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The Revd Adam Sedgwick had received his copy with more pain than pleasure Without Creation showing divine love humanity to my mind would suffer a damage that might brutalise it and sink the human race He indicated that unless Darwin accepted God s revelation in nature and scripture Sedgwick would not meet Darwin in heaven a sentiment that upset Emma The Revd John Stevens Henslow the botany professor whose natural history course Charles had joined thirty years earlier gave faint praise to the Origin as a stumble in the right direction but distanced himself from its conclusions a question past our finding out |
The Anglican establishment predominantly opposed Darwin Palmerston who became Prime Minister in June 1859 mooted Darwin s name to Queen Victoria as a candidate for the Honours List with the prospect of a knighthood While Prince Albert supported the idea after the publication of the Origin Queen Victoria s ecclesiastical advisers including the Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce dissented and the request was denied Some Anglicans were more in favour and Huxley reported of Kingsley that He is an excellent Darwinian to begin with and told me a capital story of his reply to Lady Aylesbury who expressed astonishment at his favouring such a heresy What can be more delightful to me Lady Aylesbury than to know that your Ladyship myself sprang from the same toad stool Whereby the frivolous old woman shut up in doubt whether she was being chaffed or adored for her remark |
There was no official comment from the Vatican for several decades but in 1860 a council of the German Catholic bishops pronounced that the belief that man as regards his body emerged finally from the spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith This defined the range of official Catholic discussion of evolution which has remained almost exclusively concerned with human evolution |
On 10 February 1860 Huxley gave a lecture titled On Species and Races and their Origin at the Royal Institution reviewing Darwin s theory with fancy pigeons on hand to demonstrate artificial selection as well as using the occasion to confront the clergy with his aim of wresting science from ecclesiastical control He referred to Galileo s persecution by the church the little Canutes of the hour enthroned in solemn state bidding that great wave to stay and threatening to check its beneficent progress He hailed the Origin as heralding a new Reformation in a battle against those who would silence and crush science and called on the public to cherish Science and follow her methods faithfully and implicitly in their application to all branches of human thought for the future of England To Darwin such rhetoric was time wasted and on reflection he thought the lecture an entire failure which gave no just idea of natural selection but by March he was listing those on our side as against the outsiders His close allies were Hooker and Huxley and in August he called Huxley his good and kind agent for the propagation of the Gospel ie the devil s gospel |
The position of Richard Owen was unknown when emphasising to a Parliamentary committee the need for a new Natural History museum he pointed out that The whole intellectual world this year has been excited by a book on the origin of species and what is the consequence Visitors come to the British Museum and they say Let us see all these varieties of pigeons where is the tumbler where is the pouter and I am obliged with shame to say I can show you none of them As to showing you the varieties of those species or of any of those phenomena that would aid one in getting at that mystery of mysteries the origin of species our space does not permit but surely there ought to be a space somewhere and if not in the British Museum where is it to be obtained |
Huxley s April review in the Westminster Review included the first mention of the term Darwinism in the question What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular Darwin thought it a brilliant review |
Overflowing the narrow bounds of purely scientific circles the species question divides with Italy and the Volunteers the attention of general society Everybody has read Mr Darwin s book or at least has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits pietists whether lay or ecclesiastic decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable bigots denounce it with ignorant invective old ladies of both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book and even savants who have no better mud to throw quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape himself while every philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism and all competent naturalists and physiologists whatever their opinions as to the ultimate fate of the doctrines put forth acknowledge that the work in which they are embodied is a solid contribution to knowledge and inaugurates a new epoch in natural history Thomas Huxley 1860 |
When Owen s own anonymous review of the Origin appeared in the April Edinburgh Review he praised himself and his own axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things and showed his anger at what he saw as Darwin s caricature of the creationist position and ignoring Owen s preeminence To him new species appeared at birth not through natural selection As well as attacking Darwin s disciples Hooker and Huxley he thought that the book symbolised the sort of abuse of science to which a neighbouring nation some seventy years since owed its temporary degradation Darwin had Huxley and Hooker staying with him when he read it and he wrote telling Lyell that it was extremely malignant clever I fear will be very damaging He is atrociously severe on Huxley s lecture very bitter against Hooker So we three enjoyed it together not that I really enjoyed it for it made me uncomfortable for one night but I have got quite over it today It requires much study to appreciate all the bitter spite of many of the remarks against me indeed I did not discover all myself It scandalously misrepresents many parts It is painful to be hated in the intense degree with which Owen hates me He commented to Henslow that Owen is indeed very spiteful He misrepresents alters what I say very unfairly The Londoners says he is mad with envy because my book has been talked about what a strange man to be envious of a naturalist like myself immeasurably his inferior |
Darwin s had estimated that erosion of the Weald would take 300 million years but in the second edition of On the Origin of Species published on 7 January 1860 he accepted that it would be safer to allow 150 million to 200 million years |
Geologists knew the earth was ancient but had felt unable to put realistic figures on the duration of past geological changes Darwin s book provided a new impetus to quantifying geological time His most prominent critic John Phillips had investigated how temperatures increased with depth in the 1830s and was convinced that contrary to Lyell and Darwin s uniformitarianism the Earth was cooling over the long term Between 1838 and 1855 he tried various ways of quantifying the timing of stratified deposits without success On 17 February 1860 Phillips used his presidential address to the Geological Society of London to accuse Darwin of abuse of arithmetic He said 300 million years was an inconceivable number and that depending on assumptions erosion of the Weald could have taken anything from 12000 years to at most 1332000 years well below Darwin s estimate When giving the May 1860 Rede Lecture Phillips produced his own first published estimates of the duration of the whole stratigraphic record using rates of sedimentation to calculate it at around 96 million years |
Most reviewers wrote with great respect deferring to Darwin s eminent position in science though finding it hard to understand how natural selection could work without a divine selector There were hostile comments at the start of May he commented to Lyell that he had received in a Manchester Newspaper a rather a good squib showing that I have proved might is right therefore that Napoleon is right every cheating Tradesman is also right The Saturday Review reported that The controversy excited by the appearance of Darwin s remarkable work on the Origin of Species has passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture room into the drawing room and the public street |
The older generation of Darwin s tutors were rather negative and later in May he told his cousin Fox that the attacks have been falling thick heavy on my now case hardened hide Sedgwick Clarke opened regular battery on me lately at Cambridge Phil Soc dear old Henslow defended me in grand style saying that my investigations were perfectly legitimate While defending Darwin s honest motives and belief that he was exalting not debasing our views of a Creator in attributing to him a power of imposing laws on the Organic World by which to do his work as effectually as his laws imposed upon the inorganic had done it in the Mineral Kingdom Henslow had not disguised his own opinion that Darwin has pressed his hypothesis too far |
In June Karl Marx saw the book as a bitter satire that showed a basis in natural science for class struggle in history in which Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society |
Darwin remarked to Lyell I must be a very bad explainer Several Reviews several letters have shown me too clearly how little I am understood I suppose natural selection was bad term but to change it now I think would make confusion worse confounded Nor can I think of better Natural preservation would not imply a preservation of particular varieties would seem a truism would not bring man s nature s selection under one point of view I can only hope by reiterated explanations finally to make matter clearer It was too illegible for Lyell and Darwin later apologised I am utterly ashamed groan over my hand writing It was Natural Preservation Natural persecution is what the author ought to suffer |
Around February 1860 liberal theologians entered the fray when seven produced a manifesto titled Essays and Reviews These Anglicans included Oxford professors country clergymen the headmaster of Rugby school and a layman Their declaration that miracles were irrational stirred up unprecedented anger drawing much of the fire away from Darwin Essays sold 22000 copies in two years more than the Origin sold in twenty years and sparked five years of increasingly polarised debate with books and pamphlets furiously contesting the issues |
The most scientific of the seven was the Reverend Baden Powell who held the Savilian chair of geometry at the University of Oxford Referring to Mr Darwin s masterly volume and restating his argument that God is a lawgiver miracles break the lawful edicts issued at Creation therefore belief in miracles is atheistic he wrote that the book must soon bring about an entire revolution in opinion in favour of the grand principle of the self evolving powers of nature He drew attacks with Sedgwick accusing him of greedily adopting nonsense and Tory reviews saying he was joining the infidel party He would have been on the platform at the British Association debate facing the bishop but died of a heart attack on 11 June |
The most famous confrontation took place at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxford on Saturday 30 June 1860 While there was no formal debate organised on the issue Professor John William Draper of New York University was to talk on Darwin and social progress at a routine Botany and Zoology meeting The new museum hall was crowded with clergy undergraduates Oxford dons and gentlewomen anticipating that Samuel Wilberforce the Bishop of Oxford would speak to repeat the savage trouncing he had given in 1847 to the Vestiges published anonymously by Robert Chambers Owen lodged with Wilberforce the night before but Wilberforce would have been well prepared as he had just reviewed the Origin for the Tory Quarterly for a fee of 60 Huxley was not going to wait for the meeting but met Chambers who accused him of deserting them and changed his mind Darwin was taking treatment at Dr Lane s new hydropathic establishment at Sudbrooke Park Petersham near Richmond in Surrey |
From Hooker s account Draper droned on for an hour then for half an hour Soapy Sam Wilberforce replied with the eloquence that had earned him his nickname This time the climate of opinion had changed and the ensuing debate was more evenly matched with Hooker being particularly successful in defence of Darwin s ideas In response to what Huxley took as a jibe from Wilberforce as to whether it was on Huxley s grandfather s or grandmother s side that he was descended from an ape Huxley made a reply which he later recalled as being that if asked would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means and influence and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape No verbatim record was taken eyewitness accounts exist and vary somewhat |
Robert FitzRoy who had been the captain of HMS Beagle during Darwin s voyage was there to present a paper on storms During the debate FitzRoy seen by Hooker as a grey haired Roman nosed elderly gentleman stood in the centre of the audience and lifting an immense Bible first with both and afterwards with one hand over his head solemnly implored the audience to believe God rather than man As he admitted that the Origin of Species had given him acutest pain the crowd shouted him down |
Hooker s blood boiled I felt myself a dastard now I saw my advantage I swore to myself I would smite that Amalekite Sam hip and thigh he was invited up to the platform and there and then I smacked him amid rounds of applause proceeded to demonstrate that he could never have read your book wound up with a very few observations on the old and new hypotheses Sam was shut up and the meeting was dissolved forthwith leaving you Darwin master of the field after 4 hours battle |
Both sides came away claiming victory with Hooker and Huxley each sending Darwin rather contradictory triumphant accounts Supporters of Darwinism seized on this meeting as a sign that the idea of evolution could not be suppressed by authority and would be defended vigorously by its advocates Liberal clerics were also satisfied that literal belief in all aspects of the Bible was now questioned by science they were sympathetic to some of the ideas in Essays and Reviews William Whewell wrote to his friend James David Forbes that Perhaps the Bishop was not prudent to venture into a field where no eloquence can supersede the need for precise knowledge The young naturalists declared themselves in favour of Darwin s views which tendency I saw already at Leeds two years ago I am sorry for it for I reckon Darwin s book to be an utterly unphilosophical one |
In late July Darwin read Wilberforce s review in the Quarterly It used a 60 year old parody from the AntiJacobin of the prose of Darwin s grandfather Erasmus implying old revolutionary sympathies It argued that if transmutations were actually occurring this would be seen in rapidly reproducing invertebrates and since it is nt why think that the favourite varieties of turnips are tending to become men Darwin pencilled rubbish in the margin To the statement about classification that all creation is the transcript in matter of ideas eternally existing in the mind of the Most High Darwin scribbled mere words At the same time Darwin was willing to grant that Wilberforce s review was clever he wrote to Hooker that it picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts and brings forward well all the difficulties It quizzes me quite splendidly by quoting the AntiJacobin against my Grandfather |
Wilberforce also attacked Essays and Reviews in the Quarterly Review and in a letter to The Times signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and 25 bishops which threatened the theologians with the ecclesiastical courts Darwin quoted a proverb A bench of bishops is the devil s flower garden and joined others including Lyell though not Hooker and Huxley in signing a counterletter supporting Essays and Reviews for trying to establish religious teachings on a firmer and broader foundation Despite this alignment of proevolution scientists and Unitarians with liberal churchmen two of the authors were indicted for heresy and lost their jobs by 1862 |
In October 1860 John Phillips published Life on the Earth its origin and succession reiterating points from his Rede Lecture and disputing Darwin s arguments He sent a copy to Darwin who thanked him though sorry but not surprised to see that you are dead against me |
On 20 November Darwin told Lyell of his revisions for a third edition of the Origin including removing his estimate of the time it took for the Weald to erode The confounded Wealden calculation to be struck out a note to be inserted to effect that I am convinced of its inaccuracy from Review in Saturday R from Phillips as I see in Table of Contents that he attacks it He later told Lyell that Having burnt my own fingers so consumedly with the Wealden I am fearful for you and advised caution for Heaven sake take care of your fingers to burn them severely as I have done is very unpleasant The third edition as published on 30 April 1861 stated The computation of time required for the denudation of the Weald omitted I have been convinced of its inaccuracy in several respects by an excellent article in the Saturday Review Dec 24 1859 |
The Natural History Review was bought and refurbished by Huxley Lubbock Busk and other plastically minded young men supporters of Darwin The first issue in January 1861 carried Huxley s paper on man s relationship to apes showing up Owen Huxley cheekily sent a copy to Wilberforce |
As the battles raged Darwin returned home from the spa to proceed with experiments on chloroforming carnivorous sundew plants looking over his Natural Selection manuscript and drafting two chapters on pigeon breeding that would eventually form part of The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication He wrote to Asa Gray and used the example of fantail pigeons to argue against Gray s belief that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines with the implication of Creationism rather than Natural Selection |
Over the winter he organised a third edition of the Origin adding an introductory historical sketch Asa Gray had published three supportive articles in the Atlantic Monthly Darwin persuaded Gray to publish them as a pamphlet and was delighted when Gray came up with the title of Natural Selection Not Inconsistent with Natural Theology Darwin paid half the cost imported 250 copies into Britain and as well as advertising it in periodicals and sending 100 copies out to scientists reviewers and theologians including Wilberforce he included in the Origin a recommendation for it available to be purchased for 1s 6d from Trbner s in Paternoster Row |
The Huxleys became close family friends frequently visiting Down House When their 3 year old son died of scarlet fever they were badly affected Henrietta Huxley brought their three infants to Down in March 1861 where Emma helped to console her while Huxley continued with his working men s lectures at the Royal School of Mines writing that My working men stick with me wonderfully the house fuller than ever By next Friday evening they will all be convinced that they are monkeys |
Huxley s arguments with Owen continued in the Athenaeum so that each Saturday Darwin could read the latest ripostes Owen tried to smear Huxley by portraying him as an advocate of man s origins from a transmuted ape and one of his contributions was titled Ape Origin of Man as Tested by the Brain This backfired as Huxley had already delighted Darwin by speculating on pithecoid man ape like man and was glad of the invitation to publicly turn the anatomy of brain structure into a question of human ancestry He was determined to indict Owen for perjury promising before I have done with that mendacious humbug I will nail him out like a kite to a barn door an example to all evil doers Darwin egged him on from Down writing Oh Lord what a thorn you must be in the poor dear man s side |
Their campaign ran over two years and was devastatingly successful with each slaying being followed by a recruiting drive for the Darwinian cause The spite lingered When Huxley joined the Zoological Society Council in 1861 Owen left and in the following year Huxley moved to stop Owen from being elected to the Royal Society Council as no body of gentlemen should admit a member guilty of wilful deliberate falsehood |
Lyell was troubled both by Huxley s belligerence and by the question of ape ancestry but got little sympathy from Darwin who teased him that Our ancestor was an animal which breathed water had a swim bladder a great swimming tail an imperfect skull and undoubtedly was a hermaphrodite Here is a pleasant genealogy for mankind Lyell began work on a book examining human origins |
Like the geologist John Phillips the physicist William Thomson later ennobled as Lord Kelvin had considered since the 1840s that the physics of thermodynamics required that the Earth was cooling from an initial molten state This contradicted Lyell s uniformitarian concept of unchanging processes over deep geological time which Darwin shared and had assumed would allow ample time for the slow process of natural selection |
In June 1861 Thomson asked Phillips how geologists felt about Darwin s prodigious durations for geological epochs and mentioned his own preliminary calculation that the Sun was 20 million years old with the Earth at most 200 to 1000 million years old Phillips discussed his own published view that stratified rocks went back 96 million years and dismissed Darwin s original estimate that the Weald had taken 300 million years to erode In September 1861 Thomson produced a paper On the age of the Sun s heat which estimated that the Sun was between 100 and 500 million years old and in 1862 he used assumptions on the rate of cooling from a molten condition to estimate the age of the Earth at 98 million years The dispute continued for the rest of Darwin s life |
The reception of Darwin s ideas continued to arouse scientific and religious debates and wide public interest Satirical cartoonists seized on animal ancestry in relation to other topical issues drawing on a long tradition of identifying animal traits in humans In Britain mass circulation magazines were droll rather than cruel and thus presented Darwin s theory in an unthreatening way Due to illness Darwin began growing a beard in 1862 and when he reappeared in public in 1866 with a bushy beard caricatures centred on Darwin and his new look contributed to a trend in which all forms of evolutionism were identified with Darwinism |
For a description of Darwin s life work and influences in the following period see the article Darwin from Orchids to Variation |
Note this article uses Desmond and Moore Darwin as a general reference Other references used for specific points or quotations |
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Blinded by the Light is a song written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen which first appeared on his 1973 debut album Greetings from Asbury Park NJ A cover by British rock band Manfred Mann s Earth Band reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in February 1977 and was also a top ten hit in the United Kingdom New Zealand and Canada |
The song came about when Columbia president Clive Davis upon listening to an early version of Greetings from Asbury Park NJ felt the album lacked a potential single Springsteen wrote this and Spirit in the Night in response |
According to Springsteen the song came about from going through a rhyming dictionary in search of appropriate words The first line of the song Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summers with a teenage diplomat is autobiographical Madman drummers is a reference to drummer Vini Lopez known as Mad Man later changed to Mad Dog Indians in the summer refers to the name of Springsteen s old Little League team teenage diplomat refers to himself The remainder of the song tells of many unrelated events with the refrain of Blinded by the light cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night |
Blinded by the Light was the first song on and first single from Greetings from Asbury Park NJ Springsteen s version was commercially unsuccessful and did not appear on the music charts |
Manfred Mann s Earth Band released a version of the song on their 1976 album The Roaring Silence Their version includes the Chopsticks melody played on piano near the end of the bridge of the song The track reached 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Canadian RPM charts Manfred Mann s Earth Band s recording of Blinded by the Light is Springsteen s only 1 single as a songwriter on the Hot 100 he never had a 1 as a performer except as part of USA for Africa |
In 2002 Danish act Funkstar De Luxe released its disco version of this song A jazzified version can be found on Springsteen s 2007 video and audio release Live in Dublin recorded with The Sessions Band |
The song is used in the films Blow Running with Scissors and Super Troopers 2 |
Manfred Mann s Earth Band s recording of the song changes the lyrics The most prominent change is in the chorus where Springsteen s cut loose like a deuce is replaced with revved up like a deuce This is commonly misheard as wrapped up like a douche the V sound in revved is almost unpronounced and the S sound in deuce comes across as SH due to a significant lisp The lyric is actually a reference to a hot rod deuce coupe Springsteen was fond of classic hot rods in his youth hence the line revved up like a deuce another runner in the night Springsteen himself has joked about the controversy claiming that it was not until Manfred Mann rewrote the song to be about a feminine hygiene product that it became popular |
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Libert galit fraternit pronounced libte ealite fatnite French for liberty equality fraternity is the national motto of France and the Republic of Haiti and is an example of a tripartite motto Although it finds its origins in the French Revolution it was then only one motto among others and was not institutionalized until the Third Republic at the end of the 19th century Debates concerning the compatibility and order of the three terms began at the same time as the Revolution It is also the motto of the Grand Orient de France and the Grande Loge de France |
The first to express this motto was Maximilien Robespierre in his speech On the organization of the National Guard French Discours sur lorganisation des gardes nationales on 5 December 1790 article XVI and disseminated widely throughout France by the popular Societies |
Discours sur lorganisation des gardes nationales Article XVI On their uniforms engraved these words FRENCH PEOPLE below LIBERTY EQUALITY FRATERNITY The same words are inscribed on flags which bear the three colors of the nation French XVI Elles porteront sur leur poitrine ces mots gravs LE PEUPLE FRANAIS au dessous LIBERT GALIT FRATERNIT Les mmes mots seront inscrits sur leurs drapeaux qui porteront les trois couleurs de la nation |
Credit for the motto has been given also to Antoine Franois Momoro 1756 94 a Parisian printer and Hbertist organizer though in different context of foreign invasion and Federalist revolts in 1793 it was modified to Unity indivisibility of the Republic liberty equality brotherhood or death French Unit Indivisibilit de la Rpublique Libert Egalit Fraternit ou la mort and suggested by a resolution of the Paris Commune member of which Momoro was elected by his section du Thtre Franais on 29 June 1793 to be inscribed on Parisian house fronts and imitated by the inhabitants of other cities In 1839 the philosopher Pierre Leroux claimed it had been an anonymous and popular creation The historian Mona Ozouf underlines that although Libert and galit were associated as a motto during the 18th century Fraternit was nt always included in it and other terms such as Amiti Friendship Charit Charity or Union were often added in its place |
The emphasis on Fraternit during the French Revolution led Olympe de Gouges a female journalist to write the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen as a response The tripartite motto was neither a creative collection nor really institutionalized by the French Revolution As soon as 1789 other terms were used such as la Nation la Loi le Roi The Nation The Law The King or Union Force Vertu Union Strength Virtue a slogan used beforehand by masonic lodges or Force galit Justice Strength Equality Justice Libert Sret Proprit Liberty Security Property etc |
In other words libert galit fraternit was only one slogan among many others During the Jacobin revolutionary period itself various mottos were used such as libert unit galit liberty unity equality libert galit justice liberty equality justice libert raison galit liberty reason equality etc The only solid association was that of libert and galit fraternit being ignored by the Cahiers de dolances as well as by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen It was only alluded to in the 1791 Constitution as well as in Robespierre s draft Declaration of 1793 placed under the invocation of in that order galit libert sret and proprit equality liberty safety property though it was used not as a motto but as articles of declaration as the possibility of a universal extension of the Declaration of Rights Men of all countries are brothers he who oppresses one nation declares himself the enemy of all Finally it did not figure in the August 1793 Declaration |
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 defined liberty in Article 4 as follows |
Liberty consists of being able to do anything that does not harm others thus the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights |
Equality on the other hand was defined by the 1789 Declaration in terms of judicial equality and merit based entry to government art 6 |
The law must be the same for all whether it protects or punishes All citizens being equal in its eyes shall be equally eligible to all high offices public positions and employments according to their ability and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents |
Libert galit fraternit actually finds its origins in a May 1791 proposition by the Club des Cordeliers following a speech on the Army by the marquis de Guichardin A British marine held prisoner on the French ship Le Marat in 1794 wrote home in letters published in 1796 |
The republican spirit is inculcated not in songs only for in every part of the ship I find emblems purposely displayed to awaken it All the orders relating to the discipline of the crew are hung up and prefaced by the words Libert galit Fraternit ou la Mort written in capital letters |
The compatibility of libert and galit was not doubted in the first days of the Revolution and the problem of the antecedence of one term on the other not lifted Thus the Abb Sieys considered that only liberty ensured equality unless the latter was to be the equality of all dominated by a despot while liberty followed equality ensured by the rule of law The abstract generality of law theorized by Jean Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract thus ensured the identification of liberty to equality liberty being negatively defined as an independence from arbitrary rule and equality considered abstractly in its judicial form |
This identification of liberty and equality became problematic during the Jacobin period when equality was redefined for instance by Franois Nol Babeuf as equality of results and not only judicial equality of rights Thus Marc Antoine Baudot considered that French temperament inclined rather to equality than liberty a theme which would be reused by Pierre Louis Roederer and Alexis de Tocqueville while Jacques Necker considered that an equal society could only be found on coercion |
The third term fraternit was the most problematic to insert in the triad as it belonged to another sphere that of moral obligations rather than rights links rather than statutes harmony rather than contract and community rather than individuality Various interpretations of fraternit existed The first one according to Mona Ozouf was one of fraternit de rbellion Fraternity of Rebellion that is the union of the deputies in the Jeu de Paume Oath of June 1789 refusing the dissolution ordered by the King Louis XVI We swear never to separate ourselves from the National Assembly and to reassemble wherever circumstances require until the constitution of the realm is drawn up and fixed upon solid foundations Fraternity was thus issued from Liberty and oriented by a common cause |
Another form of fraternit was that of the patriotic Church which identified social link with religious link and based fraternity on Christian brotherhood In this second sense fraternit preceded both libert and galit instead of following them as in the first sense Thus two senses of Fraternity one that followed liberty and equality was the object of a free pact the other preceded liberty and equality as the mark on its work of the divine craftsman |
Another hesitation concerning the compatibility of the three terms arose from the opposition between liberty and equality as individualistic values and fraternity as the realization of a happy community devoided of any conflicts and opposed to any form of egotism This fusional interpretation of Fraternity opposed it to the project of individual autonomy and manifested the precedence of Fraternity on individual will |
In this sense it was sometimes associated with death as in Fraternit ou la Mort Fraternity or Death excluding liberty and even equality by establishing a strong dichotomy between those who were brothers and those who were not in the sense of you are with me or against me brother or foe Louis de Saint Just thus stigmatized Anarchasis Cloots cosmopolitanism declaring Cloots liked the universe except France |
With Thermidor and the execution of Robespierre fraternit disappeared from the slogan reduced to the two terms of liberty and equality redefined again as simple judicial equality and not as the equality upheld by the sentiment of fraternity The First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte then established the motto libert ordre public liberty public order |
Following Napoleon s rule the triptych dissolved itself as none believed possible to conciliate individual liberty and equality of rights with equality of results and fraternity The idea of individual sovereignty and of natural rights possessed by man before being united in the collectivity contradicted the possibility of establishing a transparent and fraternal community Liberals accepted liberty and equality defining the latter as equality of rights and ignoring fraternity |
Early Socialists rejected an independent conception of liberty opposed to the social and also despised equality as they considered as Fourier that one had only to orchestrate individual discordances to harmonize them or they believed as Saint Simon that equality contradicted equity by a brutal levelling of individualities Utopian Socialism thus only cared about Fraternity which was in Cabet s Icarie the sole commandment |
This opposition between liberals and socialists was mirrored in rival historical interpretations of the Revolution liberals admiring 1789 and Socialists 1793 The July Revolution of 1830 establishing a constitutional monarchy headed by Louis Philippe substituted ordre et libert order and liberty to the Napoleonic motto Libert Ordre public Despite this apparent disappearance of the triptych the latter was still being thought in some underground circles in Republican secret societies masonic lodges such as the Indivisible Trinity far left booklets or during the Canuts Revolt in Lyon In 1834 the lawyer of the Society of the Rights of Man Socit des droits de lhomme Dupont a liberal sitting in the far left during the July Monarchy associated the three terms together in the Revue Rpublicaine which he edited |
Any man aspires to liberty to equality but he can not achieve it without the assistance of other men without fraternity |
The triptych resurfaced during the 1847 Campagne des Banquets upheld for example in Lille by Ledru Rollin |
Two interpretations had attempted to conciliate the three terms beyond the antagonism between liberals and socialists One was upheld by Catholic traditionalists such as Chateaubriand or Ballanche the other by socialist and republicans such as Pierre Leroux Chateaubriand thus gave a Christian interpretation of the revolutionary motto stating in the 1841 conclusion to his Mmoires doutre tombe |
Far from being at its term the religion of the Liberator is now only just entering its third phase the political period liberty equality fraternity |
Neither Chateaubriand nor Ballanche considered the three terms to be antagonistic Rather they took them for being the achievement of Christianity On the other hand Pierre Leroux did not disguise the difficulties of associating the three terms but superated it by considering liberty as the aim equality as the principle and fraternity as the means Leroux thus ordered the motto as Liberty Fraternity Equality an order also supported by Christian socialists such as Buchez |
Against this new order of the triptych Michelet supported the traditional order maintaining the primordial importance of an original individualistic right Michelet attempted to conciliate a rational communication with a fraternal communication right beyond right and thus the rival traditions of Socialism and Liberalism The Republican tradition would strongly inspire itself from Michelet s synchretism |
With the 1848 February Revolution the motto was officially adopted mainly under the pressure of the people who had attempted to impose the red flag over the tricolor flag the 1791 red flag was however the symbol of martial law and of order not of insurrection Lamartine opposed popular aspirations and in exchange of the maintaining of the tricolor flag conceded the Republican motto of Libert galit Fraternit written on the flag on which a red rosette was also to be added |
Fraternity was then considered to resume and to contain both Liberty and Equality being a form of civil religion which far from opposing itself to Christianity was associated with it in 1848 establishing social link as called for by Rousseau in the conclusion of the Social Contract |
However Fraternity was not devoid of its previous sense of opposition between brothers and foes images of blood haunting revolutionary Christian publications taking in Lamennais themes Thus the newspaper Le Christ rpublicain The Republican Christ developed the idea of the Christ bringing forth peace to the poor and war to the rich |
As soon as 6 January 1852 the future Napoleon III first President of the Republic ordered all prefects to erase the triptych from all official documents and buildings conflated with insurrection and disorder Auguste Comte applauded Napoleon claiming equality to be the symbol of metaphysical anarchism and preferring to it his diptych ordre et progrs order and progress which would then become the motto of Brazil Ordem e Progresso On the other hand Proudhon criticized fraternity as an empty word which he associated with idealistic dreams of Romanticism He preferred to it the sole term of liberty |
Pache mayor of the Paris Commune painted the formula Libert galit Fraternit ou la mort on the walls of the commune It was only under the Third Republic that the motto was made official It was then not dissociated with insurrection and revolutionary ardours Opportunist Republicans such as Jules Ferry or Gambetta adapting it to the new political conditions Larousse s Dictionnaire universel deprived fraternity of its evangelistic halo Mona Ozouf conflating it with solidarity and the welfare role of the state |
Some still opposed the Republican motto such as the nationalist Charles Maurras in his Dictionnaire politique et critique who claimed liberty to be an empty dream equality an insanity and only kept fraternity Charles Pguy renewing with Lamennais thought kept fraternity and liberty excluding equality seen as an abstract repartition between individuals reduced to homogeneity opposing fraternity as a sentiment put in motion by misery while equality only interested itself according to him to the mathematical solution of the problem of poverty |
Pguy identified Christian charity and socialist solidarity in this conception of fraternity On the other hand Georges Vacher de Lapouge the most important French author of pseudoscientific racism and supporter of eugenism completely rejected the Republican triptych adopting another motto dterminisme ingalit slection determinism inequality selection But according to Ozouf the sole use of a triptych was the sign of the influence of the Republican motto despite it being corrupted in its opposite |
During the German occupation of France in World War II this motto was replaced by the reactionary phrase travail famille patrie work family fatherland by Marshal Ptain who became the leader of the new Vichy French government in 1940 Ptain had taken this motto from the colonel de la Rocque s Parti social franais PSF although the latter considered it more appropriate for a movement than for a regime |
Following the Liberation the Provisional Government of the French Republic GPRF reestablished the Republican motto Libert galit fraternit which is incorporated into both the 1946 and the 1958 French constitutions |
Many other nations have adopted the French slogan of liberty equality and fraternity as an ideal These words appear in the preamble to the Constitution of India enforced in 1950 Since its founding Liberty Equality and Brotherhood has been the lemma of the Social Democratic Party of Denmark In the United Kingdom the political party the Liberal Democrats refer to the fundamental values of liberty equality and community in the preamble of the party s Federal Constitution and this is printed on party membership cards |
The Philippine national flag has a rectangular design that consists of a white equilateral triangle symbolizing liberty equality and fraternity a horizontal blue stripe for peace truth and justice and a horizontal red stripe for patriotism and valor In the center of the white triangle is an eight rayed golden sun symbolizing unity freedom people s democracy and sovereignty |
The idea of the slogan Liberty Equality Fraternity has also given an influence as natural law to the First Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights |
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood |
At one point the motto was used to mark churches which were controlled by the state rather than the Catholic Church |
Some former colonies of the French Republic such as Haiti Chad Niger and Gabon have adopted similar three word mottos |