VICTOR HUGO

Deeds and Words

“Deeds and Words” ("Actes et Paroles"), which is dated June, 1875, is the record of Victor Hugo’s public life, speeches and letters, down to the year of his death, which occurred on May 32, 1885; but it is most important as a defence of his political career from 1848 onwards.  It does not, however, tell us how changeable his opinions had actually been.  His inconstant attachments are thus summed up by Dr. Brandes:  “He warmly supports the candidacy of Louis Napoleon for the post of President of the Republic ... lends him his support when he occupies that post, and is even favourable to the idea of an empire, until the feeling that he is despised as a politician estranges him from the Prince-President, and resentment at the coup d’etat drives him into the camp of the extreme Republicans.  His life may be said to mirror the political movements of France during the first half of the century.”  (See fiction.)

I.—­Right and Law

All human eloquence, among all peoples and in all times, may be summed up as the quarrel of Right against Law.

But this quarrel tends ever to decrease, and therein lies the whole of progress.  On the day when it has disappeared, civilisation will have attained its highest point; that which ought to be will have become one with that which is; there will be an end of catastrophes, and even, so to speak, of events; and society will develop majestically according to nature.  There will be no more disputes nor factions; no longer will laws be made, they will only be discovered.  Education will have taken the place of war, and by means of universal suffrage there will be chosen a parliament of intellect.

In that serene and glorious age there will be no more warriors, but workers only; creators in the place of exterminators.  The civilisation of action will have passed away, and that of thought will have succeeded.  The masterpieces of art and of literature will be the great events.

Frontiers will disappear; and France, which is destined to die as the gods die, by transfiguration, will become Europe.  For the Revolution of France will be known as the evolution of the peoples.  France has laboured not for herself alone, but has aroused world-wide hopes, and is herself the representative of all human good-will.

Right and Law are the two great forces whose harmony gives birth to order, but their antagonism is the source of all catastrophe.  Right is the divine truth, and Law is the earthly reality; liberty is Right and society is Law.  Wherefore there are two tribunes, one of the men of ideas, the other of the men of facts; and between these two the consciences of most still vacillate.  Not yet is there harmony between the immutable and the variable power; Right and Law are in ceaseless conflict.