On consistency of opinion & Illustrations of ‘The Times’ newspaper, de William Hazlitt : Du labeur et du courage que demande une pensée personnelle en quête de vérité.

          Dans ces deux essais, On consistency of opinion et Illustrations of ‘The Times’ newspaper, William Hazlitt discute principalement de la manière dont une opinion personnelle se forme et comment, en particulier si elle tend à la recherche de la vérité et de la justice, elle peut souvent se trouver à contre-courant, mettant son propriétaire dans une situation difficilement tenable parmi une majorité désapprobatrice, ou l’empêchant d’accéder à une position lucrative et avantageuse puisqu’elle sera souvent l’adversaire, l’ennemi des gens puissants et influents. Ainsi, celui qui cherche à défendre, à soutenir sa pensée, conformément à sa conscience et à ses principes personnels, se retrouvera souvent esseulé, vilipendé, et devra la défendre au détriment de son intérêt matériel, mais y gagnera du moins de vivre sans se trahir, s’avilir à ses propres yeux, en ne prenant pas le parti de ce qu’il sait pertinemment être le faux, l’injuste, drapé des habits de la vérité et de la justice.

             Hazlitt commence le premier essai susmentionné par un intéressant paradoxe : en effet, il est naturel de penser qu’une personne qui s’obstine à garder telle opinion arrêtée, ou du moins n’en change que très rarement, à la marge de surcroît, est une personne étrangement têtue, intolérante, peu ouverte aux opinions d’autrui. Or, c’est justement l’inverse si nous y réfléchissons bien (dans la limite du cas développé ci-dessous, bien sûr) : une telle personne qui de prime abord semble hermétique à autrui, du moins dans le cas précis d'Hazlitt et de toute personne intellectuellement honnête, est en réalité plus ouverte que ceux qui changent leur opinion fréquemment et de manière souvent impulsive, sans véritable réflexion ! Pour Hazlitt, on ne saurait évidemment avoir une opinion arrêtée, définitive sur tout : notre capacité à connaître, apprendre est par nature limitée, mais les opinions sur lesquelles il est parvenu à un avis tranché, nous dit-il, ont été le fruit d’un long et dur labeur intellectuel, et non adoptées à la légère. Pour tout homme honnête et consciencieux, soucieux d’atteindre à la vérité dans la mesure de ses capacités, il convient de peser longuement les principaux arguments des deux camps, avant de se prononcer en faveur de telle ou telle position, a fortiori sur un sujet grave ou important, puisqu’elle peut influer, sur une modeste échelle, son entourage, ou, à une échelle plus vaste dans le cas d’un intellectuel reconnu, influer un grand nombre de personnes voire sur le destin même du pays auquel il appartient.

Par conséquent, les opinions personnelles doivent dans l’idéal s’être construites par un lent, patient travail de réflexion, menées dans un esprit de tolérance, de soupèsement des différentes parties et de leurs principaux arguments, afin que lorsque l’esprit penche d’un côté au final, il ne puisse être facilement ébranlé et se retourner au moindre argument qui lui sera opposé. Cela ne signifie sans doute pas que toute opinion soit inébranlable, définitive dans l’esprit d’un homme donné : néanmoins, la possibilité qu’il change du jour au lendemain, brusquement, d’opinion s’en trouvera très nettement réduite, et si elle a lieu, elle ne peut se réaliser que dans le même processus de lente décantation qui eut lieu pour former l’opinion première.

Ainsi, celui qui détient une opinion réellement solide, de bonne foi et honnête dans la mesure du possible, a par avance déjà considéré les arguments de l’opinion qui lui est adverse, est en mesure de les discuter, de les réfuter, tout en étant concomitamment en mesure de reconnaître les faiblesses, les limites de sa propre opinion, de concéder certains points au parti adverse en toute honnêteté intellectuelle, sans que cela néanmoins ne le fasse globalement diverger de son opinion première.

            À l’inverse, Hazlitt décrit ensuite les personnes dont les opinions ne sont pas le résultat d’un processus comme celui décrit plus haut, mais qui se reposent davantage sur leur popularité, leur succès du moment, et qu’ils adoptent davantage par paresse intellectuelle que par le fruit d’un long travail personnel. Non seulement ils disposent du commode avantage de la majorité, à qui ils renvoient pour justifier la pertinence de l’opinion qu’ils ont adoptée, mais surtout ils se distinguent par une incapacité à débattre sur le fond, et à recourir fréquemment aux attaques ad hominem : plutôt que de s’en prendre à l’idée, l’argument qui leur est avancé, ils s’en prennent à la personne, au messager de l’idée, recourant volontiers à l’insulte et à la diabolisation. Leur attitude manque aussi de nuances : ils sont en général incapables de reconnaître le bien-fondé de tel ou tel point que leur adversaire pourrait avoir, et ils rejettent en bloc toute idée, tout argument du camp adverse qui pourraient les mettre dans une position inconfortable ou contredire l’opinion qu’ils ont adoptée hâtivement et avec peu de réflexion, et à laquelle ils se sont néanmoins attachés par habitude, et sur laquelle il leur est souvent difficile de revenir sans un cuisant sentiment d'humiliation puisque cela revient à admettre qu'ils se sont trompés et qu'ils ont été au mieux naïfs, au pire dupés.

             Un autre point intéressant discuté par Hazlitt est la difficulté, le courage que demande souvent la défense d’une idée que l’on croit juste, vraie, mais qui se retrouve bien souvent minoritaire, ou vous barrant l’accès à une position sociale et financière avantageuse. Celui qui défend une telle idée minoritaire n’a en effet rien à gagner matériellement parlant : il est mal perçu par son entourage, qui se range bien souvent du côté de la majorité, et il se ferme de nombreuses opportunités sociales, potentiellement interdites ou du moins rendues très difficiles, aux personnes dont les opinions sont « controversées ». Mais il a tout à gagner au niveau de sa conscience personnelle : il n’aura pas renié ses convictions profondes, et ce même s’il se révèle qu’il a eu tort au final, et restera du moins tranquille, en paix avec lui-même. L’important au final peut-être est de distinguer celui qui de bonne foi peut se tromper, mais aura du moins fait preuve d’ouverture, de tolérance lorsque des arguments adverses lui sont présentés : en vrai défenseur de la vérité, il ne saura, s’il est dans l’erreur, y demeurer longtemps puisqu’il aura gardé un esprit d’ouverture, d’écoute pour les arguments qui pourraient éventuellement changer son opinion et lui montrer son erreur. Il saura aussi reconnaître les signes qui à l’inverse, lui montreront qu’il est peut-être éventuellement dans le mauvais camp : lorsque d’aucuns ont recours à l’attaque ad hominem, refusent de discuter le fond des arguments en les balayant d’un revers de main sans examen, ou qu’il se livre à la diabolisation extrême du camp opposé en lui déniant toute rationalité, voire commence à se montrer brutal, violent envers lui.

 

Enfin, dans le deuxième essai, Illustrations of ‘The Times’ newspaper, Hazlitt brosse le portrait de celui qui sans doute est encore pire que l’homme aveuglé par son opinion erronée, englué qu’il est dans la majorité : c’est celui qui sait pertinemment qu’il défend le faux, l’injuste, sous couvert du vrai et du juste. En effet, le premier, malgré toute sa crédulité, et les explosions de violence auxquelles il pourrait éventuellement se livrer ou se montrer complices, a du moins l’excuse de croire sincèrement en la véracité de la position qu’il défend, bien qu’il soit vrai qu’il ait fait preuve d’une certaine naïveté et mauvaise foi. Hazlitt néanmoins abhorre encore plus ceux qui ont au final « prostitué leur âme » (pour reprendre l’expression employée dans ma note consacrée à la pièce de Montherlant, Le Maître de Santiago) en toute conscience, sciemment, en prenant la défense du faux alors qu’ils savent qu’il l’est. Hazlitt se livre dans cet essai aux portraits satiriques notamment de l’avocat, du journaliste et du poète qui ont ainsi vendu leur conscience pour de l’argent, une position sociale. Ils deviennent par cette lâcheté les complices, les agents actifs de l’affaiblissement moral de leur pays, du peuple auxquels ils devraient être solidaires de par leur qualité.
Car Hazlitt termine entre autres sur une note très pessimiste : un peuple peut être conduit, de manière inconsciente, à se faire de plus en plus l’esclave du pouvoir en place et à perdre sa liberté s’il est mal guidé dans les opinions qu’il choisit, opinions que le pouvoir aura pris soin de lui imposer en lui faisant croire que c’est pour son bien, à travers sa rhétorique, la presse, par le phénomène de la majorité qu’avait déjà bien vu Tocqueville, ou par la lâcheté des hommes qui se seront rangés à leur côté malgré la conscience qu’ils ont de trahir par ce biais la justice, la vérité, et aussi leur conscience. Et pire encore, une fois asservi, ce peuple pourrait « prendre goût » à cet état nouveau de servitude, contraire au principe si cher à Hazlitt de la liberté, et être entraîné dans une fuite en avant qui ne cessera de le dégrader, de l’avilir, de le durcir dans son inhumanité, avec les conséquences terribles que cela peut avoir.

 

Extraits choisis de On consistency of opinion :

Many people boast of being masters in their own house. I pretend to be master of my own mind. (p. 29)

I do not profess the spirit of martyrdom […] I am shy of bodily pains and penalties […therefore] if I do not prefer the independance of my mind to that of my body, I at least prefer it to every thing else. (p. 29)

As to the opinion of the world, I see nothing formidable in it. ‘It is the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.’ [Macbeth, II, 2, 54] I am not to be brow-beat or wheedled out of any of my settled convictions. Opinion to opinion, I will face any man. (p. 29)

As for the reason of the thing, it can only be supposed to rest with or another, in proportion to the pains we have taken to ascertain it. (p. 29)

Where the pursuit of truth has been the habitual study of any man’s life, the love of truth will be his ruling passion. (p. 29)

Every one is most tenacious of that to which he owes his distinction from others. Kings love power, misers gold, women flattery, poets reputation – and philosophers truth, when they can find it. (p. 29)

If ‘to be wise were to be obstinate’, I might set up for as great a philosopher as the best of them ; for some of my conclusions are as fixed and as incorrigible to proof as need be. (p. 29)

I am attached to them in consequence of the pains, the anxiety, and the waste of time they have cost me. (p. 30)

I would quarrel with the best friend I have sooner than acknowledge… (p. 30)

Coleridge used to tell me, that this pertinacity was owing to a want of sympathy with others. […] But I do not agree in what he says of me. On the other hand, I think that it is my sympathising beforehand with the different views and feelings that may be entertained on a subject, that prevents my retracting my judgment, and fling myself into the contrary extreme afterwards. If you proscribe all opinion opposite to your own, and impertinently exclude all the evidence that does not make for you, it stares you in the face with double force when it breaks in unexpectedly upon you […]

But if you are aware from the first suggestion of a subject, either by subtlety of tact, or close attention, of the full force of what others possibly feel and think of it, you are not exposed to the same vacillation of opinion. The number of grains and scruples, of doubts and difficulties, thrown into the scale while the balance is yet undecided, add to the weight and steadiness of the determination. He who anticipates his opponent’s arguments, confirms while he corrects his own reasonings. When a question has been carefully examined in all its bearings, and a principle is once established, it is not liable to be overthrown by any new facts which have been arbitrarily and petulantly set aside… (p. 30)

A man may be confident in maintaining a side, as he has been cautious in chusing it. (p. 31)

I cannot say that, from my own experience, I have found that the persons most remarkable for sudden and violent changes of principle have been cast in the softest or most susceptible mould. All their notions have been exclusive, bigoted, and intolerant. Instead of being the creatures of sympathy, open to conviction, unwilling to give offence by the smallest difference of sentiment, they have (for the most part) been made up of mere antipathies – a very repulsive sort of personages – at odds with themselves, and with every body else. […] They have been persons of narrowness of view and headstrong self-sufficiency of purpose, that they could see only one side of a question at a time, and whichever they pleased. (p. 31)

They banish all doubts of their own sincerity by inveighing against the motives of their antagonists. […] They reduce common sense and probity to the straitest possible limits – the breasts of themselves and their patrons. […] Is it that they have so little faith in the cause to which they have become such staunch converts, as to suppose that, should they allow a grain of sense to their old allies and new antagonists, they will have more than they ? […] These opinions must needs be of a very fragile texture which will not stand the shock of the least acknowledged opposition, and which lay claim to respectability by stigmatising all who do not hold them as ‘sots, and knaves, and cowards’. (p. 32)

There is a craving after the approbation and concurrence of others natural to the mind of man. It is difficult to sustain the weight of an opinion singly for any length of way. The intellect languishes without cordial encouragement and support. It exhausts both strength and patience to be always striving against the stream. […] Public opinion is always pressing upon the mind, and, like the air we breathe, acts unseen, unfelt. It supplies the living current of our thoughts, and infects without our knowledge. It taints the blood, and is taken into the smallest pores. […] But public opinion has its source in power, in popular prejudice, and is not always in accord with right reason, or a high and abstracted imagination. The heroic and romantic resolution prevails at first in high and heroic tempers. […] but after a time [they] find themselves baffled, toiling on in an uphill road, without friends, in a cold neighbourhood, without aid or prospect of success. He hears murmurs loud and suppressed, meets blank looks or scowling faces, is exposed to the pelting of the pitiless press, and is stunned by the shout of the mob… (p. 35-36)

There are numbers who judge by the event, and change with fortune. They extol the hero of the day, and join the prevailing clamour whatever it is ; so that the fluctuating state of public opinion regulates their feverish, restless enthusiasm, like a thermometer. They blow hot or cold, according as the wind sets favourably or otherwise. With such people the only infaillible test of merit is success ; and no arguments are true that have not a large or powerful majority on their side. They go by appearances. Their vanity, not the truth, is their ruling object. […] The opinion of such triflers is worth nothing ; it is merely an echo. We do not want to be told the event of a question, but the rights of it. (p. 38)

As there are many who change their sentiments with circumstances […], so there are others who change them with their acquaintance. ‘Tell me your company, and I’ll tell you your opinions,’ […] Individuals of this class are quick and versatile, but they are not beforehand with opinion. They catch it, when it is pointed out to them, and take it at the rebound, instead of giving the first impulse. […] They wear the dress of other people’s minds very gracefully and unconsciously. (p. 38-39)

By trying to improve their taste, and reform their notions according to an ideal standard, they perhaps spoil and muddle their native faculties, rather than do them any good. Their first manner is their best, because it is the most natural. […] It is not necessary to change our road in order to advance on our journey. We should cultivate the spot of ground we possess to the utmost of our power, though it may be circumscribed and comparatively barren. […] There is no use in shifting from place to place, from side to side, or from subject to subject. […] By adhering to the same principles you do not become stationary. You enlarge, correct, and consolidate your reasonings, without contradicting and shuffling about in your conclusions. […]

The perspective may change with years and experience : we may see certain things nearer, and others more remote : but the great masses and landmarks will remain, though thrown into shadow and tinged by the intervening atmosphere. […] There should be a certain decorum in life as in a picture, without which it is neither useful nor agreeable. If my opinions are not right, at any rate they are the best I have been able to form, and better than any others I could take up at random, or out of perversity, now. Certains opinions vitiate one another, and destroy the simplicity and clearness of the mind : nothing is good that has not a beginning, a middle, and an end. (p. 39-40)

Et extraits choisis de Illustrations of ‘The Times’ newspaper :

It is easier to sail with the stream, than to strive against it. (p. 41)

The man, as well as the woman, who deliberates between his principle and the price of its sacrifice, is lost. The same rule holds with respect to literary as to any other kind of prostitution. It is the first false step that always costs the most ; and which is, for that reason, always fatal. It requires an effort of resolution, or at least obstinate prejudice, for a man to maintain his opinions at the expense of his interest. But it resquires a much greater effort of resolution for a man to give up his interest to recover his independence ; because, with the consistency of his character, he has lost the habitual energy of his mind… (p. 41)

A man, in adhering to his principles in contradiction to the decisions of the world, has many disadvantages. He has nothing to support him but the supposed sense of right ; and any defect in the justice of his cause, or the force of his conviction, must prey on his mind, in proportion to the delicacy and sensitiveness of its texture : he is left in his opinions… (p. 41)

A man in a crowd must go along with the crowd, and cannot stop to pick his way ; nor need he be so particular about it. He has friends to back him ; appearances are for him ; the world is on his side ; […] his vanity makes him blind to objections, or overrules them, and he is not so much ashamed of being in the wrong in such good company. It requires some fortitude to oppose one’s opinion, however right, to that of all the world besides ; none at all to agree with it, however wrong. Nothing but the strongest and clearest conviction can support a man in a losing minority […]. It is this single circumstance of not being answerable for one’s opinions one’s-self, but being able to put them off to other men’s shoulders in all crowds and collections of men, that is the reason of the violence of mobs, the venality of courts, and the corruption of all corporate bodies. (p. 42)

He takes his opinion of right and wrong from his brief : his soul is in his fee. (p. 43)

The weak side of the professional character is rather an indifference to truth and justice, than an outrageous and inveterate hatred to them. They are chargeable, as a general class of men, with levity, servility, and selfishness. (p. 46)

The spirit of poetry is in itself favourable to humanity and liberty […]. The spirit of poetry is not the spirit of mortification or of martyrdom. Poetry dwells in a perpetual Utopia of its own, and is, for that reason, very ill calculated to make a Paradise upon earth, by encountering the shocks and disappointments of the world. Poetry, like the law, is a fiction ; only a more agreeable one. It does not create difficulties where they do not exist ; but contrives to get rid of them, whether they exist or not. It is not entangled in cobwebs of its own making, but soars above all obstacles. It cannot be ‘constrained by mastery’. It has the range of the universe ; it traverses the empyreum, and looks down on nature from a higher sphere. When it lights upon the earth, it loses some its dignity and its use. Its strength is in its wings ; its element the air. Standing on its feet, jostling with crowd, it is liable to be overthrown, trampled on, and defaced ; for its wings are of a dazzling brightness, ‘heaven’s own tinct’, and the least soil upon them shews to disadvantage. (p. 47)

Poets live in an ideal world, where they make every thing out according to their wishes and fancies. They either find things delightful, or makes them so. They feign the beautiful and grand out of their own minds, and imagine all things to be, not what they are, but what they ought to be. They are naturally inventors, creators not of truth but beauty ; and while they speak to us from the sacred shrine of their own hearts, they cannot be too much admired and applauded. (p. 47)

We do not like novels founded on facts, nor do we like poets turned courtiers. Poets, it has been said, succeed best in fiction : and they should for the most part stick to it. […] They lend the colours of fancy to whatever they see : whatever they touch becomes gold, though it were lead. (p. 48)

Man is a toad-eating animal. The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself : the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. […] if he could but shake off his own fetters, would care little about the wretches whom he left behind him. (p. 48)

As the herd of mankind are stripped of every thing, in body and mind, so are they thankful for what is left ; as is the desolation of their hearts and the wreck of their little all, so is the pomp and pride is built upon their ruin, and their fawning admiration of it. (p. 48-49)

There is something in the human mind, which requires an object for it to repose on ; and, driven from all other sources of pride and pleasure, it falls in love with misery, and grows enamoured of oppression. […] Just in proportion to the systematic tyranny exercised over a nation, to its loss of a sense of freedom and the spirit of resistance, will be its loyalty ; the most abject submission will always be rendered to the most confirmed despotism. The most wretched slaves are the veriest sycophants. (p. 49)

The hireling of the press (a still meaner slave) wears his livery, and is proud of it. […] He offers up his own humanity, and that of all men, at the shrine of royalty. He sneaks to court ; and the bland accents of power close his ears to the voice of freedom ever after ; its velvet touch makes his heart marble to a people’s sufferings. He is the intellectual pimp of power as others are the practical ones of the pleasures of great, and often on the same disinterested principle. For one tyrant, there are a thousand ready slaves. Man is naturally a worshipper of idols and a lover of kings. (p. 49)

Power is the grim idol that the world adore ; that arms itself with destruction, and reigns by terror in the coward heart of man ; that dazzles the senses, haunts the imagination, confounds the understanding, and tames the will, by the vastness of its pretensions, and the very hopelessness of resistance to them. (p. 50)

The more mischevious and extensive the tyranny – the longer it has lasted, and the longer it is likely to last – the stronger is the hold it takes to the minds of its victims, the devotion to it increasing with the dread. It does not satisfy the enormity of appetite for servility, till it has slain the mind of a nation, and becomes like the evil principle of the universe, from which there is no escape. So in some countries, the most destructive animals are held sacred, despair and terror completely overpowering reason. (p. 50)

The principle of an idolatry is the same ; it is the want of something to admire, without knowing what or why : it is the love of an effect without a cause ; it is a voluntary tribute of admiration which does not compromise our vanity : it is setting something up over all the rest of the world, to which we feel ourselves to be superior, for it is our handy-work. (p. 50-51)

The love of liberty consists in the hatred of tyrants. The true Jacobin hates the enemies of liberty as they hate liberty, with all his heart and with all his soul. His memory is as long, and his will as strong as theirs, though his hands are shorter. He never forgets or forgives an injury done to the people, for tyrants never forget or forgive one done to themselves. […] His hatred of wrong only ceases with the wrong. (p. 52)

The love of liberty is the love for others ; the love of power is the love of ourselves. The one is real ; the other often but an empty dream. (p. 53)