"I am not a Christian" (je ne suis pas ChrÉtien), says Flaubert in a letter to Georges Sand. The French Revolution was, in his opinion, unsuccessful, because it was too intimately bound up with the idea of religious pity. The idea of equality, on which is based the essence of the democracy of to-day, is a contradiction of all the principles of equity. See what a preponderating influence is given at this day to grace. Emotion is everything, justice nothing. "We are degenerating owing to our superfluity of indulgence and of compassion, and to our moral drought." "I am convinced," he remarks, "that the poor envy the rich, and that the rich fear the poor; it will be so for ever—and vain it is to preach the Gospel of Love."

Flaubert tries to justify his instinctive antipathy to the idea of brotherhood by the assertion that this idea is always found to be in irreconcilable contradiction to the principle of equity. "I hate democracy (in the sense at least in which the word is accepted in France), that is to say the magnifying of grace to the detriment of justice, the negation of right—in a word, the anti-social principle (l'anti-sociabilitÉ)." "The gift of grace (within the province of theology) is the negation of justice; what right has a man to demand any change in the execution of the law?" Yet he hardly believes in this principle himself, and only enunciates it in order to have an argument with which to refute the idea of brotherhood. At least this is what he says, in a moment of complete frankness, in a letter to an old friend: "Human justice seems to me the most unstable thing in the whole world. The sight of a man daring to judge his neighbour would send me into convulsions of laughter if it did not arouse my disgust and pity, and if I were not at the present moment" (he was at that time engaged in studying for the law) "obliged to study a system of absurdities, by virtue of which men consider that they acquire the right to judge. I know of nothing so absurd as law, except, perhaps, the study of it." In another letter he confesses that he never could understand the abstract and dry conception of duty, and that "it did not seem to him to be inherent in the nature of mankind (il ne me paraÎt pas inhÉrent aux entrailles humaines)." Evidently, then he believes as little in the idea of justice as he does in that of fraternity. As a matter of fact, he has no moral ideal.

"There is only one thing in the world that I really value, and that is beautiful verse; an elegant, harmonious, melodious style; the warmth of the sun; a picturesque landscape; moonlight nights; antique statues, and the character in a profile.... I am a fatalist, in fact, like a Mahometan, and I believe that all that we do for the progress of humanity is of no use. As to this idea of progress, I am mentally incapable of grasping such nebulous and dreary conceptions. All the nonsense talked on this subject simply bores me beyond endurance.... I cherish a deep respect for the ancient form of tyranny, for to me it is the finest expression of humanity that has ever been made manifest." "I have few convictions," he writes to Georges Sand, "but one of those I have I cherish firmly—it is the conviction that the masses are always composed of idiots. And yet one may not consider the masses as stupid, because within them is concealed the seed of an incalculable fecundity (d'une fÉconditÉ incalculable)."

Flaubert makes a half-jesting attempt to contrast the doctrines of the socialists with his own ideas of the political order of the future. "The only logical conclusion is an administration consisting of mandarins, if only these mandarins be possessed of some knowledge, and if possible, even considerable knowledge. The mass of the people will thus always remain as minors, and will always hold the lowest place in the hierarchy of the social orders, seeing that it is composed of unlimited numbers.... In this lawful aristocracy of the present time is our whole salvation." ... "Humanity represents nothing new. Its irremediable worthlessness filled my soul even in my early youth with bitterness. And that is why I now experience no disappointment. I am convinced that the crowd, the common herd will always be odious.... Until the time comes when men shall submit to set up mandarins, and shall have substituted for the Roman Pope an Academy of Sciences, until that time comes, all politics, and all society even to its deepest roots, must be merely a collection of revolting lies (de blagues Écoeurantes.)" Nevertheless in his novel "Bouvard et PÉcuchet" Flaubert makes every effort to destroy faith even in the strength of the principles of science, and to prove that modern science is as impermanent a structure, as contradictory and superstitious a system as was the theology of the Middle Ages. To his disbelief in science Flaubert, moreover, is constantly giving utterance: thus, for instance, when he comes upon the Positivism of Comte, he finds this system "unbearably stupid" (c'est assommant de bÊtise).