Honore Daumier, The barricade , oil on canvas (1852-1858).
"We are witnessing the last few years, an intellectual orgy unexampled in history. The human reason, misguided, is in full revolt against the eternal truth. Since this reason has abandoned the Christian faith and philosophy, she rushed with frantic ardor in the most monstrous errors, instead of spreading the light around her, she creates one more night in deeper, instead of build and build, it reversed and destroyed tormented by the evil spirit, she boldly attack the majestic building which had hitherto sheltered souls.
No truth is still standing. The idea of a God, this keystone of any social order, was obscured in the minds of the masses, the idea of duty, the cement company, warms the heart more, the idea of immortality This source of both consolation and such sweet hopes, no longer shines upon humanity miserable.
Socialism, this synthesis of all the madness, this collection of all the contradictions, the cry of outraged pride, fell like a terrible scourge in the field of intelligence, and destroyed all in its path plants, all flowers that Christianity had been sown.
The goal of human destiny has been infringed; the most insane fantasies, utopias have the most cloud under the action of the apostles of socialism, replaced the more vibrant truths. It was even, it is true, sometimes referred to owe the people of our time, but as this idea had no basis or sanction, men have despised, and the search for happiness has become selfish their principal study.
How deep is the error of human reason in our time, for that such absurd doctrines, as sterile as those of Fourier and Proudhon have found many followers and aroused immense enthusiasm!
These doctrines, called regenerative, are they not appeal to the passions burning less? Have no other purpose than to excite the greed and selfishness to turn? Their first word at all, is it not an infernal curse upon the work of our fathers, on the history of mankind? Do not they deny the legitimacy of all the rights acquired? Do they not confuse right and wrong? Do they not cut the wings of hope, affirming nothingness after death? Do they not lull the chimerical hope of mankind on earth to carry the bliss of heaven? Do they not want to confine humanity in a narrow circle, where spontaneity is doomed, where any size would be withered, where the genius is regarded as a crime? Do they not want to sacrifice on behalf of equality impossible and unjust, the sacred rights of freedom? do not they all ignore the economic laws of production and distribution of wealth? do they not proclaim in front crimes which disgrace humanity, innocence native rights? Do not they claim to make the company responsible for all plans hitherto attributed to individual freedom? The ideal is that they continue to base it not on the ruins of the Christian world, an atheist society, pantheistic, materialistic and anarchic? [...] Do not they have denied the legitimacy of ownership and the need for a government? Have not braving the positive lessons of history, and stifling the solemn voice of the universal tradition, poured ridicule on the most sublime doctrines of Christianity? Have they not sought by every means possible to replace the cult of truth, beauty and quality in worship humiliating belly?
These doctrines have remained long in the realm of speculation, in areas of theory for a long time in the realm of speculation, in areas of theory for a long time they had no other advocates, other followers that some poor misguided minds, some dreamers used to take the shadows for reality. But soon, thanks to religious skepticism that bequeathed us the eighteenth century, they gradually descended from the heights of abstraction in the crowds of cities, and gradually, through the freedom we enjoyed under the odious tyrant Philip, they gained ground, they recruited followers, formed centers, established homes spread active in almost all cities of France, and s'universalisèrent so that, when the revolution broke out in February, legions immense armies on their behalf, swore to destroy the old world, that is to say society and civilization. In view of these doctrines of destruction, the old Jacobin, the hideous monster bloody jaw, shudders of happiness in the haunts where he was hidden he lives here in this monstrous medley of all errors and all the madness, a valuable arsenal where he could refuel during a long and wonderful to find weapons of destruction that the war for nearly a century, he declared the fundamentals of the social order also rushed Does he angrily on this new food, and after using it greedily gorged, he wandered night and day around the walls of the city well, to the surprise and seize it, the devastation and destruction. [...]
Instead of decreasing, the number of followers of Jacobinism Socialist only grow more and more: it seems that the streams of blood that has already been written and he promises to sink still exude a scent that is intoxicating and turns men into beasts. It seems that the red flag he waves within populations has the fatal gift of making them mad, cruel, ferocious same. [...]
Revolutionary socialism embraced in France as a vice: its hungry hordes scream impatience in their wild dens. The plan of destruction, looting and fire is prepared. If the company is forgotten for a moment, she is lost and if the vigilance and energy government bend for a moment in their action, there is an end of civilization, it is because of the freedom of that freedom so dearly won by our fathers [...] "
Chauvelot Barnabas, solution , Paris, D. Giraud & J. Dagneau, 1850.
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