“It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles, and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. . . . I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone.
“That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! . . .
“All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. . . .
“On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order.
“On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations or can spare to them from his own private interests.”
— Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
As soon as I saw Instapundit’s link to a column titled, “Chivalry is dead, and you killed it, ladies,” Burke’s famous eulogy for the Age of Chivalry came to mind.
A great shame of modern education is that Burke’s philosophical reflections are now taught — when taught at all, which probably isn’t often — from excerpts in annotated anthologies, or studied from Cliff Notes. Students are presented with prefabricated interpretations of Burke’s meaning, rather than being required to puzzle it out for themselves. The result is a shallow understanding that deprives them of a full comprehension of Burke’s subtle meaning. It is far better to take the time to read the whole thing, to study the history of the French Revolution (including its philosophical influences), and patiently construe the larger signficance of the intended criticism.
What Burke denounced as a “barbarous philosophy” was the spirit of modern radicalism — Liberté, égalité, fraternité — that rejects all tradition and custom as oppressive superstition. The mob that invaded Versailles in October 1789, insulting the Queen whose honor Burke thought should be avenged by “ten thousand swords,” was acting in accordance with this radical “scheme of things,” wherein “a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman [and] a woman is but an animal.”
If a queen deserved no respect from the common rabble of Paris, Burke recognized, why should anyone be expected to obey any law, except the law of brute force? And why should anyone be expected to act on anything other than the most selfish motives? Continue reading A History Lesson for Janelle Harris →
