SOURCE: Waddicor, Mark H. “The Originality of Montesquieu's Method.” In Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law, pp. 22-45. The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1970.

[In this excerpt from his study of Montesquieu's application of the idea of natural law, Waddicor examines Montesquieu's relationship to other philosophers of natural law, and to other advocates of the scientific method. In particular, Waddicor analyzes Montesquieu's methodological debt to Descartes, as well as the influence of both classical and early modern authors.]

1. THE PROBLEM OF MONTESQUIEU'S METHOD

It is often thought that the président's method of studying positive law precluded any reference to natural law. What was Montesquieu's method? Was it really different from that of the School of Natural Law?

In Book I, Chapter iii of the Esprit des lois, Montesquieu set out the aim he had in writing the work:

La loi, en général, est la raison humaine, en tant qu'elle gouverne tous les peuples de la terre; et les lois politiques et civiles de chaque nation nedoivent être que les cas particuliers où s'applique cette raison humaine.

Elles doivent être tellement propres au peuple pour lequel elles sont faites, que c'est un très grand hasard si celles d'une nation peuvent convenir à une autre.

Il faut qu'elles se rapportent à la nature et au principe du gouvernement qui est établi, ou qu'on veut établir […].

Elles doivent être relatives au physique du pays; […] au genre de vie des peuples […]: elles doivent se rapporter au degré de liberté que la constitution peut souffrir, à la religion des habitants, à leurs inclinations, à leurs richesses, à leur nombre, à leur commerce, à leurs mœurs, à leurs manières: enfin elles ont des rapports entre elles; elles en ont avec leur origine, avec l'objet du législateur, avec l'ordre des choses sur lesquelles elles sont établies. C'est dans toutes ces vues qu'il faut les considérer.

C'est ce que j'entreprends de faire dans cet ouvrage. J'examinerai tous ces rapports: ils forment tous ensemble ce que l'on appelle l' Esprit Des Lois.

(N. [Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, publiées sous la direction de M. André Masson, Nagel, 1950-55, 3 vols.] I, i, pp. 8-9; Pl. [Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, texte présenté et annoté par Roger Caillois, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1949-51, 2 vols.] II, pp. 237-8)

The phrase “ce que l'on appelle” is surely false modesty. The hostile abbé de La Porte, probably following Domat, thought that the esprit of laws was “l'intention qu'ont eue les législateurs qui les ont établies”.¹ The meaning that Montesquieu gave to the term was far more complex since for him the esprit of a law is the sum of the relationships it has with “la nature des choses” of a given country, that is, with all the physical and moral factors found there.²

Montesquieu was proposing nothing less than a scientific analysis of the laws of mankind, and his project is easy enough to grasp in its outlines. The main difficulty arises when we try to see if he carried out his intention successfully in the rest of the work. Its plan has often been subject to attack, and this is not the place to renew the controversy about it,³ though it is worth noting in passing that the form of Montesquieu's work bears a strong resemblance to that of the treatises of Grotius and Pufendorf: his book divisions correspond to their book or chapter divisions, and his multitudinous and oft-criticised chapter divisions, to their paragraph divisions. The most obvious difference is that his chapter headings are sometimes more witty, but less informative than theirs.

It is not so much the present order of the work that is important to this study, as the method by which Montesquieu proceeded in the collection and ordering of the innumerable laws and customs which form the raw material of the Esprit des lois. Did he conscientiously study all the facts first, and then induce his theories from them? In this case, he used the a posteriori method. Or did he rather use, or even distort the facts in order to back up a system he had already invented without them? In that case, he used the a priori method. It is impossible to give a clear-cut answer to these questions. They can only be answered indirectly, either by seeing what certain of Montesquieu's other works reveal about his method, or by comparing the information he may have had at his disposal with the use he made of it, or by examining what he said, in the Esprit des lois itself, about his method.

Following the first of these three indirect routes, some scholars have gone so far as to claim that, in the Esprit des lois, Montesquieu put into practice the experimental method he learnt in his scientific work for the Bordeaux Academy. Part of his duties as directeur of the Academy consisted in making and reading critical summaries (résomptions) of papers on scientific subjects prepared by various contributors. Until recently, these summaries were omitted from his works, and this may explain why scholars have tended, in the past, to exaggerate the scope of his scientific work.⁴ However Montesquieu did also make certain observations and conduct certain experiments for himself, giving accounts of them to the Academy.

It is sometimes suggested, in particular, that Montesquieu's scientific method was Newtonian.⁵ What evidence is there for this suggestion? Even though the Bordeaux Academy was predominantly Cartesian, it did nevertheless give prizes to certain dissertations containing Newtonian ideas.⁶ In addition, two of Montesquieu's friends, the scientist Dortous de Mairan and the eccentric priest L. B. Castel, were both interested in Newton's work; however, they both remained Cartesians in physics.⁷ Apart from this external evidence, it is certain from internal evidence as well that Montesquieu knew of Newtonian physics (e.g. P. 1096, Bkn. 672, N. II, p. 298, Pl. I, p. 1171, and P. 1320, Bkn. 1356, N. II, pp. 398-9, Pl. I, p. 1324); nevertheless, like the Academy and his friends, he preferred that of Descartes.⁸ For Montesquieu, Newton was “le successeur de Descartes” (N. III, p. 118, Pl. I, p. 43), but it is not clear in what sense the epithet is to be understood.

If Montesquieu knew of but did not accept Newton's physics, is it likely that he knew of and practised Newton's empirical scientific method? Perhaps, if we are to judge by a Pensée written between 1721 and 1731:

Les observations sont l'histoire de la physique, et les systèmes en sont la fable.

(P. 163, Bkn. 681, N. II, p. 51, Pl. I, p. 1182)

This is, however, the only Pensée which reveals a possible influence of the Newtonian method on Montesquieu, and the other Pensées cited by Sergio Cotta as proof of that influence⁹ do not in fact prove it. Pensées 775 (Bkn. 2105) and 1445 (Bkn. 2104), in which Montesquieu showed how Descartes' genius had enabled those who came after him to criticize his system intelligently, do not specify which aspects of Descartes' philosophy he found unsatisfactory (N. II, pp. 231 and 419, Pl. I, p. 1548). Pensée 799 (Bkn. 2093), to which Cotta also refers, contains a criticism not of hypotheses but of essences, in which neither Descartes nor Newton believed (N. II, p. 235, Pl. I, p. 1546).

Even if Montesquieu did believe in Newton's method, he does not seem to have put it into practice in his scientific work. The Essai d'observations, in which he gives an account of that work, is the touchstone in this question. In this Essai, read to the Academy in 1719 and 1721, he told of certain experiments he had conducted on ducks and a goose, and of certain observations he had made on various plants. In the case of the ducks, he was trying to see how long they would live under water. One lived longer than the other,

parce que nous nous étions trompés, la première fois, dans la mesure du temps; ou peut-être bien ce canard a-t-il vécu plus que le premier parce qu'il était moins gras et qu'il n'avait point mangé.

(N. III, p. 113; Pl. I, p. 40 omits)

It is true that this rather naïve statement was later deleted by Montesquieu,¹⁰, but it still reveals, followed as it is by several lines of undeleted conjecture based on this observation, two of the worst faults to be found in a scientist: inaccurate observation and precipitate conclusion. The second fault is also revealed by Montesquieu's observations on plants: here, it is evident that he started out with the conviction that certain plants are produced by spontaneous generation, and that he then tried to prove it by observation. But having put forward his theory, he then admitted that several years of experiment were necessary in order to “éclaircir cette matière” (N. III, p. 112, Pl. I, p. 39).

In adopting the theory of spontaneous generation, Montesquieu claimed he was a true Cartesian (N. III, p. 112, Pl. I, p. 39).¹¹ Moreover, his scientific method itself was Cartesian:

[En vain nous abandonnerions-nous à nos raisonnements, si nous ne les confirmons par des expériences];¹² ce n'est point dans les méditations d'un cabinet qu'il faut chercher les preuves, mais dans le sein de la nature même.

(ibid.)

At a superficial glance this statement looks “progressive” and empirical, but it in fact reveals that his idea of experimentation was Cartesian. The use of the words “confirmons” and “preuves” shows us that he was reasoning a priori, like Descartes, who did not use experiment as a means of inducing his natural laws, but only of confirming their truth.¹³ Thus if Montesquieu believed that observation and experiment are important, it is not because he is an empiricist, in the modern sense of the term.

Advocates of Montesquieu's empiricism are often prepared to admit that in his work for the Bordeaux Academy, he reasoned a prior, but, so anxious are they to see him in a positivistic light that they forget about the limitations of his scientific method when they come to discuss its influence on his later work. The most flagrant example of this peculiar logic is to be found in the very works through which so many readers are introduced to Montesquieu, namely Dedieu's Montesquieu and his Montesquieu l'homme et l'œuvre. In the first book, Dedieu admits that in his scientific work, Montesquieu

s'annonce comme un esprit éminemment spéculatif, que les expériences positives retiennent sans doute, mais pas assez longuement pour qu'il s'abstienne de toute conclusion précipitée, ni assez servilement pour qu'il persiste à demeurer sur le seul terrain des faits.¹⁴

So far, so good, but on the very next page Dedieu contradicts himself by saying that “la science a conduit Montesquieu […] à ne donner sa confiance qu'aux faits”, and later he claims that in his scientific work the président acquired “la discipline scientifique”.¹⁵ It would seem that the only proof Dedieu has of these last assertions is itself an a priori one: he sees Montesquieu as a positivist, ergo Montesquieu must have practised the scientific method, both in his early career, and in many parts of the Esprit des lois where, so Dedieu tells us, the author, “abandonnant le terrain des spéculations […] va droit sur le terrain des faits”.¹⁶

In his later book, Dedieu brushes aside all reservations, giving a completely false picture of Montesquieu's scientific work and its influence on his later thought. Talking mainly of the Essai d'observations, and ignoring its patent a priorism, Dedieu proclaims

Tout cela est révélateur d'un esprit positif, acquis aux nouvelles méthodes expérimentales, et qui sait que la science, avant d'être une magnifique synthèse, est d'abord une patiente analyse. Montesquieu s'est formé à cette rude et bienfaisante école de l'analyse scientifique. Il lui en restera, toute sa vie, une empreinte ineffaçable.¹⁷

Without any evidence, Dedieu has seen in Montesquieu a practitioner of the science of a later age.¹⁸

It is clear that all too often, Montesquieu's work is called scientific, without its being explained which kind of scientific method he followed. If it was the Cartesian deductive method, then it cannot rightly be called scientific.¹⁹ Thus remarks such as Janet's, that Montesquieu is

le premier qui ait appliqué l'esprit scientifique, l'esprit moderne aux faits politiques et sociaux. Il est au moins le Descartes, s'il n'est pas le Newton de la politique,²⁰

tell us little about Montesquieu's method. Janet wishes to convey the impression that it is essentially different from that of his predecessors, but unless he can prove that it is Newtonian, that is, strictly empirical, he has not shown that Montesquieu's method is original. The same confusion is to be found in many other interpreters of Montesquieu, such as Barckhausen and George Havens.²¹

We now turn to the second way of discovering Montesquieu's method, by a comparison of the evidence Montesquieu had at his disposal and the use he made of it. Obviously, a complete examination of this question is impossible: no one scholar has the necessary knowledge to pronounce on every aspect of Montesquieu's erudition. We shall limit ourselves to a few significant examples.

Dedieu, followed by many other scholars, two of the most recent being Étiemble and Loy,²² tries to prove that Montesquieu's method in the Esprit des lois was empirical. While admitting that Montesquieu frequently used deductive methods, he nevertheless claims that the work is based on the distinction between physical and moral causes which, in its turn, is based on l'expérience.²³

Dedieu would seem to be bent on proving a case contradicted by the majority of the evidence. It is of course possible that Montesquieu's theory of climate and its influence was discovered empirically, but when one reads Books XIV-XVIII, one has the impression of a mind working deductively from the principles stated in Book XIV, Chapter ii. In order to maintain his theory of climate, Montesquieu was frequently obliged to distort the facts: despotisms, he claimed, are found in hot countries (Lois, V, xv, N. I, i, p. 85, Pl. II, p. 297), but how did Russia, which was a despotism, fit into this scheme of things? Suicide, so he claimed, is, in England, entirely a result of the climate: the tenacity with which he defended this dramatic over-simplification indicates his a priorism. A similar over-simplification is found in his discussion of polygamy, which he again tried to explain by climatic influences. These famous examples of Montesquieu's rationalism are not mentioned in order to discredit him, but merely in order to show that he was not, as the positivists would have us believe, a marvel of impartiality, a kind of calculating machine: if he had been, who would read his works nowadays?

Montesquieu's rationalism also emerges from Books I-XIII. Here, one has the impression that, though there is indeed a large amount of observation in them, they are essentially the result of a process of deduction from the definition of the three types of government, and the “nature” and “principe” of each.²⁴ Above all, though, we feel that Montesquieu is not being impartial in these books. Though his picture of the democracies and aristocracies of Antiquity is based on careful documentation, it is difficult to say the same of his picture of contemporary institutions. In particular, his famous description of the English Constitution in Book XI, Chapter vi, is not simply the result of his observations when in England; it is also a vision of the home of liberty idealized for political motives, in order to impress upon the French the possibility of a monarchy limited by laws. Montesquieu used the hypothetical style, describing the constitution as it ought to work, not as it did work.²⁵

Furthermore, his picture of despotic governments, designed to warn the French of the dangers that threatened them, is almost entirely imaginary.²⁶ One of the most convincing accounts of this point is in the work of Muriel Dodds on Les récits de voyages, sources de l'Esprit des lois de Montesquieu. She shows, pièces en main, how in the VIIIth Book of the Esprit des lois, Montesquieu deliberately selected evidence to suit his case. There were two kinds of account available to him for his chapter on “l'empire de la Chine” (Lois, VIII, xxi, N. I, i, pp. 168-71; Pl. II, pp. 365-8): those of the missionaries, who, partly because they knew the people well, and partly because of the querelle des rites, had formed a favourable impression of China; and those of the merchants, who had not. Montesquieu wanted to see China as a despotism, so that it would fit in with his theory of the relationship between the size and climate of a country, and the nature of its government. In the accounts of China given by the missionaries, he did not find the picture of a despotic country:

Il ne peut concilier ces faits avec les principes qu'il a posés; il ne peut faire entrer la Chine dans le cadre étroit de sa définition du despotisme. Au lieu d'élargir le cadre, […] il repousse ces témoignages, et il va chercher des examples qui lui conviennent chez des voyageurs tels que Anson et Lange, bien que ceux-ci connaissent très mal la Chine.²⁷

From such evidence, Miss Dodds is led on to make general statements about Montesquieu's method. In the early books of the Esprit des lois he is “purement cartésien”: “Il ne cherche les faits, que pour prouver un principe qu'il a déjà posé”; she sees the concept of the “esprit général” (Lois, XIX, iv, N. I, i, p. 412, Pl. II, p. 558) as “un écart passager” in the direction of empiricism, and concludes that Montesquieu “reste essentiellement jusqu'au bout, fidèle à la méthode cartésienne”.²⁸ Further precise evidence of Montesquieu's manner of using his sources is to be found in F. Weil's comparison of his notebook, Les Geographica, with the Esprit des lois: she finds in particular that he sometimes altered quotations when transferring them to his main work, and that he tended to generalize from single examples.²⁹

These two well-substantiated accounts of Montesquieu's method confirm the theory put forward some seventy years ago by Gustave Lanson, who stated that in the Esprit des lois

Montesquieu a tout simplement suivi la méthode analytique et mathématique de Descartes.³⁰

Lanson continues by showing that the work has three main parts: Books I-XIII deal with “les choses en soi”; Books XIV-XXVI, with the rapports that arise from “[les] choses dans l'espace”; and Books XXVII-XXXI, with those arising from “[les] choses dans le temps”. In the first part, Montesquieu “part des notions simples et premières”, the prior existence of justice and reason; then he examined man before society began, then in society in general, then in particular societies—that is, he examined man and society deductively. Similarly, Lanson sees the second part as deduced from the rapports between climate and various other factors, and the third part as an historical illustration, based on the principles he had previously posited, of the rules he had put forward. Lanson adds that Montesquieu made much use of l'expérience in order to prove and illustrate what he already believed, but that he did not use it in order to induce his theories. Hence, Lanson is able to conclude that Montesquieu followed in political science exactly the same method as Descartes followed in physics.³¹

In later years, Lanson changed his position. Pointing to Montesquieu's great use of historical documentation in the Esprit des lois, he claimed that its a priorism was due merely to the way in which the ideas were expressed, not to the way in which they were discovered,³² a point also made more recently by G. Davy.³³ There is no easy way of proving or disproving this ingenious suggestion, except in the way that M. Dodds and F. Weil have done. As it now appears to the reader, the Esprit des lois is a work of rationalism, in which an astonishingly wide erudition is put at the service of certain social and political theories.

Finally, in this section, we turn to the third way of discovering Montesquieu's method, namely an examination of what he said about it. In the Preface to the Esprit des lois, he made two statements which seem to imply that he was following the empirical method. Firstly:

Je n'ai point tiré mes principes de mes préjugés, mais de la nature des choses.

(N. I, i, p. lx, Pl. II, p. 229)

But this is probably not so much a general indication of method, as a precaution against censorship. The other statement is more significant:

J'ai d'abord examiné les hommes; et j'ai cru que, dans cette infinie diversité de lois et de moeurs, ils n'étaient pas uniquement conduits par leurs fantaisies.

(N. I, i, p. lix, Pl. II, p. 229)

This looks like a statement of the empirical method, but is it? It might equally well indicate that when Montesquieu examined the world of men, he already had the conviction that they were not “conduits par leurs fantaisies”. If Montesquieu was a positivist, he was one who had the a priori conviction that reality can be expressed in mathematical terms. As he said in Book I, Chapter i:

Il y a […] une raison primitive; et les lois sont les rapports qui se trouvent entre elle et les différents êtres, et les rapports de ces divers êtres entre eux.

(N. I, i, p. 2, Pl. II, p. 232)

Thus he was a positivist in the sense that he was not a sceptic with regard to the rationality of human affairs, as Montaigne and Pascal had been.³⁴ But he was not a true positivist, not only in that he had a political axe to grind, but also in that he appears to have started out with the conviction that all facts are explainable.

The paragraph beginning “J'ai d'abord examiné les hommes” is followed by the famous remark:

J'ai posé les principes; et j'ai vu les cas particuliers s'y plier comme d'euxmêmes, les histoires de toutes les nations n'en être que les suites, et chaque loi particulière liée avec une autre loi, ou dépendre d'une autre plus générale.

(N. I, i, p. lix, Pl. II, p. 229)

In spite of the rationalism implicit in these lines, those who believe Montesquieu's method to be empirical will continue to argue, on the strength of the two paragraphs taken together, that his intended method was: examination—induction—verification.³⁵ Even if this were so, even if it were possible to ignore the latent rationalism of the first of the two paragraphs, we would still argue that the first stage of this scientific process was not thorough enough to be truly empirical, and that the second stage, the induction, often became deduction; that Montesquieu was following, whether he knew it or not, an a priori method.

Now the philosophy of natural law is also, in part at least, based on a priori methods. This method finds its classic expression in St. Thomas:

from the precepts of the natural law, as from general and indemonstrable principles, […] the human reason needs to proceed to the more particular determination of certain matters

(S.t., II, i, Q. 91, Art. 3, vol. VIII, p. 13)

Within the School of Natural Law, perhaps the best examples of the use of deductive methods are to be found in Pufendorf. Starting, in Book I of Le Droit de la nature et des gens, with a discussion of morality in general and with a definition of law, he then went on, in Book II, to deduce natural law from human nature and from man in the state of nature; in the remaining books, he deduced natural and civil laws from the nature of society and of man in society. The order is not quite the same in the Devoirs de l'homme et du citoyen, but the method is. In fact, all the members of the School of Natural Law—Grotius, Pufendorf, Burlamaqui—as well as Hobbes, Locke and Domat, follow a similar deductive procedure. Robert Shackleton is the only scholar so far to have pointed with any precision to the similarity of their method to that of Montesquieu.³⁶ But Shackleton does not go far enough, and we intend to show in the remainder of this section, that Montesquieu's very conception of social and political science was the outcome of that of the School of Natural Law.

If both Montesquieu and the School of Natural Law employed deductive methods, what then is the difference between them? In a passage that is justly famous, though not for the elegance of its style, Auguste Comte said that the président's superiority over the other political philosophers of his age lay in the “tendance prépondérante”, revealed in the Esprit des lois, to

concevoir désormais les phénomènes politiques comme aussi nécessairement assujettis à d'invariables lois naturelles que tous les autres phénomènes quelconques. […] A une époque où les plus éminents esprits, essentiellement préoccupés de vaines utopies métaphysiques, croyaient encore à la puissance absolue et indéfinie des législateurs […], combien ne fallait-il pas être en avant de son siècle pour oser concevoir […] les divers phénomènes politiques comme toujours réglés, au contraire, par des lois pleinement naturelles.³⁷

Comte thus holds that Montesquieu was the only philosopher who regarded social and political phenomena as capable of being formulated in scientific, as opposed to moralistic terms. He is contrasting Montesquieu with the philosophes, but not with the School of Natural Law, which he conveniently ignores. However, his disciple Durkheim was not content to ignore them. Being apparently unfamiliar with the philosophy of natural law, he resorts to vague generalisations and claims that before Montesquieu, the philosophers who believed in natural law derived this law from a “principe unique”, that is, from human nature, since for them,

Seule […] la nature de l'homme considéré seul paraît à ce point définie et stable, qu'elle peut fournir au droit un fondement solide.³⁸

Durkheim thus imagines that natural law is based only on the concept of man in the state of nature; Oudin makes a similar claim.³⁹

There are in fact two kinds of natural law. Burlamaqui made the point most clearly, when he distinguished between primary and Secondary natural law. The primary natural law is that which “découle immédiatement de la constitution primitive de l'homme […] indépendamment d'aucun fait humain”, whereas the secondary natural law “suppose quelque fait ou quelque établissement humain; comme l'état civil, la propriété des biens” (Principes du droit naturel, II, iv, 24, p. 203). This distinction is made, either implicitly or explicitly, by all philosophers of natural law, and it is quite wrong to imagine that natural law is only derived from man in the state of nature. Durkheim has forgotten the secondary natural law, based on the concept of man in society, and roughly equivalent to what we term civil law.

Not only had the School of Natural Law made this distinction, they had also envisaged the possibility of putting both the primary and the secondary natural law into scientific terms. Grotius, it is true, had said that

les lois naturelles étant toujours les mêmes, peuvent aisément être ramenées aux règles de l'art: mais celles qui doivent leur origine à quelque établissement humain étant différentes selon les lieux, et changeant souvent dans un même endroit, ne sont pas susceptibles de système méthodique.

(Dg., Disc. prél., xxxi, vol. I, p. 21)

In fact, however, Grotius's conception of natural law, based partly at least on universal consent meant that he regarded many civil laws as being natural laws, and as capable of being examined methodically.⁴⁰

As the seventeenth century progressed in the field of science, moral philosophers became more and more convinced of the scientific nature of their subject. Pufendorf claimed that whereas it is difficult to formulate the art of politics,

La morale, au contraire […] est appuyée sur des fondements inébranlables, d'où l'on peut tirer de véritables démonstrations, capables de produire une science solide.

(Dn., I, ii, 4, vol. I, pp. 24-5)

It is on such scientific demonstrations that he believed the substance of his book to be based. Similarly Locke held that “les véritables mesures du juste et de l'injuste” could be deduced from certain self-evident propositions “par des conséquences nécessaires, et aussi incontestables que celles qu'on emploie dans les mathématiques”,⁴¹ and he employed this kind of deduction (though not with all the scientific accuracy one might desire) in his second Treatise on Government, which is concerned both with primary and with secondary natural law. Finally, Barbeyrac was convinced of “la possibilité qu'il y a de réduire la science des mœurs à un système aussi bien lié, que ceux de géométrie, par exemple, ou de mécanique” (Dn., Préface, sec. ii, vol. I, p. xix).

Hence it can be seen how false is the following statement that Durkheim makes about the “successeurs” of Aristotle:

Quant aux mœurs, à la religion, au commerce, à la famille … c'étaient pour eux choses si fortuites et si changeantes que personne ne devait raisonablement entreprendre de les ramener à des genres et à des espèces.⁴²

Durkheim does not tell us who are these “successeurs”, so presumably he means to include all the philosophers between Aristotle and Montesquieu. His remark is untrue both in respect of such philosophers as Cicero, who formulated men's duties in his De officiis, of St. Thomas, who did the same thing from a Christian point of view, and of the School of Natural Law.

It is futile to try to disguise, as the positivists and their followers do, Montesquieu's debt to the philosophers of natural law for his general conception of social and political science.⁴³ In Pensée 1537 (Bkn. omits), Montesquieu spoke of his predecessors in eulogistic terms:

Je rends grâce à Messieurs Grotius et Pufendorf d'avoir si bien exécuté ce qu'une partie de cet ouvrage demandait de moi, avec cette hauteur de génie, à laquelle je n'aurais pu atteindre.

(N. II, p. 443; cf. P. 1863 (Bkn. 191), N. II, p. 556, Pl. II, p. 1038)

It is unfortunate that in this tribute, which seems to have been intended for the Preface to the Esprit des lois, Montesquieu did not tell us which part of the work he was talking about. The passage has in fact two possible interpretations: either Montesquieu was admitting his debt to Grotius and Pufendorf in certain parts of the work; or he was referring the reader to them for matters that he had not treated in detail because they had already done it. In either case, Montesquieu clearly considered that he owed much to them, even though he had gone much further than they had done.

For, if it is futile to disguise the influence of the philosophers of natural law on Montesquieu's method, it is equally futile to disguise the fact that he surpassed them. The real difference between them is not that he jettisoned their concept of natural law, but that he went much further than they had done in his scientific demonstration of social and political science—indeed, their efforts are often lamentable compared with his. Montesquieu was in a large degree original in that he set out to classify civil and political law in its relation to the “nature des choses” of each different country. In this sense, he had a scientific outlook, that is, he had an intense desire to explain in detail the seeming irrationality of the world of man. What the positivists do not admit is that the School of Natural Law had prepared the way for this kind of explanation, with their belief that moral and social phenomena can be classified. It is true that they often did not succeed in putting this belief into practice, but then, according to Comte, neither did Montesquieu.⁴⁴

We have shown that the positivistic interpreters of Montesquieu err in thinking that his method was a posteriori and essentially different from that of the School of Natural Law. But we have not yet disposed of all the misinterpretations of Montesquieu fostered by an unhistorically-minded group of scholars. Many of them assume, for example, not only that his method was original, but also that it was actually incompatible with a belief in the a priori natural law.

So anxious are some of them to make us accept this assumption, that they distort Montesquieu's meaning. Thus the positivist Alengry, and even the more impartial historian of philosophy Émile Bréhier, think that the mathematical analogy used by Montesquieu in Book I, Chapter i of his main work, is meant to prove the necessity of the various general laws he was to discover governing human institutions.⁴⁵ Such a sense was perhaps implied by Montesquieu, but it was not his main intention in using the analogy. His main intention was to prove the prior existence of natural law.

II. THE PRIOR EXISTENCE OF NATURAL LAW

As was shown in our historical survey of natural law, many famous philosophers have believed that the law of nature existed before there were any human laws, to which it is consequently superior. One of the most eloquent expressions of this idea is in Cicero's De republica:

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; […]. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people […]. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times.⁴⁶

More modern philosophers of natural law fervently accepted this idea, though they often lacked Cicero's eloquence in expressing it. Pufendorf, Malebranche, and the English divine Samuel Clarke,⁴⁷ saw in it a means of denying Hobbes's assertion that justice has no absolute existence and is the same as human law (P.R., xiv, 10, pp. 190-1; Leviathan, II, xxvi, pp. 253-4).

Montesquieu was just as concerned as the philosophers of natural law to refute Hobbes. His antipathy towards the English political theorist dates from as early as the Lettres persanes [L.p.]. This work is often thought of as revealing a profound moral scepticism but Usbek, the elder of the two Persian visitors to France, nevertheless affirmed that

la justice est éternelle, et ne dépend point des conventions humanies. Et, quand elle en dépendrait, ce serait une vérité terrible, qu'il faudrait se dérober à soi-même.

(L.p. LXXXIII, N. I, iii, p. 170, Pl. I, p. 256)⁴⁸

Montesquieu made a similar but even stronger affirmation in his Traité des devoirs of 1725 (N. III, p. 160, Pl. I, p. 109).

When they are viewed together with these earlier statements, instead of being lifted out of their historical context to support more modern ideas, Montesquieu's words at the opening of the Esprit des lois take on once more their proper meaning, appearing as an acknowledgement of the prior existence of natural law:

Les êtres particuliers intelligents peuvent avoir des lois qu'ils ont faites: mais ils en ont aussi qu'ils n'ont pas faites. Avant qu'il y eût des êtres intelligents, ils étaient possibles; ils avaient donc des rapports possibles, et par conséquent des lois possibles. Avant qu'il y eût des lois faites, il y avait des rapports de justice possibles. Dire qu'il n'y a rien de juste ni d'injuste que ce qu'ordonnent ou défendent les lois positives, c'est dire qu'avant qu'on eût tracé de cercle, tous les rayons n'étaient pas égaux.

Il faut donc avouer des rapports d'équité antérieurs à la loi positive qui les établit.

(N. I, i, pp. 2-3; Pl. II, p. 233)

Though Montesquieu does not here use the word natural law, reserving this term for the more physical laws of Chapter ii, it is clear, from the four examples he gives, that these “rapports d'équité” are the traditional a priori natural law: the first is that it is right to obey the laws of society; the second, to be grateful for benefits received; the third, to respect the Creator as a superior being; and the fourth, that if an intelligent being harms another intelligent being, he deserves to receive the same harm himself; “et ainsi du reste” (N. I, i, p. 3, Pl. II, p. 233). These four laws are basically two. The duty to be grateful for benefits received is the counterpart of being punished for evil actions; together the two laws form a version of the age-old maxim of natural law, do as you would be done by, to which Montesquieu specifically referred, in Book X, as “la loi de la lumière naturelle” (N. I, i, p. 184; Pl. II, p. 378). The precept of do as you would be done by is regulated in society by civil laws, which should thus be obeyed. So Chapter i postulates the two basic duties of natural law: duty to others, duty to God.⁴⁹

According to certain critics, this is almost the only reference Montesquieu made to natural law in the whole of the Esprit des lois. In the first place, there are the indignant moralists: for them, the promise of Book I, Chapter i, is not fulfilled in the rest of the work. In the words of the famous translator of Aristotle, Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire:

Le monument a été commencé sous de magnifiques auspices; mais ces splendides avenues ne mènent point à un temple.⁵⁰

In the second place, there are the positivists and their followers among literary critics. They claim that even though Chapter i may contain “quelques résidus métaphysiques”,⁵¹ the rest of the work shows that Montesquieu aimed to establish certain scientific laws governing social and political phenomena, with no reference to moral or natural laws, without perpetuating what Althusser scornfully calls the “travers idéal” of “la tradition la plus fade”⁵²—that is, of the tradition of natural law.

In the first part of this chapter, we showed the falsity of the assertion that Montesquieu's method in theory excludes natural law. In the next chapters, we turn to a re-examination of the claims just mentioned, namely that there is in practice little or no allusion to natural law in the body of the Esprit des lois, and that in any case, the doctrine of natural law is concerned only with metaphysical subtleties, and with judging positive law from the standpoint of an uncompromising idealism. Before these contentions can be examined, however, it must first be decided how far Montesquieu set out, in the Esprit des lois, with the intention of incorporating the principles of natural law into his study of civil law.

III. CIVIL LAW AND NATURAL LAW IN THE “ESPRIT DES LOIS”

In his main work, Montesquieu does not appear to have relied on the original contract as a means of establishing the rights of ruled and ruler, even though there is more than a passing reference to the contract at the beginning of the work.⁵³ He was therefore, it would seem, unable to say, as the School of Natural Law had said, that a man is obliged to obey the laws of his country because there is an implicit or explicit agreement between himself and his ruler, by which he agrees to obey any just command of the latter.

However, the contract was not the only way in which the School of Natural Law established the obligation of the ruled to obey their rulers. This obligation was also derived from the belief that without society and laws, anarchy would develop. Hobbes, Pufendorf and Gravina all held that human nature being what it is, men without society would live in a state of fear and violence, and that to prevent this happening, the laws of society must be obeyed (P.R., vi, 4, p. 75; Dn., VII, i, 7, vol. II, pp. 219-20; Origines iuris civilis, II, xvii-xviii, pp. 256-8).

Montesquieu accepted this argument, and since it is a commonplace of natural law theory, Oudin is wrong to claim that it proves he was following Spinoza.⁵⁴ The président expressed this commonplace in Pensée 883 (Bkn. 1848), written between 1734 and 1738, which echoes part of Pensée 174 (Bkn. 1935) (1721-31):

L'autorité des princes et magistrats n'est pas seulement fondée sur le droit civil, elle l'est encore sur le droit naturel: car, comme l'anarchie est contraire au droit naturel, le genre humain ne pouvant subsister par elle, il faut bien que l'autorité des magistrats, qui est opposée à l'anarchie, y soit conforme.

(N. II, p. 255; Pl. I, p. 1441)

In Pensée 883 there is therefore the germ of the idea in Book I, Chapter iii of the Esprit des lois, that the only way to prevent the state of war that accompanies the establishment of societies is to institute positive laws (N. I, i, p. 7; Pl. II, p. 236). Such, no doubt, is also the reasoning behind paragraph 9 of Chapter i of the same Book, where the first natural law is said to be that “supposé qu'il y eût des sociétés d'hommes, il serait juste de se conformer à leurs lois” (N. I, i, p. 3; Pl. II, p. 233).

Thus Montesquieu, although he does not seem to have used the original contract, seems to have followed one tradition of natural law regarding the obligation of civil law. However, there is an important difference between his arguments and those of the School of Natural Law. When Pufendorf stated that natural law enjoins obedience to the civil law, he immediately qualified this by adding that such obedience is required only so long as the law is just (Dv., II, xii, 8, p. 337).

Montesquieu, it appears, made no such statement in the Esprit des lois, even though he had done so in his earlier works, showing that subjects have the right to rebel against their rulers in certain cases,⁵⁵ and stating categorically in a Pensée that could have been written any time between 1721 and 1738, that:

Une chose n'est pas juste parce qu'elle est loi; mais elle doit être loi parce qu'elle est juste.

(P. 460, Bkn. 1906, N. II, p. 167, Pl. I, p. 1458)

The absence, in the Esprit des lois, of any such statement might lead the reader to suppose that, like Alexander Pope, Montesquieu in his later life believed that whatever is, is right,⁵⁶ and various remarks in the work seem to support this view.

Firstly there is the famous statement in the Preface, “Je n'écris point pour censurer ce qui est établi dans quelque pays que ce soit” (N. I, i, p. lx, Pl. II, p. 230). This phrase, however, proves nothing beyond Montesquieu's cautiousness—it is a “ruse philosphique”,⁵⁷ and is quite untrue: not that he took pleasure in a purely destructive kind of analysis, but he did make many criticisms of various laws and governments.

In any case, Montesquieu did not say in the Preface that all citizens must obey the laws of their country, but simply that he wished they had better reasons for so doing:

Si je pouvais faire en sorte que tout le monde eût de nouvelles raisons pour aimer ses devoirs, son prince, sa patrie, ses lois; […] je me croirais le plus heureux des mortels.

(N. I, i, p. lxi, Pl. II, p. 230)

It is true that these “nouvelles raisons” are partly a realization by the people of the purpose of and reason for each particular law that may seem irksome. But these “nouvelles raisons” are also a more enlightened attitude on the part of legislators:⁵⁸

Si je pouvais faire en sorte que ceux qui commandent augmentassent leurs connaissances sur ce qu'ils doivent prescrire, et que ceux qui obéissent trouvassent un nouveau plaisir à obéir, je me croirais le plus heureux des mortels.

(N. I, i, p. lxi, Pl. II, p. 230)

In these lines, Montesquieu showed that he was not simply concerned with justifying the status quo, but that he was also concerned with the promulgation of better laws, even if “dans un temps de lumière, on tremble encore lorsqu'on fait les plus grands biens” (N. I, i, p. lxi, Pl. II, p. 230). The Preface indicates that many laws could be improved, but that it is unwise to be too hasty with reforms, which should be based on a true knowledge of the facts of each situation: it was the aim of the Esprit des lois to supply these facts.

In claiming that the lines “Je n'écris point pour censurer” show a purely positivistic outlook, Durkheim has failed to examine the président's words in their context.⁵⁹

Secondly, two statements made by Montesquieu in the body of the work would again seem to indicate that he believed that whatever is, is right. The Faculty of Theology thought that in his account of education in monarchies (Lois, IV, ii), he had placed too much emphasis on the political “principe” of honour, and not enough on moral virtue.⁶⁰ In order to placate the Faculty, Montesquieu added a footnote to the effect that “On dit ici ce qui est, et non pas ce qui doit être”.⁶¹ Alengry, and more recently the sociologist Georges Gurvitch, seize hold of this remark, and claim that it is true of Montesquieu's whole attitude.⁶²

They have evidently not noticed that in this very Chapter ii of Book IV Montesquieu, discussing the effects of honour in monarchies, praised the action of Crillon, who refused to assassinate the duc de Guise when ordered to do so by Henri III, and that of the vicomte D'Orte, who refused to obey an order to massacre the Huguenots (N. I, i, pp. 42-3, Pl. II, p. 264). In praising these acts, Montesquieu showed that he did not believe in unconditional obedience to one's sovereign, and that the “principe” of honour is a moral as well as a political concept.⁶³

The second statement, also seized on by Durkheim, Alengry and Gurvitch,⁶⁴ is found in Book XVI, Chapter iv, in Montesquieu's discussion of polygamy:

Dans tout ceci, je ne justifie pas les usages; mais j'en rends les raisons.

(N. I, i, p. 353, Pl. II, p. 511)

a remark he had already taken the precaution of including in the first edition of the work.⁶⁵ But it is not true that these words are a fair account of his method, since he in fact criticized polygamy.⁶⁶

A third place where Montesquieu is sometimes said to have approved what is, instead of showing what should be, is in his definition of liberty. Here it is the idealists who complain, not the positivists who exult. Janet for example criticizes the président for deriving “le droit de la loi au lieu de faire dériver la loi du droit”, because in Book XI, Chapter iii, he had defined liberty as “le droit de faire tout ce que les lois permettent” (N. I, i, p. 206, Pl. II, p. 395); for it might seem that according to this definition the citizens could still be called free, even if some of them had to obey unjust or anti-social laws.⁶⁷

In fact Janet has isolated this sentence from its context, thus distorting its meaning. A few lines previously, Montesquieu had said that liberty

ne peut consister qu'à pouvoir faire ce que l'on doit vouloir, et à n'être point contraint de faire ce que l'on ne doit pas vouloir.

(N. I, i, p. 205, Pl. II, p. 395)

By using the words “doit” and “ne doit pas” Montesquieu introduced a normative principle, and there is no reason to suppose that he was talking only of the obligation of the civil law, and not of the natural law as well.⁶⁸ In any case, in Book XI he was discussing liberty “dans son rapport avec la constitution”, he was fighting arbitrariness in government; but in the next Book, where he was dealing with liberty “dans son rapport avec le citoyen”, it can be seen that he also believed in the conventional natural right of freedom, as protected by a fair system of criminal law. His conception of liberty is twofold—political liberty ensured by constitutional checks, personal liberty ensured by just laws.⁶⁹

We have seen that in his study of civil law, Montesquieu was not impartial and did not advocate total obedience to government. If we now return to the opening book of the Esprit des lois, we find further confirmation of this view, since he there stated that the civil law should be a practical expression of the natural law:

Fait pour vivre dans la société, [l'homme] y pouvait oublier les autres; les législateurs l'ont rendu à ses devoirs par les lois politiques et civiles.

(Lois, I, i, N. I, i, p. 4, Pl. II, p. 234)

The general purpose of the civil law is thus to enforce the natural law of sociability, which Montesquieu mentioned in Chapter ii.

That the civil law should express the natural law is further shown by the definition of law given in Chapter iii:

La loi, en général, est la raison humaine, en tant qu'elle gouverne tous les peuples de la terre; et les lois politiques et civiles de chaque nation ne doivent être que les cas particuliers où s'applique cette raison humaine.

(N. I, i, p. 8, Pl. II, p. 237)

As Camille Jullian showed many years ago, this definition is similar to those given in Antiquity by Plato and Cicero.⁷⁰ Cicero, expressing the doctrine of the Stoics, identified the universal and unwritten law with right reason and with the mind of God.⁷¹ In the Pensées, Montesquieu quoted one of Cicero's definitions of law:

Lex est ratio summi Jovis

(P. 1519, Bkn. 109, N. II, p. 435, Pl. I, p. 1002)

as a motto for the Esprit des lois. Another Pensée provides an illuminating commentary on Book I, iii:

C'est une pensée admirable de Platon […], que les lois sont faites pour annoncer les ordres de la raison à ceux qui ne peuvent la recevoir immédiatement d'elle

(P. 1859, Bkn. 208, N. II, p. 555, Pl. II, p. 1042)

Clearly, in these passages, Montesquieu accepted that civil law is a practical expression of natural law.

It could be argued that these Pensées are irrelevant to the Esprit des lois (even though they were probably written soon after its publication); it could further be argued that since in his definition of law in Book I, iii, Montesquieu did not say “la raison de Dieu” as Cicero had done, but “la raison humaine”, he really meant that civil and political laws are not the expression of an absolute standard of reason, but simply of the nature of things, which happens to be rational.⁷² It is quite true that the definition has a connection with the paragraphs that follow, where the relationship between positive law and la nature des choses is discussed and where consequently the descriptive aspect of law predominates. But it also has a connection with Chapter i, where the normative aspect of law is emphasized, in the passage dealing with “les rapports d'équité antérieurs à la loi positive qui les établit”. The deleted manuscript version of the definition, “La raison humaine donne des lois politiques et civiles à tous les peuples de la terre”,⁷³ which stresses the active side of the legislator's task, makes even more obvious the normative aspect of Montesquieu's conception of law, which exists alongside the descriptive aspect.⁷⁴

The idea that morals can be formulated mathematically is one that can only occur in an age such as the seventeenth century, when confidence in science had not given way to disillusionment about the value of its achievements. By his ambitious plan of explaining the whole world in rational terms, Descartes helped to foster this confidence, which lasted during the eighteenth and even into the nineteenth century. To say that Montesquieu was an optimist may be going too far, but the Esprit des lois is the work of a philosopher who, like Descartes, believed in the ability of reason to explain the world of man. It is the work of a rationalist who tried to deduce positive law mathematically from a few basic concepts.

The School of Natural Law were also rationalists, in that they tried to deduce natural and positive law scientifically, again from a few basic concepts, principally the nature of man and of society. These concepts were fewer than those which interested Montesquieu, since the School of Natural Law were not so concerned with the relation between laws and such factors as the character and history of each people, the constitution and climate of their country. Because he studied in detail the influence of these factors, Montesquieu can justly be called more scientific than his predecessors. But this does not mean that his proposed method of studying positive law excludes their two basic normative concepts, the nature of man and the nature of society.

Both Montesquieu and the School of Natural Law were rationalists, but they were not exclusively rationalists. The majority of critics claim that Montesquieu's attitude both to natural and to positive law was, in practice, more empirical than that of the School of Natural Law. In the next four chapters, it will be shown whether such claims are based on a real understanding of natural law.

Notes

1. Joseph de La Porte, Observations sur l'Esprit des lois, ou l'art de lire ce livre, de l'entendre et d'en juger, Amsterdam, Mortier, 1751, pp. 10-11; cf. Domat, op. cit., Livre préliminaire, i, 2, paragraph 1, vol. I, p. 6.

2. We use the word moral here in the French sense of mental or intellectual.

3. Criticisms of the plan of the Lois are too numerous to mention; among the most remarkable defences of the plan are Barckhausen's (Montesquieu, ses idées et ses œuvres, pp. 253-66) and Oudin's (De l'unité de l'Esprit des lois, Rousseau, 1910—a work greatly superior to his Le Spinozisme de Montesqueiu).

4. Cf. N. I, pp. B-C.

5. Three modern scholars holding this view are Seguin, ‘Montesquieu’ in É. Callot, La Philosophie de la vie au XVIII^e siècle, étudiée chez Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Maupertuis, La Mettrie, Diderot, d'Holbach, Linné, Rivière, 1965, pp. 74-6 and 90; S. Cotta, Montesquieu e la scienza della società, Turin, Ramella, 1953, p. 90; Starobinski, op. cit., p. 18.

6. Brunet, op. cit., pp. 84, n. 2, and 89-90.

7. Ibid., pp. 104-7, 113-21, and 124-9.

8. In particular, he accepted the Cartesian theory of vortices and rejected Newton's theory of gravitation: P. 206, Bkn. 1458, N. II, p. 79, Pl. I, p. 1345 (1721-31); Spicilège 565, N. II, p. 848, Pl. II, p. 1370 (1730-34); P. 1380, Bkn. 927, N. II, p. 408, Pl. I, p. 1252 (1734-45).

9. Loc. cit.

10. See N. III, p. 113.

11. See also P. 76, Bkn. 690, N. II, pp. 23-4, Pl. I, pp. 1187-8; cf. C. Beyer, ‘Montesquieu et l'esprit cartésien’, Congrès, pp. 161-2.

12. The sentence in square brackets was later deleted by M. and is not printed in Pl. I, p. 39.

13. Cf. Descartes, Discours, VI, p. 63 and Principes, II, xxxvii, xxxix and xlii, pp. 84, 86, 87-8, also Blake, Ducasse and Madden, op. cit., pp. 75-103; for a more favourable account of Descartes as an experimenter, see G. Milhaud, Descartes savant, Alcan, 1921, pp. 191-212, but even Milhaud admits (pp. 197, 204) that Descartes was only a good experimenter when he forgot his a priori theories. For two specialist accounts of M.'s Cartesianism in the sciences, see D. André, ‘Sur les écrits scientifiques de Montesquieu’, Correspondant, 1880, pp. 1054-81 and J. Jaffray, ‘La Carrière scientifique de Montesquieu’, La Nature, 1928, pp. 465-7.

14. Montesquieu, p. 9.

15. Ibid., pp. 10 and 68.

16. Ibid., p. 187.

17. Montesquieu l'homme et l'œuvre, p. 28.

18. Cf. n. 1 to p. 29 of the Ehrard edition of Montesquieu l'homme et l'œuvre.

19. Even though Oudin, Le Spinozisme de Montesquieu, p. 116, claims that Descartes put forward “les principes de la vraie méthode scientifique”.

20. Histoire de la science politique, vol. II, p. 399.

21. Barckhausen, Montesquieu, ses idées et ses œuvres, p. 15; G. R. Havens, From Reaction to Revolution. The Age of Ideas in Eighteenth-Century France, New York, Holt, 1955, pp. 101-2.

22. Étiemble, ‘Montesquieu’, in Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, vol. III, Gallimard, 1958, pp. 707-8; Loy, op. cit., p. 92-3.

23. Montesquieu, pp. 80-92.

24. Cf. Berlin, Montesquieu, p. 277.

25. The following scholars, the first three of whom have a specialized knowledge of constitutional law, claim that M.'s picture of the English Constitution is distorted: E. Eichthal, Souveraineté du peuple et gouvernement, Alcan, 1895, pp. 93, 123-4, 126-39; O. W. Holmes, Collected Legal Papers, Constable, 1920, p. 263; B. Mirkine-Guetzévitch, ‘De l'Esprit des lois à la démocratie moderne’, Bicentenaire, p. 14; Ehrard, Politique de Montesquieu, p. 127. For a contrary view, also by an expert, see C. Eisemann, ‘L'Esprit des lois et la séparation des pouvoirs’, Mélanges R. Carré de Malberg, Sirey, 1933, p. 184, n. 1; cf. also Loy, op. cit., pp. 110-11.

26. Among innumerable critics holding this view, see especially P. Vernière, ‘Montesquieu et le monde musulman’, Congrès, pp. 200-1.

27. Op. cit., Champion, 1929, p. 153.

28. Ibid., pp. 153-6.

29. ‘Le Manuscrit des Geographica et l'Esprit des lois’, RHLF, 1952, pp. 456-9.

30. ‘L'Influence de la philosophie cartésienne sur la littérature française’ [1896], Études d'histoire littéraire, Champion, 1929, p. 84.

31. ‘L'Influence de la philosophie cartésienne’, pp. 85-9.

32. Lanson made this point in ‘Le Rôle de l'expérience dans la formation de la philosophie du XVIII^e siècle en France’, Revue du mois, 1910, p. 6. He restated it in a note to his ‘Le Déterminisme historique et l'idéalisme social dans l'Esprit des lois’, p. 135.

33. ‘Montesquieu et la science politique’ II^e Centenaire, p. 154.

34. Montaigne, Essais, II, xii, Les Belles Lettres, vol. III, 1947, pp. 365-74; Pascal, Pensées, V, 294, in Œuvres de Blaise Pascal, Hachette, 1908-21, vol. XIII, pp. 214-22.

35. Cf. Davy, ‘Montesquien et la science politique’, pp. 153-4.

36. ‘Montesquieu in 1948’, French Studies, 1949, pp. 309-12; M., p. 260.

37. Cours de philosophie positive, vol. IV, pp. 127-8.

38. Thèse de Bordeaux, p. 425; cf. p. 452.

39. Le Spinozisme de Montesquieu, p. 63.

40. In the Disc. prél., xli, vol. I, p. 24, Grotius claimed that universal consent is an indication only of the law of nations, not of the law of nature; but in the body of the work, I, i, 12, vol. I, pp. 53-4, he said that natural law itself can be derived a posteriori from universal consent; he used this a posteriori method particularly in the case of slavery and of international relations (see below, Ch. 6, II and IV).

41. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, cited in Pierre Coste's famous translation, Essai philosophique concernant l'entendement humain, Amsterdam, Schelte, 1700, IV, iii, 18, p. 698. It was through this translation that many eighteenth-century philosophes became acquainted with Locke; cf. J. Hampton, ‘Les traductions françaises de Locke au XVIII^e siècle’, Revue de littérature comparée, 1955, pp. 240-51. M. owned Coste's translation (D. 1489). Like Locke, Cumberland believed that morality can be formulated scientifically, Traité philosophique des lois naturelles, i, 7, p. 47.

42. Thèse de Bordeaux, p.415; C.-J. Beyer, in ‘Le Problème du déterminisme social dans l'Esprit des lois’, Romanic Review, 1948, pp. 103-4, exaggerates M.'s originality in the same way as Durkheim.

43. Cf. Courtney, ‘Montesquieu’, p. 36.

44. Cours de philosophie positive, vol. IV, p. 129.

45. Alengry, op. cit., p. 392; Bréhier, op. cit., vol. II, p. 374.

46. De republica, III, xxii, 33; in the Loeb edition, De republica, De legibus, p. 211.

47. Dn., VIII, i, 5, vol. II, p. 358; Malebranche, Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion [1688], VIII, xiv, in Œuvres complètes, Vrin, 1958-68, vol. XII, 1965, p. 192; Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God [1704-5] [hereafter Discourse], in Works, Knapton, 1738, vol. II, p. 624-6.

48. Apart possibly from the slight doubt revealed in the last sentence, there is no evidence to support R. Caillois' view that for M. justice is merely a convention (‘Montesquieu et l'anthéisme contemporain’, Congrès, p. 335).

49. Cf. Aron, Les grandes doctrines, p. 46.

50. Politique d'Aristote, Dumont, 1848, Préface, p. lxxxviii.

51. Cf. P. Martino, ‘De Quelques résidus métaphysiques dans l'Esprit des lois’, Revue d'histoire de la philosophie et d'histoire de la civilisation, 1946, p. 241.

52. Op. cit., pp. 44 and 33-4.

53. See below, Ch. 4, IV.

54. Le Spinozisme de Montesquieu, pp. 69-70.

55. See below, Ch. 4, IV.

56. An Essay on Man [1733-4], I, x, l.294, Methuen, 1950, p. 51.

57. Cf. E. Bersot, ‘Montesquieu’, in Études sur le XVIII^e, siècle, Durand, 1855, vol. II, p. 317.

58. Cf. Lanson, ‘Le Déterminisme historique’, pp. 138-9.

59. Thèse de Bordeaux, pp. 420-1.

60. 1752: 12th Proposition: see Beyer, ‘Montesquieu et la censure religieuse’, pp. 107-8, and p. 108, n. 1.

61. N. I, i, p. 43; Pl. II, p. 265; cf. Brethe de la Gressaye, Lois, vol. I, p. 259, n. 9, to p. 77, and M.'s Réponses et explications. N. III, p. 662, Pl. II, p. 1183.

62. Alengry, op. cit., pp. 390-1; G. Gurvitch, ‘La Sociologie juridique de Montesquieu’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1939, p. 623.

63. Cf. Barrière, ‘L'Humanisme de l'Esprit des lois’, p. 49, and Meyer, ‘Politics and Morals..’, pp. 871-2.

64. Durkheim, Thèse de Bordeaux, p. 420, n. 2; Alengry, loc. cit.; Gurvitch, loc. cit.

65. Brethe de la Gressaye, Lois, vol. II, pp. 427-8, n. 20, to p. 247.

66. See below, pp. 112-5.

67. Janet, Histoire de la science politique, vol. II, p. 366; cf. P. Archambault, Montesquieu, choix de textes et introduction, Michaud, 1883, p. 42; J. Charmont, La Renaissance du droit naturel, Chauny et Quinsac, 1927, p. 39.

68. Cf. Franck, op. cit., p. 73; É. Faguet, La Politique comparée de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire, Lecène et Oudin, 1902, pp. 14-15; Dedieu, Montesquieu, p. 156.

69. Cf. V. Delbos, La Philosophie française, Plon, 1921, pp. 183-4, and Ehrard, Politique de Montesquieu, p. 124.

70. Montesquieu, livre premier de l'Esprit des lois, accompagné d'un commentaire, Hachette, 1897, p. 25.

71. Cf. De legibus, II, iv, 10; in the Loeb edition, De republica, De legibus, pp. 382-3.

72. Cf. Montesquieu e la scienza della società, p. 372.

73. See Barckhausen, Montesquieu, l'Esprit des lois, p. 23; not given in Nagel, Pléiade or Brethe de la Gressaye editions.

74. Among the many critics who accept this interpretation of Lois, I, iii, see: Janet, Histoire de la science politique, vol. II, p. 330; Barckhausen, Montesquieu, ses idées et ses œuvres, p. 46; Brethe de la Gressaye, ‘La Philosophie du droit de Montesquieu’, Archives de philosophie du droit, Sirey, 1962, p. 208; Ehrard, ‘Les Études sur Montesquieu’, p. 66.

Bibliography of Works Cited

Montesquieu's Works

I. Complete works

Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, texte présenté et annoté par Roger Caillois, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1949-51, 2 vols.

Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, publiées sous la direction de M. André Masson, Nagel, 1950-55, 3 vols.

II. Separate works

De l'Esprit des lois, texte établi et présenté par Jean Brethe de la Gressaye, Les Belles Lettres, 1950-61, 4 vols.

III. Extracts

Montesquieu: livre premier de l'Esprit des lois, accompagné d'un commentaire, par Camille Jullian, Hachette, 1897.

Primary Sources

I. Antiquity

Cicero, M. Tullius, De republica, de legibus, Loeb edition, tr. C. W. Keyes, Heinemann, 1928.

II. Middle ages to eighteenth century

Aquinas, Thomas, Summa theologica, literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1913–42, 22 vols.

Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques, Principes du droit naturel, Geneva, Barillot, 1747.

Clarke, Samuel, A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, in The Works of Samuel Clarke, Knapton, 1738, 4 vols, vol. II, pp. 513-733.

Cumberland, Richard, bishop of Peterborough, Traité philosophique des lois naturelles, ou l'on recherche et l'on établit, par la nature des choses, la forme de ces lois, leurs principaux chefs, leur ordre, leur publication et leur obligation, Amsterdam, Mortier, 1744.

Descartes, René, Discours de la méthode, in: Ouvres de Descartes, etc., vol. VI, pp. 1-78.

———. Principes de la philosophie, in: Ouvres de Descartes, etc., vol. IX, pp. 1-358.

Domat, Jean, Les Lois civiles dans leur ordre naturel, le droit public et legum delectus, Cavelier, 1705, 2 vols.

Gravina, Gian Vincenzo, Origines iuris civilis, quibus ortus et progressus iuris civilis, ius naturale, gentium et xii. tabulæ legesque ac senatusconsulta explicantur, Leipzig, Gleditsch, 1708.

Grotius, Hugo, Le Droit de la guerre et de la paix. […] Nouvelle traduction par Jean Barbeyrac […]. Avec les notes de l'auteur même, qui n'avaient point encore paru en français; et de nouvelles notes du traducteur, Amsterdam, Pierre de Coup, 1724, 2 vols.

Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, in: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. W. Molesworth, Bohn and Longman, 1839-45, 11 vols, vol. III.

———. Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society, in: The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, etc., vol. II.

Locke, John, Essai philosophique concernant l'entendement humain, traduit de l'anglais de M. Locke par Pierre Coste, Amsterdam, Schelte, 1700.

Malebranche, Nicolas de, Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion, in: Œuvres complètes de Malebranche, Vrin, 1958-68, 20 vols, vol. XII, 1965.

Montaigne, Michel de, Essais, ed. J. Plattard, Les Belles Lettres, 1947, 6 vols.

Pascal, Blaise, Pensées, in: Œuvres de Blaise Pascal, ed. L. Brunsvicg et P. Boutroux, Hachette, 1908-21, 14 vols, vols. XII-XIV.

Pope, Alexander, An Essay on Man, ed. M. Mack, Methuen, 1950.

Pufendorf, Samuel von. Les Devoirs de l'homme et du citoyen, tels qu'ils lui sont prescrits par la loi naturelle, traduits du latin de feu M. le baron de Pufendorf, par Jean Barbeyrac. Avec quelques notes du traducteur, Amsterdam and Luxembourg, Chevalier, 1708.

———. Le Droit de la nature et des gens, ou système général des principes les plus importants de la morale, de la jurisprudence, et de la politique, traduit du latin de feu M. le baron de Pufendorf par Jean Barbeyrac […]. Avec des notes du traducteur; et une préface, qui sert d'introduction à tout l'ouvrage, Amsterdam, Pierre de Coup, 1712, 2 vols.

Secondary Sources

I. Studies on Montesquieu

Alengry, Franck, ‘Montesquieu’, in: Essai historique et critique sur la sociologie chez Auguste Comte, Alcan, 1900, pp. 389-403.

André, Désiré, ‘Sur les écrits scientifiques de Montesquieu’, Correspondant, 1880, pp. 1054-81.

Aron, Raymond, ‘Montesquieu’, in: Les Grandes doctrines de sociologie historique: Montesquieu, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Alexis de Tocqueville, Les sociologues et la révolution de 1848, Les Cours de la Sorbonne, Centre de documentation universitaire, [1960], pp. 14-55.

Barckhausen, Henri A., Montesquieu, l'Esprit des lois et les archives de La Brède, Bordeaux, Michel et Forgeot, 1904.

———. Montesquieu, ses idées et ses æuvres d'après les papiers de La Brède, Hachette, 1907.

———. ‘L'Humanisme de l'Esprit des lois’, in: II^e centenaire de l'Esprit des lois de Montesquieu, conférences organisées par la ville de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, Delmas, 1949, pp. 31-64.

Berlin, Isaiah, ‘Montesquieu’, in: The Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. XLI, Oxford University Press, pp. 267-96.

Bersot, Ernest, ‘Montesquieu’, in: Études sur le XVIII^e siècle, Durand, 1855, vol. II, pp. 297-357.

Beyer, Charles-Jacques, ‘Montesquieu et la censure religieuse de l'Esprit des lois’, Revue des sciences humaines, 1953, pp. 105-31.

———. ‘Montesquieu et l'esprit cartésien’, in: Actes du congrès Montesquieu, Bordeaux, Delmas, 1956, pp. 159-73.

Caillois, Roger, ‘Montesquieu et l'athéisme contemporain’, in Actes du congrès Montesquieu, Bordeaux, Delmas, 1956, pp. 327-36.

Comte, Auguste, ‘Quarante-septième leçon: appréciation sommaire des principales tentatives philosophiques entreprises jusqu'ici pour constituer la science sociale’, in Cours de philosophie positive, Schleicher, 1908, 7 vols, vol. IV, pp. 118-50.

Cotta, Sergio, Montesquieu e la scienza della società, Turin, Ramella, 1953.

Courtney, C. P., ‘Montesquieu’, in: French Literature and its Background, ed. J. Cruickshank, vol. III, The Eighteenth Century, Oxford University Press, 1968, pp. 30-44.

Davy, Georges, ‘Montesquieu et la science politique’, in: II^e Centenaire de l'Esprit des lois de Montesquieu, conférences organisées par la ville de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, Delmas, 1949, pp. 127-71.

Dedieu, Joseph, Montesquieu, Alcan, 1913.

———. Montesquieu l'homme et l'œuvre, Boivin, 1943.

Delbos, Victor, ‘Montesquieu’, in: La Philosophie française, Plon, 1921, pp. 169-89.

Dodds, Muriel, Les récits de voyages, sources de l'Esprit des lois de Montesquieu, Champion, 1929.

Durkheim, Émile, ‘Dans quelle mesure Montesquieu a-t-il contribué à constituer la science des sociétés’, Revue d'histoire politique et constitutionnelle, 1937, pp. 407-63. [Also entitled: ‘Montesquieu: sa part dans la fondation des sciences politiques et de la science des sociétés’, this is a translation, by F. Alengry, of Durkheim's thesis of 1892: Quid Secundatus ‘politicæ scientiæ’ instituendæ contulerit].

Ehrard, Jean, ‘Les Études sur Montesquieu et l'Esprit des lois’, L'Information littéraire, 1959, pp. 55-66.

Eichthal, Eugène d', ‘La Séparation des pouvoirs politiques. Montesquieu et l'Angleterre’, in: Souveraineté du peuple et gouvernement, Alcan, 1895, pp. 89-154.

Eisemann, Charles, ‘L'Esprit des lois et la séparation des pouvoirs’, in: Mélanges R. Carré de Malberg, Sirey, 1933, pp. 165-92.

Étiemble, ‘Montesquieu’, in Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, Histoire des littératures, Gallimard, vol. III, 1958, pp. 696-710.

Faguet, Émile, La Politique comparée de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire, Société française d'imprimerie et de librairie, ancienne librairie Lecène, Oudin, 1902.

Franck, Adolphe, ‘Les Publicistes du XVIII^e siècle: Montesquieu—L'Esprit des lois’, Revue contemporaine, 1858, pp. 49-87.

Gurvitch, Georges, ‘La Sociologie juridique de Montesquieu’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1939, pp. 611-26.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, ‘Montesquieu’, in: Collected Legal Papers, Constable, 1920, pp. 250-65.

Jaffray, J., ‘La Carrière scientifique de Montesquieu’, La Nature, 1928, pp. 465-7.

‘Montesquieu’, in: Histoire de la science politique dans ses rapports avec la morale, Alcan, 1887, 2 vols, vol. II, pp. 322-99.

Lanson, Gustave, ‘Le Déterminisme historique et l'idéalisme social dans l'Esprit des lois’, Études d'histoire littéraire, Champion, 1929, pp. 135-63.

La Porte, Joseph de, Observations sur l'Esprit des lois, ou l'art de lire ce livre, de l'entendre et d'en juger, Amsterdam, Mortier, 1751.

Loy, Robert J., Montesquieu, New York, Twayne, 1968.

Martino, Pierre, ‘De Quelques résidus métaphysiques dans l'Esprit des lois’, Revue d'histoire de la philosophie et d'histoire de la civilisation, 1946, pp. 235-43.

Meyer, Paul H., ‘Politics and Morals in the Thought of Montesquieu’, in: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Geneva, Institut et musée Voltaire, vol. LVI, 1967, pp. 845-91.

Mirkine-Guetzévitch, Boris, ‘De l'Esprit des lois à la démocratie moderne’, in: La Pensée politique et constitutionnelle de Montesquieu, Bicentenaire de l'Esprit des lois, Sirey, 1952, pp. 11-24.

Oudin, Charles, Le Spinozisme de Montesquieu, Pichon et Durant Auzias, 1911.

———. De l'unité de l'Esprit des lois, Rousseau, 1910.

Seguin, ‘Montesquieu’, in: É. Callot, La Philosophie de la vie au XVIII^e siècle, étudiée chez Fontenelle, Montesquieu, Maupertuis, La Mettrie, Diderot, D'Holbach, Linné, Rivière, 1965, pp. 65-145.

Shackleton, Robert, ‘Montesquieu in 1948’, French Studies, 1949, pp. 299-323.

Starobinski, Jean, Montesquieu par lui-même, Seuil, 1961.

Vernière, Paul, ‘Montesquieu et le monde musulman d'après l'Esprit des lois’, in: Actes du congrès Montesquieu, Bordeaux, Delmas, 1956, pp. 175-90.

Weil, Françoise, ‘Le Manuscrit des Géographica et l'Esprit des lois’, RHLF, 1952, pp. 451-61.

II. Other studies

Blake, R., Ducasse, C., Madden, E., Theories of Scientific Method, University of Washington Press, 1960.

Bréhier, Émile, Histoire de la philosophie, Presses Universitaires de France, 3 vols, vol. I, 1926-8, vol. II, 1929-30.

Brunet, Pierre, L'Introduction des théories de Newton en France au XVIII^e siècle: avant 1738, Blanchard, 1931.

Hampton, John, ‘Les traductions françaises de Locke au XVIII^e siècle’, Revue de littérature comparée, 1955, pp. 240-51.

Havens, G. R., From Reaction to Revolution. The Age of Ideas in Eighteenth-Century France, New York, Holt, 1955.

Lanson, Gustave, ‘L'Influence de la philosophie cartésienne sur la littérature française’, in: Études d'histoire littéraire, Champion, 1929, pp. 58-96.

———. ‘Le Rôle de l'expérience dans la formation de ‘a philosophie du XVIII^e siècle en France.—I. La Transformation des idées morales et la naissance des morales rationnelles de 1680 à 1715’, Revue du mois, 1910, pp. 5-28.

Milhaud, Gaston, Descartes savant, Alcan, 1921.