Louis Leroy's Humanistic OptimismAuthor(s): Werner L. GundersheimerSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1962), pp. 324-339Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708070 .Accessed: 13/09/2011 10:00

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toJournal of the History of Ideas.

http://www.jstor.org

LOUIS LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM

BY WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER

In recent years, students of the intellectual history of XVIth- century France have become increasingly aware of the importance of Louis LeRoy de Coutances (1510-1577) as classical scholar, political pamphleteer, and universal historian. Throughout a long career of scholarly and political publication, spanning decades of civil and re- ligious crisis in France, LeRoy developed many of the views expressed in his final work, De la Vicissitude ou Variete des Choses en l'Univers (1575).1 Written and published during his term as Royal Professor of Greek, the De la Vicissitude (which Bodo L. 0. Richter has called "LeRoy's summa")2 contains the elderly humanist's unsystematic, but nonetheless apprehensible views on the nature of history, political and social institutions, and human possibilities in a troubled world.

The present study proceeds from a discussion of LeRoy's concep- tion of historical processes to an analysis of his understanding of con- temporary problems and possibilities. It is an attempt to formulate a detailed and coherent interpretation of his thought, as expounded in the De la Vicissitude, and to point up the organic relationship of his conception of the Golden Age to his more generalized view of history. Such an approach is made viable, if not necessary, by the fact that LeRoy's book does not in any strict sense narrate a history. It creates, rather, a philosophy of history, teaching by examples. The flux of history is here at once the source and the testing ground for the au- thor's historiographical, anthropological, and theological hypotheses.

De la Vicissitude has frequently been described by encyclopedists as an "ouvrage curieux." 3 We may seek the cause of this somewhat evasive dismissal in the fact that it is a book which in some ways re- sists classification in the conventional literary categories. It is not, for example, a work of humanist historiography. Nor is it a universal history in the manner of Bossuet and his followers, the later religious

1 I have quoted mainly from the English translation by R(obert) A(shley), Of the Interchangeable Course, or variety of things in the whole world; & the con- currence of armes & learning, thorough the first and famousest Nations, from the beginning of Civilitie, & Memory of Man, to this present (London, 1594). Wherever I have quoted the original French text, I have used selections available in Loys LeRoy, De la Vicissitude ou Vari6tt des Choses en l'Univers, ed. Blanchard W. Bates (Princeton, 1944). Professor Bates used the second edition, 1577, and made minor typographical changes. The Ashley translation has been found generally faith- ful to the sense and style of the original, despite occasional mistranslations.

2 "The Thought of Louis LeRoy according to his Early Pamphlets," Studies in the Renaissance, VIII (1961), 181.

8Nouvele Bibliographie G6ne'rale (Paris, 1862), XXX, 886, describes the work only as an "ouvrage curieux." Bibliographie Universelle (Paris, n.d.), XXIII, 257, says of the De la Vicissitude only that "C'est un recueil d'anecdotes et de traits singuliers, fruit d'une lecture immense. Les curieux recherchent encore cet ouvrage."

324

LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 325

historians. It can instead be seen as a "curious" synthesis of the prem- ises and theories of causation of both secular and Christian histori- ography. LeRoy did not write, however, with the intention to amuse, divert, or confuse. Nor was he interested in the vicissitudes per se. His purpose, insofar as it may be inferred from his tone and his own assertions, was seriously explanatory, and even didactic. He tried to document both his extraordinary awareness of the variety and muta- bility of things, and his perception of "the concurrence of armes and learning, thorough the first and famousest Nations from the begin- ning of Civility, and Memory to Man, to this present." 4 In addition to performing this ". . . so long, so high, and so difficult an enterprise hitherto never attempted of any," LeRoy wished to resolve the re- current question: ... whether it be true or no, that there can be nothing said, which hath not been said heretofore: And that we ought by our own inventions to augment the doctrines of the Ancients; not contenting ourselves with Translations, Expositions, Corrections, and Abridgements of their writings. (ante fol. i)

It scarcely needs to be remarked that from any individual's an- swer to the issues LeRoy raised, one might infer something about the answerer's attitude about ideal places and times. That is, we could discover how far his mentality was mythical or historical.5

Louis LeRoy was well qualified to deal with the problems he posed. At the age of sixty-five, he completed De la Vicissitude, begun several years before, shortly after his withdrawal from the world of affairs to the lecture hall in 1572. He had been trained as both jurist and classicist, and from 1540 on, throughout his diplomatic and courtly career, he continued to publish translations and commentaries on the Greek philosophers.6 One sees in LeRoy's own life, as Professor Weisinger has aptly put it, . . . the classic picture of the humanist in the best tradition: a student of the classics who made them available to a large reading public by means of translations, a writer on various subjects, an active participant in the

4In raising the idea of concurrent rise and fall of arms and learning to the level of a universal law of historical change, LeRoy was-perhaps unconsciously-adopt- ing a topos, or conventional literary theme, known widely to writers of belles- lettres in the early Romance vernaculars. E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, tr. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1953), 178-179, lists uses of the topos by Castiglione, Boiardo, Ariosto, Rabelais, Spenser, and Cervantes. Curtius probably did not know of LeRoy's treatise, which in 127 folio pages offers the most extensive use of the theme in all literature. I Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York, 1954), makes this distinction. Chapter Four, "The Terror of History," is especially suggestive as an aid in recognizing the historic character of LeRoy's thought.

8 A. H. Becker, Un Humaniste au XVIJ Siecle. Loys LeRoy de Coutances (Paris, 1896). This is the only recent thorough study of the life and works of LeRoy, and is very rich in bibliographical and biographical information.

326 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER

affairs of life outside the study, an acute observer of foreign customs, a teacher, and a philosopher. To him scholarship was not an end in itself; it was the means of achieving an understanding of the history and motives of men.7

But though the career of LeRoy's worldly life adheres closely to the ideals of the civic humanists of the Italian quattrocento, his histori- ographical notions differ from their secularized and rationalized cate- gories of causation.8 To open LeRoy's book is to be confronted im- mediately by the Hand of God as the most effective causal agent in human affairs. On the fifth line of the first folio, LeRoy intones: ... I most humbly acknowledge the divine providence of God to be above all, beleeving assuredly, that God almighty, maker, and governour of this great worke so excellent in beauty, so admirable in variety and so singular in continuance, (to whom I pray to ayde me in this so long, so high, and so difficult an enterprise hitherto never attempted of any) is carefull of all affairs happening therein, even to the least: contayning in himself the be- ginning, the end, and the meanes of them all, and pursuing the order which he hath given to the world, from the beginning in creating it, will that it be tempered by alternative changes, and maintayned by contraries, his eternall essence remayning alwaies one and unchangeable. (Ashley, folio ir) This long fragment of LeRoy's opening sentence contains, in typical emphasis, the principal elements of the author's philosophy of history. Significantly, LeRoy has accepted the classical theory of cyclical decline and regeneration. But he has accounted for these "alternative changes" in terms of the Divine Providence of Christian tradition which sub- sumes all terrestrial mutations under its agency. His rhetoric in so doing is Augustinian-it can hardly be distinguished from a great number of passages in the De Civitate Dei.9 Moreover, this passage is by no means a mere sop thrown to the ecclesiastical authorities, or a conventional, Christianized invocation to the muse. Throughout the course of the work, LeRoy tells us time and again of the pervasive efficacy of Providence, both in the general functioning of the cosmos, and in particular historical situations. One finds throughout the work similarities with St. Augustine's monumental philosophy of history, similarities which may well result from direct imitation.10

7H. Weisinger, "Louis LeRoy on Science and Progress," Osiris, XI (1954), 200. 8 For comprehensive discussion of historiographical theories in the Renaissance,

see W. K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1948), chs. 1-3.

9 I make this remark only on the basis of reading St. Augustine in translation. I have used The City of God, tr. Marcus Dods, D.D. (New York, 1950). Further- more, in using the word "Augustinian" to characterize LeRoy's philosophy, I refer only to St. Augustine's well-known notions about historical causation, and not to his theology in general. I plan to document the point in a future study by comparing the original texts.

1 In Books IV-VII, when LeRoy is dealing with ancient history, the debt to a book LeRoy must have known is most evident. The same causes are at work for

LEROY S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 327

There is, however, a crucial difference. The God of Augustine guides history along a linear course, from its beginnings at the Fall, through its moment of redemption on Calvary, and on to its telos- the "end without end"-at the Last Judgment. But LeRoy's theory of alternative risings and fallings is a variant form of ancient cyclical models for political histories, which Augustine had taken great pains to discredit. LeRoy, writing precisely 150 years before Vico, places providential control over the cyclical course of history.

This attempt of LeRoy's to reconcile antithetical models for order- ing the flux of human events is in a sense reflected in the organization of the De la Vicissitude. The structure of the book is itself, loosely speaking, both linear and cyclical. In general, LeRoy's method of ex- position is to discuss in more or less detail the arms and learning of any excellent nation, and then to follow this account by an extended series of comparisons with earlier powers. At each stage in the alterna- tive rise and decline of nations, LeRoy attempts to "take stock" of the new vicissitudes (a modern sociologist might consider them "variables") which the concurrence ("correlation") of arms and learn- ing had produced. Having brought a given cycle up to date, he moves on to the next, more complex, cycle, and performs the same recapitu- lary operation.

LeRoy's reason for proceeding in this way is simply, in his words, to make an ultimate ". . . comparison de ce siecle aux precedens plus illustres, pour sgavoir en quoy il leur est inferieur, ou superieur, ou egal." The most striking feature of this intention, as well as of the way in which he chooses to implement it, is LeRoy's lawyer-like in- clination for "getting down to cases." He eschews blanket evaluations of cultures, based on general qualitative comparisons. Indeed, he seems determined to replace the airy generalizations of wishful think- ers-of habitual admirers of an illud tempus-by a consideration, un- impeded by a priori norms, of the 'facts.'

The analogy which can be drawn between the structure, both repet- itive and progressive in time, of LeRoy's book on the one hand, and his model of historical motion on the other, suggests the profound ambivalence into which the author is led. He recognizes the plausi- bility of the biological metaphors of flourishing and decay which Greek and Roman historians came to apply to the "life" of nations.

both authors. Consider, for example, the problem of the rise and fall of Empires. LeRoy accounts for the success of Cyrus completely in terms of God's favor (42v- 43). Under Darius, overweening pride preceded destruction, for at "the top of the worldly power ... ariseth the spring of pride, arrogancy, over-weening, and extreme insolency. And there is the slippery path . . . where sovereign felicity falleth head- long into extreme calamity" (48). A similar retributive justice fell upon the Roman Empire, "which being clymed up to an incomparable greatness, and inestimable wealth; did fall eftsoones into great calamities; and was finally overthrowen; as others had been before it...." Cf. The City of God, Book V, passim, and indeed, all of the narrative sections of the work.

328 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER

Yet the "denial of history" 11 implicit in a model of endless repetition, of constant return to a primeval pattern of events, is carefully avoided by LeRoy, who is primarily concerned with change, and in a sense, with development.12 Though we have seen the cycles and the recur- rences, one never knows what will happen next, for no man can com- prehend the ways of divine providence.

In accepting the agency of God in history, LeRoy tended to ignore the conventional humanistic categories of causation. "Vertue," the ability of a man to meet the demands of a specific historical situation, is present, but without its traditional dialectic adversary, fortuna. The stars are thought to exert some influence in the world, but they do so through providential plan. LeRoy also has a keen awareness of the r'le of ecological factors in racial development and social differentia- tion. Though the problem of free will and determinism is not dealt with specifically, it is clear throughout that LeRoy wishes in principle to affirm the efficacy of human action, despite all the implications of his providential determinism. Men, for LeRoy, are as real as the in- scrutable forces, and one feels that a conception of the uniqueness and importance of the individual is crucial to his outlook.13 Thus in a very real sense, LeRoy emerges not simply as an Augustinian Chris- tian historian, but also as a humanist, in his hopeful view of human possibil'it'ies.

Moreover, while he accepted certain crucial conceptions from the Christian theology of history, and thereby qualified his classical his- torical model, his broadly affirmative humanism seems to have led LeRoy to reject certain other aspects of the Augustinian historical scheme. The fact that LeRoy evades the Augustinian telos is of the greatest importance. He neither expects, nor concerns himself with the absolute, sometimes even chiliastic conclusion to history which a 'medieval' Christian (including not a few men of the XVIth century) expected and even awaited. Thus, his philosophy of history is saved from becoming an eschatology, probably by means of his empirical out- look. And thus, he avoids another kind of "denial of history" and eliminates another avenue of wishful thinking.

Professors Becker, Bury, and others have found in LeRoy a fore- runner of an "idea of progress." This phrase is used in various senses

11 EHade, op. cit, 110-112. 12 Iwish to preserve a distinction between development, seen as increase in the

stores of knowledge and materials in any culture, and progress, defined as the slow and interminable advancement of men in a known, desirable direction, through their own autonomous achievement.

13 This is most evident when LeRoy discusses the contributions of men of lear- ing. He believes in the first place that "God creating Man, gave him for a great and excellent gift, the use of Reason and Speech; and by these two prerogatives hath separated him from other creatures. . . " Some men, among whom Pico della Mirandola is a good example (109), can in any age make major contributions to humanity.

LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 329

in the various critical works on LeRoy, but one meaning which is generaly shared is that humanity by its own striving may move closer to perfection in social and economic organization, and in the arts.14 Now if the interpretation of LeRoy's philosophy of history which I have put forward is correct, and if LeRoy holds to his own philosophy of history, it follows that glimmerings of humanity mov- ing toward a "perfection" (however defined) must be trivial.

Though LeRoy kept the ways open for directed change in the fu- ture, he had to do so by an essentially humane, humanistic, and emo- tional act of will, because his theory of the concurrent rise and decline of arms and letters, magnificently documented, hoisted him on his own petard. That is to say, if his philosophy of history was valid, he was logically forced to foresee a decline. And so he did: . . . if the memorie and knowledge of that which is past, be the instruction of the present, and advertisement for that which is to come: it is to be feared, least the power, wisedome, sciences, bookes, industrie, workman- shipps, and knowledges of the world, being come to so great excellencie; do fall againe, as they have done in times past, and come to decay: by con- fusion succeeding after this order and perfection; rudeness after civilitie; ignorance after knowledge; and barbarousnes after elegancie. I foresee al- readie in my mind, many strange Nations, differing in fashions, colours, and habites; rushing into Europe as did in old time the Gothes, Hunnes, Van- dales, Lombardes, and Saracens; .... (126-126v) At this point, LeRoy includes a catalogue of what would be destroyed in such a devastation. Thus, even in foreseeing a decline, LeRoy gave an implicit push to progressive assumptions by identifying his own age with a rise. A few lines later, his cyclic theory returns him to the sphere of natural phenomena, whence it was derived by the ancients: I foresee warres arising in all Countries, both civile and foreine; factions, and divisions springing, which will profane both divine and humane what- soever; famines, and pestilences threatning mortall men; the order of na- ture, the rules of the celestiall motions, and the agreement of the elements breaking off; deluges, and inundations comming on the one side; and ex- cessive heates, and violent earthquakes, on the other; and the world draw- ing towards an end; bringing with it a confusion of all things, and reducing them againe to their auncient and former Chaos. (126v) But from the Christian side of LeRoy's deliberations comes immedi- ately the qualifying deus ex machina: But howbeit, theis things proceed (after the opinion of the Naturalists) from the fatall law of the World; and have their natural causes: yet not- withstanding, the events of them do principally depend on the providence of God; who is above nature, and who alone doth know the prefixed time, wherein theis things shall come to passe. Wherefore, men of good mindes ought not to be amazed or astonished therewith; but rather to take courage

14 Becker, op. cit., 189. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York, 1932), 44-49.

330 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER

unto them, travailing carefully, every one in that vocation whereunto he is called; to thend to preserve to their power so manie goodly things lately invented, or restored; whose losse would be almost irrepairable; and to de- liver them over to such as come after us; as we have received them of our auncestours: and namely GOOD LETTERS, as long as it shall please God that they endure. (126v) Perhaps favorable providential forces will enable men to maintain the level of social order and good letters which exists nowadays. How- ever, in order for this to happen, there must clearly occur a radical departure from the direction of history since the times of Sesostris, Ninus, Cyrus, Alexander, Augustus, Trajan, and the Arabians. It is obvious to LeRoy that men cannot affect those areas of historical causality which are beyond their control by definition. In spite of this elementary and depressing recognition, he affirms the equally obvious tautology that we can do what we can, and he is cheered by the same evidence which, to his contemporaries, brought only despair.2

Louis LeRoy probably would never have had many reasons to have considered writing a book in the Utopian genre. In the first place, he rarely thought in terms of social amelioration, but as a classicist confined his interests mainly to "bonnes lettres" and the military prowess with which he believed learning rose and fell con- currently. Secondly, but equally important, his historical awareness- his recognition of the ever increasingly complex vicissitudes and varieties of things-must have caused him to regard the simplified idealizations of the utopists as native and impractical. Finally, he was a loyal subject of the King of France, and a practical defender of the nascent Gallican nation-state organization, during a period of acute religious and political crises."6

Yet, as I have shown, LeRoy was at least in one sense committed to wishful (i.e., unreasonably hopeful) thinking. We may describe him in analogy to the paradox of his own philosophical position, as a despairing optimist. Such a characterization is of course extremely imprecise. It was Professor Karl Mannheim who gave the basic out- lines for a typology of social and political thinkers.'7 He identified first the ideologist who typifies the psychology and rhetoric of con-

15K. Koller, "Two Elizabethan Expressions of the Idea of Mutability," Studies in Philology, XXXV (1938), 228-237, shows how, on the basis of the Ashley trans- lation, John Norden wrote his long and pessimistic poem on mutability, Vicissitudo Rerum (reprinted, Oxford, 1931). LeRoy was fortunate never to know that flowers culled from his own hopeful garden were used to adom this cemetery of despair.

I6LeRoy's role as a political theorist and propagandist during the violent and complicated struggles of the 1550's and 1560's is outlined in J. W. Allen, A History of Politica Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1928) 377-383, and in the recent precise studies of Vittorio de Caprariis, Propaganda e Pensiero Politico in Francia durante le Guerre di Religione, I (Naples, 1959), 245-56, etc.

17 Ideology and Utopia (New York, 1936), 192-263.

LEROY' S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 331

servatism, in his attempt to rationalize things as they are. Mannheim then juxtaposed against the ideologist's mentality that of the utopist. The utopist's ideas are incongruous with the world in which he lives. Yet his wishful thinking, whether chiliastic or more temperately im- aginative, may indicate the direction of future changes in social organization. It remains to be noted that on an imaginary scale of wishful thinkers, on which we find ideologists at one extreme and utopists at the other, there is a large area in which less extreme posi- tions may be found. Many gradations are possible here, combinations of acceptance and/or wish of all kinds and degrees. The despairing optimist may be placed somewhere in this middle region of the scale. It must be remembered, though, that while LeRoy rejects despair, he is prepared, like his contemporary Bodin, to reject as unrealistic cer- tain kinds of wishful thinking. And as one might expect, LeRoy re- jects such sorts of wishful thinking as do not embody the mature historical awareness which is so characteristically his own.

For LeRoy, these kinds of wishful thinking are typified by the various conceptions of a "Golden Age" which were common literary currency in his day, both in historical discourse and in belles lettres. The literary embodiments of the idea of a "great time" generally utilized features of the topos to which Hesiod had given early ex- pression, and to which Greek and Roman writers frequently returned. The many artistic ends which this classical topos was used to achieve in the literature of the late XVIIth century are outside the scope of this essay. For our purposes, it is enough to realize that primitivism- that sentimental and sophisticated longing for life in its simpler (i.e., more "natural") state-is completely antithetical to LeRoy's concep- tion of what is desirable for modern man.

It is for this reason that LeRoy introduces into Book III a number of phrases descriptive of men in their primitive state which seem to refer directly to the classical features of literary primitivism. LeRoy's characterization of early man may be compared with that of Lucretius on the one hand, and of Voltaire on the other. There are no primitive sentiments or evocations in LeRoy. We see in Book III simply the humanist historian's view of the birth of civilization. The possibility of an Eden is rejected by omission; the account is, in the strict philo- sophical sense, Epicurean. The Christian element of human depravity through original sin, and the resultant regression from a pristine state of grace are rejected in favor of a more naturalistic explanation: At the beginning men were very simple and rude in all things, little differ- ing from beastes. They did eate in the fieldes and mountaines, the rawe fleshe of beastes, or herbs, with their rootes, stalkes, and leaves, which the earth brought foorth of his owne accorde, and in the woodes the fruictes of wilde trees; or venison.... They clad them selves with skinnes, in stede of garments; to bee defended from heat and colde, from winde, raine, and

332 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER

snow, they withdrewe themselves into great holow trees, or under their thick leaved branches.... They abode ever almost in the open aire, in continuall travaile, and lying on the hard ground, wheresoever sleep overtooke them. (27v-28r) That LeRoy attaches a solely negative value to this natural state is evident from the title of the book, viz. "De la Vicissitude et Inven- tion des Ars, et comment les Hommes de leur Simplicit6 et Rudesse Premiere sont parvenus 'a la Commodite, Magnificence et Excellence Presente." LeRoy accepts the Lucretian explanation that men grew softer as their lives became more civilized, but modifies it by suggest- ing that their increasing softness caused them to seek means of easing the battle for survival. When they waxed weaker, and could not digest such meates, nor dwell in the open aire naked, and uncovered, they were constrayned to seeke by little and little, to soften this wild and savage maner of lyving, which they could no longer endure: learning to sow Corne, which before grew up un- known amongst herbes and weeds, and to dresse the vines, which likewise the earth brought forth amongst other plants; to transplant, and to graffe [sic] fruict-trees, to thend to make the fruicts better, and to dresse and season both flesh and fish: and then to build, and to assemble themselves in companies, that they might live the more safely, and commodiously. In such maner were they reduced, from that brutish life which they led, to this sweetnes, and civilitie; beginning from that time forward, to feed, cloath, and lodge themselves in better sort, and more commodiously (plus honneste- ment). (28r)

Plainly, LeRoy, like Voltaire, with whom he would have shared not a few attitudes and interests, would call the weakness that produced these changes a felicitous one.

This passage is characteristic of LeRoy's excursions into historical narrative, because it reflects his interest in the development of cul- ture, including the culture of fields and gardens, as well as that of manners, laws, and "honneste" behavior. The following pages of Book III document in great detail men's technological and social evolution from the forests to the loaded tables, libraries, and cannons of Europe. In keeping with his method of including and cataloguing the increas- ing vicissitudes, LeRoy reconstructs the early development of archi- tecture, cookery, drink, furniture, clothing and its role in the estab- lishment and maintenance of increasing social and political distinc- tions, the plastic and military arts, music, the natural sciences, and so forth. The primitive state of man embodied no virtues in LeRoy's scheme. It was, as Voltaire was to remark over one hundred sixty years later, a state of "pure ignorance."

It is significant that in LeRoy's discussion of primitive men he eschews any reference to the poets, of whom Jean Bodin spoke con-

LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 333

temptuously in his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem (1566).18 Bodin, in suggesting what he took to be a new method for the right understanding of history, found it necessary to censure poets for their sentimental, ahistorical primitivism. But LeRoy, writing nine years later and obviously familiar with Bodin's famous work, does not find it necessary to join that argument.

There are a number of possible reasons for this. In the first place, LeRoy is not creating a Methodus, but rather, constructing an entire "Weltanschauung." He therefore shows little of the self-conscious concern for justifying his historical approach as Bodin had done. Sec- ondly, in tracing the concurrent development of arms and learning, LeRoy assumes the supreme importance of culture, of laws, and of increases in the level of civilization. Thirdly, it is conceivable that LeRoy thought that the point had been adequately treated by Bodin, and could almost be taken for granted. Finally, such a discussion would have been difficult to incorporate in the third chapter, devoted as it is to description, entirely free of scholarly litigation.

LeRoy's main descriptive device is the list, or catalogue. Professor Bates wisely observes that these enormous lists of people and things (which to some modern readers may become tedious) are not simply displays of the author's erudition, but are a significant support for his thesis.19 In them the full range of vicissitudes in any period may be compactly presented. The techn'ique of the catalogue is both an opportunity for learned pyrotechnics and a strongly persuasive device. Perhaps the didactic function of the lists has occasionally been over- looked by writers who have seen in the De la Vicissitude simply an "ouvrage curieux." 20

18 T have used J. Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, tr. B. Reynolds (New York, 1945), ch. vii, for purposes of comparison here.

19 Bates, op. cit., xii. 20 Reader of Rabelais wil not need to be convinced that the list was a popular

device of literature in the XVIth century. The origins of the list are deep in the humanist tradition, and may be traced at least to Petrarch. In Petrarch's letter to M. Varro in Petrarch's Letters to Classical Authors, tr. M. E. Cosenza (Chicago, 1910), 73, we read: "There is, 0 Varro, a long line of illustrious men whose works were the result of an application equal to thine own, and who have not been a whit more fortunate than thou. And although not one of them was thy peer, yet thou shouldst follow their example and bear thy lot with greater equanimity. Let me enumerate some, for the mere utterance of illustrious names gives me pleasure." He then lists names of seventeen Romans, all but the first two obscure ("their very names are scarcely known today, . . . men once illustrious and now mere ashes blown hither and thither by every gust of wind"). There are implications here for the psychology of humanism. Cf. in this connection the words of J. A. Symonds who in 1877 wrote in his Preface to The Revival of Learning (Scribner, 190): "To me it has been a labor of love to record even the bare names of those Italian worthies who recovered for us in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 'the everlasting con- solations' of the Greek and Latin classics."

334 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER

While LeRoy rejects the possibility of a primitive golden age with- out ever using the phrase "age d'or," he does not reject the idea of great ages. Indeed, they are an integral part of his historical plan: ... the Starres have some power towards the disposing of inferiour things; the situation of places, and temperature of the seasons of the year do helpe, concerning understandings and maners; the reward and honour proposed unto mans industrie; the learned ages, and liberall princes, give great ad- vancement unto arts; and emulation serveth for a spur thereunto: Notwith- standing for my part, I think that God being carefull of all the parts of the world, doth grant the excellencie of Armes and of Learning, something unto Asia, sometimes unto Africk, sometimes unto Europe; establishing the sovereign empire of the world, once in the East, another time in the West, another time in the South, another in the North: and suffering vertue and vice, valiancie and cowardize, sobrietie and delicacie, knowledge and ignor- ance, to go from countrie to countrie, honouring and diffaming the Nations at diverse times: to the end that everyone in his turn might have part of good hap and ill; and that none should waxe proude by overlong pros- peritie.... (32v)

The passage nicely summarizes LeRoy's views of historical causes. More important, it shows why, for LeRoy, no past period of great- ness can provide norms for right action in the present. There are too many regional, natural, human and divine variables to make so deriv- ative a course viable, even if unqualified imitation (as distinct from emulation) were a thing to be desired. LeRoy's historical relativism goes even deeper. For example he is, like many of his contemporaries, a great admirer of the political and social organization and cultural attainments of Venice (121v). Similarly, he indulges in an almost romantic praise of Turkish citizens and institutions. Yet, LeRoy never suggests that these states should provide models for other common- wealths. He does not do so because for him, in theory, none of the many historical "great times" or places can be normative, since muta- bility is so pervasive and universal. On the same grounds, Guicciardini had criticized the Machiavelli who, in his Discorsi (written in 1517) had expressed longings for the illud tempus of Republican Rome.

Earlier, in considering LeRoy's intentions, we found that his tech- nique of extensive comparisons helps him to make distinctions be- tween various ages and his own, ". . . pour sgavoir en quoy il leur est inferieur, ou superieur, ou egal." LeRoy saw this problem of evaluation in the light of his awareness of mutability. For him, any period of military and cultural efflorescence might be called golden, since it embodied his own very civilized values. In fact for LeRoy, as for many a XVIth-century writer, the present age was as golden as any earlier time. This judgment is supported throughout the tenth and eleventh books. In constructing his own position, LeRoy seems to

LEROY S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 335

make extensive use of Bodin's arguments against those who would postulate four monarchies and a golden age in accordance with the famous analogy in the Book of Daniel II, 31-45. LeRoy specifically mentions Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and attempts to disprove it by showing how, from any standpoint, there have been more than four great empires (120v). LeRoy even goes so far as to use Bodin's famous explanation for why men think about earlier ages of gold.2"

In arguing for the greatness of his own age, LeRoy must of course present evidence of a concurrence of arms and learning comparable to that which he had found in earlier times. This he does in his tenth book "Of the power, learning, and other excellence of this age." LeRoy found the perfect model for the new military prowess in the charis- matic figure of Tamburlaine, who had consolidated an enormous em- pire in Asia almost two centuries before. As a student of history, LeRoy must have realized that the relationship between the military exploits of Tamburlaine and the intellectual revival of the Renais- sance is entirely and merely chronological, aside from a far-fetched connection, through his defeat of the Turks. And indeed, the fact that there appears to be little perceptible intrinsic relationship between power and learning in the Renaissance seems to strain LeRoy's argu- ment. He does not have to face a similar difficulty anywhere in an- cient or medieval history. This may help to explain in part LeRoy's extravagant praise of Tamburlaine. In the discussions of Alexander, Augustus, and Charlemagne, LeRoy included elements of idealization possibly derived from the speculum principis genre. In the case of Tamburlaine, this tendency toward effusive idealization is much more pronounced. Even in comparison with all other great military leaders

21 Both see the phenomenon as a function of old age. As Bodin says of the old men who speak of the golden age, "As though returning from a distant journey, they narrate the golden century-the golden age-to the young men. But then their ex- perience is the same as that of men carried out of port into the open sea-they think the houses and the towns are departing from them; thus they think that delightful, gentle conduct, and justice have flown to the heavens and deserted the earth," Ed. Reynolds, ibid., 302. Cf. LeRoy (124v-125), wherein he says of the ". . . old complaint that manners waxe every day worse and worse . . . ," that it is an absurd statement. If it were true, men would by now have reached the height of iniquity, and this is obviously not the case. "It is credible," says LeRoy, "that this complaint hath first proceeded from old men, who having passed the flower of their age (which was full of joy, and gladness,) when they come to their extreme old age (wherein is nothing but sorrow, and sadness) they wish again for the pleasures of youth; seeing their senses become feeble, and all their members weak- ened . . . they think there is no faith, nor friendship, nor honestie, remaining among men: telling to the younger sort many wonders of their former age. To whom it hapneth no otherwise than it doth unto those, that embarke themselves on the sea, and beginning to sail, according to the measure as they are distant from the land, it seemeth unto them, that the bank, or shore, the hills, trees, and houses do leave them: thinking in like manner that in their old age, both pleasure, humanitie, and justice do forsake them, and vanish away."

336 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER

of history (1 19v), Tamburlaine emerges with transcendant military and charismatic greatness. His success is due to "especiall favour of the heavens." . . . in knowledge, and experience of armes, power, authoritie, felicities, quicknesse of spirit, diligence, hardinesse, and perseverance; [Tamburlaine] hath excelled not only the Otthomans; but also all the great capitaines, Assyrians, Egyptians, Medes, Persians, Parthyans, Greekes, Romaines, Christians, and Sarasens. (119) In LeRoy's hands, Tamburlaine certainly became a mighty figure to herald the beginning of a new time. Yet, one feels some heroic strain.

For LeRoy, Tamburlaine's military ascendancy in the East was matched by a concurrent revival of learning in the West, so that ... by the industrious perseverance of divers learned men, the matter hath had such good successe, that at this day our age may compare with the most learned that ever were. For now we see the tongues restored; and not onely the deeds, and writing of the auncient brought to light; but also many goodly things newly invented. (107v) LeRoy agrees with Bodin that of the three principal new inventions- the compass, gunpowder, and printing-printing is the most impor- tant. The fact that it was discovered in a Christian world proves to LeRoy that it is to Christians that ". . . the Divine Providence has especially reserved the consummation of divine and human wis- dom." 22 Although LeRoy stresses innovation as well as restoration, no "idea of progress" is implied. There is, however, what one might call an "idea of augment." The store of civilization has been consider- ably increased, if not necessarily improved, by new discoveries and inventions. LeRoy implies a rough correlation between the augmenta- tion of positive and negative vicissitudes, for in addition to useful in- novations, men are also afflicted with "new and strange maladies, un-

22 LeRoy's Christianity appears clearly in his great hostility to Mohammedans, who have no chance for salvation: "The Mahometists, deprived of this grace do utterly reject printing, not using it amongst them, neither suffering any to bring them books written of their affaires in Arabian, and printed elsewhere" (111). He goes to considerable lengths to disparage Mohammed himself, saying of his fol- lowers, "They have forged many other lies of him, like unto these, which I will pur- posely omitt, fearing tedious prolixity: and least in reciting of scandelous blasphe- mies, I should offend Christian eares" (99v-100). This is the only instance I have found where LeRoy expresses a fear of "tedious prolixity" (101-lOlv). Yet his scorn, compounded with fear, of the Mohammedans, is not allowed to stand in the way of LeRoy's recognition of their contribution to civilization: "As the learning of the Greeks and Romaines augmented with their power; so did that of the Arabians, or Saracens. And when they were the most mighty of the world, then they became the most learned: especially in the demonstrative sciences . . .Which I thought good to speak of by the way; that it might be knowed, that all learning is not comprised in these two languages, and that the Arabian ought not to be despised; which com- prehendeth a good part" (lOlv-102).

LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 337

knowen of the Auncients. ..." Both the desirable and undesirable changes were unthinkable to the ancients, who simply had nothing to compare with them: ... no one could imagine and kind of unhappinnesse or vice, which is not found in this age, so happy in the restitution of good learning, and restor- ing of sciences. Neither is there any amongst all men, either Christian or barbarous nations, but hath suffered much. No part of the habitable earth, no person is exempted from affections: which increase from day to day, and are too much knowen to our damage and confusion.... (112v) An idea of augment is operating here, as LeRoy characterizes a world in which "All is turned upside down, and nothing goeth as it ought." Yet, as I have shown earlier, LeRoy sees some coherence remaining. He cannot allow despair to get the best of optimism.

Therefore, because of his historical realism and relativism, which combine to eliminate from his thinking both uchronistic norms on the one hand, and hypostatised utopian models on the other, LeRoy is able to place man in the dramatic plight in which we find him in the twelfth book. Even the title of the chapter-"Whether it be true or no that there can be nothing said which hath not been said before . . . " strikes the reader of the whole as a purely rhetorical question, a de- vice to sustain the dramatic effect of the concluding pages. The final chapter deals mainly with learning and its possibilities for advance- ment, and its tone is more persuasive and hortatory than descriptive.

Basically, LeRoy was advocating a state of mind. He held the position of the anti-scholastic naturalist that the proper study of mankind does not consist alone of the dusty intonations of long de- ceased sages, but of the world as it presents itself to the alert and searching modern intellect. Time and again the moderns are ad- monished against undiscriminating imitation of ancient models (127- 130v, passim). Knowledge will increase through our own original strivings, LeRoy suggests, re-emphasizing what I have called his "idea of augment." Right conduct for the present man of knowledge is to try to surpass his immediate predecessors, no matter how great their stature. The ancients should be admired and emulated, but not rigidly imitated.23

23 It should by now be evident that LeRoy's attitudes toward those whose sense of the past is romantically aligned toward some kind of primitive purity or golden age prefigure the views of Montaigne and Bacon. In the essay "Des Coches" (1585-1588), Montaigne asserts that the magnificence of Peru exceeds the glory of ancient cities, and that the Aztecs excel the conquerors in all the virtues which dis- tinguish men from beasts. Like LeRoy and other contemporary historians, Mon- taigne recognized the historical significance of the compass, gunpowder, and printing. Still, he was much more impressed by the unknown than by the known: "Even if all that has come down to us by report from the past should be true and known by someone, it would be less than nothing compared with what is unknown. And of this very image of the world which glides along while we live on it, how puny and

338 WERNER L. GUNDERSHEIMER

The consequences of this view are profound. Times change, and all things change with the times. The ancients have their place, and it is a revered one. Still, the views and solutions of past problems must give way to the more functional discoveries gained from present anal- yses of the state of things in the world. Only in this way will learn- ing avoid staleness and the always imminent decay, which in previous societies seems to have been inevitable. Rather than limit themselves to modest works of "small continuance" men must continue to search out the unknown, if not for their own sake, then at least for God's: . . . if all men do think that the future belongeth to them; they that are Learned must not be negligent in obtaining of that by the durable monu- ments of Learning, which others do pretend and seeke by works of small continuance. But they ought to travail to their power, if not in respect of men (who show themselves often times ingrateful to their benefactors, and

limited is the knowledge of even the most curious! Not only of particular events which fortune often renders exemplary and weighty, but of the state of great gov- ernments and nations, there escapes more than a hundred times what comes to our knowledge. We exclaim at the miracle of the invention of our artillery, of our printing, other men in another corner of the world, in China, enjoyed these a thou- sand years earlier. If we saw as much of the world as we do not see, we would per- ceive, it is likely, a perpetual multiplication and vicissitude of forms (une perpetuele multiplication et vicissitude de formes)." I have quoted from the translation of D. M. Frame, The Complete Works of Montaigne (Stanford, 1948), 692-3. The earlier "Des Cannibals" (1578-1580) suggests something of the same kind of relativism. LeRoy's rejection both of the scholastic attitude toward authority and of the widely- accepted canon of an ancient deposit of normative knowledge receives its most com- plete expression by Francis Bacon. His position appears in a number of places: Book I The Advancement of Learning, the preface to The Great Instauration, and throughout the Novum Organum. In Advancement, I, 1, he says that ". . . God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror of glass, capable of the image of the universal world . . . and not only delighted in beholding the variety of things and vicissitude of times, but raised also to find out and discern the ordinances and decrees, which throughout all those changes are infallibly observed." Bacon's lan- guage here suggests a first hand knowledge of the work of LeRoy, perhaps in the Ashley translation. Whether there is positive external evidence for this I have not yet been able to ascertain. But the internal evidence is very impressive. A little further on in the book (I, 2) we are told: " . . . experience doth warrant, that both in persons and times, there hath been a meeting and concurrence in Learning and Arms, flourishing and excelling in the same men and the same ages." He goes on to give some of LeRoy's stock examples, and concludes: "And this concurrence is yet more visible in times than in persons, by how much an age is a greater object than a man. For both in Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Graecia, and Rome, the same times that are most renowned for arms, are likewise most admired for learning, so that the greatest authors and philosophers, and the greatest captains and governours have lived in the same ages. Neither can it otherwise be: for as in man the ripeness of strength of the body and mind cometh much about an age, save that the strength of the body cometh the more early: so in states Arms and Learning, whereof the one correspondeth to the body, the other to the soul of man, have a concurrence or near sequence in times." The idea is repeated in I, 2, iii, and elsewhere. Bacon, writing a generation after LeRoy (and only a few years after LeRoy had become available in English) used the same language of historical explanation to defend the same propositions on the development of society and culture.

LEROY'S HUMANISTIC OPTIMISM 339

envious of the present vertue) yet at the least for the honour of God: Whose will is, that we should carefully preserve the arts and sciences, as also all other things necessary for life; and deliver them over from time to time to our posterity, by learned, and elegant writings in good matters: giving light to the obscure, credit to the doubful, order to the confused, elegancie to the unpolished, grace to such as are left of, noveltie to the old, and authoritie to the new. (130v) Here, in the concluding lines of the book, LeRoy actually presumes to know the present will of God. I believe that he claims privileged access to knowledge of God's mind, solely so that he can use God's will as a sanction for his most serious affirmation on the survival of civilization. Science, in a sense, is conceived to be a study of the divine will as manifested in nature. Bacon and Descartes were to begin their great works on precisely those foundations which LeRoy had done much to construct.

We have seen how LeRoy used providential historiography, shorn of its telos, to modify a cyclic conception of the rise and decline of arms and learning, leaving the way open for deviations from the con- sistent pattern of mutability he saw in the past. We have also ob- served how, for LeRoy, wishful thinking takes the very moderate form of humanistic optimism, tempered by despair, that man may keep learning alive through constant efforts at renewal and augmentation. This kind of wishful thinking (if the term is at all appropriate) pre- cludes serious utopian or uchronian speculations; it is too empirical, and too narrowly confined to the intellectual and military disciplines. If LeRoy had used the term "Golden Age" himself, he would un- doubtedly not have used it in a normative way. That is, he would have given us the criteria by which we could examine various ages, to decide whether or not they were "golden." LeRoy did not offer such a functionalistic definition, for he was not particularly interested in the problem of the golden age. He was probably amused by it, where his predecessor Bodin had been annoyed.

LeRoy's major work was widely read throughout Western Eu- rope.24 Some readers, especially in England, accepted his evidence, while substituting for his qualified optimism a unified conception of decay in nature and human societies.25 We, however, find in Louis LeRoy's historically perceptive and far-ranging work an enthusiasm for examining the achievements of people and the values of things capable of challenging the minds of both XVIth- and XXth-century investigators to approach their work with intensified energy and vision.*

Harvard University. 24This may be inferred from the fact that it was translated into both English

and Italian not long after its publication in French. There were French editions in 1575, 1576, 1577, 1579, 1583, 1584. 25 See note 14.

* The author wishes to thank Professor Harry Levin, who suggested this study, for his help and advice.

Article Contentsp. 324p. 325p. 326p. 327p. 328p. 329p. 330p. 331p. 332p. 333p. 334p. 335p. 336p. 337p. 338p. 339

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1962), pp. 307-429Volume Information [pp. ]Front Matter [pp. ]The Tradition of the Logical Topics: Aristotle to Ockham [pp. 307-323]Louis Leroy's Humanistic Optimism [pp. 324-339]Scientific Preconceptions in Locke's Philosophy of Language [pp. 340-354]Hegelianism in Nineteenth-Century Ohio [pp. 355-378]NotesLassalle on Heraclitus of Ephesus [pp. 379-391]The Influence of Marsilius of Padua on XVth-Century Conciliarism [pp. 392-402]Some Ideas on Education before Locke [pp. 403-406]Henry James and the Aesthetic Tradition [pp. 407-419]Burlamaqui and Rousseau [pp. 420-423]

Books Received [pp. 424-429]Back Matter [pp. ]