{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_66564/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_66564","id":"gutenberg_66564","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66564","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","French essays -- Translations into English","World War, 1914-1918 -- Influence"],"text":"TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES\n\n\nIn the plain text version words in Italics are denoted by _underscores_.\n\nThe book cover was modified by the Transcriber and has been added to\nthe public domain.\n\nA number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated\nvariants. For the words with both variants present the one more used\nhas been kept.\n\nObvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.\n\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n                                  THE\n                            HEART\u2019S DOMAIN\n\n                                  BY\n                            GEORGES DUHAMEL\n\n\n               Author of \u201cCIVILIZATION, 1914-1917,\u201d etc.\n\n\n                             TRANSLATED BY\n                        ELEANOR STIMSON BROOKS\n\n\n                            [Illustration]\n\n\n                               NEW YORK\n                            THE CENTURY CO.\n                                 1919\n\n\n                          Copyright, 1919, by\n                            THE CENTURY CO.\n\n                     _Published, September, 1919_\n\n\n                                  TO\n                            MY SON BERNARD\n\n\n\n\n                                PREFACE\n\n\nI am beginning a book with what sounds like a very ambitious title.\n\nI wish to say at once that I have no qualifications to discuss\npolitical, historical or economic matters. I leave to the scholars\nwho are versed in these redoubtable questions the task of explaining,\nskilfully and definitely, the great misery that has befallen our time.\n\nI thus at the same time renounce most of the opportunities and\nobligations of my title.\n\nBut I wish, with all my heart, to pursue with a few people of good will\na friendly discussion the object of which remains, in spite of all, the\nheart\u2019s domain, or the possession of the world.\n\nThe possession of the world is not decided by guns. It is the noble\nwork of peace. It is not involved in the struggle which is now rending\nsociety.\n\nEven so, men will find themselves engaged in an undertaking that will\nthreaten to overwhelm them with suffering and despair.\n\nFate has assigned to me during the war a place and a task of such a\ncharacter that misery has been the only thing I have seen; it has been\nmy study and my enemy every moment. I must be forgiven for thinking of\nit with a persistence that is like an obsession.\n\nThe whole intelligence of the world is absorbed by the enterprise and\nthe necessities of the war; there is little chance of rousing it now\nfrom this in favor of the happiness of the race, in favor of that\nhappiness which is compromised for the future and destroyed for the\npresent. It is to the heart one must address oneself. It is to all the\ngenerous hearts that one must make one\u2019s appeal.\n\nSo, if I am spurred by an ambition, it is to beg the world to seek\nonce more whatever can lighten the present and the future distress of\nmankind, to seek the springs of interest that exist for the soul in a\nlife harassed with difficulties, perils and disillusionments, to honor\nmore than ever the faithful and incorruptible resources of the inner\nlife.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe inner life!\n\nIt has never ceased to shine, a precious, quivering flame, devoting\nall its ardor in a struggle against the breath of these great events,\nresisting this tempest which has had no parallel.\n\nIt has never ceased to shine, but its shy and faithful light trembles\nin a sort of crypt into which we fear to venture.\n\nWhat has happened has seized upon us as upon its prey. During the\nfirst months of the war, during the first years perhaps, all our\nphysical and moral energies were overwhelmed in this maelstrom. How,\nindeed, could one refuse oneself to the appetite of the monster? We did\nnot even try to snatch from him our hours of leisure, our dreams. We\nsimply abandoned such things, as we abandoned our plans, our welfare,\nand the whole of our existence.\n\nYou remember! It was a time when solitude found us more shaken, more\ndisarmed, than peril. We reproached ourselves for distracting a single\none of our thoughts from the universal distress. We gave ourselves day\nand night to this agonizing world; and when our work was suspended,\nwhen the wild beast unloosed its clutch, as if in play, and we returned\nfor a few minutes to ourselves, we did not always dare to look the\nquivering inner flame in the face. What it lighted up in us seemed at\ntimes too foreign to our anxiety, or too filled with limpid serenity.\nAnd so we returned to our wretchedness, experiencing it to the point of\nintoxication, to the point of despair.\n\nWhen I think of the year 1915, it seems to me that I still hear all\nthose noble comrades saying to me with a sort of dejection: \u201cI can\u2019t\nthink of anything else! I can neither read, nor work, nor seek to\ndistract myself to any purpose. When I\u2019m off duty I think about these\ndays, I think about them unceasingly, till I feel seasick, till I feel\ndizzy. I\u2019ve just had two hours of liberty. Once upon a time I should\nhave given them to Pascal or to Tolstoy. Today I have employed them\nin reading some documentary works on the manufacture of torpedoes and\non European colonial methods. They are subjects that will always be\noutside my line, subjects I shall never be interested in. But how can I\nthink of anything else?\u201d\n\nPerhaps it is not a question of thinking of anything else. It is not a\nquestion of turning one\u2019s back on the time, but rather of looking it in\nthe face, calmly and collectedly.\n\nWhen the first great excitement had passed away, those who had the\nwisdom and the courage to return assiduously to themselves found their\ninner life ennobled, augmented, enriched. For it does not cease to\nlabor on in the depths of us. It is at once ourselves and something\nother than ourselves, better than ourselves. Like certain of our organs\nwhich are endowed with a marvelous independence and pursue a vigilant\nactivity in the midst of our agitations and our sleep, the inner life\ncomes to its fruitage even though we are full of ingratitude and\nindifference towards it. It is the faithful spouse who keeps the home\nradiant, arranges every comfort and spins at the wheel, behind the\ndoor, awaiting our return.\n\nAnd behold we are returning!\n\nTo be sure, the storm still roars on. It grows greater, more furious,\nmore unending. Never has it seemed more complex, more grave, more\ndifficult. Peril has taken up its abode with us. Every sort of opinion\nholds up its head and vehemently solicits our belief.\n\nBut we have found once more the key and the path to the secret refuge.\nNothing could turn us aside now. Nothing could prevent us at certain\nhours from plunging into solitude, there to find again the equilibrium,\nthe harmony and those moral riches which we know, after the ruin of so\nmany things, are alone efficacious, alone durable.\n\nFor long months now I have realized, watching the men with whom I live,\nthat they are waiting for words of quietude, words of rest and love.\nThey are like parched soil at the end of a blazing summer: they long to\nslake their thirst and grow green again.\n\nIn vain have destruction, disorder and death tried to break up the\nsublime and familiar colloquy that every being pursues with the better\npart of himself. That colloquy revives, it begins again, in the very\nmidst of the battle, among the odors and the groans of the hospital.\n\nNevertheless, the daily work is done, well done; duty is properly\nweighed and accomplished; the soul simply is unwilling any longer to\nrenounce its meditation upon all that is profound, imperishable, and\nimmaterial in the present.\n\nTell me that we are going to labor in concert once more at the\nexploitation of our inner fortune. Tell me that we are going to labor\nto save from shipwreck that part of us which, in spite of all our\nerrors, uncertainties, crimes and disillusionments, remains truly noble\nand worthy of eternity.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nI am able to undertake this essay thanks to the leisure moments the war\nhas been willing to grant me. It is not purely the fruit of solitary\nmeditations. I do not live alone: my chosen comrades surround me; they\nshare with me the confused space of our dwelling; we share together all\nthe thoughts that fill this space.\n\nFriendship has accomplished the miracle of transforming into a\ncommunion what, without it, would have remained a promiscuity.\n\nI have a feeling that I am expressing the desires and the thoughts of\nmany men. Very soon, those who are here will be going to sleep; I shall\ncontinue my writing, but with the secret certitude of not being alone\nin the task, of carrying with me their tacit assent. I feel that I have\nbeen entrusted with a sort of mandate.\n\nI have no library, no documents. But do we need books in order to\nconverse together of the things that form the very substance of our\nexistence? Does it not suffice to consult our souls? Do we need any\nother guarantee than our devout desire in order to lift an open hand\nand make, for all those who await it in their solitude, the sign of\nconcord and of hope?\n\n\n\n\n                               CONTENTS\n\n             CHAPTER                                PAGE\n\n                I THE HOPE OF HAPPINESS              3\n\n               II POVERTY AND RICHES                21\n\n              III THE POSSESSION OF OTHERS          33\n\n              IV  ON DISCOVERING THE WORLD          69\n\n               V  THE LYRICS OF LIFE                94\n\n              VI  SORROW AND RENUNCIATION          110\n\n             VII  THE SHELTER OF LIFE              126\n\n            VIII  THE CHOICE OF THE GRACES         146\n\n              IX  APOSTLESHIP                      160\n\n               X  ON THE REIGN OF THE HEART        178\n\n\n\n\n                          THE HEART\u2019S DOMAIN\n\n\n                          THE HEART\u2019S DOMAIN\n\n\n\n\n                                   I\n                         THE HOPE OF HAPPINESS\n\n                                   I\n\n\nIt was necessary for me to pass middle age in order to become convinced\nthat happiness was the object of my life, as it is the object of all\nhumanity, as it is the object of the whole world of living things.\n\nAt first sight, that statement seems self-evident. And yet many a time\nhave I questioned my friends, my relatives, my chance companions on\nthis subject and I have received the most contradictory replies.\n\nMany seemed taken unawares and, overwhelmed with their various\nburdens, would not trouble to seek an object: they were in pursuit of\nhappiness without naming it. Others, excited by the play of argument,\nacknowledged as the object of life all sorts of states or manners\nof being which are nothing but steps toward happiness, means good\nor bad of seeking it, such as movement, stoical indifference, or\nprayer. Others confused the end with the object and named death. Still\nothers, maddened by their misery, gave it as their bitter conclusion\nthat unhappiness is the actual destiny of man, and these confused the\nobstacle with the aim. Finally, there were some who gave to happiness\nnames dictated by their aspirations, their culture, their accustomed\nmanner of using words, and called it God, or eternal life, or the\nsalvation of the soul.\n\nAs for me, in spite of all, I am sure that happiness is the object of\nlife. This certitude has come to me altogether from within, not from\noutside events, and not from the spectacle of other men. Like all the\ncertitudes of the inner life, it is obstinate and even aggressive.\nAll objections seem simply made to fortify it. It dominates them\nall. I have not been able even to imagine a new certitude that could\ninvalidate or replace this one.\n\nUpon reflection, the path and the end are identical. Happiness is not\nonly the aim, the reason of life, it is its means, its expression, its\nessence. It is life itself.\n\n\n                                  II\n\nOne might well doubt this. The whole of humanity at this moment utters\none despairing, heart-rending cry. It bellows like a wounded beast of\nburden, it simply does not understand its wound.\n\nAll convictions and all certitudes are at one another\u2019s throats. How\ncan we recognize them, with that lost look they have, that blood that\nsoils and disfigures them? In the hurricane, opinions, uprooted, have\nlost their soil and their sap. They drift like autumn thistles, dry\nthistles that yet have power to tear the skin. Men no longer know\nanything but their insurmountable suffering, a suffering that has no\nlimit and seems to be without reason. They groan and desire nothing but\nto be alleviated. Will a century of pious tenderness suffice to bathe,\ndrain, close the vast wound?\n\nWithout delay, O streaming wound, your living flesh must be stanched\nand bathed. From now on, no matter how long you bleed, you must be\nanointed and protected, and if you are opened up again ten times, ten\ntimes must you be anointed anew and covered once more.\n\nYet, do not doubt it, humanity even in this terrible hour seeks for\nnothing but its own happiness. It rushes forward, by instinct, like a\nherd that smells the salt-lick and the spring. But it will suffocate\nrather than not enjoy everything together and at once.\n\nHappiness?\n\nGod! who has given it this painful and ridiculous idea? What were\nthey about, the priests, the scientists, and the people who write\nthe books? What has been taught the children of men that they could\nhave been made to believe that war brings happiness to anyone? Let\nthem declare themselves, those who have assured the poor in spirit\nthat their happiness depends upon the possession of a province, an\niron-mine, or a foaming arm of the sea between two distant continents!\n\nIt is thus that they have all set out for the conquest of happiness,\nsince that is destiny, and there has been placed in their hands\nprecisely what was certain to destroy happiness forever.\n\nAnd yet, if you will bear with me, we need not lose all hope. So long\nas there is a single wall-flower to tremble in the coming Aprils over\nthe ruins of the world, let us repeat from the depths of our hearts:\n\u201cHappiness, you are truly my end and the reason for my being, I know it\nthrough my own tears.\u201d\n\n\n                                  III\n\nI went, lately, to a laboratory, in the heart of a wilderness of glass\nand porcelain, haunted with inhuman odors. A friend dwelt there. I saw\na great crystal cask full of distilled water; the sunlight quivered\nthrough it freely and majestically. There, I thought, is the desert.\nThat water contained nothing, it was unfitted for life, it was as empty\nas a dead world.\n\nBut then we scratched the bottom of the cask and looked at it with\nthe microscope. Little round, green alg\u00e6 were growing in that desert.\nA current of air had carried the germs, and they had increased and\nmultiplied. There where there was nothing to seize upon, they had yet\nfound something. The taste of barren glass, a few stray grains of dust,\nthat soulless water, that sunlight, they had asked for nothing more in\norder to subsist and work out their humble joy.\n\nI thought of this virtue of life, this perseverance, as of a hymn to\nhappiness, a silent hymn prevailing over the roars of the conquest.\n\nNothing discourages life except, perhaps, the excess of itself.\n\nIf Europe, too rich and too beautiful, is to be henceforth the vessel\nof all the sorrows, it is because happiness has assumed an unclean\nmask: the mask of pleasure. For pleasure is not joy.\n\nPatience! The whole world has not been poisoned.\n\nI know of mosses that succeed in living upon acids. The antiseptics,\nwhose property it is to destroy living things, are at times invaded by\nthese obstinate fungi which encamp there, acclimatize themselves and\nmodestly fulfil their destiny.\n\nOne must have confidence in happiness. One must have more confidence\nthan ever, for never was happiness more greatly lacking to the mass of\nmen. So cruelly is the world astray, so immensely, so evidently, too,\nthat we cannot wait for the consummation to denounce it and reprove it.\n\nLike those alg\u00e6, those mosses, those laborious lichens that attach to\nthe very ruins themselves their infinite need of happiness, let us seek\nour joy in the distress of the present and make it open for us, like a\nplant beaten by the winds, in the desert of a blasted world.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nYou must understand that this concerns happiness and not pleasure, or\nwell-being, or enjoyment, or the delight of the senses.\n\nAll cultivated people have created different words to designate these\ndifferent things. All have committed their moralists to the task of\npreserving simple souls from a confusion which our instincts favor.\n\nDelight of the senses, you who are the eternally unsatisfactory, is it\ntrue, intangible one, that you will always deceive us and that we shall\nalways seek for happiness through you?\n\nWhat seductiveness is not yours, O you who smile with the lips of love,\nO mysterious phantom of joy? How you lure us and enchain us! Well you\nknow how to array yourself, at times, in the appearance of a sacred\nmission, a religious duty!\n\nNo, you are not happiness, divine though you are! To live without you\nis a bitter misfortune, but you are not happiness!\n\nWhy does happiness command us to sacrifice you often, to mistrust you\nalways?\n\nThere is no happiness without harmony; you know this very well, you who\nare delicious disorder itself, death, laughter, strife.\n\nHappiness is our homeland. You are only the burning country we long\nfor, the tropical isle where our dreams exile themselves, never to\nreturn.\n\nHappiness is our true kingdom. Delight of the senses, let your slaves\nhymn your praise.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nDuring the summer of 1916 I found among the meadows of the Marne a\nflower that had three odors. It is a very common flower in France: it\nadorns a low and spiny plant which the peasants call \u201c_arr\u00eate-b\u0153uf_.\u201d\nToward midday, at the hour when the sun exasperates all its creatures,\nthis flower exhales three different odors: the first is soft, fresh and\nresembles the perfume of the sweet pea; the second is sharp and makes\none think of phosphor irritant, of a flame; the third is the secret\nbreath of love. This miraculous flower really has all three of these\nodors at once, but we perceive them more easily one at a time because\nwe are not worthy of all this wealth.\n\nThis little discovery descended upon my weary head like a benediction.\nAt that time we were leaving the miseries of Verdun behind and were\njust on the point of plunging into those of the Somme. The intermediate\nrest depressed us and enervated us by turns. In the walks across the\nfields which we took with our comrades, I grew accustomed every day to\ngather a root of _arr\u00eate-b\u0153uf_ and offer it, as a gift, to those who\naccompanied me, so that they might share my discovery.\n\nSome of them, anxious about the world and their own fortune, took\npleasure in this modest marvel. They breathed in with these perfumes\nthe inexhaustible variety of the lavish universe. They distinguished\nand recognized, smilingly, the three odors of this one being. They\nhonored these three ambassadors whom a people of unknown virtues had\nassigned to them. They interpreted as a revelation the little signs\nof the latent opulence which challenges and disdains the majority of\nbewildered men.\n\nBut others remained insensible to this delicate prayer, and these I\nthought of with chagrin as of men who had no care for the welfare of\ntheir own souls.\n\nI know quite well you will say, \u201cThere is no relation between this\nflower and the welfare of the soul.\u201d But this relation does exist,\nemphatically and definitely. Truth shines out of every merest trifle\nthat goes to make up the world. We must fasten our eyes ardently upon\nit, as if it were a light shining through the branches, and march\nforward.\n\nI am sure, we are all sure, that happiness is the very reason for our\nexistence. Let it be added at once that happiness is founded upon\npossession, that is to say, upon the perfect and profound understanding\nof something.\n\nFor this reason men who have a high conception of happiness aspire to\nthe complete and definite knowledge of an absolute, a perfection which\nthey name God. The desire for eternal life is a boundless need of\npossession.\n\nEqually noble is the passionate desire of certain men to understand, to\npossess themselves, to have such an exact and merciless conception of\ntheir moral and physical nature as will give them some sort of mastery\nover it.\n\nIt is indeed a beautiful destiny to pursue the understanding of the\nexternal world with the weapons and the arguments of a science that is\nnot the slave of conquest. Men who achieve this may indeed be called\njust.\n\nOthers wish to possess a house, a field, a pair of earrings, an\nautomobile. For them possession is not understanding, it is above\nall else an exclusive and almost solitary enjoyment. They deceive\nthemselves about happiness and about possession. They deceive\nthemselves to the actual point of war, massacre and destruction.\n\nIf we wish it, we may possess the whole universe, and it is in this\npossession that we shall find the salvation of our souls. We may\npossess, for example, that unknown something which walks by the\nroad-side, the color of the forest of pointed firs that rises sharply\nagainst the southern horizon, the thoughts of Beethoven, our dreams\nby night, the conception of space, our memories, our future, the odor\nand the weight of objects, our grief at this moment and thousands and\nthousands of other things besides.\n\nIs my soul immortal? Alas! how can I still linger in this ancient,\ningenuous hope? There are millions who, like me, can no longer give\nreasonable credence to such an impossible happiness.\n\nBut does my soul exist? Every thought bears witness that it does, and\nthis life of ours too, and the inexplicable life that is all about us.\n\nWhen Christians speak of the salvation of the soul, they are thinking\nof all sorts of assurances and precautions in regard to that future\nlife which remains the greatest charm of religion and at the same time\nits most wonderful weapon.\n\nWe can give a humbler but more immediate meaning to this expression.\n\nFirst of all, not to be ignorant of our own souls!\n\nTo think about the soul, to think about it at least once in the\nconfusion of every crowded day, is indeed the beginning of salvation.\n\nTo think with perseverance and respect of the soul, to enrich it\nunceasingly, that will be our sanctity.\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nWe have all known those men who, at the first break of day, while they\nare still half awake and barely rested, fling themselves into the\nstress of business. They pass all day from one man to another in a sort\nof blind, buzzing frenzy. They are ceaselessly reaching out to take, to\nappropriate for themselves. If a moment of solitude offers itself, they\npull note-books out of their pockets and begin figuring. Between whiles\nthey eat, drink and seek a sort of sleep that is more arid than death.\nLooking at these unfortunates, who are often men of great importance,\none would imagine their souls were like decrepit poor relations,\nrelegated to some corner of their personality, with which they never\nconcern themselves.\n\nI was once returning from the country on a train with a young surgeon\non whom that cruel fortune which we call success was beginning to\nsmile. I can still see him, breathless and almost stupefied, on the\nseat facing me. He had been talking to me of his work, of how he spent\nhis time, with a restless excitement which the noise of the train\nhammered and disjointed and gave a sort of rhythm to. Evening was\nfalling. It gave me pleasure to look at the young poplars in the valley\nbeside the track, their foliage and slender trunks transfigured by\nthe sunset. My friend looked at them also, and suddenly he murmured:\n\u201cIt\u2019s true! I\u2019m no longer interested in those things, I no longer pay\nattention to anything.\u201d Through the fatigue and anxiety of his affairs,\nthrough the jingling calculation of his profits, he suddenly caught a\nglimpse of his error, of his real poverty. His repudiated soul stirred\nin the depths of his being as the infant stirs in its mother\u2019s womb.\n\nIt is constantly awakening in this way and timidly reclaiming its\nrights. Often, an unexpected word strikes us, a word that comes from\nit and reveals it. I have as a work-fellow a quiet, studious young man\nwho takes life \u201cseriously,\u201d that is to say, in such a fashion that he\ngets himself into a fine state of mind and will die, perhaps, without\nhaving known, without having saved, the soul with which he is charged.\nAt the beginning of the month of June of this year 1918, I found myself\nhard at work during one of those overwhelming afternoons that seem, on\nour barren Champagne, like a white furnace, a glistening desert. There\nwere many wounded and the greater part had been uncared for for several\ndays; the barrack that served us as an operating-hall was overcrowded;\nour task was a tragic one; the demon of war had imprisoned us under\nhis knee. We felt crushed, exasperated, swamped in these immediate\nrealities. Between two wounded men, as I was soaping my gloves, I saw\nmy young comrade looking far away through a little window and his gaze\nwas suddenly bathed with calm and peace. \u201cWhat are you looking at?\u201d I\nsaid to him. \u201cOh! nothing,\u201d he replied; \u201conly I\u2019m resting myself on\nthat little tuft of verdure down there: it refreshes me so much.\u201d\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nIt seems childish and paradoxical to oppose to all the concrete and\nformidable realities that are considered as the hereditary wealth of\nmankind an almost purely ideal world of joys that have no price, that\nremain outside all our bargainings, that are unstable, often fugitive,\nand always relative in appearance, whenever we put them to the test.\nYet they alone are absolute, they alone are true. Where they are\nlacking there may be a place for amusement, there is no place for true\nhappiness. They alone are capable of assuring the salvation of the\nsoul. We ought to labor passionately to find them, to amass them as the\nveritable treasures of humanity.\n\nThe future we are permitted to glimpse seems the very negation of\nhappiness and the ruin of the soul.\n\nIf this is true, we must examine it with open minds and then, with all\nour strength, refuse it.\n\nJust this moment, when the struggle for mastery goes on, to the great\nperil of the soul, among the peoples, just this moment I choose\nfor saying: \u201cLet us think of the salvation of our souls.\u201d And this\nsalvation is not a matter of the future but of the present hour. Let\nus recognize the existence of the soul; it is thus that we shall save\nit. Let us give it the freedom of the city in a world where everything\nconspires to silence or destroy it. If it is true that this withdraws\nus from that struggle for existence, the clamor of which assails our\nears, well, even so, I believe it is better to die than to remain in a\nuniverse from which the soul is banished. But we shall have occasion to\nspeak more than once of this.\n\nLet us not forget that happiness is our one aim. Happiness is, above\nall, a thing of the spirit, and we shall only deserve it at the price\nof the honors we render to the noblest part of our being.\n\n\n                                 VIII\n\nThere are people who have said to me, \u201cMy happiness lies in this very\nhurly-burly, this brutish labor, this frantic agitation which you\nspurn. Outside this turmoil of business and society, I am bored. I need\nit. I need it in order to divert my thoughts.\u201d\n\nNo doubt! No doubt! But what have you done with your life that it has\nbecome necessary to divert your thoughts? What have you made of your\npast, what do you hope from your future when this alcohol, this opium,\nhas become necessary to you?\n\nYou must understand me, there is no question, if you are built as an\nathlete, of letting your muscles deteriorate. There is no question,\nif you have a great thirst for controversy, a natural aptitude for\nstruggle, of letting that thirst go unsatisfied, that aptitude\nuncultivated. The question is simply one of harmoniously employing all\nthese fine gifts, of enriching yourself with those real treasures the\nuniverse bestows on those who wish to take them, and not of wearing out\nyour radiant strength in the labors of a street-porter, a galley-slave\nor an executioner.\n\nHere is a man who says to me: \u201cMy happiness! My happiness! But it\nconsists in never thinking of my soul.\u201d What a sad thing! And how\ngravely one must have offended others and one\u2019s own self to have\nreached that point!\n\nFor where shall he who loves torment, passionate restlessness,\nuncertainty, and remorse discover these terrible blessings if it is not\nin the depths of his own hateful ego?\n\n\n                                  IX\n\nIf anyone tells you something strange about the world, something you\nhave never heard before, do not laugh but listen attentively; make him\nrepeat it, make him explain it: no doubt there is something there worth\ntaking hold of.\n\nThe cult of the soul is a perpetual discovery of itself and the\nuniverse which it reflects. The purest happiness is not a stable and\nfinal frame of mind, it is an equilibrium produced by an incessant\ncompromise which has to be adroitly re\u00ebstablished; it is the reward\nof a constant activity; it increases in proportion to the daily\ncorrections one brings to it.\n\nOne must not cling obstinately to one\u2019s own interpretations of the\nworld but unceasingly renew the flowers on the altar.\n\nIn quite another order of ideas I think of those old-fashioned\nmanufacturers who are immovably set against trying any of the new\nmachines and perish in their stubbornness. That is nothing but a\ncomparison: to justify the machine folly is quite the opposite of my\ndesire. I simply wish to show that routine affects equally the things\nof the mind and of the heart, that it is a very formidable thing.\n\nKipling, I believe, tells the story of a Hindu colony that was\ndecimated by famine. The poor folk let themselves die of hunger without\ntouching the wheat that had been brought for them, because they had\nbeen used to eating millet.\n\nIf the sacred lamp of happiness some day comes to lack the ritual oil,\nwe shall not let it go out; we shall surely find something with which\nto feed it, something that will serve for light and heat.\n\n\n                                   X\n\nThe will to happiness attains its perfection in the mature man. With\nadolescence it passes through a redoubtable crisis.\n\nNietzsche says: \u201cThere is less melancholy in the mature man than in the\nyoung man.\u201d It is true.\n\nVery young people cultivate sadness as something noble. They do\nnot readily forgive themselves for not being always sad. They have\ndiscovered the mysterious isle of melancholy and do not wish to escape\nfrom it again. They love everything about that black magician and his\nattitudes and his tears and his nostalgia and his romantic beauty. They\nhave a fierce disdain for vulgar pleasures and take refuge in sadness\nbecause they do not yet know the splendor and majesty of joy.\n\nBut in their own fashion, which is full of disdain, reserve and\ningenuous complexity, they do not any the less seek for happiness.\n\nWith age happiness appears as truly the sole, serene study of man. As\nhe rests upon the moral possession of the world, he believes that with\ntime and experience he can remain insensible to the wearing out of his\nbodily organs.\n\nHe who knows how to be happy and to win forgiveness for his happiness,\nhow enviable he is!--the only true model among those that are wise.\n\nIt is now, just now, that these things ought to be said, in the hour\nwhen our old continent bleeds in every member, in the hour when our\nfuture seems blotted out by the menace of every sort of servitude and\nof a hopeless labor that will know neither measure nor redemption.\n\n\n\n\n                                  II\n                          POVERTY AND RICHES\n\n\n                                   I\n\nThe Christian doctrine, which has all the beauties, has all the\naudacities too. It has endeavored to make the sublime and daring notion\nprevail among the mass of men that salvation is reserved for the\npoor. What a magnificent thing! And if this religion of poverty has\ndegenerated in the course of the centuries, with what consolation has\nit not bathed those thrice-happy souls whom an unbroken faith guides\nthrough misery and humiliation!\n\nBut there has never been a religion which has been able to found itself\nupon renunciation without compensation. Is he poor, this man who\nconsents to go unclad, roofless, unfed, up to the day when there will\nbe showered upon him all the riches of the kingdom of God? Has he no\nthought of a supreme gift, of a magnificent possession, the man to whom\nhis master, in person, has given the command: \u201cLay up your treasures in\nheaven, where they will not be lost\u201d?\n\nHe does not exist, the hopeless being who does not hunger for some\ntreasure, even if it is an imaginary one, even an unreal one, even one\nthat is lost in a bewildering future.\n\nIn what an abyss of poverty should we groan if our kingdom were not of\nthis world and were nowhere outside the world, either?\n\nAnd now a generation of men has come that no longer believes in the\nsupernatural felicities of the future life and seems no longer to\nhave anything to hope from a world consumed by hatred and given over\ninevitably, for long years, to confusion, destitution, egotistical\npassions.\n\nIn truth, the programmes of the social factions have no consolation\nfor us, there is nothing in them that speaks of love and the true\nblessings; all these monuments of eloquence bring us back to hatred and\nanguish.\n\nThe most generous of them only give us glimpses of new struggles, new\nsheddings of blood, when our age is drunk with crime and fatigue. To\nwhichever side the individual turns he finds himself crushed, scoffed\nat, sacrificed to insatiable, hostile gods.\n\nA few years ago Maeterlinck wrote: \u201cUp to the present men have left one\nreligion to enter another; but when we abandon ours, it is not to go\nanywhere. That is a new phenomenon, with unknown consequences, in the\nmidst of which we live.\u201d\n\nHaving quoted these words, I hasten to add that the war is no\nparticular consequence of this moral state of the world. The question\nof religion is not involved at all. The priests are quite ready to\nabuse these easy oppositions in order to obtain arguments in favor of\ntheir cause. But they know well enough, alas! that if the teaching\nof Christ stigmatizes wars, the religions have only contributed to\nmultiply and aggravate them. They know very well that, in the conflict\nthat now divides the earth, the religions have shown themselves\nenslaved to the states. No one has wished to take up the wallet and\nstaff of the dead Tolstoy.\n\nHumanity seems poorer and more truly disinherited than ever. Its\nkingdom is in itself and in everything that surrounds it; but it has\nsold it for a morsel of bread. And how can one reproach it for this? It\nis very hungry and its heart is not open to beauty.\n\n\n                                  II\n\nWe shall seek together the materials of our happiness. Together we\nshall pile up all those marvelous little things that must constitute\nour patrimony, our wealth.\n\nWe shall have great misfortunes and we shall often be bitterly\ndeceived. It is because the war has succeeded in depriving the simplest\nand the most sacred things of the light of eternity. That is not the\nleast consequence of the catastrophe. We must make a painful effort to\nrecover that light and clear it of its blemishes. Silence, solitude,\nthe sky, the vestiture of the earth, all the riches of the poor have\nbeen sullied as if forever. The works of art have been mutilated. They\nhave taken refuge under the earth where they seem to veil their faces.\n\nWe ought to seek and gather together the debris so that we can take up\nand love in secret every day the fragments of our liberties.\n\nWe ought to think unceasingly of that \u201cmean landscape\u201d of which Charles\nVildrac has spoken in one of his most beautiful poems. It is an\nunfruitful landscape, despoiled, denatured by the sad labor of men, and\napparently worn out;--\n\n  But even so you found, if you sought there,\n  One happy spot where the grass grew rich,\n  Even so you heard, if you listened,\n  The whisper of leaves\n  And the birds pursuing one another.\n\n  And if you had enough love,\n  You could even ask of the wind\n  Perfumes and music ...\n\nWe shall have enough love! That shall be the principle and source of\nour wealth.\n\nAnd so we shall not have a whole life of poverty. When love, that is to\nsay, grace, abandons us, we shall perhaps know hours of poverty. That\nwill help us all the better to understand our hours of opulence, and\nall the better cherish them.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nIf you wish, we can divide our task, enumerate the coffers in which we\nare to pile our treasures.\n\nFirst of all, let us stop over a word. We have said: to possess is to\nknow. The definition may seem to you arbitrary. On the chance of this I\nopen my little pocket dictionary, which is the whole library I have as\na soldier, and read: \u201cTo possess: to have for oneself, in one\u2019s power,\nto know to the bottom.\u201d Let us accept that. We shall see, page by page,\nif it is possible for us to satisfy these na\u00efve, direct definitions.\n\nWhat is most certain to attract our glance, when we look about us, is\nthe world of men, our fellow-creatures. Their figures are certainly the\nmost affecting spectacle that can be offered us. Their acts undoubtedly\nconstitute, owing to a natural inclination and an indestructible\nsolidarity, the chief object of our curiosity. Good! We shall possess\nthem first of all. We shall possess this inexhaustible fund of other\npeople.\n\nWe shall feel no shame then in contemplating, with a noble desire,\nwhatever strikes our senses, the animals, that is to say, the plants,\nthe material universe of stones and waters, the sky and even the\npopulous stars. These, too, ought to be well worth possessing!\n\nAlready our wealth seems immense. Our ambition is still greater:\nwe must possess our dreams. But have not illustrious men made more\nbeautiful dreams than ours? Yes, and these men are called Shakespeare,\nDante, Rembrandt, Goethe, Hugo, Rodin; there are a hundred of them,\neven more; their works form the royal crown of humanity. We shall\npossess that crown. It is for us it was forged, for us it was\nbejewelled with immortal joys.\n\nIt would be vain to extend our possession only into space. It overruns\ntime: we possess the past, that is to say, our memories, and the future\nin our hopes.\n\nAnd then we also possess, and in the strictest sense of all, our\nsorrows, our griefs, our despair, if that supreme and terrible treasure\nis reserved for us.\n\nFinally, there will be times when we possess nothing but an idea, but\nthis may perhaps be the idea of the absolute or the infinite. If it is\ngiven us to possess God, then, no doubt, nothing else will be necessary\nto us.\n\nEvery time that we possess the world purely we shall find that we have\ntouched an almost unhoped for happiness, for it is always being offered\nto us and we do not think of it: we shall possess ourselves.\n\nWe shall share all our riches with our companions: that shall be our\napostolate. And we shall manage in some way to resist the seductions\nor the commands of a society that is going to ruin, a society that is\neven more unhappy and abused than corrupt. If, in consequence, we are\npermitted to glimpse, even if only for the space of a minute, a little\nmore happiness about us, a little more happiness than there is at\npresent, we shall at last be so happy as to accept death with joy.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nThe greatest of all joys is to give happiness, and those who do not\nknow it have everything to learn about life. The annals of humanity\nabound with illustrious deeds aptly proving that generosity enriches\nfirst of all those who practise it.\n\nNot to mention any celebrated instance, I shall tell you one simple\nlittle tale. It is of the truth I live on, my daily bread.\n\nJust now, not far from me, there is a young English soldier from the\nneighborhood of York who is so severely wounded in the lower part of\nthe stomach that the natural functions of the body have been completely\nupset and he has been reduced to a state of terrible suffering.\n\nAnd yet, when I went to see him this morning, this boy gave me an\nextraordinary smile, his very first, a smile full of delicacy and hope,\na smile of resurrection.\n\nPresently I learned the cause of this great joy. The dying man pulled\nfrom under his pillow a cigarette he had hidden there, which he had\nsecretly saved for me and now gave me.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nThere are many who preach an unpretentious life and the sweetness\nof possessing a little garden. The most magnificent of gardens is\ninsignificant compared with this world in which nothing is refused\nus. Accepting the little garden we should have the air of those\ndispossessed kings who lose an empire to be ironically dowered with a\nsmall island.\n\nIf we find it pleasant to employ our muscles in digging the earth,\nthere are a thousand spots where we can easily practise this wholesome\nand fruitful exercise. But we shall never really possess a single clod\nof earth because a legal deed has declared that it belongs exclusively\nto us. The world itself! Our love demands the whole world; the rocks,\nthe clouds, the great trees along the highway, the darting flight of\nbirds, receding into the evening, the rustling verdure high above that\nwall that vainly strives to shut in the private property of someone\nelse, the shining glory of those flowers we glimpse through the iron\nrailings of a park, and even that very wall and railing themselves.\n\nAccording to the stretch of our wings, the scope of our desires, we\nshall possess whatever our hands touch with ardor and respect, whatever\ndelights our eyes from the summits of mountains, whatever our thoughts\nbring back from their travels through legendary lands.\n\nTo possess the world is purely a question of the intensity of our\nunderstanding of it. One does not possess things on their surfaces but\nin their depths; but the spirit alone can penetrate into the depths,\nand for the spirit there is no barrier.\n\nMany men to whom the law allows the gross, official possession of a\nstatue, a gem, a beautiful horse or a province wear themselves out\nfulfilling a r\u00f4le to which no human being has received a call. Every\nmoment they perceive with bitterness that men who have no legal title\nwhatever to these material goods draw from them a delight that is\nsuperior to the enjoyment they themselves get from them as absolute\nowners. They often find, in this way, that a friend appreciates their\nbeautiful pictures better than they do, that a groom is a better judge\nof their own stables, that a passer-by draws out of \u201ctheir landscape\u201d a\npurer joy than theirs and more original ideas. They take their revenge\nby obstinately confusing the usage of a thing with its possession.\n\nJesus said that the rich man renounced the kingdom of God. He renounces\nmany other things as well. For if he shuts himself up within his proud\nwalls, he abandons the marvelous universe for a small fragment of it;\nand if he is actually curious about the universe, if he appreciates\nits significance, how can he consent without guilt to hide a portion of\nit away from the contemplation of others?\n\nIn order to express the gross and exclusive possession of things\nsociety has invented various words and phrases that betray the weak\nefforts of men to appropriate for themselves, in spite of everything,\nin spite of the laws of love, the riches that remain the prerogative of\nall. They speak, for example, of \u201cdisposing of a piece of property,\u201d\nwhich means having it subject to our pleasure, being able to do as\nwe choose with it. The sacrilegious vanity of this view of the world\ngives the possessor, as his supreme right, the power to destroy his\nown treasure. He could not, indeed, have a greater right than that.\nBut what sort of desperate possession is it, I ask, that considers the\ndestruction of the object possessed as the supreme manifestation of\npower?\n\nThe world has long known and still knows slavery. Lords and masters\nclaimed the extravagant right of disposing of other human beings.\nThey all insisted, as a mark of authority, on their right of dealing\ndeath to their slaves. But truly, what was the power of these despots\ncompared with the deep, sensitive, voluntary bond that united Plato to\nSocrates, or John to Christ?\n\nEpictetus suffered at the hands of Epaphroditus. For all that,\nEpaphroditus was not able to prevent his slave from reigning, through\nhis thought, over the centuries. Epaphroditus\u2019 right of possession\nseems to us ridiculous and shameful. Who can fairly envy him when so\nmany centuries have passed judgement on him?\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nEvery philosophy has given magnificent expression to these immortal\ntruths. What can we add to the words of Epictetus, of Marcus Aurelius,\nof Christ in regard to the vanity of those riches which alone society\nadmits to be of value?\n\nBut the poets have said to us, \u201cDo not abandon the world, for it\nabounds in pure and truly divine joys that will be lost if you do not\nharvest them!\u201d\n\nThe road that ought to be sweet for us to follow crosses now that of\nthe Christians, now that of the Stoics. We may stop now at the Garden\nof Olives, now at the threshold of that small house without a door,\nwithout furnishings, where the master of Arrien used to live.\n\nOur road will lead us even more often through wild, solitary places, or\nto the pillow of some man who sleeps in the earth, or to the smiling\ndwelling of some humble friend, or again into the melodious shadow\nwhere the souls of Beethoven and Johann Sebastian Bach forever dwell.\n\nWe shall not struggle with the mass of deluded man to possess the\nknown, so long as the unknown remains without a master. We shall give\nup crude material possession in order to dream all the better of\nspiritual possession.\n\nNo, we cannot any longer renounce our kingdom when it calls to us, when\nfor us it sings, hosanna!\n\nAnd those of us who already have their place in the kingdom of heaven\nmust not hesitate to demand their share of this world also; for the\nworld has been given to all men so that each man, with the help of all\nthe rest, may possess the whole of it.\n\n\n\n\n                                  III\n                       THE POSSESSION OF OTHERS\n\n\n                                   I\n\nIn the exile of the war I have fifteen comrades, and we live side by\nside like seamen on the deck of a ship. Everything brings us together:\nwork, sleep, play, food and danger. Even our quarrels reunite us, for,\nin order to quarrel well, you have to know your man: between strangers\ndisputes have little savor.\n\nI never chose these men for my companions, as I once thought I had a\nright to do. They have been given to me like a handful of fruit of\nwhich some is juicy and some green. They have been taken at random,\nas if by a drag of that net which respects nothing, from the swarming\nspecies of man. Thanks, therefore, to the blind and divine world which\nhas thrown the net into the flood!\n\nThey are my treasure, my study, and my daily task. They are my purpose,\nmy horizon, my torment, and my recompense.\n\nAlthough far from my own people, far from those with whom I have\ncarried on my life, I could not feel myself destitute, abandoned; the\nworld is not empty for me since I have these fifteen men to manage,\nthis cherished problem to ponder, this soil to work over, this vintage\nfor the winepress.\n\nI accept the gift, the restless opulence, the fifteen glances that open\non fifteen different heavens where there shine neither the same seasons\nnor the same stars, those fifteen proud, vindictive souls whom I must\nwin over and subdue like wild horses.\n\nTo be sure, a few of these men are frank, level in temperament, as\nplain to the eye as a smooth pebble on the beach; one touches them,\nholds them, grasps them in a moment like a big piece of silver in the\nhollow of the hand. But so many others are changeable, furtive, so many\nothers are rough like ore in which only the fissures glisten and betray\nthe inner nobility.\n\nThe more unresponsive and secretive they seem, without any obvious\nbeauty, the more resolved I find I am to look upon them as a treasure,\nto search through them as if they were a soil that is full of wealth.\n\nThere are some of them that I love, there are some whom I think that I\ndo not love. What does it matter! The interest I devote to them is not\nin the least dependent on the throbs of my heart. That one who never\nspeaks and conceals, under his obstinate forehead, two little eyes\nof green glass,--certainly he does not naturally arouse my affection.\nNevertheless, how different is the attention with which I regard him\nfrom the curiosity of a scientist watching the stirrings of fish in an\naquarium! It makes me think, that attention, rather of the dizzy joy of\nthe miser who weighs a gold-piece, the effigy on which doesn\u2019t please\nhim. Gold, nevertheless!\n\nTrue! How could I feel bored with these faces turned toward me, with\nthis choir of human voices singing, each in its own familiar key, yet\nblending into the masculine clamor of an orchestra?\n\nEverything they say is precious; less so, however, than what they keep\nto themselves. The reasons they give for their actions astonish me\nat times; those they do not confess, especially those of which they\nthemselves are ignorant, always fill me with passionate interest. A\nword, fallen from their lips like a piece of paper from an unknown\npocket, arrests me and sets me dreaming for long days. About them\nI build up daring and yet fragile hypotheses which they either\nobligingly support or destroy with a careless gesture. I always begin\nagain, delighting in it; it is my recreation. I enjoy finding that my\nhypotheses are right, for that satisfies my pride; I enjoy finding I am\nwrong, for that reveals to me leafy depths in my park that are still\nunexplored.\n\nAnd then I know that only a small part of their nature is involved\nin our intercourse. The rest branches off, ramifies out into the\nperspectives of the world. I think of it as of that side of the moon\nwhich men will never see. I reconstruct with a pious, a burning\npatience that life of theirs which is outside this, their true life,\nendlessly complicated, linked by a thousand tentacles with a thousand\nother unknown lives. So must Cuvier\u2019s mind have wandered as he turned\nand returned a fossil tooth, the only vestige of some vast, unknown\norganism.\n\nThere is all this in people, and then there is the past that each one\nhas, his own past, his ancestors, the prodigious combination of actions\nand of souls of which he is the result. And there is his future, the\nunexplored desert toward which he stretches out anxious tentacles, and\ninto which I dare to venture, I, the stranger, with trembling heart,\nthe tiny lantern in my hand.\n\nThese are my riches today. They are inalienable: a man may flee from an\nindiscretion, he cannot escape the grip of contemplation and love. Even\nif he desired it, his very struggles would reveal his movements, betray\nthe deepest secrets of his being, deliver him over bound hand and foot.\n\nAs for myself, eager to hoard up my treasure, I give myself up without\na struggle. Rich in others, I yield myself into their hands. And if, in\nspite of myself, I attempt some evasion, am I not sure to render the\nprey all the more desirable, all the more beautiful?\n\n\n                                  II\n\nThey say of curiosity that it was the beginning of science. That is not\npraise enough, it sounds rather like an excuse.\n\nWhat is more human, more touching than this religious reaching out\ntoward the unknown, this sort of instinct which makes us divine and\nattack the mystery?\n\nTo take pride in not being curious! One might as well take pride in\nsome ridiculous infirmity. It is true that even that is in the order of\nthings normal, and that vanity finds its nourishment where it can.\n\nDoubtless there is a sort of curiosity which is both weak and cowardly.\nIt is that of men who dare not remain alone a moment face to face with\nthemselves; they take refuge in loquacity and in reading the daily\nnewspapers. Their fashion of interesting themselves in everything that\ngoes on is a confession that they are unable to become interested in\nanything eternal. They depend as if for nourishment on that noise which\nthose who have nothing to say are always making. They are like children\nwho cannot amuse themselves alone, or like stupid monarchs who fear\nnothing so much as silence and their own thoughts, the emptiness of\ntheir own thoughts!\n\nAnd then there are the easy-going people. They want to know everything,\nthe number of your maternal aunt\u2019s children, the price of the furniture\nand the wages of the servants. They want to know everything and they\nwill never know anything. Their life is spent in forced smiles and in\ngracefully holding a cup of tea.\n\nTheir souls contain vast lists of names, dates and other miserable\nthings. They go through life like beasts of burden, weighed down under\nloads that have no value.\n\nThere are maniacs, too, perverts, freaks, people that are full of\ncuriosity about a postage stamp, the handle of an umbrella; but of\nthese I dare not say anything, for I remember an old and very wise\nmaster who used to say to us with a smile: \u201cYou who are entering upon\nscientific careers must begin right away to think about collections,\neven if you have to collect boxes of matches.\u201d\n\nTo tell the truth, is it our business to be wise, to be learned?\nHardly! It is our business to be rich.\n\nWell, then, there are not two kinds of curiosity. Let us leave out of\nthe question all those dull stupidities we dare to call by this name.\n\nThe curious man seems strangely uninterested in that which excites\nthe loquacity of trivial souls. He does not trouble himself to find\nout the year in which a house was built, or the honors accorded to\nthe architect; he dreams in secret of the tastes, the passions of\nthe man who had that little, low window pierced on the north side and\nthat black tree with its twisted branches planted at the edge of the\npond. He does not ask a young woman the name of her dressmaker, but\ntrembles at the thought of understanding what made her choose that\ndisturbing dress to wear this particular day. He does not question his\nmistress about her opinion of him, but seeks passionately to understand\nthe opinion he has at this moment of her. He does not hasten to ask\nhis travelling companions about their professions and the political\nopinions they uphold, because, as he watches their faces, he is\nstudying discreetly and sympathetically the meaning of the little\nwrinkle that moves between their brows, or the significance of a\nglance, its source and its object. He does not solicit confidences, he\nreceives them almost without wishing to; they come naturally to him; he\nis their sure and deep receptacle.\n\nCurious about all this vast world, he seems especially concerned with\nits image in himself. He bears his curiosity like a sacred gift and\nexercises it, or rather honors it, as one would perform the rites of a\ncult.\n\nDo not say you would not wish to be that man. You who feel pride in\npossessing yourself of a secret, in drawing out a confession, in\nmeriting the confidence of another man, must realize that it is a\nmarvelous fortune to be thus the tenderly imperious confidant who\ncannot be denied, though often the rest of the world knows nothing of\nit. And it is possible for you, even if you cannot become such a man\nat once, at least to labor to become one. Begin, with this in view,\nto deliver yourself from your little servile curiosities. Let us work\ntogether for this future. Let us enter so deeply into ourselves that\npeople will say of us, \u201cThat man is not curious about anything.\u201d From\nthat moment we shall have begun to chant the hymn of the great, the\ndivine curiosity.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nThe possession of others is a passion, that is to say, it is an ordeal,\na painful effort. This supreme joy, like all the joys to which we\nattach value, is born out of suffering.\n\nWe must experience men in order to know them, and our neighbor for\nwhom, or through whom, we have never had to endure any anguish, has\nsurprises in store for us, or else escapes us altogether: that is\nalmost a truism.\n\nLike all others, this treasure cannot be acquired without effort,\nwithout bitterness; but it knows no decay, it never ceases to grow\nthrough the mere play of the forces of our life and seems as if\nsheltered from the blows of fate. It does not, like money, depreciate\nin value or serve ignoble ends. It only returns to oblivion.\n\nIt is not strictly personal. It can be shared and bequeathed. Since\nit escapes destruction and death, it can become the most precious of\nheritages; it has this superiority over money, that its transmission is\nreally valid only after it has been in some sort of way reconquered.\nIt must fall into worthy hands that will know how to work to preserve,\ncultivate and build it up again. In certain points it resembles what we\ncall experience.\n\nTo suffer, first of all! That is surely one of the grandeurs of our\nrace, and we truly love our blessings for what they have cost us in\ntears, in sweat, in blood.\n\nIt is repugnant to the spirit to admit that anything can be a blessing\nwhich the war has given. The desperate folly of the Western world has\nengendered and still holds in reserve such great misfortunes that we\ncannot ransack all these ruins, these heaps of bones, with any hope of\nextracting from them, as rag pickers do with their hooks, some fragment\nthat is good, some useful bit of waste. No! There is no excuse for\nthis ferocious, immeasurable stupidity. And yet, men have suffered so\nterribly from one another that they have learned to know one another,\nthat is to say, to possess one another mutually. In spite of my own\ndenials, let me save this bit of wreckage from the general disaster.\nThat is indeed one blessing so dearly bought that we shall not\nwillingly give it up. And I do not speak here only of those who have\nfought against each other; I speak also of those who have fought side\nby side, who have shed their blood for the same cause and under the\nsame standards.\n\nCompanions have been given us, imposed upon us, association with whom,\neven when casual and transitory, would once have seemed impossible to\nus. Living as free men, we sought to control the inevitable as far\nas possible, to choose our own road and avoid those whose opinions\nor points of view about the universe were likely to offend our own.\nWe thus made use of that liberty for the most part in order to humor\nour irritable feelings, to lull our souls to sleep in a precarious\nsecurity, and restrict the area of our inward activity.\n\nThen came the war and we had not only to suffer from the enemy, to\nendure unforeseen attacks in regions of ourselves that we considered\ninvulnerable, but to suffer still more from our own messmates, from\nthose who commanded us and especially those whom we commanded.\n\nCould it have been otherwise? No! No! If that suffering had been spared\nus, we should not have been men, we should not have gone to war, we\nshould not have been those divine animals whom it is so beautiful and\nso shameful to be and whom we cannot help being.\n\nWe have been told that all suffering is sterile, hopeless and without\nredemptive power. That it only serves to nourish hatred. But how\nmarvelous it is when it engenders understanding, that is to say,\npossession, that is to say, love!\n\nI have observed that for many men, except in actual bodily encounter,\ncombat face to face, the enemy has lost all individual or specific\ncharacter and has become almost confounded with the great hostile\nforces of nature: lightning, fire, tidal waves. The bullet coming\nfrom so far away, the shell hurled from beyond the horizon, all these\nmortal powers are simply like a form of blind destiny. In spite of\ndaily lessons in hatred, in spite of vociferations, these men die\ncourageously, with a resigned despair, without hatred.\n\nBut with other, less noble souls, the tendency to aversion and\nquarreling, thus turned back from the enemy, seeks its objects in their\nimmediate surroundings and finds them, creates them, alas!\n\nMy comrades, my comrades, if the uncertainty of your spirit, your\nagony, the rebelliousness of your afflicted flesh urges you to seek\nthose who are responsible, do not look too angrily upon those who are\nabout you, do not, in your aberration, accuse Houtelette because he is\na chatterbox, Exmelin because he is an egoist, or Bl\u00e8che because he is\na rude, morose commander. Do not place your misery to the account of\nM\u00e9ry, who is so slow in obeying, and be willing to admit that Maurin is\nnot to blame for everything because his opinions are not the same as\nyours. At least, if you must draw your circle of animosity, make it so\nclose about you that it contains only yourselves, and seek first of all\nin yourselves the causes of your unhappiness.\n\nBetter still, apply yourselves to looking your suffering in the face,\nputting it, with insight and precision, to the proof.\n\nYou know that a loathsome drink almost ceases to be loathsome when you\ndrink it without haste but with a desire to appreciate the precise\nquality of its bitterness. Exactly in this same manner you should\nendeavor to measure, to study your suffering. Instead of abhorring it,\ntry in a way to understand it; it will become interesting, curious, I\ndare not say lovable.\n\nIf M\u00e9ry carries out your orders badly, consider systematically how he\ncan be made to become, in spite of himself, a really good servant. If\nBl\u00e8che exercises his authority in a way that incessantly wounds you,\ninterest yourself in his brutality, try to analyze his movements, his\nexpressions, his familiar habits, and you will then be in a better\nposition, not to escape from him indeed, but to avoid at times the\nsting, the cut of his peremptoriness. You will make him restless by\ndoing this, and you will set him thinking. It is not necessary for him\nto fear you, it is enough for him to recognize in you a free force with\nwhich he has to reckon, a force it is wise to propitiate. Meanwhile,\nto use a colloquialism, \u201cyou\u2019ve got him.\u201d Every time you have obliged\nhim to be less arrogant, more just with you, you can say that you have\n\u201chad\u201d him, as the soldiers so admirably put it.\n\nThis possession costs a certain amount of work. But you are willing to\ntoil eight hours in order to earn ten francs that do not remain for a\nsingle day between your fingers; you can certainly afford a few minutes\nof your effort and your soul to acquire a treasure of which nothing\nwill ever be able to deprive you.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nThe very rich man owns several estates. There is always one that he\nprefers, that he frequents and cultivates by choice. There are others\nwhere he goes only from time to time, at the solicitation of some state\nof his soul which inclines him to seek, for a period, the mountains, or\nthe ocean, or the open country. There are some, finally, which he does\nnot love at all but of which, nevertheless, he will not dispossess\nhimself because they are part of his fortune.\n\nIt is so with you who possess a family, friends, comrades, and\nadversaries. It is so with you who are able to draw, without let\nor hindrance, from the immense well of humankind. You must refuse\nnothing; you must accept everything, find out the value of everything,\nstore everything away. The world of men is a rich patrimony, the\nexploitation of which is expressly confided to you. You must not be a\nbad administrator, you must make all your land bring forth its fruit.\n\nChoose every day what is necessary to you, for you are the master.\n\nYou must know, besides, how to accept the inevitable and take chances,\nfor you are nothing but a man.\n\nConstruct a scale, a clear, harmonious keyboard. Like an organist you\nmust know the right moment to pull the stop of the oboe and unloose\nthe thunder of the bass. The pipes are not at fault: it is for you\nto become a good musician. The face of Guillaumin suits you in the\nmorning, and his ideas rejuvenate you like fresh water. The eloquence\nof Maurin is like a tonic in your hours of recreation. But there are\ndesolate evenings when what you undoubtedly need is the deep voice of\nCauchois and his affectionate silence.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nIn spite of the legendary ages, in spite of the religions, in spite\nof the poets, in spite of the marvelous traditions and, above all, in\nspite of our own deepest aspirations, we must unquestionably abandon\nthe hope of an occult correspondence between souls.\n\nIt is a renunciation that it is hard to admit. Every day events envelop\nus that seem to revive the vanished perfume of mystery. Our reason is\nin no haste to dissipate these clouds, to pierce these appearances: too\nwell they soothe the irritating need of not being quite solitary in the\ninterior of ourselves, of not being quite exiles in an inaccessible\ndesert.\n\nThat nothing outside our senses can reveal to us the proximity of a\nbeloved person, the danger that is approaching him, the death that is\ncoming to clasp him, is an extremity to which we find ourselves reduced\nwithout ever submissively making up our minds to it.\n\nA few courageous men have halted before this mountain and undertaken to\nlift it. Let us leave them toiling in the shadow; let us aid them, if\nnot by our effort, at least by our silence, and wait.\n\nLet us wait, but let us not cease to go forth to other battles. The\nunknown never fails us. And as for what we shall choose, there is\nso much in the unknown to allure us, to enchant us! If we give up\nsurmounting one obstacle another will always rise before our feet. From\nobstacle to obstacle we shall always be led to the foot of the same\nwall. We shall consume our whole life in the struggle, knowing that the\nvery interest of life lies in that struggle and in those obstacles.\n\nNow and then, detached by great efforts of the pickaxe and the mattock,\na fragment of the somber mountain rolls at our feet. We stop it with\nrapture, we examine it, we lift it with a sort of sadness, in order to\ntry its weight. There is no victory that demands so great a price or\nseems to us more desolate. It is as if we roused ourselves to a frenzy\nto destroy the unknown in order that our success might fill us with\nbitterness. Happily, the unknown is always there.\n\nI find myself alone with the person who of all the world is the closest\nto me, the best loved, the most perfectly chosen. The silence exhales a\nlight perfume, a unique perfume that seems that of our kindred souls.\nOh! how we should like to believe that the essences of our beings,\ndelivered at last, might communicate and unite with each other in the\nintermediate space, in the impassable abyss!\n\nAt this very moment we surprise in one another\u2019s eyes a common\nthought. Simultaneously, it escapes our lips with a sort of rapturous\nprecipitancy, as if we were afraid of not arriving at exactly the same\nmoment at the _rendez-vous_, as if we wished, with the harmonious\nprecision of a well-rehearsed duet, to confess together some matchless\ncertainty.\n\nWe are happy, filled with astonishment.... But I am not deceived.\n\nI do not yet hold it, palpitating, for good and all, between my\nfingers, the proof that has been so long sought for. Not yet, this day,\nhave I met face to face either God or the immortal soul.\n\nOnly too well I know that some slight sound, some rhythm outside us,\nthe beating of a bird\u2019s wing, the boring of an insect in the old wood\nof the furniture, the sigh of the wind under the door,--that it is one\nof these things which has suddenly set our souls in tune, awakened the\nechoes of affinity in the abysses of our two separate selves. We have\nso many memories in common, we have so carefully matched our tastes,\nwe have so well unified our material world and tried to blend even our\nfutures together that the very touch of the violinist\u2019s bow suffices to\nmake us vibrate in harmony.\n\nBut there must be the touch of the bow, there must be the perfume,\nso faint that one experiences its suggestions without being sure of\nits presence; perhaps there is necessary only one of those obscure\nphenomena which pass the limit of our senses in the twilight where our\ninadequate organs can only gropingly divine the world.\n\nThis is our meager certainty. Very well! Let us not reject it in our\nspite; for it has its depth, its beauty. We must make it our own, force\nit to enrich us.\n\nWhere the exercise of the intelligence seems to result in the fatal\nimprisonment of the soul within itself, love enables us to see how\nthe soul can reach beyond its own limits into time and space. In vain\ndoes the intelligence prove to us that all this is only an illusion.\nThat illusion is beautiful; let us make up our minds to give it shape.\nThrough its very longings to escape from its confines, the soul may\nperhaps succeed in breaking them, and it is to love without a doubt\nthat it will owe the miracle of its deliverance.\n\nWe possess only an imperfect means of communion. So be it! Let us labor\ntenderly to perfect that means. It is thus that the creators of science\nand industry labor, and we must admit that their stubbornness has\nsucceeded in making a very great evil out of a small one. Let us not be\nless ingenious! This sinister progress ought to give us encouragement:\nmoral civilization deserves as much care as the other sort.\n\nWith our brothers, our wives, our friends, let us freely seek to have\nso many things in common, let us strive so passionately to understand\none another, that our thoughts, ceaselessly pressing toward this goal,\nmay continually experience the sense of infinity and eternity.\n\nThere lies our path; if it urges us to possess the largest portion we\ncan of the human world, let us first begin by intimately possessing\nwhat we love. This possession I am sure is the only real one. They\nknew it very well, those desperate men who have loved fiercely the\nmere bodies of women without ever receiving the real gift that can be\nyielded in a glance, from a distance, with the swiftness of lightning.\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nThere are men who set out from their homes in the morning in the\npursuit of wealth. They walk with their eyes on the pavement, they\nfling themselves furiously into all sorts of petty labors. They dream\nof lost money, princely gifts, scandalous inheritances, lotteries.\nThey think of gold as of an inaccessible woman whom they can strike\ndown and ravish in a corner. They return home in the evening worn out,\nexasperated, famished, as poor as ever. They have not even seen the\nface of the man who sat next them in the subway. That face itself was a\nfortune.\n\nDo you seek out your friend because, on occasion, he can lend you the\nsum you foresee you are going to need, because he can speak to some\ncabinet official on your behalf, because he is a jovial host? If that\nis the case, you are a slave, you possess nothing. Do you, on the\ncontrary, love him for that way of smiling he has that so delights you,\nfor the candor and tenderness his hesitating voice betrays, his gift\nof tears and his stormy repentances? If this is so, you are very rich:\nthat man is yours and he is a treasure worth having.\n\nCan you recall the use you made of your first five-franc piece? Most\nassuredly not! But you will never forget a certain expression which, in\nyour eyes, distorted or made more beautiful some well-loved face when\nyou were a little child. That has, and always will have, a place among\nyour treasures: that day you really learned something of importance,\nand you have never ceased since to recall the victory and turn it to\naccount.\n\nIf you have little inclination to squander your fortune, what is to\nprevent you from assembling it under one title-deed? A single face,\na single soul, is yet an inestimable estate. One may believe one has\nexhausted all one\u2019s resources, but one is always deceived, for like the\nearth, the human landscape is always perpetually laboring and bears\nfruit every season.\n\nThe peasant who possesses only an acre is full of pride nevertheless,\nfor he knows that his possession goes down to the very center of the\nearth.\n\nFor many years I have watched the same face, like the faithful horizon\nstretched across the aperture of a window. It contrives, that face,\na thousand things, it expresses and reflects a thousand things, I\nalone know its touching beauty, since I alone am able to reap all its\nharvests, since I alone cannot, without a glance, allow the tiniest\nflower of every day to die.\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nIt is not wholly within your power to be without enemies; it behooves\nyou, indeed, not to lack adversaries. Above all, it behooves you to\nknow your adversaries. From that to conquering them is but a short\nstep. From that to loving them is no step at all.\n\nDo not dread an experience too much; consider your adversary\nattentively and try to imagine his motives, those that he declares as\nwell as those that he conceals, those that he invents as well as those\nof which he is ignorant. Think long enough and with enough intensity to\nunderstand these reasons, and even to discover new ones of which your\nadversary has not thought; this will not be difficult for you if you\nhave any knowledge of yourself.\n\nThen make a strong effort to put yourself, in spirit, in the place of\nhim you are combatting. Do not go so far as to detest yourself, but do\nnot refuse this opportunity of judging yourself severely. For a test:\nperhaps you have entered upon this experience with your teeth and fists\nclenched; stop when you find that you are smiling and that your hands\nare relaxed.\n\nOne has no idea how much this exercise inclines one to justice, how\nprofitable it is and how destructive of hatred. Too much imagination\nwould perhaps lead you to neglect your own cause; stop in time,\ntherefore, unless you wish to become, as the spectators may decide,\neither a fool or a hero.\n\nFor my part, I have no hesitation in counselling such a practice: it\nteaches one to conquer, to conquer smilingly. It teaches one to know\none\u2019s adversary. And then, too, it is good as everything is good that\nforestalls and destroys hatred.\n\nThere is only one single thing in the world that is, perhaps, really\nhateful, stupidity. But even that is disputable, and moreover it is\nalways a presumptuous assertion.\n\nHappy is the man who has no enemies. But, I repeat, he who has no\nadversaries, he who has not accepted those that life offers him, or has\nnot been able to procure any of his own will, is ignorant of a great\nsource of wealth.\n\nThere is but small merit in understanding those whom we love; there is\na great, a crowningly bitter pleasure, in penetrating a soul that is\nhostile to us, in making it our own by main force, in colonizing it.\n\nNot to choose our friends, that is to be too self-denying, too modest.\nNot to choose our adversaries, that is altogether too stupid; it is\ninexcusable.\n\nA voice whispers in my ear: \u201cWe do not choose our vermin, we do not\nchoose our mad dogs....\u201d Alas, no! but that is quite another matter.\n\n\n                                 VIII\n\nEvery time I hear someone use the word \u201cpromiscuity,\u201d I recall an\nexperience I once had. An experience,--that is a great deal to say, it\nwas such a slight affair after all.\n\nIt was in the days when there still used to be in Paris those omnibuses\nwith upper stories. I was returning home quite late, on one of those\nfresh, airy nights when one suddenly draws in, through the fetid breath\nof the streets, a gust that comes from afar and seems unwilling to\nlet itself be defiled, obliterated. I was dreaming all alone, quite\nto myself, about things of no interest to anyone but myself, but that\nhappily filled the infinite space of the world.\n\nThrough the depths of this reverie I became aware of a slight,\nmuffled blow against my right shoulder. This did not rouse me from\nmy own absorption. A second time the blow came, followed by a soft,\ncontinuous contact. It gave me a disagreeable sensation.\n\nBy my side there was a young boy of sixteen or seventeen, dressed like\nan apprentice. The uncertain glimmer of the street-lamps lighted up\nhis pale, weary face. His eyes were closed and he seemed overwhelmed\nwith sleep. I noticed that every few moments his head, swaying with the\njolts of the vehicle, would strike against my shoulder. He would raise\nit up with an instinctive movement, only to let it fall back the more\nheavily the next moment. Once he let it lie there. At the time I was\nso lost in my dreams that the animal in me alone rose to its defense:\nI pushed the young lad gently back into his place. It was trouble\nlost; the next second he abandoned himself anew against my shoulder\nwith a sort of desperate ingenuousness. I pushed him back two or three\ntimes, then I gave it up and tried, in spite of this slight burden, to\ncontinue my glorious excursion in the interior of my own self.\n\nBut I did not succeed. An extraordinary, unforeseen, unknown sensation\nwas sweeping over me. It was a penetrating animal warmth. It came\nfrom that head propped against my shoulder, and also from a certain\nfrail, bent arm which I felt slowly digging into my side. The little\napprentice was sound asleep.\n\nI bent down my face and felt his breath like that of a child passing\nin little puffs over my cheek and my chin. From that moment on, I\nceased completely to think of my important personal affairs and I had\nonly one anxiety: to see to it that the boy did not awaken.\n\nI do not know how long this sleep lasted: I was warm with a strange,\ndelicate warmth; I had a sense of well-being, I was absorbed, I was\npenetrating into an unknown universe, as vast, as starry as my own. I\ncould not understand how this contact could have offended me at first,\neven disgusted me. I had torn off the prickly shell and was tasting,\nlike a nourishing kernel, that human presence and companionship. I was\nhappy and interested.\n\nWe reached a place where there were shouts and lights. The little\nfellow sat up with a start, rubbed his eyes and ran stumbling towards\nthe stairway and disappeared; he had not even seen me.\n\nHe did not know what I owed him and that he would never be forgotten.\n\n\n                                  IX\n\nOne must not, at first sight, say that a man is uninteresting and that\nhis face is expressionless. One might as well say that the water of a\nriver is empty when it swarms with vegetable and animal life.\n\nIn one\u2019s manner of listening to a man there may be prejudice and\nsuspicion, there must not be indifference or indolence. The soul has,\nin its arsenal, lenses, microscopes, and powerful sources of light for\nexploring objects to their depths, through their transparencies, into\nthe innermost recesses of their organs.\n\nAt the beginning of the war I lived for two years with a comrade who\nwas invariably silent and indolent; his handsome face remained always\nso gloomy, his actions remained so devoid of purpose and significance,\nthat I despaired of ever making him my prey; I was simply never touched\nwith a desire to get hold of him.\n\nThen a day came when I heard him greet some happening with a word,\npronounced in such a challenging tone that I decided to undertake the\nexpedition. I spent days and days at it, with the pickaxe, mattock,\nand little lantern of the miner. I have thought of him ever since with\nstupefaction, as of those subterranean, half-explored chasms where one\nfinds rivers, colonnades, domes, blind animals and terrible shapes of\nstone.\n\nThe nature of the object should not discourage one\u2019s interest. The\nviper is a dangerous and vindictive creature. The naturalists who have\nbeen able to study it have only been able to do so because they have\nstudied with passion, that is to say, with love.\n\nSo much to tell you that that sort of zoological curiosity you may\nbring to the study of your neighbor no more authorizes cruelty than it\nallows you to dispense with affection.\n\nExtreme attention resembles affection. Contemplation is pure love.\n\n\n                                   X\n\nIt is after my own taste that I mean to enjoy my possessions.\n\nFirst, I wish to have part possession of my companions. There is no\nquestion of my being the only one to possess them, or of my limiting my\nempire to one or two of them. What I plan is to undertake each conquest\nseparately. This word, we shall see, does not signify seduction, but\na knowledge that is full of respect, a profound, lasting interest, an\nenthusiasm, a passionate contemplation.\n\nObserve them, your comrades: say you have twenty-three of them; you\nwill find through them twenty-three distinct representations of\nyourself, and that in spite of yourself, through the mere play of\neveryday life. One of them knows chiefly your tireless patience;\nanother, who works beside you all day, knows that you are painstaking\nand irritable; he is, however, ignorant of what a third, the friend\nof your fireside, knows,--that you are a careful and anxious father.\nThere are others for whom you are, above all, a soul torn by religion\nor a mind familiar with everything that concerns social questions,\nor a great lover of reading. Others, finally, see in you only a good\nbilliard-player, or a crack shot, or a courteous companion.\n\nYou are, of course, all these things. The totality of these various\naspects is, indeed, you, provided that we add also many other qualities\nthat no one suspects. But each one of your comrades sees an aspect of\nyou that is different from what his neighbor sees. For this reason,\navoid confusion, avoid mixing things. Be lavish of yourself in every\nsense, but begin by being prudent, careful of your resources and\nskilful in the art of grouping them.\n\nOne day you were having an affectionate conversation with Maurin. You\nwere delighted with one another, delighted to be together, satisfied\nwith your fellowship, your mutual possession. You were not talking\nof anything very private. But then Bl\u00e8che came up, Bl\u00e8che with whom\nyou have such profitable, such intimate talks, and all the charm of\nMaurin\u2019s company disappeared without your being able to compensate\nyourself with the usual pleasure you take in the society of Bl\u00e8che.\nThis was because, in the presence of both, you could not give each one\nwhat you are accustomed to give him, nor could you ask from him what he\ngives only to you.\n\nThese combinations, like those of the chemists, demand much care and\njudgment. Don\u2019t protest! Don\u2019t exclaim that such notions are too\nsubtle, too complex: you do not receive all your friends pell-mell.\nHowever much of an epicure you may be, you still give more attention\nto the selection of your guests than to the composition of the menu.\nOf what importance is the most delicate fare in comparison with the\ndelight the conversation of carefully chosen human beings gives us?\n\nThat is why, when you are sure of two persons for whom you feel an\ninterest that borders on passion, you experience such a delicious\nanxiety at the moment of presenting them to one another, of bringing\nthem together in your presence.\n\nYou are like the maker of fireworks who is about to mix changeable\nsubstances with explosive properties in his mortar. You weigh them\ncarefully and combine them in well-defined proportions. You take time\npreparing each of the spiritual elements of this mixture.\n\nAnd when the union is accomplished, you seem to be saying to each of\nthem: \u201cI have prepared a magnificent gift for you. Come, now, and know\none another.\u201d\n\nYour heart throbs, because each of them is not only going to know the\nother but is going to learn to know you through the eyes of the other.\n\nCould there be a better reason for living?\n\n\n                                  XI\n\nHowever brief may be the intercourse we have with a man, we always come\naway from it somewhat modified: we find we are a little greater than\nwe were before, or a little less great, better or worse, exalted or\ndiminished.\n\nI have learned this from having, in the course of my life, approached\nmany men, both famous and obscure, who do not dream what I owe them or\nthe harm they have been able to do me.\n\nWe instinctively recognize and classify individuals according to this\nfaculty they have, some of drawing us out, others of crushing us. It\nis a faculty they usually exert without knowing it, even against their\nwill: they are tonic or depressing just as one is short or tall, just\nas one has black eyes or green. But the comparison breaks down in this\nrespect, that it is always possible to modify the reaction we produce\non others.\n\nIn this matter we exhibit a special sensibility that may be compared\nto the tropisms which push plants up toward the light or make them\nstruggle against gravitation. We go toward some and flee from others,\nregardless of our interests or our prejudices.\n\nThe man whose companionship we seek because it stimulates us is not\nnecessarily he who strives to give us a good opinion of ourselves.\nOften he is taciturn, sometimes surly, occasionally ironical and\ncutting. Nevertheless, there emanates from his whole person something\nlike approbation, a confession of confidence. Even if he insists,\nharshly, noisily, upon calling attention to our faults, he does not\nmake us despair of ourselves and our future. And if he never speaks to\nus about ourselves we yet know, by some imperceptible gesture, by some\ntone in his voice, by a gleam in his eye, that he is interested in us.\n\nEvery time we leave him we like him better, we like ourselves better,\nwe like all humanity better, we look at everything with a smile, we are\nas full of plans as a tree in April.\n\nThe other sort of man, on the contrary, is forever deluding himself.\nHe pursues before our very eyes an end which we see, with grief and\nbitterness, he regularly fails to attain. Whatever he does, whatever\nhe says, he always shows us that he is a stranger to us, that he is\nsuperior and that we do not interest him. Even in his manner of wishing\nto give us his attention, he exhibits a certain difficulty in seeing\nus at all. If he tries to seem talkative, important, majestic, his\nnatural gifts turn against him; his cordiality disgusts us, his bearing\nirritates us, his self-importance makes us want to laugh. We cannot\nforgive him anything, and especially the fact that we always leave him\nwith the same vague depression, the same disgust of life, and the same\ndistrust of our own undertakings. What we are always escapes him, and\nalthough what he is does not escape us, we are discouraged by him all\nthe same.\n\nWe must be the first of these two men, he who is, amid all things,\nin spite of all things, a rich man, he whom the poet of the _Livre\nd\u2019amour_ justly called \u201ca conqueror.\u201d\n\n\n                                  XII\n\nYou must not violate your gifts, you must simply study their\npossibilities. It is what we do with trees and animals in which we are\nable to instil virtues they do not seem to possess at all naturally.\n\nHowever humble your position in society may be, however great your\npoverty, in the crude sense men give to this word, you may none the\nless become rich and successful without so much as leaving the room\nwhere you are in conversation with your comrade, your wife or your\nfavorite adversary. Find your study there. You have observed that when\ntwo men meet they begin by sacrificing to the old custom of enquiring\nbriefly about one another\u2019s health and affairs, after which, without\nwaiting for the other\u2019s reply, each one begins to speak of himself.\nThis is such an old usage that they do not even know they are doing it.\nEach one speaks of himself for a few moments, then allows the other\nto talk about himself for about the same length of time. When this has\ngone on long enough they separate, and each preserves for his partner\na vague feeling of gratitude, not so much because he has listened as\nbecause he has made a pretense of listening to matters that were of no\nconcern to him.\n\nThis fact suggests a great lesson. The majority of men suffer from a\nsort of neglect, they suffer from not being possessed by anyone, from\noffering themselves in vain. Stretch out your hand and seize them.\nLearn to say the word that will assure you the mastery, the domination.\n\nIt is inconceivable that so many spirits, tormented by the need for\npower, by the passion for authority, should waste and sterilize\nthemselves in order to hoard money, win rank, obtain a title. They gain\nnothing from it but a pride that withers them; they clasp only the\nshadow of what they pursue.\n\nSeek a little and you will soon find that they are legion who ask\nnothing better than to cast themselves into your nets. Do not believe\nthat they are always the mediocre victims. It is not only the wretched\nwho wish to be understood and consoled. There are many sceptics who\nawait with anguish the touch of a hand to deliver them from their\nscepticism. There are many happy men, too, who cannot bear to be alone\nwith their happiness, for man has even more need of help in joy than\nin sorrow.\n\nIt has often happened, while walking with a comrade, a stranger or\nan adversary, that I would find him hard, defiant, rebellious at\nevery touch. Thereupon, I would set out openly, under his very eye,\nto capture him. I would begin to speak to him about himself. I would\nsay to him: \u201cThe unique things about you are....\u201d And I would confide\nto him everything I thought about him, being particularly careful to\nsay nothing more about myself. I would interest myself in him, not\nfictitiously--that is a barren and a perilous game--but with all my\nheart, with all my intelligence. I would tell him what I knew, what\nI already possessed of him, his virtues and his faults. Confused or\nirritated, he would come to my feet, he would appear as if before a bar\nto give thanks or to plead, to show his claws or to purr. The things I\nhad said to him might be very severe; I still felt that he was grateful\nto me for having cared about him, even in order to attack him. No\nlonger was he in any haste to leave me. Often he would come back on\nthe days that followed and make me unexpected visits; though I could\nsee that he was provoked, I knew nevertheless that he had come to pay\nhomage, to attest that he was a faithful subject.\n\n\u201cThe unique things about you are\u201d.... That is a chance phrase. There\nare others, there are a thousand of them. When you are ready, a grip\nof the hand or some other human sign may take its place. I remember the\nstory of a certain prefect who, having no worse enemy than a traitor in\nhis department, had the happy thought one day of asking him to have a\ndrink and going away without paying for it. This extraordinary proof of\nconfidence attached the man to him forever.\n\nNot that all your victims will be so tremblingly easy. There are proud\nsouls who set a high price on their conquest, fantastic and sick souls\nwhom one has to seize suddenly and overthrow almost before they are\naware of it.\n\nYou must set the time and choose the hour of the attack.\n\nDo not accost the business man in the roar of the Exchange; attempt\nthe field rather at the hour when, wearied, he is counting over and\nreckoning his disillusionments. Do not seize the man of action on the\nbattlefield, but in the moment of leisure when he does not know what to\ndo with his solitude.\n\nWhat marvelous opportunities must the shy Las Casas have glimpsed at\nSaint Helena, even though he was pursuing other aims!\n\nI once saw a simple soul publicly congratulate a master surgeon whose\nskill had for long years placed him above all felicitations. And the\ncelebrated man blushed, bowed, gave in.\n\nA successful lawyer said to me one day: \u201cEach one of my clients\nimagines that I think only of him, that I occupy myself exclusively\nwith him.\u201d\n\nRemember, too, that certain women never capitulate twice: they never\nforgive themselves for having yielded completely even for a moment. The\nsame thing is true with others who are offended with you because you\nhave \u201ctaken\u201d them by force. Do not regret this sacrifice too much: it\nleaves a beautiful jewel in your casket.\n\nTruly the whole vast race of men belongs to you.\n\nTake and eat, you cannot find more noble food.\n\nSee, there is the world you must conquer. It is not that for whose\npossession proud peoples are driven to declare war; it is indeed quite\nanother world than that which Satan showed Jesus from the summit of the\nmountain.\n\n\n\n\n                                  IV\n                       ON DISCOVERING THE WORLD\n\n\n                                   I\n\nThe world contains not one single object that might not be a source\nof happiness. Sorrow springs from this, that man outdoes himself in\nmisusing everything. He turns against his own body or his own spirit\nall sorts of things that seem well made for his joy.\n\nEvery being contains an unbelievable store of happiness, and this one\nvirtue reveals the angle from which he ought to be judged.\n\nYour true business man makes a practice of weighing everything in terms\nof gold: a human being, a field of wheat, a beam, a precious stone.\nHis tables of value are false, but the principle of valuation remains\nnone the less efficacious, fundamental. The mistake of these persons\nis in testing everything by a single measure, in reducing everything\nto this gold which enables them to seek their chosen pleasure. If it\nis drink, or woman, they transmute an orchard into wine or into women,\nlosing terribly by the exchange. They thus produce a sort of analogy\nto what the physicists call the degradation of energy: little by\nlittle, the traffickers degrade their pleasures until they obtain those\nthey prefer. But happiness is higher than this: it cannot be degraded,\nbought, transmuted. It is a pure relationship between the soul and the\nworld. It will never be the mere object of a transaction. Many are the\nmen who have fastened their hope, their future upon the acquisition\nof some material good only to experience after years of effort and\nprivation a burning disillusion. That is because happiness is too proud\nand free a thing to obey the commands of merchants. It follows laws of\nits own that seem like inspirations, it does not come at the bidding\nof business men. The castle we have coveted so long may open at the\nappointed hour; joy will not take up its abode there unless we have\ndeserved it.\n\nIt must be repeated again: the principle of evaluation is at the base\nof our moral life. But each thing should be valued in itself and for\nitself.\n\nA tuft of violets is worth a great deal for its perfume and its beauty,\nit can bring joy or consolation to a great many hearts. But it has only\nthe slightest commercial value; estimated in terms of building lumber\nor freestone it signifies nothing, or virtually nothing.\n\nThat so many men should cut and sell wood, shape and barter the stone\nof which our houses are built, go gathering violets through the May\nthickets to sell them to townsfolk, is undoubtedly right and necessary.\nThe real question is quite a different one: we must first possess\nfor their own sakes all the blessings that are offered us, and not\nobstinately transform them, without an important reason, beyond our\nstrict needs, at the risk of forever losing our understanding and our\ntrue possession of them.\n\nIt is almost a truism that men who are obliged by their profession\nto handle, store or sell substances famous for their power of giving\npleasure, perfumes, fruits, silks, end by losing all appreciation of\nthem and even by contracting a disgust and contempt for them. Cooks\nhave no appetite. Let us not be cooks, then, in the presence of this\nvast world; let us know how to preserve or restore to each object its\noriginal savor and significance.\n\nI say \u201crestore\u201d intentionally, for the world seems to be more and more\nturning from its true sense, that is to say, its human sense, the only\none for us.\n\nA stone is a beautiful thing, beautiful from all points of view; its\ngrain, its color, its brilliancy, its hardness are all so many virtues\nthat exercise and satisfy our senses, excite our reflections. We have a\nthousand noble uses, speculative or practical, to which we can put such\nan object. We shall be the kings of the universe if we assert boldly\nthat we find in these uses and in our joy the very destiny of the\nstone.\n\nI remember seeing hills that had been disemboweled by a bombardment\nand were sown with long splinters of twisted iron; the base of a\nmonstrous shell appeared before me, one day, under these conditions,\nand it seemed to me truly inhuman, this product of the work of men: the\nnoble metal, with which so many good and beautiful things can be made,\ntook on a hateful appearance. Man had achieved the mournful miracle of\ndenaturing nature, rendering it ignoble and criminal.\n\nTruly, we are equally guilty every time we turn an object aside from\nits mission, which is altogether one of happiness. We are guilty again\nevery time we fail to extract, for others and for ourselves, all the\nhappiness an object holds in store and only asks to be allowed to yield.\n\n\n                                  II\n\nIt is because every fragment of the earth is a source of happiness that\nmen ceaselessly dream of winning that source for their own profit.\n\nThey do not wish to have all humanity refresh itself, plunge its\nfeverish face and lips in the cool waters.\n\nOnce the springs were the delight and the wealth of whole peoples;\nthey were conducted magnificently along majestically proportioned\naqueducts; their liquid opulence, crossing valleys and mountains,\nentered the cities with a great outburst of architectural joy; it shone\nand sparkled in the sunlight from a thousand embellished apertures\nbefore it went to bathe and nourish the people.\n\nThe statues of the gods watched over this treasure.\n\nToday, the most beautiful springs are guarded by railings; one goes to\na wicket and pays in order to drink there.\n\nIn the same way, all the springs of joy seem to have been sequestered\nfor the profit of a few people.\n\nThis is not always for the sake of gain. In most cases it is simply for\nexclusiveness. The man who owns something capable of giving joy na\u00efvely\nimagines that he will be happier if he is the only one to drink from\nthis inexhaustible breast. He becomes infatuated with it and thinks of\nnothing but how to shut up his treasure. He puts up a wall and provides\nit with fragments of sharp glass, so that the wall may show its teeth,\nso that it may be not only defensive but, in some sense, offensive. At\ntimes, yawning with ennui in the very midst of his material prosperity,\nhe makes an opening in the wall, only to correct this imprudence with\na ditch; and from behind this he seems to say, \u201cNow see how rich I\nam; look and proclaim it in a loud voice, you who pass by, for I am\nbeginning not to be so sure of it myself.\u201d\n\nTo shut up a picture, a beautiful tree, a sumptuous tapestry for one\u2019s\nown exclusive benefit is, after all, only a trifling folly; but there\nare some who undertake to capture a river, a mountain, a horizon, the\nsea.\n\nA few years ago, I visited the shore of the Mediterranean, between\nCannes and Menton. I was struck by a strange thing: the road that\nfollows the edge of the sea, at the foot of the hills, through a\nthousand natural beauties, continually loses sight of the waves; it\nseems as if pushed back, held aside.\n\nPeople have appropriated the horizon; they have driven their fortune\nlike a wedge between the divine sea and the road of the common folk.\nThey wish to be the only ones to possess the ocean, dawn, the gold and\nsapphire of moon, the tempests and the thunders of the open sea.\n\nDo not be alarmed, mistaken brothers, do not tremble; we shall not\nthrow down your walls. Live in peace in your sumptuous prison, our\nportion remains so beautiful and so great that we shall never exhaust\nit.\n\nClose your gates, you will not shut in the perfume of your shrubbery,\nnor all the wind, nor all the sky. You will not imprison the fragrant\nodor of your flower-beds. We shall breathe them, as we pass, lovingly,\nand continue on our way. We shall go on still further, for we have many\nthings to acquaint ourselves with, we divine so many, many of them that\na whole life is short in the light of such a destiny. But if it pleases\nyou to join our vagabond company you will discover, perhaps, the\nother side of your own walls, which are hung with flax-weed and wild\ngeranium. The road that skirts them outside leads to joy also.\n\nAnd besides, one does not find these ingenuous walls everywhere. The\ngreed of men has not yet subjected all the beauty of things. You have\nsnatched up in your fingers a fleeting draught of water: the ocean does\nnot seem to be aware of it.\n\nYou must understand that we really possess nothing by ourselves. Veil,\nif you wish, the faces of your women and visit every day the gold in\nthe depths of your vaults. Exclusiveness yields you no wealth save that\nwhich is dead and unproductive.\n\nBut he is truly rich for whom life is a perpetual discovery.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nDiscovery! It seems as if this word were one of a cluster of magic\nkeys, one of those keys that make all doors open before our feet.\nWe know that to possess is to understand, to comprehend. That, in a\nsupreme sense, is what discovery means.\n\nTo understand the world can well be compared to the peaceful, enduring\nwealth of the great landowner; to make discoveries is, in addition to\nthis, to come into sudden, overflowing riches, to have one of those\nsudden strokes of fortune which double a man\u2019s capital by a windfall\nthat seems like an inspiration.\n\nThe life of a child who grows up unconstrainedly is a chain of\ndiscoveries, an enriching of each moment, a succession of dazzling\nsurprises.\n\nI cannot go on without thinking of the beautiful letter I received\ntoday about my little boy; it said: \u201cYour son knows how to find\nextraordinary riches, inexhaustible treasures, even in the barrenest\nfields, and when I set him on the grass, I cannot guess the things\nhe is going to bring out of it. He has an admirable appreciation of\nthe different kinds of soil; if he finds sand he rolls in it, buries\nhimself in it, grabs up handfuls and flings them delightedly over his\nhair. Yesterday he discovered a molehole, and you cannot imagine all\nthe pleasure he took in it. He also knows the joys of a slope which\none can descend on one\u2019s feet, or head over heels, or by rolling, and\nwhich is also splendid for somersaults. Every rise of ground interests\nhim, and I wish you could see him pushing his cart up them. There is\na little ditch where on the edge he likes to lie with his feet at\nthe bottom and his body pressed tight against the slope. He played\ninterminably, the other day, on top of a big stone; he kept stroking\nit, he had truly found a new pleasure there. And as for me, I find my\nwealth in watching him discover all these things.\u201d\n\nIt is thus a child of fifteen months gives man lessons in appreciation.\n\nUnfortunately, most systems of education do their best to substitute\nhackneyed phrases for the sense of discovery. A series of conventions\nare imposed on the child; he ceases to discover and experience the\nobjects in the world in pinning them down with dry, formal labels by\nthe help of which he can recognize them. He reduces his moral life\nlittle by little to the dull routine of classifying pins and pegs, and\nin this fashion begins the journey to maturity.\n\nDiscover! You must discover in order to be rich! You must not be\nsatisfied to accept the night good-humoredly, to go to sleep after a\nday empty of all discovery. There are no small victories, no negligible\ndiscoveries: if you bring back from your day\u2019s journey the memory of\nthe white cloud of pollen the ripe plantain lets fall, in May, at the\nstroke of your switch, it may be little, but your day is not lost. If\nyou have only encountered on the road the tiny urn of jade which the\nmoss delightedly balances at the end of its frail stem, it may seem\nlittle, but be patient! Tomorrow will perhaps be more fruitful. If for\nthe first time you have seen a swarm of bees go by in search of a hive,\nor heard the snapping pods of the broom scattering its seeds in the\nheat, you have nothing to complain of, and life ought to seem beautiful\nto you. If, on that same day, you have also enriched your collection of\nhumanity with a beautiful or an interesting face, confess that you will\ngo to sleep upon a treasure.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nThere will be days when you will be like a peaceful sovereign seated\nunder a tree: the whole world will come to render homage to you and\nbring you tribute. Those will be your days of contemplation.\n\nThere will be days when you will have to take your staff and wallet\nand go and seek your living along the highways. On these days you must\nbe contented with what you gain from observing, from hunting; have no\nfear: it will be beautiful.\n\nIt is sweet to receive; it is thrilling to take. You must, by turns,\ncharm and compel the universe. When you have gazed long at the tawny\nrock, with its lichens, its velvety mosses, it is most amusing to\nlift it up: then you will discover its weight and the little nest of\norange-bellied salamanders that live there in the cool.\n\nYou have only to lie among the hairy mints and the horse-tails to\nadmire the religious dance of the dragon-fly going to lay its eggs\nin the brook, or to hear in early June the clamorous orgy of the\ntree-toads, drunk with love; and it is very pleasant, too, to dip one\u2019s\nhands in the water, to stir the gravel at the bottom, whence bubble up\na thousand tiny, agile existences, or to pick the fleshy stalk of the\nwater-lily that lifts its tall head out of the depths.\n\nThere are people who have passed a plant a thousand times without ever\nthinking of picking one of its leaves and rubbing it between their\nfingers. Do this always and you will discover hundreds of new perfumes.\nEach of these perfumes may seem quite insignificant, and yet when you\nhave breathed it once, you wish to breathe it again; you think of it\noften, and something has been added to you.\n\nIt is an unending game and it resembles love, this possession of a\nworld that now yields itself, now conceals itself. It is a serious, a\ndivine game.\n\nMarcus Aurelius, whose philosophy cannot be called futile, does not\nhesitate, amid many austere counsels, to urge his friends to the\ncontemplation of those natural spectacles that are always so rich in\nmeaning and suggestion: \u201cEverything that comes forth from the works of\nnature,\u201d he writes, \u201chas its grace and beauty. The face wrinkles in\nmiddle age, the very ripe olive is almost decomposed, but the fruit\nhas, for all that, a unique beauty. The bending of the corn toward the\nearth, the bushy brows of the lion, the foam that drips from the mouth\nof the wild boar and many other things, considered by themselves, are\nfar from being beautiful; nevertheless, since they are accessory to the\nworks of nature, they embellish them and add a certain charm. Thus a\nman who has a sensitive soul, and who is capable of deep reflection,\nwill see, in whatever exists in the world, hardly anything that is not\npleasant in his eyes, since it is related, in some way, to the totality\nof things.\u201d\n\nThis philosopher is right as the poets are right. As our days permit\nus, let us reflect and observe, let us never cease to see in each\nfragment of the great whole a pure source of happiness. Like children\ndrawn into a marvelous dance, let us not relax our hold upon the hand\nthat sustains us and directs us.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nChalifour was a locksmith. I knew him in my childhood. You would have\nsaid that he was just a simple country laborer. Why has he left the\nmemory of a rich and powerful man? His image will always be for me that\nof the \u201cmaster of metals.\u201d\n\nHe worked in a mean, encumbered room, full of the pungent, acrid\nodor of the forge, which seemed to me a sort of annex to those other\nunderground vaults that used to be peopled by the earth-spirits.\n\nHow I loved to see him, with his little apron of blackened leather!\nHe would seize a bar of iron and this iron at once became his. He had\nhis own way of handling the object of his labor that was full of love\nand authority. His gnarled hands touched everything with a mixture of\nrespect and daring; I used to admire them as if they were the somber\nworkmen of some sovereign power.\n\nIt seemed as if some pact had been made between Chalifour and the hard\nmetal, which gave the man complete mastery over the material. One might\nhave thought that solemn vows had been exchanged.\n\nI see him again with his pensive air working the panting bellows\nand watching the metal whose incandescence was almost transparent.\nI see him at the anvil: the hammer, handled forcefully, delicately,\nobeying like a subject demon. I see him before the drill, starting\nthe great wheel, following the measured exigencies of a ceremonial\nrite. Especially I see him before the smoky window with its pale flood\nof light, surveying, with that fine smile under his white beard, the\nconquered piece of metal, the creature of his will, which he had\ncharged with destiny.\n\nO ancient laborer, great, simple man, how rich and enviable you were,\nyou who aspired to just one thing: to do well what you were doing, to\npossess intimately the object of your toil! No one better than you has\nunderstood the ponderous, obedient iron, no one than you has worked it\nwith greater love and constancy.\n\nSomewhere there exists, I believe, an unhappy man eaten up with nerves\nand stomach-disorder. He lives crouched up against his telephone, and\nsends his orders to all the stock exchanges of the world. People call\nhim the \u201ciron king,\u201d for some reason that has to do with finance. I\ndon\u2019t believe he has ever touched or weighed a morsel of real iron. Let\nus smile, Chalifour! Let us smile, my master!\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nI should like to tell you about Bernier, too. They say he is a very\npoor man because his coat is all shiny from wear and his shoes have the\nweary, wretched look of things that have never been young, because the\nsweat of many summers has soaked and stained the ribbon of his hat and\nhis baggy trousers give him the air of always kneeling.\n\nBernier has a poor little drooping moustache with nothing glorious\nabout it. You know only too well that he earns a hundred and twenty\nfrancs a month in some government bureau and that people say of him,\n\u201cHe\u2019s a poor devil with a miserable job.\u201d\n\nAs for me, I know that Bernier is rich, and I have seen him smile in\nthe hour of his wealth,--for the true wealth has its times of slumber\nand its awakenings. Bernier possesses something which is quite\nstrange and almost inexpressible; it is a space, a white space, vast\nand virgin, and it is his power to be able to trace there certain\nharmonious lines which he alone knows how to trace in the right way.\n\nWhy have you never seen, why have you never been able to see Bernier\nat the moment when he begins his work, when the whole sickly light of\nthe office seems concentrated on the beautiful white page? His face is\nserene, smiling, assured. He half closes his eyes and draws back his\nhead; he holds, adroitly and elegantly, a certain chosen pen, flexible,\nwith a good point, a pen that belongs to him alone, which he has\nprepared for himself and which he would throw away if some blundering\nfool happened to touch it. And then he begins!\n\nHis kingdom is ranged all about him: ink pure from all dust, a brightly\nlined ruler, a collection of pens with all sorts of points. He begins,\nand the black line obeys him, springs up, curves in, stops, bounds\nforward or falls back, prances, yields. Look at Bernier\u2019s face: is it\nreally the face of that poor wretch you have just described to me? No!\nNo! It is the face of a masterful man, calm, sure of himself and his\nwealth, who is doing something that no one can do as well as he: across\na snowy, limitless desert he directs, as if in a dream, a black line\nthat advances, advances, now slowly, now dizzily, like time itself.\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nYou are willing to pay ten francs to see an acrobat or a trained dog.\nPerhaps you have never watched a spider about to prepare its web. In\nthat case, do not miss the spectacle at the very next opportunity. When\nyou have had a good glimpse of the extraordinary creature revolving\nabout the center of the work and fastening, with its hind leg, so\nquickly and accurately, the thread that it unwinds in just the right\nquantity, you will be so delighted that you will want to show the\nmarvel to all those you love.\n\nIt is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered\nthem freely. And yet this does not argue a shallowness in our natures:\nthere is a certain beauty in our prizing an object just because it has\ncost us some trouble. You must not imagine, however, that the marvels\nof nature come for nothing: they cost patience, time and attention.\n\nAn unhealthy curiosity and the taste for anomalies incline us to take\npleasure in seeing a creature perform an action for which its own\norganism seems unsuited. It palls very quickly. For a long time now,\nfor example, the flight of aviators has ceased to excite our interest:\nwe know all about that unmysterious machine; its very sound and its\npresence in the sky defile the silence and the space whose virginity\nwas a refuge for us. On the other hand, I assure you I never cease to\nbe fascinated by the mysterious man\u0153uvers of a swarm of gnats, their\ninterweaving curves, the spherical movement which, from instant to\ninstant, transports the whole group of insects and seems the result of\nsome secret password, and so many other subtle and profound mysteries\nthat remain, for the imagination, full of allurement, full, one might\nsay, of resources.\n\nAnd do you think there is nothing disturbing in the beauty of the\nimperious flight of the great dragon-fly, in its sudden, meditative\npauses, in its peremptory starts that lash the air like a supple,\nfurious whip?\n\nTo whatever school of philosophy they belong, the great observers of\nnatural phenomena, the Darwins, Lamarcks, Fabres, give us a magnificent\nlesson in love. But why do we nourish ourselves only on their harvests\ninstead of providing our own? Why do we buy and read their books\nwithout drawing any real profit from them, without ever taking the\ntrouble to look down at our own feet, without ever going to live,\nwith the creatures of the sand and the grass, their minute, thrilling\nexistence, in which everything would be for us full of novelty,\ndiscovery, suggestion?\n\n\n                                 VIII\n\nThe world is so generous and I feel my heart so full, so overflowing,\nthat I do not even dream of arranging in order all these things I have\nto say to you. I should wish first of all to see your brow relax, to\nhear you say that you are less dispirited and that you refuse to be\nbored.\n\nI should like to know all of you, and each in particular, to take you\nby the arm and walk with you through one of the streets of your town,\nor along the highroad if you live in the country. You would tell me of\nyour cares and we should search together and see if there is indeed\nnothing in the universe for which you are especially destined, if there\ndoes not indeed exist, all ready for your wound, the precise balm that\nis necessary to anoint and heal it.\n\nI came out this morning from my shelter of planks. The barren, chalky\nsoil that surrounds it is surely the most sterile in all Champagne, but\nit had rained and the storm had brought up out of this miserable soil,\nwhich is almost without vegetation, all sorts of kindly odors. They\nwere worth more than all the perfumes of Florida, for they were the\nhumble gift of poverty.\n\nAt the end of next February I could show you, some morning, if the sun\nwere out, the color of the birches against the blue of the winter sky.\nAll the slender branches will seem ablaze with purple fire, and the\nsky, through this delicate flame, will survey you with an exquisite\ntenderness. You must wait, you must drink it in deeply, and not go on\nyour way before you have understood it. From it you will be able to\nstore up enough happiness to last you till another winter comes and\ngives birth once more to this prodigy of light.\n\nLast year, during the hard summer months on the Aisne, I used to escape\neach day, for a second, toward the end of the afternoon, from the\noverheated tent where we carried on the bloody work of the ambulance.\nOne of my comrades was in the habit of eating an apple at this hour.\nI used to ask him to be good enough to lend it to me for a moment. I\nloved to breathe its delicate, penetrating perfume which, every day,\nchanged with the fruit. That was indeed a rare, a beautiful moment amid\nthe fatigues of that concert of suffering and death.\n\nI requisitioned this imponderable part of another\u2019s wealth; then I\nreturned the apple to my comrade. I could have wished that you had all\nbeen with me to taste that poignant little joy.\n\nWhen peace comes again, if you wish to see me in May, I will take you\nout under the great sycamore that is turning green at the bottom of\nthe meadow. And there as you listen to the flying, the humming, the\nloving and the living of the millions of creatures that people its cool\nfoliage, we shall set out together on a journey so rare that you will\nleave your heaviest sorrows along the way.\n\n\n                                  IX\n\nSome years ago, a magazine undertook to ask a number of writers in\nwhat chosen spot they would like to pass a few beautiful hours. Emile\nVerhaeren answered:\n\n\u201cIn a certain corner of the harbor of Hamburg.\u201d\n\nVerhaeren is among those who have revealed to us the mournful grandeur\nof city views, of factory towns, those places that seem accursed and\nfrom which one might think that happiness was forever exiled.\n\nThe aspirations of our souls are so plentiful, so tenacious, so fertile\nthat we find something to console us, satisfy us, exalt us in those\nvery spots where suffering rules tyrannically, where the valley of\nGehenna is most precipitous.\n\nI visited the docks of Liverpool with a sort of horror. There were tall\nbrick buildings, their roofs lost in the smoke, windows covered with\ngrime, their interiors nothing but monstrous heaps of cotton bales.\nMen were climbing about there like flies. Everything smelt of fog and\nmould. Narrow pavements, slimy with rain, ran along by the dry-docks\nwhere the steamers, like immense corpses, were being assailed by the\nfrantic crowd. The workers toiled amid a bombardment of hammers, a\nwhirl of sparks. The drills snarled like whipped cats. A hideous\nlight, smothered by the smoke and the mist of the Mersey, drowned\neverything in its fetid flood.\n\nAnd yet, since then, I have often dreamed of that terrible spot and\nfelt the need of living there.\n\nFor two years I attended the wounded of the First Army Corps, all of\nthem men from the north, stained by the coal on face and chest, men\nfrom the factories or the mines. I walked with them through the smiling\nlandscapes of the Aisne, the Vesle, the Marne, when those lovely\nvalleys had not yet been too much disfigured by the war. Certainly\nthey all enjoyed the slopes with their gracious groves of trees, the\nbeautiful cultivated fields, draped like many-colored shawls over the\nshoulders of the little hills, but they all thought most, with love and\nregret, of cylinders, mine shafts, machines, and a smoky horizon.\n\nI can understand it: one\u2019s native soil, one\u2019s own habitude, the\nfamiliar human landscape, moulded upon the other and transfiguring\nit. Above everything we have to recognize that the soul is sensitive\nto many infinitely varied and often contradictory things. Grace of\nlines, rustic charm are qualities that attach us to a country; fierce\nand desolate grandeur is another such, and this indeed has almost the\nstrongest nostalgic power of all.\n\nWhen beauty seems to have abandoned the world, we must realize that it\nhas first deserted our own hearts.\n\n\n                                   X\n\nBetween your five senses, open like the dazzling portholes on the side\nof a ship, do you really believe there is nothing, nothing but the\nvoid, the night, the dumb wall?\n\nI do not know, I do not know.... I cannot believe....\n\nThe sound rises, rises like the skylark, and the ear rises with it. And\nthen comes a moment when the sound still rises and the hearing stops,\nlike those birds that do not frequent the loftiest altitudes.\n\nTell me, are they lost truly and forever, those sounds that hold sway\nat the gates of your soul, those sounds to which your senses are not\nequal?\n\nWait! Hope! Some day perhaps we shall know.\n\nYou will say to me: \u201cThe light is so beautiful, so beautiful! It adds\nluster to so many things that are dear to me. Have I any need to dream\nof other rays than these? My eyes have already so much to do that\nthey are overcome by their delight. The beauty of sound and silence\nceaselessly intoxicates my ear.\u201d\n\nTrue! Your soul has active purveyors. They do not leave it idle. They\ncome and heap at its feet riches that demand its enthusiasm and its\nsolicitude.\n\nBut often there is in your soul something your senses have not brought\nthere, an exquisite joy, an inexpressible sadness. Do not forget that\nyou live bathed in a multitude of rays to only some of which you\nare sensible. The others are perhaps not quite strange to you. What\nis passing, in contraband, across the frontiers of your being? Do\nnot obstinately try to bring it under control. Submit, experience,\nbe merely attentive and respectful to everything. Some day we shall\nperhaps know more things than we are able to divine now.\n\n\n                                  XI\n\nOne of the greatest delights of the religious faith is to abandon\nourselves to gratitude, to be able to thank, from an overflowing heart,\nthe moral being to whom we feel indebted for our wealth.\n\nWhy then, since I have long lost this faith, do I still feel each day,\nand several times a day, the great need of singing the canticle of\nFrancis of Assisi, the lovely canticle in which he says:\n\n  Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, and unto all Thy creatures, especially\n  our gracious brother the sun, who gives us the day and through whom\n  Thou showest us Thy light. He is beautiful and radiant with a great\n  splendor. He is the symbol of Thee, Most High.\n\n  Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, for our sister the moon and the stars,\n  fashioned by Thee in the sky, clear, precious, and beautiful.\n\n  Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, for our mother the wind, and for the air\n  and the clouds, for the pure sky, and for all the time during which\n  Thou givest to thy creatures life and sustenance.\n\n  Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, for our sister the water, who is so\n  useful, precious and clean.\n\n  Praise be unto Thee, O Lord, for our brother the fire, through whom\n  Thou illuminest the night. He is lovely and gay, courageous and\n  strong.\n\n  Praise unto Thee, O Lord, for our mother the earth, who sustains us\n  and nourishes us, and brings forth divers fruits and flowers of a\n  thousand colors and the grass.\n\nA poet has transposed these divine strophes into the harmony of French\nverse and sings thus:\n\n  I shall praise you, Lord, for having made so lovely and so bright\n  This world where you wish us to await our life.\n\nNow, I know very well that in this world I am not awaiting life, I am\nliving. I know very well that it is here I must live and lose no time\nabout it. My gratitude is all the more pressing, all the more intense.\n\nWhat if it does rise to an empty heaven, that infinite gratitude!\n\nIt will not be lost. And is that heaven ever empty to which we breathe\nout so many dreams, where there trembles so much beauty!\n\nThe sweetest of human voices has said: \u201cLay up for yourselves in heaven\nthe treasures that do not perish.\u201d Perhaps we shall be pardoned if we\ndare to murmur: \u201cLay up for yourselves, in this world, the treasures\nthat do not perish.\u201d\n\nThey will not perish, these treasures, O my son, and all you whom I\nlove, they will not perish if you thirst to discover them only that\nyou may share them with others, that you may bequeath them to a devout\nposterity.\n\nThey will not perish if they find their being, their supreme reason, in\nthat region of the soul where believers have raised up the tabernacle\nof a God.\n\n\n\n\n                                   V\n                          THE LYRICS OF LIFE\n\n\n                                   I\n\nDuring the cruellest hours, when the war about me has been heaping\nagony upon agony, when I have been able to find nothing, nothing to\nwhich I could any longer attach my confidence and my need of hope, I\nhave often been surprised to find, running through my head, one of\nthose airs that I know so well, those airs that I love and that escort\nmy soul, like watchful and radiant personages, through the chaos of the\ndays. And I would think bitterly: \u201cJust fifteen quite simple notes! but\nthey carry a meaning so beautiful, so profound, so commanding that they\nwould suffice, I am certain, to resolve all conflicts, to discourage\nall hatreds, if men knew them well enough to sing them all together\nwith the same attentive tenderness.\u201d\n\nIt may be that the philosophy which absorbs you is one that leaves no\nroom for indulgence. Perhaps you feel yourself full of bitterness for\nyour fellows, perhaps you have made up your mind not to see in the\nactivity of the living any but motives of greed and covetousness. Do\nnot laugh! Do not be in too great haste to prove yourself right! Above\neverything, do not rejoice in being right in so dismal a fashion.\n\nI say it again, if certain pages of Beethoven were better known to\nthose who suffer and slaughter one another they would succeed in\ndisarming many a resentment, they would restore to many a tense face a\nsoft, ineffable smile.\n\nIf you do not believe this, you are not accustomed to living among\nsimple people, you have never watched an irrepressible class of little\nchildren whom their master dominates and calms by making them sing,\nyou have never heard a multitude of people intoning a hymn in some\ncathedral, you have never seen a great flood of workingmen, in some\nfoul slum, break into the rhythm of a revolutionary song, perhaps you\nhave never even seen a poor man weeping because a violin had just\nrecalled to him his youth and the obscure thoughts he believed he had\nnever in all his life confessed to anyone.\n\nThink of all these things and then form some notion of what it is\nthe thoughts of the great masters can do with the soul. Why, why\nis it not better known, this thing which is, indeed, knowledge and\nrevelation itself? Why does it not reign over the empires, this which\nis sovereignty, grandeur, majesty? Why is it not more ardently invoked\nin the hour of crisis, this that teaches, equally well, fruitful doubt\nand serene resolution?\n\n\n                                  II\n\nTrue, he who says ecstatically, \u201cThe world is governed by love,\ngoodness, generous passions,\u201d surrenders himself to a childish error.\nBut he who cries, \u201cThe whole world is enslaved by egoism, violence and\nbase passions,\u201d speaks foolishly.\n\nAs we look about us, we might perhaps imagine that from one or the\nother of these two moral attitudes there is no escape. Must we believe\nthat the spirit of system has such an irresistible hold over everyone\nwho sets about the business of living?\n\nThe world! The world! It is much more beautiful and complex than that.\nIt always upsets our prearrangements, and that is why we cherish it so\ndearly. But we also love to foresee things, and system seems to arrange\nthem so that we can.\n\nWhat does it signify in a world that is capable of everything? Amid\nthe evil and the mediocre there will always shine forth consolingly\nsomething noble, something wondrous. Is it not shameful to predict the\nbasest things so glibly only to close our eyes the more obstinately\nbefore the beauty that is unknown and unforeseen?\n\nI assure you, in spite of all, that two lines of music can turn a\nmultitude back and agitate the deepest springs of its behavior. If\nthe miracle does not result from harmonious sounds, it will be borne,\nperhaps, of ten warm, rhythmical words, or the sight of a statue or the\nevocation of an image.\n\nThe worship of immediate realities leads us to those easy victories\nthat intoxicate the coarse spirits. At times it results in irreparable\ndisasters, for it inclines us to misprize those secret and delicate\nthings that pave the way for the soul\u2019s most daring flights and\nventures.\n\nSome other time I shall tell the story of the general who, in order to\nallay the grievances of his mutinous troops, offered them a cask of\nwine and, thanks to this blunder, suffered a defeat.\n\nPeople who reason in a wholesale fashion get along successfully from\nday to day till the hour when a tiny error destroys their success\nforever.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nIf the thoughts of great men no longer cause miracles it is because\nthey are too little understood, or are misunderstood, or are purposely\ndistorted. You are mistaken if you think they are powerless because\nthey are beautiful.\n\nThe war, which has crushed such great masses of men, has brought\nus face to face with this melancholy evidence, it has enabled us\nthoroughly to examine many individuals and to put many experiences\nto the proof. It has permitted us to measure the whole humiliation of\nmoral civilization before that other, the scientific and industrial\ncivilization which we might still better call practical civilization.\n\nGifted, serious, good men have said to me, \u201cFirst of all one has to\nlive. You can see, in the midst of this hurricane, what would become\nof a people weakened by idealism and given over to the works of the\nspirit. My son will study chemistry. The coming century will be a\nhard one, my son will perhaps never have the time to read Emerson or\nacquaint himself with the works of Bach! Too bad! But first of all one\nhas to live.\u201d\n\nDoes it not seem as if error had a dazzling power to seduce us and\noverwhelm us? Men are always hoping to conquer it by yielding to its\ndemands. No one has the courage to turn his own steps away from its\nshifting shore. No one, for example, says to me: \u201cThe moral culture of\nthe world is in peril. Mechanical progress monopolizes and swallows up\nall human energy. The generous soul of the best men is forgotten, in\nexile. Let us, with a common voice, with all our strength, summon it\nto come back to us, or let us go and die in exile with it, in an exile\nthat is noble and pure.\u201d\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nI shall speak to you again of all these things; we must talk a great\ndeal more about the future if we wish to enter it without blindness,\nshame, and horror.\n\nFor the moment, glance at the people who surround us, the restless\npeople we see on all sides. There are some of them who know what is\nbeautiful. They rejoice in it, almost in secrecy, and despise those\nwho do not share their faith. As for the others, they do not know it,\nand that is all one can say. They are, according to their several\ncharacters, ignorant and sceptical, or just simply ignorant. They see\nhow works of art and the spirit miraculously survive the decadence and\nthe prosperity of empires: that astonishes them without convincing\nthem. Many divine that this has something to do with a secret and\nsacred power, but they do not dare and they do not know how to avail\nthemselves of it. They catch glimpses of the feast of the heroes and\nthey cannot realize that their place is marked and waiting for them.\n\nAmong my everyday companions are many educated men upon whom the\nuniversities have lavished their care and their degrees. Many of them\nare interested neither in their duties, nor in their comrades, nor, one\nwould say, in their own thoughts. They play cards, read the papers,\nthink about women and complain of ennui, for the war has enthroned\nboredom. And yet these souls, I assure you, are of good material and\nfull of energy and resource.\n\nWhat is to be done? How is one to introduce them to a larger, fuller\nlife? How can one dare to do that without presumption, and also without\nfear of pomposity? How do it with affection, without lecturing them,\nwithout preaching to them? How be useful and friendly with simplicity?\nThey have suffered, they have experience and obstinate views of their\nown. They do not believe that they have been dispossessed of anything.\nYou have to listen very attentively to hear their soul groaning in the\ndepths.\n\nI spoke to one of them about music. He replied with an indifference\nin which there was a touch of discouragement; \u201cFor my part, I don\u2019t\nunderstand music. It can\u2019t interest me.\u201d We went on talking and I\ndiscovered that he was strangely sensitive to architectual matters,\nthat he had a very subtle understanding and lacked nothing but\nenlightenment, knowledge, to have applied himself to it with passionate\ninterest.\n\nIt is usually that way. The field of moral activity is so large that it\nhas in reserve for every soul a path of his own choice, accessible and\nfull of allurement. I do not believe there is a single individual who\ncannot end by meeting, in the limitless realm of art, with a mode of\nexpression that touches him, conforms quite accurately to his powers\nand tastes.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nYou see I have waited a long time before pronouncing the word. I must\nat last make up my mind to call art by its name. Listen and do not\nconfuse modesty with timidity.\n\nThe past century has produced important artists in every country in\nthe world. That was a beautiful, fertile and truly generous century!\nAnd yet it witnessed the birth of a misunderstanding that grows more\nobdurate, that increases as it grows older. Should one ever allow a\nmisunderstanding to grow old?\n\nThe romantic writers and, following them, all the artists of their\nepoch, intoxicated with their own genius, honored art as a religion.\nIt was natural enough since at that moment, as we know, mankind was\nbeginning to detach itself from its divinities, and it is hard to live\nwithout God. I cannot bring myself to condemn that enthusiasm. I love\nart too well, and I shall always hold it as one of the distinguishing\nmarks of man and one of the greatest things in this world.\n\nBut the priests of this new God have acted like all priests: they have\nhurled anathemas and brought in a reign of intolerance. They have grown\nmad with pride, when there was reason and when there was no reason\nfor it. They have cried out at all hours of the day, \u201cAway, profane\nones!\u201d Many of them, who have had very noble souls, have discouraged,\nas if designedly, those whom their radiant face has fascinated. Others,\ninstead of struggling, have held the epoch responsible for their\nill-fortune. All of them, poets, painters, musicians, have let it be\nunderstood that they exercised a divine power and that the mass of men\nmust only wonder and be silent, without themselves attempting anything\nof the sort.\n\nNo doubt there is a certain virtue in this attitude; it has lavished\nsolitary consolations on those who have turned their backs on fashion.\n\nThe worthiest heirs of these illustrious men have confirmed their\ntradition. They have devised a splendid isolation, raised up a tower\nof ivory and dug all about it a moat that every day grows deeper. They\nhave also stirred up childish and shame-faced adversaries with a desire\nfor the commonest sort of popularity, and the confirmation of billboard\nsuccess.\n\nYet humanity is waiting and longs to be treated neither as intruders\nnor as children.\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nIt cannot be said any longer that pure art is of no use: it helps us to\nlive.\n\nIt helps us to live, in the most practical manner and every day.\n\nEvery moment you make instinctive, reiterated, and forcible appeals\nto all the forms of art. And that not only in order to express your\nthought, but still more and above all to shape your thought, to think\nyour thought.\n\nYou find yourself in the midst of a landscape, and there is an image at\nthe back of your eye. The manner in which you accept and interpret this\nimage bears the mark of your personality and also of a crowd of other\npersonalities which you call to your aid without knowing it.\n\nThe day when the painters of our continent invented that convention we\ncall perspective, they modified and determined, for many long years,\nour way of seeing things. It must be recognized equally that since the\nreign of impressionism we have understood, possessed in a new way, the\ncolors of the world.\n\nYou live in a sonorous universe where everything is rhythm, tone,\nnumber and harmony: human voices, the great sounds of nature, the\nartificial uproar of society envelopes you in a vibrant and complex\nnetwork that you ought unceasingly to decipher and translate. Well,\nthis you cannot do without submitting to the influence of the\ngreat souls who have occupied themselves with these things. The\nunderstanding of movements, harmonies, rhythms, only comes to you at\nthe moment when the musicians reveal their secret to you, since they\nhave been able, in some fashion, to interest you in them.\n\nAnd this is true in regard to everything. If you discover something\nin your environment, if you perceive an interesting harmony between\ntwo beings, a curious relation between two ideas, you will succeed in\nthrowing them into relief, in giving happy expression to them, only by\nmeans of the poet\u2019s art, and if you cannot find terms and images of\nyour own, you can freely borrow them from Hugo, from Baudelaire, from\nthose unknown artists who have elaborated the common language of men.\n\nWe do not think alone. Resign yourself, therefore, to being the\ndelighted prisoner of a vast, human system from which you cannot escape\nwithout error and loss. Become, with good grace, the friend and the\nguest of great men.\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nThey will introduce you to a profound, passionate, lyrical life. They\nwill aid you to possess the world. Art is not simply a manner of moving\nthe pencil, the pen or the bow. It is not a secret, technical process.\nIt is, above everything else, a way of living.\n\nIf your business is to grow wheat or to smelt copper, perform it with\ninterest and skill. That will render service to other men whose\nfunction is to assemble colors, shapes, words or sounds. They will know\nhow to render service to you, in their own fashion, repay you in turn.\nBut do not imagine that their works are destined merely to divert your\nleisure. They have a more sacred, a more beautiful mission: that of\nplacing you in possession of your own wealth.\n\nArt is the supreme gift that men make of their discoveries, their\nriches.\n\nNo one has possessed the world better than Lucretius, Shakespeare or\nGoethe. What do you know of Croesus, who heaped up his gold to such an\nabnormal and monstrous degree? Nothing has remained of that chimerical\nfortune but a vague memory. But the fortune of Rembrandt has become and\nwill remain the fortune of our race.\n\nTo follow the example of these masters is not so much to try, with pen\nor palette in hand, to imitate them, as to understand with them, and\nthanks to them, what they have understood.\n\nThis cannot hurt your pride or hinder the expansion of your own\npersonality. Quite the contrary. This studious humility is the surest\npath toward the conquest of your own soul. The anatomists will explain\nto you that the human embryo adopts successively, in its quick\nevolution, all the forms the species has known before its actual\nflowering. This great law rules also in the moral order, and do not\ncount on escaping it. It is by first knowing the world through the\nmasters that you will succeed some day in grasping it in your hands,\ndominating it yourself.\n\nAmbition is an intoxicating passion, but to go to school to genius is a\nprudent measure and a sweet experience, too.\n\n\n                                 VIII\n\nIf you are unhappy, oppressed, if you have melancholy doubts of your\nfuture, of your ability, of your power to love, and if nothing in\nheaven replies to your prayer, to your need for deliverance, remember\nthat you are not abandoned without resource. Men remain to you. The\nbest among them have made for your consolation, for your redemption,\nstatues, books and songs.\n\nOpen one of these books, therefore, and plunge into it! Sink into it as\ninto a cool forest, as into a deep, running brook.\n\nA man is speaking to you of himself or of the world. Read! Read on!\nLittle by little the harmonious voice envelopes you, cradles you, lifts\nyou up and suddenly bears you away. The tightness in your throat seems\nto relax, you breathe with a sort of fervor and exaltation. Generous\ntears start to your eyes or your whole soul shakes with laughter.\n\nThis great and wholesome exaltation people attribute to the miraculous\npresence of beauty. No doubt, no doubt! But that vague and simple\nexplanation is an almost mythical one.\n\nFor you must realize that the man with whom you have just been having\na sort of intimate colloquy has comforted you and carried you out of\nyourself mainly because he has been able to prove to you that you were\nneither abandoned, nor destitute, nor truly disgraced. He has seemed\nto you great but, in recalling to you that you are of the same race as\nhimself, he has effaced himself before you. He has given you happy,\ncourageous, new thoughts, and you have suddenly seen that you were\nthinking them also. For a second you have both communed together. And\nyou have felt yourself once more in possession of a treasure that was\nescaping you.\n\nIt is true, all these thoughts are your own, since it is enough for\nyou to see them in writing to recognize them. It is true, you too have\nyour grandeur, your nobility and infinite resources. How could you have\nforgotten it for a moment? It is enough for you to open that book or to\nhum that song to remember it. It is true, your life also is astonishing\nand full of adventures. How did you fall into that despair? What did\nthat discouragement signify?\n\n\n                                  IX\n\nDuring the winter of 1917, I made the acquaintance of a young\nprovincial musician who was serving in the same unit with me. At\nSoissons we found a room where we were able to meet and play together.\n\nOur new comrade was a simple man with a country accent.\n\nHe played the violin carefully and with talent. Often, during our\nconcerts, we watched his face as it bent over the instrument, and\nit seemed to us that in those moments that humble violinist was in\ncommunion with the great souls of Bach, Beethoven, and Franck, that he\nwas holding a brotherly and affectionate conversation with them. I felt\nthen that he had nothing to envy in the princes of this world. And it\nis a fact, I believe, that he did not envy them anything.\n\nDo not tell me that you do not know how to play any instrument. That\nsignifies nothing. There are two skilful professional musicians in my\ngroup who play their instruments only just enough to enable them not to\nlose practice for their calling. They are a sort of mechanician. As for\nyou, you have a heart, ears, and a memory. And that\u2019s the main thing.\n\nBelieve that what you hold in your memory is more precious than\neverything else, for you carry that with you wherever you go, through\nall your days.\n\nDo you think I can ever bore myself, with all those thousands of airs\nthat sing in my head, that secretly accompany all my thoughts and offer\na sort of harmonious comment upon all the acts of my life?\n\nIf this does not seem possible to you, remember that you possess the\nimmense library of humankind and all its museums. Think of all you have\nread and admired. Think of it with pride and affection. Think of all\nthat remains to you to see and to read and tell yourself how marvelous\nit is to be so ignorant as to have such riches in reserve, to have such\ntreasures to conquer.\n\nAmid the ordeals and the disillusionments of your existence, lift your\nsoul every day toward those divine brothers who are our masters, and\nrepeat with a proud humility: \u201cIt is sweet to sit down at your feast!\nAnd how good to think that it is to you we owe our opulence and our\nprosperity!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                                  VI\n                        SORROW AND RENUNCIATION\n\n\n                                   I\n\nIf, concerning an old man, some one said to us: \u201cHe has been perfectly\nhappy all his life, he is going to die without ever having suffered,\u201d\nwe should be incredulous at first; then, if we were obliged to admit\nthe truth of the remark, we should feel for this old man not so much\nenvy as pity. With our astonishment would be mingled, in spite of all,\nsomething a little like contempt.\n\nHappiness is our aim, the final reason for our living. But is it fair\nto say that sorrow is opposed to happiness?\n\nThere are sorrows that one cannot, that one should not, escape. They\nare the very price we pay for happiness. It is by means of them that we\ntravel toward our own development. They prepare us for joy and render\nus worthy of it. Without them, could we ever know that we were happy?\n\nIf I believed, O my unknown friend for whom today I am hoping these\nconsolations, if I believed that you could reach happiness, that is\nto say, the harmonious prosperity of your soul, without experiencing\nany agonies, I should not undertake to praise your suffering. But you\nsuffer, I know it, and you are called to other sufferings. Henceforth\nI shall not refrain from praising what wounds you. For one does not\nconsole anyone by depreciating his grief, but by showing him how\nbeautiful, how rare, how desirable it is, and your suffering can truly\nbe called that.\n\nI do not dream, then, of depriving you of your wealth. I only hope that\nyou will be able to appreciate its full value. I beg that you will\npardon me if I chance to hurt you by placing my hand upon your wound. I\ndo it, you may be sure, with the affection and the solicitude of a man\nwho has consecrated his life to such tasks.\n\nThey will tell you, my friend, that I am seeking to flatter your\ndistress by reasonings that are full of guile, that I am singing to\nlull you to sleep and deceive you, that I am dressing in the gilded\nclothes of an age that is past the black demon that torments you. Let\nme still have your confidence: I have only one ambition,--it is your\nown greatest joy. I could not lead you astray without shame and without\ndeceiving myself; for are you not indeed myself, O my friend?\n\n\n                                  II\n\nThere are some material fortunes which humble and reasonable men do not\ndesire because they divine, in spite of the pleasures that result from\nthem, what a crushing load they are.\n\nBy contrast, among the spiritual riches that we are able to possess,\ngrief seems surrounded by a simple aureole. It is tyrannical,\nredoubtable, mutilating; its favorites are its victims. It does not\ndescend upon its chosen ones with the softness of a dove, it pounces\nlike a bird of prey, and those whom it carries off into the sky bear\nupon their sides the marks of its clenched claws.\n\nBut it is the sign of life; of all our possessions it is the last to\nleave us, it is the one that escorts us to the brink of the abyss.\n\nIt gives us the measure of man. He who has not suffered always seems to\nus a little like a child or a pauper.\n\nThe bitterness of men who have been often visited by sorrow is so truly\na treasure that, if they could, they would not rid themselves of it for\nanything in the world: it resembles authority.\n\nThrough his tears, through his martyrdom, he who is charged with a\ngreat sorrow feels that he is the abode of some terrible thing that is\nalso sacred and majestic. Great griefs command our respect. Before\nthem knees tremble and heads bow as in the presence of thrones and\ntabernacles.\n\nHe who has suffered greatly makes us feel timid and humble before\nhim. He knows things that we can only guess. We gaze upon him with\npassionate admiration as upon a traveller who has journeyed over oceans\nand explored far countries. It is at the time of his first wounds that\nthe young man discovers his soul and plumbs his inner nobility.\n\nOur grief is so precious a blessing that for its sake we dread\ninquisitive contacts. We preserve it jealously from the touch of those\nwho might, through clumsiness or stupidity, debase this terrible and\nprecious treasure. We long only that people should leave us alone with\nthis bitter possession! Let them beware of frustrating us when they\nimagine that they are working for our relief!\n\nWhen sorrow leaves us too soon, we feel a sort of shame and think less\nwell of ourselves: it shone out of its shadowy casket, out of the\ndeepest depths of the chest where we heap up our true treasures, and\nnow, behold, it has vanished! We find ourselves almost miserable and\nutterly dispossessed.\n\nThe man who beats a retreat before a great ordeal fills us with\ndistrust and pity. Something in us rejoices that he has not suffered.\nBut something regrets that he has not given his measure, that he has\nnot been the hero, the potent, exceptional man we hoped he would be.\nAnd that is not a mere perversion of our need for the spectacular: we\nare not less exacting with ourselves.\n\nWhen sorrow comes to us, and we manage to escape it, the first sense of\ndeliverance we feel is marred by an obscure, obstinate regret, as if we\nhad lost an opportunity to enrich ourselves.\n\nTell me, what man among us did not, at the outset of the present\ngreat catastrophe, interrogate his own fate with a double anguish:\nthe anguish to know what sufferings were in store for him, the fear\nalso that he might not suffer enough, that he might not receive, and\nquickly, an adequate share of the ordeal.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nThis religious respect we experience in the face of grief gives its\nmeaning and beauty to the feeling of sympathy.\n\nWe do not wish to admit that a great grief can live side by side with\nus without demanding that we should share it. As a man of lowly station\nwistfully approaches the table of princes, so we revolve about the\ngrief of others in the hope of being invited to partake of it.\n\nIt is an overmastering impulsion that rises from the depths of our\nnatures. The eagerness we are able to bring to the sharing of others\u2019\njoys is but lukewarm beside the insurmountable urge that makes us\nshare in their sorrow.\n\nThis is because our taste for joy is stamped with a keen quality of\nreserve, an irreducible delicacy. The joy even of those who are nearest\nto us can easily become repugnant to us. We are too proud to seem eager\nfor it. True grief, on the contrary, attracts us, fascinates us. It\ndisarms our critical sense and leaves us only an obscure feeling of\nenvy.\n\nSympathy stirs us gently without overwhelming us; it is for this reason\ntoo that we find it so full of savor.\n\nAlthough we recoil from the terrors of the leading part, sympathy\npermits us to play passionately the r\u00f4le of supernumeraries.\n\nIt is not we who are struck down and yet we can taste the mystic horror\nof the wound. The chosen victim bestows alms upon us and we accept\nthem without shame. We have the perfume of the Host on our lips and it\nis not our blood that has paid the sacrifice. We are the guests at a\nsumptuous and tragic feast. We bear the reflected light of the great\nfuneral pyre, without undergoing the flames and the destruction.\n\nThat explains our leaning toward those works of art that find their\nstrength and their subjects in human grief. It is for this reason,\nsurely, that we love so dearly to shed tears at the theater. The great\nartists have drawn from grief their most beautiful inspirations. We vow\neternal gratitude to those who can revive in us a faithful image of\nour torments and call them back to our forgetful souls, to those who\nknow so well how to give us a foretaste of the delights that future\nsuffering has in store for us.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nNot all griefs exalt us and add to us. There are some that are sterile,\nwithering, unconfessable.\n\nSuch griefs bring only misery and impoverishment. In the moral order\nthey stand for debts and failures. However great may be our blind\nindulgence for ourselves, we cannot, on principle, impute them to\nourselves. They do not bear the stamp of destiny but of our own\nbaseness.\n\nWho, indeed, would wish to share them with us, when we do not even let\nthem appear?\n\nWho would wish to associate himself with our weaknesses, our shames,\nour jealousies, our betrayals? Who can feel sympathy for a grief that\ndisavows everything pure and generous that exists in us? No mention is\nmade of these griefs in the Beatitudes.\n\nChrist himself might ask us to kiss the face of a leper. But what\ncharity could so sacrifice itself as to embrace our shame and our\ndegradation?\n\nThat is the cup we must put away from our lips.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nThe stoics pursue their strange happiness with an impassibility that\nis worse than death. Epictetus writes: \u201cIf you love an earthen vessel,\ntell yourself that you love an earthen vessel, for then if that vessel\nis broken you will not be troubled by it. If you love your son or your\nwife, tell yourself that you love a mortal being, for then if that\nbeing chance to die you will not be troubled by it.\u201d\n\nComes our wisdom at such a price? If so, I renounce and abhor it.\nBetter trouble and sorrow than this inhuman serenity!\n\nCertainly I willingly renounce the earthen vessel; the sound of its\nbreaking will never be loud enough to interrupt the conversation our\nsouls pursue. But those dear faces that are my horizon, my heaven and\nmy homeland, can I think without anguish of losing them forever? How\nirreparably I should despise myself if, on that condition, I succeeded\nin winning my own salvation!\n\nThis philosophy is poor, forsaken, desperate, rather than truly wise.\nIt renounces, by degrees, everything, for the sake of an ironical\npeace. It withdraws from life the least debatable motives for\ncontinuing it. It seeks to close the heart to sorrow. But since that\nremains inevitable, it is better to love it, better to make an ally of\nit, better to conquer it by main strength and possess it intimately.\n\nDryness of heart cannot be a good thing. What, is everything to be\ntaken away from me, even my grief, even that grief which remains to us\nwhen all other blessings have been ravished away?\n\nThe resources of philosophy are poor and destitute unless the heart\ncan anoint them, sanctify them, and invest them with its own supreme\nauthority.\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nThe fanaticism of grief is a fact so profoundly human that religions\nand governments have exploited it successfully. This almost mystical\npassion flourishes so well among peoples that are permeated with the\nancient traditions of suffering and renunciation!\n\nNevertheless, the path does not lie through this sublime error, which\nis altogether too favorable for the enterprises of criminal ambition.\n\nSorrow cannot be a thing that one covets. It is, it ought to be, simply\na thing that one accepts. Like certain terrible dignities, like certain\noverwhelming honors, one receives it, one does not seek it. Destiny\nbrings a sufficient burden of mourning and cruelty, it should not be\ntempted. The noble life demands that we shall be courageous, it does\nnot require us to be foolhardy. To him who \u201cseeks while he groans,\u201d\nsuffering will never be wanting.\n\nAt this hour the whole world is intoxicated with it, satiated, it would\nseem, for all time. At this hour there rises an immense cry of pity and\nsupplication.\n\nAll generous souls are wounded to the quick and stagger. It is\nnot in the moment when they beg for mercy that one would desire a\nsuperaddition of martyrdom. It is enough to assume the sanguinary\nwealth with which we are overwhelmed.\n\nNo one will ever be deprived of it who lives for love. We shall all be\nhonored according to our merits. And we shall know that grief is its\nown reward; for it is in sorrow and abnegation that our soul becomes\nsupremely aware of the beauty of the world and of its own virtues.\n\nWe cannot ask to be indemnified for our riches....\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nIn sorrow shalt thou bring forth children!\n\nIt is true! Our child was born in sorrow, in your sorrow, O my friend!\nI am jealous because of it. Forgive me!\n\nForgive me, for your part is more beautiful than mine, inasmuch as it\ncontains more suffering. Let me look upon you with envy. Let me think\nof my own lot with regret.\n\nYou have borne, you have brought forth, you have nourished. It was not\nin my side that this little body lay. It is not my flesh this tender,\ngreedy mouth has clung to. I have known nothing of that suffering. You\nhave kept it all for yourself. I have only picked up the crumbs, like a\nbeggar, like a pauper.\n\nI have not suffered! I have not suffered enough! I look on my happiness\nas upon something usurped. It is your happiness that I share. It is\nyour wealth that overflows even upon me.\n\nI know that a day may come when we shall both suffer together because\nof this son. But whatever may be our common anguish, you will always\nkeep the first place, you will always walk before me. You have forever\noutdistanced me along the shining road.\n\nHow can I help regarding you with envy, I who have not suffered enough?\n\n\n                                 VIII\n\nExalted spirits, struck by our many resemblances to the beasts, have\nstriven to find what was the distinguishing mark of man. It is a noble\nsolicitude, for wheresoever the mark of men may be it is that way we\nmust go. If we really possess a characteristic virtue of which the\nanimals are deprived, it is that which we must exalt, in order to be\ncompletely, proudly, men.\n\nPascal said: \u201cMan is obviously made to think; and his whole dignity,\nhis whole merit, and his whole duty lies in thinking rightly.\u201d\n\nCan we indeed believe that no other being has this grandeur to any\ndegree? Are we so sure that \u201ca tree does not know it is miserable\u201d?\n\nEven art, which may turn out to be the instrument of our redemption,\nis not certainly the lot of our race alone. Song and the dance triumph\namong the animals and often appear like the beautiful inventions of a\ngratuitous activity, with no other end than themselves and the emotions\nthey give or interpret.\n\nIn renunciation, perhaps, lies our distinction, the trait which stamps\nus and sets us apart.\n\nI say \u201cperhaps,\u201d because animals also offer us examples of abnegation.\nSacrifice beautifies even their habits. With them, too, the individual\nsacrifices himself for the group, the hero sacrifices itself for the\nrace. At the moment when I am writing these lines we are in autumn; a\nswarm of bees is dying of cold on a branch beside me. They are dying\nwith a sort of resignation, in order that their hive, so poor in\nresources, may survive the winter.\n\nWhy not share, then, with these humble victims, our most beautiful\nquality? Why refuse to possess something in common with them, since it\nis a virtue? Why cut ourselves off haughtily from the rest of life?\n\nOver and above this, the renunciation that has no particular or general\nmotive of interest, the pure and absolute renunciation which is a\nheroic folly, is undoubtedly our business. I am not speaking now of the\nrenunciation of the better religions, the renunciation that counts on\ncelestial rewards, but of the renunciation which is an end in itself,\nwhich finds in itself its own sorrowful recompense.\n\n\n                                  IX\n\nCan we ever forget, my friend, that woman who was the lesson of your\nyouth, your counsellor and your example?\n\nShe lived in that dark, low room where you so loved to go and to which\nyou used to show me the way, a way that seemed to me that of veneration\nitself.\n\nDisillusionments, griefs, sickness and, without doubt, a great need\nfor renunciation had gradually sequestered her in that unlovely place\nof refuge, encumbered with old books and full of the odor of dust. She\nseemed cut off from the world; but in the shadow of that retreat her\neye sparkled so vivaciously, she spoke with so melodious a voice that\nthe world pursued her who had abandoned it even into her retirement:\nthe friendship of young people, that friendship which is so pure and\nspontaneous, was for her a constant testimony. This was the only thing\nshe would not renounce, her only ornament, her last elegance, her\npossession.\n\nYear by year death came to snatch from her affection those of her own\nblood. Every sort of happiness withdrew from her as she retired into\nher abode, light itself she dreaded more and more, and more and more\nrenounced.\n\nEvery time we passed through her little door, so slow in opening, we\nhad at first an insurmountable feeling of being suffocated, for we were\nstill intoxicated with our radiant life, our destiny and our ambitions.\n\nBut soon our eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, our souls recognized\nthe humble, penetrating odor of the hangings, and we found again\nthat beautiful, commanding glance, that voice with its supernatural\nfreshness.\n\nHer malady struck her new blows. This woman who still possessed the\nspace of three rooms had to shut herself in one of them. And then,\neven of this she possessed no more than a corner. Her world was only a\nlittle wall and the wood of an old bed.\n\nThat ardent eye still shone. That spiritual voice still prevailed. One\nday the voice faltered and sank, like a ship disabled in a storm which\ngives up all resistance.\n\nThat day we were sad, sad, we who had not learned to renounce.\n\n\n                                   X\n\nDelivered from romanticism, the nineteenth century toward its close and\nthe twentieth century at its beginning, exalted an image full of the\npride of physical life, of impetuous health.\n\nNever had humanity seemed more intoxicated with its carnal development,\nwith its splendid animality, than at the very moment when the war broke\nout. Our humanity! behold it now, covered with wounds so deep that for\nlong decades the sight of them will baffle us and fill our pity with\ndespair.\n\nBehold it now, like a vast race of invalids. It creeps over a world\nwhere now there are more graveyards than villages.\n\nWe have had an unparalleled experience of sorrow and renunciation.\n\nAnd yet the desire for happiness is deeply rooted: the unanimous voice\nto which our world listens repeats, from amid the sobs: \u201cWe shall\nrenounce nothing!\u201d\n\nTo him who listens with an attentive ear, it says again, it says\nparticularly: \u201cWe shall renounce nothing, not even renunciation!\u201d\n\nBut let us leave this immense grief to itself. Let us leave it to\nsatiate and appease itself with its own contemplation--Silence!\n\n\n\n\n                                  VII\n                          THE SHELTER OF LIFE\n\n\n                                   I\n\nTwo immense worlds remain faithful to me when the others discourage or\nbetray me. Two refuges open to my heart when it is weary, faltering or\nharassed with temptation.\n\nI should like very much to tell you about them, since you are my\nfriend. I can tell you, since you have nothing to envy me, since you\nbear within yourself two such worlds, two kingdoms that will submit to\nyou undividedly, without contest.\n\nYesterday I was watching some prisoners working. They were pushing the\ntrunk of a tree lashed to a cart. Sweat was rolling down their faces,\nfor the heat was great, the slope steep and the load heavy. An armed\nsoldier was watching them. Large letters were printed on their clothes\nto proclaim their servitude. And I thought: they live, they do not look\ntoo unhappy, they do not seem crushed by their condition. And if this\nis so, it is not because they have the placidity of beasts. No! Look\nat their eyes, listen to their voices. It is precisely because they\nare men and they carry everywhere with them two refuges, whither the\ngaoler cannot follow them, two precious possessions that no punitive\ndiscipline can snatch from them: their future and their memories.\n\nThe longer I watch, from close by, those men who, for four years have\nled the inhuman life of the army, the better I understand the meaning\nof their incredible patience: between the future and the remembered\npast they have the air of awaiting the passage of a storm. They are\ngulping down, you would say, hastily and with closed eyes, this\nbitter and criminal present, in order to reserve their hearts all the\nbetter for the things of the future and the past. One feels in their\nconversation only these two luminous existences. They seek and unite\nthem unceasingly above the bloody abyss. I have also observed that, in\nthe concerts they give themselves to cheer their periods of rest, their\nsouls always return, with the same rapture, to their former way of\nliving, to their old sons, their familiar ways of being sad or joyous.\nThe artistic attempts that are carried on to interest them, at the\nbottom of their hearts, in the formidable present, remain sterile and,\nas it were, dry.\n\nThey seem to reply, silently: \u201cWhat have all these things to do with\nus? Isn\u2019t it enough for us to live them? Isn\u2019t it enough for us to\ndo them, every day with our blood and tears? Give us back our dear\nkingdom. Give back to our souls that memory which is their most\nimperishable and marvelous possession.\u201d\n\n\n                                  II\n\nBetween the future and the remembered past, man is left to struggle\nwith what he possesses least, the present.\n\nAnd yet this present is lavish of all sorts of materials that we\ncan transform into riches. It is our liquid fortune, mobile and in\ncirculation. It is the well-filled purse upon which we draw for our\ndaily needs.\n\nIt reaches us out of the depths of time, like a great river, loaded\nwith sailing-ships and steamers, deep, flowing, beautiful with all its\nreflections, and rolling gold in its sands.\n\nBut it has its rages, its whims, its cruelties. According to the\nseason, it overflows and desolates the land or suddenly dries up and\ndeserts the fields that it refreshed with its floods!\n\nSo be it! If the present refuses to yield its manna, we will draw upon\nour last resources. If the times overwhelm us with bitterness, we will\nflee to our refuges, where we have nothing to fear from intruders or\nmasters or tormentors.\n\nCommon-sense folk, who have the secret of debasing life in the name\nof a reason that is more mischievous than actual stupidity, are in\nthe habit of devoting an almost superstitious worship to the present\nreality. To tell the truth, they are greatly afraid that the taste for\nmemory and hope will turn young men away from that immediate action\nwhich is necessary for the conquest and preservation of material wealth.\n\nThey honor with great pomp the origins in the past of those traditions\nthat are favorable to them; and the way they invoke and prepare for the\nfuture loads the present with chains and shackles.\n\nThey dread, in reverie, an enemy of action. As if there were any great\nactions that have not their source in great dreams!\n\nThese people deceive themselves. They sacrifice an unequalled\nconsolation to the needs of a fleeting fortune. But do not imagine that\nthe failure of their fortune leaves these men utterly abandoned: the\nrefuges open gladly, even for those who have despised them.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nAn intimate friend once said to me, as he watched his little son\nplaying: \u201cYou see; he\u2019s no longer the baby you knew last year. He\u2019s\nanother child. I have been cheated of the one I had last year. I shall\nnever have him again. I have lost a child.\u201d\n\nO dear, big heart, how beautiful and how unjust those words are! How\nhuman! How they overflow with ingratitude and with adoration!\n\nYou know quite well that every object that appears on the horizon of\nour souls has, for us, two existences. One is sudden, sharp, almost\nalways penetrated with an intense and, so to say, corrosive flavor:\nthat is the existence of the present. Men agree in recognizing that its\nduration is hardly measurable. But the other existence is perennial, as\nample as the measure of our life and our thoughts; in this sense it is\nalmost infinite.\n\nThus each moment of the present survives in memory for years, and\ndoubtless for centuries, since posterity can gather up and prolong the\nbest of our acts and our works.\n\nIt is true, my friend, that each moment dispossesses us, even of the\nobject we never withdraw our arms from. The miser, infatuated with\nhis material riches, may well suffer agony of mind over them, but we,\nwe? Do we not know that each moment restores to us, transfigured, all\nthe treasures it has snatched away from us? It robs us of the frailer\nblessings, it offers us imperishable blessings, less mortal than\nourselves.\n\nYou have conquered one whole happy day. Contemplate without regret\nthe sleep that marks its end, for you will continue to live this day\nduring all the rest of jour life. And if this day was truly beautiful,\ndo you not know that others after you will continue to live it, down,\never farther down, the succession of the years?\n\nLet your son grow, without too much anxiety, like a beautiful tree:\nthe child he was once, the child he was but now, the child he is at\npresent, you will not lose them, O insatiable heart! They will escort\nyou toward old age, like a beloved multitude that increases every day\nand cannot die.\n\nOwing to the war, I have seen my own child only seven times, and each\ntime I have hardly recognized him. Seven times I have believed him\nlost. I know now that I have seven lovely images in my soul, seven\nchildren to adorn and hearten my solitude.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nThere are beauties which the present fails to appreciate. That is\nnatural, because it is greedy, disordered, care-ridden. Memory exists\nto see that justice is done. To it falls the divine r\u00f4le of restoring\nand, at times, pardoning. (It is memory which, in the last resort,\nvindicates and judges. It is in its light that things appear to us\nunder the aspect of eternity.)\n\nNone of our thoughts would be really happy that had not received the\napprobation of memory, that did not find themselves sealed at last\nwith its sovereign imprint. We do not know the true value of our\nmoments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images\nthe photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on\ncolor; and only then, after that recoil and that transfiguration, do\nwe understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil\nsplendor.\n\nDays of ours that had seemed to us dull and hopeless show themselves in\nmemory luminous and decisive. Journeys undertaken without eagerness,\nwithout enthusiasm, and without any of the freshness of surprise,\nbecome, from a distance, fruitful in revelations and discoveries.\n\nEvery reality develops with time a thousand aspects of itself that\nare just as real, as charged with meaning and consequence, as the\noriginal aspect. We cannot foretell what memory will contrive for\nus. It is a treasure all the more precious and unexpected because it\nis so independent of our rudimentary logic. For the logic of memory\nis more subtle than ours; it seems entirely free from our miserable\ncalculations; it draws its inspirations from our true interests, which\nwe ourselves are forever misapprehending. The slow task it pursues\ntestifies to so rare a virtue and so munificent a wisdom that man,\nstruck with his own unworthiness, might well seek there the signs of a\ndivine intervention.\n\nSometimes it is a friend, whom we have misunderstood or misjudged, who\ntakes on in memory his true aspect and his true stature and reveals the\nprofound influence which, without our knowing it, he has exercised over\nour thoughts.\n\nSometimes it is a word which we heard at first with an inattentive or\ndistrustful ear, and which we find again engraved in letters of gold\nover the portico of the secret temple where we love to collect our\nthoughts.\n\nLike some skilful goldsmith, memory seizes the materials that our life\naccumulates haphazard. It submits them to the touchstone, fashions\nthem, embellishes them and imprints upon them that mysterious sheen\nwhich gives them their distinctive meaning and their value.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nThe cult of memory should not turn us away from the present out of\nwhich memory itself draws its nourishment.\n\nWe sometimes meet men of whom plain people say, with profound wisdom,\n\u201cTheir mind is elsewhere.\u201d It is true; they are the timid and tormented\nsouls who have early sought in memory a refuge which nothing, it seems,\ncould ever make them renounce.\n\nLet us beware of troubling this retreat. Some day, perhaps, we may long\nfor one like it. But however deeply one may seem to have taken refuge\nin memory, one cannot escape the clutch, the invasion of the present.\n\nIt is best, therefore, and with all the strength that is in us, to\naccept, honor, love this present as the principal source of our riches.\n\nIf the true cult of memory were a less exceptional moral usage, many\nmen would hesitate to create bad memories for themselves; for our worst\nmemories are not those of our sufferings, our ordeals, our privations,\nbut of our shameful acts, our cowardices and our betrayals.\n\nOur weakness lasted only a moment; must we really, for thirty years,\nfeel the hostile stare of that moment resting heavily upon us? Who\nknows? Hope, even so, in the clemency of memory, which is able to\nmitigate and pardon everything. It is indulgent and full of pity. In a\nworld given over to spite and reprisals, it remains the only inviolable\nrefuge of the outcast, as the cathedrals used to be in the days of the\nright of sanctuary.\n\nFor him who descends with true fervor into his own depths, memory\nalways preserves some corner pure from all baseness. Do we not know,\nmoreover, that in order to console us memory consents to work in\nconcert even with its enemy, forgetfulness?\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nWho can dispute with us the world of memory? No one! And who would\ndare, without fear, to do so? It is because we are more ardently\nattached to this possession than to any other.\n\nAt times, a clumsy or malevolent hand succeeds in smirching one of\nour dear memories. Then we experience an indignation and a despair as\nlasting and profound as if these sentiments recognized their cause in\nthe loss or the fall of a loved being.\n\nHappily this criminal work implies a rarely evil spirit, a sort of\nperverse genius of which humanity is none too prodigal. And then our\nmemory is a territory too vast, too mountainous, too impregnable as a\nwhole for the rage of hostile destruction to be able to defile or mar\nlarge portions of it. The best of our memories thus remain in safety\nand for us alone. Besides, we keep careful watch around this fortune.\n\nOur great memories are actual moral personages, so necessary to our\nhappiness that we bear them under a sacred arch, sheltered from\nall injury, from all contact. It is into this solitude that we go\nceaselessly to question them, invoke them, call them to witness.\n\nA past in common does not always give memories in common, so true it\nis that the heart defends itself, in its innermost retreat, as the\nphysical self defends its flesh against the intrusions of the stranger.\n\nIt sometimes happens that men find pleasure in recalling in our\npresence the episodes of an existence that was passed, by themselves\nor by them and us, in companionship. It is then that we measure the\nroad our soul has travelled on its solitary path: these things of which\nthey speak to us, these deeds which, it seems, we have performed, these\nlandscapes which they remember having crossed in our company, we no\nlonger recognize; we do not even wish to recognize them. We smile in\nan embarrassed, awkward, unhappy way. Our whole attitude says: \u201cIs it\nreally true that we have drunk from the same cup? For all that, it was\nnot the same wine we drank, and my intoxication is not yours.\u201d\n\nWe cannot give to one who is dear to us a greater proof of love than\nto admit him to the intimacy of our memories. We have need of all our\ntenderness to help us to introduce another soul into the subterranean\nbasilica, to lead that soul as close as possible to the refuge where,\nin spite of all, there is only room for one.\n\nPerfect communion in memory is an extraordinary favor, and an\nadmonition. If it is given to you to enjoy it, open your arms and\nreceive one elect soul.\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nNo doubt you have had the experience, when passing through a country\nwhere you were travelling for the first time, of stopping short, as\nyou rounded a mountain, before some unknown horizon, and finding it\nstrangely familiar.\n\nNo doubt you have had the experience of arriving at night in a dark\nsquare where you knew you had never been before, and briskly finding\nyour way through it, just as if you were resuming some old habit.\n\nAt times the spectacle of a smiling valley arrests you at the top\nof some hill. You thought you knew nothing of this country, and yet\nstrange and sure impressions guide you; they are like old memories. You\nadvance, and behold, you are looking at everything as if you recognized\nit. That road which winds between the pastures, as supple and sinuous\nas a beautiful river of yellow water,--you are almost certain you\nhave followed it long ago, in some misty, far-off existence which,\nnevertheless, is not your own.\n\nThere are times, too, when you are dreaming, as you sit alone, and\nsuddenly a memory passes over you: the memory of some act the man you\nare surely never performed. Yet it is not a fabrication, an invention.\nYou know, you feel, that it is a personal memory. A memory of what\nworld? Of what life?\n\nDo not reject this shadowy treasure, and do not tremble! Do not\naccept complacently the explanations of the superstitious or of the\npseudo-scientists. The flesh of your flesh was not born yesterday.\nSomething survives in it that is contemporaneous with all the\ngenerations. Many a revelation awaits us. Let us keep for them a soul\nthat is accessible, experienced, and not too distrustful.\n\n\n                                 VIII\n\nDo not imagine that to possess memory is to possess a dead world.\n\nAmong your friends there is surely one who has a house and a garden.\nFrom time to time he invites you to visit him. Every time you enter\nhis house you observe some striking change: he has connected two parts\nof the building which till then had no means of communication. He has\nplanted some new trees. The old elms are flourishing. Some rosebushes\nhave died. Urns have been set out on the lawn. The life of men, of\nanimals, of plants has drawn the inanimate world into its toils,\nmodeled it, sculptured it, forced it to take part in the movement of\nthe soul.\n\nIt is in like fashion that the domains of memory cultivate themselves\nand live. They are not ruins, inalterable, rigid, fixed forever in the\nice of some past epoch. Life still penetrates and moves them; they do\nnot cease to share in its enterprises, its labors, its festivals.\n\nWhen a man has opened for you several times the same gate in the wall,\nwhen several times he has related the same adventure to you, with\nintervals of a few months or a few years, observe closely the spots\nto which he leads you and the persons to whom he presents you. Every\ntime you will find new things, you will find that roads have been laid\nout, underbrush cut down, windows opened and unexpected supernumeraries\ncalled in.\n\nIs it true then that that was a dead tale, wrapped up in what we call\nthe shroud of the past?\n\nThe world of \u201cliving memory\u201d is so indissolubly bound up with our\nresolutions and our acts that in accumulating memories we feel we are\npreparing, erecting our future itself.\n\n\n                                  IX\n\nThere is another refuge!\n\n\u201cWhat makes hope so intense a pleasure,\u201d writes M. Bergson, \u201cis that\nthe future, which we fashion to suit ourselves, appears to us at one\nand the same time under a multitude of forms, all equally smiling,\nequally possible. Even if the most desirable of them all is realized,\nwe must have sacrificed the others, and we shall have lost much. The\nidea of the future, pregnant with infinite possibilities, is therefore\nmore fertile than the future itself, and that is why we find more\ncharm in hope than in possession, in reverie than in reality.\u201d\n\nThe idea of the future alone interests us: that alone is our treasure,\nthat alone is endowed with existence. It is that indeed which we call\nthe future. And if M. Bergson, at the end of these admirable lines,\ncreates a distinction between the future and the idea of the future, he\ndoes not make us forget that he has just, and as if by design, caused\nthe confusion; for what \u201cwe fashion to suit ourselves\u201d is the idea of\nthe future, and nothing else. But, following the example of M. Bergson,\nlet us call our idea of the future the future itself.\n\nThis idea is our cherished fortune. Certainly we take a passionate\ninterest in seeking, in what flows out of the present, something that\nresembles the realization of our dreams. And yet their realization,\nlike their failure, marks, in every sense, their end, their exhaustion.\nAnd that is insupportable to us. Whatever fate the present reserves for\nour imaginings, we labor every day, as fast as time devours them and\ndestroys them by making them finite, to push them further back into the\ninfinite, to prolong them, to reconstruct them, so that we may never\nhave less of a future at our disposal.\n\nThis need of a future, which has no other connection than our hope with\nthe rugged actuality of the present, is so deep-rooted, so generally\nhuman a thing, that one cannot contemplate it without a respect which\nis almost religious. In order that this future, so pregnant with\ndreams, should be as necessary as it is to the moral life of most\nmen, it must represent a truly incomparable treasure. The embrace we\nthrow around it is the close and powerful embrace we reserve for those\npossessions that lie nearest our hearts. And, since we have already\ndetached the word \u201cpossession\u201d from the gross meaning that is usually\nattributed to it, let us say that the possession of a dream, when it\nassures our happiness, is a reality less debatable and less illusory\nthan the possession of a coal-mine or a field of wheat.\n\nBut as there is no possession without conquest, without effort, we must\nmerit our dreams and cultivate them lovingly.\n\nIf people who have taken the mould of reason reproach us with\ndistracting for a moment the men of that practical reality which\npretends to be preparing the future, we are ready to reply to them:\n\n\u201cGlance at those men to whom our words are addressed. You know that\nthey are crushed with fatigue and privation. They have experienced\nevery danger and every sort of weariness. By what right will you hinder\nthem from taking refuge in a world which is henceforth the least\ncontestable of their domains? Do not, on their account, be afraid of\nreverie; it could never fill them with as much bitterness as does this\nmodern reality of which you are the unpunished builders.\n\n\u201cIf you are not weary of glimpsing your future through the\nspecifications, the account-books, the cage-bars, and the unbreathable\nfumes of industrialism, at least allow these to cherish a marvelous\nand, in spite of all its disappointments, an efficacious future. It\nis not a question of forgetting life,--that is too beautiful and too\ndesirable, but rather of amplifying and fertilizing it. Whatever may\nbe the outcome of a generous dream, it always ennobles the man who has\nentertained it. Allow the unhappy to be rich in a possession that costs\nthem only love and simple faith. Do not let your reason dispossess them\nof the only treasure that your greed has not been able to snatch from\nthem. It is the cult of the future and of memory that sustains man in\nthe uncertainty of the present hour. If he walks by instinct towards\nthese refuges, do not turn him aside, and think, O priests of reason,\nof the warning of Pascal: \u2018It is on the knowledge of the heart and of\nthe instincts that Reason has to lean, and establish there the whole of\nher discourse\u2019.\u201d\n\n\n                                   X\n\nI have seen thousands of men suffer and die. Every day I see new ones\nenter the somber arena and struggle. My part is to help them in this\ntorment, to assure them aid and hope. I have a wide experience of these\nthings now and I know that men are never denied a future, even when\nlife is on the point of betraying them.\n\nPhilosophers and poets, led astray by religion or by a mystical passion\nfor death, have given the severe counsel that we should never conceal\nfrom the dying the approach of their annihilation. It is a theoretical\nview of charity, an artificial, mischievous doctrine that does not\nstand the test, that should not be put to the test. Its partisans\nsuspect falsehood where there is only pity and modesty, for it is not\nthe part of man to be so proud of his own judgment as to take away from\nsomeone with the certitude of life that fabulous future which is more\nprecious than life itself.\n\nI remember, in 1915, a wounded man, who had just received the visit\nof a priest moved by praiseworthy intentions and a clumsy exaltation,\nsaying to me suddenly, \u201cI know now that I am going to die!\u201d and\nbeginning to weep terribly. I went to see the priest and reproached him\nfor his behavior. \u201cWhat!\u201d that eloquent man replied haughtily, \u201cdo you\nwho are incapable of preserving this unhappy man\u2019s earthly life blame\nme for assuring him his future life?\u201d Alas! Alas! I still think of the\nsobs of that wounded man; they were those of one who has just lost his\nsupreme wealth and to whom nothing else can make amends.\n\nSoldiers who, in the full vigor of their youth, suffer a severe,\na final mutilation experience at first that is like a veritable\namputation of their future, so true is it that every part of our\nphysical self is intimately bound up with the labors of our dream.\nThen, with surprising rapidity, and long before the disorder of the\ntissues has been exorcised, one sees them filling in the moral breach,\nraising up the crumbled wall, propping it hastily and reconstructing,\nquite as new but quite complete and tightly shut, the sacred fortress\noutside which their soul remains vulnerable and disarmed.\n\nIn truth, the man who is condemned to death is still rich in the\nfuture, even when his body sinks, ten times pierced by bullets, even\nwhen he has only one drop of blood left, one flickering spark of life.\n\n\n                                  XI\n\nO present hour, magnificent, foaming fountain, you know very well that\nwe shall be faithful to you! With your thousand animated faces, your\nlandscapes, your problems, your combats and that heavy burden of\njostling ideas you carry with you, you will always attract us, you will\nsee us all together drinking of your waters.\n\nBut when you no longer contain for us anything but anger and hatred,\ngreed and cruelty, then indeed we must each of us abandon you and turn\nto our refuges; we must each of us withdraw into the Thebaid where all\nthings still respond to our voice, to our voice alone.\n\nMay our fate preserve us from the greatest of all misfortunes! May our\nrefuges never lose in our eyes their virtue and their security! This\nsupreme affliction at times befalls us, and it is then that our souls,\nexiled from their homeland, must set themselves humbly to the search\nfor the lost grace.\n\n\n\n\n                                 VIII\n                       THE CHOICE OF THE GRACES\n\n\n                                   I\n\nWhat man, tell me, what man, were he suddenly delivered from disgust\nwith himself, from terror of the world, from the sadness of an age that\nis without pity, from remorse for a thing he has done, from the fear\nof things he has to do, what man, suffering from one of these evils,\nor from several of them or from all at once, would not experience an\nimmense relief, would not feel a certain absolution for the errors of\nthe universe, a certain alleviation of his own in the contemplation of\nthis little osier-bed which I descry this evening, at the turning of a\nlane?\n\nWhat is there so profound, so divine in that scene?\n\nNothing, nothing, no doubt. Everything, perhaps. For who would venture\nto maintain that there is anything in the world that might not be a\nsign for my heart and yet be nothing more? I was following a stone\nwall, an indecipherable wall at present, without significance, without\ncompassion, an enemy. It shut in my view and my thoughts, it was\ncovered with cold mosses and all the dampness of winter. And then, all\nat once, the wall ended and there was a little valley crowned with\nthese osiers. Yes, I mean crowned, for it seemed as if all its desires\nhad been granted, all its aspirations satisfied, all its prayers\nfulfilled.\n\nThousands of crimson branches rose in a chorus toward heaven, like\nclusters of some smooth, straight, up-springing coral. All the branches\nrose together, with one brotherly impulse, like the desires of a world\nfreed from ambitions and vowed to the one, the noblest ambition of\nall. But why seek for words, why strive to paint it? Surely it was not\nthe flaming sap of the young shoots any more than the little rivulets\nsmoking like censers at their feet,--it was neither of these things\nthat promised relief and deliverance. It was the entire world that\nmanifested itself in this, its smallest fragment, just as the most\nsecretive man will betray himself by the trembling of his little finger\nor the flutter of an eyelash.\n\n\n                                  II\n\nI was once saved by the tarpaulin of a humble delivery wagon. That\ntarpaulin certainly knew no more about it than did the men who owned\nit, or had the use of it here below. There are, in every object,\nqualities we are ignorant of and that are precisely those through which\nthis object fulfils its most beautiful r\u00f4le in the universe, those\nto which it inclines as if toward some miraculous purpose, which are\nindeed its vocation and its true destiny.\n\nI remember it was a morning in February, one of those hopeless mornings\nwhich we feel do not deserve the evening and will hardly attain\nit. I do not know what I had done to myself or to my men to have\nso completely lost all courage and purpose; but that morning I was\ncertainly the most destitute of beings and the least worthy of an act\nof grace.\n\nYet for all that, grace was shown me, for that marvelous tarpaulin\nappeared. It was of heavy canvas, yellow and green. Its color, its\nfolds, its whole appearance, the form it concealed, in fact I know not\nwhat element in it, showed me that I still could live, that my faults\nwere forgiven me, that nothing about me was irremediable.\n\nI am willing to pass for a man who is eager for forgiveness, a man who\nis satisfied with little. We wish to set our own value on everything,\nas if the things of the spirit meant the same thing as money, as\nif they did not depend upon quite another spirit than that of the\naccountants and geometricians.\n\nI met a priest,--it was since the war began,--with whom I often talked\nabout penance and contrition. I asked him one day what price he would\nask for the remission of the heaviest burden on one\u2019s conscience. He\nanswered without hesitation: \u201cThree paters and three aves.\u201d This man\nwas corrupted by the customs of the world and its authorities. He\nfilled me with a sort of desire to insult him, and I confess I gave\nhim some rude shocks. Since then I have reflected. I have not become\nreconciled to the memory of that priest, but I believe that grace\ntouches us in a most unforeseen way; it shines out suddenly, without\nany reason, like the radiant blue in a sky where one has not expected\nit. It manifests itself without regard to the efforts we make to\ndeserve it, and the occasions it selects are not in proportion to our\ndistress. But how sovereign it is, how much the most desirable of all\nblessings!\n\nRemember, remember! you were walking through the streets, a prey to\nsome irremediable pain. Your poverty seemed unlimited, for it could\nnot be palliated by more money, an improvement in your health or the\nrenewal of a broken friendship. And yet, nevertheless, you suddenly\nbreathed in the wind an imperceptible odor, familiar, charged with\nmemories, you suddenly encountered in the color of a house, or in the\nlook of an unknown face, some mysterious sign, and you felt that your\nwealth had been given back to you, that it flowed through you once\nmore as the saving blood returns to the heart of the dying man.\n\nI was walking one day along the banks of the Aisne, the prey of an\nillimitable mental torture which, just because there was no reason\nfor it, seemed incurable. The image of a bridge in the water suddenly\ngave me back my confidence in myself and my accustomed joyousness. It\nwas only a reflection; but never believe those who tell you that these\nthings are nothing but reflections.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nWhen a man who is cruelly wounded in his body or his spirit preserves a\ncheerful faith and never ceases to be the master of his misfortune, I\nsay that he has grace.\n\nWhen a true man is able, for an hour, to contemplate without uneasiness\nhis own thoughts and actions, I say that he is touched with grace, and\nI hope that hour may last a day and that day an entire life.\n\nLike a sailing-vessel that stretches through the air its slender,\nvibrant cables, probes the sky with its strong and supple masts, offers\nto the wind, at ever-varying angles, the white resistance of its sails\nand marvelously dominates all the forces of the air while seeming to\nobey them, the man who possesses grace enjoys a communion that is\nprofound, perfect, exquisite, not only with whatever in the world is\nperceptible to us, but above all with what is unknown.\n\nThat man weighs much in the baskets of the winnower. That man does not\nsee only within the limits of his own flesh. He fills in his own self\nalmost the whole universe, participates gloriously in the infinite.\n\nI know that it often happens that the beautiful ship sees its sails\nsinking in distress and no longer feels its ropes trembling in the\nwind. The time comes when it stops painfully in the stupor and\nindifference of noon.\n\nThe time comes when the rich man suddenly finds himself on Job\u2019s\ndung-heap. The time comes when, without reason, grace deserts the heart.\n\nWait expectantly, with sails spread like an ear, with rigging firm, and\nperhaps, where others less trustful would find themselves abandoned,\nyou will perceive a certain relenting breeze.\n\nYou must never lose contact with the universe if you wish to live in\nthe state of grace.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nWelcome your own true thought, whatever may be the hour at which it\nvisits you. If it chooses to rouse you in the middle of the night, rise\nto do it honor and look at it with clear eyes.\n\nThere are some who have just missed an hour of greatness because they\npreferred to slumber under the warm eiderdown. The spirit called them\nin a low voice, in the darkness of the cold room; they did not rise\nand they will never know what they might have become. They will try\nto console themselves by thinking they have dreamed; will they ever\nconsole themselves?\n\nThere are some who, suddenly, through the mist of tobacco smoke, have\nseen their souls, like some long-awaited supernatural being, watching\nthem.\n\nAt the moment they were playing cards or reading their paper; they\nthought: \u201cWait, I\u2019ll join you in a moment.\u201d The game ended, or the\npaper thrown aside, the visitor had departed.\n\nThey rushed forth in pursuit, their hearts convulsed with shame and\nanguish. Alas! the deep melancholy glance will perhaps never shine\nupon them again. Perhaps they will never again come face to face with\nthemselves.\n\nIn the midst of pleasure, when you are enjoying the company of a woman\nor the conversation of bold, intelligent men, if you chance to hear the\nvoice of solitude singing like a siren at your feet, leave everything\nto flee with her.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nWhen Epictetus said: \u201cOur good and evil exist only in our own will,\u201d\nhe misstated the problem. That is one way of solving it, but more\noften it is a way of assuming that it has been solved, an expedient for\npassing it over.\n\nI am not happy today; I am not pleased with myself, I am not pleased\nwith anyone; I feel quite certain that everything I undertake will be a\nfailure, above all, above all, I do not want to undertake anything; I\nview all things with an unprofitable eye, an irritable and apparently\ndried-up soul. I am driven to suffer myself and make others suffer.\nOh! I am without grace! I know it and I am far from admiring myself.\nSecretly I long to feel grace at last descending on my head and\nshoulders like a mantle of soft sunshine, like the honeyed perfume that\nfalls from the lime-trees.\n\nWhat does that old man want? Why does he repeat with a sort of\nobstinacy: \u201cIt depends upon you to make a good use of every event\u201d?\n\nNo doubt it depends upon me!\n\nBut what are we to do when nothing can be blamed upon events? And what\nwhen, indeed, there are no events.\n\nIs it true that it depends upon me to be myself at such times also?\nAnswer me, great, silent trees! Answer me, fir-tree, weighted down\nwith sleet and dreaming--Heine has told me--of the palm consumed with\nburning heat in the tropics.\n\n\u201cDrive out,\u201d replies the philosopher, \u201cdrive out your desires and your\nfears and you will never again suffer tyranny.\u201d\n\nTrue; but I have only one fear: not to be the best man I may; only one\ndesire, not to give in to myself.\n\nThe sage shrugs his shoulders and then says in a gentle voice: \u201cBear\nand forbear.\u201d And he is not thinking only of the storms that come from\nwithout.\n\nHe says this because he well knows that in order to be happy one must\nbe visited by grace.\n\nAll the stoics have drawn up rules of virtue. Not one has suggested the\nmeans that will give us the strength to apply them. For the wish is\nnot enough. The gift is necessary, that secret impulse which is grace\nitself.\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nPraise be to thee, divine world, that hast delivered me from anger by\nrevealing to me in time that trembling blossom of the convolvulus!\n\nPraise be to thee, divine world, that, at the very limit of my fatigue,\nin the midst of my perils, hast chosen mysterious ways to light me with\nan inner smile!\n\nMillions of unhappy men who are suffering at this moment on the fields\nof distracted Europe are aware that at the blackest moment of distress\na strange consolation can penetrate them; it is as if the fingers\nclutching one\u2019s heart suddenly relaxed their grip. There are some who\ncall this God. Many others give no name to the miracle, but long for it\non their knees all the same.\n\nThe voice no longer speaks from the burning bush. Sometimes it is the\nsound of last year\u2019s leaves still rustling in the branches of an oak.\nSometimes there is no sound; only the speaking glance of a veronica in\necstasy among the April fields.\n\nI am quite willing to bear, but I do not wish to forbear. I do not wish\nnot to meet grace halfway, not to seek for it in the night flooded with\nfrosty perfumes, in the tossing forest where two interlocked branches\ngroan through the long hours, on the plateau haunted with thistles that\nlabor with feverish piety to perpetuate their innumerable lineage.\n\nI ask only to be allowed to interrogate the earth like those who seek\nminerals and water-courses, and to experience every morning the green\nascent of the spring-time over the rocky slopes.\n\nI do not know by what path joy will come; I ask only to be permitted,\nnone the less, to go to meet it, for truly I cannot sit here by this\nmile-post at the cross-roads, and placidly await it.\n\nOne joy has come to me during the war, one that is undoubtedly the\ngreatest joy of my life: that of having a child. My reason did not\nrevolt at it, it did not dare to tell me that it was foolhardy to\ndesire a child at a time when the human world was left without defense\nagainst confusion, disorder and crime. Yes, I rejoiced to have a\nman-child born to me now when the future of men seems to be corrupted\nfor long years to come. I even hailed the child as a savior. You see,\nthe paths of joy are as unknown to us as those of grace.\n\nI shall not forbear, therefore, and when I feel my heart bleeding from\nan unjust wound I shall go with respectful steps and recover myself in\nthe world of solitude. I shall not ask in the name of justice, I shall\nnot insist, I shall not importune; I shall wait until it manifests\nitself and sets me free, I shall wait until at last it bestows upon\nme the grace which, like a fine sap, like mother\u2019s milk, it always\ncontains.\n\nSolitude! I can still conquer it among a hundred thousand chattering\ncompanions; I know how to sing to myself little songs that surround me\nwith the silence of the steppes.\n\nI will go back again to the ravine where, the whole summer long, a\nblackbird I know of whistles that same liquid song that grows purer and\nmore perfect from week to week. Ten notes are his whole career and his\nreason for being. Perhaps on a day that music will be just what my soul\nneeds to recover its flight, like a stranded bark which a lazy wave has\njust set floating.\n\nI will go back to the spots where I have been happy, and I do not think\nthis will be very imprudent; for, like the perfume a woman leaves in\nher garments, like a drop of wine in the bottom of a glass, a little\nhappiness often remains attached to things.\n\nI shall go out again behind the hamlet, where I know that every morning\na couple of turtle-doves mingle a plaint that secretly cuts the\nsilence, hollows it with a melodious tunnel.\n\nAnd I shall stretch myself out there, my face to the sky, like a\nwell-exposed vine that longs to ripen some fine fruit.\n\nI am saying what I shall do, with the sole purpose, with the deep\ndesire, that you will all do the same, and that you will each turn to\nyour favorite star; and all this with the earnest desire that you will\nnot be content to remain sheep marked, without redemption, for the\nknife.\n\nIt requires little at times. The soul is not more exacting than the\nbody. I have seen exhausted soldiers whom a single swallow of brandy\nraised up again to the heights of courage. I have seen seriously\nwounded men brought back to life when their bodies were turned a little\nin order to facilitate the uncertain flow of the blood.\n\nThe soul is no less fragile, no less sensitive. If the western view\nkeeps you sad, turn lightly to the south. We do not know what the\ndivine world holds in store.\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nHappy are those who are able to pray. It is thus that Christians\nsolicit grace.\n\nIt is easy to fall on one\u2019s knees; but to be able to pray one must\nalready possess that grace which one implores. It is so great a gift,\nthe gift of prayer, that it is almost indelicate to desire anything\nelse from it.\n\nTo drink is a small matter. To be thirsty is everything.\n\nWhy do the Christians, who counsel us to pray in order to obtain\ngrace, never tell us what we must do in order to be able to pray? It\nis not for nothing, nevertheless, that they arrange the play of light\nand shade through their stained-glass windows, the odor of stones and\nincense, the silence of the vaults and the propitiatory sights of the\norgan, all those harmonious snares set for the wandering prayer.\n\nAs for me, I shall take a staff and go out seeking the solitude of the\nworld. If this world is a city street at dawn,--that will do! A misty\ndock, its outline broken by rails and masts,--that will do! A sunken\nroad, lighted by the flowering broom,--that will do! The court of a\nbarrack, the muddy enclosure of a prison-camp, oh! pitiful as it may\nseem to me, may it still seem good!\n\nIf I can walk, straight before me or far and wide, I can pray. If I can\nsee a scrap of the sky, I can pray. And with all nature offered to my\nsoul, I can pray, I can pray in spite of everything and as if without\nwilling it. I must see that osier-bed, or the radiant awning of that\nwagon, or the image of the bridge in the water. I must hear the moaning\nof those interlaced branches; then I am able to feel myself bathed in\ngrace.\n\nGrace! It is indeed the fleeting consciousness man has of his divinity.\n\nAnd now, now especially, and more than ever, we say to ourselves, man\nmust have faith in his divinity!\n\n\n\n\n                                  IX\n                              APOSTLESHIP\n\n\n                                   I\n\nThe beautiful legend of the multiplication of the loaves of bread is\nmiraculous only in the material order to which we try to confine it.\nBut the infinite multiplication of moral nourishment is our daily\nspectacle, our joy, our encouragement.\n\nWe know that the possession of material goods inclines us to\nexclusiveness, solitary satisfaction: if I wish to share with you this\nbeautiful apple I hold in my hand, I must make up my mind to enjoy only\nhalf of it myself. And if there are four of us the part each one has\nwill be proportionally reduced. Ah! blessed would be the wonder-worker\nwho could refresh us all with a single glass of water, stay us all with\na single mouthful of bread.\n\nThat miracle flashes forth every day before our eyes. All moral wealth\nseems to increase by being possessed in common. The more a truth is\nspread abroad the more its beauty, its prestige, and in a way its\nefficacy, grows. The veneration a hundred peoples throw round a\npainting of da Vinci\u2019s, a song of Gl\u00fcck\u2019s, or a saying of Spinoza\u2019s\nhas not partitioned these lovely treasures but has added to their\nimportance and their glory, has developed and opened up the whole\nsum of joy that lies latent in them. Great ideas have such radiant\nstrength! They cross space and time like avalanches: they carry along\nwith them whatever they touch. They are the only riches that one shares\nwithout ever dividing them.\n\nThis fact invites each one of us to make himself the modest and\npersevering apostle of his own truths, the propagator of his\ndiscoveries, the dispenser of his moral riches. Our own interest\ndemands it imperatively, no less than the interest of others. We shall\nnever be really happy until we have admitted and converted to our joy\nthose whom we love; and we shall love them all the better for having\nbrought them some joy, for being among the causes of their comfort.\n\nThe journeys we have made alone without companions leave us a memory\nthat is melancholy and without warmth. It is because we have had no\none to whom we could communicate our admiration, our wonder. Seated\nalone before the most majestic landscapes, we have had no one to whom\nwe could express our enthusiasm, and deprived of this expansion it has\nbeen stunted, it has remained, we might say, poor. Sharing it would\nhave enriched it.\n\nWe love solitude, indeed; it is the cold and silent fountain at which\nour soul is purified and confirmed. But what would it profit us to have\namassed great riches, by the help of solitude, if we had no one to whom\nto offer them?\n\nIt is because he feels this anxiety that man seeks a lasting union.\nAmong a thousand generosities, love offers him the opportunity to enjoy\ncompanionship without renouncing solitude. A happy home is the solitude\nof many a soul. The man who has entered into a beautiful union is sure\nof at least one person to whom he can give the best that he possesses.\n\n\n                                  II\n\nPerhaps you will say to me: \u201cHow can I be an apostle when I have in\nmyself only a wavering faith? I would enjoy being generous, but I\nam obliged to beg from the generosity of others. Such advice is for\nthose rich souls who, precisely because they are rich, have no need of\nadvice. It is with this kind of fortune as it is with money, it crowns\nthose who already possess it! My soul is poor and timid; what sort of\ncomfort would it be for other souls that are poor and timid also?\u201d\n\nO my friend, how deceived you are in yourself! How much like\ningratitude your modesty seems! First of all, let me tell you that\nthe heart that doubts its resources is rich without knowing it. The\npassion of humility weighs it down; let it free itself without\nbecoming proud! In the realm of the intelligence, you have surely\nobserved, it is only actual imbeciles who never doubt their faculties.\nThe man who can admit his own insufficiency at once gives proof of a\nrare perspicacity. In the same way, if you think you are poor it is\nbecause you are not. The only natures that are truly arid are those who\ndo not recognize and never will recognize their own sterility.\n\nThis morning you went out at dawn to take up your duties. In the marsh\nthat slumbers along the edge of the road there were such delicate green\nand purple reflections that you were struck by them. You spoke to me\nabout them, very subtly and sensitively, as soon as you were able to\nsee me. You were generous with me. You shared your good fortune with\nme. Thank you!\n\nWho spoke to me about Faisne\u2019s unhappiness? Who suddenly opened my eyes\nand made me realize the profound misery of that soul? It was you! I\nam still touched by your affectionate insight, I still marvel at your\nfortune.\n\nYou remember that night when we were lying stretched out together in\nthe fields, looking up at a sky that was rippling with milky light.\nYou said nothing to me, but I understood that evening that you were\npossessed, to the point of intoxication, with an immense, terrible\nidea, that of infinity. Thanks to your silence, I shared with you that\noverwhelming treasure.\n\nWho lent me that beautiful Swedish book I did not know? Who spoke to me\nso enthusiastically about it? It was you, you again!\n\nWho sings to me, when I am tired, that song as poignant and serene as\na breath that has come from beyond the midnight oceans? You know very\nwell, my friend, it is you.\n\nI could tell you of a thousand instances of your generosity, a thousand\napostolic words that have issued from your lips.\n\nAh! my friend, can you disavow such riches? Can you show at the same\ntime such bitterness and such prodigality?\n\nEvery day you discover a means of transforming into happiness the\nelements that others possess and neglect. Do not hesitate, therefore:\nshow them the fruitful use they ought to make of their blessings.\n\nAnd do not ask any other recompense than the pleasure of having been\nthe giver, the initiator.\n\nThe total amount of joy that prevails on the face of our world is of\ngreat importance to you and to me. One must always labor to augment it,\nwhoever the direct beneficiaries may be. There is no one who, in the\nend, will not catch its echo, who will not receive his own personal\nprofit from it.\n\nAnd that is also why, in the present immense misery of the world, the\nselfish pleasure-seekers feel themselves ill at ease, even when their\nuntimely pleasures are seen by nobody.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nIf you will, we can begin with the resolution never to undeceive anyone\nwho thinks he possesses anything.\n\nThere are some who make it their care and pride to deprive their\nneighbors of those illusions that Ibsen calls \u201cthe vital illusions.\u201d\nThe characteristic of these illusions is that they cannot be replaced.\nTo tear them away leaves a man mutilated, without any possible\nreparation.\n\nYoung people, assuredly, have a very exuberant sap and all sorts of\nencumbering shoots. Skillful and careful shears may well cut off, here\nand there, these over-greedy branches--and the tree will bear heavier\nand more fragrant fruit.\n\nBut can you without guilt take away his wealth from that old man whose\nillusion is his only pleasure? Beware of cutting off all its leaves\nfrom that old trunk that will never bring forth again and has nothing\nbut its foliage with which to subsist and feel the sun.\n\nDistrust those men who have what is like a false passion for truth.\nThey are swollen with presumptuous vanity. They do not know that real\ntruth exists only where there is faith, even faith without an object.\nOf what importance is the object? It is in faith itself that our\ngrandeur lies.\n\nIn my childhood, I often used to stop in to see a certain humble,\nwhite-haired shopkeeper. She vegetated in a dark little shop and was\nalways sitting behind her window, where the dust lay thick over the\ntoys and trinkets. Her business was very poor, but she loved to say at\nnight: \u201cThe passers-by were very good today. They looked in the window\na great deal.\u201d\n\nI noticed, in fact, that nearly all who went by turned toward the dark\nshop a long, dreamy look, full of unusual interest, that sometimes\ncaused them to stop short.\n\nOne day, as I was myself passing before the poor little display, I\nsuddenly understood what it was the passers-by looked at so kindly: it\nwas their own faces reflected in the dark window-pane.\n\nI was still very young, but I realized vaguely that it would never do\nto disclose this disastrous discovery to my old friend.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nBut this passive good will is not enough. It is not enough not to harm\nthings. Marcus Aurelius, I believe, has said; \u201cOne is often as unjust\nin doing nothing as in doing what one does.\u201d You must understand,\ntherefore, that not to share your inner fortune is, in some sort, to\nrob those who surround you.\n\nWe must first declare our blessings: we must try to do this without\nshame and without arrogance. Those who enjoy an intense and efficacious\ninner life draw from it a great deal of pride; they would gladly\ncommunicate it if they did not know that these treasures seem\nridiculous to the common men; it is really shame, therefore, that\nprevents them from being proud.\n\nIn spite of the cry of Hamlet, it is through words that one discovers\nand possesses the world.\n\nThe rhetoricians have done their work so well that at times words seem\ndry, empty of pulp, empty of juice. They are no longer nourishing food,\nthey are discordant sounds.\n\nIt needs only a little confidence and generosity to restore their\nmeaning and their weight. Then they become precious and faithful. We\ncall them, like devoted persons, to our aid; they come at once out of\nthe shadow and show themselves docile to our wishes.\n\nMarcus Aurelius, of whom we have just spoken, has said this also: \u201cI\nwish always to define or describe the object that presents itself to my\nthoughts, so as to see, distinctly and in its nakedness, what it is in\nits substance, considered as a whole, and separately in all its parts,\nso as to be able to tell myself its true name as well as the true names\nof the parts of which it is composed and into which it can be resolved.\nFor nothing is so suited to elevate the soul as to analyze as much as\npossible, with method and justice, everything that one meets with in\nlife, and always to examine each object so as to be able to recognize\nat once to what order of things it belongs, of what, use it is, and\nwhat is its importance in the universe and, relatively, to man.\u201d\n\nIt is with words that this task is accomplished.\n\nI have noted another beautiful expression on this subject; it is from\nM. Anatole France. \u201cWords,\u201d he says, \u201care ideas.... I think the highest\nrace in the world is that which has the best syntax. It often happens\nthat men cut each other\u2019s throats over words they do not understand. If\nthey understood each other they would embrace each other.\u201d\n\nBe very sure then that the words of which we make use are deserving of\nall our care, all our respect. They are the witnesses of our thoughts.\nThey will betray us if we degrade them to base uses.\n\nChoose them with great tenderness; that is a quality as enviable as\nprecision. And by means of these choice words, loyally express your\nfortune.\n\nTell what you have discovered, what you know. In affirming your\npossession you render it sure, positive. You labor for others and for\nyourself. You give form to your treasure and yield it, as if perfected,\nto those who truly wish to avail themselves of it.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nYes, in acting in this way, you are also working for your own profit.\nDo not let us leave this burning subject too quickly.\n\nIf I were not afraid of giving a conviction the form of a whim, I\nshould say: \u201cYou do your work and it does good to you.\u201d\n\nAmong the ideas that are dear to you and that you are glad to\nexpress are not only certainties, verified results, the testimony of\nexperience. There are many wishes, many longings, too. By virtue of\nbeing enunciated, these end by reacting upon you, by gently imprisoning\nyou. When you speak of virtue, or happiness, or the spirit of adventure\nor courage, you further certain things that are indeed your own; you\nfurther also many other things that you passionately wish to have\nbecome your own, your unique and recognized quality. By virtue of\nexpressing them, it comes to pass that they in turn react upon you; a\nmoment arrives when you are morally constrained to become the product\nof your opinions. In this sense your work does for you the good that\nyou have done for it.\n\nAdmit, therefore, that if it pleases you to see and to paint your life\nin generous, harmonious colors, it is inevitable that harmony and\ngenerosity should little by little imprint their stamp on your serious\nthoughts and on your acts.\n\nTherefore speak, speak of your dream. Every time someone tells you:\n\u201cYou do not live up to what you say,\u201d think, with a smile: \u201cNot yet,\nundoubtedly; but I feel sure that one day my words, that is to say, my\nthoughts, will prove to be truer than my vagaries.\u201d\n\nWhen you have tried and proved this method, you will attempt to bestow\nit upon others.\n\nTo that end strive to win a reputation among uncertain, hesitating\npeople. Be prudent: this is the time when it is of great importance to\nchoose the right ideas and words. But if you see one of your companions\ntorn between two opposing reputations, imprison him in the better of\nthe two.\n\nI once knew a man who had done many good acts and a considerable number\nof reprehensible ones. One day, when I saw him hesitating between\nthese two different tendencies, I began to address certain phrases to\nhim that opened somewhat like this: \u201cYou who are so good.... You who\nhave done such and such fine things.\u201d ... And the result was that that\nman became really good, in order not to betray the reputation he had\ngained.\n\nI foresee that you are about to pronounce the word vanity. Stop a\nmoment! It is not a base stratagem that causes a barren soul to bring\nforth a fine harvest. If I had called the attention of that man to what\nwas mean and sordid in his character, he would have perhaps become a\nvillain altogether, and that would have been a shame for him, for me,\nand for everybody.\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nWe have discovered together, you will recall, that the world is offered\nto all men that it may be possessed by each with the help of all. You\nsee, then, that in your modest r\u00f4le of apostle there is a means of\nmaking others rich while securing their help for your own undertakings.\n\nEstimate your wealth according to the importance of what you give.\nDispossess yourself boldly. Everything will be returned to you at the\nright time and a hundredfold.\n\nIf the great apostles were able to bring the good news, it was because\nthey had faith; but nothing could have exalted their faith more than to\nbring the good news.\n\nIf you have been interested in something you have read, in a walk, if\nyou have been astonished at some spectacle, invite all those whom you\nknow to read what you have read, to take that walk, to contemplate\nthat spectacle. Show some discernment in your invitations. Distrust\nthe sceptics a little, the ironical, cruel, or contradictory spirits.\nDistrust them, but do not abandon them: they are the strayed sheep\nwhose return ought to rejoice your heart supremely. When you have made\nthem admit: \u201cYes, there\u2019s something really fine! Yes, there\u2019s something\ninteresting, there\u2019s something worth the pain of living!\u201d you may fall\nasleep with a smile; your day will not have been lost.\n\nAt times, you will make a discovery so rare, so delicate that, by some\nsecret warning, you will know it cannot be communicated, that it is\nstrictly individual, that it ought to remain as a private relation\nbetween the world and your soul. In that case, keep your own counsel.\nPerhaps a day will come when your thought will have gained in precision\nthrough being amplified; on that day you will be mysteriously informed\nthat your treasure has lost its private character, that it has become\nsuitable for sustaining your communion with others. When that day\ncomes, speak forth. Until that day, however, be patient; do not\nfall into the error of those spirits who are called obscure because\nthey offer us impressions that have been insufficiently ripened and\nexperienced, impressions that are not for all humanity.\n\nOn the other hand, when someone offers you one of these obscure\nimpressions, do not reject it, do not laugh with disdain. Force\nyourself to feel what has been pictured for you in this faulty fashion.\nYou will do your partner a service in visualizing his discovery, and\nyou will perhaps be able to increase your own stock. Perhaps there will\nbe something worth seizing and understanding at the bottom of it.\n\nAlways seek communion. It is the most precious thing men possess. In\nthis respect, the symbol of the religions is indeed full of majesty.\nWhere there is communion there is something that is more than human,\nthere is surely something divine.\n\nWhen you deem that you have grasped a truth do not forget, in\ncommunicating it to others, that there are two conditions of truth. Any\ntruth one receives is but a small fortune in comparison with the value\nof that which one experiences. Therefore persuade those you love into\nthe experiencing of truths, into the religious, courageous, persistent\nexperiencing of the well-beloved truth.\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nOne dreams of a life in which everyone would be the apostle of what he\npossesses and where all would be the disciples of each.\n\nIf you wish to be an apostle, begin by never mislaying any of your\nwealth.\n\nI once had a friend who said to me almost every day: \u201cThis morning I\nhad a beautiful thought; but I can\u2019t find it again, I\u2019ve forgotten it,\nI\u2019ve lost it.\u201d\n\nYou have a purse to contain your money; condescend to have a scrap of\npaper on which you can put your thoughts, where you can set them in\norder. It is a slight means to what will eventually be a great end. Be\neconomical of your treasures so that you may be lavish of them at the\nopportune moment. Do not lose what you wish to give away.\n\nYou are like the seeker after gold, on your knees by the bank of a\nriver that rolls with sand and with nuggets.\n\nThe rushing flood of your soul flows by, and you watch it with fear\nand delight. Every sort of thing is in it: mud, grass, gold, flowers,\nformless and nameless debris. Gather to one side what you deem worthy\nto be preserved, do not let it escape in the torrent.\n\nThis mass of thoughts that crowd and elbow one another, this storm that\ntumbles its way over you, this unending dream that you have when you\nare awake, when your soul abandons itself to its natural, spontaneous\nimpulses, there, indeed, is matter to terrify you! So many things\nappear and are swallowed up again that scandalize or horrify you; so\nmany contradictions bewilder you, so many jewels shine furtively forth,\nthat you are by turns filled with consternation, stupefied, dazzled.\n\nYou must choose among all these things. You must draw out of the\ncurrent what you recognize as of value to you, and let the rest sink.\n\nI beg you, keep the reckoning of your own soul. Keep a little book in\nyour pocket that is carefully brought up to date. And do not trust\nyour memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip\nthrough it.\n\nYou must not have too much fear of not being up to your task when you\nare approaching great problems and great works.\n\nThat is something worth meditating for him who sets himself to\nobtaining possession of the world, who wishes to invite his companions\nto do the same.\n\nThough it may have all the appearance of na\u00efvet\u00e9, confidence is less to\nbe feared than the terror of ridicule that paralyzes so many souls at\nthe beginning of the most beautiful adventures.\n\nThe fear of enthusiasm does as much harm as obvious wickedness.\n\nIt is better to pass for a simpleton and become the laughing-stock of\nthe disillusioned than to miss the opportunity to serve as the apostle\nof one\u2019s beloved verities. It is better to squander one\u2019s fortune than\nto run the risk of being the only one to profit from it. There will\nalways be a farthing to fall into eager hands.\n\nThe main thing is to be, above everything else, a man of good will.\n\nThe true enemy, if there is any such, is the pharisee, the man of\noutward observance, he who adopts every religion as a matter of\nfashion, who speaks frequently and passionately of his soul in the same\nway in which he speaks of his necktie.\n\n\n                                 VIII\n\nIf you are only two against a thousand in leading this beautiful, pure\nlife, rejoice that there are at least two of you and do not despair of\nyour course of action.\n\nIs it not Renan who has uttered this profound saying: \u201cThe great things\nin any race are usually accomplished by the minority\u201d?\n\nDo not rejoice because there are slaves. Let their example be a fearful\nwarning to you; let it fill you with an overmastering desire to free\nthem from servitude.\n\nTo the apostle Paul is ascribed that disquieting utterance of the\nconquering soldier: \u201cOportet h\u00e6reses esse.\u201d\n\nYes, undoubtedly, whoever wishes to fight needs an enemy.\n\nThe dazzling chance of such conquests is not, alas, the thing you will\nbe most likely to miss. But every conquest is vain that does not tend\ntoward peace.\n\nOne thinks with ecstasy of the joy of a universal communion, from\nwhich no one would be left out, in which no one would be the victim.\n\nMust there be heretics? Yes! To convince them, but not to vanquish\nthem, and still less to put them to the stake.\n\n\n\n\n                                   X\n                       ON THE REIGN OF THE HEART\n\n\n   \u201cThe knowledge of external things does not make up for me, in times\n   of affliction, for my ignorance of the moral world; but my knowledge\n   of the moral world always consoles me for my ignorance of external\n   things.\u201d--_Pascal_.\n\n\n                                   I\n\nIt has come, the time of affliction!\n\nWhatever may be the outcome of this war, it marks a period of profound\ndespair for humanity. However great may be the pride of victory,\nhowever generous such a victory may be, under whatever light the\ndistant consequences may be presented to us, we live, none the less, in\na blighted age, on an earth that will be devastated for long years, in\nthe midst of a society that is decimated, ruined, crushed by its wounds.\n\nAmong all our disillusionments, if there is one that remains especially\npainful to us it is the sort of bankruptcy of which our whole\ncivilization is convicted.\n\nMan had never been prouder than at the beginning of the twentieth\ncentury of the discoveries he had realized in the domain of what\nPascal called \u201cthe external sciences.\u201d\n\nWe must admit that there was some excuse for this intoxication, this\nerror. In its struggle with matter, humanity had experienced a success\nthat was so daring, so disconcerting, and above all so repeated that it\nlost a just conception of its adversary and forgot that its principal\nenemy was itself.\n\nEvents have recalled this to it in a flash. In the last year or two it\nhas expressed its discomfiture through millions of simple lips. It has\nasked with anguish how \u201ca century so advanced in civilization\u201d could\ngive birth to this demoralizing catastrophe. Stupefied, it sees turning\nagainst itself all those inventions which, it had been told, were made\nfor its happiness. For hardly one is absent. Even those that seemed\nthe highest in moral significance, even they, have contributed in some\ndegree to the disaster. Only the fear of creating an uncontrollable\nsituation has prevented certain of the belligerents from forming an\nalliance with the very germs of epidemic diseases and thus debasing the\nnoblest of all the acquisitions of science.\n\nA doubt has grown up in all hearts: what, after all, is this\ncivilization from which we draw such pride and which we claim the\nright to impose upon the peoples of the other continents? What is this\nthing that has suddenly revealed itself as so cruel, so dangerous, as\ndestitute of soul as its own machines?\n\nEyes have been opened, spirits have been illuminated: never did\nbarbarism, in all its brutality and destructiveness, attain results as\nmonstrous as those of which our industrial and scientific civilization\nhas proved itself capable. Is it indeed anything but a travesty on\nbarbarism?\n\nWhat inclines one to believe this is that the peoples which have\ndedicated to the gods of the factory and the laboratory the most\nfervent and the most vainglorious worship have shown themselves in this\nway by far the cruellest, the most fertile in inhumane and disgraceful\ninventions.\n\nM. Bergson has said, of the intelligence, that it is \u201ccharacterized by\na natural incomprehension of life.\u201d To this one might add: and by a\ncomplete incomprehension of happiness, which is the very aim of life.\n\nWith its retinue of ingenious inventions and clever complications, the\nintelligence plays the part of something irresponsible or criminal in\nthe great disorder of the world. It seems not only incapable of giving\nhappiness to men, but actually adapted to bewilder them, corrupt them,\nset them quarreling. It knows how to provoke conflicts; it is unable\neither to exorcise them or to resolve them.\n\nScientific and industrial civilization based upon the intelligence is\ncondemned. For long years it has monopolized and distracted all human\nenergies. Its reign has ended in an immense defeat.\n\n\n                                  II\n\nIt is toward the resources of the heart that our hope turns. Betrayed\nby this clever intelligence, whose formidable works have at times the\nvery look of stupidity itself, we aspire to the reign of the heart; all\nour desires turn toward a moral civilization, such as is alone capable\nof exalting us, satisfying us, protecting us, assuring us the true\nburgeoning of our race.\n\nIt is by juggling with words that people have been able to attach the\nidea of true progress to the development of the mechanical, chemical\nor biological sciences. True progress concerns nothing but the soul,\nit remains independent of the expedients and the practices of science.\nThis latter is able to triumph even when the true progress, the ascent\nof mankind toward happiness, is interrupted and thwarted in its\nprofoundest tendencies.\n\nThere are not lacking people to tell us that the war will mark with\nprecision the advent of a new world, that it has bought in the blood\nand the flame the moral elevation necessary for a fruitful and final\npeace. We cannot share this optimism of official eloquence. It is\nnot the performance of tasks of murder that opens to men the road\nto justice and converts them to good customs. Humanity must grow\nunaccustomed to crime, and it is not the armed intelligence that can\naccomplish this miracle. The pacifying work of the war will remain\nin peril if everything that is healthy and generous in humanity does\nnot labor to dethrone this scientific civilization which still abuses\nsociety after having reduced it to helplessness.\n\nI consider as negligible the objection of the stoics who say that these\nmiseries do not depend upon us and that we ought obstinately to seek\nour happiness through them, isolate our happiness from the surrounding\ndegradation. No! These miseries do depend upon us. In spite of its\ndisdainful nobility, the stoic resignation has here too much the look\nof egoism.\n\nThis moral civilization, when its hour comes, will revive Christianity\nand propagate it; it will not leave the human race in the abandonment\nof the desperate misery of today.\n\n\n                                  III\n\nThe naturalists and the sociologists have contributed to spread\nthis idea that moral progress is, for individuals, a function of\nthe anatomical complex, and for societies of the complex of habits,\ninstitutions and industries. It is on this understanding that they have\nundertaken the classification of species and arranged the various\nhuman hierarchies.\n\nThat is a view entirely external to things, it cannot be verified\nas regards individual thought, it is a sheer fabrication as regards\ncollectivities: the war is a bloody refutation of it.\n\nIf we mean by moral progress that which affects the conditions of\nhappiness, nothing permits us to conjecture what advantages have been\nrealized in this direction by the vegetable and animal organisms that\nhave not chosen us as confidents. Habits, as we observe them, cannot be\na criterion, even if we admit that we ought to seek for evidence among\nthem; they seem as if designed to baffle all theories.\n\nThose animals whose anatomical structure closely resembles ours, not\nto say that it is exactly analogous to ours, such as cattle and sheep,\ngive proof of a moral activity that is insignificant beside the real\ngenius shown by the bee and so many other insects whose nervous systems\nare still rudimentary in comparison with those of the mammals.\n\nCertain sea animals, the barnacles, have suffered, because of their\nsedentary existence, an anatomical regression. We know that the mobile\nlarv\u00e6 of the barnacles possess more complicated organisms than those\nof the adult and stationary animal. To conclude from that that this\nanatomical regression is a lowering of the species is to assume a great\ndeal, and it is to accord to movement a very debatable significance.\n\nThere exist species of plant life, especially among the conifers\nand the ferns, which, for thousands of centuries, seem to have\nremained in an almost stable anatomical and functional stage. These\nspecies are none the less very widely scattered and very long-lived,\nvery adaptable. They offer an outward appearance of happiness and\nprosperity. On the other hand, nothing permits us to affirm that\ncertain species, like the orchids, which have undergone a delirious\nevolution resulting in forms of extreme anatomical complexity, have\nattained a true progress, have improved, that is to say, their moral\ndestiny: we see them subject to innumerable external servitudes. Their\nreproduction, even, is only possible thanks to the intervention of\noutside agencies and is fraught with perils. A seductive argument that\nsmacks of anthropomorphism inclines us to believe that these species,\nintoxicated with their material difficulties, ought to have a less free\nand less serene philosophical existence.\n\nThe complexity of the individual organism, which corresponds strictly\nto the political, economic and scientific complexity of societies, adds\nneither to the possibilities of life, nor to its scope of activity, nor\nto its hopes.\n\nCertain fish, the pleuronectes, have sought their salvation in a very\nbold, precocious development that ends in a displacement of their\neyes, of their mouth and in a profound disorder of their original\nsymmetry. Looking at them, one has the impression that this development\nhas thrown them into an impasse, into a _cul-de-sac_ from which it\nwould be difficult for them to escape into a new evolution; one has\nthe impression that this whole biological stratagem has considerably\nrestricted the destiny of the species.\n\nBesides, and the naturalists know it very well, the species that are\nmost highly evolved, most differentiated, to employ the consecrated\nexpression, are in a certain sense the oldest species, imprisoned\nin their own tradition and scarcely to be counted upon for a new\nadaptation, a profound reformation of their organs and their habits.\n\n\n                                  IV\n\nThis digression, too long for our restlessness, but too succinct in\nview of the facts it involves, raises several criticisms.\n\nOne might, in the first place, object that evolution is a thing which\nspecies undergo and which they cannot influence themselves. If that is\ntrue, humanity finds itself forced into an adventure against which it\nis puerile and presumptuous to contend.\n\nThis attitude implies a submissive fatalism that denies both our sense\nof experience and our thirst for perfection. We are apt to construe\nour lessons in such a way as to draw instruction from them. We have\nshown this in many moments of crisis, and we feel a certain repugnance\nto thinking that we cannot turn to our own profit the most majestic\nlesson that has ever been given to men.\n\nCertain minds, on the other hand, have concluded that humanity is\naltogether too old, too highly evolved a species to be capable of ever\nagain renouncing what is fundamental in its inveterate intellectual\ntraditions, its scientific acquisitions and the customs that have\nsprung from them.\n\nIf this conception of the world did not appear as if stamped with\nlassitude and scepticism, it would seem to leave us in the presence\nof a desperate alternative: either the acceptance of a life without\nrestraint, given over to every sort of folly, exposed to every sort\nof lapse into crime, or the solitary search for an oblivion that only\nwaits for death.\n\nBut will the peoples who have struggled so fiercely for their material\ninterests remain disarmed in the face of the moral danger that\nthreatens the very morning of the race, will they undertake nothing\ntruly efficacious for the sake of posterity?\n\nThat is the anxiety that haunts generous souls today.\n\nThe political arrangements that will mark the end of this war will be\nof no real interest if the minds that control the spiritual direction\nof the peoples do not labor, from now on-and in the future, to modify\nthe meaning of the ideas of progress and civilization.\n\nWe cannot believe that humanity is so deeply sunk in its convictions\nand its intellectual habits as to remain forever incapable of sudden\nchange and reform.\n\nThe human world has already passed through important crises; it has\nalready been forced several times to reshape the idea it had formed of\nculture and civilization.\n\nIt has always been amid its ruins that it has meditated the conditions\nof a new life. If it is true that ruins demand the revolution of\ncustoms, let us admit that the heart of man has never been more\nurgently entreated than today.\n\nIn any case, there is no question of giving up those customs that\nform an integral part of our vital economy. It would be fantastic to\nconsider the regeneration of a society that was deprived, for example,\nof the means of communication which have obtained for a century and\nwhich we could scarcely abandon now without suicide. But it is fair to\nconsider how great and dangerous is the hold of the false needs which\nthe study of the \u201cexternal sciences\u201d creates in us and not to permit\nour ideal activity to be blindly enslaved any longer by our material\ningenuity.\n\nThere exist in our nature ardent forces that one cannot condemn\nwithout appeal and that will manifest themselves against all discipline.\n\nThe passion of the sciences must be deeply-rooted when we see men, in\nlove with love, peace, humanity, consecrating themselves, as if in\ntheir own despite, under the cover of some abstract sophistry, to tasks\nwhose results may contribute seriously to the wretchedness and the\ndebasement of society.\n\nIf one might gather together all the faculties of the spirit for the\nsingle cause of happiness!\n\nAt least, and from now on, let us cease to consider that the monstrous\ndevelopment of industrial science represents civilization; otherwise\nlet us withdraw from this word its whole moral significance and seek\nanother for the needs of our ideal.\n\nLet us cease humiliating moral culture, the only pledge we have of\npeace and happiness, before the irresponsible and unruly genius that\nhaunts the laboratories. Scientific civilization, let us say, to\nallow it to keep this name for a moment, has been for us so prodigal\nin bitterness that we can no longer abandon it uncontrolled to its\ndevouring activity. We must make use of it as a servant and cease any\nlonger to adore it as a goddess.\n\n\n                                   V\n\nWe must revise all our definitions, all our values, our whole\nvocabulary.\n\nAll fervent spirits should set themselves to this work, and their task\nwill be all the heavier the more widely extended they are assured their\ninfluence will be.\n\nWe must strive to make our stunned humanity realize that happiness does\nnot consist in travelling at the rate of sixty miles an hour, rising\nup into the air on a machine or talking under the ocean, but above all\nelse in being rich in beautiful thoughts, contented with its work,\nhonored with warm affections.\n\nWe must restore the cult of the arts which contribute to the\npurification of the soul, which are consoling in times of affliction\nand remain, by their nature, incapable of serving ignoble ends.\n\nWe must employ our strength to altering the meaning of the words\n\u201criches,\u201d \u201cpossessions,\u201d \u201cauthority,\u201d to showing that they are things\nof the soul and that the material acceptance of these terms corresponds\nto realities that are perfidious and ironical. We must at the same time\ntransform the ideas of benevolence and ambition, open a new career to\nthese virtues, create for them new ends and new satisfactions. Those\nwho consider such a program with irony or scepticism make a great\nmistake. Its realization may seem illusory, but it will undoubtedly\nbecome a necessity. The material goods at the disposal of humanity will\nfind themselves considerably reduced both by the destruction of which\nthey have been the object and by the long arrest of the production of\nthem.\n\nTheir rarity and their growing expensiveness will be the source of\ngrave and almost insoluble conflicts, which new effusions of blood will\nonly make more venomous.\n\nHumanity can hurl against this terrible future a defiance full of\ngrandeur. It can, under the influence of its spiritual masters, seek\nits happiness in a wise and passionate transformation of its desires.\n\nLet us not urge it toward resignation but toward the conquest of the\ntrue riches, those that assure it the moral possession of the world.\n\n\n                                  VI\n\nThe economists, whose science the war has so often tested, are laboring\nto define what will be the conditions of life in the period that will\nfollow the world war; their estimates leave little room for the hope of\nan agreeable and easy material existence; they hold over the mass of\nmen, conquered and conquerors alike, the menace of desperate labor and\nslight and wretched returns.\n\nThese learned researches, added to the similar conclusions of common\nsense, do not seem to discourage the laborious race of men. They have\nbeen told they must work, and even now, while they are struggling\nagainst a hundred fearful perils, they are mentally preparing to earn\ntheir difficult living, if only the war does not take away their lives.\n\nThe modern industrial monster sets these conditions in advance. We\nalready know that competition will be pitiless, we know too that\nenjoyment will only be for the highest bidder. Individuals, at the\nsight of this future, mutually urge one another to be stubborn. The\nworld is preparing to take up again, obstinately, the old order that\nhas cost it so many trials. As yet no one speaks of a new life.\n\nThere will be so many voices to praise these desperate resolutions, so\nmany books will be written to persuade men to persevere in their old\nhatreds that a timid voice may well raise itself to protest against the\nconsummation of the error.\n\nA man whom I love and esteem above all others once said to me:\n\n\u201cWhen peace is signed and I return home, I shall have to give up all\nthe distractions I used to have if I wish to work as much as will be\nnecessary to recover a situation as good as the one I had before.\u201d\n\nBelieve me, O my friend who said these words to me, I love work too\nwell to blame your decision; but I was thinking only of your happiness,\nand it was of your situation that you spoke to me. Are you sure that\nthey are rightly related, those two words, those two ideas? What do you\nhope from the future if you are not going to allow a large place in it\nto the soul?\n\nWhat compensation will be left for our passion of today if we take up\nall our prejudices again, if we return to our own vomit?\n\nThe old civilization seems condemned. To break with it, we must first\nof all seek our individual satisfaction outside money, our happiness\noutside the whirlpool of pleasure. We must flee deliberately from the\ntyranny of luxury. In this way even the events of the present oblige\nus to seek our true path. Must we keep blindly and obstinately to the\nways of slavery? We have slighted the best sources of interest, joy and\nwealth; shall we misprize them now that they remain the only fresh and\nfaithful things in the aridity of our time? Shall we neglect our souls\nagain to seek a false fortune that can only betray us? Shall we contend\nwith exasperated brutes over possessions we know to be unstable and\ndeceptive?\n\nNo! No! Here should lie the lesson and the one benefit of this war:\nthat we should undeceive ourselves about ourselves and about our ends!\nLet us not devote our courage to choosing a ferocious discipline\ndevoid of the ideal. Let us once for all reject our calculating and\ndemoralizing intelligence. Let us organize, in the peace that returns,\nthe reign of the heart.\n\n\n                                  VII\n\nThe search for happiness cannot ignore the conditions of the material\nlife. Undoubtedly, well-being, comfort, dispose us to a happy view\nof things; but will they ever replace what a poet has called \u201cthe\ncontented heart\u201d?\n\nThe Anglo-American peoples, susceptible as they are to all the moral\nand religious revolutions, have applied themselves to altering the\noriginal sense of simple well-being so as to identify it with luxurious\ncomfort. That is a way of giving a moral aspect to pleasure, making an\nhonest bargain with the corruptions of money.\n\nThe exigencies of this sort of life have largely contributed to\ninvolving these peoples in a frenzied whirlwind of business that wears\na man out and bewilders him. The anonymous writer of the \u201cLetters of\nan Elderly American to a Frenchman\u201d says to my countrymen: \u201cYour most\nbeautiful country-houses and your best hotels are occupied most of the\ntime by foreigners, while your own people have to content themselves\nwith miserable little cheap holes. Isn\u2019t it absurd!\u201d Perhaps, O Elderly\nAmerican, but that absurdity is dear to my heart. May the God of\njourneys always turn my path away from the tainted spots where rise\nthose buildings in which the existence you think so enviable is passed.\nIf we are to consecrate our friendship we ought to discuss the value\nof words: what you call happiness does not tempt me.\n\nThe love of nature, the taste for those simple, healthy joys that were\nso vaunted by the philosophers of our eighteenth century have been the\nlaughing-stock of our contemporary writers. A laughable excess has led,\nby reaction, to a furious and ignoble excess.\n\nThe dramatists and novelists of our time who, by the quality of their\nopinions or by their political positions are ostensibly laboring for\na moral or religious end, have betrayed, in most of their works, a\nservile and ill-concealed love of luxury. It is useless to give names;\nlet us say only that none of the modern novels of certain of our\nauthors lack those descriptions and professions of faith that reveal\nthe quivering longing of the pauper for the delights and enjoyments on\nwhich all his eager desires are fixed.\n\nIt is partly to the influence of this literature that our old world\nowes the headlong rush of all classes of humanity toward those\npleasures that are only the phantoms of happiness and will never be\nanything else.\n\nIf genius wishes to consecrate itself to a labor that is truly\nreconstructive, truly pacific, it must discover other subjects for its\nworks.\n\n\n                                 VIII\n\nIf the future laws governing labor do not allow enough time for the\ncultivation and the flourishing of the soul, a sacred struggle will\nbecome inevitable.\n\nThe organizers of the modern world, who have shown themselves powerless\nto avert war and did not realize the vanity of our old civilization,\ndo not yet seem to foresee the urgency of radical changes in the moral\neducation of the peoples.\n\nThey continue to talk to us about the superhuman efforts we must make\nin order to redeem their faults.\n\nNo one shrinks before these efforts. Society is weary of crime but not\nof peaceful tasks. Everyone prepares with joyous energy to take up his\nformer position and his tools again.\n\nIt rests with us all to mitigate the severity of economic conflicts by\nworking to transform the current idea of happiness.\n\nThe possessors of material wealth have, in general, for centuries,\ngiven to those whom they employ and direct so scandalous and basely\nimmoral an example that they themselves are the principal fomenters of\nthe attacks which they will henceforth have to undergo.\n\nIn the machinery of modern industry, work has lost a great many of its\nattractive virtues: all the methods in force tend to diminish the part\nplayed by the soul and the heart, and the workman, imprisoned in an\nalmost mechanical function, no longer expects from work the personal\nsatisfaction he once obtained; as a poet has said: \u201cHis empty labor is\nthe fate he fights against.\u201d\n\nCertain American methods have based their theory upon a clever sophism;\nthey exaggerate the automatic under the pretext of thus cutting short\nthe length of the work. That is not a happy solution, to cut short the\nhours of labor by emptying it of all joy, of all professional interest.\nIt is better to undertake a long piece of work with relish than to\nhurry through a short task with repugnance.\n\nThe specialization that is rendered necessary by the very extent\nof scientific and industrial activity remains a dangerous thing,\nespecially among an old race of encyclopedists like ourselves.\n\nHowever that may be, the peoples consent to yield themselves to the\ndiscretion of the modern world. May the monster leave them some scraps\nof a liberty that is still honorable enough for them to think of\ncultivating their souls. There will not be lacking men of good will\nwho will be glad to devote themselves to directing this liberty, to\ntransforming the meaning and the demands of joy, propagating a culture\nwhich, unlike those old errors, will support education more readily\nthan instruction,--men who will more often address themselves to the\nheart than to the disastrous reason.\n\n\n                                  IX\n\nFrance has suffered, suffers and will suffer more deeply than all\nthe other countries of the world. She is at once the altar and the\nholocaust. She has sacrificed her men, her cities, and her soil. It is\nin the heart of her beautiful fields that the devastating storm whirls\nand roars.\n\nIn the depths of my soul I hope that, because of this great grief, it\nwill be France that will give the signal for redemption. I hope that\nthe reign of the heart will begin just here where the old civilization\nwill leave imperishable traces of its murderous folly.\n\nThe resources of the French people in perseverance, in self-reliance,\nin goodness, in subtle delicacy are so great that one feels a word\nwould suffice to rally all hearts and give them their bearings. One\nfeels that at the mere phrase \u201cmoral civilization\u201d thousands and\nthousands of noble heads will nod approval, thousands of hands will\nreach out to find each other.\n\nPeople who have obstinate views on the political meaning of wars,\non the eminently economic nature of the peril that has been run\nby humanity, and on the efficacy of the industrial and scientific\ncivilization, will not fail to proclaim that France ought first of\nall to return to its furious task and apply itself to surpassing the\npeoples that have outstripped it along this path.\n\nBut France has always been the country of initiation and revelation. It\nis the chosen land of spiritual revolutions. May the bloody baptism it\nhas received give it precedence in the discussion of the future!\n\nDo you wish it to lose the glorious rank it holds in the moral order,\nat the head of the nations, that it may fall in line behind the peoples\nwho are enslaved by automatism and swear allegiance to a worn-out,\ncondemned, bankrupt social and economic religion?\n\nIf the destiny of our country is to make a humanity that is plunged in\naffliction give ear to the words of peace, consolation and love, let it\naccomplish this beautiful mission, let it teach the other peoples the\ngenerous laws of the true possession of the world.\n\n\n                                   X\n\nMy work is finished, and now the time has come for me to part with it.\n\nIt is going off into this misty autumn night. My heart is both glad and\nsorrowful.\n\nIt is going away from me, henceforth to follow a destiny of its own\nthat will no longer depend only upon my love.\n\nI shall turn to other duties, I shall assume other cares. A voice tells\nme that they will always be the same duties, the same cares, and that\nthere is no longer but one great task for men, one single task with a\nhundred radiant aspects.\n\nIt is late. The night is drawing to a close; it is calm and yet\npenetrated with a vast, subdued murmur of joy. They say it is one of\nthe last nights of the war.\n\nI hear about me the panting breath of the wounded. There are several\nhundred of them; they are sleeping or longing for sleep and rest. Their\nburning breath is like a lamentation. Many of them will never see the\npeace they have so dearly bought. They are perhaps the wounded of the\nlast battle, the last victims, the last martyrs.\n\nOver the whole face of the world souls are suffering with them, for\nthem, souls which the angel of death laboring here this night will not\ndeliver.\n\nMy work is finished. It begins to withdraw from me. If it can bring any\nconsolation to a single one of these suffering souls, let me believe\nthat it has fulfilled its destiny.\n\n\n                                THE END","title":"The Heart's Domain","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":44673}