{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_23092/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_23092","id":"gutenberg_23092","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23092","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Conduct of life","Simplicity"],"text":"Produced by Chris Curnow, Sarah Jensen, Matt Mello and the\nOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  THE SIMPLE LIFE\n\n  By CHARLES WAGNER\n  _Author of The Better Way_\n\n  _Translated from the French by Mary Louise Hendee_\n\n\n  GROSSET & DUNLAP\n  Publishers, New York\n\n\n  Copyright, 1901, by\n  McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.\n\n\n\n\n  CONTENTS\n\n                                                           Page\n\n     I. OUR COMPLEX LIFE                                      1\n\n    II. THE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICITY                            15\n\n   III. SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT                                22\n\n    IV. SIMPLICITY OF SPEECH                                 39\n\n     V. SIMPLE DUTY                                          52\n\n    VI. SIMPLE NEEDS                                         68\n\n   VII. SIMPLE PLEASURES                                     80\n\n  VIII. THE MERCENARY SPIRIT AND SIMPLICITY                  96\n\n    IX. NOTORIETY AND THE INGLORIOUS GOOD                   111\n\n     X. THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME                  128\n\n    XI. SIMPLE BEAUTY                                       139\n\n   XII. PRIDE AND SIMPLICITY IN THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN      151\n\n  XIII. THE EDUCATION FOR SIMPLICITY                        167\n\n   XIV. CONCLUSION                                          188\n\n\n\n\nTHE SIMPLE LIFE\n\nI\n\nOUR COMPLEX LIFE\n\n\nAt the home of the Blanchards, everything is topsy-turvy, and with\nreason. Think of it! Mlle. Yvonne is to be married Tuesday, and to-day\nis Friday!\n\nCallers loaded with gifts, and tradesmen bending under packages, come\nand go in endless procession. The servants are at the end of their\nendurance. As for the family and the betrothed, they no longer have a\nlife or a fixed abode. Their mornings are spent with dressmakers,\nmilliners, upholsterers, jewelers, decorators, and caterers. After that,\ncomes a rush through offices, where one waits in line, gazing vaguely at\nbusy clerks engulfed in papers. A fortunate thing, if there be time when\nthis is over, to run home and dress for the series of ceremonial\ndinners--betrothal dinners, dinners of presentation, the settlement\ndinner, receptions, balls. About midnight, home again, harassed and\nweary, to find the latest accumulation of parcels, and a deluge of\nletters--congratulations, felicitations, acceptances and regrets from\nbridesmaids and ushers, excuses of tardy tradesmen. And the\n_contretemps_ of the last minute--a sudden death that disarranges the\nbridal party; a wretched cold that prevents a favorite cantatrice from\nsinging, and so forth, and so forth. Those poor Blanchards! They will\nnever be ready, and they thought they had foreseen everything!\n\nSuch has been their existence for a month. No longer possible to\nbreathe, to rest a half-hour, to tranquillize one's thoughts. _No, this\nis not living!_\n\nMercifully, there is Grandmother's room. Grandmother is verging on\neighty. Through many toils and much suffering, she has come to meet\nthings with the calm assurance which life brings to men and women of\nhigh thinking and large hearts. She sits there in her arm-chair,\nenjoying the silence of long meditative hours. So the flood of affairs\nsurging through the house, ebbs at her door. At the threshold of this\nretreat, voices are hushed and footfalls softened; and when the young\n_fianc\u00e9s_ want to hide away for a moment, they flee to Grandmother.\n\n\"Poor children!\" is her greeting. \"You are worn out! Rest a little and\nbelong to each other. All these things count for nothing. Don't let them\nabsorb you, it isn't worth while.\"\n\nThey know it well, these two young people. How many times in the last\nweeks has their love had to make way for all sorts of conventions and\nfutilities! Fate, at this decisive moment of their lives, seems bent\nupon drawing their minds away from the one thing essential, to harry\nthem with a host of trivialities; and heartily do they approve the\nopinion of Grandmamma when she says, between a smile and a caress:\n\n\"Decidedly, my dears, the world is growing too complex; and it does not\nmake people happier--quite the contrary!\"\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nI also, am of Grandmamma's opinion. From the cradle to the grave, in his\nneeds as in his pleasures, in his conception of the world and of\nhimself, the man of modern times struggles through a maze of endless\ncomplication. Nothing is simple any longer: neither thought nor action;\nnot pleasure, not even dying. With our own hands we have added to\nexistence a train of hardships, and lopped off many a gratification. I\nbelieve that thousands of our fellow-men, suffering the consequences of\na too artificial life, will be grateful if we try to give expression to\ntheir discontent, and to justify the regret for naturalness which\nvaguely oppresses them.\n\nLet us first speak of a series of facts that put into relief the truth\nwe wish to show.\n\nThe complexity of our life appears in the number of our material needs.\nIt is a fact universally conceded, that our needs have grown with our\nresources. This is not an evil in itself; for the birth of certain needs\nis often a mark of progress. To feel the necessity of bathing, of\nwearing fresh linen, inhabiting wholesome houses, eating healthful food,\nand cultivating our minds, is a sign of superiority. But if certain\nneeds exist by right, and are desirable, there are others whose effects\nare fatal, which, like parasites, live at our expense: numerous and\nimperious, they engross us completely.\n\nCould our fathers have foreseen that we should some day have at our\ndisposal the means and forces we now use in sustaining and defending our\nmaterial life, they would have predicted for us an increase of\nindependence, and therefore of happiness, and a decrease in competition\nfor worldly goods: they might even have thought that through the\nsimplification of life thus made possible, a higher degree of morality\nwould be attained. None of these things has come to pass. Neither\nhappiness, nor brotherly love, nor power for good has been increased.\nIn the first place, do you think your fellow-citizens, taken as a whole,\nare more contented than their forefathers, and less anxious about the\nfuture? I do not ask if they should find reason to be so, but if they\nreally are so. To see them live, it seems to me that a majority of them\nare discontented with their lot, and, above all, absorbed in material\nneeds and beset with cares for the morrow. Never has the question of\nfood and shelter been sharper or more absorbing than since we are better\nnourished, better clothed, and better housed than ever. He errs greatly\nwho thinks that the query, \"What shall we eat, and what shall we drink,\nand wherewithal shall we be clothed?\" presents itself to the poor alone,\nexposed as they are to the anguish of morrows without bread or a roof.\nWith them the question is natural, and yet it is with them that it\npresents itself most simply. You must go among those who are beginning\nto enjoy a little ease, to learn how greatly satisfaction in what one\nhas, may be disturbed by regret for what one lacks. And if you would see\nanxious care for future material good, material good in all its\nluxurious development, observe people of small fortune, and, above all,\nthe rich. It is not the woman with one dress who asks most insistently\nhow she shall be clothed, nor is it those reduced to the strictly\nnecessary who make most question of what they shall eat to-morrow. As an\ninevitable consequence of the law that needs are increased by their\nsatisfaction, _the more goods a man has, the more he wants_. The more\nassured he is of the morrow, according to the common acceptation, the\nmore exclusively does he concern himself with how he shall live, and\nprovide for his children and his children's children. Impossible to\nconceive of the fears of a man established in life--their number, their\nreach, and their shades of refinement.\n\nFrom all this, there has arisen throughout the different social orders,\nmodified by conditions and varying in intensity, a common agitation--a\nvery complex mental state, best compared to the petulance of a spoiled\nchild, at once satisfied and discontented.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf we have not become happier, neither have we grown more peaceful and\nfraternal. The more desires and needs a man has, the more occasion he\nfinds for conflict with his fellow-men; and these conflicts are more\nbitter in proportion as their causes are less just. It is the law of\nnature to fight for bread, for the necessities. This law may seem\nbrutal, but there is an excuse in its very harshness, and it is\ngenerally limited to elemental cruelties. Quite different is the battle\nfor the superfluous--for ambition, privilege, inclination, luxury. Never\nhas hunger driven man to such baseness as have envy, avarice, and thirst\nfor pleasure. Egotism grows more maleficent as it becomes more refined.\nWe of these times have seen an increase of hostile feeling among\nbrothers, and our hearts are less at peace than ever.[A]\n\nAfter this, is there any need to ask if we have become better? Do not\nthe very sinews of virtue lie in man's capacity to care for something\noutside himself? And what place remains for one's neighbor in a life\ngiven over to material cares, to artificial needs, to the satisfaction\nof ambitions, grudges, and whims? The man who gives himself up entirely\nto the service of his appetites, makes them grow and multiply so well\nthat they become stronger than he; and once their slave, he loses his\nmoral sense, loses his energy, and becomes incapable of discerning and\npracticing the good. He has surrendered himself to the inner anarchy of\ndesire, which in the end gives birth to outer anarchy. In the moral life\nwe govern ourselves. In the immoral life we are governed by our needs\nand passions. Thus little by little, the bases of the moral life shift,\nand the law of judgment deviates.\n\nFor the man enslaved to numerous and exacting needs, possession is the\nsupreme good and the source of all other good things. It is true that in\nthe fierce struggle for possession, we come to hate those who possess,\nand to deny the right of property when this right is in the hands of\nothers and not in our own. But the bitterness of attack against others'\npossessions is only a new proof of the extraordinary importance we\nattach to possession itself. In the end, people and things come to be\nestimated at their selling price, or according to the profit to be drawn\nfrom them. What brings nothing is worth nothing: he who has nothing, is\nnothing. Honest poverty risks passing for shame, and lucre, however\nfilthy, is not greatly put to it to be accounted for merit.\n\nSome one objects: \"Then you make wholesale condemnation of progress, and\nwould lead us back to the good old times--to asceticism perhaps.\"\n\nNot at all. The desire to resuscitate the past is the most unfruitful\nand dangerous of Utopian dreams, and the art of good living does not\nconsist in retiring from life. But we are trying to throw light upon one\nof the errors that drag most heavily upon human progress, in order to\nfind a remedy for it--namely, the belief that man becomes happier and\nbetter by the increase of outward well-being. Nothing is falser than\nthis pretended social axiom; on the contrary, that material prosperity\nwithout an offset, diminishes the capacity for happiness and debases\ncharacter, is a fact which a thousand examples are at hand to prove. The\nworth of a civilization is the worth of the man at its center. When this\nman lacks moral rectitude, progress only makes bad worse, and further\nembroils social problems.\n\n[A] The author refers to the unparalleled bitterness of the conflict in\nFrance between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis principle may be verified in other domains than that of material\nwell-being. We shall speak only of education and liberty. We remember\nwhen prophets in good repute announced that to transform this wicked\nworld into an abode fit for the gods, all that was needed was the\noverthrow of tyranny, ignorance, and want--those three dread powers so\nlong in league. To-day, other preachers proclaim the same gospel. We\nhave seen that the unquestionable diminution of want has made man\nneither better nor happier. Has this desirable result been more nearly\nattained through the great care bestowed upon instruction? It does not\nyet appear so, and this failure is the despair of our national\neducators.\n\nThen shall we stop the people's ears, suppress public instruction, close\nthe schools? By no means. But education, like the mass of our age's\ninventions, is after all only a tool; everything depends upon the\nworkman who uses it.... So it is with liberty. It is fatal or lifegiving\naccording to the use made of it. Is it liberty still, when it is the\nprerogative of criminals or heedless blunderers? Liberty is an\natmosphere of the higher life, and it is only by a slow and patient\ninward transformation that one becomes capable of breathing it.\n\nAll life must have its law, the life of man so much the more than that\nof inferior beings, in that it is more precious and of nicer adjustment.\nThis law for man is in the first place an external law, but it may\nbecome an internal law. When man has once recognized the inner law, and\nbowed before it, through this reverence and voluntary submission he is\nripe for liberty: so long as there is no vigorous and sovereign inner\nlaw, he is incapable of breathing its air; for he will be drunken with\nit, maddened, morally slain. The man who guides his life by inner law,\ncan no more live servile to outward authority than can the full-grown\nbird live imprisoned in the eggshell. But the man who has not yet\nattained to governing himself can no more live under the law of liberty\nthan can the unfledged bird live without its protective covering. These\nthings are terribly simple, and the series of demonstrations old and new\nthat proves them, increases daily under our eyes. And yet we are as far\nas ever from understanding even the elements of this most important law.\nIn our democracy, how many are there, great and small, who know, from\nhaving personally verified it, lived it and obeyed it, this truth\nwithout which a people is incapable of governing itself? Liberty?--it is\nrespect; liberty?--it is obedience to the inner law; and this law is\nneither the good pleasure of the mighty, nor the caprice of the crowd,\nbut the high and impersonal rule before which those who govern are the\nfirst to bow the head. Shall liberty, then, be proscribed? No; but men\nmust be made capable and worthy of it, otherwise public life becomes\nimpossible, and the nation, undisciplined and unrestrained, goes on\nthrough license into the inextricable tangles of demagoguery.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen one passes in review the individual causes that disturb and\ncomplicate our social life, by whatever names they are designated, and\ntheir list would be long, they all lead back to one general cause, which\nis this: _the confusion of the secondary with the essential_. Material\ncomfort, education, liberty, the whole of civilization--these things\nconstitute the frame of the picture; but the frame no more makes the\npicture than the frock the monk or the uniform the soldier. Here the\npicture is man, and man with his most intimate possessions--namely, his\nconscience, his character and his will. And while we have been\nelaborating and garnishing the frame, we have forgotten, neglected,\ndisfigured the picture. Thus are we loaded with external good, and\nmiserable in spiritual life; we have in abundance that which, if must\nbe, we can go without, and are infinitely poor in the one thing needful.\nAnd when the depth of our being is stirred, with its need of loving,\naspiring, fulfilling its destiny, it feels the anguish of one buried\nalive--is smothered under the mass of secondary things that weigh it\ndown and deprive it of light and air.\n\nWe must search out, set free, restore to honor the true life, assign\nthings to their proper places, and remember that the center of human\nprogress is moral growth. What is a good lamp? It is not the most\nelaborate, the finest wrought, that of the most precious metal. A good\nlamp is a lamp that gives good light. And so also we are men and\ncitizens, not by reason of the number of our goods and the pleasures we\nprocure for ourselves, not through our intellectual and artistic\nculture, nor because of the honors and independence we enjoy; but by\nvirtue of the strength of our moral fibre. And this is not a truth of\nto-day but a truth of all times.\n\nAt no epoch have the exterior conditions which man has made for himself\nby his industry or his knowledge, been able to exempt him from care for\nthe state of his inner life. The face of the world alters around us, its\nintellectual and material factors vary; and no one can arrest these\nchanges, whose suddenness is sometimes not short of perilous. But the\nimportant thing is that at the center of shifting circumstance man\nshould remain man, live his life, make toward his goal. And whatever be\nhis road, to make toward his goal, the traveler must not lose himself in\ncrossways, nor hamper his movements with useless burdens. Let him heed\nwell his direction and forces, and keep good faith; and that he may the\nbetter devote himself to the essential--which is to progress--at\nwhatever sacrifice, let him simplify his baggage.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nTHE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICITY\n\n\nBefore considering the question of a practical return to the simplicity\nof which we dream, it will be necessary to define simplicity in its very\nessence. For in regard to it people commit the same error that we have\njust denounced, confounding the secondary with the essential, substance\nwith form. They are tempted to believe that simplicity presents certain\nexternal characteristics by which it may be recognized, and in which it\nreally consists. Simplicity and lowly station, plain dress, a modest\ndwelling, slender means, poverty--these things seem to go together.\nNevertheless, this is not the case. Just now I passed three men on the\nstreet: the first in his carriage; the others on foot, and one of them\nshoeless. The shoeless man does not necessarily lead the least complex\nlife of the three. It may be, indeed, that he who rides in his carriage\nis sincere and unaffected, in spite of his position, and is not at all\nthe slave of his wealth; it may be also that the pedestrian in shoes\nneither envies him who rides nor despises him who goes unshod; and\nlastly, it is possible that under his rags, his feet in the dust, the\nthird man has a hatred of simplicity, of labor, of sobriety, and dreams\nonly of idleness and pleasure. For among the least simple and\nstraightforward of men must be reckoned professional beggars, knights of\nthe road, parasites, and the whole tribe of the obsequious and envious,\nwhose aspirations are summed up in this: to arrive at seizing a\nmorsel--the biggest possible--of that prey which the fortunate of earth\nconsume. And to this same category, little matter what their station in\nlife, belong the profligate, the arrogant, the miserly, the weak, the\ncrafty. Livery counts for nothing: we must see the heart. No class has\nthe prerogative of simplicity; no dress, however humble in appearance,\nis its unfailing badge. Its dwelling need not be a garret, a hut, the\ncell of the ascetic nor the lowliest fisherman's bark. Under all the\nforms in which life vests itself, in all social positions, at the top as\nat the bottom of the ladder, there are people who live simply, and\nothers who do not. We do not mean by this that simplicity betrays itself\nin no visible signs, has not its own habits, its distinguishing tastes\nand ways; but this outward show, which may now and then be\ncounterfeited, must not be confounded with its essence and its deep and\nwholly inward source. _Simplicity is a state of mind._ It dwells in the\nmain intention of our lives. A man is simple when his chief care is the\nwish to be what he ought to be, that is, honestly and naturally human.\nAnd this is neither so easy nor so impossible as one might think. At\nbottom, it consists in putting our acts and aspirations in accordance\nwith the law of our being, and consequently with the Eternal Intention\nwhich willed that we should be at all. Let a flower be a flower, a\nswallow a swallow, a rock a rock, and let a man be a man, and not a fox,\na hare, a hog, or a bird of prey: this is the sum of the whole matter.\n\nHere we are led to formulate the practical ideal of man. Everywhere in\nlife we see certain quantities of matter and energy associated for\ncertain ends. Substances more or less crude are thus transformed and\ncarried to a higher degree of organization. It is not otherwise with the\nlife of man. The human ideal is to transform life into something more\nexcellent than itself. We may compare existence to raw material. What it\nis, matters less than what is made of it, as the value of a work of art\nlies in the flowering of the workman's skill. We bring into the world\nwith us different gifts: one has received gold, another granite, a third\nmarble, most of us wood or clay. Our task is to fashion these\nsubstances. Everyone knows that the most precious material may be\nspoiled, and he knows, too, that out of the least costly an immortal\nwork may be shaped. Art is the realization of a permanent idea in an\nephemeral form. True life is the realization of the higher\nvirtues,--justice, love, truth, liberty, moral power,--in our daily\nactivities, whatever they may be. And this life is possible in social\nconditions the most diverse, and with natural gifts the most unequal. It\nis not fortune or personal advantage, but our turning them to account,\nthat constitutes the value of life. Fame adds no more than does length\nof days: quality is the thing.\n\nNeed we say that one does not rise to this point of view without a\nstruggle? The spirit of simplicity is not an inherited gift, but the\nresult of a laborious conquest. Plain living, like high thinking, is\nsimplification. We know that science is the handful of ultimate\nprinciples gathered out of the tufted mass of facts; but what gropings\nto discover them! Centuries of research are often condensed into a\nprinciple that a line may state. Here the moral life presents strong\nanalogy with the scientific. It, too, begins in a certain confusion,\nmakes trial of itself, seeks to understand itself, and often mistakes.\nBut by dint of action, and exacting from himself strict account of his\ndeeds, man arrives at a better knowledge of life. Its law appears to\nhim, and the law is this: _Work out your mission._ He who applies\nhimself to aught else than the realization of this end, loses in living\nthe _raison d'\u00eatre_ of life. The egoist does so, the pleasure-seeker,\nthe ambitious: he consumes existence as one eating the full corn in the\nblade,--he prevents it from bearing its fruit; his life is lost.\nWhoever, on the contrary, makes his life serve a good higher than\nitself, saves it in giving it. Moral precepts, which to a superficial\nview appear arbitrary, and seem made to spoil our zest for life, have\nreally but one object--to preserve us from the evil of having lived in\nvain. That is why they are constantly leading us back into the same\npaths; that is why they all have the same meaning: _Do not waste your\nlife,_ make it bear fruit; learn how to give it, in order that it may\nnot consume itself! Herein is summed up the experience of humanity, and\nthis experience, which each man must remake for himself, is more\nprecious in proportion as it costs more dear. Illumined by its light, he\nmakes a moral advance more and more sure. Now he has his means of\norientation, his internal norm to which he may lead everything back; and\nfrom the vacillating, confused, and complex being that he was, he\nbecomes simple. By the ceaseless influence of this same law, which\nexpands within him, and is day by day verified in fact, his opinions and\nhabits become transformed.\n\nOnce captivated by the beauty and sublimity of the true life, by what is\nsacred and pathetic in this strife of humanity for truth, justice, and\nbrotherly love, his heart holds the fascination of it. Gradually\neverything subordinates itself to this powerful and persistent charm.\nThe necessary hierarchy of powers is organized within him: the essential\ncommands, the secondary obeys, and order is born of simplicity. We may\ncompare this organization of the interior life to that of an army. An\narmy is strong by its discipline, and its discipline consists in respect\nof the inferior for the superior, and the concentration of all its\nenergies toward a single end: discipline once relaxed, the army suffers.\nIt will not do to let the corporal command the general. Examine\ncarefully your life and the lives of others. Whenever something halts\nor jars, and complications and disorder follow, it is because the\ncorporal has issued orders to the general. Where the natural law rules\nin the heart, disorder vanishes.\n\nI despair of ever describing simplicity in any worthy fashion. All the\nstrength of the world and all its beauty, all true joy, everything that\nconsoles, that feeds hope, or throws a ray of light along our dark\npaths, everything that makes us see across our poor lives a splendid\ngoal and a boundless future, comes to us from people of simplicity,\nthose who have made another object of their desires than the passing\nsatisfaction of selfishness and vanity, and have understood that the art\nof living is to know how to give one's life.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nSIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT\n\n\nIt is not alone among the practical manifestations of our life that\nthere is need of making a clearing: the domain of our ideas is in the\nsame case. Anarchy reigns in human thought: we walk in the woods,\nwithout compass or sun, lost among the brambles and briars of infinite\ndetail.\n\nWhen once man has recognized the fact that he has an aim, and that this\naim is _to be a man_, he organizes his thought accordingly. Every mode\nof thinking or judging which does not make him better and stronger, he\nrejects as dangerous.\n\nAnd first of all he flees the too common contrariety of amusing himself\nwith his thought. Thought is a tool, with its own proper function: it\nisn't a toy. Let us take an example. Here is the studio of a painter.\nThe implements are all in place: everything indicates that this\nassemblage of means is arranged with view to an end. Throw the room open\nto apes. They will climb on the benches, swing from the cords, rig\nthemselves in draperies, coif themselves with slippers, juggle with\nbrushes, nibble the colors, and pierce the canvases to see what is\nbehind the paint. I don't question their enjoyment; certainly they must\nfind this kind of exercise extremely interesting. But an atelier is not\nmade to let monkeys loose in. No more is thought a ground for acrobatic\nevolutions. A man worthy of the name, thinks as he is, as his tastes\nare: he goes about it with his whole heart, and not with that fitful and\nsterile curiosity which, under pretext of observing and noting\neverything, runs the risk of never experiencing a deep and true emotion\nor accomplishing a right deed.\n\nAnother habit in urgent need of correction, ordinary attendant on\nconventional life, is the mania for examining and analyzing one's self\nat every turn. I do not invite men to neglect introspection and the\nexamination of conscience. The endeavor to understand one's own mental\nattitudes and motives of conduct is an essential element of good living.\nBut quite other is this extreme vigilance, this incessant observation of\none's life and thoughts, this dissecting of one's self, like a piece of\nmechanism. It is a waste of time, and goes wide of the mark. The man\nwho, to prepare himself the better for walking, should begin by making a\nrigid anatomical examination of his means of locomotion, would risk\ndislocating something before he had taken a step. You have what you need\nto walk with, then forward! Take care not to fall, and use your forces\nwith discretion. Potterers and scruple-mongers are soon reduced to\ninaction. It needs but a glimmer of common sense to perceive that man is\nnot made to pass his life in a self-centered trance.\n\nAnd common sense--do you not find what is designated by this name\nbecoming as rare as the common-sense customs of other days? Common sense\nhas become an old story. We must have something new--and we create a\nfactitious existence, a refinement of living, that the vulgar crowd has\nnot the wherewithal to procure. It is so agreeable to be distinguished!\nInstead of conducting ourselves like rational beings, and using the\nmeans most obviously at our command, we arrive, by dint of absolute\ngenius, at the most astonishing singularities. Better off the track than\non the main line! All the bodily defects and deformities that orthopedy\ntreats, give but a feeble idea of the humps, the tortuosities, the\ndislocations we have inflicted upon ourselves in order to depart from\nsimple common sense; and at our own expense we learn that one does not\ndeform himself with impunity. Novelty, after all, is ephemeral. Nothing\nendures but the eternal commonplace; and if one departs from that, it is\nto run the most perilous risks. Happy he who is able to reclaim himself,\nwho finds the way back to simplicity.\n\nGood plain sense is not, as is often imagined, the innate possession of\nthe first chance-comer, a mean and paltry equipment that has cost\nnothing to anyone. I would compare it to those old folk-songs,\nunfathered but deathless, which seem to have risen out of the very heart\nof the people. Good sense is a fund slowly and painfully accumulated by\nthe labor of centuries. It is a jewel of the first water, whose value he\nalone understands who has lost it, or who observes the lives of others\nwho have lost it. For my part, I think no price too great to pay for\ngaining it and keeping it, for the possession of eyes that see and a\njudgment that discerns. One takes good care of his sword, that it be not\nbent or rusted: with greater reason should he give heed to his thought.\n\nBut let this be well understood: an appeal to common sense is not an\nappeal to thought that grovels, to narrow positivism which denies\neverything it cannot see or touch. For to wish that man should be\nabsorbed in material sensations, to the exclusion of the high realities\nof the inner life, is also a want of good sense. Here we touch upon a\ntender point, round which the greatest battles of humanity are waging.\nIn truth we are striving to attain a conception of life, searching it\nout amid countless obscurities and griefs: and everything that touches\nupon spiritual realities becomes day by day more painful. In the midst\nof the grave perplexities and transient disorders that accompany great\ncrises of thought, it seems more difficult than ever to escape with any\nsimple principles. Yet necessity itself comes to our aid, as it has done\nfor the men of all times. The program of life is terribly simple, after\nall, and in the fact that existence so imperiously forces herself upon\nus, she gives us notice that she precedes any idea of her which we may\nmake for ourselves, and that no one can put off living pending an\nattempt to understand life. Our philosophies, our explanations, our\nbeliefs are everywhere confronted by facts, and these facts, prodigious,\nirrefutable, call us to order when we would deduce life from our\nreasonings, and would wait to act until we have ended philosophizing. It\nis this happy necessity that prevents the world from stopping while man\nquestions his route. Travelers of a day, we are carried along in a vast\nmovement to which we are called upon to contribute, but which we have\nnot foreseen, nor embraced in its entirety, nor penetrated as to its\nultimate aims. Our part is to fill faithfully the r\u00f4le of private, which\nhas devolved upon us, and our thought should adapt itself to the\nsituation. Do not say that we live in more trying times than our\nancestors, for things seen from afar are often seen imperfectly: it is\nmoreover scarcely gracious to complain of not having been born in the\ndays of one's grandfather. What we may believe least contestable on the\nsubject is this: from the beginning of the world it has been hard to see\nclearly; right thinking has been difficult everywhere and always. In the\nmatter the ancients were in no wise privileged above the moderns, and it\nmight be added that there is no difference between men when they are\nconsidered from this point of view. Master and servant, teacher and\nlearner, writer and artisan discern truth at the same cost. The light\nthat humanity acquires in advancing is no doubt of the greatest use; but\nit also multiplies the number and extent of human problems. The\ndifficulty is never removed, the mind always encounters its obstacle.\nThe unknown controls us and hems us in on all sides. But just as one\nneed not exhaust a spring to quench his thirst, so we need not know\neverything to live. Humanity lives and always has lived on certain\nelemental _provisions_.\n\nWe will try to point them out. First of all, humanity lives by\nconfidence. In so doing it but reflects, commensurate with its conscious\nthought, that which is the hidden source of all beings. An imperturbable\nfaith in the stability of the universe and its intelligent ordering,\nsleeps in everything that exists. The flowers, the trees, the beasts of\nthe field, live in calm strength, in entire security. There is\nconfidence in the falling rain, in dawning day, in the brook running to\nthe sea. Everything that is seems to say: \"I am, therefore I should be;\nthere are good reasons for this, rest assured.\"\n\nSo, too, mankind lives by confidence. From the simple fact that he is,\nman has within him the sufficient reason for his being--a pledge of\nassurance. He reposes in the power which has willed that he should be.\nTo safeguard this confidence, to see that nothing disconcerts it, to\ncultivate it, render it more personal, more evident--toward this should\ntend the first effort of our thought. All that augments confidence\nwithin us is good, for from confidence is born the life without haste,\ntranquil energy, calm action, the love of life and its fruitful labor.\nDeep-seated confidence is the mysterious spring that sets in motion the\nenergy within us. It is our nutriment. By it man lives, much more than\nby the bread he eats. And so everything that shakes this confidence is\nevil--poison, not food.\n\nDangerous is every system of thought that attacks the very fact of life,\ndeclaring it to be an evil. Life has been too often wrongly estimated in\nthis century. What wonder that the tree withers when its roots are\nwatered with corrosives. And there is an extremely simple reflection\nthat might be made in the face of all this negation. You say life is an\nevil. Well; what remedy for it do you offer? Can you combat it, suppress\nit? I do not ask you to suppress your own life, to commit suicide;--of\nwhat advantage would that be to us?--but to suppress _life_, not merely\nhuman life, but life at its deep and hidden origin, all this upspringing\nof existence that pushes toward the light and, to your mind, is rushing\nto misfortune; I ask you to suppress the will to live that trembles\nthrough the immensities of space, to suppress in short the source of\nlife. Can you do it? No. Then leave us in peace. Since no one can hold\nlife in check, is it not better to respect it and use it than to go\nabout making other people disgusted with it? When one knows that certain\nfood is dangerous to health, he does not eat it, and when a certain\nfashion of thinking robs us of confidence, cheerfulness and strength, we\nshould reject that, certain not only that it is a nutriment noxious to\nthe mind, but also that it is false. There is no truth for man but in\nthoughts that are human, and pessimism is inhuman. Besides, it wants as\nmuch in modesty as in logic. To permit one's self to count as evil this\nprodigious thing that we call life, one needs have seen its very\nfoundation, almost to have made it. What a strange attitude is that of\ncertain great thinkers of our times! They act as if they had created the\nworld, very long ago, in their youth, but decidedly it was a mistake,\nand they had well repented it.\n\nLet us nourish ourselves from other meat; strengthen our souls with\ncheering thoughts. What is truest for man is what best fortifies him.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nIf mankind lives by confidence, it lives also by hope--that form of\nconfidence which turns toward the future. All life is a result and an\naspiration, all that exists supposes an origin and tends toward an end.\nLife is progression: progression is aspiration. The progress of the\nfuture is an infinitude of hope. Hope is at the root of things, and must\nbe reflected in the heart of man. No hope, no life. The same power which\nbrought us into being, urges us to go up higher. What is the meaning of\nthis persistent instinct which pushes us on? The true meaning is that\nsomething is to result from life, that out of it is being wrought a good\ngreater than itself, toward which it slowly moves, and that this painful\nsower called man, needs, like every sower, to count on the morrow. The\nhistory of humanity is the history of indomitable hope; otherwise\neverything would have been over long ago. To press forward under his\nburdens, to guide himself in the night, to retrieve his falls and his\nfailures, to escape despair even in death, man has need of hoping\nalways, and sometimes against all hope. Here is the cordial that\nsustains him. Had we only logic, we should have long ago drawn the\nconclusion: Death has everywhere the last word!--and we should be dead\nof the idea. But we have hope, and that is why we live and believe in\nlife.\n\nSuso, the great monk and mystic, one of the simplest and best men that\never lived, had a touching custom: whenever he encountered a woman, were\nshe the poorest and oldest, he stepped respectfully aside, though his\nbare feet must tread among thorns or in the gutter. \"I do that,\" he\nsaid, \"to render homage to our Holy Lady, the Virgin Mary.\" Let us offer\nto hope a like reverence. If we meet it in the shape of a blade of wheat\npiercing the furrow; a bird brooding on its nest; a poor wounded beast,\nrecovering itself, rising and continuing its way; a peasant ploughing\nand sowing a field that has been ravaged by flood or hail; a nation\nslowly repairing its losses and healing its wounds--under whatever guise\nof humanity or suffering it appears to us, let us salute it! When we\nencounter it in legends, in untutored songs, in simple creeds, let us\nstill salute it! for it is always the same, indestructible, the immortal\ndaughter of God.\n\nWe do not dare hope enough. The men of our day have developed strange\ntimidities. The apprehension that the sky will fall--that acme of\nabsurdity among the fears of our Gallic forefathers--has entered our own\nhearts. Does the rain-drop doubt the ocean? the ray mistrust the sun?\nOur senile wisdom has arrived at this prodigy. It resembles those testy\nold pedagogues whose chief office is to rail at the merry pranks or the\nyouthful enthusiasms of their pupils. It is time to become little\nchildren once more, to learn again to stand with clasped hands and wide\neyes before the mystery around us; to remember that, in spite of our\nknowledge, what we know is but a trifle, and that the world is greater\nthan our mind, which is well; for being so prodigious, it must hold in\nreserve untold resources, and we may allow it some credit without\naccusing ourselves of improvidence. Let us not treat it as creditors do\nan insolvent debtor: we should fire its courage, relight the sacred\nflame of hope. Since the sun still rises, since earth puts forth her\nblossoms anew, since the bird builds its nest, and the mother smiles at\nher child, let us have the courage to be men, and commit the rest to Him\nwho has numbered the stars. For my part, I would I might find glowing\nwords to say to whomsoever has lost heart in these times of disillusion:\nRouse your courage, hope on; he is sure of being least deluded who has\nthe daring to do that; the most ingenuous hope is nearer truth than the\nmost rational despair.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nAnother source of light on the path of human life is goodness. I am not\nof those who believe in the natural perfection of man, and teach that\nsociety corrupts him. On the contrary, of all forms of evil, the one\nwhich most dismays me is heredity. But I sometimes ask myself how it is\nthat this effete and deadly virus of low instincts, of vices inoculated\nin the blood, the whole assemblage of disabilities imposed upon us by\nthe past--how all this has not got the better of us. It must be because\nof something else. This other thing is love.\n\nGiven the unknown brooding above our heads, our limited intelligence,\nthe grievous and contradictory enigma of human destiny, falsehood,\nhatred, corruption, suffering, death--what can we think, what do? To all\nthese questions a sublime and mysterious voice has answered: _Love your\nfellow-men._ Love must indeed be divine, like faith and hope, since she\ncannot die when so many powers are arrayed against her. She has to\ncombat the natural ferocity of what may be called the beast in man; she\nhas to meet ruse, force, self-interest, above all, ingratitude. How is\nit that she passes pure and scathless in the midst of these dark\nenemies, like the prophet of the sacred legend among the roaring beasts?\nIt is because her enemies are of the earth, and love is from above.\nHorns, teeth, claws, eyes full of murderous fire, are powerless against\nthe swift wing that soars toward the heights and eludes them. Thus love\nescapes the undertakings of her foes. She does even better: she has\nsometimes known the fine triumph of winning over her persecutors: she\nhas seen the wild beasts grow calm, lie down at her feet, obey her law.\n\nAt the very heart of the Christian faith, the most sublime of its\nteachings, and to him who penetrates its deepest sense, the most human,\nis this: To save lost humanity, the invisible God came to dwell among\nus, in the form of a man, and willed to make Himself known by this\nsingle sign: _Love._\n\nHealing, consoling, tender to the unfortunate, even to the evil, love\nengenders light beneath her feet. She clarifies, she simplifies. She has\nchosen the humblest part--to bind up wounds, wipe away tears, relieve\ndistress, soothe aching hearts, pardon, make peace; yet it is of love\nthat we have the greatest need. And as we meditate on the best way to\nrender thought fruitful, simple, really conformable to our destiny, the\nmethod sums itself up in these words: _Have confidence and hope; be\nkind._\n\nI would not discourage lofty speculation, dissuade any one whomsoever\nfrom brooding over the problems of the unknown, over the vast abysses of\nscience or philosophy. But we have always to come back from these far\njourneys to the point where we are, often to a place where we seem to\nstand marking time with no result. There are conditions of life and\nsocial complications in which the sage, the thinker, and the ignorant\nare alike unable to see clearly. The present age has often brought us\nface to face with such situations; I am sure that he who meets them with\nour method will soon recognize its worth.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nSince I have touched here upon religious ground, at least in a general\nway, someone may ask me to say in a few simple words, what religion is\nthe best; and I gladly express myself on this subject. But it might be\nbetter not to put the question in this form. All religions have, of\nnecessity, certain fixed characteristics, and each has its inherent\nqualities or defects. Strictly speaking, then, they may be compared\namong themselves: but there are always involuntary partialities or\nforegone conclusions. It is better to put the question otherwise, and\nask: Is my own religion good, and how may I know it? To this question,\nthis answer: Your religion is good if it is vital and active, if it\nnourishes in you confidence, hope, love, and a sentiment of the infinite\nvalue of existence; if it is allied with what is best in you against\nwhat is worst, and holds forever before you the necessity of becoming a\nnew man; if it makes you understand that pain is a deliverer; if it\nincreases your respect for the conscience of others; if it renders\nforgiveness more easy, fortune less arrogant, duty more dear, the beyond\nless visionary. If it does these things it is good, little matter its\nname: however rudimentary it may be, when it fills this office it comes\nfrom the true source, it binds you to man and to God.\n\nBut does it perchance serve to make you think yourself better than\nothers, quibble over texts, wear sour looks, domineer over others'\nconsciences or give your own over to bondage; stifle your scruples,\nfollow religious forms for fashion or gain, do good in the hope of\nescaping future punishment?--oh, then, if you proclaim yourself the\nfollower of Buddha, Moses, Mahomet, or even Christ, your religion is\nworthless--it separates you from God and man.\n\nI have not perhaps the right to speak thus in my own name; but others\nhave so spoken before me who are greater than I, and notably He who\nrecounted to the questioning scribe the parable of the Good Samaritan. I\nintrench myself behind His authority.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nSIMPLICITY OF SPEECH\n\n\nSpeech is the chief revelation of the mind, the first visible form that\nit takes. As the thought, so the speech. To better one's life in the way\nof simplicity, one must set a watch on his lips and his pen. Let the\nword be as genuine as the thought, as artless, as valid: think justly,\nspeak frankly.\n\nAll social relations have their roots in mutual trust, and this trust is\nmaintained by each man's sincerity. Once sincerity diminishes,\nconfidence is weakened, society suffers, apprehension is born. This is\ntrue in the province of both natural and spiritual interests. With\npeople whom we distrust, it is as difficult to do business as to search\nfor scientific truth, arrive at religious harmony, or attain to justice.\nWhen one must first question words and intentions, and start from the\npremise that everything said and written is meant to offer us illusion\nin place of truth, life becomes strangely complicated. This is the case\nto-day. There is so much craft, so much diplomacy, so much subtle\nlegerdemain, that we all have no end of trouble to inform ourselves on\nthe simplest subject and the one that most concerns us. Probably what I\nhave just said would suffice to show my thought, and each one's\nexperience might bring to its support an ample commentary with\nillustrations. But I am none the less moved to insist on this point, and\nto strengthen my position with examples.\n\nFormerly the means of communication between men were considerably\nrestricted. It was natural to suppose that in perfecting and multiplying\navenues of information, a better understanding would be brought about.\nNations would learn to love each other as they became acquainted;\ncitizens of one country would feel themselves bound in closer\nbrotherhood as more light was thrown on what concerned their common\nlife. When printing was invented, the cry arose: _fiat lux!_ and with\nbetter cause when the habit of reading and the taste for newspapers\nincreased. Why should not men have reasoned thus:--\"Two lights illumine\nbetter than one, and many better than two: the more periodicals and\nbooks there are, the better we shall know what happens, and those who\nwish to write history after us will be right fortunate; their hands will\nbe full of documents\"? Nothing could have seemed more evident. Alas!\nthis reasoning was based upon the nature and capacity of the\ninstruments, without taking into account the human element, always the\nmost important factor. And what has really come about is this: that\ncavilers, calumniators, and crooks--all gentlemen glib of tongue, who\nknow better than any one else how to turn voice and pen to account--have\ntaken the utmost advantage of these extended means for circulating\nthought, with the result that the men of our times have the greatest\ndifficulty in the world to know the truth about their own age and their\nown affairs. For every newspaper that fosters good feeling and good\nunderstanding between nations, by trying to rightly inform its neighbors\nand to study them without reservations, how many spread defamation and\ndistrust! What unnatural and dangerous currents of opinion set in\nmotion! what false alarms and malicious interpretations of words and\nfacts! And in domestic affairs we are not much better informed than in\nforeign. As to commercial, industrial, and agricultural interests,\npolitical parties and social tendencies, or the personality of public\nmen, it is alike difficult to obtain a disinterested opinion. The more\nnewspapers one reads, the less clearly he sees in these matters. There\nare days when after having read them all, and admitting that he takes\nthem at their word, the reader finds himself obliged to draw this\nconclusion:--Unquestionably nothing but corruption can be found any\nlonger--no men of integrity except a few journalists. But the last part\nof the conclusion falls in its turn. It appears that the chroniclers\ndevour each other. The reader has under his eyes a spectacle somewhat\nlike the cartoon entitled, \"The Combat of the Serpents.\" After having\ngorged themselves with everything around them, the reptiles fall upon\neach other, and there remain upon the field of battle two tails.\n\nAnd not the common people alone feel this embarrassment, but the\ncultivated also--almost everybody shares it. In politics, finance,\nbusiness--even in science, art, literature and religion, there is\neverywhere disguise, trickery, wire-pulling; one truth for the public,\nanother for the initiated. The result is that everybody is deceived. It\nis vain to be behind the scenes on one stage; a man cannot be there on\nthem all, and the very people who deceive others with the most ability,\nare in turn deceived when they need to count upon the sincerity of their\nneighbors.\n\nThe result of such practices is the degradation of human speech. It is\ndegraded first in the eyes of those who manipulate it as a base\ninstrument. No word is respected by sophists, casuists, and quibblers,\nmen who are moved only by a rage for gaining their point, or who assume\nthat their interests are alone worth considering. Their penalty is to be\nforced to judge others by the rule they follow themselves: _Say what\nprofits and not what is true._ They can no longer take any one\nseriously--a sad state of mind for those who write or teach! How lightly\nmust one hold his readers and hearers to approach them in such an\nattitude! To him who has preserved enough honesty, nothing is more\nrepugnant than the careless irony of an acrobat of the tongue or pen,\nwho tries to dupe honest and ingenuous men. On one side openness,\nsincerity, the desire to be enlightened; on the other, chicanery making\ngame of the public! But he knows not, the liar, how far he is misleading\nhimself. The capital on which he lives is confidence, and nothing equals\nthe confidence of the people, unless it be their distrust when once they\nfind themselves betrayed. They may follow for a time the exploiters of\ntheir artlessness, but then their friendly humor turns to hate. Doors\nwhich stood wide open offer an impassable front of wood, and ears once\nattentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to the\nevil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort and\ndegrade speech: they shake confidence generally. We consider as a\ncalamity the debasement of the currency, the lowering of interest, the\nabolition of credit:--there is a misfortune greater than these: the loss\nof confidence, of that moral credit which honest people give one\nanother, and which makes speech circulate like an authentic currency.\nAway with counterfeiters, speculators, rotten financiers, for they bring\nunder suspicion even the coin of the realm. Away with the makers of\ncounterfeit speech, for because of them there is no longer confidence in\nanyone or anything, and what they say and write is not worth a\ncontinental.\n\nYou see how urgent it is that each should guard his lips, chasten his\npen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense,\ncircumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to\ncomplicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of\nplain-dealing does more for the salvation of the world than years of\nduplicity.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nA word now about a national bias, to those who have a veneration for\ndiction and style. Assuredly there can be no quarrel with the taste for\ngrace and elegance of speech. I am of opinion that one cannot say too\nwell what he has to say. But it does not follow that the things best\nsaid and best written are most studied. Words should serve the fact, and\nnot substitute themselves for it and make it forgotten in its\nembellishment. The greatest things are those which gain the most by\nbeing said most simply, since thus they show themselves for what they\nare: you do not throw over them the veil, however transparent, of\nbeautiful discourse, nor that shadow so fatal to truth, called the\nwriter's vanity. Nothing so strong, nothing so persuasive, as\nsimplicity! There are sacred emotions, cruel griefs, splendid heroisms,\npassionate enthusiasms that a look, a movement, a cry interprets better\nthan beautifully rounded periods. The most precious possessions of the\nheart of humanity manifest themselves most simply. To be convincing, a\nthing must be true, and certain truths are more evident when they come\nin the speech of ingenuousness, even weakness, than when they fall from\nlips too well trained, or are proclaimed with trumpets. And these rules\nare good for each of us in his every-day life. No one can imagine what\nprofit would accrue to his moral life from the constant observation of\nthis principle: Be sincere, moderate, simple in the expression of your\nfeelings and opinions, in private and public alike; never pass beyond\nbounds, give out faithfully what is within you, and above all,\nwatch!--that is the main thing.\n\nFor the danger in fine words is that they live from a life of their own.\nThey are servants of distinction, that have kept their titles but no\nlonger perform their functions--of which royal courts offer us example.\nYou speak well, write well, and all is said. How many people content\nthemselves with speaking, and believe that it exempts them from acting!\nAnd those who listen are content with having heard them. So it sometimes\nhappens that a life may in the end be made up of a few well-turned\nspeeches, a few fine books, and a few great plays. As for practicing\nwhat is so magisterially set forth, that is the last thing thought of.\nAnd if we pass from the world of talent to spheres which the mediocre\nexploit, there, in a pell-mell of confusion, we see those who think that\nwe are in the world to talk and hear others talk--the great and hopeless\nrout of babblers, of everything that prates, bawls, and perorates and,\nafter all, finds that there isn't talking enough. They all forget that\nthose who make the least noise do the most work. An engine that expends\nall its steam in whistling, has nothing left with which to turn wheels.\nThen let us cultivate silence. All that we can save in noise we gain in\npower.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nThese reflections lead us to consider a similar subject, also very\nworthy of attention: I mean what has been called \"the vice of the\nsuperlative.\" If we study the inhabitants of a country, we notice\ndifferences of temperament, of which the language shows signs. Here the\npeople are calm and phlegmatic; their speech is jejune, lacks color.\nElsewhere temperaments are more evenly balanced; one finds precision,\nthe word exactly fitted to the thing. But farther on--effect of the sun,\nthe air, the wine perhaps--hot blood courses in the veins, tempers are\nexcitable, language is extravagant, and the simplest things are said in\nthe strongest terms.\n\nIf the type of speech varies with climate, it differs also with epochs.\nCompare the language, written or spoken, of our own times with that of\ncertain other periods of our history. Under the old _r\u00e9gime_, people\nspoke differently than at the time of the Revolution, and we have not\nthe same language as the men of 1830, 1848, or the Second Empire. In\ngeneral, language is now characterized by greater simplicity: we no\nlonger wear perukes, we no longer write in lace frills: but there is one\nsignificant difference between us and almost all of our ancestors--and\nit is the source of our exaggerations--our nervousness. Upon\nover-excited nervous systems--and Heaven knows that to have nerves is no\nlonger an aristocratic privilege!--words do not produce the same\nimpression as under normal conditions. And quite as truly, simple\nlanguage does not suffice the man of over-wrought sensibilities when he\ntries to express what he feels. In private life, in public, in books, on\nthe stage, calm and temperate speech has given place to excess. The\nmeans that novelists and playwrights employ to galvanize the public mind\nand compel its attention, are to be found again, in their rudiments, in\nour most commonplace conversations, in our letter-writing, and above all\nin public speaking. Our performances in language compared to those of a\nman well-balanced and serene, are what our hand-writing is compared to\nthat of our fathers. The fault is laid to steel pens. If only the truth\nwere acknowledged!--Geese, then, could save us! But the evil goes\ndeeper; it is in ourselves. We write like men possessed: the pen of our\nancestors was more restful, more sure. Here we face one of the results\nof our modern life, so complicated and so terribly exhaustive of energy.\nIt leaves us impatient, breathless, in perpetual trepidation. Our\nhand-writing, like our speech, suffers thereby and betrays us. Let us go\nback from the effect to the cause, and understand well the warning it\nbrings us!\n\nWhat good can come from this habit of exaggerated speech? False\ninterpreters of our own impressions, we can not but warp the minds of\nour fellow-men as well as our own. Between people who exaggerate, good\nunderstanding ceases. Ruffled tempers, violent and useless disputes,\nhasty judgments devoid of all moderation, the utmost extravagance in\neducation and social life--these things are the result of intemperance\nof speech.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nMay I be permitted, in this appeal for simplicity of speech, to frame a\nwish whose fulfilment would have the happiest results? I ask for\nsimplicity in literature, not only as one of the best remedies for the\ndejection of our souls--_blas\u00e9s_, jaded, weary of eccentricities--but\nalso as a pledge and source of social union. I ask also for simplicity\nin art. Our art and our literature are reserved for the privileged few\nof education and fortune. But do not misunderstand me. I do not ask\npoets, novelists, and painters to descend from the heights and walk\nalong the mountain-sides, finding their satisfaction in mediocrity; but,\non the contrary, to mount higher. The truly popular is not that which\nappeals to a certain class of society ordinarily called the common\npeople; the truly popular is what is common to all classes and unites\nthem. The sources of inspiration from which perfect art springs are in\nthe depths of the human heart, in the eternal realities of life before\nwhich all men are equal. And the sources of a popular language must be\nfound in the small number of simple and vigorous forms which express\nelementary sensations, and draw the master lines of human destiny. In\nthem are truth, power, grandeur, immortality. Is there not enough in\nsuch an ideal to kindle the enthusiasm of youth, which, sensible that\nthe sacred flame of the beautiful is burning within, feels pity, and to\nthe disdainful adage, _Odi profanum vulgus_, prefers this more humane\nsaying, _Misereor super turbam_. As for me, I have no artistic\nauthority, but from out the multitude where I live, I have the right to\nraise my cry to those who have been given talents, and say to them:\nLabor for men whom the world forgets, make yourselves intelligible to\nthe humble, so shall you accomplish a work of emancipation and peace; so\nshall you open again the springs whence those masters drew, whose works\nhave defied the ages because they knew how to clothe genius in\nsimplicity.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nSIMPLE DUTY\n\n\nWhen we talk to children on a subject that annoys them, they call our\nattention to some pigeon on the roof, giving food to its little one, or\nsome coachman down in the street who is abusing his horse. Sometimes\nthey even maliciously propose one of those alarming questions that put\nthe minds of parents on the rack; all this to divert attention from the\ndistressing topic. I fear that in the face of duty we are big children,\nand, when that is the theme, seek subterfuges to distract us.\n\nThe first sophism consists in asking ourselves if there is such a thing\nas duty in the abstract, or if this word does not cover one of the\nnumerous illusions of our forefathers. For duty, in truth, supposes\nliberty, and the question of liberty leads us into metaphysics. How can\nwe talk of liberty so long as this grave problem of free-will is not\nsolved? Theoretically there is no objection to this; and if life were a\ntheory, and we were here to work out a complete system of the universe,\nit would be absurd to concern ourselves with duty until we had clarified\nthe subject of liberty, determined its conditions, fixed its limits.\n\nBut life is not a theory. In this question of practical morality, as in\nthe others, life has preceded hypothesis, and there is no room to\nbelieve that she ever yields it place. This liberty--relative, I admit,\nlike everything we are acquainted with, for that matter--this duty whose\nexistence we question, is none the less the basis of all the judgments\nwe pass upon ourselves and our fellow-men. We hold each other to a\ncertain extent responsible for our deeds and exploits.\n\nThe most ardent theorist, once outside of his theory, scruples not a\nwhit to approve or disapprove the acts of others, to take measures\nagainst his enemies, to appeal to the generosity and justice of those he\nwould dissuade from an unworthy step. One can no more rid himself of the\nnotion of moral obligation than of that of time or space; and as surely\nas we must resign ourselves to walking before we know how to define this\nspace through which we move and this time that measures our movements,\nso surely must we submit to moral obligation before having put our\nfinger on its deep-hidden roots. Moral law dominates man, whether he\nrespects or defies it. See how it is in every-day life: each one is\nready to cast his stone at him who neglects a plain duty, even if he\nallege that he has not yet arrived at philosophic certitude. Everybody\nwill say to him, and with excellent reason: \"Sir, we are men before\neverything. First play your part, do your duty as citizen, father, son;\nafter that you shall return to the course of your meditations.\"\n\nHowever, let us be well understood. We should not wish to turn anyone\naway from scrupulous research into the foundations of morality. No\nthought which leads men to concern themselves once more with these grave\nquestions, could be useless or indifferent. We simply challenge the\nthinker to find a way to wait till he has unearthed these foundations,\nbefore he does an act of humanity, of honesty or dishonesty, of valor or\ncowardice. And most of all do we wish to formulate a reply for all the\ninsincere who have never tried to philosophize, and for ourselves when\nwe would offer our state of philosophic doubt in justification of our\npractical omissions. From the simple fact that we are men, before all\ntheorizing, positive, or negative, about duty, we have the peremptory\nlaw to conduct ourselves like men. There is no getting out of it.\n\nBut he little knows the resources of the human heart, who counts on the\neffect of such a reply. It matters not that it is itself unanswerable;\nit cannot keep other questions from arising. The sum of our pretexts for\nevading duty is equal to the sum of the sands of the sea or the stars of\nheaven.\n\nWe take refuge, then, behind duty that is obscure, difficult,\ncontradictory. And these are certainly words to call up painful\nmemories. To be a man of duty and to question one's route, grope in the\ndark, feel one's self torn between the contrary solicitations of\nconflicting calls, or again, to face a duty gigantic, overwhelming,\nbeyond our strength--what is harder! And such things happen. We would\nneither deny nor contest the tragedy in certain situations or the\nanguish of certain lives. And yet, duty rarely has to make itself plain\nacross such conflicting circumstances, or to be struck out from the\ntortured mind like lightning from a storm-cloud. Such formidable shocks\nare exceptional. Well for us if we stand staunch when they come! But if\nno one is astonished that oaks are uprooted by the whirlwind, that a\nwayfarer stumbles at night on an unknown road, or that a soldier caught\nbetween two fires is vanquished, no more should he condemn without\nappeal those who have been worsted in almost superhuman moral conflicts.\nTo succumb under the force of numbers or obstacles has never been\ncounted a disgrace.\n\nSo my weapons are at the service of those who intrench themselves\nbehind the impregnable rampart of duty ill-defined, complicated or\ncontradictory. But it is not that which occupies me to-day; it is of\nplain, I had almost said easy duty, that I wish to speak.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have yearly three or four high feast days, and many ordinary ones:\nthere are likewise some very great and dark combats to wage, but beside\nthese is the multitude of plain and simple duties. Now, while in the\ngreat encounters our equipment is generally adequate, it is precisely in\nthe little emergencies that we are found wanting. Without fear of being\nmisled by a paradoxical form of thought, I affirm, then, that the\nessential thing is to fulfil our simple duties and exercise elementary\njustice. In general, those who lose their souls do so not because they\nfail to rise to difficult duty, but because they neglect to perform that\nwhich is simple. Let us illustrate this truth.\n\nHe who tries to penetrate into the humble underworld of society is not\nslow to discover great misery, physical and moral. And the closer he\nlooks, the greater number of unfortunates does he discover, till in the\nend this assembly of the wretched appears to him like a great black\nworld, in whose presence the individual and his means of relief are\nreduced to helplessness. It is true that he feels impelled to run to the\nsuccor of these unfortunates, but at the same time he asks himself,\n\"What is the use?\" The case is certainly heartrending. Some, in despair,\nend by doing nothing. They lack neither pity nor good intention, but\nthese bear no fruit. They are wrong. Often a man has not the means to do\ngood on a large scale, but that is not a reason for failing to do it at\nall. So many people absolve themselves from any action, on the ground\nthat there is too much to do! They should be recalled to simple duty,\nand this duty in the case of which we speak is that each one, according\nto his resources, leisure and capacity, should create relations for\nhimself among the world's disinherited. There are people who by the\nexercise of a little good-will have succeeded in enrolling themselves\namong the followers of ministers, and have ingratiated themselves with\nprinces. Why should you not succeed in forming relations with the poor,\nand in making acquaintances among the workers who lack somewhat the\nnecessities of life? When a few families are known, with their\nhistories, their antecedents and their difficulties, you may be of the\ngreatest use to them by acting the part of a brother, with the moral and\nmaterial aid that is yours to give. It is true, you will have attacked\nonly one little corner, but you will have done what you could, and\nperhaps have led another on to follow you. Instead of stopping at the\nknowledge that much wretchedness, hatred, disunion and vice exist in\nsociety, you will have introduced a little good among these evils. And\nby however slow degrees such kindness as yours is emulated, the good\nwill sensibly increase and the evil diminish. Even were you to remain\nalone in this undertaking, you would have the assurance that in\nfulfilling the duty, plain as a child's, which offered itself, you were\ndoing the only reasonable thing. If you have felt it so, you have found\nout one of the secrets of right living.\n\nIn its dreams, man's ambition embraces vast limits, but it is rarely\ngiven us to achieve great things, and even then, a quick and sure\nsuccess always rests on a groundwork of patient preparation. Fidelity in\nsmall things is at the base of every great achievement. We too often\nforget this, and yet no truth needs more to be kept in mind,\nparticularly in the troubled eras of history and in the crises of\nindividual life. In shipwreck a splintered beam, an oar, any scrap of\nwreckage, saves us. On the tumbling waves of life, when everything seems\nshattered to fragments, let us not forget that a single one of these\npoor bits may become our plank of safety. To despise the remnants is\ndemoralization.\n\nYou are a ruined man, or you are stricken by a great bereavement, or\nagain, you see the fruit of toilsome years perish before your eyes. You\ncannot rebuild your fortune, raise the dead, recover your lost toil, and\nin the face of the inevitable, your arms drop. Then you neglect to care\nfor your person, to keep your house, to guide your children. All this is\npardonable, and how easy to understand! But it is exceedingly dangerous.\nTo fold one's hands and let things take their course, is to transform\none evil into worse. You who think that you have nothing left to lose,\nwill by that very thought lose what you have. Gather up the fragments\nthat remain to you, and keep them with scrupulous care. In good time\nthis little that is yours will be your consolation. The effort made will\ncome to your relief, as the effort missed will turn against you. If\nnothing but a branch is left for you to cling to, cling to that branch;\nand if you stand alone in defense of a losing cause, do not throw down\nyour arms to join the rout. After the deluge a few survivors repeopled\nthe earth. The future sometimes rests in a single life as truly as life\nsometimes hangs by a thread. For strength, go to history and Nature.\nFrom the long travail of both you will learn that failure and fortune\nalike may come from the slightest cause, that it is not wise to neglect\ndetail, and, above all, that we must know how to wait and to begin\nagain.\n\nIn speaking of simple duty I cannot help thinking of military life, and\nthe examples it offers to combatants in this great struggle. He would\nlittle understand his soldier's duty who, the army once beaten, should\ncease to brush his garments, polish his rifle, and observe discipline.\n\"But what would be the use?\" perhaps you ask. Are there not various\nfashions of being vanquished? Is it an indifferent matter to add to\ndefeat, discouragement, disorder, and demoralization? No, it should\nnever be forgotten that the least display of energy in these terrible\nmoments is a sign of life and hope. At once everybody feels that all is\nnot lost.\n\nDuring the disastrous retreat of 1813-1814, in the heart of the winter,\nwhen it had become almost impossible to present any sort of appearance,\na general, I know not who, one morning presented himself to Napoleon, in\nfull dress and freshly shaven. Seeing him thus, in the midst of the\ngeneral demoralization, as elaborately attired as if for parade, the\nEmperor said: _My general, you are a brave man!_\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nAgain, the plain duty is the near duty. A very common weakness keeps\nmany people from finding what is near them interesting; they see that\nonly on its paltry side. The distant, on the contrary, draws and\nfascinates them. In this way a fabulous amount of good-will is wasted.\nPeople burn with ardor for humanity, for the public good, for righting\ndistant wrongs; they walk through life, their eyes fixed on marvelous\nsights along the horizon, treading meanwhile on the feet of passers-by,\nor jostling them without being aware of their existence.\n\nStrange infirmity, that keeps us from seeing our fellows at our very\ndoors! People widely read and far-travelled are often not acquainted\nwith their fellow-citizens, great or small. Their lives depend upon the\nco\u00f6peration of a multitude of beings whose lot remains to them quite\nindifferent. Not those to whom they owe their knowledge and culture, not\ntheir rulers, nor those who serve them and supply their needs, have ever\nattracted their attention. That there is ingratitude or improvidence in\nnot knowing one's workmen, one's servants, all those in short with whom\none has indispensable social relations--this has never come into their\nminds. Others go much farther. To certain wives, their husbands are\nstrangers, and conversely. There are parents who do not know their\nchildren: their development, their thoughts, the dangers they run, the\nhopes they cherish, are to them a closed book. Many children do not know\ntheir parents, have no suspicion of their difficulties and struggles, no\nconception of their aims. And I am not speaking of those piteously\ndisordered homes where all the relations are false, but of honorable\nfamilies. Only, all these people are greatly preoccupied: each has his\noutside interest that fills all his time. The distant duty--very\nattractive, I don't deny--claims them entirely, and they are not\nconscious of the duty near at hand. I fear they will have their trouble\nfor their pains. Each person's base of operations is the field of his\nimmediate duty. Neglect this field, and all you undertake at a distance\nis compromised. First, then, be of your own country, your own city, your\nown home, your own church, your own work-shop; then, if you can, set out\nfrom this to go beyond it. That is the plain and natural order, and a\nman must fortify himself with very bad reasons to arrive at reversing\nit. At all events, the result of so strange a confusion of duties is\nthat many people employ their time in all sorts of affairs except those\nin which we have a right to demand it. Each is occupied with something\nelse than what concerns him, is absent from his post, ignores his trade.\nThis is what complicates life. And it would be so simple for each one to\nbe about his own matter.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nAnother form of simple duty. When damage is done, who should repair it?\nHe who did it. This is just, but it is only theory, and the consequence\nof following the theory would be the evil in force until the malefactors\nwere found and had offset it. But suppose they are not found? or suppose\nthey can not or will not make amends?\n\nThe rain falls on your head through a hole in the roof, or the wind\nblows in at a broken window. Will you wait to find the man who caused\nthe mischief? You would certainly think that absurd. And yet such is\noften the practice. Children indignantly protest, \"I didn't put it\nthere, and I shall not take it away!\" And most men reason after the same\nfashion. It is logic. But it is not the kind of logic that makes the\nworld move forward.\n\nOn the contrary, what we must learn, and what life repeats to us daily,\nis that the injury done by one must be repaired by another. One tears\ndown, another builds up; one defaces, another restores; one stirs up\nquarrels, another appeases them; one makes tears to flow, another wipes\nthem away; one lives for evil-doing, another dies for the right. And in\nthe workings of this grievous law lies salvation. This also is logic,\nbut a logic of facts which makes the logic of theories pale. The\nconclusion of the matter is not doubtful; a single-hearted man draws it\nthus: given the evil, the great thing is to make it good, and to set\nabout it on the spot; well indeed if Messrs. the Malefactors will\ncontribute to the reparation; but experience warns us not to count too\nmuch on their aid.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nBut however simple duty may be, there is still need of strength to do\nit. In what does this strength consist, or where is it found? One could\nscarcely tire of asking. Duty is for man an enemy and an intruder, so\nlong as it appears as an appeal from without. When it comes in through\nthe door, he leaves by the window; when it blocks up the windows, he\nescapes by the roof. The more plainly we see it coming, the more surely\nwe flee. It is like those police, representatives of public order and\nofficial justice, whom an adroit thief succeeds in evading. Alas! the\nofficer, though he finally collar the thief, can only conduct him to the\nstation, not along the right road. Before man is able to accomplish his\nduty, he must fall into the hands of another power than that which says,\n\"Do this, do that; shun this, shun that, or else beware!\"\n\nThis is an interior power; it is love. When a man hates his work, or\ngoes about it with indifference, all the forces of earth cannot make\nhim follow it with enthusiasm. But he who loves his office moves of\nhimself; not only is it needless to compel him, but it would be\nimpossible to turn him aside. And this is true of everybody. The great\nthing is to have felt the sanctity and immortal beauty in our obscure\ndestiny; to have been led by a series of experiences to love this life\nfor its griefs and its hopes, to love men for their weakness and their\ngreatness, and to belong to humanity through the heart, the intelligence\nand the soul. Then an unknown power takes possession of us, as the wind\nof the sails of a ship, and bears us toward pity and justice. And\nyielding to its irresistible impulse, we say: _I cannot help it,\nsomething is there stronger than I._ In so saying, the men of all times\nand places have designated a power that is above humanity, but which may\ndwell in men's hearts. And everything truly lofty within us appears to\nus as a manifestation of this mystery beyond. Noble feelings, like great\nthoughts and deeds, are things of inspiration. When the tree buds and\nbears fruit, it is because it draws vital forces from the soil, and\nreceives light and warmth from the sun. If a man, in his humble sphere,\nin the midst of the ignorance and faults that are his inevitably,\nconsecrates himself sincerely to his task, it is because he is in\ncontact with the eternal source of goodness. This central force\nmanifests itself under a thousand forms. Sometimes it is indomitable\nenergy; sometimes winning tenderness; sometimes the militant spirit that\ngrasps and uproots the evil; sometimes maternal solicitude, gathering to\nits arms from the wayside where it was perishing, some bruised and\nforgotten life; sometimes the humble patience of long research. All that\nit touches bears its seal, and the men it inspires know that through it\nwe live and have our being. To serve it is their pleasure and reward.\nThey are satisfied to be its instruments, and they no longer look at the\noutward glory of their office, well knowing that nothing is great,\nnothing small, but that our life and our deeds are only of worth because\nof the spirit which breathes through them.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nSIMPLE NEEDS\n\n\nWhen we buy a bird of the fancier, the good man tells us briefly what is\nnecessary for our new pensioner, and the whole thing--hygiene, food, and\nthe rest--is comprehended in a dozen words. Likewise, to sum up the\nnecessities of most men, a few concise lines would answer. Their r\u00e9gime\nis in general of supreme simplicity, and so long as they follow it, all\nis well with them, as with every obedient child of Mother Nature. Let\nthem depart from it, complications arise, health fails, gayety vanishes.\nOnly simple and natural living can keep a body in full vigor. Instead of\nremembering this basic principle, we fall into the strangest\naberrations.\n\nWhat material things does a man need to live under the best conditions?\nA healthful diet, simple clothing, a sanitary dwelling-place, air and\nexercise. I am not going to enter into hygienic details, compose menus,\nor discuss model tenements and dress reform. My aim is to point out a\ndirection and tell what advantage would come to each of us from ordering\nhis life in a spirit of simplicity. To know that this spirit does not\nrule in our society we need but watch the lives of men of all classes.\nAsk different people, of very unlike surroundings, this question: What\ndo you need to live? You will see how they respond. Nothing is more\ninstructive. For some aboriginals of the Parisian asphalt, there is no\nlife possible outside a region bounded by certain boulevards. There one\nfinds the respirable air, the illuminating light, normal heat, classic\ncookery, and, in moderation, so many other things without which it would\nnot be worth the while to promenade this round ball.\n\nOn the various rungs of the bourgeois ladder people reply to the\nquestion, what is necessary to live? by figures varying with the degree\nof their ambition or education: and by education is oftenest understood\nthe outward customs of life, the style of house, dress, table--an\neducation precisely skin-deep. Upward from a certain income, fee, or\nsalary, life becomes possible: below that it is impossible. We have seen\nmen commit suicide because their means had fallen under a certain\nminimum. They preferred to disappear rather than retrench. Observe that\nthis minimum, the cause of their despair, would have been sufficient for\nothers of less exacting needs, and enviable to men whose tastes are\nmodest.\n\nOn lofty mountains vegetation changes with the altitude. There is the\nregion of ordinary flora, that of the forests, that of pastures, that of\nbare rocks and glaciers. Above a certain zone wheat is no longer found,\nbut the vine still prospers. The oak ceases in the low regions, the pine\nflourishes at considerable heights. Human life, with its needs, reminds\none of these phenomena of vegetation.\n\nAt a certain altitude of fortune the financier thrives, the club-man,\nthe society woman, all those in short for whom the strictly necessary\nincludes a certain number of domestics and equipages, as well as several\ntown and country houses. Further on flourishes the rich upper middle\nclass, with its own standards and life. In other regions we find men of\nample, moderate, or small means, and very unlike exigencies. Then come\nthe people--artisans, day-laborers, peasants, in short, the masses, who\nlive dense and serried like the thick, sturdy growths on the summits of\nthe mountains, where the larger vegetation can no longer find\nnourishment. In all these different regions of society men live, and no\nmatter in which particular regions they flourish, all are alike human\nbeings, bearing the same mark. How strange that among fellows there\nshould be such a prodigious difference in requirements! And here the\nanalogies of our comparison fail us. Plants and animals of the same\nfamilies have identical wants. In human life we observe quite the\ncontrary. What conclusion shall we draw from this, if not that with us\nthere is a considerable elasticity in the nature and number of needs?\n\nIs it well, is it favorable to the development of the individual and his\nhappiness, and to the development and happiness of society, that man\nshould have a multitude of needs, and bend his energies to their\nsatisfaction? Let us return for a moment to our comparison with inferior\nbeings. Provided that their essential wants are satisfied, they live\ncontent. Is this true of men? No. In all classes of society we find\ndiscontent. I leave completely out of the question those who lack the\nnecessities of life. One cannot with justice count in the number of\nmalcontents those from whom hunger, cold, and misery wring complaints. I\nam considering now that multitude of people who live under conditions at\nleast supportable. Whence comes their heart-burning? Why is it found not\nonly among those of modest though sufficient means, but also under\nshades of ever-increasing refinement, all along the ascending scale,\neven to opulence and the summits of social place? They talk of the\ncontented middle classes. Who talk of them? People who, judging from\nwithout, think that as soon as one begins to enjoy ease he ought to be\nsatisfied. But the middle classes themselves--do they consider\nthemselves satisfied? Not the least in the world. If there are people at\nonce rich and content, be assured that they are content because they\nknow how to be so, not because they are rich. An animal is satisfied\nwhen it has eaten; it lies down and sleeps. A man also can lie down and\nsleep for a time, but it never lasts. When he becomes accustomed to this\ncontentment, he tires of it and demands a greater. Man's appetite is not\nappeased by food; it increases with eating. This may seem absurd, but it\nis strictly true.\n\nAnd the fact that those who make the most outcry are almost always those\nwho should find the best reasons for contentment, proves unquestionably\nthat happiness is not allied to the number of our needs and the zeal we\nput into their cultivation. It is for everyone's interest to let this\ntruth sink deep into his mind. If it does not, if he does not by\ndecisive action succeed in limiting his needs, he risks a descent,\ninsensible and beyond retreat, along the declivity of desire.\n\nHe who lives to eat, drink, sleep, dress, take his walk,--in short,\npamper himself all that he can--be it the courtier basking in the sun,\nthe drunken laborer, the commoner serving his belly, the woman absorbed\nin her toilettes, the profligate of low estate or high, or simply the\nordinary pleasure-lover, a \"good fellow,\" but too obedient to material\nneeds--that man or woman is on the downward way of desire, and the\ndescent is fatal. Those who follow it obey the same laws as a body on an\ninclined plane. Dupes of an illusion forever repeated, they think: \"Just\na few steps more, the last, toward the thing down there that we covet;\nthen we will halt.\" But the velocity they gain sweeps them on, and the\nfurther they go the less able they are to resist it.\n\nHere is the secret of the unrest, the madness, of many of our\ncontemporaries. Having condemned their will to the service of their\nappetites, they suffer the penalty. They are delivered up to violent\npassions which devour their flesh, crush their bones, suck their blood,\nand cannot be sated. This is not a lofty moral denunciation. I have\nbeen listening to what life says, and have recorded, as I heard them,\nsome of the truths that resound in every square.\n\nHas drunkenness, inventive as it is of new drinks, found the means of\nquenching thirst? Not at all. It might rather be called the art of\nmaking thirst inextinguishable. Frank libertinage, does it deaden the\nsting of the senses? No; it envenoms it, converts natural desire into a\nmorbid obsession and makes it the dominant passion. Let your needs rule\nyou, pamper them--you will see them multiply like insects in the sun.\nThe more you give them, the more they demand. He is senseless who seeks\nfor happiness in material prosperity alone. As well undertake to fill\nthe cask of the Dana\u00efdes. To those who have millions, millions are\nwanting; to those who have thousands, thousands. Others lack a\ntwenty-franc piece or a hundred sous. When they have a chicken in the\npot, they ask for a goose; when they have the goose, they wish it were a\nturkey, and so on. We shall never learn how fatal this tendency is.\nThere are too many humble people who wish to imitate the great, too many\npoor working-men who ape the well-to-do middle classes, too many\nshop-girls who play at being ladies, too many clerks who act the\nclub-man or sportsman; and among those in easy circumstances and the\nrich, are too many people who forget that what they possess could serve\na better purpose than procuring pleasure for themselves, only to find in\nthe end that one never has enough. Our needs, in place of the servants\nthat they should be, have become a turbulent and seditious crowd, a\nlegion of tyrants in miniature. A man enslaved to his needs may best be\ncompared to a bear with a ring in its nose, that is led about and made\nto dance at will. The likeness is not flattering, but you will grant\nthat it is true. It is in the train of their own needs that so many of\nthose men are dragged along who rant for liberty, progress, and I don't\nknow what else. They cannot take a step without asking themselves if it\nmight not irritate their masters. How many men and women have gone on\nand on, even to dishonesty, for the sole reason that they had too many\nneeds and could not resign themselves to simple living. There are many\nguests in the chambers of Mazas who could give us much light on the\nsubject of too exigent needs.\n\nLet me tell you the story of an excellent man whom I knew. He tenderly\nloved his wife and children, and they all lived together, in France, in\ncomfort and plenty, but with little of the luxury the wife coveted.\nAlways short of money, though with a little management he might have\nbeen at ease, he ended by exiling himself to a distant colony, leaving\nhis wife and children in the mother country. I don't know how the poor\nman can feel off there; but his family has a finer apartment, more\nbeautiful toilettes, and what passes for an equipage. At present they\nare perfectly contented, but soon they will be used to this\nluxury--rudimentary after all. Then Madam will find her furniture common\nand her equipage mean. If this man loves his wife--and that cannot be\ndoubted--he will migrate to the moon if there is hope of a larger\nstipend. In other cases the r\u00f4les are reversed, and the wife and\nchildren are sacrificed to the ravenous needs of the head of the family,\nwhom an irregular life, play, and countless other costly follies have\nrobbed of all dignity. Between his appetites and his r\u00f4le of father he\nhas decided for the former, and he slowly drifts toward the most abject\negoism.\n\nThis forgetfulness of all responsibility, this gradual benumbing of\nnoble feeling, is not alone to be found among pleasure-seekers of the\nupper classes: the people also are infected. I know more than one little\nhousehold, which ought to be happy, where the mother has only pain and\nheartache day and night, the children are barefoot, and there is great\nado for bread. Why? Because too much money is needed by the father. To\nspeak only of the expenditure for alcohol, everybody knows the\nproportions that has reached in the last twenty years. The sums\nswallowed up in this gulf are fabulous--twice the indemnity of the war\nof 1870. How many legitimate needs could have been satisfied with that\nwhich has been thrown away on these artificial ones! The reign of wants\nis by no means the reign of brotherhood. The more things a man desires\nfor himself, the less he can do for his neighbor, and even for those\nattached to him by ties of blood.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nThe destruction of happiness, independence, moral fineness, even of the\nsentiment of common interests--such is the result of the reign of needs.\nA multitude of other unfortunate things might be added, of which not the\nleast is the disturbance of the public welfare. When society has too\ngreat needs, it is absorbed with the present, sacrifices to it the\nconquests of the past, immolates to it the future. After us the deluge!\nTo raze the forests in order to get gold; to squander your patrimony in\nyouth, destroying in a day the fruit of long years; to warm your house\nby burning your furniture; to burden the future with debts for the sake\nof present pleasure; to live by expedients and sow for the morrow\ntrouble, sickness, ruin, envy and hate--the enumeration of all the\nmisdeeds of this fatal r\u00e9gime has no end.\n\nOn the other hand, if we hold to simple needs we avoid all these evils\nand replace them by measureless good. That temperance and sobriety are\nthe best guardians of health is an old story. They spare him who\nobserves them many a misery that saddens existence; they insure him\nhealth, love of action, mental poise. Whether it be a question of food,\ndress, or dwelling, simplicity of taste is also a source of independence\nand safety. The more simply you live, the more secure is your future;\nyou are less at the mercy of surprises and reverses. An illness or a\nperiod of idleness does not suffice to dispossess you: a change of\nposition, even considerable, does not put you to confusion. Having\nsimple needs, you find it less painful to accustom yourself to the\nhazards of fortune. You remain a man, though you lose your office or\nyour income, because the foundation on which your life rests is not your\ntable, your cellar, your horses, your goods and chattels, or your money.\nIn adversity you will not act like a nursling deprived of its bottle and\nrattle. Stronger, better armed for the struggle, presenting, like those\nwith shaven heads, less advantage to the hands of your enemy, you will\nalso be of more profit to your neighbor. For you will not rouse his\njealousy, his base desires or his censure, by your luxury, your\nprodigality, or the spectacle of a sycophant's life; and, less absorbed\nin your own comfort, you will find the means of working for that of\nothers.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nSIMPLE PLEASURES\n\n\nDo you find life amusing in these days? For my part, on the whole, it\nseems rather depressing, and I fear that my opinion is not altogether\npersonal. As I observe the lives of my contemporaries, and listen to\ntheir talk, I find myself unhappily confirmed in the opinion that they\ndo not get much pleasure out of things. And certainly it is not from\nlack of trying; but it must be acknowledged that their success is\nmeagre. Where can the fault be?\n\nSome accuse politics or business; others social problems or militarism.\nWe meet only an embarrassment of choice when we start to unstring the\nchaplet of our carking cares. Suppose we set out in pursuit of pleasure.\nThere is too much pepper in our soup to make it palatable. Our arms are\nfilled with a multitude of embarrassments, any one of which would be\nenough to spoil our temper. From morning till night, wherever we go, the\npeople we meet are hurried, worried, preoccupied. Some have spilt their\ngood blood in the miserable conflicts of petty politics: others are\ndisheartened by the meanness and jealousy they have encountered in the\nworld of literature or art. Commercial competition troubles the sleep of\nnot a few. The crowded curricula of study and the exigencies of their\nopening careers, spoil life for young men. The working classes suffer\nthe consequences of a ceaseless industrial struggle. It is becoming\ndisagreeable to govern, because authority is diminishing; to teach,\nbecause respect is vanishing. Wherever one turns there is matter for\ndiscontent.\n\nAnd yet history shows us certain epochs of upheaval which were as\nlacking in idyllic tranquillity as is our own, but which the gravest\nevents did not prevent from being gay. It even seems as if the\nseriousness of affairs, the uncertainty of the morrow, the violence of\nsocial convulsions, sometimes became a new source of vitality. It is not\na rare thing to hear soldiers singing between two battles, and I think\nmyself nowise mistaken in saying that human joy has celebrated its\nfinest triumphs under the greatest tests of endurance. But to sleep\npeacefully on the eve of battle or to exult at the stake, men had then\nthe stimulus of an internal harmony which we perhaps lack. Joy is not in\nthings, it is in us, and I hold to the belief that the causes of our\npresent unrest, of this contagious discontent spreading everywhere, are\nin us at least as much as in exterior conditions.\n\nTo give one's self up heartily to diversion one must feel himself on a\nsolid basis, must believe in life and find it within him. And here lies\nour weakness. So many of us--even, alas! the younger men--are at\nvariance with life; and I do not speak of philosophers only. How do you\nthink a man can be amused while he has his doubts whether after all life\nis worth living? Besides this, one observes a disquieting depression of\nvital force, which must be attributed to the abuse man makes of his\nsensations. Excess of all kinds has blurred our senses and poisoned our\nfaculty for happiness. Human nature succumbs under the irregularities\nimposed upon it. Deeply attainted at its root, the desire to live,\npersistent in spite of everything, seeks satisfaction in cheats and\nbaubles. In medical science we have recourse to artificial respiration,\nartificial alimentation, and galvanism. So, too, around expiring\npleasure we see a crowd of its votaries, exerting themselves to reawaken\nit, to reanimate it Most ingenious means have been invented; it can\nnever be said that expense has been spared. Everything has been tried,\nthe possible and the impossible. But in all these complicated alembics\nno one has ever arrived at distilling a drop of veritable joy. We must\nnot confound pleasure with the instruments of pleasure. To be a painter,\ndoes it suffice to arm one's self with a brush, or does the purchase at\ngreat cost of a Stradivarius make one a musician? No more, if you had\nthe whole paraphernalia of amusement in the perfection of its\ningenuity, would it advance you upon your road. But with a bit of\ncrayon a great artist makes an immortal sketch. It needs talent or\ngenius to paint; and to amuse one's self, the faculty of being happy:\nwhoever possesses it is amused at slight cost. This faculty is destroyed\nby scepticism, artificial living, over-abuse; it is fostered by\nconfidence, moderation and normal habits of thought and action.\n\nAn excellent proof of my proposition, and one very easily encountered,\nlies in the fact that wherever life is simple and sane, true pleasure\naccompanies it as fragrance does uncultivated flowers. Be this life\nhard, hampered, devoid of all things ordinarily considered as the very\nconditions of pleasure, the rare and delicate plant, joy, flourishes\nthere. It springs up between the flags of the pavement, on an arid wall,\nin the fissure of a rock. We ask ourselves how it comes, and whence: but\nit lives; while in the soft warmth of conservatories or in fields richly\nfertilized you cultivate it at a golden cost to see it fade and die in\nyour hand.\n\nAsk actors what audience is happiest at the play; they will tell you the\npopular one. The reason is not hard to grasp. To these people the play\nis an exception, they are not bored by it from over-indulgence. And,\ntoo, to them it is a rest from rude toil. The pleasure they enjoy they\nhave honestly earned, and they know its cost as they know that of each\nsou earned by the sweat of their labor. More, they have not frequented\nthe wings, they have no intrigues with the actresses, they do not see\nthe wires pulled. To them it is all real. And so they feel pleasure\nunalloyed. I think I see the sated sceptic, whose monocle glistens in\nthat box, cast a disdainful glance over the smiling crowd.\n\n\"Poor stupid creatures, ignorant and gross!\"\n\nAnd yet they are the true livers, while he is an artificial product, a\nmannikin, incapable of experiencing this fine and salutary intoxication\nof an hour of frank pleasure.\n\nUnhappily, ingenuousness is disappearing, even in the rural districts.\nWe see the people of our cities, and those of the country in their turn,\nbreaking with the good traditions. The mind, warped by alcohol, by the\npassion for gambling, and by unhealthy literature, contracts little by\nlittle perverted tastes. Artificial life makes irruption into\ncommunities once simple in their pleasures, and it is like phylloxera to\nthe vine. The robust tree of rustic joy finds its sap drained, its\nleaves turning yellow.\n\nCompare a _f\u00eate champ\u00eatre_ of the good old style with the village\nfestivals, so-called, of to-day. In the one case, in the honored setting\nof antique costumes, genuine countrymen sing the folk songs, dance\nrustic dances, regale themselves with native drinks, and seem entirely\nin their element. They take their pleasure as the blacksmith forges, as\nthe cascade tumbles over the rocks, as the colts frisk in the meadows.\nIt is contagious: it stirs your heart. In spite of yourself you are\nready to cry: \"Bravo, my children. That is fine!\" You want to join in.\nIn the other case, you see villagers disguised as city folk,\ncountrywomen made hideous by the modiste, and, as the chief ornament of\nthe festival, a lot of degenerates who bawl the songs of music halls;\nand sometimes in the place of honor, a group of tenth-rate barnstormers,\nimported for the occasion, to civilize these rustics and give them a\ntaste of refined pleasures. For drinks, liquors mixed with brandy or\nabsinthe: in the whole thing neither originality nor picturesqueness.\nLicense, indeed, and clownishness, but not that _abandon_ which\ningenuous joy brings in its train.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nThis question of pleasure is capital. Staid people generally neglect it\nas a frivolity; utilitarians, as a costly superfluity. Those whom we\ndesignate as pleasure-seekers forage in this delicate domain like wild\nboars in a garden. No one seems to doubt the immense human interest\nattached to joy. It is a sacred flame that must be fed, and that throws\na splendid radiance over life. He who takes pains to foster it\naccomplishes a work as profitable for humanity as he who builds bridges,\npierces tunnels, or cultivates the ground. So to order one's life as to\nkeep, amid toils and suffering, the faculty of happiness, and be able to\npropagate it in a sort of salutary contagion among one's fellow-men, is\nto do a work of fraternity in the noblest sense. To give a trifling\npleasure, smooth an anxious brow, bring a little light into dark\npaths--what a truly divine office in the midst of this poor humanity!\nBut it is only in great simplicity of heart that one succeeds in\nfilling it.\n\nWe are not simple enough to be happy and to render others so. We lack\nthe singleness of heart and the self-forgetfulness. We spread joy, as we\ndo consolation, by such methods as to obtain negative results. To\nconsole a person, what do we do? We set to work to dispute his\nsuffering, persuade him that he is mistaken in thinking himself unhappy.\nIn reality, our language translated into truthful speech would amount to\nthis: \"You suffer, my friend? That is strange; you must be mistaken, for\nI feel nothing.\" As the only human means of soothing grief is to share\nit in the heart, how must a sufferer feel, consoled in this fashion?\n\nTo divert our neighbor, make him pass an agreeable hour, we set out in\nthe same way. We invite him to admire our versatility, to laugh at our\nwit, to frequent our house, to sit at our table; through it all, our\ndesire to shine breaks forth. Sometimes, also, with a patron's\nprodigality, we offer him the beneficence of a public entertainment of\nour own choosing, unless we ask him to find amusement at our home, as we\nsometimes do to make up a party at cards, with the _arri\u00e8re-pens\u00e9e_ of\nexploiting him to our own profit. Do you think it the height of\npleasure for others to admire us, to admit our superiority, and to act\nas our tools? Is there anything in the world so disgusting as to feel\none's self patronized, made capital of, enrolled in a claque? To give\npleasure to others and take it ourselves, we have to begin by removing\nthe ego, which is hateful, and then keep it in chains as long as the\ndiversions last. There is no worse kill-joy than the ego. We must be\ngood children, sweet and kind, button our coats over our medals and\ntitles, and with our whole heart put ourselves at the disposal of\nothers.\n\nLet us sometimes live--be it only for an hour, and though we must lay\nall else aside--to make others smile. The sacrifice is only in\nappearance; no one finds more pleasure for himself than he who knows\nhow, without ostentation, to give himself that he may procure for those\naround him a moment of forgetfulness and happiness.\n\nWhen shall we be so simply and truly _men_ as not to obtrude our\npersonal business and distresses upon the people we meet socially? May\nwe not forget for an hour our pretensions, our strife, our distributions\ninto sets and cliques--in short, our \"parts,\" and become as children\nonce more, to laugh again that good laugh which does so much to make the\nworld better?\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nHere I feel drawn to speak of something very particular, and in so doing\nto offer my well-disposed readers an opportunity to go about a splendid\nbusiness. I want to call their attention to several classes of people\nseldom thought of with reference to their pleasures.\n\nIt is understood that a broom serves only to sweep, a watering-pot to\nwater plants, a coffee-mill to grind coffee, and likewise it is supposed\nthat a nurse is designed only to care for the sick, a professor to\nteach, a priest to preach, bury, and confess, a sentinel to mount guard;\nand the conclusion is drawn that the people given up to the more serious\nbusiness of life are dedicated to labor, like the ox. Amusement is\nincompatible with their activities. Pushing this view still further, we\nthink ourselves warranted in believing that the infirm, the afflicted,\nthe bankrupt, the vanquished in life's battle, and all those who carry\nheavy burdens, are in the shade, like the northern slopes of mountains,\nand that it is so of necessity. Whence the conclusion that serious\npeople have no need of pleasure, and that to offer it to them would be\nunseemly; while as to the afflicted, there would be a lack of delicacy\nin breaking the thread of their sad meditations. It seems therefore to\nbe understood that certain persons are condemned to be _always_ serious,\nthat we should approach them in a serious frame of mind, and talk to\nthem only of serious things: so, too, when we visit the sick or\nunfortunate; we should leave our smiles at the door, compose our face\nand manner to dolefulness, and talk of anything heartrending. Thus we\ncarry darkness to those in darkness, shade to those in shade. We\nincrease the isolation of solitary lives and the monotony of the dull\nand sad. We wall up some existences as it were in dungeons; and because\nthe grass grows round their deserted prison-house, we speak low in\napproaching it, as though it were a tomb. Who suspects the work of\ninfernal cruelty which is thus accomplished every day in the world! This\nought not to be.\n\nWhen you find men or women whose lives are lost in hard tasks, or in the\npainful office of seeking out human wretchedness and binding up wounds,\nremember that they are beings made like you, that they have the same\nwants, that there are hours when they need pleasure and diversion. You\nwill not turn them aside from their mission by making them laugh\noccasionally--these people who see so many tears and griefs; on the\ncontrary, you will give them strength to go on the better with their\nwork.\n\nAnd when people whom you know are in trial, do not draw a sanitary\ncordon round them--as though they had the plague--that you cross only\nwith precautions which recall to them their sad lot. On the contrary,\nafter showing all your sympathy, all your respect for their grief,\ncomfort them, help them to take up life again; carry them a breath from\nthe out-of-doors--something in short to remind them that their\nmisfortune does not shut them off from the world.\n\nAnd so extend your sympathy to those whose work quite absorbs them, who\nare, so to put it, tied down. The world is full of men and women\nsacrificed to others, who never have either rest or pleasure, and to\nwhom the least relaxation, the slightest respite, is a priceless good.\nAnd this minimum of comfort could be so easily found for them if only\nwe thought of it. But the broom, you know, is made for sweeping, and it\nseems as though it could not be fatigued. Let us rid ourselves of this\ncriminal blindness which prevents us from seeing the exhaustion of those\nwho are always in the breach. Relieve the sentinels perishing at their\nposts, give Sisyphus an hour to breathe; take for a moment the place of\nthe mother, a slave to the cares of her house and her children;\nsacrifice an hour of our sleep for someone worn by long vigils with the\nsick. Young girl, tired sometimes perhaps of your walk with your\ngoverness, take the cook's apron, and give her the key to the fields.\nYou will at once make others happy and be happy yourself. We go\nunconcernedly along beside our brothers who are bent under burdens we\nmight take upon ourselves for a minute. And this short respite would\nsuffice to soothe aches, revive the flame of joy in many a heart, and\nopen up a wide place for brotherliness. How much better would one\nunderstand another if he knew how to put himself heartily in that\nother's place, and how much more pleasure there would be in life!\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nI have spoken too fully elsewhere of systematizing amusements for the\nyoung, to return to it here in detail.[B] But I wish to say in substance\nwhat cannot be too often repeated: If you wish youth to be moral, do not\nneglect its pleasures, or leave to chance the task of providing them.\nYou will perhaps say that young people do not like to have their\namusements submitted to regulations, and that besides, in our day, they\nare already over-spoiled and divert themselves only too much. I shall\nreply, first, that one may suggest ideas, indicate directions, offer\nopportunities for amusement, without making any regulations whatever. In\nthe second place, I shall make you see that you deceive yourselves in\nthinking youth has too much diversion. Aside from amusements that are\nartificial, enervating and immoral, that blight life instead of making\nit bloom in splendor, there are very few left to-day. Abuse, that enemy\nof legitimate use, has so befouled the world, that it is becoming\ndifficult to touch anything but what is unclean: whence watchfulness,\nwarnings and endless prohibitions. One can hardly stir without\nencountering something that resembles unhealthy pleasure. Among young\npeople of to-day, particularly the self-respecting, the dearth of\namusements causes real suffering. One is not weaned from this generous\nwine without discomfort. Impossible to prolong this state of affairs\nwithout deepening the shadow round the heads of the younger generations.\nWe must come to their aid. Our children are heirs of a joyless world. We\nbequeath them cares, hard questions, a life heavy with shackles and\ncomplexities. Let us at least make an effort to brighten the morning of\ntheir days. Let us interest ourselves in their sports, find them\npleasure-grounds, open to them our hearts and our homes. Let us bring\nthe family into our amusements. Let gayety cease to be a commodity of\nexport. Let us call in our sons, whom our gloomy interiors send out into\nthe street, and our daughters, moping in dismal solitude. Let us\nmultiply anniversaries, family parties, and excursions. Let us raise\ngood humor in our homes to the height of an institution. Let the\nschools, too, do their part. Let masters and students--school-boys and\ncollege-boys--meet together oftener for amusement. It will be so much\nthe better for serious work. There is no such aid to understanding one's\nprofessor as to have laughed in his company; and conversely, to be well\nunderstood a pupil must be met elsewhere than in class or examination.\n\nAnd who will furnish the money? What a question! That is exactly the\nerror. Pleasure and money: people take them for the two wings of the\nsame bird! A gross illusion! Pleasure, like all other truly precious\nthings in this world, cannot be bought or sold. If you wish to be\namused, you must do your part toward it; that is the essential. There is\nno prohibition against opening your purse, if you can do it, and find it\ndesirable. But I assure you it is not indispensable. Pleasure and\nsimplicity are two old acquaintances. Entertain simply, meet your\nfriends simply. If you come from work well done, are as amiable and\ngenuine as possible toward your companions, and speak no evil of the\nabsent, your success is sure.\n\n[B] See \"Youth,\" the chapter on \"Joy.\"\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE MERCENARY SPIRIT AND SIMPLICITY\n\n\nWe have in passing touched upon a certain wide-spread prejudice which\nattributes to money a magic power. Having come so near enchanted ground\nwe will not retire in awe, but plant a firm foot here, persuaded of many\ntruths that should be spoken. They are not new, but how they are\nforgotten!\n\nI see no possible way of doing without money. The only thing that\ntheorists or legislators who accuse it of all our ills have hitherto\nachieved, has been to change its name or form. But they have never been\nable to dispense with a symbol representative of the commercial value of\nthings. One might as well wish to do away with written language as to do\naway with money. Nevertheless, this question of a circulating medium is\nvery troublesome. It forms one of the chief elements of complication in\nour life. The economic difficulties amid which we still flounder, social\nconventionalities, and the entire organization of modern life, have\ncarried gold to a rank so eminent that it is not astonishing to find the\nimagination of man attributing to it a sort of royalty. And it is on\nthis side that we shall attack the problem.\n\nThe term money has for appendage that of merchandise. If there were no\nmerchandise there would be no money; but as long as there is merchandise\nthere will be money, little matter under what form. The source of all\nthe abuses which centre around money lies in a lack of discrimination.\nPeople have confused under the term and idea of merchandise, things\nwhich have no relation with one another. They have attempted to give a\nvenal value to things which neither could have it nor ought to. The idea\nof purchase and sale has invaded ground where it may justly be\nconsidered an enemy and a usurper. It is reasonable that wheat,\npotatoes, wine, fabrics, should be bought and sold, and it is perfectly\nnatural that a man's labor procure him rights to life, and that there be\nput into his hands something whose value represents them; but here\nalready the analogy ceases to be complete. A man's labor is not\nmerchandise in the same sense as a sack of flour or a ton of coal. Into\nthis labor enter elements which cannot be valued in money. In short,\nthere are things which can in no wise be bought: sleep, for instance,\nknowledge of the future, talent. He who offers them for sale must be\nconsidered a fool or an impostor. And yet there are gentlemen who coin\nmoney by such traffic. They sell what does not belong to them, and\ntheir dupes pay fictitious values in veritable coin. So, too, there are\ndealers in pleasure, dealers in love, dealers in miracles, dealers in\npatriotism, and the title of merchant, so honorable when it represents a\nman selling that which is in truth a commodity of trade, becomes the\nworst of stigmas when there is question of the heart, of religion, of\ncountry.\n\nAlmost all men are agreed that to barter with one's sentiments, his\nhonor, his cloth, his pen, or his note, is infamous. Unfortunately this\nidea, which suffers no contradiction as a theory, and which thus stated\nseems rather a commonplace than a high moral truth, has infinite trouble\nto make its way in practice. Traffic has invaded the world. The\nmoney-changers are established even in the sanctuary, and by sanctuary I\ndo not mean religious things alone, but whatever mankind holds sacred\nand inviolable. It is not gold that complicates, corrupts, and debases\nlife; it is our mercenary spirit.\n\nThe mercenary spirit resolves everything into a single question: _How\nmuch is that going to bring me?_ and sums up everything in a single\naxiom: _With money you can procure anything._ Following these two\nprinciples of conduct, a society may descend to a degree of infamy\nimpossible to describe or to imagine.\n\n_How much is it going to bring me?_ This question, so legitimate while\nit concerns those precautions which each ought to take to assure his\nsubsistence by his labor, becomes pernicious as soon as it passes its\nlimits and dominates the whole life. This is so true that it vitiates\neven the toil which gains our daily bread. I furnish paid labor; nothing\ncould be better: but if to inspire me in this labor I have only the\ndesire to get the pay, nothing could be worse. A man whose only motive\nfor action is his wages, does a bad piece of work: what interests him is\nnot the doing, it's the gold. If he can retrench in pains without\nlessening his gains, be assured that he will do it. Plowman, mason,\nfactory laborer, he who loves not his work puts into it neither interest\nnor dignity--is, in short, a bad workman. It is not well to confide\none's life to a doctor who is wholly engrossed in his fees, for the\nspring of his action is the desire to garnish his purse with the\ncontents of yours. If it is for his interest that you should suffer\nlonger, he is capable of fostering your malady instead of fortifying\nyour strength. The instructor of children who cares for his work only so\nfar as it brings him profit, is a sad teacher; for his pay is\nindifferent, and his teaching more indifferent still. Of what value is\nthe mercenary journalist? The day you write for the dollar, your prose\nis not worth the dollar you write for. The more elevated in kind is the\nobject of human labor, the more the mercenary spirit, if it be present,\nmakes this labor void and corrupts it. There are a thousand reasons to\nsay that all toil merits its wage, that every man who devotes his\nenergies to providing for his life should have his place in the sun, and\nthat he who does nothing useful, does not gain his livelihood, in short,\nis only a parasite. But there is no greater social error than to make\ngain the sole motive of action. The best we put into our work--be that\nwork done by strength of muscle, warmth of heart, or concentration of\nmind--is precisely that for which no one can pay us. Nothing better\nproves that man is not a machine than this fact: two men at work with\nthe same forces and the same movements, produce totally different\nresults. Where lies the cause of this phenomenon? In the divergence of\ntheir intentions. One has the mercenary spirit, the other has singleness\nof purpose. Both receive their pay, but the labor of the one is barren;\nthe other has put his soul into his work. The work of the first is like\na grain of sand, out of which nothing comes through all eternity; the\nother's work is like the living seed thrown into the ground; it\ngerminates and brings forth harvests. This is the secret which explains\nwhy so many people have failed while employing the very processes by\nwhich others succeed. Automatons do not reproduce their kind, and\nmercenary labor yields no fruit.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nUnquestionably we must bow before economic facts, and recognize the\ndifficulties of living: from day to day it becomes more imperative to\ncombine well one's forces in order to succeed in feeding, clothing,\nhousing, and bringing up a family. He who does not rightly take account\nof these crying necessities, who makes no calculation, no provision for\nthe future, is but a visionary or an incompetent, and runs the risk of\nsooner or later asking alms from those at whose parsimony he has\nsneered. And yet, what would become of us if these cares absorbed us\nentirely? if, mere accountants, we should wish to measure our effort by\nthe money it brings, do nothing that does not end in a receipt, and\nconsider as things worthless or pains lost whatever cannot be drawn up\nin figures on the pages of a ledger? Did our mothers look for pay in\nloving us and caring for us? What would become of filial piety if we\nasked it for loving and caring for our aged parents?\n\nWhat does it cost you to speak the truth? Misunderstandings, sometimes\nsufferings and persecutions. To defend your country? Weariness, wounds\nand often death. To do good? Annoyance, ingratitude, even resentment.\nSelf-sacrifice enters into all the essential actions of humanity. I defy\nthe closest calculators to maintain their position in the world without\never appealing to aught but their calculations. True, those who know how\nto make their \"pile\" are rated as men of ability. But look a little\ncloser. How much of it do they owe to the unselfishness of the\nsimple-hearted? Would they have succeeded had they met only shrewd men\nof their own sort, having for device: \"No money, no service?\" Let us be\noutspoken; it is due to certain people who do not count too rigorously,\nthat the world gets on. The most beautiful acts of service and the\nhardest tasks have generally little remuneration or none. Fortunately\nthere are always men ready for unselfish deeds; and even for those paid\nonly in suffering, though they cost gold, peace, and even life. The part\nthese men play is often painful and discouraging. Who of us has not\nheard recitals of experiences wherein the narrator regretted some past\nkindness he had done, some trouble he had taken, to have nothing but\nvexation in return? These confidences generally end thus: \"It was folly\nto do the thing!\" Sometimes it is right so to judge; for it is always a\nmistake to cast pearls before swine; but how many lives there are whose\nsole acts of real beauty are these very ones of which the doers repent\nbecause of men's ingratitude! Our wish for humanity is that the number\nof these foolish deeds may go on increasing.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd now I arrive at the _credo_ of the mercenary spirit. It is\ncharacterized by brevity. For the mercenary man, the law and the\nprophets are contained in this one axiom: _With money you can get\nanything._ From a surface view of our social life, nothing seems more\nevident. \"The sinews of war,\" \"the shining mark,\" \"the key that opens\nall doors,\" \"king money!\"--If one gathered up all the sayings about the\nglory and power of gold, he could make a litany longer than that which\nis chanted in honor of the Virgin. You must be without a penny, if only\nfor a day or two, and try to live in this world of ours, to have any\nidea of the needs of him whose purse is empty. I invite those who love\ncontrasts and unforeseen situations, to attempt to live without money\nthree days, and far from their friends and acquaintances--in short, far\nfrom the society in which they are somebody. They will gain more\nexperience in forty-eight hours than in a year otherwise. Alas for some\npeople! they have this experience thrust upon them, and when veritable\nruin descends around their heads, it is useless to remain in their own\ncountry, among the companions of their youth, their former colleagues,\neven those indebted to them. People affect to know them no longer. With\nwhat bitterness do they comment on the creed of money:--With gold one\nmay have what he will; without it, impossible to have anything! They\nbecome pariahs, lepers, whom everyone shuns. Flies swarm round cadavers,\nmen round gold. Take away the gold, nobody is there. Oh, it has caused\ntears to flow, this creed of gain! bitter tears, tears of blood, even\nfrom those very eyes which once adored the golden calf.\n\nAnd with it all, this creed is false, quite false. I shall not advance\nto the attack with hackneyed tales of the rich man astray in a desert,\nwho cannot get even a drop of water for his gold; or the decrepit\nmillionaire who would give half he has to buy from a stalwart fellow\nwithout a cent, his twenty years and his lusty health. No more shall I\nattempt to prove that one cannot buy happiness. So many people who have\nmoney and so many more who have not would smile at this truth as the\nhardest ridden of saws. But I shall appeal to the common experience of\neach of you, to make you put your finger on the clumsy lie hidden\nbeneath an axiom that all the world goes about repeating.\n\nFill your purse to the best of your means, and let us set out for one of\nthe watering-places of which there are so many. I mean some little town\nformerly unknown and full of simple folk, respectful and hospitable,\namong whom it was good to be, and cost little. Fame with her hundred\ntrumpets has announced them to the world, and shown them how they can\nprofit from their situation, their climate, their personality. You start\nout, on the faith of Dame Rumor, flattering yourself that with your\nmoney you are going to find a quiet place to rest, and, far from the\nworld of civilization and convention, weave a bit of poetry into the\nwarp of your days.\n\nThe beginning is good. Nature's setting and some patriarchal costumes,\nslow to disappear, delight you. But as time passes, the impression is\nspoiled. The reverse side of things begins to show. This which you\nthought was as true antique as family heirlooms, is naught but trickery\nto mystify the credulous. Everything is labeled, all is for sale, from\nthe earth to the inhabitants. These primitives have become the most\nconsummate of sharpers. Given your money, they have resolved the problem\nof getting it with the least expense to themselves. On all sides are\nnets and traps, like spider-webs, and the fly that this gentry lies\nsnugly in wait for is _you_. This is what twenty or thirty years of\nvenality has done for a population once simple and honest, whose contact\nwas grateful indeed to men worn by city life. Home-made bread has\ndisappeared, butter comes from the dealer, they know to an art how to\nskim milk and adulterate wine; they have all the vices of dwellers in\ncities without their virtues.\n\nAs you leave, you count your money. So much is wanting, that you make\ncomplaint. You are wrong. One never pays too dear for the conviction\nthat there are things which money will not buy.\n\nYou have need in your house of an intelligent and competent servant:\nattempt to find this _rara avis_. According to the principle that with\nmoney one may get anything, you ought, as the position you offer is\ninferior, ordinary, good, or exceptional, to find servants unskilled,\naverage, excellent, superior. But all those who present themselves for\nthe vacant post are listed in the last category, and are fortified with\ncertificates to support their pretensions. It is true that nine times\nout of ten, when put to the test, these experts are found totally\nwanting. Then why did they engage themselves with you? They ought in\ntruth to reply as does the cook in the comedy, who is dearly paid and\nproves to know nothing.\n\n    \"Why did you hire out as a _cordon bleu_?\n    _It was to get bigger commissions.\"_\n\nThat is the great affair. You will always find people who like to get\nbig wages. More rarely you find capability. And if you are looking for\nprobity, the difficulty increases. Mercenaries may be had for the\nasking; faithfulness is another thing. Far be it from me to deny the\nexistence of faithful servants, at once intelligent and upright. But you\nwill encounter as many, if not more, among the illy paid as among those\nmost highly salaried. And it little matters where you find them, you may\nbe sure that they are not faithful in their own interest; they are\nfaithful because they have somewhat of that simplicity which renders us\ncapable of self-abnegation.\n\nWe also hear on all sides the adage that money is the sinews of war.\nThere is no question but that war costs much money, and we know\nsomething about it. Does this mean that in order to defend herself\nagainst her enemies and to honor her flag, a country need only be rich?\nIn olden time the Greeks took it upon themselves to teach the Persians\nthe contrary, and this lesson will never cease to be repeated in\nhistory. With money ships, cannon, horses may be bought; but not so\nmilitary genius, administrative wisdom, discipline, enthusiasm. Put\nmillions into the hands of your recruiters, and charge them to bring you\na great leader and an army. You will find a hundred captains instead of\none, and a thousand soldiers. But put them under fire: you will have\nenough of your hirelings! At least one might imagine that with money\nalone it is possible to lighten misery. Ah! that too is an illusion from\nwhich we must turn away. Money, be the sum great or small, is a seed\nwhich germinates into abuses. Unless there go with it intelligence,\nkindness, much knowledge of men, it will do nothing but harm, and we run\ngreat risk of corrupting both those who receive our bounty and those\ncharged with its distribution.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nMoney will not answer for everything: it is a power, but it is not\nall-powerful. Nothing complicates life, demoralizes man, perverts the\nnormal course of society like the development of venality. Wherever it\nreigns, everybody is duped by everybody else: one can no longer put\ntrust in persons or things, no longer obtain anything of value. We would\nnot be detractors of money, but this general law must be applied to it:\n_Everything in its own place._ When gold, which should be a servant,\nbecomes a tyrannical power, affronting morality, dignity and liberty;\nwhen some exert themselves to obtain it at any price, offering for sale\nwhat is not merchandise, and others, possessing wealth, fancy that they\ncan purchase what no one may buy, it is time to rise against this gross\nand criminal superstition, and cry aloud to the imposture: \"Thy money\nperish with thee!\" The most precious things that man possesses he has\nalmost always received gratuitously: let him learn so to give them.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nNOTORIETY AND THE INGLORIOUS GOOD\n\n\nOne of the chief puerilities of our time is the love of advertisement.\nTo emerge from obscurity, to be in the public eye, to make one's self\ntalked of--some people are so consumed with this desire that we are\njustified in declaring them attacked with an itch for publicity. In\ntheir eyes obscurity is the height of ignominy: so they do their best to\nkeep their names in every mouth. In their obscure position they look\nupon themselves as lost, like ship-wrecked sailors whom a night of\ntempest has cast on some lonely rock, and who have recourse to cries,\nvolleys, fire, all the signals imaginable, to let it be known that they\nare there. Not content with setting off crackers and innocent rockets,\nmany, to make themselves heard at any cost, have gone to the length of\nperfidy and even crime. The incendiary Erostratus has made numerous\ndisciples. How many men of to-day have become notorious for having\ndestroyed something of mark; pulled down--or tried to pull down--some\nman's high reputation; signalled their passage, in short, by a scandal,\na meanness, or an atrocity!\n\nThis rage for notoriety does not surge through cracked brains alone, or\nonly in the world of adventurers, charlatans and pretenders generally;\nit has spread abroad in all the domains of life, spiritual and material.\nPolitics, literature, even science, and--most odious of\nall--philanthropy and religion are infected. Trumpets announce a good\ndeed done, and souls must be saved with din and clamor. Pursuing its way\nof destruction, the rage for noise has entered places ordinarily silent,\ntroubled spirits naturally serene, and vitiated in large measure all\nactivity for good. The abuse of showing everything, or rather, putting\neverything on exhibition; the growing incapacity to appreciate that\nwhich chooses to remain hidden, and the habit of estimating the value of\nthings by the racket they make, have come to corrupt the judgment of the\nmost earnest men, and one sometimes wonders if society will not end by\ntransforming itself into a great fair, with each one beating his drum in\nfront of his tent.\n\nGladly do we quit the dust and din of like exhibitions, to go and\nbreathe peacefully in some far-off nook of the woods, all surprise that\nthe brook is so limpid, the forest so still, the solitude so enchanting.\nThank God there are yet these uninvaded corners. However formidable the\nuproar, however deafening the babel of merry-andrews, it cannot carry\nbeyond a certain limit; it grows faint and dies away. The realm of\nsilence is vaster than the realm of noise. Herein is our consolation.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nRest a moment on the threshold of this infinite world of inglorious\ngood, of quiet activities. Instantly we are under the charm we feel in\nstretches of untrodden snow, in hiding wood-flowers, in disappearing\npathways that seem to lead to horizons without bourn. The world is so\nmade that the engines of labor, the most active agencies, are everywhere\nconcealed. Nature affects a sort of coquetry in masking her operations.\nIt costs you pains to spy her out, ingenuity to surprise her, if you\nwould see anything but results and penetrate the secrets of her\nlaboratories. Likewise in human society, the forces which move for good\nremain invisible, and even in our individual lives; what is best in us\nis incommunicable, buried in the depths of us. And the more vital are\nthese sensibilities and intuitions, confounding themselves with the very\nsource of our being, the less ostentatious they are: they think\nthemselves profaned by exposure to the light of day. There is a secret\nand inexpressible joy in possessing at the heart of one's being, an\ninterior world known only to God, whence, nevertheless, come impulses,\nenthusiasms, the daily renewal of courage, and the most powerful motives\nfor activity among our fellow men. When this intimate life loses in\nintensity, when man neglects it for what is superficial, he forfeits in\nworth all that he gains in appearance. By a sad fatality, it happens\nthat in this way we often become less admirable in proportion as we are\nmore admired. And we remain convinced that what is best in the world is\nunknown there; for only those know it who possess it, and if they speak\nof it, in so doing they destroy its charm.\n\nThere are passionate lovers of nature whom she fascinates most in\nby-places, in the cool of forests, in the clefts of ca\u00f1ons, everywhere\nthat the careless lover is not admitted to her contemplation. Forgetting\ntime and the life of the world, they pass days in these inviolate\nstillnesses, watching a bird build its nest or brood over its young, or\nsome little groundling at its gracious play. So to seek the good within\nhimself--one must go where he no longer finds constraint, or pose, or\n\"gallery\" of any sort, but the simple fact of a life made up of wishing\nto be what it is good for it to be, without troubling about anything\nelse.\n\nMay we be permitted to record here some observations made from life? As\nno names are given, they cannot be considered indiscreet.\n\nIn my country of Alsace, on the solitary route whose interminable ribbon\nstretches on and on under the forests of the Vosges, there is a\nstone-breaker whom I have seen at his work for thirty years. The first\ntime I came upon him, I was a young student, setting out with swelling\nheart for the great city. The sight of this man did me good, for he was\nhumming a song as he broke his stones. We exchanged a few words, and he\nsaid at the end: \"Well, good-by, my boy, good courage and good luck!\"\nSince then I have passed and repassed along that same route, under\ncircumstances the most diverse, painful and joyful. The student has\nfinished his course, the breaker of stones remains what he was. He has\ntaken a few more precautions against the seasons' storms: a rush-mat\nprotects his back, and his felt hat is drawn further down to shield his\nface. But the forest is always sending back the echo of his valiant\nhammer. How many sudden tempests have broken over his bent back, how\nmuch adverse fate has fallen on his head, on his house, on his country!\nHe continues to break his stones, and, coming and going I find him by\nthe roadside, smiling in spite of his age and his wrinkles, benevolent,\nspeaking--above all in dark days--those simple words of brave men, which\nhave so much effect when they are scanned to the breaking of stones.\n\nIt would be quite impossible to express the emotion the sight of this\nsimple man gives me, and certainly he has no suspicion of it. I know of\nnothing more reassuring and at the same time more searching for the\nvanity which ferments in our hearts, than this coming face to face with\nan obscure worker who does his task as the oak grows and as the good God\nmakes his sun to rise, without asking who is looking on.\n\nI have known, too, a number of old teachers, men and women who have\npassed their whole life at the same occupation--making the rudiments of\nhuman knowledge and a few principles of conduct penetrate heads\nsometimes harder than the rocks. They have done it with their whole\nsoul, throughout the length of a hard life in which the attention of men\nhad little place. When they lie in their unknown graves, no one\nremembers them but a few humble people like themselves. But their\nrecompense is in their love. No one is greater than these unknown.\n\nHow many hidden virtues may one not discover--if he know how to\nsearch--among people of a class he often ridicules without perceiving\nthat in so doing he is guilty of cruelty, ingratitude and stupidity: I\nmean old maids. People amuse themselves with remarking the surprising\ndress and ways of some of them--things of no consequence, for that\nmatter. They persist also in reminding us that others, very selfish,\ntake interest in nothing but their own comfort and that of some cat or\ncanary upon which their powers of affection center; and certainly these\nare not outdone in egoism by the most hardened celibates of the stronger\nsex. But what we oftenest forget is the amount of self-sacrifice hidden\nmodestly away in so many of these truly admirable lives. Is it nothing\nto be without home and its love, without future, without personal\nambition? to take upon one's self that cross of solitary life, so hard\nto bear, especially when there is added the solitude of the heart? to\nforget one's self and have no other interests than the care of the old,\nof orphans, the poor, the infirm--those whom the brutal mechanism of\nlife casts out among its waste? Seen from without, these apparently tame\nand lusterless lives rouse pity rather than envy. Those who approach\ngently sometimes divine sad secrets, great trials undergone, heavy\nburdens beneath which too fragile shoulders bend; but this is only the\nside of shadow. We should learn to know and value this richness of\nheart, this pure goodness, this power to love, to console, to hope, this\njoyful giving up of self, this persistence in sweetness and forgiveness\neven toward the unworthy. Poor old maids! how many wrecked lives have\nyou rescued, how many wounded have you healed, how many wanderers have\nyou gently led aright, how many naked have you clothed, how many orphans\nhave you taken in, and how many strangers, who would have been alone in\nthe world but for you--you who yourselves are often remembered of no\none. I mistake. Someone knows you; it is that great mysterious Pity\nwhich keeps watch over our lives and suffers in our misfortunes.\nForgotten like you, often blasphemed, it has confided to you some of its\nheavenliest messages, and that perhaps is why above your gentle comings\nand goings, we sometimes seem to hear the rustling wings of ministering\nangels.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nThe good hides itself under so many different forms, that one has often\nas much pains to discover it as to unearth the best concealed crimes. A\nRussian doctor, who had passed ten years of his life in Siberia,\ncondemned for political reasons to forced labor, used to find great\npleasure in telling of the generosity, courage and humanity he had\nobserved, not only among a large number of the condemned, but also\namong the convict guards. For the moment one is tempted to exclaim:\nWhere will not the good hide away! And in truth life offers here great\nsurprises and embarrassing contrasts. There are good men, officially so\nrecognized, quoted among their associates, I had almost said guaranteed\nby the Government or the Church, who can be reproached with nothing but\ndry and hard hearts; while we are astonished to encounter in certain\nfallen human beings, the most genuine tenderness, and as it were a\nthirst for self-devotion.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nI should like to speak next--apropos of the inglorious good--of a class\nthat to-day it is thought quite fitting to treat with the utmost\none-sidedness. I mean the rich. Some people think the last word is said\nwhen they have stigmatized that infamy, capital. For them, all who\npossess great fortunes are monsters gorged with the blood of the\nmiserable. Others, not so declamatory, persist, however, in confounding\nriches with egoism and insensibility. Justice should be visited on these\nerrors, be they involuntary or calculated. No doubt there are rich men\nwho concern themselves with nobody else, and others who do good only\nwith ostentation; indeed, we know it too well. But does their inhumanity\nor hypocrisy take away the value of the good that others do, and that\nthey often hide with a modesty so perfect?\n\nI knew a man to whom every misfortune had come which can strike us in\nour affections. He had lost a beloved wife, had seen all his children\nburied, one after another. But he had a great fortune, the result of his\nown labor. Living in the utmost simplicity, almost without personal\nwants, he spent his time in searching for opportunities to do good, and\nprofiting by them. How many people he surprised in flagrant poverty,\nwhat means he combined for relieving distress and lighting up dark\nlives, with what kindly thoughtfulness he took his friends unawares, no\none can imagine. He liked to do good to others and enjoy their surprise\nwhen they did not know whence the relief came. It pleased him to repair\nthe injustices of fortune, to bring tears of happiness in families\npursued by mischance. He was continually plotting, contriving,\nmachinating in the dark, with a childish fear of being caught with his\nhand in the bag. The greater part of these fine deeds were not known\ntill after his death; the whole of them we shall never know.\n\nHe was a socialist of the right sort! for there are two kinds of them.\nThose who aspire to appropriate to themselves a part of the goods of\nothers, are numerous and commonplace. To belong to their order it\nsuffices to have a big appetite. Those who are hungering to divide their\nown goods with men who have none, are rare and precious, for to enter\nthis choice company there is need of a brave and noble heart, free from\nselfishness, and sensitive to both the happiness and unhappiness of its\nfellows. Fortunately the race of these socialists is not extinct, and I\nfeel an unalloyed satisfaction in offering them a tribute they never\nclaim.\n\nI must be pardoned for dwelling upon this. It does one good to offset\nthe bitterness of so many infamies, so many calumnies, so much\ncharlatanism, by resting the eyes upon something more beautiful,\nbreathing the perfume of these stray corners where simple goodness\nflowers.\n\nA lady, a foreigner, doubtless little used to Parisian life, just now\ntold me with what horror the things she sees here inspire her:--these\nvile posters, these \"yellow\" journals, these women with bleached hair,\nthis crowd rushing to the races, to dance-halls, to roulette tables, to\ncorruption--the whole flood of superficial and mundane life. She did not\nspeak the word Babylon, but doubtless it was out of pity for one of the\ninhabitants of this city of perdition.\n\n\"Alas, yes, madam, these things are sad, but you have not seen all.\"\n\n\"Heaven preserve me from that!\"\n\n\"On the contrary, I wish you could see everything; for if the dark side\nis very ugly, there is so much to atone for it. And believe me, madam,\nyou have simply to change your quarter, or observe at another hour. For\ninstance, take the Paris of early morning. It will offer much to correct\nyour impressions of the Paris of the night. Go see, among so many other\nworking people, the street-sweepers, who come out at the hour when the\nrevellers and malefactors go in. Observe beneath these rags those\ncaryatid bodies, those austere faces! How serious they are at their work\nof sweeping away the refuse of the night's revelry. One might liken\nthem to the prophets at Ahasuerus's gates. There are women among them,\nmany old people. When the air is cold they stop to blow their fingers,\nand then go at it again. So it is every day. And they, too, are\ninhabitants of Paris.\n\n\"Go next to the faubourgs, to the factories, especially the smaller\nones, where the children or the employers labor with the men. Watch the\narmy of workers marching to their tasks. How ready and willing these\nyoung girls seem, as they come gaily down from their distant quarters to\nthe shops and stores and offices of the city. Then visit the homes from\nwhich they come. See the woman of the people at her work. Her husband's\nwages are modest, their dwelling is cramped, the children are many, the\nfather is often harsh. Make a collection of the biographies of lowly\npeople, budgets of modest family life: look at them attentively and\nlong.\n\n\"After that, go see the students. Those who have scandalized you in the\nstreets are numerous, but those who labor hard are legion--only they\nstay at home, and are not talked about. If you knew the toil and dig of\nthe Latin Quarter! You find the papers full of the rumpus made by a\ncertain set of youths who call themselves students. The papers say\nenough of those who break windows; but why do they make no mention of\nthose who spend their nights toiling over problems? Because it wouldn't\ninterest the public. Yes, when now and then one of them, a medical\nstudent perhaps, dies a victim to professional duty, the matter has two\nlines in the dailies. A drunken brawl gets half a column, with every\ndetail elaborated. Nothing is lacking but the portraits of the\nheroes--and not always that!\n\n\"I should never end were I to try to point out to you all that you must\ngo to see if you would see all: you would needs make the tour of society\nat large, rich and poor, wise and ignorant. And certainly you would not\njudge so severely then. Paris is a world, and here, as in the world in\ngeneral, the good hides away while the evil flaunts itself. Observing\nonly the surface, you sometimes ask how there can possibly be so much\nriff-raff. When, on the contrary, you look into the depths, you are\nastonished that in this troublous, obscure and sometimes frightful life\nthere can be so much of virtue.\"\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nBut why linger over these things? Am I _not_ blowing trumpets for those\nwho hold trumpet-blowing in horror? Do not understand me so. My aim is\nthis--to make men think about unostentatious goodness; above all, to\nmake them love it and practice it. The man who finds his satisfaction in\nthings which glitter and hold his eyes, is lost: first, because he will\nthus see evil before all else; then, because he gets accustomed to the\nsight of only such good as seeks for notice, and therefore easily\nsuccumbs to the temptation to live himself for appearances. Not only\nmust one be resigned to obscurity, he must love it, if he does not wish\nto slip insensibly into the ranks of figurants, who preserve their parts\nonly while under the eyes of the spectators, and put off in the wings\nthe restraints imposed on the stage. Here we are in the presence of one\nof the essential elements of the moral life. And this which we say is\ntrue not only for those who are called humble and whose lot it is to\npass unremarked; it is just as true, and more so, for the chief actors.\nIf you would not be a brilliant inutility, a man of gold lace and\nplumes, but empty inside, you must play the star r\u00f4le in the simple\nspirit of the most obscure of your collaborators. He who is nothing\nworth except on hours of parade, is worth less than nothing. Have we the\nperilous honor of being always in view, of marching in the front ranks?\nLet us take so much the greater care of the sanctuary of silent good\nwithin us. Let us give to the structure whose fa\u00e7ade is seen of our\nfellow-men, a wide foundation of simplicity, of humble fidelity. And\nthen, out of sympathy, out of gratitude, let us stay near our brothers\nwho are unknown to fame. We owe everything to them--do we not? I call to\nwitness everyone who has found in life this encouraging experience, that\nstones hidden in the soil hold up the whole edifice. All those who\narrive at having a public and recognized value, owe it to some humble\nspiritual ancestors, to some forgotten inspirers. A small number of the\ngood, among them simple women, peasants, vanquished heroes, parents as\nmodest as they are revered, personify for us beautiful and noble living;\ntheir example inspires us and gives us strength. The remembrance of them\nis forever inseparable from that conscience before which we arraign\nourselves. In our hours of trial, we think of them, courageous and\nserene, and our burdens lighten. In clouds they compass us about, these\nwitnesses invisible and beloved who keep us from stumbling and our feet\nfrom falling in the battle; and day by day do they prove to us that the\ntreasure of humanity is its hidden goodness.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nTHE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME\n\n\nIn the time of the Second Empire, in one of our pleasantest\nsub-prefectures of the provinces, a little way from some baths\nfrequented by the Emperor, there was a mayor, a very worthy man and\nintelligent too, whose head was suddenly turned by the thought that his\nsovereign might one day descend upon his home. Up to this time he had\nlived in the house of his fathers, a son respectful of the slightest\nfamily traditions. But when once the all-absorbing idea of receiving the\nEmperor had taken possession of his brain, he became another man. In\nthis new light, what had before seemed sufficient for his needs, even\nenjoyable, all this simplicity that his ancestors had loved, appeared\npoor, ugly, ridiculous. Out of the question to ask an Emperor to climb\nthis wooden staircase, sit in these old arm-chairs, walk over such\nsuperannuated carpets. So the mayor called architect and masons;\npickaxes attacked walls and demolished partitions, and a drawing-room\nwas made, out of all proportion to the rest of the house in size and\nsplendor. He and his family retired into close quarters, where people\nand furniture incommoded each other generally. Then, having emptied his\npurse and upset his household by this stroke of genius, he awaited the\nroyal guest. Alas, he soon saw the end of the Empire arrive, but the\nEmperor never.\n\nThe folly of this poor man is not so rare. As mad as he are all those\nwho sacrifice their home life to the demands of the world. And the\ndanger in such a sacrifice is most menacing in times of unrest. Our\ncontemporaries are constantly exposed to it, and constantly succumbing.\nHow many family treasures have they literally thrown away to satisfy\nworldly ambitions and conventions; but the happiness upon which they\nthought to come through these impious immolations always eludes them.\n\nTo give up the ancestral hearth, to let the family traditions fall into\ndesuetude, to abandon the simple domestic customs, for whatever return,\nis to make a fool's bargain; and such is the place in society of family\nlife, that if this be impoverished, the trouble is felt throughout the\nwhole social organism. To enjoy a normal development, this organism has\nneed of well-tried individuals, each having his own value, his own\nhall-mark. Otherwise society becomes a flock, and sometimes a flock\nwithout a shepherd. But whence does the individual draw his\noriginality--this unique something, which, joined to the distinctive\nqualities of others, constitutes the wealth and strength of a community?\nHe can draw it only from his own family. Destroy the assemblage of\nmemories and practices whence emanates for each home an atmosphere in\nminiature, and you dry up the sources of character, sap the strength of\npublic spirit.\n\nIt concerns the country that each home be a world, profound, respected,\ncommunicating to its members an ineffaceable moral imprint. But before\npursuing the subject further, let us rid ourselves of a\nmisunderstanding. Family feeling, like all beautiful things, has its\ncaricature, which is family egoism. Some families are like barred and\nbolted citadels, their members organized for the exploitation of the\nwhole world. Everything that does not directly concern them is\nindifferent to them. They live like colonists, I had almost said\nintruders, in the society around them. Their particularism is pushed to\nsuch an excess that they make enemies of the whole human race. In their\nsmall way they resemble those powerful societies, formed from time to\ntime through the ages, which possess themselves of universal rule, and\nfor which no one outside their own community counts. This is the spirit\nthat has sometimes made the family seem a retreat of egoism which it was\nnecessary to destroy for the public safety. But as patriotism and\njingoism are as far apart as the east from the west, so are family\nfeeling and clannishness.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nHere we are talking of right family feeling, and nothing else in the\nworld can take its place; for in it lie in germ all those fine and\nsimple virtues which assure the strength and duration of social\ninstitutions. And the very base of family feeling is respect for the\npast; for the best possessions of a family are its common memories. An\nintangible, indivisible and inalienable capital, these souvenirs\nconstitute a sacred fund that each member of a family ought to consider\nmore precious than anything else he possesses. They exist in a dual\nform: in idea and in fact. They show themselves in language, habits of\nthought, sentiments, even instincts, and one sees them materialized in\nportraits, furniture, buildings, dress, songs. To profane eyes, they are\nnothing; to the eyes of those who know how to appreciate the things of\nthe family, they are relics with which one should not part at any price.\n\nBut what generally happens in our day? Worldliness wars upon the\nsentiment of family, and I know of no strife more impassioned. By great\nmeans and small, by all sorts of new customs, requirements and\npretensions, the spirit of the world breaks into the domestic sanctuary.\nWhat are this stranger's rights? its titles? Upon what does it rest its\nperemptory claims? This is what people too often neglect to inquire.\nThey make a mistake. We treat the invader as very poor and simple people\ndo a pompous visitor. For this incommoding guest of a day, they pillage\ntheir garden, bully their children and servants, and neglect their\nwork. Such conduct is not only wrong, it is impolitic. One should have\nthe courage to remain what he is, in the face of all comers.\n\nThe worldly spirit is full of impertinences. Here is a home which has\nformed characters of mark, and is forming them yet. The people, the\nfurnishings, the customs are all in harmony. By marriage or through\nrelations of business or pleasure, the worldly spirit enters. It finds\neverything out of date, awkward, too simple, lacking the modern touch.\nAt first it restricts itself to criticism and light raillery. But this\nis the dangerous moment. Look out for yourself; here is the enemy! If\nyou so much as listen to his reasonings, to-morrow you will sacrifice a\npiece of furniture, the next day a good old tradition, and so one by one\nthe family heirlooms dear to the heart will go to the bric-a-brac\ndealer--and filial piety with them.\n\nIn the midst of your new habits and in the changed atmosphere, your\nfriends of other days, your old relatives, will be expatriated. Your\nnext step will be to lay them aside in their turn; the worldly spirit\nleaves the old out of consideration. At last, established in an\nabsolutely transformed setting, even you will view yourself with\namazement. Nothing will be familiar, but surely it will be correct; at\nleast the world will be satisfied!--Ah! that is where you are mistaken!\nAfter having made you cast out pure treasure as so much junk, it will\nfind that your borrowed livery fits you ill, and will hasten to make you\nsensible of the ridiculousness of the situation. Much better have had\nfrom the beginning the courage of your convictions, and have defended\nyour home.\n\nMany young people when they marry, listen to this voice of the world.\nTheir parents have given them the example of a modest life; but the new\ngeneration thinks it affirms its rights to existence and liberty, by\nrepudiating ways in its eyes too patriarchal. So these young folks make\nefforts to set themselves up lavishly in the latest fashion, and rid\nthemselves of useless property at dirt-cheap prices. Instead of filling\ntheir houses with objects which say: Remember! they garnish them with\nquite new furnishings that as yet have no meaning. Wait, I am wrong;\nthese things are often symbols, as it were, of a facile and superficial\nexistence. In their midst one breathes a certain heady vapor of\nmundanity. They recall the life outside, the turmoil, the rush. And were\none sometimes disposed to forget this life, they would call back his\nwandering thought and say: Remember!--in another sense: Do not forget\nyour appointment at the club, the play, the races! The home, then,\nbecomes a sort of half-way house where one comes to rest a little\nbetween two prolonged absences; it isn't a good place to stay. As it has\nno soul, it does not speak to yours. Time to eat and sleep, and then off\nagain! Otherwise you become as dull as a hermit.\n\nWe are all acquainted with people who have a rage for being abroad, who\nthink the world would no longer go round if they didn't figure on all\nsides of it. To stay at home is penal; there they cease to be in view. A\nhorror of home life possesses them to such a degree that they would\nrather pay to be bored outside than be amused gratuitously within.\n\nIn this way society slowly gravitates toward life in herds, which must\nnot be confounded with public life. The life in herds is somewhat like\nthat of swarms of flies in the sun. Nothing so much resembles the\nworldly life of a man as the worldly life of another man. And this\nuniversal banality destroys the very essence of public spirit. One need\nnot journey far to discover the ravages made in modern society by the\nspirit of worldliness; and if we have so little foundation, so little\nequilibrium, calm good sense and initiative, one of the chief reasons\nlies in the undermining of the home life. The masses have timed their\npace by that of people of fashion. They too have become worldly. Nothing\ncan be more so than to quit one's own hearth for the life of saloons.\nThe squalor and misery of the homes is not enough to explain the current\nwhich carries each man away from his own. Why does the peasant desert\nfor the inn the house that his father and grandfather found so\ncomfortable? It has remained the same. There is the same fire in the\nsame chimney. Whence comes it that it lights only an incomplete circle,\nwhen in olden times young and old sat shoulder to shoulder? Something\nhas changed in the minds of men. Yielding to dangerous impulses, they\nhave broken with simplicity. The fathers have quitted their post of\nhonor, the wives grow dull beside the solitary hearth, and the children\nquarrel while waiting their turn to go abroad, each after his own fancy.\n\nWe must learn again to live the home life, to value our domestic\ntraditions. A pious care has preserved certain monuments of the past. So\nantique dress, provincial dialects, old folk songs have found\nappreciative hands to gather them up before they should disappear from\nthe earth. What a good deed, to guard these crumbs of a great past,\nthese vestiges of the souls of our ancestors! Let us do the same for our\nfamily traditions, save and guard as much as possible of the\npatriarchal, whatever its form.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nBut not everyone has traditions to keep. All the more reason for\nredoubling the effort to constitute and foster a family life. And to do\nthis there is need neither of numbers nor a rich establishment. To\ncreate a home you must have the spirit of home. Just as the smallest\nvillage may have its history, its moral stamp, so the smallest home may\nhave its soul. Oh! the spirit of places, the atmosphere which surrounds\nus in human dwellings! What a world of mystery! Here, even on the\nthreshold the cold begins to penetrate, you are ill at ease, something\nintangible repulses you. There, no sooner does the door shut you in than\nfriendliness and good humor envelop you. It is said that walls have\nears. They have also voices, a mute eloquence. Everything that a\ndwelling contains is bathed in an ether of personality. And I find proof\nof its quality even in the apartments of bachelors and solitary women.\nWhat an abyss between one room and another room! Here, all is dead,\nindifferent, commonplace: the device of the owner is written all over\nit, even in his fashion of arranging his photographs and books: All is\nthe same to me! There, one breathes in animation, a contagious joy in\nlife. The visitor hears repeated in countless fashions: \"Whoever you\nare, guest of an hour, I wish you well, peace be with you!\"\n\nWords can do little justice to the subject of home, tell little about\nthe effect of a favorite flower in the window, or the charm of an old\narm-chair where the grandfather used to sit, offering his wrinkled hands\nto the kisses of chubby children. Poor moderns, always moving or\nremodeling! We who from transforming our cities, our houses, our customs\nand creeds, have no longer where to lay our heads, let us not add to the\npathos and emptiness of our changeful existence by abandoning the life\nof the home. Let us light again the flame put out on our hearths, make\nsanctuaries for ourselves, warm nests where the children may grow into\nmen, where love may find privacy, old age repose, prayer an altar, and\nthe fatherland a cult!\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nSIMPLE BEAUTY\n\n\nSomeone may protest against the nature of the simple life in the name of\nesthetics, or oppose to ours the theory of the service of luxury--that\nprovidence of business, fostering mother of arts, and grace of civilized\nsociety. We shall try, briefly, to anticipate these objections.\n\nIt will no doubt have been evident that the spirit which animates these\npages is not utilitarian. It would be an error to suppose that the\nsimplicity we seek has anything in common with that which misers impose\nupon themselves through cupidity, or narrow-minded people through false\nausterity. To the former the simple life is the one that costs least; to\nthe latter it is a flat and colorless existence, whose merit lies in\ndepriving one's self of everything bright, smiling, seductive.\n\nIt displeases us not a whit that people of large means should put their\nfortune into circulation instead of hoarding it, so giving life to\ncommerce and the fine arts. That is using one's privileges to good\nadvantage. What we would combat is foolish prodigality, the selfish use\nof wealth, and above all the quest of the superfluous on the part of\nthose who have the greatest need of taking thought for the necessary.\nThe lavishness of a M\u00e6cenas could not have the same effect in a society\nas that of a common spendthrift who astonishes his contemporaries by the\nmagnificence of his life and the folly of his waste. In these two cases\nthe same term means very different things--to scatter money broadcast\ndoes not say it all; there are ways of doing it which ennoble men, and\nothers which degrade them. Besides, to scatter money supposes that one\nis well provided with it. When the love of sumptuous living takes\npossession of those whose means are limited, the matter becomes\nstrangely altered. And a very striking characteristic of our time is\nthe rage for scattering broadcast which the very people have who ought\nto husband their resources. Munificence is a benefit to society, that we\ngrant willingly. Let us even allow that the prodigality of certain rich\nmen is a safety-valve for the escape of the superabundant: we shall not\nattempt to gainsay it. Our contention is that too many people meddle\nwith the safety-valve when to practice economy is the part of both their\ninterest and their duty: their extravagance is a private misfortune and\na public danger.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nSo much for the utility of luxury.\n\nWe now wish to explain ourselves upon the question of esthetics--oh!\nvery modestly, and without trespassing on the ground of the specialists.\nThrough a too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered as\nrivals. But simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous,\nstylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. Our eyes are wounded\nby the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless and\ngraceless luxury. Wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes us\nregret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation of\nsuch a prodigality of horrors. Our contemporary art suffers as much from\nthe want of simplicity as does our literature--too much in it that is\nirrelevant, over-wrought, falsely imagined. Rarely is it given us to\ncontemplate in line, form, or color, that simplicity allied to\nperfection which commands the eyes as evidence does the mind. We need to\nbe rebaptized in the ideal purity of immortal beauty which puts its seal\non the masterpieces; one shaft of its radiance is worth more than all\nour pompous exhibitions.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nYet what we now have most at heart is to speak of the ordinary esthetics\nof life, of the care one should bestow upon the adornment of his\ndwelling and his person, giving to existence that luster without which\nit lacks charm. For it is not a matter of indifference whether man pays\nattention to these superfluous necessities or whether he does not: it is\nby them that we know whether he puts soul into his work. Far from\nconsidering it as wasteful to give time and thought to the perfecting,\nbeautifying and poetizing of forms, I think we should spend as much as\nwe can upon it. Nature gives us her example, and the man who should\naffect contempt for the ephemeral splendor of beauty with which we\ngarnish our brief days, would lose sight of the intentions of Him who\nhas put the same care and love into the painting of the lily of an hour\nand the eternal hills.\n\nBut we must not fall into the gross error of confounding true beauty\nwith that which has only the name. The beauty and poetry of existence\nlie in the understanding we have of it. Our home, our table, our dress\nshould be the interpreters of intentions. That these intentions be so\nexpressed, it is first necessary to have them, and he who possesses them\nmakes them evident through the simplest means. One need not be rich to\ngive grace and charm to his habit and his habitation: it suffices to\nhave good taste and good-will. We come here to a point very important to\neverybody, but perhaps of more interest to women than to men.\n\nThose who would have women conceal themselves in coarse garments of the\nshapeless uniformity of bags, violate nature in her very heart, and\nmisunderstand completely the spirit of things. If dress were only a\nprecaution to shelter us from cold or rain, a piece of sacking or the\nskin of a beast would answer. But it is vastly more than this. Man puts\nhimself entire into all that he does; he transforms into types the\nthings that serve him. The dress is not simply a covering, it is a\nsymbol. I call to witness the rich flowering of national and provincial\ncostumes, and those worn by our early corporations. A woman's toilette,\ntoo, has something to say to us. The more meaning there is in it, the\ngreater its worth. To be truly beautiful, it must tell us of beautiful\nthings, things personal and veritable. Spend all the money you possess\nupon it, if its form is determined by chance or custom, if it has no\nrelation to her who wears it, it is only toggery, a domino.\nUltra-fashionable dress, which completely masks feminine personality\nunder designs of pure convention, despoils it of its principal\nattraction. From this abuse it comes about that many things which women\nadmire do as much wrong to their beauty as to the purses of their\nhusbands and fathers. What would you say of a young girl who expressed\nher thoughts in terms very choice, indeed, but taken word for word from\na phrase-book? What charm could you find in this borrowed language? The\neffect of toilettes well-designed in themselves but seen again and\nagain on all women indiscriminately, is precisely the same.\n\nI can not resist citing here a passage from Camille Lemonnier, that\nharmonizes with my idea.\n\n\"Nature has given to the fingers of woman a charming art, which she\nknows by instinct, and which is peculiarly her own--as silk to the worm,\nand lace-work to the swift and subtle spider. She is the poet, the\ninterpreter of her own grace and ingenuousness, the spinner of the\nmystery in which her wish to please arrays itself. All the talent she\nexpends in her effort to equal man in the other arts, is never worth the\nspirit and conception wrought out through a bit of stuff in her skillful\nhands.\n\n\"Well, I wish that this art were more honored than it is. As education\nshould consist in thinking with one's mind, feeling with one's heart,\nexpressing the little personalities of the inmost, invisible _I_,--which\non the contrary are repressed, leveled down by conformity,--I would that\nthe young girl in her novitiate of womanhood, the future mother, might\nearly become the little exponent of this art of the toilet, her own\ndressmaker in short--she who one day shall make the dresses of her\nchildren. But with the taste and the gift to improvise, to express\nherself in that masterpiece of feminine personality and skill--_a gown_,\nwithout which a woman is no more than a bundle of rags.\"\n\nThe dress you have made for yourself is almost always the most becoming,\nand, however that may be, it is the one that pleases you most. Women of\nleisure too often forget this; working women, also, in city and country\nalike. Since these last are costumed by dressmakers and milliners, in\nvery doubtful imitation of the modish world, grace has almost\ndisappeared from their dress. And has anything more surely the gift to\nplease than the fresh apparition of a young working girl or a daughter\nof the fields, wearing the costume of her country, and beautiful from\nher simplicity alone?\n\nThese same reflections might be applied to the fashion of decorating and\narranging our houses. If there are toilettes which reveal an entire\nconception of life, hats that are poems, knots of ribbon that are\nveritable works of art, so there are interiors which after their manner\nspeak to the mind. Why, under pretext of decorating our homes, do we\ndestroy that personal character which always has such value? Why have\nour sleeping-rooms conform to those of hotels, our reception-rooms to\nwaiting-rooms, by making predominant a uniform type of official beauty?\n\nWhat a pity to go through the houses of a city, the cities of a country,\nthe countries of a vast continent, and encounter everywhere certain\nforms, identical, inevitable, exasperating by their repetition! How\nesthetics would gain by more simplicity! Instead of this luxury in job\nlots, all these decorations, pretentious but vapid from iteration, we\nshould have an infinite variety; happy improvisations would strike our\neyes, the unexpected in a thousand forms would rejoice our hearts, and\nwe should rediscover the secret of impressing on a drapery or a piece of\nfurniture that stamp of human personality which makes certain antiques\npriceless.\n\nLet us pass at last to things simpler still; I mean the little details\nof housekeeping which many young people of our day find so unpoetical.\nTheir contempt for material things, for the humble cares a house\ndemands, arises from a confusion very common but none the less\nunfortunate, which comes from the belief that beauty and poetry are\nwithin some things, while others lack them; that some occupations are\ndistinguished and agreeable, such as cultivating letters, playing the\nharp; and that others are menial and disagreeable, like blacking shoes,\nsweeping, and watching the pot boil. Childish error! Neither harp nor\nbroom has anything to do with it; all depends on the hand in which they\nrest and the spirit that moves it. Poetry is not in things, it is in us.\nIt must be impressed on objects from without, as the sculptor impresses\nhis dream on the marble. If our life and our occupations remain too\noften without charm, in spite of any outward distinction they may have,\nit is because we have not known how to put anything into them. The\nheight of art is to make the inert live, and to tame the savage. I would\nhave our young girls apply themselves to the development of the truly\nfeminine art of giving a soul to things which have none. The triumph of\nwoman's charm is in that work. Only a woman knows how to put into a home\nthat indefinable something whose virtue has made the poet say, \"The\nhousetop rejoices and is glad.\" They say there are no such things as\nfairies, or that there are fairies no longer, but they know not what\nthey say. The original of the fairies sung by poets was found, and is\nstill, among those amiable mortals who knead bread with energy, mend\nrents with cheerfulness, nurse the sick with smiles, put witchery into\na ribbon and genius into a stew.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is indisputable that the culture of the fine arts has something\nrefining about it, and that our thoughts and acts are in the end\nimpregnated with that which strikes our eyes. But the exercise of the\narts and the contemplation of their products is a restricted privilege.\nIt is not given to everyone to possess, to comprehend or to create fine\nthings. Yet there is a kind of ministering beauty which may make its way\neverywhere--the beauty which springs from the hands of our wives and\ndaughters. Without it, what is the most richly decorated house? A dead\ndwelling-place. With it the barest home has life and brightness. Among\nthe forces capable of transforming the will and increasing happiness,\nthere is perhaps none in more universal use than this beauty. It knows\nhow to shape itself by means of the crudest tools, in the midst of the\ngreatest difficulties. When the dwelling is cramped, the purse limited,\nthe table modest, a woman who has the gift, finds a way to make order,\nfitness and convenience reign in her house. She puts care and art into\neverything she undertakes. To do well what one has to do is not in her\neyes the privilege of the rich, but the right of all. That is her aim,\nand she knows how to give her home a dignity and an attractiveness that\nthe dwellings of princes, if everything is left to mercenaries, cannot\npossess.\n\nThus understood, life quickly shows itself rich in hidden beauties, in\nattractions and satisfactions close at hand. To be one's self, to\nrealize in one's natural place the kind of beauty which is fitting\nthere--this is the ideal. How the mission of woman broadens and deepens\nin significance when it is summed up in this: to put a soul into the\ninanimate, and to give to this gracious spirit of things those subtle\nand winsome outward manifestations to which the most brutish of human\nbeings is sensible. Is not this better than to covet what one has not,\nand to give one's self up to longings for a poor imitation of others'\nfinery?\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nPRIDE AND SIMPLICITY IN THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN\n\n\nIt would perhaps be difficult to find a more convincing example than\npride to show that the obstacles to a better, stronger, serener life are\nrather in us than in circumstances. The diversity, and more than that,\nthe contrasts in social conditions give rise inevitably to all sorts of\nconflicts. Yet in spite of this how greatly would social relations be\nsimplified, if we put another spirit into mapping out our plan of\noutward necessities! Be well persuaded that it is not primarily\ndifferences of class and occupation, differences in the outward\nmanifestations of their destinies, which embroil men. If such were the\ncase, we should find an idyllic peace reigning among colleagues, and all\nthose whose interests and lot are virtually equivalent. On the contrary,\nas everyone knows, the most violent shocks come when equal meets equal,\nand there is no war worse than civil war. But that which above all\nthings else hinders men from good understanding, is pride. It makes a\nman a hedgehog, wounding everyone he touches. Let us speak first of the\npride of the great.\n\nWhat offends me in this rich man passing in his carriage, is not his\nequipage, his dress, or the number and splendor of his retinue: it is\nhis contempt. That he possesses a great fortune does not disturb me,\nunless I am badly disposed: but that he splashes me with mud, drives\nover my body, shows by his whole attitude that I count for nothing in\nhis eyes because I am not rich like himself--this is what disturbs me,\nand righteously. He heaps suffering upon me needlessly. He humiliates\nand insults me gratuitously. It is not what is vulgar within me, but\nwhat is noblest that asserts itself in the face of this offensive pride.\nDo not accuse me of envy; I feel none; it is my manhood that is wounded.\nWe need not search far to illustrate these ideas. Every man of any\nacquaintance with life has had numerous experiences which will justify\nour dictum in his eyes. In certain communities devoted to material\ninterests, the pride of wealth dominates to such a degree that men are\nquoted like values in the stock market. The esteem in which a man is\nheld is proportionate to the contents of his strong box. Here \"Society\"\nis made up of big fortunes, the middle class of medium fortunes. Then\ncome people who have little, then those who have nothing. All\nintercourse is regulated by this principle. And the relatively rich man\nwho has shown his disdain for those less opulent, is crushed in turn by\nthe contempt of his superiors in fortune. So the madness of comparison\nrages from the summit to the base. Such an atmosphere is ready to\nperfection for the nurture of the worst feeling; yet it is not wealth,\nbut the spirit of the wealthy that must be arraigned.\n\nMany rich men are free from this gross conception--especially is this\ntrue of those who from father to son are accustomed to ease--yet they\nsometimes forget that there is a certain delicacy in not making\ncontrasts too marked. Suppose there is no wrong in enjoying a large\nsuperfluity: is it indispensable to display it, to wound the eyes of\nthose who lack necessities, to flaunt one's magnificence at the doors of\npoverty? Good taste and a sort of modesty always hinder a well man from\ntalking of his fine appetite, his sound sleep, his exuberance of\nspirits, in the presence of one dying of consumption. Many of the rich\ndo not exercise this tact, and so are greatly wanting in pity and\ndiscretion. Are they not unreasonable to complain of envy, after having\ndone everything to provoke it?\n\nBut the greatest lack is that want of discernment which leads men to\nground their pride in their fortune. To begin with, it is a childish\nconfusion of thought to consider wealth as a personal quality; it would\nbe hard to find a more ingenuous fashion of deceiving one's self as to\nthe relative value of the container and the thing contained. I have no\nwish to dwell on this question: it is too painful. And yet one cannot\nresist saying to those concerned: \"Take care, do not confound what you\npossess with what you are. Go learn to know the under side of worldly\nsplendor, that you may feel its moral misery and its puerility.\" The\ntraps pride sets for us are too ridiculous. We should distrust\nassociation with a thing that makes us hateful to our neighbors and robs\nus of clearness of vision.\n\nHe who yields to the pride of riches, forgets this other point, the most\nimportant of all--that possession is a public trust. Without doubt,\nindividual wealth is as legitimate as individual existence and liberty.\nThese things are inseparable, and it is a dream pregnant with dangers\nthat offers battle to such fundamentals of life. But the individual\ntouches society at every point, and all he does should be done with the\nwhole in view. Possession, then, is less a privilege of which to be\nproud than a charge whose gravity should be felt. As there is an\napprenticeship, often very difficult to serve, for the exercise of every\nsocial office, so this profession we call wealth demands an\napprenticeship. To know how to be rich is an art, and one of the least\neasy of arts to master. Most people, rich and poor alike, imagine that\nin opulence one has nothing to do but to take life easy. That is why so\nfew men know how to be rich. In the hands of too many, wealth, according\nto the genial and redoubtable comparison of Luther, is like a harp in\nthe hoofs of an ass. They have no idea of the manner of its use.\n\nSo when we encounter a man at once rich and simple, that is to say, who\nconsiders his wealth as a means of fulfilling his mission in the world,\nwe should offer him our homage, for he is surely mark-worthy. He has\nsurmounted obstacles, borne trials, and triumphed in temptations both\ngross and subtle. He does not fail to discriminate between the contents\nof his pocketbook and the contents of his head or heart, and he does\nnot estimate his fellow-men in figures. His exceptional position, instead\nof exalting him, makes him humble, for he is very sensible of how far he\nfalls short of reaching the level of his duty. He has remained a\nman--that says it all. He is accessible, helpful, and far from making of\nhis wealth a barrier to separate him from other men, he makes it a means\nfor coming nearer and nearer to them. Although the profession of riches\nhas been so dishonored by the selfish and the proud, such a man as this\nalways makes his worth felt by everyone not devoid of a sense of\njustice. Each of us who comes in contact with him and sees him live, is\nforced to look within and ask himself the question, \"What would become\nof me in such a situation? Should I keep this modesty, this naturalness,\nthis uprightness which uses its own as though it belonged to others?\" So\nlong as there is a human society in the world, so long as there are\nbitterly conflicting interests, so long as envy and egoism exist on the\nearth, nothing will be worthier of honor than wealth permeated by the\nspirit of simplicity. And it will do more than make itself forgiven; it\nwill make itself beloved.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nMore dangerous than pride inspired by wealth is that inspired by power,\nand I mean by the word every prerogative that one man has over another,\nbe it unlimited or restricted. I see no means of preventing the\nexistence in the world of men of unequal authority. Every organism\nsupposes a hierarchy of powers--we shall never escape from that law. But\nI fear that if the love of power is so wide-spread, the spirit of power\nis almost impossible to find. From wrong understanding and misuse of it,\nthose who keep even a fraction of authority almost everywhere succeed in\ncompromising it.\n\nPower exercises a great influence over him who holds it. A head must be\nvery well balanced not to be disturbed by it. The sort of dementia which\ntook possession of the Roman emperors in the time of their world-wide\nrule, is a universal malady whose symptoms belong to all times. In every\nman there sleeps a tyrant, awaiting only a favorable occasion for\nwaking. Now the tyrant is the worst enemy of authority, because he\nfurnishes us its intolerable caricature, whence come a multitude of\nsocial complications, collisions and hatreds. Every man who says to\nthose dependent on him: \"Do this because it is my will and pleasure,\"\ndoes ill. There is within each one of us something that invites us to\nresist personal power, and this something is very respectable. For at\nbottom we are equal, and there is no one who has the right to exact\nobedience from me because he is he and I am I: if he does so, his\ncommand degrades me, and I have no right to suffer myself to be\ndegraded.\n\nOne must have lived in schools, in work-shops, in the army, in\nGovernment offices, he must have closely followed the relations between\nmasters and servants, have observed a little everywhere where the\nsupremacy of man exercises itself over man, to form any idea of the\ninjury done by those who use power arrogantly. Of every free soul they\nmake a slave soul, which is to say the soul of a rebel. And it appears\nthat this result, with its social disaster, is most certain when he who\ncommands is least removed from the station of him who obeys. The most\nimplacable tyrant is the tyrant himself under authority. Foremen and\noverseers put more violence into their dealings than superintendents and\nemployers. The corporal is generally harsher than the colonel. In\ncertain families where madam has not much more education than her maid,\nthe relations between them are those of the convict and his warder. And\nwoe everywhere to him who falls into the hands of a subaltern drunk with\nhis authority!\n\nWe forget that the first duty of him who exercises power is humility.\nHaughtiness is not authority. It is not we who are the law; the law is\nover our heads. We only interpret it, but to make it valid in the eyes\nof others, we must first be subject to it ourselves. To command and to\nobey in the society of men, are after all but two forms of the same\nvirtue--voluntary servitude. If you are not obeyed, it is generally\nbecause you have not yourself obeyed first.\n\nThe secret of moral ascendancy rests with those who rule with\nsimplicity. They soften by the spirit the harshness of the fact. Their\nauthority is not in shoulder-straps, titles or disciplinary measures.\nThey make use of neither ferule nor threats, yet they achieve\neverything. Why? Because we feel that they are themselves ready for\neverything. That which confers upon a man the right to demand of another\nthe sacrifice of his time, his money, his passions, even his life, is\nnot only that he is resolved upon all these sacrifices himself, but that\nhe has made them in advance. In the command of a man animated by this\nspirit of renunciation, there is a mysterious force which communicates\nitself to him who is to obey, and helps him do his duty.\n\nIn all the provinces of human activity there are chiefs who inspire,\nstrengthen, magnetize their soldiers: under their direction the troops\ndo prodigies. With them one feels himself capable of any effort, ready\nto go through fire, as the saying has it; and if he goes, it is with\nenthusiasm.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nBut the pride of the exalted is not the only pride; there is also the\npride of the humble--this arrogance of underlings, fit pendant to that\nof the great. The root of these two prides is the same. It is not alone\nthat lofty and imperious being, the man who says, \"I am the law,\" that\nprovokes insurrection by his very attitude; it is also that pig-headed\nsubaltern who will not admit that there is anything beyond his\nknowledge.\n\nThere are really many people who find all superiority irritating. For\nthem, every piece of advice is an offense, every criticism an\nimposition, every order an outrage on their liberty. They would not\nknow how to submit to rule. To respect anything or anybody would seem to\nthem a mental aberration. They say to people after their fashion:\n\"Beyond us there is nothing.\"\n\nTo the family of the proud belong also those difficult and\nsupersensitive people who in humble life find that their superiors never\ndo them fitting honor, whom the best and most kindly do not succeed in\nsatisfying, and who go about their duties with the air of a martyr. At\nbottom these disaffected minds have too much misplaced self-respect.\nThey do not know how to fill their place simply, but complicate their\nlife and that of others by unreasonable demands and morbid suspicions.\n\nWhen one takes the trouble to study men at short range, he is surprised\nto find that pride has so many lurking-places among those who are by\ncommon consent called the humble. So powerful is this vice, that it\narrives at forming round those who live in the most modest circumstances\na wall which isolates them from their neighbors. There they are,\nintrenched, barricaded with their ambitions and their contempts, as\ninaccessible as the powerful of earth behind their aristocratic\nprejudices. Obscure or illustrious, pride wraps itself in its dark\nroyalty of enmity to the human race. It is the same in misery and in\nhigh places--solitary and impotent, on guard against everybody,\nembroiling everything. And the last word about it is always this: If\nthere is so much hostility and hatred between different classes of men,\nit is due less to exterior conditions than to an interior fatality.\nConflicting interests and differences of situation dig ditches between\nus, it is true, but pride transforms the ditches into gulfs, and in\nreality it is pride alone which cries from brink to brink: \"There is\nnothing in common between you and us.\"\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have not finished with pride, but it is impossible to picture it\nunder all its forms. I feel most resentful against it when it meddles\nwith knowledge and appropriates that. We owe our knowledge to our\nfellows, as we do our riches and power. It is a social force which ought\nto be of service to everybody, and it can only be so when those who know\nremain sympathetically near to those who know not. When knowledge is\nturned into a tool for ambition, it destroys itself.\n\nAnd what shall we say of the pride of good men? for it exists, and makes\neven virtue hateful. The just who repent them of the evil others do,\nremain in brotherhood and social rectitude. But the just who despise\nothers for their faults and misdeeds, cut themselves off from humanity,\nand their goodness, descended to the rank of an ornament for their\nvanity, becomes like those riches which kindness does not inform, like\nauthority untempered by the spirit of obedience. Like proud wealth and\narrogant power, supercilious virtue also is detestable. It fosters in\nman traits and an attitude provocative of I know not what. The sight of\nit repels instead of attracting, and those whom it deigns to distinguish\nwith its benefits feel as though they had been slapped in the face.\n\nTo resume and conclude, it is an error to think that our advantages,\nwhatever they are, should be put to the service of our vanity. Each of\nthem constitutes for him who enjoys it an obligation and not a reason\nfor vainglory. Material wealth, power, knowledge, gifts of the heart and\nmind, become so much cause for discord when they serve to nourish\npride. They remain beneficent only so long as they are the source of\nmodesty in those who possess them.\n\nLet us be humble if we have great possessions, for that proves that we\nare great debtors: all that a man has he owes to someone, and are we\nsure of being able to pay our debts?\n\nLet us be humble if we sit in high places and hold the fate of others in\nour hands; for no clear-sighted man can fail to be sensible of unfitness\nfor so grave a r\u00f4le.\n\nLet us be humble if we have much knowledge, for it only serves to better\nshow the vastness of the unknown, and to compare the little we have\ndiscovered for ourselves with the amplitude of that which we owe to the\npains of others.\n\nAnd, above all, let us be humble if we are virtuous, since no one should\nbe more sensible of his defects than he whose conscience is illumined,\nand since he more than anyone else should feel the need of charity\ntoward evil-doers, even of suffering in their stead.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\n\"And what about the necessary distinctions in life?\" someone may ask.\n\"As a result of your simplifications, are you not going to destroy that\nsense of the difference between men which must be maintained if society\nexists at all?\"\n\nI have no mind to suppress distinctions and differences. But I think\nthat what distinguishes a man is not found in his social rank, his\noccupation, his dress or his fortune, but solely in himself. More than\nany other our own age has pricked the vain bubble of purely outward\ngreatness. To be somebody at present, it does not suffice to wear the\nmantle of an emperor or a royal crown: what honor is there in wielding\npower through gold lace, a coat of arms or a ribbon? Not that visible\nsigns are to be despised; they have their meaning and use, but on\ncondition that they cover something and not a vacuum. The moment they\ncease to stand for realities, they become useless and dangerous. The\nonly true distinction is superior worth. If you would have social rank\nduly respected, you must begin by being worthy of the rank that is your\nown; otherwise you help to bring it into hatred and contempt. It is\nunhappily too true that respect is diminishing among us, and it\ncertainly is not from a lack of lines drawn round those who wish to be\nrespected. The root of the evil is in the mistaken idea that high\nstation exempts him who holds it from observing the common obligations\nof life. As we rise, we believe that we free ourselves from the law,\nforgetting that the spirit of obedience and humility should grow with\nour possessions and power. So it comes about that those who demand the\nmost homage make the least effort to merit the homage they demand. This\nis why respect is diminishing.\n\nThe sole distinction necessary is the wish to become better. The man who\nstrives to be better becomes more humble, more approachable, more\nfriendly even with those who owe him allegiance. But as he gains by\nbeing better known, he loses nothing in distinction, and he reaps the\nmore respect in that he has sown the less pride.\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nTHE EDUCATION FOR SIMPLICITY\n\n\nThe simple life being above all else the product of a direction of mind,\nit is natural that education should have much to do with it.\n\nIn general but two methods of rearing children are practiced: the first\nis to bring them up for ourselves; the second, to bring them up for\nthemselves.\n\nIn the first case the child is looked upon as a complement of the\nparents: he is part of their property, occupies a place among their\npossessions. Sometimes this place is the highest, especially when the\nparents value the life of the affections. Again, where material\ninterests rule, the child holds second, third, or even the last place.\nIn any case he is a nobody. While he is young, he gravitates round his\nparents, not only by obedience, which is right, but by the subordination\nof all his originality, all his being. As he grows older, this\nsubordination becomes a veritable confiscation, extending to his ideas,\nhis feelings, everything. His minority becomes perpetual. Instead of\nslowly evolving into independence, the man advances into slavery. He is\nwhat he is permitted to be, what his father's business, religious\nbeliefs, political opinions or esthetic tastes require him to be. He\nwill think, speak, act, and marry according to the understanding and\nlimits of the paternal absolutism. This family tyranny may be exercised\nby people with no strength of character. It is only necessary for them\nto be convinced that good order requires the child to be the property of\nthe parents. In default of mental force, they possess themselves of him\nby other means--by sighs, supplications, or base seductions. If they\ncannot fetter him, they snare his feet in traps. But that he should live\nin them, through them, for them, is the only thing admissible.\n\nEducation of this sort is not the practice of families only, but also of\ngreat social organizations whose chief educational function consists in\nputting a strong hand on every new-comer, in order to fit him, in the\nmost iron-bound fashion, into existing forms. It is the attenuation,\npulverization and assimilation of the individual in a social body, be it\ntheocratic, communistic, or simply bureaucratic and routinary. Looked at\nfrom without, a like system seems the ideal of simplicity in education.\nIts processes, in fact, are absolutely simplistic, and if a man were not\nsomebody, if he were only a sample of the race, this would be the\nperfect education. As all wild beasts, all fish and insects of the same\ngenus and species have the same markings, so we should all be identical,\nhaving the same tastes, the same language, the same beliefs, the same\ntendencies. But man is not simply a specimen of the race, and for that\nreason this sort of education is far from being simple in its results.\nMen so vary from one another, that numberless methods have to be\ninvented to repress, stupefy, and extinguish individual thought. And one\nnever arrives at it then but in part, a fact which is continually\nderanging everything. At each moment, by some fissure, some interior\nforce of initiative is making a violent way to the light, producing\nexplosions, upheavals, all sorts of grave disorders. And where there are\nno outward manifestations, the evil lies dormant; beneath apparent order\nare hidden dumb revolt, flaws made by an abnormal existence, apathy,\ndeath.\n\nThe system is evil which produces such fruit, and however simple it may\nappear, in reality it brings forth all possible complications.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nThe other system is the extreme opposite, that of bringing up children\nfor themselves. The r\u00f4les are reversed: the parents are there for the\nchild. No sooner is he born than he becomes the center. White-headed\ngrandfather and stalwart father bow before these curls. His lisping is\ntheir law. A sign from him suffices. If he cries in the night, no\nfatigue is of account, the whole household must be roused. The new-comer\nis not long in discovering his omnipotence, and before he can walk he is\ndrunken with it. As he grows older all this deepens and broadens.\nParents, grandparents, servants, teachers, everybody is at his command.\nHe accepts the homage and even the immolation of his neighbor: he treats\nlike a rebellious subject anyone who does not step out of his path.\nThere is only himself. He is the unique, the perfect, the infallible.\nToo late it is perceived that all this has been evolving a master; and\nwhat a master! forgetful of sacrifices, without respect, even pity. He\nno longer has any regard for those to whom he owes everything, and he\ngoes through life without law or check.\n\nThis education, too, has its social counterpart. It flourishes wherever\nthe past does not count, where history begins with the living, where\nthere is no tradition, no discipline, no reverence; where those who know\nthe least make the most noise; where those who stand for public order\nare alarmed by every chance comer whose power lies in his making a great\noutcry and respecting nothing. It insures the reign of transitory\npassion, the triumph of the inferior will. I compare these two\neducations--one, the exaltation of the environment, the other of the\nindividual; one the absolutism of tradition, the other the tyranny of\nthe new--and I find them equally baneful. But the most disastrous of all\nis the combination of the two, which produces human beings\nhalf-automatons, half-despots, forever vacillating between the spirit\nof a sheep and the spirit of revolt or domination.\n\nChildren should be educated neither for themselves nor for their\nparents: for man is no more designed to be a personage than a specimen.\nThey should be educated for life. The aim of their education is to aid\nthem to become active members of humanity, brotherly forces, free\nservants of the civil organization. To follow a method of education\ninspired by any other principle, is to complicate life, deform it, sow\nthe seeds of all disorders.\n\nWhen we would sum up in a phrase the destiny of the child, the word\nfuture springs to our lips. The child is the future. This word says\nall--the sufferings of the past, the stress of to-day, hope. But when\nthe education of the child begins, he is incapable of estimating the\nreach of this word; for he is held by impressions of the present. Who\nthen shall give him the first enlightenment and put him in the way he\nshould go? The parents, the teachers. And with very little reflection\nthey perceive that their work does not interest simply themselves and\nthe child, but that they represent and administer impersonal powers and\ninterests. The child should continually appear to them as a future\ncitizen. With this ruling idea, they will take thought for two things\nthat complement each other--for the initial and personal force which is\ngerminating in the child, and for the social destination of this force.\nAt no moment of their direction over him can they forget that this\nlittle being confided to their care must become _himself_ and a\n_brother_. These two conditions, far from excluding each other, never\nexist apart. It is impossible to be brotherly, to love, to give one's\nself, unless one is master of himself; and reciprocally, none can\npossess himself, comprehend his own individual being, until he has first\nmade his way through the outward accidents of his existence, down to the\nprofound springs of life where man feels himself one with other men in\nall that is most intimately his own.\n\nTo aid a child to become himself and a brother it is necessary to\nprotect him against the violent and destructive action of the forces of\ndisorder. These forces are exterior and interior. Every child is menaced\nfrom without not only by material dangers but by the meddlesomeness of\nalien wills; and from within, by an exaggerated idea of his own\npersonality and all the fancies it breeds. There is a great outward\ndanger which may come from the abuse of power in educators. The right of\nmight finds itself a place in education with extreme facility. To\neducate another, one must have renounced this right, that is to say,\nmade abnegation of the inferior sentiment of personal importance, which\ntransforms us into the enemies of others, even of our own children. Our\nauthority is beneficent only when it is inspired by one higher than our\nown. In this case it is not only salutary, but also indispensable, and\nbecomes in its turn the best guarantee against the greater peril which\nthreatens the child from within--that of exaggerating his own\nimportance. At the beginning of life the vividness of personal\nimpressions is so great, that to establish an equilibrium, they must be\nsubmitted to the gentle influence of a calm and superior will. The true\nquality of the office of educator is to represent this will to the\nchild, in a manner as continuous and as disinterested as possible.\nEducators, then, stand for all that is to be respected in the world.\nThey give to the child impressions of that which precedes it, outruns\nit, envelops it: but they do not crush it; on the contrary, their will\nand all the influence they transmit, become elements nutritive of its\nnative energy. Such use of authority as this, cultivates that fruitful\nobedience out of which free souls are born. The purely personal\nauthority of parents, masters and institutions is to the child like the\nbrushwood beneath which the young plant withers and dies. Impersonal\nauthority, the authority of a man who has first submitted himself to the\ntime-honored realities before which he wishes the individual fancy of\nthe child to bend, resembles pure and luminous air. True it has an\nactivity, and influences us in its manner, but it nourishes our\nindividuality and gives it firmness and stability. Without this\nauthority there is no education. To watch, to guide, to keep a firm\nhand--such is the function of the educator. He should appear to the\nchild not like a barrier of whims, which, if need be, one may clear,\nprovided the leap be proportioned to the height of the obstacle; but\nlike a transparent wall through which may be seen unchanging realities,\nlaws, limits, and truths against which no action is possible. Thus\narises respect, which is the faculty of conceiving something greater\nthan ourselves--respect, which broadens us and frees us by making us\nmore modest. This is the law of education for simplicity. It may be\nsummed up in these words: to make _free_ and _reverential_ men, who\nshall be _individual_ and _fraternal_.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nLet us draw from this principle some practical applications.\n\nFrom the very fact that the child is the future, he must be linked to\nthe past by piety. We owe it to him to clothe tradition in the forms\nmost practical and most fit to create a deep impression: whence the\nexceptional place that should be given in education to the ancients, to\nthe cult of remembrance of the past, and by extension, to the history of\nthe domestic rooftree. Above all do we fulfil a duty toward our children\nwhen we give the place of honor to the grandparents. Nothing speaks to a\nchild with so much force, or so well develops his modesty, as to see his\nfather and mother, on all occasions, preserve toward an old grandfather,\noften infirm, an attitude of respect. It is a perpetual object lesson\nthat is irresistible. That it may have its full force, it is necessary\nfor a tacit understanding to obtain among all the grown-up members of\nthe family. To the child's eyes they must all be in league, held to\nmutual respect and understanding, under penalty of compromising their\neducational authority. And in their number must be counted the servants.\nServants are big people, and the same sentiment of respect is injured in\nthe child's disregard of them as in his disregard of his father or\ngrandfather. The moment he addresses an impolite or arrogant word to a\nperson older than himself, he strays from the path that a child ought\nnever to quit; and if only occasionally the parents neglect to point\nthis out, they will soon perceive by his conduct toward themselves, that\nthe enemy has found entrance to his heart.\n\nWe mistake if we think that a child is naturally alien to respect,\nbasing this opinion on the very numerous examples of irreverence which\nhe offers us. Respect is for the child a fundamental need. His moral\nbeing feeds on it. The child aspires confusedly to revere and admire\nsomething. But when advantage is not taken of this aspiration, it gets\ncorrupted or lost. By our lack of cohesion and mutual deference, we, the\ngrown-ups, discredit daily in the child's eyes our own cause and that of\neverything worthy of respect. We inoculate in him a bad spirit whose\neffects then turn against us.\n\nThis pitiful truth nowhere appears with more force than in the relations\nbetween masters and servants, as we have made them. Our social errors,\nour want of simplicity and kindness, all fall back upon the heads of our\nchildren. There are certainly few people of the middle classes who\nunderstand that it is better to part with many thousands of dollars than\nto lead their children to lose respect for servants, who represent in\nour households the humble. Yet nothing is truer. Maintain as strictly as\nyou will conventions and distances,--that demarkation of social\nfrontiers which permits each one to remain in his place and to observe\nthe law of differences. That is a good thing, I am persuaded, but on\ncondition of never forgetting that those who serve us are men and women\nlike ourselves. You require of your domestics certain formulas of speech\nand certain attitudes, outward evidence of the respect they owe you. Do\nyou also teach your children and use yourselves manners toward your\nservants which show them that you respect their dignity as individuals,\nas you desire them to respect yours? Here we have continually in our\nhomes an excellent ground for experiment in the practice of that mutual\nrespect which is one of the essential conditions of social sanity. I\nfear we profit by it too little. We do not fail to exact respect, but\nwe fail to give it. So it is most frequently the case that we get only\nhypocrisy and this supplementary result, all unexpected,--the\ncultivation of pride in our children. These two factors combined heap up\ngreat difficulties for that future which we ought to be safeguarding. I\nam right then in saying that the day when by your own practices you have\nbrought about the lessening of respect in your children, you have\nsuffered a sensible loss.\n\nWhy should I not say it? It seems to me that the greater part of us\nlabor for this loss. On all sides, in almost every social rank, I notice\nthat a pretty bad spirit is fostered in children, a spirit of reciprocal\ncontempt. Here, those who have calloused hands and working-clothes are\ndisdained; there, it is all who do not wear blue jeans. Children\neducated in this spirit make sad fellow-citizens. There is in all this\nthe want of that simplicity which makes it possible for men of good\nintentions, of however diverse social standing, to collaborate without\nany friction arising from the conventional distance that separates them.\n\nIf the spirit of caste causes the loss of respect, partisanship, of\nwhatever sort, is quite as productive of it. In certain quarters\nchildren are brought up in such fashion that they respect but one\ncountry--their own; one system of government--that of their parents and\nmasters; one religion--that which they have been taught. Does anyone\nsuppose that in this way men can be shaped who shall respect country,\nreligion and law? Is this a proper respect--this respect which does not\nextend beyond what touches and belongs to ourselves? Strange blindness\nof cliques and coteries, which arrogate to themselves with so much\ningenuous complacence the title of schools of respect, and which,\noutside themselves, respect nothing. In reality they teach: \"Country,\nreligion, law--we are all these!\" Such teaching fosters fanaticism, and\nif fanaticism is not the sole anti-social ferment, it is surely one of\nthe worst and most energetic.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nIf simplicity of heart is an essential condition of respect, simplicity\nof life is its best school. Whatever be the state of your fortune, avoid\neverything which could make your children think themselves more or\nbetter than others. Though your wealth would permit you to dress them\nrichly, remember the evil you might do in exciting their vanity.\nPreserve them from the evil of believing that to be elegantly dressed\nsuffices for distinction, and above all do not carelessly increase by\ntheir clothes and their habits of life, the distance which already\nseparates them from other children: dress them simply. And if, on the\ncontrary, it would be necessary for you to economize to give your\nchildren the pleasure of fine clothes, I would that I might dispose you\nto reserve your spirit of sacrifice for a better cause. You risk seeing\nit illy recompensed. You dissipate your money when it would much better\navail to save it for serious needs, and you prepare for yourself, later\non, a harvest of ingratitude. How dangerous it is to accustom your sons\nand daughters to a style of living beyond your means and theirs! In the\nfirst place, it is very bad for your purse; in the second place it\ndevelops a contemptuous spirit in the very bosom of the family. If you\ndress your children like little lords, and give them to understand that\nthey are superior to you, is it astonishing if they end by disdaining\nyou? You will have nourished at your table the declassed--a product\nwhich costs dear and is worthless.\n\nAny fashion of instructing children whose most evident result is to\nlead them to despise their parents and the customs and activities among\nwhich they have grown up, is a calamity. It is effective for nothing but\nto produce a legion of malcontents, with hearts totally estranged from\ntheir origin, their race, their natural interests--everything, in short,\nthat makes the fundamental fabric of a man. Once detached from the\nvigorous stock which produced them, the wind of their restless ambition\ndrives them over the earth, like dead leaves that will in the end be\nheaped up to ferment and rot together.\n\nNature does not proceed by leaps and bounds, but by an evolution slow\nand certain. In preparing a career for our children, let us imitate her.\nLet us not confound progress and advancement with those violent\nexercises called somersaults. Let us not so bring up our children that\nthey will come to despise work and the aspirations and simple spirit of\ntheir fathers: let us not expose them to the temptation of being ashamed\nof our poverty if they themselves come to fortune. A society is indeed\ndiseased when the sons of peasants begin to feel disgust for the fields,\nwhen the sons of sailors desert the sea, when the daughters of\nworking-men, in the hope of being taken for heiresses, prefer to walk\nthe streets alone rather than beside their honest parents. A society is\nhealthy, on the contrary, when each of its members applies himself to\ndoing very nearly what his parents have done before him, but doing it\nbetter, and, looking to future elevation, is content first to fulfill\nconscientiously more modest duties.[C]\n\n[C] This would be the place to speak of work in general, and of its\ntonic effect upon education. But I have discussed the subject in my\nbooks _Justice_, _Jeunesse_, and _Vaillanos_. I must limit myself to\nreferring the reader to them.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nEducation should make independent men. If you wish to train your\nchildren for liberty, bring them up simply, and do not for a moment fear\nthat in so doing you are putting obstacles in the way of their\nhappiness. It will be quite the contrary. The more costly toys a child\nhas, the more feasts and curious entertainments, the less is he amused.\n\n\nIn this there is a sure sign. Let us be temperate in our methods of\nentertaining youth, and especially let us not thoughtlessly create for\nthem artificial needs. Food, dress, nursery, amusements--let all these\nbe as natural and simple as possible. With the idea of making life\npleasant for their children, some parents bring them up in habits of\ngormandizing and idleness, accustom them to sensations not meant for\ntheir age, multiply their parties and entertainments. Sorry gifts these!\nIn place of a free man, you are making a slave. Gorged with luxury, he\ntires of it in time; and yet when for one reason or another his\npleasures fail him, he will be miserable, and you with him: and what is\nworse, perhaps in some capital encounter of life, you will be ready--you\nand he together--to sacrifice manly dignity, truth, and duty, from sheer\nsloth.\n\nLet us bring up our children simply, I had almost said rudely. Let us\nentice them to exercise that gives them endurance--even to privations.\nLet them belong to those who are better trained to fatigue and the earth\nfor a bed than to the comforts of the table and couches of luxury. So we\nshall make men of them, independent and staunch, who may be counted on,\nwho will not sell themselves for pottage, and who will have withal the\nfaculty of being happy.\n\nA too easy life brings with it a sort of lassitude in vital energy. One\nbecomes blas\u00e9, disillusioned, an old young man, past being diverted. How\nmany young people are in this state! Upon them have been deposited, like\na sort of mold, the traces of our decrepitude, our skepticism, our\nvices, and the bad habits they have contracted in our company. What\nreflections upon ourselves these youths weary of life force us to make!\nWhat announcements are graven on their brows!\n\nThese shadows say to us by contrast that happiness lies in a life true,\nactive, spontaneous, ungalled by the yoke of the passions, of unnatural\nneeds, of unhealthy stimulus; keeping intact the physical faculty of\nenjoying the light of day and the air we breathe, and in the heart, the\ncapacity to thrill with the love of all that is generous, simple and\nfine.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nThe artificial life engenders artificial thought, and a speech little\nsure of itself. Normal habits, deep impressions, the ordinary contact\nwith reality, bring frankness with them. Falsehood is the vice of a\nslave, the refuge of the cowardly and weak. He who is free and strong is\nunflinching in speech. We should encourage in our children the hardihood\nto speak frankly. What do we ordinarily do? We trample on natural\ndisposition, level it down to the uniformity which for the crowd is\nsynonymous with good form. To think with one's own mind, feel with one's\nown heart, express one's own personality--how unconventional, how\nrustic!--Oh! the atrocity of an education which consists in the\nperpetual muzzling of the only thing that gives any of us his reason for\nbeing! Of how many soul-murders do we become guilty! Some are struck\ndown with bludgeons, others gently smothered with pillows! Everything\nconspires against independence of character. When we are little, people\nwish us to be dolls or graven images; when we grow up, they approve of\nus on condition that we are like all the rest of the world--automatons:\nwhen you have seen one of them you've seen them all. So the lack of\noriginality and initiative is upon us, and platitude and monotony are\nthe distinctions of to-day. Truth can free us from this bondage: let\nour children be taught to be themselves, to ring clear, without crack or\nmuffle. Make loyalty a need to them, and in their gravest failures, if\nonly they acknowledge them, account it for merit that they have not\ncovered their sin.\n\nTo frankness let us add ingenuousness, in our solicitude as educators.\nLet us have for this comrade of childhood--a trifle uncivilized, it is\ntrue, but so gracious and friendly!--all possible regard. We must not\nfrighten it away: when it has once fled, it so rarely comes back!\nIngenuousness is not simply the sister of truth, the guardian of the\nindividual qualities of each of us; it is besides a great informing and\neducating force. I see among us too many practical people, so called,\nwho go about armed with terrifying spectacles and huge shears to ferret\nout na\u00efve things and clip their wings. They uproot ingenuousness from\nlife, from thought, from education, and pursue it even to the region of\ndreams. Under pretext of making men of their children, they prevent\ntheir being children at all;--as if before the ripe fruit of autumn,\nflowers did not have to be, and perfumes, and songs of birds, and all\nthe fairy springtime.\n\nI ask indulgence for everything na\u00efve and simple, not alone for the\ninnocent conceits that flutter round the curly heads of children, but\nalso for the legend, the folk song, the tales of the world of marvel and\nmystery. The sense of the marvellous is in the child the first form of\nthat sense of the infinite without which a man is like a bird deprived\nof wings. Let us not wean the child from it, but let us guard in him the\nfaculty of rising above what is earthy, so that he may appreciate later\non those pure and moving symbols of vanished ages wherein human truth\nhas found forms of expression that our arid logic will never replace.\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nI think I have said enough of the spirit and manifestations of the\nsimple life, to make it evident that there is here a whole forgotten\nworld of strength and beauty. He can make conquest of it who has\nsufficient energy to detach himself from the fatal rubbish that trammels\nour days. It will not take him long to perceive that in renouncing some\nsurface satisfactions and childish ambitions, he increases his faculty\nof happiness and his possibilities of right judgment.\n\nThese results concern as much the private as the public life. It is\nincontestable that in striving against the feverish will to shine, in\nceasing to make the satisfaction of our desires the end of our activity,\nin returning to modest tastes, to the true life, we shall labor for the\nunity of the family. Another spirit will breath in our homes, creating\nnew customs and an atmosphere more favorable to the education of\nchildren. Little by little our boys and girls will feel the enticement\nof ideals at once higher and more realizable. And transformation of the\nhome will in time exercise its influence on public spirit. As the\nsolidity of a wall depends upon the grain of the stones and the\nconsistence of the cement which binds them together, so also the energy\nof public life depends upon the individual value of men and their power\nof cohesion. The great desideratum of our time is the culture of the\ncomponent parts of society, of the individual man. Everything in the\npresent social organism leads us back to this element. In neglecting it\nwe expose ourselves to the loss of the benefits of progress, even to\nmaking our most persistent efforts turn to our own hurt. If in the midst\nof means continually more and more perfected, the workman diminishes in\nvalue, of what use are these fine tools at his disposal? By their very\nexcellence to make more evident the faults of him who uses them without\ndiscernment or without conscience. The wheelwork of the great modern\nmachine is infinitely delicate. Carelessness, incompetence or corruption\nmay produce here disturbances of far greater gravity than would have\nthreatened the more or less rudimentary organism of the society of the\npast. There is need then of looking to the quality of the individual\ncalled upon to contribute in any measure to the workings of this\nmechanism. This individual should be at once solid and pliable, inspired\nwith the central law of life--to be one's self and fraternal. Everything\nwithin us and without us becomes simplified and unified under the\ninfluence of this law, which is the same for everybody and by which each\none should guide his actions; for our essential interests are not\nopposing, they are identical. In cultivating the spirit of simplicity,\nwe should arrive, then, at giving to public life a stronger cohesion.\n\nThe phenomena of decomposition and destruction that we see there may all\nbe attributed to the same cause,--lack of solidity and cohesion. It will\nnever be possible to say how contrary to social good are the trifling\ninterests of caste, of coterie, of church, the bitter strife for\npersonal welfare, and, by a fatal consequence, how destructive these\nthings are of individual happiness. A society in which each member is\npreoccupied with his own well-being, is organized disorder. This is all\nthat we learn from the irreconcilable conflicts of our uncompromising\negoism.\n\nWe too much resemble those people who claim the rights of family only to\ngain advantage from them, not to do honor to the connection. On all\nrounds of the social ladder we are forever putting forth claims. We all\ntake the ground that we are creditors: no one recognizes the fact that\nhe is a debtor, and our dealings with our fellows consist in inviting\nthem, in tones sometimes amiable, sometimes arrogant, to discharge their\nindebtedness to us. No good thing is attained in this spirit. For in\nfact it is the spirit of privilege, that eternal enemy of universal law,\nthat obstacle to brotherly understanding which is ever presenting itself\nanew.\n\n*       *       *       *       *\n\nIn a lecture delivered in 1882, M. Renan said that a nation is \"a\nspiritual family,\" and he added: \"The essential of a nation is that all\nthe individuals should have many things in common, and also that all\nshould have forgotten much.\" It is important to know what to forget and\nwhat to remember, not only in the past, but also in our daily life. Our\nmemories are lumbered with the things that divide us; the things which\nunite us slip away. Each of us keeps at the most luminous point of his\nsouvenirs, a lively sense of his secondary quality, his part of\nagriculturist, day laborer, man of letters, public officer, proletary,\nbourgeois, or political or religious sectarian; but his essential\nquality, which is to be a son of his country and a man, is relegated to\nthe shade. Scarcely does he keep even a theoretic notion of it. So that\nwhat occupies us and determines our actions, is precisely the thing that\nseparates us from others, and there is hardly place for that spirit of\nunity which is as the soul of a people.\n\nSo too do we foster bad feeling in our brothers. Men animated by a\nspirit of particularism, exclusiveness, and pride, are continually\nclashing. They cannot meet without rousing afresh the sentiment of\ndivision and rivalry. And so there slowly heaps up in their remembrance\na stock of reciprocal ill-will, of mistrust, of rancor. All this is bad\nfeeling with its consequences.\n\nIt must be rooted out of our midst. Remember, forget! This we should say\nto ourselves every morning, in all our relations and affairs. Remember\nthe essential, forget the accessory! How much better should we discharge\nour duties as citizens, if high and low were nourished from this spirit!\nHow easy to cultivate pleasant remembrances in the mind of one's\nneighbor, by sowing it with kind deeds and refraining from procedures of\nwhich in spite of himself he is forced to say, with hatred in his heart:\n\"Never in the world will I forget!\"\n\nThe spirit of simplicity is a great magician. It softens asperities,\nbridges chasms, draws together hands and hearts. The forms which it\ntakes in the world are infinite in number; but never does it seem to us\nmore admirable than when it shows itself across the fatal barriers of\nposition, interest, or prejudice, overcoming the greatest obstacles,\npermitting those whom everything seems to separate to understand one\nanother, esteem one another, love one another. This is the true social\ncement, that goes into the building of a people.\n\n\nTHE END.","title":"The Simple Life","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":39316}