[153] At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession when the north of France was invaded, Fénelon delivered several sermons in which he told the invaded population that their sufferings were the just punishment for their sins. Imagine the reception of anyone who dared to preach such a sermon to the French in August, 1914! For the manner in which the ‘taught’ Church to-day treats the ‘teaching’ Church if the latter does not say what it wants to hear, think of the reception thirty years ago of Father Ollivier’s sermon on the victims of the fire at the charity bazaar. [154] Similar observations may be made about the philosophers, most of whom--and not the least famous--do not live to-day like Descartes and Spinoza, but are married, have children, occupy posts, are ‘in daily life’. All of which seems to me to have a relation with the ‘pragmatic’ character of their teaching. (On this point, see my book: _Sur le Succès du Bergsonisme_, page 207.) [155] This is the reign (which seems eternal in France) of the ‘wit’, with his attribute so admirably denounced by Malebranche in this delicious phrase: ‘The stupid person and the wit are equally blind to truth; with this difference, that the stupid person respects truth while the wit despises it.’ [156] The spectacle of democracies may satisfy another sort of artistic sensibility, i.e. the sort which is moved, not by the spectacle of order, but by the spectacle of an equilibrium between forces which are naturally in opposition. (On this distinction, see the great book by M. Hauriou, _Principes de droit public_, chap. i.) Nevertheless, a sensibility to equilibrium is far more intellectual than truly artistic. See Note Q at the end of this book. [157] More precisely, since the haughty Romanticism I mentioned above. The artist’s desire to set himself up as an exceptional being dates from Flaubert. Hugo and Lamartine never expressed it. [158] This aversion is particularly strong in Nietzsche. (See _Le Gai sçavoir_, loc. cit., where generalization becomes a synonym for platitude, superficiality, stupidity.) Like a true artist, Nietzsche is incapable of understanding that the apperception of a common characteristic may be an act of genius--for instance, the apperception of the common characteristic between the movement of the planets and the fall of an apple. [159] So much so that the true champions of ‘sacred egoism’ definitely condemn them. Bismarck, Wilhelm II, Naumann, Houston Chamberlain, all argue against classical teaching. [160] Remember that Nietzsche only truly esteems the thought of the ancients up to Socrates, i.e. up to the time when it begins to teach the universal.