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1 THE GREAT PRIMAEVAL CONTRACT OF ETERNAL SOCIETY: EDMUND BURKE S VIEWS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT PIERRE LURBE Université Paul Valéry Montpellier D D ISSN (spausdintas) ISSN (internetinis) SUMMARY. At first glance, the attempt to find common ground between Edmund Burke and Kristijonas Donelaitis is gratuitous and doomed to fail: biographically, nothing connects them, and they cannot even have heard of each other. Yet what they at least have in common is a deep-seated interest in the notions of time and duration: for the Lithuanian poet, the ever-recurring seasons provide human life with substance and pattern; for the Irish philosopher, they are of the essence of what nations are all about. As a critic of contractual theories, Burke argues that society is eternal, and proceeds from a primæval contract that was always there. He is particularly critical of the view that the earth belongs exclusively to the living, a view that has come to be associated with Thomas Jefferson: for Burke, if such were really the case, men would be no better than the flies of a summer. This image immediately conjures up a vision of the summer months, and makes us realize that Burke and Donelaitis are in fact kindred spirits: they share a common Protestant faith, a concern for the downtrodden peasantry, a view of the social contract as primæval, and the belief that men belong to deeply rooted, historical communities that make them truly human. KEYWORDS: Edmund Burke, Kristijonas Donelaitis, Thomas Jefferson, chain of being, commonwealth, nation, partnership, prescription, presumption, prejudice, reason, seasons, social contract, society, state of nature, time. In the context of a conference held to celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the great Lithuanian poet Kristijonas Donelaitis, it may seem quite paradoxical, to put it mildly, to offer a paper concerning the Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke ( ), whose links with Lithuania in general, and Donelaitis in particular, are, strictly speaking, non-existent. Indeed, it is a paradox to attempt to try and bring together two authors who never met, never read each other, and could not even have been aware of each other s existence: as Donelaitis s works were published after both his own death and that of Burke, there was no way the Irishman could ever have heard about the Lithuanian pastor cum poet; 67

2 PIERRE LURBE 68 conversely, given the geographical, cultural, and linguistic distances involved, there is precious little chance that the name of Edmund Burke, let alone his works, were familiar to the Donelaitis household. When comparing the biographical data concerning their respective lives, what leaps from the page are the huge differences between them. Edmund Burke came from a partly impoverished family on his mother s side, but from a reasonably wellto-do one on his father s side; he was famous from a very young age on (he was barely 27 when he published his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful), quickly became a senior Whig politician, and spent his adult life in public sight, in the cockpit of high politics. He was immediately recognized as a talented and fearsome orator, fighting for a number of progressive and reforming causes, denouncing the creeping encroachments of the executive power on Parliament in the late 18 th century, trying to obtain the impeachment of Warren Hastings for his notorious corruption, and taking the side of the American insurgents rebelling against British rule; as a politician, Burke had very high standards concerning what public life ought to be like. From 1768, he became a great landowner in his own right, with a mansion and a 300-acre estate at Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. His Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) made him even more famous, if that were at all possible. 1 By contrast, Kristijonas Donelaitis came from peasant stock, fell into hardship when his father died, and during his time at Karaliaučius (Königsberg) Cathedral school, he had to live in the dormitory for poor students. 2 After a brief spell as a teacher ( ), he was appointed pastor of a Protestant parish, Tolminkiemis, between 1743 and his death in 1800, leading an obscure, uneventful life 3 in the service of his flock. Donelaitis s fame was only posthumous, thanks to Rėza s publication of The Seasons nearly forty years after the author s death. Where Burke was famous, often fêted, and widely mourned when he passed away, Donelaitis s life and death passed unnoticed. The words of that other great rural poet, Thomas Gray, seem oddly apposite to describe the Lithuanian pastor s anonymity in death: Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree s shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 1 For a recent, concise overview of Burke s life, see Lock F. P., Burke s Life. In Dwan D. and Insole Ch. J., eds. The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke.Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012, For a very extended view of the same topic, see Lock F. P., Edmund Burke. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2 vol., Korsakas K. Kristijonas Donelaitis and his poem The Seasons. In Donelaitis K.The Seasons, illustrated by V. K. Jonynas, translated by P. Tempest. Vilnius, Vaga, 1985, 6. 3 In the words of Korsakas K., Donelaitis led a quiet and regular life (The Seasons, op. cit., 6).

3 THE GREAT PRIMAEVAL CONTRACT OF ETERNAL SOCIETY: EDMUND BURKE S VIEWS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 4 [ ] Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway d, Or wak d to ecstasy the living lyre. 5 A confrontation, or a comparison between Burke and Donelaitis, therefore seems to be a perfectly gratuitous, futile, and hopeless task. Yet in spite of this, the Irish philosopher and the Lithuanian poet may turn out to have had at least some unpredictable common points, providing a first, tentative, tenuous link between them. If anything, the notions of time and duration, of the passing of time, of cyclical repetition, are a central concern for a poet whose major work is entitled The Seasons. The marvelously evocative opening stanzas of Spring Joys both point to the ever-recurring cycle of the succeeding seasons The sun again ascending wakes the world / And laughs as it undoes what winter s done 6, and provide a local habitation and a name 7 to this experience that is so central to human life, by placing it in the actual landscape Donelaitis was so familiar with. For him, seasons are not mere abstractions ; they literally take place, altering the perception and the physical feel of the places men and women live and toil in; there is a rootedness and physicality about the passing of time that prevents it from becoming a mere abstraction. As it happens, time and duration are also central concerns for Burke, and for him too, they have a quality of rootedness that precludes their being turned into pure ciphers. The Irishman does not deal with the changes brought about in the local parish by the successive seasons of the year; his material is different, and has to do with societies and nations. But as he argues, as early as 1782, time, and not only space, is of the essence of what a nation is all about: Because a nation is not an idea only of local extent, and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers, and in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or one set of people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of ages and of generations; it is a Constitution made by what is ten thousand times better than choice, it is made by the peculiar 4 Gray, Elegy written in a country churchyard, vs Ibid, vs Donelaitis K., The Seasons, op. cit., Spring Joys, vs To borrow Shakespeare s felicitous phrase from A Midsummer Night s Dream, Act V, scene 1, vs

4 PIERRE LURBE circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time. It is a vestment, which accommodates itself to the body. 8 Although this was a party political speech, not a piece of political philosophy, the import of this passage is clear: beyond the issue immediately under discussion, Burke indirectly addresses the major difficulty of all contractual theories. Whatever form they take, 9 what such theories have in common is the premise that there was one initial, founding moment, when all men gathered together and somehow decided, or chose, 10 to leave the state of nature behind, and set up instead a society and/or a polity or a commonwealth that could protect them, both from themselves and from foreign enemies. 11 The exact status of this founding moment, if such a moment there was, is never made entirely clear. 12 As it is not and cannot be directly observable, lost as it is in immemorial times, it can only be reconstructed through a kind of mental experiment, and the use of conjecture to fill the gaps in the historical record. 13 At best, for lack of direct, incontrovertible evidence about the original social contract, it is at least possible to suggest analogically that the state of nature is not an entirely fanciful theory, as when Hobbes refers his readers to the 70 8 Burke E. Speech on the Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament [May 7, 1782]. In Burke E. Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 4, Miscellaneous Writings, ed. foreword and notes by F. Canavan. Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, Inc., 2002, < SWv4c2.html>. 9 For the purpose of the present argument, the differences between the Hobbesian, Lockean and Rousseauian versions need not be gone into. 10 Hence Burke s use of the phrase the choice of one day when referring to the inaugural moment when the contract is passed. 11 See Hobbes T., Leviathan (1651), part II, ch. XVII, Of the Causes, Generation and Definition of a Common-Wealth ; John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689), ch. VIII, Of the Beginning of Political Societies ; Rousseau J.-J. Du Contrat social (1762), Livre I, ch. VI, «Du pacte social». 12 A very fine and nuanced analysis of the conceptual difficulties involved in the interpretation of contractual theory, with particular reference to John Locke, is to be found in Jeremy Waldron s classic article, John Locke: Social Contract versus Political Anthropology. The Review of Politics, vol. 51, no 1 (winter, 1989), This is a difficulty explicitly tackled by Locke: To this [that, which begins and actually constitutes any political society, is nothing but the consent of any number of free men capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society] I find two objections made: First, that there are no instances to be found in history of a company of men independent and equal one amongst another, that met together, and in this way began and set up a government. [ ] To the first there is this to answer. That it is not at all to be wondered, that history gives us but a very little account of men, that lived together in the state of nature. [ ] For tis with commonwealths as with particular persons, they are commonly ignorant of their own births and infancies [...]. (Locke J. Second Treatise of Government (1689), edited by Goldie M. London, Dent, and Rutland (Vermont), Tuttle, 1993, ch. VIII, Of the Beginning of Political Societies, 165).

5 THE GREAT PRIMAEVAL CONTRACT OF ETERNAL SOCIETY: EDMUND BURKE S VIEWS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT contemporary accounts of what he calls the savage people of America, 14 or closer to home, to the warlike postures taken by the European states of the day, which are still in a state of war akin to that of the earlier, original state of nature. 15 In expressing his doubts concerning both the state of nature and the idea of an initial social contract, Burke was at one with the major Scottish philosophers of the age, such as David Hume or Adam Ferguson, who argued forcefully that it was futile to try and imagine a moment in time when man was not a social animal. 16 As far back as history can be traced, human beings have always been social beings, and there is no reason to assume that things were otherwise even when no archives remain to testify to this basic feature of human nature. 17 Man cannot be thought of apart from society; his being is social through and through, without any need to resort to idle fictions, 18 like the state of nature or the original contract. For Burke too, human society reaches way back into the past, and there is no need either to posit the distinction between a pre-contractual and a post-contractual era. This view is neatly encapsulated in one of these memorable phrases he was so adept at coining: the great primæval contract of eternal society. 19 As ever with Burke, whose talent for twisting meanings was formidable, the terms society and contract are both taken up, only the better to be voided of the significance they usually had in the philosophical or speculative system of principles 20 in which they were found. The sly, pointed introduction of the two telling adjectives, eternal and primæval, is sufficient to do the trick: if society is indeed eternal, it can hardly be the result of a contract in the usual sense; and if the contract itself is primæval, it is 14 It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of warre as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the concord whereof depends on naturall lust, have no government at all ; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before (Hobbes T. Leviathan (1651), edited by McPherson C. B. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1985, part I, ch. XIII, Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery, 187). 15 [...] yet in all times, Kings, and Persons of Sovereigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators; [ ] which is a posture of War (Hobbes T., ibid., ). 16 Hume D. Of the Original Contract,1748; Ferguson A. An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), sec. I, Of the question relating to the State of Nature. 17 With him the society appears to be as old as the individual, and the use of the tongue as universal as that of the hand or the foot (Ferguson A. An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), edited by F. Oz-Salzberger. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, Section I, Of the question relating to the State of Nature, This state of nature, therefore, is to be regarded as a mere fiction, not unlike that of the golden age, which poets have invented; [ ] This, no doubt, is to be regarded as an idle fiction; [...] (Hume D. A Treatise of Human Nature ( ), edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, with text revised and notes by P. H. Nidditch. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980, vol. III, Of Morals, Part II, Of Justice and Injustice, section I, Burke E., Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), edited by C. C. O Brien. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1986, Hume D., Political Essays, edited by K. Haakonssen. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, Of the Original Contract (1748),

6 PIERRE LURBE because it is so primitive as to antedate any distinct, contractual moment. Society and contract are coæval, and this is because they were always there in the first place. What is more, human society itself is only one component part of the great society, or organized whole, that makes up the entire universe; Burke s vision is more than reminiscent of the great chain of beings, 21 in which all the elements of the created world are carefully placed in their respective, proper positions, by divine providence: Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primæval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. 22 It is therefore a futile exercise to pry into the past, and inquire after the founding moment of the commonwealth: It is always to be lamented when men are driven to search into the foundations of the Commonwealth. 23 Such a quest is premised on the mistaken view that foundations can somehow be discovered and laid bare, while the relevant issue for Burke is not to look for the origins of a commonwealth, but to try and understand what holds it together across centuries. Any stability and continuity that a commonwealth may enjoy is not to be explained in terms of some founding moment, located in a mythical past and a no less mythical contract; they ought to be accounted for by a mixture of prescription, presumption, and prejudice, all of which are ultimately grounded in human psychology. For Burke, who gives the word a definitely idiosyncratic meaning, prescription is the ancient authority of an established practice, 24 which is itself backed up by presumption, the human propensity to approve and perpetuate a familiar state of things ; 25 in the same way, prejudice is defined positively as the judgment that infers the rightness of ancient or previous practices, 26 which therefore should not be tampered with lightly. Relying on prescription, presumption, and prejudice is not an instance of unreason; it is testimony to a trust in nature, which for Burke can be defined as wisdom without reflection : The classic work on the topic is Lovejoy A. O. The Great Chain of Being: A study of the history of an idea. New York, Harper and Row, 1965 [1936]. 22 Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., Burke E., Speech on the Duration of Parliaments [May 8, 1780], quoted by David Bromwich. The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke. From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence. Cambridge, Mass., and London, England, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014, Bromwich D., op. cit., Ibid. 26 Bromwich D., op. cit., This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection; or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it (Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., 119).

7 THE GREAT PRIMAEVAL CONTRACT OF ETERNAL SOCIETY: EDMUND BURKE S VIEWS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind unmeaning prejudices for man is a most unwise, and a most wise, being. The individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it almost always acts right. 28 This, of course, is a highly conservative defense of the British constitution, but one that is built on the anthropological observation that human beings are essentially creatures of habit, and that ultimately habits and manners matter far more than any decision of the will to set up and maintain a particular form of government. The semantic proximity between habits as habitudes, and habits as vestment, is strikingly brought home when Burke connects, in a passage that has already been quoted, the social habitudes of the people, and the vestment, which accommodates itself to the body. 29 The concern for clothing man s metaphorical nakedness is ever present in Burke; his awareness of human fragility is forcefully expressed in Reflections, where he describes the naked shivering nature 30 of human beings, a nakedness that needs all the warmth of ancient, solidly established institutions to be sheltered and protected. Yet at least, the contractual theories that Burke steadfastly opposed were built on the premise that the contract was an event that took place once and for all, and that was not meant to be indefinitely started again. It is true that Hobbes envisaged the possibility that the covenant, by which a relationship of obedience and protection was instituted between the subject and the sovereign, might functionally break down; 31 as for Locke, he argued that if the legislative or the prince betrayed the trust placed in them by the subjects, the duty of obedience was at an end: 32 in both cases, this would entail a return to the state of nature. But even though Locke had argued the case for legitimate rebellion against a ruler that patently breached the contract with his subjects, he had been very careful to stress that only the most serious circumstances could justify a resort to arms. His main concern was civil peace, so that his justification of rebellion was hedged by a number of provisions to 28 Burke E., Speech on the Reform of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament [May 7, 1782], in op. cit., See above, note Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., 171. The Shakespearean echo is unmistakable, as Lear s Poor naked wretches (King Lear, Act III, scene 4, l. 32) immediately comes to mind. Nor was it the first time that Burke made use of imagery taken from this particular play: see Bromwich D., op. cit., The Obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign, is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them (Hobbes T. Leviathan, op. cit., Part II, Ch. xxi, Of the Liberty of Subjects, 272). 32 [ ] whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence (Locke J., Second Treatise, op. cit., ch. XIX, Dissolution of Government, 227). 73

8 PIERRE LURBE make sure that people would not lightly resort to rebellion and revolution, for mere peccadilloes of their rulers. 33 Rebellion had to be the last resort. However, an unexpected twist was to be given to the standard contract theory by no less a figure than Thomas Jefferson, the future president of the United States, in a famous letter to another future American president, James Madison, written on 6 September 1789, just after the beginning of the French Revolution. 34 Jefferson gave an entirely new turn to the standard theory by arguing that the earth belongs to the living, 35 a principle that is described as so commonsensical as to be self-evident: I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living : that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. 36 This principle that the earth belongs to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive application and consequences, in every country, and most especially in France. 37 Jefferson was fully aware of the novelty of his approach, 38 and he went to great lengths to try and turn it into a viable political programme. For however selfevident he claimed his principle to be, any attempt at making it workable immediately ran into considerable difficulties. The main difficulty is to successfully transpose a principle that may well be valid for individuals, to the collective level of an entire society or country. At this higher level than the individual one, how are the living to be defined? For a start, it is an obvious, prosaic fact that human generations cannot be disentangled; at any given time, the living include the new-born baby, as well as the centenarians, and all the different age-groups shading into each other in-between. But then in what sense can it be said that the earth belongs to all of the above categories, from the cradle to the grave? If belonging entails, as Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty will be borne by the people, without mutiny or murmur (Locke J., ibid., 229). 34 Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 6 September 1789, The Founders Constitution, vol. 1, ch. 2, Popular Basis of Political Authority, Document 23, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2000 [1987] < The above-mentioned online edition of Jefferson s letter is itself based on The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. I, edited by J. P. Boyd et al. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, In subsequent quotations from the letter, page numbers will be those from the print edition. See also D. Bromwich, op. cit., Jefferson s letter has come to be known by this name. See Bromwich D., op. cit., Jefferson T., op. cit., Jefferson T., op. cit., The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water (Jefferson T., op. cit., 68).

9 THE GREAT PRIMAEVAL CONTRACT OF ETERNAL SOCIETY: EDMUND BURKE S VIEWS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT it obviously does for Jefferson, the exercise of political capacity, it is difficult to see how this could apply to those who are either in their nonage or in their dotage. Yet Jefferson is not one to stop at this kind of difficulty: What is true of every member of the society individually, is true of them all collectively, since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals. To keep our ideas clear when applying them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age on the same day, and to die on the same day, leaving a succeeding generation in the moment of attaining their mature age all together. Let the ripe age be supposed of 21 years, and their period of life 34 years more, that being the average term given by the bills of mortality to persons who have already attained 21 years of age. Each successive generation would, in this way, come on, and go off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do now. Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations, during its course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d generation receives it clear of the debts and incumberances of the 1st, the 3d of the 2d, and so on. For if the 1st could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation. Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence. 39 Jefferson blithely ignores, or simply leapfrogs the difficulties his principle involves. He cuts the Gordian knot through the simple expedient of assuming that generations can be supposed to succeed each other neatly, the one dying out to make room for the next one, and so on until the end of time. Once this very large point is granted, everything becomes thinkable, and possible, and the American statesman launches into elaborate calculations to demonstrate that every succeeding generation is free to start all over again. Basing his approach on the use of statistics, Jefferson comes up with the neat, irrefutable conclusion that each successive generation enjoys an effective, useful lifespan of nineteen years, beyond which it necessarily clears the place for the succeeding generation: What is true of a generation all arriving to self-government on the same day, and dying all on the same day, is true of those in a constant course of decay and renewal, with this only difference. A generation coming in and going out entire, as in the first case, would have a right in the 1st year of their self-dominion to contract a debt for 33 years, in the 10th for 24, in the 20th for 14, in the 30th for 4, whereas generations, changing daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant term, beginning at the date of their contract, and ending when a majority of those of full age at that date shall be dead. The length of that term may be estimated from the tables of mortality, corrected by the circumstances of climate, occupation &c. peculiar to the country of the contractors. Take, for instance, the table of M. de Buffon wherein he states 23,994 deaths, and the ages at which they happened. Suppose a society in which 23,994 persons are born every year, and live to the ages stated in this table. The conditions of that society will be as follows. 1st. It will consist constantly of 617,703 persons of all ages. 21y. Of those living at any 39 Jefferson T., op. cit.,

10 PIERRE LURBE one instant of time, one half will be dead in 24 years 8 months. 3dly. 10,675 will arrive every year at the age of 21 years complete. 41y. It will constantly have 348,417 persons of all ages above 21 years. 5ly. And the half of those of 21 years and upwards living at any one instant of time will be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation, nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly extend a debt. 40 Even though the example Jefferson chooses to give concerns taxation, this is of course with an eye to the political implication of his principle: On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. [ ] Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. 41 The Jeffersonian hypothesis is as convincing an instance as can be found of what Burke means when, in Reflections, he keeps warning against the danger posed by sophisters, œconomists, and calculators, 42 who in the name of rationality, experiment with human nature instead of paying heed to the lessons drawn from history and experience. Not that Burke repudiates reason as such. What he does object to, however, is a certain way of using, or rather abusing reason: Burke is against reason gone mad, against an excess of rationality that paradoxically has much in common with the wildest flights of fancy hence the wonderful image of the aëronauts of France. 43 The distinction with him is between dry, cold reason, uninformed by experience and wisdom, and a gentler, less arrogant, more humane form of reason, which can be called reasonableness the very word used by Locke in Reasonableness of Christianity, a work that was deliberately pitted against the dry rationality of deism. Although it is uncertain whether Burke ever read Jefferson s letter to Madison, this passage (part of which is already familiar) from Reflections reads eerily like an answer to Jefferson, for it is his very principle that the Irish philosopher systematically rebuts: Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal Jefferson T., ibid. 41 Jefferson T., op. cit., But the age of chivalry is gone. - That of sophisters, œconomists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever (Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., 170). 43 [ ] standing on the firm ground of the British constitution, let us be satisfied to admire rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights the aëronauts of France (Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., 376).

11 THE GREAT PRIMAEVAL CONTRACT OF ETERNAL SOCIETY: EDMUND BURKE S VIEWS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primæval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. 44 The gist of Burke s argument is that society is not a contract in the commercial sense of the word, but a partnership, a keyword that is repeated several times through this passage. Etymologically, the word partner comes from the older term parcener, the meaning of which is defined as follows: 1. A person who shares, or has a part in, something with another or others; a partner; a sharer, a partaker; 2. Law. A person who shares equally with another or others in the inheritance of an estate from a common ancestor; a coheir. 45 The notion of partnership is the polar opposite of the Jeffersonian view of successive generations that have no relation with each other: not only does it stress the solidarity, the sharing, in the present, between all those who are alive here and now; it also reaches deep into the past, stressing that all human beings are the heirs of their predecessors, and even well into the future, taking into account the generations of the yet unborn. Far from arguing that the earth belongs only to the living, Burke makes it quite clear that if anything, all those who are alive here and now are no more than temporary possessors and life-renters in [the commonwealth], not [its] entire masters ; 46 in a dazzling intellectual experiment of his own, he pursues Jefferson s arguments to its logical end, and concludes with one of those memorable, startling images he had the knack of conjuring up: But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated is, lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters, that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail or commit waste on the inheritance by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society, hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many 44 Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., Oxford English Dictionary, online edition. 46 Burke E., Reflections, op. cit.,

12 PIERRE LURBE 78 ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer. 47 The final image, comparing mankind to summer flies, is abrupt, striking, and by unmistakingly hinting at the passing of seasons, takes us straight back to the world of Kristijonas Donelaitis. Of course, a single, isolated instance like this should not be overplayed. Although Burke uses natural imagery to make a political point, through significant metaphors, 48 this has little to do with the work of the Lithuanian poet, who describes nature and village life in the raw, in all their starkness. Yet this reminds us of how much, in fact, Burke and Donelaitis have in common, above and beyond the all too obvious differences between them. Both came from the periphery, or the margins of the state they belonged to: Burke hailed from Ireland, Donelaitis from East Prussia, otherwise known as Lithuania Minor; both had first-hand knowledge of what it felt like to live in the countryside; and of course, both were Protestants, a form of faith that made the Lithuanian and the Irishman kindred spirits in more than one way, for as Burke asserted: All protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. 49 They also shared the same classic, mediæval vision of the great chain of being: where the stork asserts, in The Seasons, that God when he was fashioning the world / Created hosts of creatures of all kinds, / To each appointing his own fare and place, 50 Burke had argued that Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primæval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. 51 Nor do the similarities stop here, for both writers share a common sense of the frailty of human life, of its poignantly transient character; whilst for Burke, men are no more than temporary possessors and life-renters in the commowealth they were born into, 52 Donelaitis mourns the fleeting character of human life in a restrained, epigrammatic poetic statement: 47 Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., This is probably one of the most famous: Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number, or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meager, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour (Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., 181). 49 Burke E., Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies [March 22, 1775], quoted in Bromwich D., op. cit., Donelaitis K., The Seasons, op. cit., Spring Joys, vs Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., 195. See above, note Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., 192. See above, note 47.

13 THE GREAT PRIMAEVAL CONTRACT OF ETERNAL SOCIETY: EDMUND BURKE S VIEWS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Each man, when he is born, is like a bud From which at first a little bloom is hatched. When this has faded and the petals gone, It bears its fruit and then to life, adieu! 53 However conservative they were, both men were outraged by the plight of the oppressed, whether the downtrodden Lithuanian peasants, or the no less downtrodden Irish Catholic peasantry, whose fate was little better than that of Lithuanian serfs. Burke s seething anger against the unfeeling tyranny of a mungril Irish Landlord, 54 is echoed throughout The Seasons by Donelaitis s acerbic jibes agaisnt the Germanized or Frenchified landlords who mercilessly exploit the local peasantry. The sense of loss, of an earlier, simpler, gentler age that is forever gone, is pervasive in both works: Where have the days of Lithuania gone, When Prussians did not know the German tongue Nor go round wearing leather shoes and boots, But proudly wore bast shoes, as peasants do! 55 Thus Donelaitis, to whom Burke might answer, by way of rejoinder: Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! 56 Ultimately, for both Donelaitis and Burke, the embodiment and guarantee of the proper humanity of man is the historical community, 57 and more precisely still, the local, historically rooted community to which human beings first belong; this, in Burke s language, is the little platoon : To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that 53 Donelaitis K., The Seasons, op. cit., Summer Toil, vs The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, edited by T. Copeland & others. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1958, vol. I, Donelaitis K., The Seasons, op. cit., Autumn Boons, vs Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., Williams R., Culture and Society , Harmondsworth, Penguin Books in association with Chatto & Windus, 1977 [1958], Ch. I, Contrasts, i. Edmund Burke and William Cobbett,

14 PIERRE LURBE portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage. 58 Love for the little platoon is much in evidence in The Seasons too, where the character of Krizas displays the kind of affection to his neighbors and fellow-men that leads on, through an ever-expanding benevolence, to love to our country and to mankind : Our cordial neighbour Krizas bore a true Lithuanian s love for all his fellow-men. Particularly those who worked for him He never tired of loving as himself. He never forced hard tasks on anyone But offered tasty morsels, roast or boiled, As should a farmer, to all those who toiled. 59 The world of Donelaitis s Seasons, and the kind of values it offers and propounds, would have looked familiar to Burke, and would have been congenial to him. Conversely, there is little doubt that Donelaitis would have felt comfortable with Burke s account of the great primæval contract of eternal society, while the summer flies would have been a familiar sight, and a metaphor the immediacy of which he would have responded to. Each would have felt at home with the other, for in their own, distinctive ways, both were busy writing up the simple annals of the poor. Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor Burke E., Reflections, op. cit., Donelaitis K., The Seasons, op. cit., Winter Cares, vs Gray, Elegy written in a country churchyard, vs

15 THE GREAT PRIMAEVAL CONTRACT OF ETERNAL SOCIETY: EDMUND BURKE S VIEWS ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT Pierre Lurbe PIRMYKŠTĖ VISUOMENĖS SUTARTIS: EDMUNDO BURKE O POŽIŪRIS Į VISUOMENINĘ SUTARTĮ SANTRAUKA. Iš pirmo žvilgsnio bandymas rasti kažką iš esmės bendro tarp Edmundo Burke o ir Kristijono Donelaičio atrodo lemtas žlugti: jų biografijų niekas nesieja ir vienas apie kitą jie nieko nebuvo girdėję. Tačiau bent vienas dalykas jiems bendras tai dėmesys laikui ir trukmei: lietuviui poetui pasikartojantys metų laikai žmonių gyvenimui suteikia turinį ir formą, o airiui filosofui jie sudaro tautų esmę. Kaip sutarties teorijų kritikas Burke as teigia, kad visuomenė yra amžina ir neatsiejama nuo pirmykštės sutarties. Jis ypač nepritaria požiūriui, kad žemė priklauso tik gyviesiems. Tai Thomo Jeffersono mintis, bet jeigu ji būtų tikrai teisinga, tuomet ir žmonės nebūtų daugiau negu vasaros musės. Šis įvaizdis iš karto asocijuojasi su vasaros mėnesiais. Tada mes suprantame, jog Burke as ir Donelaitis išties giminingos dvasios: jiedu dalijasi bendru protestantišku tikėjimu, abiem rūpi vargstantys valstiečiai, į socialinę sutartį jie žiūri kaip į ateinančią iš amžių glūdumos ir abu tiki, kad žmonių priklausymas gilias šaknis turinčioms istorinėms bendruomenėms padaro juos tikrais žmonėmis. RAKTAŽODŽIAI: Edmundas Burke as, Kristijonas Donelaitis, Thomas Jeffersonas, būties grandinė, sandrauga, tauta, partnerystė, nurodymas, prielaida, išankstinė nuostata, protas, metų laikai, socialinė sutartis, visuomenė, gamtos būsena, laikas. 81