The Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires is a book by Volney, first published in 1791.
Contemplating the remains of Palmyra by moonlight, the narrator is visited by the "Genius of Ruins and Tombs". The Genius carries him into orbit around the Earth and teaches him the natural law governing the rise and fall of civilizations. Together they witness the outbreak of the French Revolution, followed by the convening of a "General Assembly of Nations" bringing together all the peoples of the world.
The book concludes with a naturalistic account of the origins of myths and religious beliefs. Volney defines Christianity as an "allegorical worship of the sun" and challenges the historical existence of Jesus.
At once an heir to the Age of Enlightenment and a work of pre-Romanticism, The Ruins combines melancholy lyricism with biting sarcasm, and eschatological anxiety with revolutionary hope.Jean Gaulmier described it as a "rationalist apocalypse".
The Ruins enjoyed considerable success both in France and internationally, particularly in Great Britain and the United States, where President Thomas Jefferson personally oversaw its translation.
Background
Sources of inspiration
The dialogue between a young man and a semi-divine mentor recalls Fénelon's The Adventures of Telemachus, the most widely read work in eighteenth-century France after the Bible.
The dreamlike atmosphere of the Orient evokes One Thousand and One Nights, first translated into French by Antoine Galland in 1704.
The idea of a journey through space around the Earth was borrowed from Voltaire, whose pseudonym inspired that of Volney. In Micromégas (1752), a giant from the star Sirius and his Saturnian companion observe from space the tiny inhabitants of Earth and their boundless pretensions.
The author of The Ruins also acknowledged his intellectual debt to Condillac, who, together with Voltaire, had introduced the empiricist and sensualist philosophy of John Locke to France. Volney frequented the salon of Baron d'Holbach and that of Madame Helvétius, the widow of Claude Adrien Helvétius, both disciples of Condillac.
Several Enlightenment writers had reflected on the causes of the decline and fall of civilizations, including Montesquieu, the Abbé de Mably (Condillac's brother), and, in Britain, Adam Ferguson and Edward Gibbon.
The chapters of The Ruins devoted to the history of religions were inspired by the theories of Charles-François Dupuis, who is said to have shared with Volney the manuscript of The Origin of All Religious Worship, then still in preparation.
Although Volney travelled through Ottoman Egypt and Syria between 1782 and 1785, he never visited Palmyra, the opening setting of The Ruins. Instead, he drew upon the descriptions published by Robert Wood and James Dawkins, the two archaeologists who had rediscovered the site.
The poetics of ruins
Since the Renaissance, ancient ruins had long provided poets with a privileged object of contemplation, from Petrarch to Joachim du Bellay and Jacques Grévin, and later James Thomson, Louis Racine, and Aimé Feutry in the eighteenth century.
The itineraries of every Grand Tour converged on Rome. The remains of the Roman Empire formed an essential stage in the education of Europe's elites, who collected the capricci of Panini and the engravings of Piranesi.
Diderot, whom Volney met at the salon of Baron d'Holbach, commented on the paintings of Hubert Robert, exhibited at the Salon of 1767:
In his novel The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One (1771), Louis-Sébastien Mercier imagined the Palace of Versailles lying in ruins. There, the narrator encounters Louis XIV, restored to life by divine justice. Shedding "a torrent of tears", the king finally becomes aware of the suffering that he had inflicted upon his people.
Edward Young, the author of the Night Thoughts, found in cemeteries a privileged setting for philosophical meditation. He also invited his readers to rise above the world and observe it from the heavens:
James Macpherson's The Poems of Ossian likewise inspired the elegiac tone of the opening chapters of The Ruins. Young and Macpherson, two pioneers of British Romanticism, enjoyed widespread popularity in late eighteenth-century France.
Publication during the French Revolution Volney began writing The Ruins in 1787, following the publication of his Travels in Egypt and Syria. Elected as a deputy of the Third Estate in 1789, he depicted the creation of the National Constituent Assembly in the central chapter of his book, entitled "The New Age".
The Ruins was published shortly after the Constitution of 1791 came into force. As announced by Le Moniteur Universel on 13 September 1791, the work was offered for sale at the price of five pounds by three Parisian bookseller-publishers. A second, revised edition appeared a few months later.
Summary
The narrative opens with an invocation: "Hail, solitary ruins, holy sepulchres, and silent walls!" The ruins teach all humanity that all are equal before death, that oppression is temporary, and that wealth is ultimately vain. They raise the mind above "the weary struggle of the passions."
The Genius of Palmyra
Volney returned in memory to the journey he had made through Ottoman Syria in 1784, during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid I. After three days crossing the desert, he reached the ruins of ancient Palmyra. At dusk, seated upon the shaft of a fallen column, the traveller falls into a profound reverie.
Of the once flourishing and populous city of Palmyra, only its "gloomy skeleton" remained before him. He realized that his native Europe might one day suffer the same fate:
Absorbed in melancholy, Volney attributes the death of civilizations to "the justice of heaven fulfilling its decrees" whose designs are beyond human understanding.
Suddenly, as night falls, a spectre appears and addresses him in a grave, resonant voice:
The Genius explains that the history of civilizations is governed by "eternal laws, prior to all codes and all prophets."
The Earth Seen from the Heavens The Genius lays his hand upon Volney's head, and his mind, filled with a "celestial flame", is borne aloft into the air. "Floating in the void", he finds himself in orbit around the Earth. His eyes, sweep across the Northern Hemisphere, from the Atlantic Ocean to Siberia and Malaysia. His gaze falls upon the valley of the Nile, where he discerns the Giza pyramid complex. He also beholds the ruins of Babylon and Palmyra, where he had stood only moments before.
The Rise and Decline of Civilizations Throughout history, the Genius explains, the human species has been governed by "self-love, the aversion to pain, and the desire for happiness." Primitive man, "naked in body and in mind", like the other animals, was motivated solely by the instinct for survival and reproduction. In pursuit of these ends, he gradually learned to master his environment through "the repeated experience of diverse accidents."
To overcome their individual weakness and confront the dangers of nature, human beings united into tribes. Wearied by the uncertainties of hunting and gathering, they domesticated animals and invented agriculture. The abundance of harvests enabled them to establish ever larger sedentary communities.
So long as self-love remains in accordance with natural needs, the Genius explains, it encourages mutual assistance and progress. But when men seek limitless pleasures and covet the possessions of others, it becomes "a corrupting poison", giving rise to "a general and disastrous discord." The Genius reveals to the traveller "the twofold source of all the sufferings of human life": ignorance and greed. Ignorance causes human beings to mistake their true interests, while greed leads them to sacrifice the interests of others to their own.
Injustice, he continues, originated within the family through patriarchy and patrilineal descent:
Conflicts gradually spread to every level of society: "man armed himself against man, family against family, tribe against tribe", until the Earth became "a bloody theatre of discord and brigandage." By departing from the laws of nature, humanity wandered into "a labyrinth of errors and calamities."
Human beings soon realized that greed ultimately turned against itself: "what one man seizes today will be taken from him tomorrow." They therefore devised laws to restrain it. Justice is the condition of a nation's prosperity. Whenever individuals' natural interests – security, the protection of property, and freedom of labour – are frustrated, societies decline. Laws must direct self-love toward the common good.
This equilibrium, however, is fragile. As societies expand, social relations become more complex, laws prove inadequate and are gradually subverted, and those entrusted with restraining greed succumb to it themselves. No form of government is immune to such corruption: even democracy degenerates when magistrates appropriate the powers entrusted to them.
Society fragments into rival groups seeking to monopolize political power. Laws cease to protect the people, instead justifying slavery and sanctioning hereditary privilege. The aristocracy, controlling taxation and military force, becomes a caste distinct from the mass of the population.
When a civilization remains relatively small, several circumstances may limit these abuses. Threatened by external enemies, rulers have an interest in preserving the loyalty of their people. Internally, traditions of independence and the absence of widespread poverty make tyranny difficult: a despot cannot long impose his authority upon free men who own property and are capable of resisting or emigrating if their rights are violated. Such conditions foster civic cohesion: every citizen is prepared to bear arms because in doing so he also serves his own interest.
Yet cities absorb cities, and kingdoms absorb kingdoms, until vast empires emerge. Peoples lose their laws and customs. Eventually, "a single man rules millions of his fellow men against their will or without their consent." The monarch exploits social divisions, governing less by force than by fostering rivalry among his subjects, drawing "his strength from their weakness."
This despotism, together with the corruption that accompanies it, brings about economic decline. Increasing taxation discourages labour. Princes divert wealth toward luxurious expenditure – palaces, tombs, and religious monuments – to the detriment of useful public works. The concentration of landed property ruins small landowners and divides society between "a class of opulent idlers and a multitude of impoverished hirelings." Production declines, and societies lose their vitality, collapsing beneath their own weight.
Empires, weakened from within, vulnerable to the "accidents of nature", and incapable of withstanding crises, become easy prey for invaders. The societies born of these conquests perpetuate the division between conquerors and conquered, thereby deepening injustice.
This tragic condition also finds expression in religion. Overwhelmed by their misfortunes and unable to explain them, human beings imagine heavenly tyrants in the likeness of those who oppress them on earth. These "gloomy and misanthropic" religions come to glorify suffering, condemn self-love, and turn mankind away from every earthly enjoyment. Such an "antisocial" morality in turn hastens the decline of civilizations.
The Genius concludes that mankind are "the eternal instruments of their own misfortunes." History demonstrates that societies rise or fall according to whether they observe or violate "the physical laws of the human heart." So long as rulers persist in "the ways of falsehood and tyranny," and peoples remain imprisoned by superstition and ignorance, civilizations are destined for ruin.