get used to telling of these devastating wars caused by the crimes of their fathers.
War is therefore divine in itself, since it is a law of the world.
War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature, which are as much general as particular, consequences little known because little studied, but which are nevertheless incontestable. Who could doubt the great privileges to be found in death in battle? Who could believe that the victims of this dreadful sentence have shed their blood in vain? However this is not the time to insist on matters of this kind; our century is not yet mature enough to occupy itself with these matters. Let it keep to its physics, but we must nevertheless keep our eyes fixed on the invisible world that will explain everything.
War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it, and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it.
War is divine in the protection granted to its great leaders, even the most venturesome, who are rarely struck down in battle, and then only when their reputation can no longer be increased and when their mission has been fulfilled.
War is divine by the way in which it breaks out. I do not want to excuse anyone too easily, but how many of those regarded as the immediate authors of war are themselves carried along by circumstances! At the precise moment caused by men and prescribed by justice, God himself comes forward to avenge the iniquity committed against him by the inhabitants of the world. The earth, thirsty for blood, as we heard a few days ago, opens its mouth to receive it and to keep it in its bosom until the time when it must render its account. So let us applaud as loudly as you wish the worthy poet who cries out:
To the least interest that would divide
These blazing sovereigns,
Bellona [god of war] sustains the reply,
And saltpetre always announces
Their willing murderers.
However these very secondary considerations do not at all prevent us from looking to higher things.
War is divine in its results, which absolutely escape the speculations of human reason, since they can be totally different for two different nations, even though the war appears to have affected them both equally. There are wars that degrade nations, and degrade them for centuries; others exalt them, perfect them in all sorts of ways, and even soon replace momentary losses by a visible increase in population, which is something quite extraordinary. History often shows us the spectacle of a rich and growing population in the midst of the most murderous battles. There are also vicious wars, accursed wars, that the conscience recognizes better than reasoning; nations are mortally wounded by them, both in their power and in their character; then you will see even the victor degraded, impoverished, and groaning under his sad laurels, whereas in lands of the vanquished, in a short time, you will not find an unused workshop or plough.
War is divine by the indefinable force that determines success in it. It was surely without thinking, my dear Chevalier, when you repeated the other day the celebrated maxim that God is always on the side of the big battalions. I will never believe that it really came from the great man to whom it has been attributed; perhaps he put forward this maxim in jest, or seriously in a limited and very true sense, for God in the temporal government of his Providence does not derogate, except in the case of miracles, from the general laws that he established for all time. Thus, just as two men are stronger than one, a hundred thousand men must be more powerful and effective than fifty thousand. When we ask God for victory, we do not ask him to derogate from the general laws of the world; that would be too much. However these laws can combine in a thousand different ways, and can permit victory in ways that cannot be foreseen. Undoubtedly three men are stronger than one; this general proposition is incontestable, but an able man can profit from certain circumstances, and a single Horatius will kill three Curiatii. A body with the greater mass has the greater momentum; this is undoubtedly true if their speeds are equal, but three parts of mass and two of speed are equal to three parts of speed and two of mass. In the same way, an army of 40,000 men is physically inferior to another army of 60,000, but if the first has more courage, experience, and discipline, it will be able to defeat the second, for it is more effective with less mass. This is what we can see on every page of history. Moreover, war always supposes a certain equality between the two sides. I never read of the Republic of Ragusa declaring war on the sultans, or that of Geneva on the kings of France. There is always a certain equilibrium in the political world, and (if certain rare, precise, and limited cases are excepted) it is not up to man to upset it. This is why coalitions are so difficult. It they were not, since politics is so little governed by justice, coalitions would be assembled every day to destroy particular powers; but such projects seldom succeed, and history shows even weak powers escaping from them with astonishing ease. When a too predominate power frightens the world, men are irritated at not being able to find any way to check it, and bitter reproaches are made against the egotism and immorality of cabinets that are preventing an alliance against the common enemy. This is the cry that was heard in the heyday of Louis XIV. But in
the end these complaints are ill founded. A coalition between several sovereigns, based on a pure and disinterested morality, would be a miracle. God, who owes miracles to no one, and who never works them needlessly, uses two very simple means to re-establish political equilibrium: sometimes the giant overreaches itself, and sometimes a very inferior power puts a tiny obstacle in the giant's way, something imperceptible that subsequently grows in an unaccountable way until it becomes insurmountable, just as a small branch, stuck in the current of a river, can in the end produce a blockage that diverts it.
- Joseph De Maistre, [i]St Petersburg Dialogues: Or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence, (1821)
But how can he accomplish this law, he who is a moral and merciful being, who is born to love, who weeps for others as for himself, who finds pleasure in weeping and who even invents fictions to make himself weep, and finally, to whom it has been said that whoever sheds blood unjustly, by man shall his blood be shed. It is war that accomplishes the decree. Do you not hear the earth itself crying out and demanding blood? The blood of animals does not satisfy it, nor even that of criminals spilled by the sword of the law. If human justice struck down all criminals, there would be no war, but it can catch only a few of them, and often it even spares them, without suspecting that this cruel humanity contributes to the necessity of war, especially if at the same time, another blindness no less stupid and no less blind works to extinguish atonement in the world. The earth did not cry out in vain; war breaks out. Man, suddenly seized by a divine fury foreign to both hatred and anger, goes to the battlefield without knowing what he intends nor even what he is doing. How can this horrible enigma be explained? Nothing is more contrary to man's nature, yet nothing is less repugnant to him; he does with enthusiasm what he holds in horror. Have you never noticed that men never disobey on the field of death. They might well massacre a Nerva or a Henry IV, but what the most abominable tyrant, the most insolent butcher of human flesh, will never hear is: "We no longer want to serve you". A revolt on the battlefield, an agreement to unite to repudiate a tyrant, is an unheard-of phenomena. Nothing can resist the force that drags men into combat; an innocent murderer, a passive instrument in a formidable hand: he plunges headfirst into the abyss he has dug for himself; he bestows and receives death without suspecting that he himself prepared it.
Thus, from the maggot up to man, the universal law of the violent destruction of living things is unceasingly fulfilled. The entire earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be immolated without end, without restraint, without respite, until the consummation of the world, until the extinction of evil, until the death of death.
But the anathema must strike down man most directly and most visibly: the exterminating angel circles this unhappy globe like the sun, and allows one nation a respite only to strike down others. When crimes, and especially crimes of a certain kind, accumulate to a designated point, the angel relentlessly quickens its tireless flight. Like a rapidly turning burning torch, the immense speed of his movement allows him to be simultaneously present everywhere in his formidable orbit. He strikes all the peoples of the earth at the same time. At other times, a minister of a precise and infallible vengeance, he pursues particular nations and bathes them in blood. Do not expect them to make any effort to escape or alleviate their sentence. It is as if we saw these great criminals, enlightened by their consciences, requesting the punishment and accepting it for the sake of their atonement. So long as they have any blood left they will come to offer it, and soon a sparse youth will get used to telling of these devastating wars caused by the crimes of their fathers.
War is therefore divine in itself, since it is a law of the world.
War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature, which are as much general as particular, consequences little known because little studied, but which are nevertheless incontestable. Who could doubt the great privileges to be found in death in battle? Who could believe that the victims of this dreadful sentence have shed their blood in vain? However this is not the time to insist on matters of this kind; our century is not yet mature enough to occupy itself with these matters. Let it keep to its physics, but we must nevertheless keep our eyes fixed on the invisible world that will explain everything.
War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it, and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it.
War is divine in the protection granted to its great leaders, even the most venturesome, who are rarely struck down in battle, and then only when their reputation can no longer be increased and when their mission has been fulfilled.
War is divine by the way in which it breaks out. I do not want to excuse anyone too easily, but how many of those regarded as the immediate authors of war are themselves carried along by circumstances! At the precise moment caused by men and prescribed by justice, God himself comes forward to avenge the iniquity committed against him by the inhabitants of the world. The earth, thirsty for blood, as we heard a few days ago, opens its mouth to receive it and to keep it in its bosom until the time when it must render its account. So let us applaud as loudly as you wish the worthy poet who cries out:
To the least interest that would divide
These blazing sovereigns,
Bellona [god of war] sustains the reply,
And saltpetre always announces
Their willing murderers.
However these very secondary considerations do not at all prevent us from looking to higher things.
War is divine in its results, which absolutely escape the speculations of human reason, since they can be totally different for two different nations, even though the war appears to have affected them both equally. There are wars that degrade nations, and degrade them for centuries; others exalt them, perfect them in all sorts of ways, and even soon replace momentary losses by a visible increase in population, which is something quite extraordinary. History often shows us the spectacle of a rich and growing population in the midst of the most murderous battles. There are also vicious wars, accursed wars, that the conscience recognizes better than reasoning; nations are mortally wounded by them, both in their power and in their character; then you will see even the victor degraded, impoverished, and groaning under his sad laurels, whereas in lands of the vanquished, in a short time, you will not find an unused workshop or plough.
War is divine by the indefinable force that determines success in it. It was surely without thinking, my dear Chevalier, when you repeated the other day the celebrated maxim that God is always on the side of the big battalions. I will never believe that it really came from the great man to whom it has been attributed; perhaps he put forward this maxim in jest, or seriously in a limited and very true sense, for God in the temporal government of his Providence does not derogate, except in the case of miracles, from the general laws that he established for all time. Thus, just as two men are stronger than one, a hundred thousand men must be more powerful and effective than fifty thousand. When we ask God for victory, we do not ask him to derogate from the general laws of the world; that would be too much. However these laws can combine in a thousand different ways, and can permit victory in ways that cannot be foreseen. Undoubtedly three men are stronger than one; this general proposition is incontestable, but an able man can profit from certain circumstances, and a single Horatius will kill three Curiatii. A body with the greater mass has the greater momentum; this is undoubtedly true if their speeds are equal, but three parts of mass and two of speed are equal to three parts of speed and two of mass. In the same way, an army of 40,000 men is physically inferior to another army of 60,000, but if the first has more courage, experience, and discipline, it will be able to defeat the second, for it is more effective with less mass. This is what we can see on every page of history. Moreover, war always supposes a certain equality between the two sides. I never read of the Republic of Ragusa declaring war on the sultans, or that of Geneva on the kings of France. There is always a certain equilibrium in the political world, and (if certain rare, precise, and limited cases are excepted) it is not up to man to upset it. This is why coalitions are so difficult. It they were not, since politics is so little governed by justice, coalitions would be assembled every day to destroy particular powers; but such projects seldom succeed, and history shows even weak powers escaping from them with astonishing ease. When a too predominate power frightens the world, men are irritated at not being able to find any way to check it, and bitter reproaches are made against the egotism and immorality of cabinets that are preventing an alliance against the common enemy. This is the cry that was heard in the heyday of Louis XIV. But in
the end these complaints are ill founded. A coalition between several sovereigns, based on a pure and disinterested morality, would be a miracle. God, who owes miracles to no one, and who never works them needlessly, uses two very simple means to re-establish political equilibrium: sometimes the giant overreaches itself, and sometimes a very inferior power puts a tiny obstacle in the giant's way, something imperceptible that subsequently grows in an unaccountable way until it becomes insurmountable, just as a small branch, stuck in the current of a river, can in the end produce a blockage that diverts it.
- Joseph De Maistre, [i]St Petersburg Dialogues: Or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence, (1821)
[media=https://youtu.be/ccOlnHu7Bd0]
[media=https://youtu.be/IzR4rae6KDM]
41-45, M