Chapter 23: Melanges philosophiques
Théodore Jouffroy was a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, a man of learning and sophistication. His philosophy was different from Andrew Jackson Davis's visions, but it arrived at similar conclusions by different routes.
"We are limited beings," Jouffroy wrote. "No individual possesses absolute truth. Each of us sees only a part of reality — the part visible from our particular perspective. The whole remains hidden from any single viewpoint."
This might seem a counsel of despair. If we cannot know the truth, what is the point of seeking?
But Jouffroy drew the opposite conclusion: "Because no individual can see the whole, we need each other. My limitations are compensated by your strengths; your blind spots are illuminated by my perceptions. Together, we approach what none could approach alone. This is why community matters. This is why tradition matters. This is why the many must unite."
He called this collective wisdom "common sense" — not the ordinary meaning of that phrase, but a technical term for the shared understanding that emerges when many perspectives combine.
"Philosophers are not isolated geniuses who discover truth single-handedly. They are mouthpieces for their cultures, channels through which the accumulated wisdom of many minds speaks. The individual thinker adds a few drops to an ocean that countless others have filled."
Applied to the Martyrs
No single death reveals the full truth. But the pattern across many deaths — the poet and the general, the friend and the statesman — this pattern begins to reveal what no single biography could show.
Chapter 24: The Course on Natural Law
Jouffroy also wrote on law and ethics. He argued that beneath the positive laws of particular nations lay a natural law common to all humanity.
"The laws of France are not the laws of Germany, nor those of Hungary. Each nation has its customs, its traditions, its particular arrangements. Yet beneath these differences lies something universal. Murder is wrong everywhere. Cruelty is condemned everywhere. The strong exploiting the weak is recognized as unjust in every culture that has reached a certain level of reflection."
This natural law was not simply human convention. It reflected the structure of reality itself.
"We do not invent morality; we discover it. Just as we do not invent the laws of mathematics but recognize them as already there, so we do not invent the laws of ethics but awaken to what is already binding upon us. The natural law is written into the fabric of existence."
The martyrs of 1848 and 1849 had appealed to this natural law against the positive laws of the states that condemned them. They said: You may have the power to execute us, but you do not have the right. Your laws violate the deeper law. History will judge you, and history will judge us, and the verdict will not be in your favor.
"When positive law conflicts with natural law," Jouffroy wrote, "the individual faces a terrible choice. Obey the state, and betray the conscience. Obey the conscience, and invite the state's retribution. There is no comfortable resolution. One must choose, and having chosen, accept the consequences."
Chapter 25: Nouveaux Melanges and Aesthetics
In his later writings, Jouffroy turned to questions of beauty and the sublime.
"Beauty is what pleases us in its harmony, its proportion, its fitness. The beautiful object satisfies our sense of order. It gives us peace.
"But there is something beyond beauty: the sublime. The sublime does not please; it overwhelms. It does not satisfy our sense of order; it shatters it. Before the sublime, we feel not peace but awe, not satisfaction but terror mingled with exaltation."
Mountains are sublime. Storms are sublime. The ocean in its vastness is sublime. And, Jouffroy argued, certain human experiences are sublime: the confrontation with death, the sacrifice of life for principle, the moments when ordinary limits are transcended.
"The martyrs are sublime. Their deaths are not beautiful — there is nothing harmonious or pleasing about execution. But they are sublime. They overwhelm us. They shatter our ordinary sense of what is possible. Before them, we feel the terror and exaltation that the sublime evokes."
Why the Martyrs Matter
This is why the martyrs matter beyond their political causes. They reveal something about human possibility. They show us that ordinary limits can be transcended, that the spirit can triumph over the body's destruction, that meaning can emerge from meaningless cruelty.
"We need the sublime," Jouffroy concluded. "We cannot live in it — it would burn us up. But we need to know it exists. We need to be reminded, periodically, that we are more than comfortable animals seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The sublime reminds us. The martyrs remind us."